Past Masters Fifty
Author: Various
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: Another anthology of short stories in the Life + 70 public domain: 1: "Pigs is Pigs" / Ellis Parker Butler 2: The Tomb of Sarah / F. G. Loring 3: The Yogi of West Ninth Street / Guy Gilpatric 4: The Black Sampan / Raoul Whitfield 5: The Dancing Partner / Jerome K. Jerome 6: Casting the Runes / M. R. James 7: The Van Duersen Haze / Frederick Irving Anderson 8: The Phantom Alibi / Frederick Irving Anderson 9: The Loaded Dog / Henry Lawson 10: Servant of Satan / Otis Adelbert Kline 11: Silver Jemmy / Stephen Vincent Benét 12: The Vampire / Théophile Gautier 13: The Briar / Valentine Williams 14:

PAST MASTERS

FIFTY

November 2021

Part 3

Produced by Terry Walker

("Pulpmeister")

Contents

1: "Pigs is Pigs" / Ellis Parker Butler

2: The Tomb of Sarah / F. G. Loring

3: The Yogi of West Ninth Street / Guy Gilpatric

4: The Black Sampan / Raoul Whitfield

5: The Dancing Partner / Jerome K. Jerome

6: Casting the Runes / M. R. James

7: The Van Duersen Haze / Frederick Irving Anderson

8: The Phantom Alibi / Frederick Irving Anderson

9: The Loaded Dog / Henry Lawson

10: Servant of Satan / Otis Adelbert Kline

11: Silver Jemmy / Stephen Vincent Benét

12: The Vampire / Théophile Gautier

13: The Briar / Valentine Williams

14: The Judge's House / Bram Stoker

15: The Ghost of the Marchioness of Appleford / Jerome K. Jerome

16: The Beast with Five Fingers / William Fryer Harvey

Cumulative Index 31-50

________________

1: "Pigs is Pigs"

Ellis Parker Butler

1869-1937

American Illustrated Magazine Sep 1905

The celebrated and  much reprinted story which made Ellis Parker Butler's name

MIKE FLANNERY, the Westcote agent of the Interurban Express Company, leaned over the counter of the express office and shook his fist. Mr. Morehouse, angry and red, stood on the other side of the counter, trembling with rage. The argument had been long and heated, and at last Mr. Morehouse had talked himself speechless. The cause of the trouble stood on the counter between the two men. It was a soap box across the top of which were nailed a number of strips, forming a rough but serviceable cage. In it two spotted guinea-pigs were greedily eating lettuce leaves.

"Do as you loike, then!" shouted Flannery, "pay for thim an' take thim, or don't pay for thim and leave thim be. Rules is rules, Misther Morehouse, an' Mike Flannery's not goin' to be called down fer breakin' of thim."

"But, you everlastingly stupid idiot!" shouted Mr. Morehouse, madly shaking a flimsy printed book beneath the agent's nose, "can't you read it here-in your own plain printed rates? 'Pets, domestic, Franklin to Westcote, if properly boxed, twenty-five cents each.' " He threw the book on the counter in disgust. "What more do you want? Aren't they pets? Aren't they domestic? Aren't they properly boxed? What?"

He turned and walked back and forth rapidly; frowning ferociously.

Suddenly he turned to Flannery, and forcing his voice to an artificial calmness spoke slowly but with intense sarcasm.

"Pets," he said "P-e-t-s! Twenty-five cents each. There are two of them. One! Two! Two times twenty-five are fifty! Can you understand that? I offer you fifty cents."

Flannery reached for the book. He ran his hand through the pages and stopped at page sixty four.

"An' I don't take fifty cints," he whispered in mockery. "Here's the rule for ut. 'Whin the agint be in anny doubt regardin' which of two rates applies to a shipment, he shall charge the larger. The con-sign-ey may file a claim for the overcharge.' In this case, Misther Morehouse, I be in doubt. Pets thim animals may be, an' domestic they be, but pigs I'm blame sure they do be, an' me rules says plain as the nose on yer face, 'Pigs Franklin to Westcote, thirty cints each.' An' Mister Morehouse, by me arithmetical knowledge two times thurty comes to sixty cints."

Mr. Morehouse shook his head savagely. "Nonsense!" he shouted, "confounded nonsense, I tell you! Why, you poor ignorant foreigner, that rule means common pigs, domestic pigs, not guinea pigs!"

Flannery was stubborn.

"Pigs is pigs," he declared firmly. "Guinea-pigs, or dago pigs or Irish pigs is all the same to the Interurban Express Company an' to Mike Flannery. Th' nationality of the pig creates no differentiality in the rate, Misther Morehouse! 'Twould be the same was they Dutch pigs or Rooshun pigs. Mike Flannery," he added, "is here to tind to the expriss business and not to hould conversation wid dago pigs in sivinteen languages fer to discover be they Chinese or Tipperary by birth an' nativity."

Mr. Morehouse hesitated. He bit his lip and then flung out his arms wildly.

"Very well!" he shouted, "you shall hear of this! Your president shall hear of this! It is an outrage! I have offered you fifty cents. You refuse it! Keep the pigs until you are ready to take the fifty cents, but, by George, sir, if one hair of those pigs' heads is harmed I will have the law on you!"

He turned and stalked out, slamming the door. Flannery carefully lifted the soap box from the counter and placed it in a corner. He was not worried. He felt the peace that comes to a faithful servant who has done his duty and done it well.

Mr. Morehouse went home raging. His boy, who had been awaiting the guinea-pigs, knew better than to ask him for them. He was a normal boy and therefore always had a guilty conscience when his father was angry. So the boy slipped quietly around the house. There is nothing so soothing to a guilty conscience as to be out of the path of the avenger. Mr. Morehouse stormed into the house. "Where's the ink?" he shouted at his wife as soon as his foot was across the doorsill.

Mrs. Morehouse jumped, guiltily. She never used ink. She had not seen the ink, nor moved the ink, nor thought of the ink, but her husband's tone convicted her of the guilt of having borne and reared a boy, and she knew that whenever her husband wanted anything in a loud voice the boy had been at it.

"I'll find Sammy," she said meekly.

When the ink was found Mr. Morehouse wrote rapidly, and he read the completed letter and smiled a triumphant smile.

"That will settle that crazy Irishman!" he exclaimed. "When they get that letter he will hunt another job, all right!"

A WEEK LATER Mr. Morehouse received a long official envelope with the card of the Interurban Express Company in the upper left corner. He tore it open eagerly and drew out a sheet of paper. At the top it bore the number A6754. The letter was short. "Subject— Rate on guinea-pigs," it said, "Dr. Sir— We are in receipt of your letter regarding rate on guinea-pigs between Franklin and Westcote addressed to the president of this company. All claims for overcharge should be addressed to the Claims Department."

Mr. Morehouse wrote to the Claims Department. He wrote six pages of choice sarcasm, vituperation and argument, and sent them to the Claims Department.

A few weeks later he received a reply from the Claims Department. Attached to it was his last letter.

"Dr. Sir," said the reply. "Your letter of the 16th inst., addressed to this Department, subject rate on guinea-pigs from Franklin to Westcote, rec'd. We have taken up the matter with our agent at Westcote, and his reply is attached herewith. He informs us that you refused to receive the consignment or to pay the charges. You have therefore no claim against this company, and your letter regarding the proper rate on the consignment should be addressed to our Tariff Department."

Mr. Morehouse wrote to the Tariff Department. He stated his case clearly, and gave his arguments in full, quoting a page or two from the encyclopedia to prove that guinea-pigs were not common pigs.

With the care that characterizes corporations when they are systematically conducted, Mr. Morehouse's letter was numbered, O.K'd, and started through the regular channels. Duplicate copies of the bill of lading, manifest, Flannery's receipt for the package and several other pertinent papers were pinned to the letter, and they were passed to the head of the Tariff Department.

The head of the Tariff Department put his feet on his desk and yawned. He looked through the papers carelessly.

"Miss Kane," he said to his stenographer, "take this letter. 'Agent, Westcote, N. J. Please advise why consignment referred to in attached papers was refused domestic pet rates.' "

Miss Kane made a series of curves and angles on her note book and waited with pencil poised. The head of the department looked at the papers again.

"Huh! guinea-pigs!" he said. "Probably starved to death by this time! Add this to that letter: 'Give condition of consignment at present.' "

He tossed the papers on to the stenographer's desk, took his feet from his own desk and went out to lunch.

When Mike Flannery received the letter he scratched his head.

"Give prisint condition," he repeated thoughtfully. "Now what do thim clerks be wantin' to know, I wonder! 'Prisint condition, 'is ut? Thim pigs, praise St. Patrick, do be in good health, so far as I know, but I niver was no veternairy surgeon to dago pigs. Mebby thim clerks wants me to call in the pig docther an' have their pulses took. Wan thing I do know, howiver, which is they've glorious appytites for pigs of their soize. Ate? They'd ate the brass padlocks off of a barn door! If the paddy pig, by the same token, ate as hearty as these dago pigs do, there'd be a famine in Ireland."

To assure himself that his report would be up to date, Flannery went to the rear of the office and looked into the cage. The pigs had been transferred to a larger box— a dry goods box.

"Wan,— two,— t'ree,— four,— five,— six,— sivin,— eight!" he counted. "Sivin spotted an' wan all black. All well an' hearty an' all eatin' loike ragin' hippypottymusses."

He went back to his desk and wrote.

"Mr. Morgan, Head of Tariff Department," he wrote. "Why do I say dago pigs is pigs because they is pigs and will be til you say they ain't which is what the rule book says stop your jollying me you know it as well as I do. As to health they are all well and hoping you are the same. P. S. There are eight now the family increased all good eaters. P.S. I paid out so far two dollars for cabbage which they like shall I put in bill for same what?"

Morgan, head of the Tariff Department, when he received this letter, laughed. He read it again and became serious.

"By George!" he said, "Flannery is right, 'pigs is pigs.' I'll have to get authority on this thing. Meanwhile, Miss Kane, take this letter: Agent, Westcote, N. J. Regarding shipment guinea-pigs, File No. A6754. Rule 83, General Instruction to Agents, clearly states that agents shall collect from consignee all costs of provender, etc., etc., required for live stock while in transit or storage. You will proceed to collect same from consignee."

Flannery received this letter next morning, and when he read it he grinned.

"Proceed to collect," he said softly. "How thim clerks do loike to be talkin'! Me proceed to collect two dollars and twinty-foive cints off Misther Morehouse! I wonder do thim clerks know Misther Morehouse? I'll git it! Oh, yes! 'Misther Morehouse, two an' a quarter, plaze.' 'Cert'nly, me dear frind Flannery. Delighted!' Not!"

Flannery drove the express wagon to Mr. Morehouse's door. Mr. Morehouse answered the bell.

"Ah, ha!" he cried as soon as he saw it was Flannery. "So you've come to your senses at last, have you? I thought you would! Bring the box in."

"I hev no box," said Flannery coldly. "I hev a bill agin Misther John C. Morehouse for two dollars and twinty-foive cints for kebbages aten by his dago pigs. Wud you wish to pay ut?"

"Pay— Cabbages—!" gasped Mr. Morehouse. "Do you mean to say that two little guinea-pigs—"

"Eight!" said Flannery. "Papa an' mamma an' the six childer. Eight!"

For answer Mr. Morehouse slammed the door in Flannery's face. Flannery looked at the door reproachfully.

"I take ut the con-sign-y don't want to pay for thim kebbages," he said. "If I know signs of refusal, the con-sign-y refuses to pay for wan dang kebbage leaf an' be hanged to me!"

Mr. Morgan, the head of the Tariff Department, consulted the president of the Interurban Express Company regarding guinea-pigs, as to whether they were pigs or not pigs. The president was inclined to treat the matter lightly.

"What is the rate on pigs and on pets?" he asked.

"Pigs thirty cents, pets twenty-five," said Morgan.

"Then of course guinea-pigs are pigs," said the president.

"Yes," agreed Morgan, "I look at it that way, too. A thing that can come under two rates is naturally due to be classed as the higher. But are guinea-pigs, pigs? Aren't they rabbits?"

"Come to think of it," said the president, "I believe they are more like rabbits. Sort of half-way station between pig and rabbit. I think the question is this— are guinea-pigs of the domestic pig family? I'll ask professor Gordon. He is authority on such things. Leave the papers with me."

The president put the papers on his desk and wrote a letter to Professor Gordon. Unfortunately the Professor was in South America collecting zoological specimens, and the letter was forwarded to him by his wife. As the Professor was in the highest Andes, where no white man had ever penetrated, the letter was many months in reaching him. The president forgot the guinea-pigs, Morgan forgot them, Mr. Morehouse forgot them, but Flannery did not. One-half of his time he gave to the duties of his agency; the other half was devoted to the guinea-pigs. Long before Professor Gordon received the president's letter Morgan received one from Flannery.

"About them dago pigs," it said, "what shall I do they are great in family life, no race suicide for them, there are thirty-two now shall I sell them do you take this express office for a menagerie, answer quick."

Morgan reached for a telegraph blank and wrote:

"Agent, Westcote. Don't sell pigs."

He then wrote Flannery a letter calling his attention to the fact that the pigs were not the property of the company but were merely being held during a settlement of a dispute regarding rates. He advised Flannery to take the best possible care of them.

Flannery, letter in hand, looked at the pigs and sighed. The dry-goods box cage had become too small. He boarded up twenty feet of the rear of the express office to make a large and airy home for them, and went about his business. He worked with feverish intensity when out on his rounds, for the pigs required attention and took most of his time. Some months later, in desperation, he seized a sheet of paper and wrote "160" across it and mailed it to Morgan. Morgan returned it asking for explanation. Flannery replied:

"There be now one hundred sixty of them dago pigs, for heavens sake let me sell off some, do you want me to go crazy, what."

"Sell no pigs," Morgan wired.

Not long after this the president of the express company received a letter from Professor Gordon. It was a long and scholarly letter, but the point was that the guinea-pig was the Cava aparoea while the common pig was the genus Sus of the family Suidae. He remarked that they were prolific and multiplied rapidly.

"They are not pigs," said the president, decidedly, to Morgan. "The twenty-five cent rate applies."

Morgan made the proper notation on the papers that had accumulated in File A6754, and turned them over to the Audit Department. The Audit Department took some time to look the matter up, and after the usual delay wrote Flannery that as he had on hand one hundred and sixty guinea-pigs, the property of consignee, he should deliver them and collect charges at the rate of twenty-five cents each.

Flannery spent a day herding his charges through a narrow opening in their cage so that he might count them.

"Audit Dept." he wrote, when he had finished the count, "you are way off there may be was one hundred and sixty dago pigs once, but wake up don't be a back number. I've got even eight hundred, now shall I collect for eight hundred or what, how about sixty-four dollars I paid out for cabbages."

It required a great many letters back and forth before the Audit Department was able to understand why the error had been made of billing one hundred and sixty instead of eight hundred, and still more time for it to get the meaning of the "cabbages."

Flannery was crowded into a few feet at the extreme front of the office. The pigs had all the rest of the room and two boys were employed constantly attending to them. The day after Flannery had counted the guinea-pigs there were eight more added to his drove, and by the time the Audit Department gave him authority to collect for eight hundred Flannery had given up all attempts to attend to the receipt or the delivery of goods. He was hastily building galleries around the express office, tier above tier. He had four thousand and sixty-four guinea-pigs to care for! More were arriving daily.

Immediately following its authorization the Audit Department sent another letter, but Flannery was too busy to open it. They wrote another and then they telegraphed:

"Error in guinea-pig bill. Collect for two guinea-pigs, fifty cents. Deliver all to consignee."

Flannery read the telegram and cheered up. He wrote out a bill as rapidly as his pencil could travel over paper and ran all the way to the Morehouse home. At the gate he stopped suddenly. The house stared at him with vacant eyes. The windows were bare of curtains and he could see into the empty rooms. A sign on the porch said, "To Let." Mr. Morehouse had moved! Flannery ran all the way back to the express office. Sixty-nine guinea-pigs had been born during his absence. He ran out again and made feverish inquiries in the village. Mr. Morehouse had not only moved, but he had left Westcote. Flannery returned to the express office and found that two hundred and six guinea-pigs had entered the world since he left it. He wrote a telegram to the Audit Department.

"Can't collect fifty cents for two dago pigs consignee has left town address unknown what shall I do? Flannery."

The telegram was handed to one of the clerks in the Audit Department, and as he read it he laughed.

"Flannery must be crazy. He ought to know that the thing to do is to return the consignment here," said the clerk. He telegraphed Flannery to send the pigs to the main office of the company at Franklin.

When Flannery received the telegram he set to work. The six boys he had engaged to help him also set to work. They worked with the haste of desperate men, making cages out of soap boxes, cracker boxes, and all kinds of boxes, and as fast as the cages were completed they filled them with guinea-pigs and expressed them to Franklin. Day after day the cages of guineapigs flowed in a steady stream from Westcote to Franklin, and still Flannery and his six helpers ripped and nailed and packed— relentlessly and feverishly. At the end of the week they had shipped two hundred and eighty cases of guinea-pigs, and there were in the express office seven hundred and four more pigs than when they began packing them.

"Stop sending pigs. Warehouse full," came a telegram to Flannery. He stopped packing only long enough to wire back, "Can't stop," and kept on sending them. On the next train up from Franklin came one of the company's inspectors. He had instructions to stop the stream of guinea-pigs at all hazards. As his train drew up at Westcote station he saw a cattle car standing on the express company's siding. When he reached the express office he saw the express wagon backed up to the door. Six boys were carrying bushel baskets full of guinea-pigs from the office and dumping them into the wagon. Inside the room Flannery, with his coat and vest off, was shoveling guinea-pigs into bushel baskets with a coal scoop. He was winding up the guinea-pig episode.

He looked up at the inspector with a snort of anger.

"Wan wagonload more an, I'll be quit of thim, an' niver will ye catch Flannery wid no more foreign pigs on his hands. No, sur! They near was the death o' me. Nixt toime I'll know that pigs of whaiver nationality is domistic pets— an' go at the lowest rate."

He began shoveling again rapidly, speaking quickly between breaths.

"Rules may be rules, but you can't fool Mike Flannery twice wid the same thrick— whin ut comes to live stock, dang the rules. So long as Flannery runs this expriss office— pigs is pets— an' cows is pets— an' horses is pets— an' lions an' tigers an' Rocky Mountain goats is pets— an' the rate on thim is twinty-foive cints."

He paused long enough to let one of the boys put an empty basket in the place of the one he had just filled. There were only a few guinea-pigs left. As he noted their limited number his natural habit of looking on the bright side returned.

"Well, annyhow," he said cheerfully, "'tis not so bad as ut might be. What if thim dago pigs had been elephants!"

___________________

2: The Tomb of Sarah

F. G. Loring

1869–1951

Pall Mall, Dec 1897

MY FATHER WAS THE head of a celebrated firm of church restorers and decorators about sixty years ago. He took a keen interest in his work, and made an especial study of any old legends or family histories that came under his observation. He was necessarily very well read and thoroughly well posted in all questions of folk-lore and mediaeval legend. As he kept a careful record of every case he investigated the manuscripts he left at his death have a special interest. From amongst them I have selected the following, as being a particularly weird and extraordinary experience. In presenting it to the public I feel it is superfluous to apologize for its supernatural character.

My Father's Diary:

1841.—JUNE 17th.

RECEIVED a commission from my old friend Peter Grant to enlarge and restore the chancel of his church at Hagarstone, in the wilds of the West Country.

July 5th. Went down to Hagarstone with my head man, Somers. A very long and tiring journey.

July 7th. Got the work well started. The old church is one of special interest to the antiquarian, and I shall endeavour while restoring it to alter the existing arrangements as little as possible. One large tomb, however, must be moved bodily ten feet at least to the southward. Curiously enough, there is a somewhat forbidding inscription upon it in Latin, and I am sorry that this particular tomb should have to be moved. It stands amongst the graves of the Kenyons, an old family which has been extinct in these parts for centuries. The inscription on it runs thus:

SARAH

1630.

FOR THE SAKE OF THE DEAD AND THE WELFARE

OF THE LIVING, LET THIS SEPULCHRE REMAIN

UNTOUCHED AND ITS OCCUPANT UNDISTURBED TILL

THE COMING OF CHRIST.

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, THE SON,

AND THE HOLY GHOST.

July 8th. Took counsel with Grant concerning the "Sarah Tomb." We are both very loath to disturb it, but the ground has sunk so beneath it that the safety of the church is in danger; thus we have no choice. However, the work shall be done as reverently as possible under our own direction.

Grant says there is a legend in the neighbourhood that it is the tomb of the last of the Kenyons, the evil Countess Sarah, who was murdered in 1630. She lived quite alone in the old castle, whose ruins still stand three miles from here on the road to Bristol. Her reputation was an evil one even for those days. She was a witch or were-woman, the only companion of her solitude being a familiar in the shape of a huge Asiatic wolf. This creature was reputed to seize upon children, or failing these, sheep and other small animals, and convey them to the castle, where the Countess used to suck their blood. It was popularly supposed that she could never be killed. This, however, proved a fallacy, since she was strangled one day by a mad peasant woman who had lost two children, she declaring that they had both been seized and carried off by the Countess's familiar. This is a very interesting story, since it points to a local superstition very similar to that of the Vampire, existing in Slavonic and Hungarian Europe.

The tomb is built of black marble, surmounted by an enormous slab of the same material. On the slab is a magnificent group of figures. A young and handsome woman reclines upon a couch; round her neck is a piece of rope, the end of which she holds in her hand. At her side is a gigantic dog with bared fangs and lolling tongue. The face of the reclining figure is a cruel one: the corners of the mouth are curiously lifted, showing the sharp points of long canine or dog teeth. The whole group, though magnificently executed, leaves a most unpleasant sensation.

If we move the tomb it will have to be done in two pieces, the covering slab first and then the tomb proper. We have decided to remove the covering slab tomorrow.

July 9th.— 6 P.M. A very strange day.

By noon everything was ready for lifting off the covering stone, and after the men's dinner we started the jacks and pulleys. The slab lifted easily enough, though it fitted closely into its seat and was further secured by some sort of mortar or putty, which must have kept the interior perfectly air-tight.

None of us were prepared for the horrible rush of foul, mouldy air that escaped as the cover lifted clear of its seating. And the contents that gradually came into view were more startling still. There lay the fully dressed body of a woman, wizened and shrunk and ghastly pale as if from starvation. Round her neck was a loose cord, and, judging by the scars still visible, the story of death by strangulation was true enough.

The most horrible part, however, was the extraordinary freshness of the body. Except for the appearance of starvation, life might have been only just extinct. The flesh was soft and white, the eyes were wide-open and seemed to stare at us with a fearful understanding in them. The body itself lay on mould, without any pretence to coffin or shell.

For several moments we gazed with horrible curiosity, and then it became too much for my work-men, who implored us to replace the covering slab. That, of course, we would not do; but I set the carpenters to work at once to make a temporary cover while we moved the tomb to its new position. This is a long job, and will take two or three days at least.

July 9th.— 9 P.M. Just at sunset we were startled by the howling of, seemingly, every dog in the village. It lasted for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, and then ceased as suddenly as it began. This, and a curious mist that has risen round the church, makes me feel rather anxious about the Sarah Tomb. According to the best established traditions of the Vampire-haunted countries, the disturbance of dogs or wolves at sunset is supposed to indicate the presence of one of these fiends, and local fog is always considered to be a certain sign. The Vampire has the power of producing it for the purpose of concealing its movements near its hiding-place at any time.

I dare not mention or even hint my fears to the Rector, for he is, not unnaturally perhaps, a rank disbeliever in many things that I know, from experience, are not only possible but even probable. I must work this out alone at first, and get his aid without his knowing in what direction he is helping me. I shall now watch till midnight at least.

10.15 P.M. As I feared and half expected. Just before ten there was another outburst of the hideous howling. It was commenced most distinctly by a particularly horrible and blood-curdling wail from the vicinity of the churchyard. The chorus lasted only a few minutes, however, and at the end of it I saw a large dark shape, like a huge dog, emerge from the fog and lope away at a rapid canter towards the open country. Assuming this to be what I fear, I shall see it return soon after midnight.

12.30 P.M. I was right. Almost as midnight struck I saw the beast returning. It stopped at the spot where the fog seemed to commence, and lifting up its head, gave tongue to that particularly horrible long-drawn wail that I had noticed as preceding the outburst earlier in the evening.

To-morrow I shall tell the Rector what I have seen; and if, as I expect, we hear of some neighbouring sheep-fold having been raided, I shall get him to watch with me for this nocturnal marauder. I shall also examine the Sarah Tomb for something which he may notice without any previous hint from me.

July 10th. I found the workmen this morning much disturbed in mind about the howling of the dogs. "We doan't like it, zur," one of them said to me—"we doan't like it; there was summat abroad last night that was unholy." They were still more uncomfortable when the news came round that a large dog had made a raid upon a flock of sheep, scattering them far and wide, and leaving three of them dead with torn throats in the field.

When I told the Rector of what I had seen and what was being said in the village, he immediately decided that we must try and catch or at least identify the beast I had seen. "Of course," said he, "it is some dog lately imported into the neighbourhood, for I know of nothing about here nearly as large as the animal you describe, though its size may be due to the deceptive moonlight."

This afternoon I asked the Rector, as a favour, to assist me in lifting the temporary cover that was on the tomb, giving as an excuse the reason that I wished to obtain a portion of the curious mortar with which it had been sealed. After a slight demur he consented, and we raised the lid. If the sight that met our eyes gave me a shock, at least it appalled Grant.

"Great God!" he exclaimed; "the woman is alive!"

And so it seemed for a moment. The corpse had lost much of its starved appearance and looked hideously fresh and alive. It was still wrinkled and shrunken, but the lips were firm, and of the rich red hue of health. The eyes, if possible, were more appalling than ever, though fixed and staring. At one corner of the mouth I thought I noticed a slight dark-colored froth, but I said nothing about it then.

"Take your piece of mortar, Harry," gasped Grant, "and let us shut the tomb again. God help me! Parson though I am, such dead faces frighten me!"

Nor was I sorry to hide that terrible face again; but I got my bit of mortar, and I have advanced a step towards the solution of the mystery.

This afternoon the tomb was moved several feet towards its new position, but it will be two or three days yet before we shall be ready to replace the slab.

10.15 P.M. Again the same howling at sunset, the same fog enveloping the church, and at ten o'clock the same great beast slipping silently out into the open country. I must get the Rector's help and watch for its return. But precautions we must take, for if things are as I believe, we take our lives in our hands when we venture out into the night to waylay the—Vampire. Why not admit it at once? For that the beast I have seen is the Vampire of that evil thing in the tomb I can have no reasonable doubt.

Not yet come to its full strength, thank Heaven! after the starvation of nearly two centuries, for at present it can only maraud as wolf apparently. But, in a day or two, when full power returns, that dreadful woman in new strength and beauty will be able to leave her refuge. Then it would not be sheep merely that would satisfy her disgusting lust for blood, but victims that would yield their life-blood without a murmur to her caressing touch—victims that, dying of her foul embrace, themselves must become Vampires in their turn to prey on others.

Mercifully my knowledge gives me a safeguard; for that little piece of mortar that I rescued to-day from the tomb contains a portion of the Sacred Host, and who holds it, humbly and firmly believing in its virtue, may pass safely through such an ordeal as I intend to submit myself and the Rector to to-night.

12.30 P.M. Our adventure is over for the present, and we are back safe.

After writing the last entry recorded above, I went off to find Grant and tell him that the marauder was out on the prowl again. "But, Grant," I said, "before we start out tonight I must insist that you will let me prosecute this affair in my own way; you must promise to put yourself completely under my orders, without asking any questions as to the why and wherefore."

After a little demur, and some excusable chaff on his part at the serious view I was taking of what he called a "dog hunt," he gave me his promise. I then told him that we were to watch to-night and try and track the mysterious beast, but not to interfere with it in any way. I think, in spite of his jests, that I impressed him with the fact that there might be, after all, good reason for my precautions.

It was just after eleven when we stepped out into the still night.

Our first move was to try and penetrate the dense fog round the church, but there was something so chilly about it, and a faint smell so disgustingly rank and loathsome, that neither our nerves nor our stomachs were proof against it. Instead, we stationed ourselves in the dark shadow of a yew tree that commanded a good view of the wicket entrance to the churchyard.

At midnight the howling of the dogs began again, and in a few minutes we saw a large grey shape, with green eyes shining like lamps, shamble swiftly down the path towards us.

The Rector started forward, but I laid a firm hand upon his arm and whispered a warning: "Remember!" Then we both stood very still and watched as the great beast cantered swiftly by. It was real enough, for we could hear the clicking of its nails on the stone flags. It passed within a few yards of us, and seemed to be nothing more nor less than a great grey wolf, thin and gaunt, with bristling hair and dripping jaws. It stopped where the mist commenced, and turned round. It was truly a horrible sight, and made one's blood run cold. The eyes burnt like fires, the upper lip was snarling and raised, showing the great canine teeth, while round the mouth hung and dripped a dark-coloured froth.

It raised its head and gave tongue to its long wailing howl, which was answered from afar by the village dogs.

After standing for a few moments it turned and disappeared into the thickest part of the fog.

Very shortly afterwards the atmosphere began to clear, and within ten minutes the mist was all gone, the dogs in the village were silent, and the night seemed to reassume its normal aspect. We examined the spot where the beast had been standing and found, plainly enough upon the stone flags, dark spots of froth and saliva.

"Well, Rector," I said, "will you admit now, in view of the things you have seen today, in consideration of the legend, the woman in the tomb, the fog, the howling dogs, and, last but not least, the mysterious beast you have seen so close, that there is something not quite normal in it all? Will you put yourself unreservedly in my hands and help me, whatever I may do, to first make assurance doubly sure, and finally take the necessary steps for putting an end to this horror of the night?" I saw that the uncanny influence of the night was strong upon him, and wished to impress it as much as possible.

"Needs must," he replied, "when the Devil drives: and in the face of what I have seen I must believe that some unholy forces are at work. Yet, how can they work in the sacred precincts of a church? Shall we not call rather upon Heaven to assist us in our need?"

"Grant," I said solemnly, "that we must do, each in his own way. God helps those who help themselves, and by His help and the light of my knowledge we must fight this battle for Him and the poor lost soul within."

We then returned to the rectory and to our rooms, though I have sat up to write this account while the scene is fresh in my mind.

July 11th. Found the workmen again very much disturbed in their minds, and full of a strange dog that had been seen during the night by several people, who had hunted it. Farmer Stotman, who had been watching his sheep (the same flock that had been raided the night before), had surprised it over a fresh carcase and tried to drive it off, but its size and fierceness so alarmed him that he had beaten a hasty retreat for a gun. When he returned the animal was gone, though he found that three more sheep from his flock were dead and torn.

The Sarah Tomb was moved to-day to its new position; but it was a long, heavy business, and there was not time to replace the covering slab. For this I was glad, as in the prosaic light of day the Rector almost disbelieves the events of the night, and is prepared to think everything to have been magnified and distorted by our imagination.

As, however, I could not possibly proceed with my war of extermination against this foul thing without assistance, and as there is nobody else I can rely upon, I appealed to him for one more night—to convince him that it was no delusion, but a ghastly, horrible truth, which must be fought and conquered for our own sakes, as well as that of all those living in the neighbourhood.

"Put yourself in my hands, Rector," I said, "for to-night at least. Let us take those precautions which my study of the subject tells me are the right ones. To-night you and I must watch in the church; and I feel assured that to-morrow you will be as convinced as I am, and be equally prepared to take those awful steps which I know to be proper, and I must warn you that we shall find a more startling change in the body lying there than you noticed yesterday."

My words came true; for on raising the wooden cover once more the rank stench of a slaughter-house arose, making us feel positively sick. There lay the Vampire, but how changed from the starved and shrunken corpse we saw two days ago for the first time! The wrinkles had almost disappeared, the flesh was firm and full, the crimson lips grinned horribly over the long pointed teeth, and a distinct smear of blood had trickled down one corner of the mouth. We set our teeth, however, and hardened our hearts. Then we replaced the cover and put what we had collected into a safe place in the vestry. Yet even now Grant could not believe that there was any real or pressing danger concealed in that awful tomb, as he raised strenuous objections to any apparent desecration of the body without further proof. This he shall have to-night. God grant that I am not taking too much on myself! If there is any truth in old legends it would be easy enough to destroy the Vampire now; but Grant will not have it.

I hope for the best of this night's work, but the danger in waiting is very great.

6 P.M. I have prepared everything: the sharp knives, the pointed stake, fresh garlic, and the wild dog-roses. All these I have taken and concealed in the vestry, where we can get at them when our solemn vigil commences.

If either or both of us die with our fearful task undone, let those reading my record see that this is done. I lay it upon them as a solemn obligation. "That the Vampire be pierced through the heart with the stake, then let the Burial Service be read over the poor clay at last released from its doom. Thus shall the Vampire cease to be, and a lost soul rest."

July 12th. All is over. After the most terrible night of watching and horror one Vampire at least will trouble the world no more. But how thankful should we be to a merciful Providence that that awful tomb was not disturbed by anyone not having the knowledge necessary to deal with its dreadful occupant! I write this with no feelings of self-complacency, but simply with a great gratitude for the years of study I have been able to devote to this special subject.

And now to my tale.

Just before sunset last night the Rector and I locked ourselves into the church, and took up our position in the pulpit. It was one of those pulpits, to be found in some churches, which is entered from the vestry, the preacher appearing at a good height through an arched opening in the wall. This gave us a sense of security (which we felt we needed), a good view of the interior, and direct access to the implements which I had concealed in the vestry.

The sun set and the twilight gradually deepened and faded. There was, so far, no sign of the usual fog, nor any howling of the dogs. At nine o'clock the moon rose, and her pale light gradually flooded the aisles, and still no sign of any kind from the "Sarah Tomb." The Rector had asked me several times what he might expect, but I was determined that no words or thought of mine should influence him, and that he should be convinced by his own senses alone.

By half-past ten we were both getting very tired, and I began to think that perhaps after all we should see nothing that night. However, soon after eleven we observed a light mist rising from the Sarah Tomb. It seemed to scintillate and sparkle as it rose, and curled in a sort of pillar or spiral

I said nothing, but I heard the Rector give a sort of gasp as he clutched my arm feverishly. "Great Heaven!" he whispered, "it is taking shape."

And, true enough, in a very few moments we saw standing erect by the tomb the ghastly figure of the Countess Sarah!

She looked thin and haggard still, and her face was deadly white; but the crimson lips looked like a hideous gash in the pale cheeks, and her eyes glared like red coals in the gloom of the church.

It was a fearful thing to watch as she stepped unsteadily down the aisle, staggering a little as if from weakness and exhaustion. This was perhaps natural, as her body must have suffered much physically from her long incarceration, in spite of the unholy forces which kept it fresh and well.

We watched her to the door, and wondered what would happen; but it appeared to present no difficulty, for she melted through it and disappeared.

"Now, Grant," I said, "do you believe?"

"Yes," he replied, "I must. Everything is in your hands, and I will obey your commands to the letter, if you can only instruct me how to rid my poor people of this unnameable terror."

"By God's help I will," said I; "but you shall be yet more convinced first, for we have a terrible work to do, and much to answer for in the future, before we leave the church again this morning. And now to work, for in its present weak state the Vampire will not wander far, but may return at any time, and must not find us unprepared."

We stepped down from the pulpit and, taking dog-roses and garlic from the vestry, proceeded to the tomb. I arrived first and, throwing off the wooden cover, cried, "Look! it is empty!" There was nothing there! Nothing except the impress of the body in the loose damp mould!

I took the flowers and laid them in a circle round the tomb, for legend teaches us that Vampires will not pass over these particular blossoms if they can avoid it.

Then, eight or ten feet away, I made a circle on the stone pavement, large enough for the Rector and myself to stand in, and within the circle I placed the implements that I had brought into the church with me.

"Now," I said, "from this circle, which nothing unholy can step across, you shall see the Vampire face-to-face, and see her afraid to cross that other circle of garlic and dog roses to regain her unholy refuge. But on no account step beyond the holy place you stand in, for the Vampire has a fearful strength not her own, and, like a snake, can draw her victim willingly to his own destruction."

Now so far my work was done, and, calling the Rector, we stepped into the Holy Circle to await the Vampire's return.

Nor was this long delayed. Presently a damp, cold odour seemed to pervade the church, which made our hair bristle and flesh to creep. And then, down the aisle with noiseless feet came that which we watched for.

I heard the Rector mutter a prayer, and I held him tightly by the arm, for he was shivering violently.

Long before we could distinguish the features we saw the glowing eyes and the crimson sensual mouth. She went straight to her tomb, but stopped short when she encountered my flowers. She walked right round the tomb seeking a place to enter, and as she walked she saw us. A spasm of diabolical hate and fury passed over her face; but it quickly vanished, and a smile of love, more devilish still, took its place. She stretched out her arms towards us. Then we saw that round her mouth gathered a bloody froth, and from under her lips long pointed teeth gleamed and champed.

She spoke: a soft soothing voice, a voice that carried a spell with it, and affected us both strangely, particularly the Rector. I wished to test as far as possible, without endangering our lives, the Vampire's power.

Her voice had a soporific effect, which I resisted easily enough, but which seemed to throw the Rector into a sort of trance. More than this: it seemed to compel him to her in spite of his efforts to resist.

"Come!" she said— "come! I give sleep and peace— sleep and peace— sleep and peace."

She advanced a little towards us; but not far, for I noted that the Sacred Circle seemed to keep her back like an iron hand.

My companion seemed to become demoralized and spellbound. He tried to step forward and, finding me detain him, whispered, "Harry, let go! I must go! She is calling me! I must! I must! Oh, help me! help me!" And he began to struggle.

It was time to finish.

"Grant!" I cried, in a loud, firm voice, "in the name of all that you hold sacred, have done and play the man!" He shuddered violently and gasped, "Where am I?" Then he remembered, and clung to me convulsively for a moment.

At this a look of damnable hate changed the smiling face before us, and with a sort of shriek she staggered back.

"Back!" I cried: "back to your unholy tomb! No longer shall you molest the suffering world! Your end is near."

It was fear that now showed itself in her beautiful face (for it was beautiful in spite of its horror) as she shrank back, back and over the circlet of flowers, shivering as she did so. At last, with a low mournful cry, she appeared to melt back again into her tomb.

As she did so the first gleams of the rising sun lit up the world, and I knew all danger was over for the day.

Taking Grant by the arm, I drew him with me out of the circle and led him to the tomb. There lay the Vampire once more, still in her living death as we had a moment before seen her in her devilish life. But in the eyes remained that awful expression of hate, and cringing, appalling fear.

Grant was pulling himself together.

"Now," I said, "will you dare the last terrible act and rid the world for ever of this horror?"

"By God!" he said solemnly, "I will. Tell me what to do."

"Help me to lift her out of her tomb. She can harm us no more," I replied.

With averted faces we set to our terrible task, and laid her out upon the flags.

"Now," I said, "read the Burial Service over the poor body, and then let us give it its release from this living hell that holds it."

Reverently the Rector read the beautiful words, and reverently I made the necessary responses. When it was over I took the stake and, without giving myself time to think, plunged it with all my strength through the heart.

As though really alive, the body for a moment writhed and kicked convulsively, and an awful heart-rending shriek woke the silent church; then all was still.

Then we lifted the poor body back; and, thank God! the consolation that legend tells is never denied to those who have to do such awful work as ours came at last. Over the face stole a great and solemn peace; the lips lost their crimson hue, the prominent sharp teeth sank back into the mouth, and for a moment we saw before us the calm, pale face of a most beautiful woman, who smiled as she slept. A few minutes more, and she faded away to dust before our eyes as we watched. We set to work and cleaned up every trace of our work, and then departed for the rectory. Most thankful were we to step out of the church, with its horrible associations, into the rosy warmth of the summer morning.

With the above end the notes in my father's diary, though a few days later this further entry occurs:

JULY 15TH. SINCE THE 12th everything has been quiet and as usual. We replaced and sealed up the Sarah Tomb this morning. The workmen were surprised to find the body had disappeared, but took it to be the natural result of exposing it to the air.

One odd thing came to my ears to-day. It appears that the child of one of the villagers strayed from home the night of the 11th inst., and was found asleep in a coppice near the church, very pale and quite exhausted. There were two small marks on her throat, which have since disappeared.

What does this mean? I have, however, kept it to myself, as, now that the Vampire is no more, no further danger either to that child or any other is to be apprehended. It is only those who die of the Vampire's embrace that become Vampires at death in their turn.

______________________

3: The Yogi of West Ninth Street

Guy Gilpatric

1896-1950

The Saturday Evening Post 24 Sep 1938

EARLY ONE evening last spring, Mr. Colin Glencannon was strolling through West Ninth Street, in New York, when he happened upon an establishment called The Occult and Astrological Bookshop. Now, an occult and astrological bookshop was by no means the sort of establishment Mr. Glencannon had been hoping to happen upon, but a volume on a sidewalk table caught his eye. It was The Secrets of Hindu Yoga Breath Control, and the title attracted him for two reasons. The first was that the S.S. Inchcliffe Castle, of which he was chief engineer, would shortly be sailing for India and other lands of the mystic East, while the second, and more important, was his own lifelong study of the breath-control problem.

In the course of exhaustive experiments conducted on shipboard and in barrooms of the seaports of the world, Mr. Glencannon had endeavored to control his breath with cloves, coffee beans, lemon peel, cinnamon bark, peppermint lozenges, toothpaste and, on one occasion, the contents of a fire extinguisher, but all to no avail; hence, he welcomed this opportunity to learn what, in their wisdom, the Hindu yogis had been able to do about it.

The book was on a table, marked FIFTY CENTS, so, scanning the sky and estimating a good twenty minutes of daylight, Mr. Glencannon picked it up and went browsing through its pages. The illustrations were photographs of scrawny colored gentlemen in breech-clouts, some of whom were squatting cross-legged staring into space, while others gazed down at their own navels with the intense concentration of cats watching rat holes. Mr. Glencannon found these pictures perplexing; indeed, unless the pensive blackamoors were bartenders, which they didn't appear to be, he could not imagine them enjoying any considerable eminence as breath-control practitioners.

"Ah, swith!" he muttered. "I can see that this tome merits lang and deeligent study!"

He turned back to the beginning and soon became so engrossed that he was scarcely more than nine-tenths aware of straying along to a table with a placard, SPECIAL AT TWENTY-FIVE CENTS. Here he halted; but observing through the shop window that the bookseller, a flat-heeled lady with a batik blouse and gold hoop earrings, was busy waiting on a customer, he stepped politely aside so as not to obstruct their light. This brought him squarely before a table of TEN CENT SACRIFICE BARGAINS, beyond the window's range. Now, under the circumstances, it is possible that a less conscientious person would have been tempted to slip the book in amongst the bargains, summon the proprietress and close the deal for a dime, but Mr. Glencannon reflected that this might fatally interrupt the more important transaction in progress within, so he tucked the volume under his arm, dodged around the corner and continued on his stroll.

"Noo, let's see, let's see," he meditated. "Before I can test the efficacy o' the Hindu methods o' controlling the breath, I must feerst acquire a guid, sturdy breath to control. In fact, it says here— er— 'As a preliminurra to the breathing exercises which are the basis of hatha yoga, the student should thoroughly soturate himself with the vital fluid known to the yogis as Prana.' Prana? H'm— weel, I dinna remember e'er drinking any Prana, but I ken another brond that'll no doot sairve. If I— Ach!"

A horny hand gripped him by the throat and another snatched the book. "Ho, ye thief!" snarled a voice behind him. "I've caught ye with the goods!" Half choked and generally at a disadvantage, Mr. Glencannon was still able to slip his fingers through the knuckleduster in his starboard coat pocket. He was about to attempt a fancy but very sporting backhand shot at the chin which he could just see over his right shoulder, when, "Colin!" the voice exclaimed and the stranglehold relaxed. "Weel, weel, weel, ye whuskery auld walrus! Foncy meeting you— here in New York!"

Mr. Glencannon wheeled and considered his late assailant with surprise and disfavor. "MacCrummon!" he gulped, adjusting his crumpled necktie and his sprained celluloid collar. "Weel, fronkly, I— I canna say that I foncy meeting ye at all! Why, what do ye mean, kicking up such a fuss in public? Do ye want to get me arrested, or what?"

"I did till I reecognized ye," Mr. MacCrummon chuckled. "But noo, if ye really want that book, keep it, Colin! Keep it with my cumpliments!"

"Yere— cumpliments?" repeated Mr. Glencannon, amazed. "Why, David! D'ye mean to say ye— ye actually own yon bookshop?"

A frown clouded Mr. MacCrummon's brow. "Weel, yes and no," he said. "But look, Colin, let's step into this pub, where we can talk. If there e'er was a mon who needed a friend's advice, ye see him stonding before ye!" He seized the other's arm and led him through the swinging doors of the saloon.

"Noo wait!" said Mr. Glencannon. "Ye've just used a vurra sacred word, 'friend,' and I hope ye didna utter it in vain. For ye must admit that in the past ye've done me more than one shobby turn, my dear Muster David MacCrummon!''

"Oh, I have, have I? And what aboot all the fulthy swundles ye've worked on me?" demanded Mr. MacCrummon hotly; then, controlling his indignation, "Come, come, forget it!" he pleaded. "I've osked ye to have a drink, Colin, auld mon!"

"And I've lang since accepted," said Mr. Glencannon, settling down on the wall bench at a corner table. "I only wanted to mak' sure we understood each other, that was all. Er— mine," he addressed the barman—"mine'll be a brimming beaker o' Prana, but if, as I hope, ye haven't got any o' that, bring me a dooble Duggan's Dew o' Kirkintilloch."

"Fetch a full bottle while ye're aboot it," ordered Mr. MacCrummon gruffly. "Ah, losh, Colin! Teeling ye my story is going to be a lang, parching job!"

"Aye? But speaking o' jobs, David, am I to understond from seeing ye here that ye've lost yere splendid berth as assistant junior theerd fourth engineer o' the palatial S.S. Malaita, o' the White Crown Line?"

"Oh, no, they tronsferred me to a better one," said Mr. MacCrummon, with a sigh. "Noo, I'm junior seecond o' the Cariba, running back and forth betwixt New York and Bermuda. It's a soft job, a pleasant job, a lovely job— but I dinna dare chuck it up, and there's the whole dom trouble!"

"Eh?" said Mr. Glencannon incredulously. "Ye dinna dare chuck it up? But why shud ye wish to chuck it up? Come, dinna be so cryptic, MacCrummon, nor yet so consairvatif with yon whusky. Pour oot yere troubles, but dinna stop there!"

"A-weel," said Mr. MacCrummon, heeding the admonition, "I ken it's no secret to ye, Glencannon, that my travels up and doon the world have included— er—several trips to the altar."

"Indeed," nodded Mr. Glencannon, "I knew ye'd married consistently until ye got to be a trigamist, and after that I stopped counting because I cudna think o' the name for it."

"M'm— weel, suffice it to say I kept richt on going," said Mr. MacCrummon. "It was my hobby, d'ye see, the same as some chaps collect spoons from hotels. I married my way clear aroond the globe, skipping only the darker neeger countries and places where they fry hoptoads in garlic. But mak' no mistake, auld mon; please dinna tak' me for a cad and a rotter! I married each and every one o' my wives in a strictly legal manner, with everything honorable and aboveboard! Why, to spare them any possible emborrassing cumplications, I e'en wed them under different names!"

"Vurra decent o' ye, David, vurra cheevalrous, I must say," approved Mr. Glencannon, "But noo ye've finally run oot o' names; is that yere trouble?"

"Weel, more or less," assented Mr. MacCrummon glumly. "Ye see, when the owners tronsferred me to this Bermuda run and for the feerst time in my life I had a fixed port to come hame to regularly— weel, I got to thinking how cozy it wud be to have my ain little flat richt here in New York to brawl and carouse in betwixt trips. But as soon as I'd rented one, I realized I ocht to have a wife o' some sort to live there and clean up the mess, so I rushed richt oot and got engaged to a widow."

"And ye were stumped to think up a name?"

"I was forced to use my ain!" groaned Mr. MacCrummon. "Ye see, this lady owns a vurra prusperous laundry doon on Front Street, and lik' a dom fool, I took her some shirts that the laundry on the ship had stenciled D. MACCRUMMON, WHITE CROWN S.S. Co., clear across the tails of, in letters an inch high. In fact"— he looked away sheepishly— "one fine day she sent my clean shirts hame with garlands o' forget-me-nots embroidered aroond the letters, and that's how the romance started."

"A vurra dainty sentiment!" declared Mr. Glencannon. "But, aloss! Noo that she knows yere name and address, she'll surely have ye up for breeks o' promise if ye dinna go through wi' it! However, David— er— somehow, I'd gathered that yere ladylove owned that bookshop, no' a laundry."

"Oh, she's the other one I'm wooing— aye, and the one I'll marry, if I can only ditch the laundress!" Mr. MacCrummon explained. "Ye see, the vurra trip after I got engaged, the bookshop lady was assigned to my table in the tourist-closs saloon. A strange, exootic type and full o' fods and foncies, she blethered at the steward every meal because she couldn't get raw oats and spinach roots, though that didn't stop her from scoffing enough beefsteak to choke a Swede. In a wurrd, auld mon, she— she intrigued me! And every nicht on both trips she'd go up on the boat deck to attune her vibrations with cosmos, whate'er the heel that is, taking a bottle o' whusky with her. Noturally, under such saircumstonces, I went alang too."

"And noturally another romance started— eh, Mac, ye sly dog?"

"No, not yet it didn't," said Mr. MacCrummon. "How cud it, when I knew nothing o' her finoncial stonding? When I looked her up, here in New York, and found that her silly bookshop was losing money hond ower fist, I was aboot to cast her oot o' my heart fore'er and for aye. But then"— he smiled and breathed a long, ecstatic sigh— "but then, gloncing ower her books aboot astrology and finding some mailing lists she hoppened to have, I suddenly thocht o' a grond, a mognificent, a stuppendous idea! Look!" He produced a typewritten letter and handed it across the table to Mr. Glencannon. "Two thoosand o' these have gone oot already!"

Across the top of the paper was engraved THE NEW YORK OFFICES OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR ASTROLOGICAL RESEARCH. The letter read:

Dear Sir:

For centuries, many people have believed that the stars exert a dominating influence upon Man. However, scientific opinion has been divided, certain savants maintaining that Astrology is a fake and that the countless instances of success in its application have been due solely to coincidence.

If Astrology is a fake, the whole world ought to know it. But if Astrology is what it purports to be, then, certainly, the whole world should make use of it to achieve HEALTH, WEALTH AND HAPPINESS! How to find out?

The International Committee for Astrological Research, a public-spirited group enlisted from both camps, has found the solution in TESTED HOROSCOPES. Under strict scientific control, we are casting, FREE, the Horoscopes of thousands of individuals all over the world, and then subjecting them to rigid tests. The tests consist in buying, through our foreign offices and AT OUR OWN EXPENSE, fractional tickets in the French and other National Lotteries, the purchases being guided by the Horoscopes which our experts have cast. According to the Astrologers, all tickets so bought should win. According to Astrology's opponents, the percentage of winners will be only that which could be calculated mathematically for tickets bought haphazardly.

Our statistics, covering 100,000 actual tests, will conclusively demonstrate which claim is right. We need only a few thousand more to settle the question. Will you help?

OUR AMAZING OFFER

If you will aid us in our work, our experts will cast your Horoscope, ABSOLUTELY FREE. If its indications are auspicious, we will purchase a fractional ticket in whichever lottery is to be drawn within your favorable dates. If your ticket WINS, we will send you a FULL HALF SHARE of the winnings. This may run into HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS. YOU RISK NOTHING! The half share retained by us will be used toward defraying the considerable expenses of this test.

We are not selling anything, because we have nothing to sell. YOU SEND NO MONEY and therefore you take no risks. All we ask is that you mail us a postcard with your name, address, date and, if possible, hour of your birth. You will be rendering a service to science, you cannot lose, and YOU MAY WIN HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS! The sooner you act, the sooner you'll know!

"A-weel," said Mr. Glencannon, "if I didna know ye, MacCrummon, if I didna realize it was a swundle o' some sort, I'd say ye'd gone crazy. Why, ye dinna osk them fir a single, soliturra penny! And surely, David, ye dinna mean to say that ye octually send money to them?"

"O' course I do. There's the whole trick!" Mr. MacCrummon winked. "I sent oot ower a hoonderd two-dollar bills last time, and our next mailing will run to ower four hoonderd dollars! Ye see, my— er— fioncee is a hondwriting expert as weel as an astrologer, so we only send the two dollars to correspondents whose scrawl shows they're more than average daft. They receive the money in our Letter Number Two, Here."

This letter read:

Dear Sir: Enclosed, please find $2.00, your share in a winning French National Lottery Ticket. This ticket was bought according to your Horoscope, cast by our experts from the personal data you so kindly furnished, and PROVED by this actual test. YOUR PROVED HOROSCOPE clearly indicates that you are a person "favored by the stars." If you will only follow their guidance, Happiness, Fame and Fortune await you! Your cooperation has aided us in proving beyond question that Astrology is a science to guide YOU to RICHES, and the Committee takes this opportunity of thanking you for your help.

Mr. Glencannon squinted his eyes and nodded his head. "H'm!" he murmured. "Hum-m-m! Noo I'm beginning to get the hong o' it! Ye send them the two dollars, but ye dinna send them the lucky horoscopes!"

"Exockly!" agreed Mr. MacCrummon. "And ye'd be surprised how many o' them gullup doon the bait! Why, it tontalizes them, drives them mod—aye, raving mod with greed! They feel they must get hold o' that horoscope—not any auld horoscope, but the vurra same horoscope which won them the two dollars, so they can use it to mak' mullions! But—haw, haw!—but when they write in to osk for it, we send them this Letter Number Three."

It read:

Dear Sir: As our previous letters have made clear, The International Committee for Astrological Research is in no sense a profit-making institution, nor did we originally intend to distribute the Horoscopes used in our experiments. However, several people besides yourself have asked for their Horoscopes, so we have arranged to make copies of the originals now in our archives. If you will send us $5.00 to help cover costs, your TESTED, PROVED Horoscope will be forwarded by return mail. As you have already received $2.00 cash, you will realize that the price is purely nominal.

"Ah!" said Mr. Glencannon. "And how many o' them send in their five dollars?"

"A-weel," chuckled Mr. MacCrummon, "for the one hoonderd two-dollar bills I sent oot last time, I got eighty five-dollar bills in return. In other wurrds, an eighty percent response gave me a hoonderd percent profit. For the four hoonderd dollars I'm mailing oot this time, I expect to get back eight hoonderd at the vurra least."

"Ah, swith!" breathed Mr. Glencannon. "It's an odmirable scheme—odmirable and pairfictly legitimate! And e'en if they arrest ye for it, it's yere fioncee who writes the letters and casts up the horoscopes, so ye can always blame the whole thing on her. But where did ye raise yere original copital, Mac?"

"Oh, I borrowed it from the laundress," said Mr. MacCrummon. "That's another reason it'll be so frichtfully difficult to ditch her. Two hoonderd dollars mak's it grond larceny, d'ye see, and grond larceny can cost me ten years in the condenser. Oh, dom! If only the two o' them didn't live richt here in New York! If only one or the other lived in Valparaiso or Cape Town or Calcutta, why, even their knowing my real name wudna matter. But as it is—" He sat back and spread his hands helplessly.

"Ah, Calcutta!" mused Mr. Glencannon. "Dear auld Calcutta, 'where the frying fishes play and the sun comes up lik' thunder'— but no, no, I'm thinking o' another place! Anyhow, I expect to be in Calcutta sometime aboot the feerst o' July."

"Ye do, do ye?" Mr. MacCrummon rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Ye'll be in Calcutta alang towards the feerst o' July? Why, Colin!" he slapped the table resoundingly. "There's the vurra solution!"

Mr. Glencannon raised his eyebrows questioningly and his glass in the conventional manner.

"Aye!" Mr. MacCrummon continued excitedly. "It settles everything! Richt the noo, I'll write a letter to the laundress for ye to post from Calcutta, don't ye see? The letter'll say that I've gone to India to start life anew!"

Mr. Glencannon pondered the scheme, but without visible enthusiasm. "How are ye going to arrange things on this end?" he asked skeptically.

"Why, supposing I was really going to Calcutta, via Marseels to Bombay and by train from then on, it wud tak' me only aboot twunty-four days. In other wurrds, to get there when ye'll be there, I wudna have to leave here until the feerst week in June. Weel, then! At aboot that date, I'll tell her I've been tronsferred to one o' our South American cruise ships, and that I canna get back to marry her for seeveral months. Then I'll simply move oot o' the flat, chuck up my job, marry the bookshop lady, and settle doon to a life o' ease! In due time, the laundress will get the letter and write me off as loss. New York's a thumping big city, Colin, and there's no' the faintest chonce o' her e'er spotting me amongst its polyglut mullions!"

"A-weel," said Mr. Glencannon, pessimistically, "go ahead and write yere letter and I'll post it in Calcutta, if ye say so. But fronkly, David, it soonds to me lik' a vurra flumsy scheme, and though no doot hoonderds o' yere astrological dimwits micht fall for it, a laundress knows a great deal more aboot human nature than commonly appears on the surface!"

"But what's wrong with the idea?" demanded Mr. MacCrummon.

"Why, Mac, my dear mon, ye dom fool! It's— it's altogeether too obvious— too tronsporent! She'll have the New York police on yere tail in no time! The letter alone willna carry sufficient conviction to flummox her! It ocht to be confeermed by something— by anything— I dinna ken exockly what, but let's just say by a theerd party in Calcutta who'd seen and talked wi' ye there."

"Aye, weel, pairhops ye're richt," Mr. MacCrummon conceded. "And there, Colin, ye can help me again. Before ye leave Calcutta, ye cud write her a line yersel', saying ye'd run into me in the street just as I was being lugged off to jail. Ye micht tell her they'd recognized me as the mon who beat up the policemon in the Chandernagar Road in 1936, or whene'er it was ye did it— remeember? In addition, twud be a vurra sweet little touch to add that I'd osked ye to write and beg her to forgive and—"

"Noo, hold on a minute!" Mr. Glencannon interrupted. "Just so's ye'll have it straight, MacCrummon, I no' only chostised that policemon ye're talking aboot; I made him eat his ain cork helmet, chin strop, pugaree and all. Moreover, he wasn't a mere constable, he was a sergeant; and as hoonderds o' enthusiostic speectators can teestify, I was aboot to feed him his puttees for dessert when the armored cars arrived. But as for me writing any letters and signing my name to them— weel, I'm sorra, David, but I dinna care to entongle mysel' in yere domestic affairs to that extent."

"Oh, vurra weel!" Mr. MacCrummon shrugged. "If ye won't, Colin, ye won't. But after all, as I told ye, I really think the one letter from me will do the trick." He bade the waiter bring stationery and proceeded to write.

"There," he said, handing it over to Mr. Glencannon. "Read it if ye want to, then put it in yere inside pocket where ye keep yere money, and for putty's sake dinna lose it! All ye've got to do when ye get to Calcutta is stick an Indian stomp on it and drop it in the box feerst time ye go ashore. But ye willna forget it, Colin? Give me yere wurrd, auld mon!"

"O' course I won't forget it," said Mr. Glencannon. "Ye can count upon me posting it somewhere betwixt the feerst and the tenth o' July."

"No, but I mean, really?" insisted Mr. MacCrummon. "Ah, losh, lad! Canna ye see for yersel' how much depends on her getting it?"

"Dinna worrit yersel', MacCrummon," Mr. Glencannon assured him, somewhat testily. "My meemory is no' only excellent, it's prodigious. When I tell ye I'll post that letter in Calcutta, ye can depend upon my posting it in Calcutta. I willna post it at Punta Delgada, Lisbon, Naples, Palermo, the Peiraeus, Port Said or Suez. I willna post it at Djibouti, nor, on the other hond—'tis yere left hond as ye head sou'-east doon the Red Sea— will I post it at Aden, which is a vurra nosty place to have on yere left hond, yere richt hond or both. Bombay, Goa and Negapatam, lik' Pondicherry, Madras and Masulipatam, will see it not, so foosh to Bombay, Goa and Negapatam, to Pondicherry, Madras and Masulipatam! No, MacCrummon, no! Drink yere drink and rest ye tronquil! I'll post yere letter in Calcutta— post it pairsonally, prumptly, unerringly and in my customarra dignified manner."

"Thonks, thonks, auld mon! Believe me, I'm grateful!" said Mr. MacCrummon. He looked at his watch, and a sort of reflex caused Mr. Glencannon to pat his pocket to make sure of his own. "Swith, can it be ten o'clock already? I must go aroond and clean up some odds and ends in the bookshop, and after that I'll have to nip doontown and help shut up the laundry. Ah, we men o' affairs! Weel, guid-by, Colin, guid-by! A friend indeed needs a friend indeed! Mak' yersel' at hame with the whusky, lad; the bottle's all paid for! And when ye get to Calcutta— weel, please dinna forget!"

Mr. Glencannon watched him leave the saloon and then shook his head pityingly. "A mon o' a sairtain inteeligence, but o' questionable social ethics!" he mused. "A-weel, despicht his faults and foibles, I willna let him doon! And noo, as I obsairve that this bottle is still ower half full, I'll resume my studies o' yoga breath mastery."

He stoked up his pipe, refilled his glass, propped the book against the bottle, and launched into the text. He found it dry going— so dry, in fact, that he was soon obliged to alter the table arrangements and hold the book in his left hand. "Ah, whurra," he growled, "it's deep, deep! For exomple— er— "The aura o' each principle, if the other principles be removed, wud occupy the same space as that filled by the aura o' all or any o' the other principles, with the physical aura, as revealed to the psychic vision, appearing bluish-white, but streaked with numerous fine lines, if, indeed, it, or they, can be perceived at all."

Having read this over again, he rose, faced his reflection in the mirror and expelled a long breath. Although three flies and a moth fell lifeless, he could detect no aura, streaked or otherwise, and so returned in bafflement to his book and his bottle.

The subjects of Asana and Mudra, having to do with the yogi meditating posture, he found no less baffling. When he endeavored to cross his legs under him and assume the correct "Lotus seat," his knee joints cracked, his ankles dislocated and the varicose veins on his calves stood out like knotted eels. Just as success seemed about to crown his efforts, both his shoestrings snapped and the bartender invited him to git his feet to hell off the leather cushions. He then turned to the chapter on Vayut Krama and S'it Krama, which, he gathered, were yogi methods of drinking through the nostrils. While he had once seen a Liverpool stevedore win a bet by consuming a pint of ale in this manner, he considered it awkward, even vulgar; and he doubted if he could manage it with whisky anyway. "And e'en if I cud," he muttered, "why shud I?"

In the chapter on Brahmari and Sitali, however, he felt that he was finally getting somewhere. Brahmari was described as a droning breath, like the hum of bees, while Sitali consisted in a sort of cobra hiss. Both, it appeared, were highly efficacious in controlling the outward manifestations of the Prana already absorbed as per directions in Chapter I. Determined to conduct his tests under the most favorable conditions, Mr. Glencannon rapidly absorbed the Prana substitute which remained in the bottle and then downed six additional dollops which he purchased at retail. At this point, feeling himself in the proper Gnani, or wisdom, state, he sat back, filled his lungs with air and expelled it in a bellowing "Brur-r-r-r!" which resembled the roar of the Inchcliffe Castle's foghorn. He followed this up with a menacing "Zis-s-sh-h," like the blowing of the vessel's main exhaust.

"'S'matter, Jack?" inquired the barman. "Hay fever or somethin'?"

"No, neither the one, the two, nor the other," Mr. Glencannon assured him, ponderously. "I say, my guid mon, I need yere cooperation! Come ower here for a moment, will ye, and while ye're aboot it, dinna come empty-honded.... Ah, thonk ye! Noo, wait!" He downed the drink, stood up and faced the barman across the table. "Just see if ye can detect anything— anything— er— oot o' the ordinurra. Are ye all set?"

"Let 'er go, Gallagher!" invited the barman, puzzled.

"Brur-r-r!" roared Mr. Glencannon. "Zis-s-s-sh!" Swaying but triumphant, he stood awaiting the other's reaction. "Weel," he prompted, "what do ye say, my mon? I mean, just supposing I was invisible, so ye cudn't e'en see me— weel, what wud ye think?" He leaned forward eagerly.

The barman scratched his head with his ice pick. "Well, I— oh— why, I dunno! I guess I'd just say there was somebody between here and Albany with the world's champeen heavyweight-whisky breath on him!"

Mr. Glencannon's face fell, and so did the rest of him. Fortunately, he landed on the bench. "Weel, weel, dearie me!" he sighed. "I see I've still got a-muckle to lairn before I can rate as a yogi adept or e'en as an apprentice!" Suddenly feeling a peculiar lightheadedness, he closed his eyes and pressed his hand to his brow. "But strange, strange!" he whispered. "Can this be the beginning of disembodiment? Can it— aye, can it be the Shakti state—the yogi tronce which Chopter Three describes as the— er— wait, I can remeember it— 'the isolation o' bliss'?"

"Search me!" said the bartender, uneasily. "I guess I wouldn't know about that. But look, listen here, Jack; if—"

"Subar kuro, Duggan's Dew aur bilatti pani lao paihla!" ordered Mr. Glencannon, suddenly lapsing into flawless stokehold Lascari. "Hum Kalkuttamen jate hain!"

"Come again, Jack," said the bartender. "I only speak New York, Brooklyn and Yiddish."

Mr. Glencannon opened his eyes and considered him in amazement. "But if that's the case, how do ye monnage to get alang, here in Calcutta?" he demanded. "O' course, I suppose ye'll pick up the lingo quickly enough if ye've got an inteeligent Ag wala Serang. Ah me!" he sighed reminiscently and gazed through the window at the crowded avenue. "When I made my feerst trip oot here, theerty-three years ago, ours was the only steamer to be seen at anchor in the whole o' yon broad Hooghly River. All the rest were sailing ships— clippers, brigs, barks, bites and similar picturesque auld swill buckets that have lang since vanished from the sea. Why, if anybody had predicted, then, that one day there'd be tromcars running richt there in midstream, people wud've said he was crazy!" From his pocket he produced a slim black cheroot and bit the end off it before realizing that it was his fountain pen.

"Yair? Well, now look, Jack!" The barman seemed worried. "How about wipin' the ink off ya chin and havin' a little good-night snifter on the house, whadya say? It's time I gotta close the jernt."

"Aye, and it's time I attended to an urgent errand for a friend at hame. I'm glad ye reminded me! Er— chin, ye said? Weel, chin-chin, barmon! Oh, by the way, cud ye let me have a postage stomp?"

Two years had passed since Mr. Glencannon's last visit to Calcutta, and as he strolled through the streets he found its aspect greatly altered. "Weel, I suppose it's modern progress," he mused, "but all the same, I canna say I foncy it. In monny ways, the place looks lik' an American city— New York, for instonce. And speaking o' which, I'll just drop auld Dave MacCrummon's letter in this box before I forget it again!"

He was unable to find a slot in the box, but then, reading on the front of it "Turn knob to right, open door and pull hook down once," he followed the directions. Still, he could see no place to put the letter. "Ah, foosh to all such newfongled foolishness!" he fumed, peering and fumbling within. "I dinna blame the guid Muster MacGandhi for wanting to drive us British oot o' India!" He continued his exploration of the box's interior until his attention was attracted by red lights flashing on the avenue, the brazen clang of gongs and dismal wailings as of a multitude. "Oh, ho!" he exclaimed, delightedly. "It must be a quaint celebration o' some sort! Praises be, the auld cults and customs are holding their ain, after all! Pairhops it's e'en the picturesque procession o' Juggernaut— aye, for here comes his great red chariot noo!" Before the chariot reached him, however, he saw that it was only a fire engine; so, as a gesture of disdain for our over-mechanized civilization, he turned his back upon it and hurried into a shadowy side street. Soon he came upon a post box of the old-fashioned pattern. "There!" he said, dropping the letter into it. "Nobody can say I didna carry oot my promise in a prompt and conscientious manner."

Still in an advanced state of Shakti, he wended his way through Calcutta's streets to the Hooghly waterfront, boarded the S.S. Inchcliffe Castle and proceeded to his room. With a final "Whoosh!" or Bhastrika breath, he fell into his bunk and a profound yogi trance.

ii

MR. GLENCANNON awoke with a start and lay staring up into the inky darkness. A troubling thought, a sort of nightmare, had broken his slumbers, but now that he was conscious, he was unable to recall it. He fell to reviewing the events of the previous evening, and suddenly the terrible truth burst in upon him. "Ach, horrors!" he croaked, sitting bolt upright and switching on the light. "The letter! She'll get it in the morning and MacCrummon— MacCrummon will be sunk!"

Beaded with cold sweat, he sat pondering the awful situation. He thought of waylaying the postman outside the laundry and snatching the letter away from him; then he realized that he had not noticed the laundry's address. Neither did he know Mr. MacCrummon's, that he might warn him.

"Ah, whurra!" he groaned. "There's nowt to do but go ashore and burgle the box on the odd chonce the mail's no' collected yet! Dom the yogis and their mysteries anyway; such things are dangerous to dobble with! Why, there can be no doot that I must have hypnotized mysel'!"

His erstwhile Shakti state had given place to one distinctly shaky, but he descended to the engine room, slipped a hammer and a cold chisel into his hip pockets, and hurried ashore.

Save for occasional policemen whose lowering scowls chilled his marrow, milk wagons and certain pasty-faced specimens who bore black-cased jazz instruments under their arms, the streets were deserted. It was a dismal hour and Mr. Glencannon was on a desperate mission.

Turning into Ninth Street and covertly surveying the lay of the land, he sneaked up on the letter box and examined it. He decided that its most vulnerable spot was the little door on the side. Planting his chisel in the crack above the lock, he dealt it a mighty clout with the hammer. To his horror, the hollow metal gave off a resounding "Boom!" which shattered the silence of the sleeping street and echoed from the house fronts in a rumble like that of artillery. As he crouched, cowering, a gentleman in evening clothes appeared from out of the shadows, yawned, stretched, teetered up to the box and dropped the stub of a theater ticket into it. From his somewhat garbled remarks, Mr. Glencannon gleaned that he was anxious to obtain a packet of chewing gum, his correct weight, a glass of orange juice, the Turkish bath of the New York Athletic Club and three telephone numbers in Larchmont. Finally discouraged, he lay upon the sidewalk and endeavored to swim toward Fifth Avenue, but finding the current too strong for him, he regained his feet and departed into the night, sobbing plaintively.

"Faugh!" Mr. Glencannon shuddered in righteous disgust. "The fellow has had recoorse to alcoholic steemulants! But noo, let's see, let's see!" Studying the box again, he found that it was secured to the post by two hinged rings, rather like the leg irons once so much in vogue among the colonists of Australia, and that these rings were fastened with ordinary quarter-inch stove bolts. It was the work of a moment to chop off the bolt heads; then, responding to a gentle heave, the rings opened and the box came away in his arms.

"Swith!" he gasped, staggering under the weight of it. "It's too heavy to carry! It's too awkward to carry! It's too dangerous to carry! But I dinna dare open it here, so carry it I must!" Clutching the burden to his bosom and trying to hide behind it, he headed crosstown toward the river and Inchcliffe Castle.

A policeman emerged from a doorway. "Hey, you, whatcha got there?" he demanded.

Mr. Glencannon felt his blood turn to water. "A— a letter box," he said, setting it down on the sidewalk and resigning himself to his fate. "Just a common, ordinurra letter box, or box to put letters in. It's made o' iron and painted an attroctive shade o' green, as ye can readily vurrify for yersel', sir."

"Oh! Hunh, a letter box, hey?" The policeman strolled nearer, scrutinizing Mr. Glencannon's uniform and the crown and anchor on his cap. "Well, where are ya takin' that letter box to at this time in the morning?"

"I'm taking it to the ship, sir," said Mr. Glencannon, making a clean breast of it.

"Ship? Oh, yair, sure!" nodded the policeman, comprehendingly. "I get it now, purser! You put it up outside your office so's the passengers can mail their last-minute letters, ain't that right? I seen one of them on the Queen Mary, the first time she come over. Well, it looks kinder heavy. Better lemme give ya a lift with it."

"Thonks, my guid mon," said Mr. Glencannon, recovering himself, "I'm afraid yere suggestion is a little bit irregular, but— weel, as lang as ye're a unifurrmed officer o' the law and promise me to carry it vurra carefully, I dinna suppose anybody will complain."

"Okay, purser," said the policeman, hoisting it to his shoulder. "Glad to do you a favor. You see, I'm starting a little stamp collection, sorter, and I was thinkin'— well, now just take you; you travel around the world a lot, see, and you must get a chance to pick up plenty stamps. Well, what I mean, if I should give you my name and address, I wonder would it be too much trouble to—"

"Bless yere soul, o' course it wudn't!" Mr. Glencannon assured him warmly. "'Twud give me pleasure to send ye stomps from the farthermost corner o' the globe!"

"Well, say, that's fine!" said the cop. "Now look, I'm sorry, but this corner's as far as I can go. Here's my address where you can send the stamps. Good luck, purser!"

Bathed in perspiration, Mr. Glencannon covered the remaining blocks of his journey, staggered aboard the Inchcliffe Castle and reached his room in a state verging on collapse.

"Come, get to work!" he admonished himself. "The sky's pink in the east and ye've no time to lose! Smosh open the box and see if the dom letter's there!"

After a din-filled interval of hammering, the little door swung wide. He shook the box, and from it belched a white cascade of letters. Kneeling, he scrambled among them eagerly. "At last!" he cried, snatching up an envelope addressed to Mrs. Dolly Schwoll, Schwoll's Hand Laundry. "At last! Ah, MacCrummon, MacCrummon! I've saved yere skin this time, m'lad, though ye'll ne'er know it! Whurra, what an ordeal it's been!"

Fanning himself with the precious letter and wondering from which side of the ship to heave the rest of them overboard, his gaze fell upon one with the typewritten address: THE COMMISSIONER OF POLICE, CALCUTTA, BENGAL, INDIA.

He leaned forward and glowered at it suspiciously.

"Ah, ha!" he growled. "Oh, ho! What devil's work is this?"

He picked it up, ripped open the envelope and read:

Sir: On or about July 1st, the S.S. Inchcliffe Castle will arrive at Calcutta. On board will be David MacCrummon, alias Colin Glencannon, wanted by you for assaulting a police sergeant in the Chandernagar Road in 1936 and by the police of Bombay and Madras for bigamy, etc. If you arrest him as soon as he steps ashore, you will find proof of his real identity in a letter he will be intending to post to Mrs. Dolly Schwoll, Schwoll's Hand Laundry, New York.

The present writer asks that in recognition of this service to law and order, you notify Mrs. Schwoll of MacCrummon's arrest. It is, of course, assumed that you will forward MacCrummon's letter to her when it has served its purpose of proving his true identity, and that the source of your information will be considered strictly confidential.

(Signed) A FRIEND OF JUSTICE.

Mr. Glencannon's face was purple and his mustache bristled like a hedgehog. "Foosh!" he shouted. "Foosh! Oh, the ungrate, the back-knifer, the Judas! Oh, the swundling, snooling, tripe-hearted Dunvegan sweer!" He crumpled the traitorous missive into a ball, hurled it to the floor and ground it with a savage heel. As he did so, he spied an envelope upon which was printed THE NEW YORK OFFICES OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR ASTROLOGICAL RESEARCH. Bending over the pile, he found that there were at least two hundred envelopes similarly marked. Tearing one open, he peered within— and stood rooted to his tracks!

Some minutes later the sun, climbing above Manhattan's skyscrapers, shone through the porthole to reveal Mr. Glencannon ankle deep in two-dollar bills, with the tide still rising. He was breathing hard. The nature of his exhalations left no doubt that he was filled with a vital fluid which may or may not have been Prana.

_______________

4: The Black Sampan

Raoul Whitfield

1896-1945

Black Mask June 1932

IT WAS NEARING the hour of the swift tropic twilight; a warm breeze blew in from Manila Bay and stirred the palm trees in the fringe of almost jungle growth between the narrow white beach and the low, straggling Spanish house. There had been a pink, fan-shaped sunset in the sky, but most of the light had faded now. Gulls screamed over the water and somewhere on the opposite side of the house a parrot shrilled monotonously.

Jo Gar stood near the black shape of the sampan, which rested in a cleared space about fifty yards from the house and towards the fringe of jungle growth. His gray-blue eyes were frowning. The sampan was like hundreds of others drifting on the water of the Pasig, the narrow curve of water that twisted through the City of Manila and emptied into the Bay. That is, it was like others in size and shape. But there were differences. This particular sampan rested on earth. And all the wood of it was black. The mast was black, and the drooping canvas of the sail had been painted black. Not a dull color, but a rich, almost glossy black. There was something funereal in the appearance of the craft, resting on land, with the palm trees swaying slightly between it and the water of the Bay. The color was funereal, and even the shape added to the effect.

Beside him, Harvey Wall said slowly and in his deep voice:

"I heard one terrible, shrill cry— I was in my study. I got a gun and came right out. My Chinese cook was upstairs, in his quarters. He came out behind me. We found Vincente as you see him now, but not until we'd searched quite a bit. You see, we didn't think to look in the sampan immediately."

The Island detective moved closer to the sampan, and Wall moved almost silently behind him. The American was a tall, lean man with gray eyes and slightly gray hair. There was a stoop to his narrow shoulders and his face was well browned. His voice was extraordinarily deep for a man of his build.

The dead figure of Vincente was lying sprawled on the deck of the sampan, the left arm flung out so that the hand almost touched the base of the mast. In the breeze the rings of the sail made faint scraping sound against the mastwood. Vincente's dark eyes were opened wide— he seemed to be staring in painful surprise at the darkening sky, as he lay on his back. There was blood on his throat, and more on his white shirt, over the heart. He was a small, wiry Filipino, and even the pain of his death had not robbed him completely of a dark handsomeness.

Jo Gar said softly: "You were not aware that he had enemies?"

Wall said with decision: "I do not think Vincente had an enemy. I can't understand it, unless robbery was the motive, and he surprised thieves who were waiting in the palm growth, for darkness to come."

Jo Gar leaned down and his gray-blue eyes searched the deck of the sampan, which was fairly small, near the body. He moved around the craft slowly, examining the ground, which was hard and dry from months without rain. Then he came close to the sampan and looked at the dead man again. The swift, tropical twilight came and was gone— it was suddenly dark.

Wall said in a steady, low voice: "Vincente has been with me for five years. He was more than my house-boy. I trusted him completely. Sometimes he did business for me. I live more or less of a secluded life, since I sold out my plantations up the river and on the other side of Luzon. Only Vincente and the cook, Sarong, live with me."

Jo Gar nodded. "Sarong is not a Chinese name," he observed. "Malay, perhaps?"

Wall said: "There may be Malay blood, but the man is Chinese. He was upstairs in his quarters when I heard the one scream. My study is on the second floor, and the servants have small rooms above, in the one high portion of the house. I called to Sarong as I came down, and he answered me."

The Island detective used the beam of a small flashlight on the ground around the sampan.

"What did this Sarong answer, when you called, Señor Wall?" he asked quietly.

Wall said:

"He replied— 'I come, Señor.' That was all. And I could hear him moving hurriedly."

Jo Gar nodded again. He snapped off the beam of the flash, so that they were in darkness. There was a short silence, then the parrot shrilled again. Jo spoke thoughtfully.

"If he had been knifed in the throat first—I do not think the scream would have been shrill. He was struck over the heart first, then in the throat. Filipino cry of surprise or pain is most always shrill. As it is in anger."

Harvey Wall swore very grimly.

"There was just the one scream, high— of pain. It was terrible. I'll hear it at night—forever."

Jo Gar said quietly: "I think not. One forgets these things in time.

You have notified the police?"

Wall spoke a little huskily. "I told Sarong to notify them, after you had arrived. I wanted you here first. I think that perhaps you work more slowly and more thoughtfully."

The Island detective bowed a little. "You are kind," he replied.

There was the sound of a car arriving at the far side of the house. A car door slammed. Harvey Wall said:

"Sarong will bring them here."

Jo Gar looked towards the sky and his eyes were almost closed. He spoke in a gentle voice.

"I think I shall take a short walk through the palms and along the beach," he said very softly. "The sampan here— it has been painted recently?"

Harvey Wall spoke in a toneless voice. "I am a sentimental man. When I came to the Islands, fifteen years ago, I was broke. I had to borrow the money to start in business, and my first business was hauling stuff down the river. I had two sampans— this is the first one I bought. I have always kept it, and when I sold that fleet of mine— I brought it over here. That was about a year ago. The ants were getting at it— it's had several coats of paint."

Jo Gar nodded slowly. "The color is peculiar," he said quietly. "Any particular reason for the color?"

Harvey Wall turned so that he faced the house. There were the sounds of voices, growing louder.

"Vincente painted it, and this time he said he had bought a new kind of paint. It was supposed to be thick and it contained a great deal of lead. He thought that would do for the ants and protect the wood."

The Island detective spoke very softly. "You suggested the color?"

Harvey Wall shook his head. "I was away at the time. But I do not object to the color. Why?"

Jo Gar shrugged and moved away from the sampan and the dead man, towards the fringe of palm trees that swayed in the breeze.

"It is a strange color for a sampan," he said.

There was irritation in Wall's voice. "It's a strange place for a sampan, too," he said. "But neither of those facts is helping us to find Vincente's murderer."

The Island detective paused for a few seconds: "Often one can never tell what is helping in the search for a murderer," he observed. Harvey Wall said: "Well, you know more about this sort of thing than I do. But I think Vincente surprised thieves and they— or one of them— knifed him. Perhaps it was only one thief that he surprised." The voice of Lieutenant Sadi Ratan sounded more clearly, and a flashlight beam cut through the darkness, near a side of the house. Jo Gar said:

"Why should Vincente have surprised a man lying in wait to enter the house, after darkness? Why should the man have been waiting? Why couldn't he come here after dark? But if he was here— why should he be surprised?"

Irritation was again evident in Harvey Wall's tone.

"I merely advanced my theory, Señor Gar. I would prefer to ask the questions and have you answer them."

The Island detective moved in the darkness. "I shall do my best Señor Wall," he said tonelessly. "But it is almost always simpler to ask questions than to answer them."

Lieutenant Sadi Ratan straightened up and faced the door as Jo Gar entered the library of the Wall house. There was perspiration on Ratan's handsome face, his dark eyes were frowning.

"The Chinese is either a fool or a murderer," he announced in his loud, sure voice.

Jo Gar smiled a little and said: "Good evening, Lieutenant. It has been cooler today."

Harvey Wall was pouring himself a drink of whiskey from a decanter. He said suddenly:

"Good God! To think that my two servants hated each other! I never suspected—"

The Chinese sat impassively in a small wicker chair, and the light from a lamp struck full on his face. It was a round, brown face. His eyes were black and very small and they held no expression.

Sadi Ratan said: "He admits he hated Vincente, and he says Vincente hated him. The hatred was very strong. But he knows nothing whatever about the knifing of the house-boy."

Jo Gar inspected the brown paper of his cigarette. "What is it that makes him a fool, Lieutenant?" he asked slowly.

Sadi Ratan swore in Spanish. He wiped his forehead with a brown colored handkerchief.

"I said he was either a fool or a murderer," he corrected. "If he is not a murderer— he is a fool for telling me he hated the dead man."

The Chinese said in a flat voice: "I not a fool."

He said it as though he were patiently correcting some slight error. Jo Gar's blue-gray eyes were on the dark ones of the lieutenant of Manila police.

"Perhaps the Chinese believes that even if he does admit that he hated Vincente— that does not make him a murderer," he said gently.

Harvey Wall downed his whiskey and turned towards Sadi Ratan. "How could Sarong have done this thing?" he demanded impatiently. "I told you he was in his room, above my study. I called to him, just after the scream, and he answered me. He came from the house behind me, and we searched together."

The Chinese closed his eyes. Ratan looked at him with a peculiar expression in his dark ones.

"His room has a small balcony— it faces the sampan," he said simply. Jo Gar smiled a little. "It would be remarkable knife throwing, Lieutenant," he said.

Sadi Ratan shrugged again, and Harvey Wall blinked at him.

"Good God! What stupidity!" he breathed. "You mean to tell me you think this cook killed Vincente by throwing a knife from his balcony? How about the two wounds? And where would the knives have gone? And how could any person throw so accurately at such a distance? And what—"

He groaned and broke off suddenly, appealing with his eyes to Jo. The Island detective was looking at a wicker floor lamp and the light it cast on the waxed floor of the library. He was thinking about Sadi Ratan. The man was not a fool— he was trying to get at something, and was using his apparent stupidity as a mask.

The Chinese said impassively: "I no— kill Vincente."

Sadi Ratan spoke in a rising voice, "You hated him, and he's dead, murdered. Señor Wall called to you, and he thought he heard you answer."

Harvey Wall sucked in a noisy breath. "You mean— Sarong wasn't in his quarters?" he muttered. "You mean—"

He checked himself. There was a little silence and then Jo Gar said quietly:

"If I cared to believe that the cook murdered Vincente—I would prefer the lieutenant's theory. That Sarong was not in his quarters. You did not actually see him leave the house behind you, Señor Wall?" Harvey Wall's eyes were wide. "No," he admitted. "I was in too much of a hurry to get outside. I didn't wait for him. But I heard footfalls, and the voice that answered me sounded like Sarong's. When I got around the house near the sampan, he came around—"

Sadi Ratan kept his eyes on the half-closed ones of the Chinese.

"He could easily have done that—and still have murdered the man he hated," he said grimly.

Jo Gar nodded his head. "Quiet easily," he agreed. "And the one who answered for him and made the footfall sounds could have gone from the house and vanished."

Harvey Wall swore softly. The Island detective smiled. "But it did not happen that way," he said quietly.

Sadi Ratan frowned at the diminutive detective, his fine figure very straight. The Chinese said slowly and with little tone in his voice:

"I in my room. I hear scream. Master— he call and me call back. I come down quick. It is so."

Sadi Ratan said in a hard voice: "It is so now, but I do not think it will be so in a short time. You are lying, Sarong, and it will not be easy for you to continue lying."

Jo Gar lighted another of his brown-paper cigarettes and spoke to Lieutenant Ratan.

"You have so often jumped at conclusions in the past, Lieutenant— and so often you have been mistaken. A man is dead, murdered, and a man that hated him is alive. Does that make him the murderer?"

Sadi Ratan smiled coldly at the Island detective. "It so happens that the Chinese is an expert with knives," he said evenly. "Perhaps you were not aware of that fact, Señor Gar?"

Jo Gar shrugged. "Many Chinese are experts with knives," he said.

The lieutenant of police continued to smile.

"While you were strolling about the beach my men have been busy. I think that Sarong is both a fool and a murderer. They have found a palm that is scarred by the blades of thrown knives. There is a cleared spot near it. In the next house there is a house-boy Carinto. He has seen the Chinese at practice."

Harvey Wall swore again, softly. Jo Gar said nothing.

The Chinese smiled impassively. "I know— Carinto see me," he said. "He no good. He hear knife strike tree. One time me miss."

Jo Gar grinned, showing his white teeth. He chuckled softly. Harvey Wall grunted. Sadi Ratan frowned at the Chinese.

Jo said: "You have an accommodating murderer, Lieutenant. He even admits that there are times when he misses a throw."

The Chinese smiled at the Island detective, then suddenly his eyes held a worried expression. He spoke very rapidly in Chinese, and Jo saw that even Sadi Ratan did not understand.

Jo replied to the cook, and Sarong smiled again. Ratan said in a cold voice:

"What did he say, Señor Gar?"

Jo said: "He said that he did not murder the man that he hated, and that he did not wish to die because some other one did murder him. He trusts that I will be able to find this other one, because he thinks that I am an honest man and he thinks that you do not like him."

Sadi Ratan scowled at the Chinese, whose eyes again held no expression. Jo Gar asked:

"Why, Sarong, did you hate Vincente?"

The Chinese started to speak in his native tongue, but Jo shook his head.

"In English, Sarong," he said. "Señor Wall should be able to understand."

The cook turned his eyes towards Harvey Wall, then looked at Jo. "He want to kill me," he said simply. "He no like me. He talk to himself— I hear him say some day he kill me. And I no like him."

Jo Gar chuckled again. "That is a good reason for disliking a man," he agreed. "A very good reason."

Sadi Ratan muttered something under his breath, then said coldly: "It is not even funny. He is lying. Why did you hate Vincente, Sarong? Why did you murder him with a knife— with one of your knives, and then hide the knife, perhaps throw it into the Bay? Why did you place the body in the black sampan? What was the real reason?" Jo Gar said dryly: "And why did you spend all this time in practicing throwing knives when you are supposed to have murdered Vincente without throwing one?"

Sadi Ratan swung his body towards Jo Gar's. "You will please remain silent," he said grimly. "I am questioning this man."

Jo Gar turned his back, shrugging slightly. Ratan spoke in a hard, loud tone:

"Was it because of a woman? Because he owed you money?"

The Chinese sighed heavily. He half closed his eyes again. One of Lieutenant Ratan's men came into the library, almost silently. He went to Ratan's side.

"We have found the woman, Lieutenant," he said in precise Spanish. "It is the kitchen maid of the Dutch family in the adjoining house— Herr Saaden."

Lieutenant Ratan stood very erectly, and when Jo Gar faced him again he was smiling in a satisfied manner.

"A woman or money," he announced.

"It is almost always one or the other."

"Or both," Jo added. "What about the woman?"

Sadi Ratan looked at the khaki-clad police officer who had come in.

"What about the woman?" he asked. "Tell us."

The officer was short and chesty. He stood very stiffly and said that as ordered he had gone to the nearest house to make inquiries. He had talked with the house-boy, one named Carinto, and had learned that the Chinese and the Filipino of the American Señor, Harvey Wall, hated each other. He had learned that the house-boy of the Dutch family had watched the Chinese throwing knives at a palm tree. He had brought this information to Lieutenant Ratan and had then sought a reason for the hatred. And he had now learned that both Sarong and the dead Filipino had been in love with this Filipino maid of the family in the nearest house. Her name was Maria Tondo, and she was a half-breed of Spanish-Filipino parentage.

Sadi Ratan gestured with spread hands, brown palms upturned, when the policeman had finished.

"That is good," he said.

"We will go with the Chinese to the woman—"

The officer interrupted to state that the woman was now outside.

Sadi Ratan said sharply:

"Bring her in."

He faced the Chinese and spoke coldly.

"You will be wise to confess. We know that you hated the dead man, and that you are an expert with knives. You will confess and tell us who it was that you sent to your room, in case your master should call. The one who was to answer in your tone of voice, while you crept through the palm growth and knifed Vincente to death, because you wanted this Maria Tondo, and because perhaps you feared that she preferred Vincente."

The Chinese said flatly: "I no kill Vincente— I no want Maria."

Lieutenant Ratan slapped a fist against a palm of his left hand, swore, and in Spanish. The policeman came in behind a slim, short girl of perhaps seventeen. She was pretty in a dark, graceful way. Her eyes were very black.

She stopped several feet from the Chinese, and her breath was drawn in in a sharp hiss. Then she raised both arms above her head and cried out shrilly. She moved towards Sarong, who was watching her with narrowed eyes. Sadi Ratan caught her by an arm, held her firmly. But he let her talk.

She said that Sarong was the son of a dog; she cursed him, waving her one free arm about. Her eyes were flashing and she was breathing heavily. She said that he had murdered the man she loved, and that he would die for it. He deserved to die for it, a thousand times. She had told Vincente only this very morning that she would marry him, and he had told Sarong, of course. And therefore the Chinese had murdered the man she loved.

When she quieted, Sadi Ratan looked at Harvey Wall and smiled a little proudly. Then he turned towards Jo Gar, who had been smoking and watching the Chinese.

"It is finished," he said. "We now have the motive."

The Island detective smiled back at Lieutenant Ratan, while Harvey Wall was repeating that he could hardly believe it— he had never noticed any hatred between his two servants. But then, he had been very busy with his monthly accounts of late. Perhaps he had not paid much attention to matters between the two.

Jo Gar said suddenly: "You do not find it strange, Lieutenant, that the body was found in the black sampan?"

The lieutenant shrugged. "He was murdered perhaps alongside of it," he suggested. "No— I do not find it strange."

The girl, still breathing heavily, said that she often met Vincente beside the sampan. Because Sarong was a devil, he had deliberately placed the body of the man she loved in it.

Sadi Ratan smiled more broadly. "You see?" he said. "It is all very simple."

There was a little silence and then the lieutenant went close to the seated Chinese.

"Who was the one you had in your room, to answer Señor Wall?" he demanded.

The Chinese raised his eyes and looked at the lieutenant of Manila police. He shook his head slowly from side to side, then looked at Jo Gar.

"I did not— kill him," he said very steadily and tonelessly. "This girl— she lie."

The girl shrilled words at him again, in native tongues— a mixture of Low Spanish and Filipino. Sadi Ratan interrupted her.

"In prison it will be different," he said. "We will have his confession there."

Jo Gar spoke softly. "I do not think it will be different. It is not easy for one to confess to a murder not committed."

Sadi Ratan smiled nastily, then sighed. "Confession will hardly be necessary," he said. "The evidence is very strong against the Chinese."

Harvey Wall came over near Jo Gar and looked at him with wide eyes.

"You are not satisfied that Sarong is guilty?" he asked.

Jo smiled a little. "I certainly am not," he replied. "On the contrary, I am quite sure he is innocent."

Sadi Ratan gestured towards the girl and then motioned for her to be taken out. Two more policemen came into the room, and the lieutenant pointed at Sarong.

"He is arrested for the murder of Señor Wall's house-boy Vincente," he said slowly. "Take him away, and guard him carefully."

The Chinese stood up, raised his hands slightly and let them fall at his sides. Jo Gar smiled at him.

"It will be for only a short time, Sarong," he said. "Perhaps only for hours."

The Chinese lifted his shoulders, let them fall, and was led from the room. Sadi Ratan went to a small wicker table and placed his pith helmet on his head, adjusting it carefully. Jo Gar spoke quietly.

"You have probably worked more rapidly on this case than on any other, Lieutenant," he said. "Unfortunately, I do not think you have the right person."

Sadi Ratan smiled at Harvey Wall, as though in sympathy.

"It was your wish to call in Señor Gar," he said. "I regret that he was of so little use to you."

Harvey Wall looked at Jo Gar. "I think the lieutenant is right, Señor Gar," he said. "It is a surprise— but I think Sarong killed Vincente. The girl is sure of it, and the evidence is all against him."

Jo Gar narrowed his blue-gray eyes on the gray ones of the American. He let his gaze flicker to Sadi Ratan, and then come back to the American again.

"But you still wish to find the murderer of your house-boy?" he asked pleasantly.

Harvey Wall frowned. "Certainly," he said.

The Island detective nodded his head and looked towards the screened windows that faced in the direction of the Bay.

"In that case," he said very tonelessly, "I shall wander about a bit."

Sadi Ratan sighed again. "While I am getting a confession from the Chinese," he said.

Jo Gar bowed slightly. "While you are attempting to get a confession from the Chinese," he corrected placidly.

A half hour or so before dusk, on the next day, Jo Gar stood near the desk of Lieutenant Ratan, at police headquarters, just off the Escolta. The creak of carriage wheels and the chug-noise of small machines on Manila's main business street came through the screened windows of the room. Sadi Ratan sat behind his desk and seemed very pleased with himself.

"He has not confessed," he said, "but these things take some time, as you know. Because you are interested in the case, and appear to sympathize with this Chinese, I shall be severe but not at all brutal with him."

The Island detective nodded. "It is kind of you," he returned. "You are dealing with a very clever murderer. He could not have been at all certain that Señor Wall would call for him, nor could he have been certain that Vincente would cry out. Yet he went to great trouble in putting a substitute in his quarters, in case of such a circumstance."

The lieutenant frowned. He tapped the desk surface with his right-hand fingers.

"You think that Sarong would not have planned so carefully," he said slowly. "I disagree— the Chinese are very shrewd."

Jo Gar nodded. "Sarong was the cook," he said. "Ground glass in food would have been much more simple."

Sadi Ratan shook his head. "In the autopsy it would have been discovered. Instantly Sarong would have been caught— just because he— was the cook."

The Island detective was silent for several seconds. "In the tropics one can hardly help but notice servants," he said. "Yet Señor Wall failed to notice they hated each other. That is unnatural."

Sadi Ratan made a gesture that was broad and dismissing.

"He was busy with his monthly accounts. And it is very possible that Sarong and Vincente were careful."

Jo Gar frowned slightly. "There is the matter of the sampan," he said. "The body being placed on the wooden deck would make sound. Or if it fell there it would make sound. And yet it was found there." The police lieutenant smiled coldly. "You are growing old, Señor Gar," he observed viciously. "The sampan was the love spot of the house-boy and the girl. Sarong had discovered that— it pleased him to deposit Vincente's body there."

Jo Gar said: "This Maria has told you that Sarong loved her, as well as Vincente?" he asked.

Sadi Ratan nodded. "Naturally, and that she refused him, even laughed at him. There is no Chinese blood in her veins. She would not marry him. Vincente was a Filipino."

Jo Gar looked at the ceiling fan. "The girl is here?" he asked. The police lieutenant shook his head.

"I released her this afternoon. She is needed at the Saaden house. She will not go away. She hates Sarong. She says there is bad Malay blood in him. She will stay, and if he does not confess— her word will be enough to convict him."

Jo Gar placed his soiled Panama on top of his head and turned towards the office door.

"The newspapers are complimenting you, Lieutenant," he stated pleasantly. "But then, they have done that before."

Sadi Ratan frowned. "I have made mistakes," he said. "They have complimented me too soon. But this time I am right. Sarong was the murderer. You arrived on the scene ahead of me, Señor Gar, but you reasoned poorly. I regret that, sincerely."

Jo Gar smiled and bowed. "I would regret it also, Lieutenant," he replied cheerfully, "if I believed it was so."

The Island detective drove through the Luneta, between the Manila Hotel and the Army and Navy Club while the Constabulary Band was playing its final number. The sun was very low, beyond the Island of Cavite, but tonight there were no clouds in the sky and the sunset was not beautiful. The driver of the caleso made low, clucking sounds to his thin horse, and Jo Gar smoked a brown-paper cigarette.

Near the Army and Navy Club he told the driver to stop, and descended from the carriage. He walked slowly along the avenue that wound nearest the Bay and when he was within five hundred yards of the Wall house it was almost dark.

When he reached the gate on the avenue frontage of the place the twilight was rapidly fading; it was gone as he used the key he had obtained from Wall an hour ago, in the city. There were no lights showing; Harvey Wall was staying with friends for the night. Jo Gar moved very quietly through the foliage just off the cinder path, circled the house and approached the spot where the black sampan rested, from the far side.

He stood motionless for almost five minutes, listening carefully. Gulls were crying, over the water, but the parrot did not make sound. The Island detective raised his eyes and saw the dark shape of the house rising beyond the sampan. He smiled faintly, waited another five minutes. There were no alien sounds to be heard; his smile became a frown.

And then, as he bent down and got first on his knees, then flat on the ground, he heard the light noise of footfalls. They seemed to be coming from the direction of the Bay. At intervals they ceased completely, then he would hear them again. And they increased in sound— the one who was making them was coming nearer.

The light from the stars was brighter tonight, but Jo Gar did not move his head as the person who was making the footfall sounds passed within ten yards of him. He waited for almost a minute, and when the sounds were very light he looked up. The black sampan was only a shape in the semi-darkness— a coffin-like shape, with the mast a tombstone.

But near it stood a small figure— and as his eyes became accustomed to the light Jo saw that it was the girl, Maria Tondo. She was standing motionless near the sampan, but her head was thrown back. She was looking, Jo realized, not at the craft but at the house.

For several seconds she stood without making any movement. Then she turned and moved back towards the Bay, passing so close to him as he lay flat among the dried palm leaves and shrubbery that he could hear her even breathing.

After another thirty seconds or so he raised his head. He got very slowly to his feet, moved carefully through the fringe of palms towards the beach and the water of the Bay. When he reached the Bay side of the palm thicket he could see her walking along the beach. Near the end of the Wall property line there was an outrigger that Harvey Wall sometimes used for swimming. The girl went straight to it, seated herself on it. Her back was to Jo Gar— she was facing the beach of Herr Saaden.

Jo Gar straightened and smiled grimly. He worked his way slowly along the edge of the palm fringe, getting nearer the outrigger. It was slow work, and once he halted for seconds and fingered the Colt in the right-hand pocket of his lightweight suit, getting the safety lock off.

When he reached a spot almost opposite the beached outrigger he crouched low and waited. The figure of the girl was very still. And then, from some spot farther along the fringe of palms, he heard a long, low whistle.

The girl's body moved. She stood up, but did not go away from the outrigger. She turned her head slightly and whistled as the other had whistled— long and softly.

Jo Gar's gray-blue eyes were expressionless as he waited. When the figure of the man came along the sand he drew in a short breath. He slipped his right hand into the right pocket of his coat and closed his short fingers over the grip of the gun.

When the man reached the girl's side he took her in his arms. Their bodies were close together for seconds. They stood facing the water, after a time, and Jo could hear the low murmur of their voices.

He stepped out from the fringe of palms; moved as quietly as he could across the pebbles and sand of the narrow beach. His eyes were on the two figures; they had stopped talking now. When he was within twenty-five feet of them, directly behind them, his right shoe struck against a piece of driftwood. The sound was sharp, and they both swung around.

Jo Gar walked forward, a smile on his face. The sand gave light to the scene, and he watched their hands carefully. The man's breath was coming sharply. The girl's eyes were wide. She said in a half whisper:

"Señor— Gar!"

Jo Gar smiled more broadly. He nodded his head, and stopped within ten feet of them. The man was a Filipino— he had a sharp face and a small mustache. His hair was very black and clipped short. He wore a white shirt and white trousers, and his feet were bare. There was a red sash around his waist.

The Island detective said: "Yes, it is Señor Gar. And this is the house-boy, Carinto, I suppose? The house-boy of Herr Saaden."

The Filipino's thick lips parted; he half muttered something, nodding his head jerkily. Jo Gar continued to smile. His eyes flickered to the eyes of the girl.

"You do not grieve long," he said with faint mockery. "One love is dead— only a short time. Yet already you have another."

The girl's body stiffened, and the man made a slight movement with his left hand.

Jo Gar said sharply: "No! My fingers hold a gun!"

There was silence except for the short breathing of the two. Jo Gar looked at the Filipino and said softly:

"The house-boy of Herr Saaden— and the murderer of Vincente!" The girl screamed and raised her hands to her face. The Filipino ripped at the left side of his red scarf and the blade of the knife shone in the beach light. But he did not throw it. Instead he leaped forward, the knife held low in his hand. His arm was moving upward as he leaped.

Jo Gar twisted to one side and squeezed the trigger of the Colt. The Filipino groaned as the shot crashed; he fell heavily to the sand near the feet of the Island detective. The girl screamed again, took her hands away from her face and rushed at him. Jo Gar lifted his gun again, let his hand drop. The girl was tearing at him with her fingers, when he got a grip on her throat. His skin was ripped twice before she was quiet, relaxed in his arms.

He let her slip to the sand, turned the house-boy over on his back. The knife he twisted from his weak grip. There were cries from the direction of the Saaden house, and the beams of flashlights were showing.

Jo Gar straightened up and looked down at the Filipino. The girl stirred in the sand and moaned. Jo Gar said heavily:

"The bullet is in your shoulder— you won't die— yet. Why did you— murder Vincente?"

Carinto cursed in his native tongue. The girl pulled herself to her knees and faced Jo.

"If we tell the truth— will it help?" she asked.

Jo Gar nodded. "The truth always helps," he said a little grimly. "How much, I cannot say."

The girl said: "We'd saved money— to get married. Vincente did not want it. He saw that Juan drank, and then he gambled with him. He won all of his money. Juan did not think it was honest, and he knew why Vincente had done it. He caught him near the black sampan— and killed him. Vincente screamed, but Juan did not care. He put him on the sampan. He said it looked like a coffin— and he got away. He thought that Sarong would be suspected, because he knew the Chinese hated Vincente. He had lost money to him also—and the two had quarreled much. Juan thought that Señor Wall knew that, but he did not. I went to the house tonight; it was dark and I thought we were safe—"

Her voice broke. The thick voice of Herr Saaden was calling, and Jo Gar answered him. On the sand Juan Carinto was groaning. Jo Gar held his Colt low at his side; his eyes were expressionless. He nodded his head very slowly.

"It will interest Lieutenant Ratan to know that he was correct in one thing," he murmured tonelessly. "He said that murder was almost always for a woman or money."

The flashlight beams were moving nearer and the voices were growing louder. Jo Gar looked out over the water and sighed.

"And Vincente spent so much time painting the spot where his body was to rest," he said with irony. "He even chose the proper color—"

Herr Saaden came limping up and asked questions. Jo Gar answered them, and after a short silence he said:

"We will take the wounded man to your house, and from there I will call Lieutenant Ratan."

The Dutchman nodded his head. "He will be pleased," he said seriously.

Jo Gar smiled a little grimly. "He will be delighted," he said. "When he realizes that he did not recognize what a poor actress your kitchen maid is, and that he thought Sarong was much more clever than I did, and that he failed to wonder why your house-boy, Carinto, was so eager to come forward and state that he had seen the Chinese practicing with knives— he will be delighted."

Herr Saaden looked puzzled, but Jo Gar only smiled very faintly. He was not very concerned— whether Herr Saaden understood or not.

____________________

5: The Dancing Partner

Jerome K. Jerome

1859-1927

Novel Notes, Leadenhall Press, 1893

"THIS STORY," commenced MacShaugnassy, "comes from Furtwangen, a small town in the Black Forest. There lived there a very wonderful old fellow named Nicholaus Geibel. His business was the making of mechanical toys, at which work he had acquired an almost European reputation. He made rabbits that would emerge from the heart of a cabbage, flop their ears, smooth their whiskers, and disappear again; cats that would wash their faces, and mew so naturally that dogs would mistake them for real cats and fly at them; dolls with phonographs concealed within them, that would raise their hats and say, 'Good morning; how do you do?' and some that would even sing a song.

"But, he was something more than a mere mechanic; he was an artist. His work was with him a hobby, almost a passion. His shop was filled with all manner of strange things that never would, or could, be sold— things he had made for the pure love of making them. He had contrived a mechanical donkey that would trot for two hours by means of stored electricity, and trot, too, much faster than the live article, and with less need for exertion on the part of the driver, a bird that would shoot up into the air, fly round and round in a circle, and drop to earth at the exact spot from where it started; a skeleton that, supported by an upright iron bar, would dance a hornpipe, a life-size lady doll that could play the fiddle, and a gentleman with a hollow inside who could smoke a pipe and drink more lager beer than any three average German students put together, which is saying much.

"Indeed, it was the belief of the town that old Geibel could make a man capable of doing everything that a respectable man need want to do. One day he made a man who did too much, and it came about in this way:

"Young Doctor Follen had a baby, and the baby had a birthday. Its first birthday put Doctor Follen's household into somewhat of a flurry, but on the occasion of its second birthday, Mrs. Doctor Follen gave a ball in honour of the event. Old Geibel and his daughter Olga were among the guests.

"During the afternoon of the next day some three or four of Olga's bosom friends, who had also been present at the ball, dropped in to have a chat about it. They naturally fell to discussing the men, and to criticizing their dancing. Old Geibel was in the room, but he appeared to be absorbed in his newspaper, and the girls took no notice of him.

" 'There seem to be fewer men who can dance at every ball you go to,' said one of the girls.

" 'Yes, and don't the ones who can give themselves airs,' said another; 'they make quite a favour of asking you.'

" 'And how stupidly they talk,' added a third. 'They always say exactly the same things: "How charming you are looking tonight." "Do you often go to Vienna? Oh, you should, it's delightful." "What a charming dress you have on." "What a warm day it has been." "Do you like Wagner?" I do wish they'd think of something new.'

" 'Oh, I never mind how they talk,' said a forth. 'If a man dances well he may be a fool for all I care.'

" 'He generally is,' slipped in a thin girl, rather spitefully.

" 'I go to a ball to dance,' continued the previous speaker, not noticing the interruption. 'All I ask is that he shall hold me firmly, take me round steadily, and not get tired before I do.'

"'A clockwork figure would be the thing for you,' said the girl who had interrupted.

" 'Bravo!' cried one of the others, clapping her hands, 'what a capital idea!'

" 'What's a capital idea?' they asked.

" 'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down.'

"The girls took up the idea with enthusiasm.

" 'Oh, what a lovely partner he would make,' said one; 'he would never kick you, or tread on your toes.'

" 'Or tear your dress,' said another.

" 'Or get out of step.'

" 'Or get giddy and lean on you.'

" 'And he would never want to mop his face with his handkerchief. I do hate to see a man do that after every dance.'

"'And wouldn't want to spend the whole evening in the supper-room.'

"'Why, with a phonograph inside him to grind out all the stock remarks, you would not be able to tell him from a real man,' said the girl who had first suggested the idea.

"Oh yes, you would,' said the thin girl, 'he would be so much nicer.'

"Old Geibel had laid down his paper, and was listening with both his ears. On one of the girls glancing in his direction, however, he hurriedly hid himself again behind it.

"After the girls were gone, he went into his workshop, where Olga heard him walking up and down, and every now and then chuckling to himself; and that night he talked to her a good deal about dancing and dancing men— asked what dances were most popular— what steps were gone through, with many other questions bearing on the subject.

"Then for a couple of weeks he kept much to his factory, and was very thoughtful and busy, though prone at unexpected moments to break into a quiet low laugh, as if enjoying a joke that nobody else knew of.

"A month later another ball took place in Furtwangen. On this occasion it was given by old Wenzel, the wealthy timber merchant, to celebrate his niece's betrothal, and Geibel and his daughter were again among the invited.

"When the hour arrived to set out, Olga sought her father. Not finding him in the house, she tapped at the door of his workshop. He appeared in his shirt-sleeves, looking hot but radiant.

"Don't wait for me,' he said, 'you go on, I'll follow you. I've got something to finish.'

"As she turned to obey he called after her, 'Tell them I'm going to bring a young man with me— such a nice young man, and an excellent dancer. All the girls will like him.' Then he laughed and closed the door.

"Her father generally kept his doings secret from everybody, but she had a pretty shrewd suspicion of what he had been planning, and so, to a certain extent, was able to prepare the guests for what was coming. Anticipation ran high, and the arrival of the famous mechanist was eagerly awaited.

"At length the sound of wheels was heard outside, followed by a great commotion in the passage, and old Wenzel himself, his jolly face red with excitement and suppressed laughter, burst into the room and announced in stentorian tones:

" 'Herr Geibel— and a friend.'

"Herr Geibel and his 'friend' entered, greeted with shouts of laughter and applause, and advanced to the centre of the room.

"'Allow me, ladies and gentlemen,' said Herr Geibel, 'to introduce you to my friend, Lieutenant Fritz. Fritz, my dear fellow, bow to the ladies and gentlemen.'

"Geibel placed his hand encouragingly on Fritz's shoulder, and the Lieutenant bowed low, accompanying the action with a harsh clicking noise in his throat, unpleasantly suggestive of a death-rattle. But that was only a detail.

" 'He walks a little stiffly' (old Geibel took his arm and walked him forward a few steps. He certainly did walk stiffly), 'but then, walking is not his forte. He is essentially a dancing man. I have only been able to teach him the waltz as yet, but at that he is faultless. Come, which of you ladies may I introduce him to as a partner? He keeps perfect time; he never gets tired; he won't kick you or trad on your dress; he will hold you as firmly as you like, and go as quickly or a slowly as you please; he never gets giddy; and he is full of conversation. Come, speak up for yourself, my boy.'

"The old gentleman twisted one of the buttons at the back of his coat, and immediately Fritz opened his mouth, and in thin tones that appeared to proceed from the back of his head, remarked suddenly, 'May I have the pleasure?' and then shut his mouth again with a snap.

"That Lieutenant Fritz had made a strong impression on the company was undoubted, yet none of the girls seemed inclined to dance with him. They looked askance at his waxen face, with its staring eyes and fixed smile, and shuddered. At last old Geibel came to the girl who had conceived the idea.

" 'It is your own suggestion, carried out to the letter,' said Geibel, 'an electric dancer. You owe it to the gentleman to give him a trial.'

"She was a bright, saucy little girl, fond of a frolic. Her host added his entreaties, and she consented.

"Her Geibel fixed the figure to her. Its right arm was screwed round her waist, and held her firmly; its delicately jointed left hand was made to fasten upon her right. The old toymaker showed her how to regulate its speed, and how to stop it, and release herself.

" 'It will take you round in a complete circle,' he explained; 'be careful that no one knocks against you, and alters its course.'

"The music struck up. Old Geibel put the current in motion, and Annette and her strange partner began to dance.

"For a while everyone stood watching them. The figure performed its purpose admirably. Keeping perfect time and step, and holding its little partner tight clasped in an unyielding embrace, it revolved steadily, pouring forth at the same time a constant flow of squeaky conversation, broken by brief intervals of grinding silence.

" 'How charming you are looking tonight,' it remarked in its thin, far-away voice. 'What a lovely day it has been. Do you like dancing? How well our steps agree. You will give me another, won't you? Oh, don't be so cruel. What a charming gown you have on. Isn't waltzing delightful? I could go on dancing for ever— with you. Have you had supper?'

"As she grew more familiar with the uncanny creature, the girl's nervousness wore off, and she entered into the fun of the thing.

" 'Oh, he's just lovely,' she cried, laughing; 'I could go on dancing with him all my life.'

"Couple after couple now joined them, and soon all the dancers in the room were whirling round behind them. Nicholaus Geibel stood looking on, beaming with childish delight at his success.

"Old Wenzel approached him, and whispered something in his ear. Geibel laughed and nodded, and the two worked their way quietly towards the door.

" 'This is the young people's house tonight,' said Wenzel, as soon as they were outside; 'you and I will have a quiet pipe and glass of hock, over in the counting-house.'

"Meanwhile the dancing grew more fast and furious. Little Annette loosened the screw regulating her partner's rate of progress, and the figure flew round with her swifter and swifter. Couple after couple dropped out exhausted, but they only went the faster, till at length they remained dancing alone.

"Madder and madder became the waltz. The music lagged behind: the musicians, unable to keep pace, ceased, and sat staring. The younger guests applauded, but the older faces began to grow anxious.

" 'Hadn't you better stop, dear,' said one of the women, 'you'll make yourself so tired.'

"But Annette did not answer.

" 'I believe she's fainted,' cried out a girl who had caught sight of her face as it was swept by.

"One of the men sprang forward and clutched at the figure, but its impetus threw him down on to the floor, where its steel-cased feet laid bare his cheek. The thing evidently did not intend to part with its prize so easily.

"Had any one retained a cool head, the figure, one cannot help thinking, might easily have been stopped. Two or three men acting in concert might have lifted it bodily off the floor, or have jammed it into a corner. But few human heads are capable of remaining cool under excitement. Those who are not present think how stupid must have been those who were; those who are reflect afterwards how simple it would have been to do this, that, or the other, if only they had thought of it at the time.

"The women grew hysterical. The men shouted contradictory directions to one another. Tow of them made a bungling rush at the figure, which had the end result of forcing it out of its orbit at the centre of the room, and sending it crashing against the walls and furniture. A stream of blood showed itself down the girl's white frock, and followed her along the floor. The affair was becoming horrible. The women rushed screaming from the room. The men followed them.

"One sensible suggestion was made: 'Find Geibel— fetch Geibel.'

"No one had noticed him leave the room, no one knew where he was. A party went in search of him. The others, too unnerved to go back into the ballroom, crowded outside the door and listened. They could hear the steady whir of the wheels upon the polished floor as the thing spun round and round; the dull thud as every now and again it dashed itself and its burden against some opposing object and ricocheted off in a new direction.

"And everlastingly it talked in that thin ghostly voice, repeating over and over the same formula: 'How charming you look tonight. What a lovely day it has been. Oh, don't be so cruel. I could go on dancing for ever— with you. Have you had supper?'

"Of course they sought Geibel everywhere but where he was. They looked in every room in the house, then they rushed off in a body to his own place, and spent precious minutes waking up his deaf old housekeeper. At last it occurred to one of the party that Wenzel was missing also, and then the idea of the counting-house across the yard presented itself to them, and there they found him.

"He rose up, very pale, and followed them; and he and old Wenzel forced their way through the crowd of guests gathered outside, and entered the room, and locked the door behind them.

"From within there came the muffled sound of low voices and quick steps, followed by a confused scuffling noise, then silence, then the low voices again.

"After a time the door opened, and those near it pressed forward to enter, but old Wenzel's broad head and shoulders barred the way.

" 'I want you— and you, Bekler,' he said, addressing a couple of the elder men. His voice was calm, but his face was deadly white. 'The rest of you, please go— get the women away as quickly as you can.'

"From that day old Nicholaus Geibel confined himself to the making of mechanical rabbits, and cats that mewed and washed their faces."

___________________

6: Casting the Runes

M R James

1862-1936

More Ghost Stories, 1911

APRIL 15th, 190—

Dear Sir,

I am requested by the Council of the—— Association to return to you the draft of a paper on The Truth of Alchemy, which you have been good enough to offer to read at our forthcoming meeting, and to inform you that the Council do not see their way to including it in the programme.

I am,

Yours faithfully,

——, Secretary.

April 18th

Dear Sir,

I am sorry to say that my engagements do not permit of my affording you an interview on the subject of your proposed paper. Nor do our laws allow of your discussing the matter with a Committee of our Council, as you suggest. Please allow me to assure you that the fullest consideration was given to the draft which you submitted, and that it was not declined without having been referred to the judgement of a most competent authority. No personal question (it can hardly be necessary for me to add) can have had the slightest influence on the decision of the Council.

Believe me (ut supra).

April 20th

The Secretary of the—— Association begs respectfully to inform Mr Karswell that it is impossible for him to communicate the name of any person or persons to whom the draft of Mr Karswell's paper may have been submitted; and further desires to intimate that he cannot undertake to reply to any further letters on this subject.

'AND WHO is Mr Karswell?' inquired the Secretary's wife. She had called at his office, and (perhaps unwarrantably) had picked up the last of these three letters, which the typist had just brought in.

'Why, my dear, just at present Mr Karswell is a very angry man. But I don't know much about him otherwise, except that he is a person of wealth, his address is Lufford Abbey, Warwickshire, and he's an alchemist, apparently, and wants to tell us all about it; and that's about all-except that I don't want to meet him for the next week or two. Now, if you're ready to leave this place, I am.'

'What have you been doing to make him angry?' asked Mrs Secretary.

'The usual thing, my dear, the usual thing: he sent in a draft of a paper he wanted to read at the next meeting, and we referred it to Edward Dunning-almost the only man in England who knows about these things— and he said it was perfectly hopeless, so we declined it. So Karswell has been pelting me with letters ever since. The last thing he wanted was the name of the man we referred his nonsense to; you saw my answer to that. But don't you say anything about it, for goodness' sake.'

'I should think not, indeed. Did I ever do such a thing? I do hope, though, he won't get to know that it was poor Mr Dunning.'

'Poor Mr Dunning? I don't know why you call him that; he's a very happy man, is Dunning. Lots of hobbies and a comfortable home, and all his time to himself.'

'I only meant I should be sorry for him if this man got hold of his name, and came and bothered him.'

'Oh, ah! yes. I dare say he would be poor Mr Dunning then.'

The Secretary and his wife were lunching out, and the friends to whose house they were bound were Warwickshire people. So Mrs Secretary had already settled it in her own mind that she would question them judiciously about Mr Karswell. But she was saved the trouble of leading up to the subject, for the hostess said to the host, before many minutes had passed, 'I saw the Abbot of Lufford this morning.'

The host whistled. 'Did you? What in the world brings him up to town?'

'Goodness knows; he was coming out of the British Museum gate as I drove past.'

It was not unnatural that Mrs Secretary should inquire whether this was a real Abbot who was being spoken of.

'Oh no, my dear: only a neighbour of ours in the country who bought Lufford Abbey a few years ago. His real name is Karswell.'

'Is he a friend of yours?' asked Mr Secretary, with a private wink to his wife.

The question let loose a torrent of declamation. There was really nothing to be said for Mr Karswell. Nobody knew what he did with himself: his servants were a horrible set of people; he had invented a new religion for himself, and practised no one could tell what appalling rites; he was very easily offended, and never forgave anybody; he had a dreadful face (so the lady insisted, her husband somewhat demurring); he never did a kind action, and whatever influence he did exert was mischievous.

'Do the poor man justice, dear,' the husband interrupted. 'You forget the treat he gave the school children.'

'Forget it, indeed! But I'm glad you mentioned it, because it gives an idea of the man. Now, Florence, listen to this. The first winter he was at Lufford this delightful neighbour of ours wrote to the clergyman of his parish (he's not ours, but we know him very well) and offered to show the school children some magic-lantern slides. He said he had some new kinds, which he thought would interest them. Well, the clergyman was rather surprised, because Mr Karswell had shown himself inclined to be unpleasant to the children— complaining of their trespassing, or something of the sort; but of course he accepted, and the evening was fixed, and our friend went himself to see that everything went right. He said he never had been so thankful for anything as that his own children were all prevented from being there: they were at a children's party at our house, as a matter of fact. Because this Mr Karswell had evidently set out with the intention of frightening these poor village children out of their wits, and I do believe, if he had been allowed to go on, he would actually have done so. He began with some comparatively mild things. Red Riding Hood was one, and even then, Mr Farrer said, the wolf was so dreadful that several of the smaller children had to be taken out: and he said Mr Karswell began the story by producing a noise like a wolf howling in the distance, which was the most gruesome thing he had ever heard. All the slides he showed, Mr Farrer said, were most clever; they were absolutely realistic, and where he had got them or how he worked them he could not imagine. Well, the show went on, and the stories kept on becoming a little more terrifying each time, and the children were mesmerized into complete silence. At last he produced a series which represented a little boy passing through his own park— Lufford, I mean— in the evening. Every child in the room could recognize the place from the pictures. And this poor boy was followed, and at last pursued and overtaken, and either torn to pieces or somehow made away with, by a horrible hopping creature in white, which you saw first dodging about among the trees, and gradually it appeared more and more plainly. Mr Farrer said it gave him one of the worst nightmares he ever remembered, and what it must have meant to the children doesn't bear thinking of. Of course this was too much, and he spoke very sharply indeed to Mr Karswell, and said it couldn't go on. All he said was: "Oh, you think it's time to bring our little show to an end and send them home to their beds? Very well!" And then, if you please, he switched on another slide, which showed a great mass of snakes, centipedes, and disgusting creatures with wings, and somehow or other he made it seem as if they were climbing out of the picture and getting in amongst the audience; and this was accompanied by a sort of dry rustling noise which sent the children nearly mad, and of course they stampeded. A good many of them were rather hurt in getting out of the room, and I don't suppose one of them closed an eye that night. There was the most dreadful trouble in the village afterwards. Of course the mothers threw a good part of the blame on poor Mr Farrer, and, if they could have got past the gates, I believe the fathers would have broken every window in the Abbey. Well, now, that's Mr Karswell: that's the Abbot of Lufford, my dear, and you can imagine how we covet his society.'

'Yes, I think he has all the possibilities of a distinguished criminal, has Karswell,' said the host. 'I should be sorry for anyone who got into his bad books.'

'Is he the man, or am I mixing him up with someone else?' asked the Secretary (who for some minutes had been wearing the frown of the man who is trying to recollect something). 'Is he the man who brought out a History of Witchcraft some time back— ten years or more?'

'That's the man; do you remember the reviews of it?'

'Certainly I do; and what's equally to the point, I knew the author of the most incisive of the lot. So did you: you must remember John Harrington; he was at John's in our time.'

'Oh, very well indeed, though I don't think I saw or heard anything of him between the time I went down and the day I read the account of the inquest on him.'

'Inquest?' said one of the ladies. 'What has happened to him?'

'Why, what happened was that he fell out of a tree and broke his neck. But the puzzle was, what could have induced him to get up there. It was a mysterious business, I must say. Here was this man— not an athletic fellow, was he? and with no eccentric twist about him that was ever noticed— walking home along a country road late in the evening— no tramps about— well known and liked in the place— and he suddenly begins to run like mad, loses his hat and stick, and finally shins up a tree— quite a difficult tree— growing in the hedgerow: a dead branch gives way, and he comes down with it and breaks his neck, and there he's found next morning with the most dreadful face of fear on him that could be imagined. It was pretty evident, of course, that he had been chased by something, and people talked of savage dogs, and beasts escaped out of menageries; but there was nothing to be made of that. That was in '89, and I believe his brother Henry (whom I remember as well at Cambridge, but you probably don't) has been trying to get on the track of an explanation ever since. He, of course, insists there was malice in it, but I don't know. It's difficult to see how it could have come in.'

After a time the talk reverted to the History of Witchcraft. 'Did you ever look into it?' asked the host.

'Yes, I did,' said the Secretary. 'I went so far as to read it.'

'Was it as bad as it was made out to be?'

'Oh, in point of style and form, quite hopeless. It deserved all the pulverizing it got. But, besides that, it was an evil book. The man believed every word of what he was saying, and I'm very much mistaken if he hadn't tried the greater part of his receipts.'

'Well, I only remember Harrington's review of it, and I must say if I'd been the author it would have quenched my literary ambition for good. I should never have held up my head again.'

'It hasn't had that effect in the present case. But come, it's half-past three; I must be off.'

On the way home the Secretary's wife said, 'I do hope that horrible man won't find out that Mr Dunning had anything to do with the rejection of his paper.' 'I don't think there's much chance of that,' said the Secretary. 'Dunning won't mention it himself, for these matters are confidential, and none of us will for the same reason. Karswell won't know his name, for Dunning hasn't published anything on the same subject yet. The only danger is that Karswell might find out, if he was to ask the British Museum people who was in the habit of consulting alchemical manuscripts: I can't very well tell them not to mention Dunning, can I? It would set them talking at once. Let's hope it won't occur to him.'

However, Mr Karswell was an astute man.

THIS MUCH is in the way of prologue. On an evening rather later in the same week, Mr Edward Dunning was returning from the British Museum, where he had been engaged in research, to the comfortable house in a suburb where he lived alone, tended by two excellent women who had been long with him. There is nothing to be added by way of description of him to what we have heard already. Let us follow him as he takes his sober course homewards.

A TRAIN took him to within a mile or two of his house, and an electric tram a stage farther. The line ended at a point some three hundred yards from his front door. He had had enough of reading when he got into the car, and indeed the light was not such as to allow him to do more than study the advertisements on the panes of glass that faced him as he sat. As was not unnatural, the advertisements in this particular line of cars were objects of his frequent contemplation, and, with the possible exception of the brilliant and convincing dialogue between Mr Lamplough and an eminent K.C. on the subject of Pyretic Saline, none of them afforded much scope to his imagination. I am wrong: there was one at the corner of the car farthest from him which did not seem familiar. It was in blue letters on a yellow ground, and all that he could read of it was a name— John Harrington— and something like a date. It could be of no interest to him to know more; but for all that, as the car emptied, he was just curious enough to move along the seat until he could read it well. He felt to a slight extent repaid for his trouble; the advertisement was not of the usual type. It ran thus:

'In memory of John Harrington, F.S.A., of The Laurels, Ashbrooke. Died Sept. 18th, 1889. Three months were allowed.'

The car stopped. Mr Dunning, still contemplating the blue letters on the yellow ground, had to be stimulated to rise by a word from the conductor.

'I beg your pardon,' he said, 'I was looking at that advertisement; it's a very odd one, isn't it?'

The conductor read it slowly. 'Well, my word,' he said, 'I never see that one before. Well, that is a cure, ain't it? Someone bin up to their jokes 'ere, I should think.' He got out a duster and applied it, not without saliva, to the pane and then to the outside. 'No,' he said, returning, 'that ain't no transfer; seems to me as if it was reg'lar in the glass, what I mean in the substance, as you may say. Don't you think so, sir?'

Mr Dunning examined it and rubbed it with his glove, and agreed.

'Who looks after these advertisements, and gives leave for them to be put up? I wish you would inquire. I will just take a note of the words.'

At this moment there came a call from the driver: 'Look alive, George, time's up.'

'All right, all right; there's something else what's up at this end. You come and look at this 'ere glass.'

'What's gorn with the glass?' said the driver, approaching. 'Well, and oo's 'Arrington? What's it all about?'

'I was just asking who was responsible for putting the advertisements up in your cars, and saying it would be as well to make some inquiry about this one.'

'Well, sir, that's all done at the Company's office, that work is: it's our Mr Timms, I believe, looks into that. When we put up tonight I'll leave word, and per'aps I'll be able to tell you tomorrer if you 'appen to be coming this way.'

This was all that passed that evening. Mr Dunning did just go to the trouble of looking up Ashbrooke, and found that it was in Warwickshire.

Next day he went to town again. The car (it was the same car) was too full in the morning to allow of his getting a word with the conductor: he could only be sure that the curious advertisement had been made away with. The close of the day brought a further element of mystery into the transaction. He had missed the tram, or else preferred walking home, but at a rather late hour, while he was at work in his study, one of the maids came to say that two men from the tramways was very anxious to speak to him. This was a reminder of the advertisement, which he had, he says, nearly forgotten. He had the men in— they were the conductor and driver of the car— and when the matter of refreshment had been attended to, asked what Mr Timms had had to say about the advertisement.

'Well, sir, that's what we took the liberty to step round about,' said the conductor. 'Mr Timms 'e give William 'ere the rough side of his tongue about that: 'cordin' to 'im there warn't no advertisement of that description sent in, nor ordered, nor paid for, nor put up, nor nothink, let alone not bein' there, and we was playing the fool takin' up his time. "Well," I says, "if that's the case, all I ask of you, Mr Timms," I says, "is to take and look at it for yourself," I says. "Of course if it ain't there," I says, "you may take and call me what you like." "Right," he says, "I will": and we went straight off. Now, I leave it to you, sir, if that ad., as we term 'em, with 'Arrington on it warn't as plain as ever you see anythink— blue letters on yeller glass, and as I says at the time, and you borne me out, reg'lar in the glass, because, if you remember, you recollect of me swabbing it with my duster.'

'To be sure I do, quite clearly— well?'

'You may say well, I don't think. Mr Timms he gets in that car with a light— no, he telled William to 'old the light outside. "Now," he says, "where's your precious ad. what we've 'card so much about?" "'Ere it is," I says, "Mr Timms," and I laid my 'and on it.' The conductor paused.

'Well,' said Mr Dunning, 'it was gone, I suppose. Broken?'

'Broke!— not it. There warn't, if you'll believe me, no more trace of them letters— blue letters they was— on that piece o' glass, than— well, it's no good me talkin'. I never see such a thing. I leave it to William here if— but there, as I says, where's the benefit in me going on about it?'

'And what did Mr Timms say?'

'Why 'e did what I give 'im leave to— called us pretty much anythink he liked, and I don't know as I blame him so much neither. But what we thought, William and me did, was as we seen you take down a bit of a note about that— well, that letterin'—'

'I certainly did that, and I have it now. Did you wish me to speak to Mr Timms myself, and show it to him? Was that what you came in about?'

'There, didn't I say as much?' said William. 'Deal with a gent if you can get on the track of one, that's my word. Now perhaps, George, you'll allow as I ain't took you very far wrong tonight.'

'Very well, William, very well; no need for you to go on as if you'd 'ad to frog's-march me 'ere. I come quiet, didn't I? All the same for that, we 'adn't ought to take up your time this way, sir; but if it so 'appened you could find time to step round to the Company orfice in the morning and tell Mr Timms what you seen for yourself, we should lay under a very 'igh obligation to you for the trouble. You see it ain't bein' called-well, one thing and another, as we mind, but if they got it into their 'ead at the orfice as we seen things as warn't there, why, one thing leads to another, and where we should be a twelvemunce 'ence— well, you can understand what I mean.'

Amid further elucidations of the proposition, George, conducted by William, left the room.

The incredulity of Mr Timms (who had a nodding acquaintance with Mr Dunning) was greatly modified on the following day by what the latter could tell and show him; and any bad mark that might have been attached to the names of William and George was not suffered to remain on the Company's books; but explanation there was none.

Mr Dunning's interest in the matter was kept alive by an incident of the following afternoon. He was walking from his club to the train, and he noticed some way ahead a man with a handful of leaflets such as are distributed to passers-by by agents of enterprising firms. This agent had not chosen a very crowded street for his operations: in fact, Mr Dunning did not see him get rid of a single leaflet before he himself reached the spot. One was thrust into his hand as he passed: the hand that gave it touched his, and he experienced a sort of little shock as it did so. It seemed unnaturally rough and hot.

He looked in passing at the giver, but the impression he got was so unclear that, however much he tried to reckon it up subsequently, nothing would come. He was walking quickly, and as he went on glanced at the paper. It was a blue one. The name of Harrington in large capitals caught his eye. He stopped, startled, and felt for his glasses. The next instant the leaflet was twitched out of his hand by a man who hurried past, and was irrecoverably gone. He ran back a few paces, but where was the passer-by? and where the distributor?

It was in a somewhat pensive frame of mind that Mr Dunning passed on the following day into the Select Manuscript Room of the British Museum, and filled up tickets for Harley 3586, and some other volumes. After a few minutes they were brought to him, and he was settling the one he wanted first upon the desk, when he thought he heard his own name whispered behind him. He turned round hastily, and in doing so, brushed his little portfolio of loose papers on to the floor. He saw no one he recognized except one of the staff in charge of the room, who nodded to him, and he proceeded to pick up his papers. He thought he had them all, and was turning to begin work, when a stout gentleman at the table behind him, who was just rising to leave, and had collected his own belongings, touched him on the shoulder, saying, 'May I give you this? I think it should be yours,' and handed him a missing quire.

'It is mine, thank you,' said Mr Dunning.

In another moment the man had left the room. Upon finishing his work for the afternoon, Mr Dunning had some conversation with the assistant in charge, and took occasion to ask who the stout gentleman was. 'Oh, he's a man named Karswell,' said the assistant; 'he was asking me a week ago who were the great authorities on alchemy, and of course I told him you were the only one in the country. I'll see if I can catch him: he'd like to meet you, I'm sure.'

'For heaven's sake don't dream of it!' said Mr Dunning, 'I'm particularly anxious to avoid him.'

'Oh! very well,' said the assistant, 'he doesn't come here often: I dare say you won't meet him.'

More than once on the way home that day Mr Dunning confessed to himself that he did not look forward with his usual cheerfulness to a solitary evening. It seemed to him that something ill-defined and impalpable had stepped in between him and his fellow-men— had taken him in charge, as it were. He wanted to sit close up to his neighbours in the train and in the tram, but as luck would have it both train and car were markedly empty. The conductor George was thoughtful, and appeared to be absorbed in calculations as to the number of passengers. On arriving at his house he found Dr Watson, his medical man, on his doorstep.

'I've had to upset your household arrangements, I'm sorry to say, Dunning. Both your servants hors de combat. In fact, I've had to send them to the Nursing Home.'

'Good heavens! what's the matter?'

'It's something like ptomaine poisoning, I should think: you've not suffered yourself, I can see, or you wouldn't be walking about. I think they'll pull through all right.'

'Dear, dear! Have you any idea what brought it on?' 'Well, they tell me they bought some shell-fish from a hawker at their dinner-time. It's odd. I've made inquiries, but I can't find that any hawker has been to other houses in the street. I couldn't send word to you; they won't be back for a bit yet. You come and dine with me tonight, anyhow, and we can make arrangements for going on. Eight o'clock. Don't be too anxious.'

The solitary evening was thus obviated; at the expense of some distress and inconvenience, it is true. Mr Dunning spent the time pleasantly enough with the doctor (a rather recent settler), and returned to his lonely home at about 11.30. The night he passed is not one on which he looks back with any satisfaction. He was in bed and the light was out. He was wondering if the charwoman would come early enough to get him hot water next morning, when he heard the unmistakable sound of his study door opening. No step followed it on the passage floor, but the sound must mean mischief, for he knew that he had shut the door that evening after putting his papers away in his desk. It was rather shame than courage that induced him to slip out into the passage and lean over the banister in his nightgown, listening. No light was visible; no further sound came: only a gust of warm, or even hot air played for an instant round his shins. He went back and decided to lock himself into his room. There was more unpleasantness, however. Either an economical suburban company had decided that their light would not be required in the small hours, and had stopped working, or else something was wrong with the meter; the effect was in any case that the electric light was off. The obvious course was to find a match, and also to consult his watch: he might as well know how many hours of discomfort awaited him. So he put his hand into the well-known nook under the pillow: only, it did not get so far. What he touched was, according to his account, a mouth, with teeth, and with hair about it, and, he declares, not the mouth of a human being. I do not think it is any use to guess what he said or did; but he was in a spare room with the door locked and his ear to it before he was clearly conscious again. And there he spent the rest of a most miserable night, looking every moment for some fumbling at the door: but nothing came.

The venturing back to his own room in the morning was attended with many listenings and quiverings. The door stood open, fortunately, and the blinds were up (the servants had been out of the house before the hour of drawing them down); there was, to be short, no trace of an inhabitant. The watch, too, was in its usual place; nothing was disturbed, only the wardrobe door had swung open, in accordance with its confirmed habit. A ring at the back door now announced the charwoman, who had been ordered the night before, and nerved Mr Dunning, after letting her in, to continue his search in other parts of the house. It was equally fruitless.

The day thus begun went on dismally enough. He dared not go to the Museum: in spite of what the assistant had said, Karswell might turn up there, and Dunning felt he could not cope with a probably hostile stranger. His own house was odious; he hated sponging on the doctor. He spent some little time in a call at the Nursing Home, where he was slightly cheered by a good report of his housekeeper and maid. Towards lunch-time he betook himself to his club, again experiencing a gleam of satisfaction at seeing the Secretary of the Association. At luncheon Dunning told his friend the more material of his woes, but could not bring himself to speak of those that weighed most heavily on his spirits. 'My poor dear man,' said the Secretary, 'what an upset! Look here: we're alone at home, absolutely. You must put up with us. Yes! no excuse: send your things in this afternoon.' Dunning was unable to stand out: he was, in truth, becoming acutely anxious, as the hours went on, as to what that night might have waiting for him. He was almost happy as he hurried home to pack up.

His friends, when they had time to take stock of him, were rather shocked at his lorn appearance, and did their best to keep him up to the mark. Not altogether without success: but, when the two men were smoking alone later, Dunning became dull again.

Suddenly he said, 'Gayton, I believe that alchemist man knows it was I who got his paper rejected.' Gayton whistled. 'What makes you think that?' he said. Dunning told of his conversation with the Museum assistant, and Gayton could only agree that the guess seemed likely to be correct. 'Not that I care much,' Dunning went on, 'only it might be a nuisance if we were to meet. He's a bad-tempered party, I imagine.'

Conversation dropped again; Gayton became more and more strongly impressed with the desolateness that came over Dunning's face and bearing, and finally— though with a considerable effort— he asked him point-blank whether something serious was not bothering him. Dunning gave an exclamation of relief. 'I was perishing to get it off my mind,' he said. 'Do you know anything about a man named John Harrington?'

Gayton was thoroughly startled, and at the moment could only ask why. Then the complete story of Dunning's experiences came out— what had happened in the tramcar, in his own house, and in the street, the troubling of spirit that had crept over him, and still held him; and he ended with the question he had begun with. Gayton was at a loss how to answer him. To tell the story of Harrington's end would perhaps be right; only, Dunning was in a nervous state, the story was a grim one, and he could not help asking himself whether there were not a connecting link between these two cases, in the person of Karswell. It was a difficult concession for a scientific man, but it could be eased by the phrase 'hypnotic suggestion'.

In the end he decided that his answer tonight should be guarded; he would talk the situation over with his wife. So he said that he had known Harrington at Cambridge, and believed he had died suddenly in 1889, adding a few details about the man and his published work. He did talk over the matter with Mrs Gayton, and, as he had anticipated, she leapt at once to the conclusion which had been hovering before him. It was she who reminded him of the surviving brother, Henry Harrington, and she also who suggested that he might be got hold of by means of their hosts of the day before. 'He might be a hopeless crank,' objected Gayton. 'That could be ascertained from the Bennetts, who knew him,' Mrs Gayton retorted; and she undertook to see the Bennetts the very next day.

IT IS NOT necessary to tell in further detail the steps by which Henry Harrington and Dunning were brought together.

THE NEXT SCENE that does require to be narrated is a conversation that took place between the two. Dunning had told Harrington of the strange ways in which the dead man's name had been brought before him, and had said something, besides, of his own subsequent experiences. Then he had asked if Harrington was disposed, in return, to recall any of the circumstances connected with his brother's death. Harrington's surprise at what he heard can be imagined: but his reply was readily given.

'John,' he said, 'was in a very odd state, undeniably, from time to time, during some weeks before, though not immediately before, the catastrophe. There were several things; the principal notion he had was that he thought he was being followed. No doubt he was an impressionable man, but he never had had such fancies as this before. I cannot get it out of my mind that there was ill-will at work, and what you tell me about yourself reminds me very much of my brother. Can you think of any possible connecting link?'

'There is just one that has been taking shape vaguely in my mind. I've been told that your brother reviewed a book very severely not long before he died, and just lately I have happened to cross the path of the man who wrote that book in a way he would resent.'

'Don't tell me the man was called Karswell.'

'Why not? that is exactly his name.'

Henry Harrington leant back. 'That is final to my mind. Now I must explain further. From something he said, I feel sure that my brother John was beginning to believe— very much against his will— that Karswell was at the bottom of his trouble. I want to tell you what seems to me to have a bearing on the situation. My brother was a great musician, and used to run up to concerts in town. He came back, three months before he died, from one of these, and gave me his programme to look at— an analytical programme: he always kept them. "I nearly missed this one," he said. "I suppose I must have dropped it: anyhow, I was looking for it under my seat and in my pockets and so on, and my neighbour offered me his, said 'might he give it me, he had no further use for it,' and he went away just afterwards. I don't know who he was— a stout, clean-shaven man. I should have been sorry to miss it; of course I could have bought another, but this cost me nothing." At another time he told me that he had been very uncomfortable both on the way to his hotel and during the night. I piece things together now in thinking it over. Then, not very long after, he was going over these programmes, putting them in order to have them bound up, and in this particular one (which by the way I had hardly glanced at), he found quite near the beginning a strip of paper with some very odd writing on it in red and black— most carefully done— it looked to me more like Runic letters than anything else. "Why," he said, "this must belong to my fat neighbour. It looks as if it might be worth returning to him; it may be a copy of something; evidently someone has taken trouble over it. How can I find his address?" We talked it over for a little and agreed that it wasn't worth advertising about, and that my brother had better look out for the man at the next concert, to which he was going very soon. The paper was lying on the book and we were both by the fire; it was a cold, windy summer evening. I suppose the door blew open, though I didn't notice it: at any rate a gust— a warm gust it was— came quite suddenly between us, took the paper and blew it straight into the fire: it was light, thin paper, and flared and went up the chimney in a single ash. "Well," I said, "you can't give it back now." He said nothing for a minute: then rather crossly, "No, I can't; but why you should keep on saying so I don't know." I remarked that I didn't say it more than once. "Not more than four times, you mean," was all he said. I remember all that very clearly, without any good reason; and now to come to the point. I don't know if you looked at that book of Karswell's which my unfortunate brother reviewed. It's not likely that you should: but I did, both before his death and after it. The first time we made game of it together. It was written in no style at all— split infinitives, and every sort of thing that makes an Oxford gorge rise. Then there was nothing that the man didn't swallow: mixing up classical myths, and stories out of the Golden Legend with reports of savage customs of today— all very proper, no doubt, if you know how to use them, but he didn't: he seemed to put the Golden Legend and the Golden Bough exactly on a par, and to believe both: a pitiable exhibition, in short. Well, after the misfortune, I looked over the book again. It was no better than before, but the impression which it left this time on my mind was different. I suspected— as I told you— that Karswell had borne ill-will to my brother, even that he was in some way responsible for what had happened; and now his book seemed to me to be a very sinister performance indeed. One chapter in particular struck me, in which he spoke of "casting the Runes" on people, either for the purpose of gaining their affection or of getting them out of the way— perhaps more especially the latter: he spoke of all this in a way that really seemed to me to imply actual knowledge. I've not time to go into details, but the upshot is that I am pretty sure from information received that the civil man at the concert was Karswell: I suspect— I more than suspect— that the paper was of importance: and I do believe that if my brother had been able to give it back, he might have been alive now. Therefore, it occurs to me to ask you whether you have anything to put beside what I have told you.'

By way of answer, Dunning had the episode in the Manuscript Room at the British Museum to relate.

'Then he did actually hand you some papers; have you examined them? No? because we must, if you'll allow it, look at them at once, and very carefully.'

They went to the still empty house— empty, for the two servants were not yet able to return to work. Dunning's portfolio of papers was gathering dust on the writing-table. In it were the quires of small-sized scribbling paper which he used for his transcripts: and from one of these, as he took it up, there slipped and fluttered out into the room with uncanny quickness, a strip of thin light paper. The window was open, but Harrington slammed it to, just in time to intercept the paper, which he caught. 'I thought so,' he said; 'it might be the identical thing that was given to my brother. You'll have to look out, Dunning; this may mean something quite serious for you.'

A long consultation took place. The paper was narrowly examined. As Harrington had said, the characters on it were more like Runes than anything else, but not decipherable by either man, and both hesitated to copy them, for fear, as they confessed, of perpetuating whatever evil purpose they might conceal. So it has remained impossible (if I may anticipate a little) to ascertain what was conveyed in this curious message or commission. Both Dunning and Harrington are firmly convinced that it had the effect of bringing its possessors into very undesirable company. That it must be returned to the source whence it came they were agreed, and further, that the only safe and certain way was that of personal service; and here contrivance would be necessary, for Dunning was known by sight to Karswell. He must, for one thing, alter his appearance by shaving his beard. But then might not the blow fall first? Harrington thought they could time it.

He knew the date of the concert at which the 'black spot' had been put on his brother: it was June 18th. The death had followed on Sept. 18th. Dunning reminded him that three months had been mentioned on the inscription on the car-window.

'Perhaps,' he added, with a cheerless laugh, 'mine may be a bill at three months too. I believe I can fix it by my diary. Yes, April 23rd was the day at the Museum; that brings us to July 23rd. Now, you know, it becomes extremely important to me to know anything you will tell me about the progress of your brother's trouble, if it is possible for you to speak of it.'

'Of course. Well, the sense of being watched whenever he was alone was the most distressing thing to him. After a time I took to sleeping in his room, and he was the better for that: still, he talked a great deal in his sleep. What about? Is it wise to dwell on that, at least before things are straightened out? I think not, but I can tell you this: two things came for him by post during those weeks, both with a London postmark, and addressed in a commercial hand. One was a woodcut of Bewick's, roughly torn out of the page: one which shows a moonlit road and a man walking along it, followed by an awful demon creature. Under it were written the lines out of the "Ancient Mariner" (which I suppose the cut illustrates) about one who, having once looked round— walks on, And turns no more his head, Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.

The other was a calendar, such as tradesmen often send. My brother paid no attention to this, but I looked at it after his death, and found that everything after Sept. 18 had been torn out. You may be surprised at his having gone out alone the evening he was killed, but the fact is that during the last ten days or so of his life he had been quite free from the sense of being followed or watched.'

The end of the consultation was this. Harrington, who knew a neighbour of Karswell's, thought he saw a way of keeping a watch on his movements. It would be Dunning's part to be in readiness to try to cross Karswell's path at any moment, to keep the paper safe and in a place of ready access.

They parted. The next weeks were no doubt a severe strain upon Dunning's nerves: the intangible barrier which had seemed to rise about him on the day when he received the paper, gradually developed into a brooding blackness that cut him off from the means of escape to which one might have thought he might resort. No one was at hand who was likely to suggest them to him, and he seemed robbed of all initiative. He waited with inexpressible anxiety as May, June, and early July passed on, for a mandate from Harrington. But all this time Karswell remained immovable at Lufford.

At last, in less than a week before the date he had come to look upon as the end of his earthly activities, came a telegram: 'Leaves Victoria by boat train Thursday night. Do not miss. I come to you tonight. Harrington.'

He arrived accordingly, and they concocted plans. The train left Victoria at nine and its last stop before Dover was Croydon West. Harrington would mark down Karswell at Victoria, and look out for Dunning at Croydon, calling to him if need were by a name agreed upon. Dunning, disguised as far as might be, was to have no label or initials on any hand luggage, and must at all costs have the paper with him.

Dunning's suspense as he waited on the Groydon platform I need not attempt to describe. His sense of danger during the last days had only been sharpened by the fact that the cloud about him had perceptibly been lighter; but relief was an ominous symptom, and, if Karswell eluded him now, hope was gone: and there were so many chances of that. The rumour of the journey might be itself a device. The twenty minutes in which he paced the platform and persecuted every porter with inquiries as to the boat train were as bitter as any he had spent. Still, the train came, and Harrington was at the window. It was important, of course, that there should be no recognition: so Dunning got in at the farther end of the corridor carriage, and only gradually made his way to the compartment where Harrington and Karswell were. He was pleased, on the whole, to see that the train was far from full.

Karswell was on the alert, but gave no sign of recognition. Dunning took the seat not immediately facing him, and attempted, vainly at first, then with increasing command of his faculties, to reckon the possibilities of making the desired transfer. Opposite to Karswell, and next to Dunning, was a heap of Karswell's coats on the seat. It would be of no use to slip the paper into these— he would not be safe, or would not feel so, unless in some way it could be proffered by him and accepted by the other. There was a handbag, open, and with papers in it. Could he manage to conceal this (so that perhaps Karswell might leave the carriage without it), and then find and give it to him? This was the plan that suggested itself. If he could only have counselled with Harrington! but that could not be. The minutes went on. More than once Karswell rose and went out into the corridor. The second time Dunning was on the point of attempting to make the bag fall off the seat, but he caught Harrington's eye, and read in it a warning.

Karswell, from the corridor, was watching: probably to see if the two men recognized each other. He returned, but was evidently restless: and, when he rose the third time, hope dawned, for something did slip off his seat and fall with hardly a sound to the floor. Karswell went out once more, and passed out of range of the corridor window. Dunning picked up what had fallen, and saw that the key was in his hands in the form of one of Cook's ticket-cases, with tickets in it. These cases have a pocket in the cover, and within very few seconds the paper of which we have heard was in the pocket of this one. To make the operation more secure, Harrington stood in the doorway of the compartment and fiddled with the blind. It was done, and done at the right time, for the train was now slowing down towards Dover.

In a moment more Karswell re-entered the compartment. As he did so, Dunning, managing, he knew not how, to suppress the tremble in his voice, handed him the ticket-case, saying, 'May I give you this, sir? I believe it is yours.'

After a brief glance at the ticket inside, Karswell uttered the hoped-for response, 'Yes, it is; much obliged to you, sir,' and he placed it in his breast pocket.

Even in the few moments that remained— moments of tense anxiety, for they knew not to what a premature finding of the paper might lead— both men noticed that the carriage seemed to darken about them and to grow warmer; that Karswell was fidgety and oppressed; that he drew the heap of loose coats near to him and cast it back as if it repelled him; and that he then sat upright and glanced anxiously at both. They, with sickening anxiety, busied themselves in collecting their belongings; but they both thought that Karswell was on the point of speaking when the train stopped at Dover Town. It was natural that in the short space between town and pier they should both go into the corridor.

At the pier they got out, but so empty was the train that they were forced to linger on the platform until Karswell should have passed ahead of them with his porter on the way to the boat, and only then was it safe for them to exchange a pressure of the hand and a word of concentrated congratulation. The effect upon Dunning was to make him almost faint. Harrington made him lean up against the wall, while he himself went forward a few yards within sight of the gangway to the boat, at which Karswell had now arrived. The man at the head of it examined his ticket, and, laden with coats he passed down into the boat.

Suddenly the official called after him, 'You, sir, beg pardon, did the other gentleman show his ticket?'

'What the devil do you mean by the other gentleman?' Karswell's snarling voice called back from the deck.

The man bent over and looked at him. 'The devil? Well, I don't know, I'm sure,' Harrington heard him say to himself, and then aloud, 'My mistake, sir; must have been your rugs! ask your pardon.' And then, to a subordinate near him, ' 'Ad he got a dog with him, or what? Funny thing: I could 'a' swore 'e wasn't alone. Well, whatever it was, they'll 'ave to see to it aboard. She's off now. Another week and we shall be gettin' the 'oliday customers.'

In five minutes more there was nothing but the lessening lights of the boat, the long line of the Dover lamps, the night breeze, and the moon.

Long and long the two sat in their room at the 'Lord Warden'. In spite of the removal of their greatest anxiety, they were oppressed with a doubt, not of the lightest. Had they been justified in sending a man to his death, as they believed they had? Ought they not to warn him, at least?

'No,' said Harrington; 'if he is the murderer I think him, we have done no more than is just. Still, if you think it better— but how and where can you warn him?'

'He was booked to Abbeville only,' said Dunning. 'I saw that. If I wired to the hotels there in Joanne's Guide, "Examine your ticket-case, Dunning," I should feel happier. This is the 21st: he will have a day. But I am afraid he has gone into the dark.'

So telegrams were left at the hotel office.

It is not clear whether these reached their destination, or whether, if they did, they were understood. All that is known is that, on the afternoon of the 23rd, an English traveller, examining the front of St Wulfram's Church at Abbeville, then under extensive repair, was struck on the head and instantly killed by a stone falling from the scaffold erected round the north-western tower, there being, as was clearly proved, no workman on the scaffold at that moment: and the traveller's papers identified him as Mr Karswell.

Only one detail shall be added. At Karswell's sale a set of Bewick, sold with all faults, was acquired by Harrington. The page with the woodcut of the traveller and the demon was, as he had expected, mutilated. Also, after a judicious interval, Harrington repeated to Dunning something of what he had heard his brother say in his sleep: but it was not long before Dunning stopped him.

______________________

7: The Van Duersen Haze

Frederick Irving Anderson

1877-1947

World's News (Sydney) 1, 8 and 15 May 1926

THE canvas before which the lady stood rooted depicted a corn patch in Indian summer twilight, the yellow shocks wheeling away in open Roman columns on a field of clover, through whose soft, velvety pile one traced the stubble of harvested rows. In the air hung the impalpable golden dust of evening. It was called, oddly, and awkwardly, "Sedimentary Light", as if it were the day, not sight, that fell, and here only the last finest particles remained afloat.

The lady was made up in pastel tints for the afternoon, with just that touch of too much which is so fetching when it is not overdone. -Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled with an acquisitive gleam, that Peppi, hopeful scion of the illustrious house of Gentimeri, dealers and appraisers, always looked for— and seldom found— in a client. It had limitless possibilities, that gleam like a trace of color in a miner's gold-pan. There were other visitors in the gallery, but they were whispering in the hushed tones of a sick chamber over the Inness, the Murphy, and the Carlsen at the other end.

The lady bent toward and searched the little gold title plate through a lorgnette, which instantly, as she raised it to her eyes, added ten years to her age— which should have been, say, well thirty. Her head moved with her eyes from letter to letter, and her lips moved, too, for she was near-sighted. Peppi in admiration guessed that she must be over thirty, but managed beaufifully.

Concluding the legend, she puckered up her lips and knitted her brows and. elevated a shoulder; she stood erect again, shedding hsr ten years with an unclasping of the finger-tips, and looked through and beyond young Peppi into the limpid depths of some abstract thought.

"Madame is right," said Peppi, bowing.

"Comment?" She started slightly, as though he recalled her.

"The title will be changed," pursued the impeccable Peppi. "It suggests a geological epoch— or, ah— a treatise on the corpuscular theory." He smiled, closing his eyes. He was as handsome, this boy, as one of those evanescent great lovers of the cinema screen, who come shooting up out of the void every now and then, to glow for their moment, and then burn out.

"You have the perception— the taste— and the courage, madame!" said Peppi, falling into the patter unaffectedly. "This one is not yet discovered. They," he whispered discreetly, indicating the group about the more seasoned masterpieces at the other end of the gallery, "will not know he is on earth till they see his name in the critiques," He stole a look at her. "You are probably a dear friend of my father?" he hazarded.

She threw back her head with sudden soft laughter, showing her pretty teeth, a single dimple, and the throat of a swan. Oh, no! She was not thirty— by far— amended young Centimeri, who flushed with a disturbed pleasure.

"A dear friend of your father,"' she repeated. "Oil,. Peppi! How the doyen would love to hear you say that!"

She turned to the "Sedimentary Light" and addressed it in the third person as one does a child or a pet dog:—

"I want it, yes. I must have, it! I shall have it! It is a necessity of life, of living! To think of it without possessing it is bitter—like, unrequited love! Only yesterday— oh, how long ago was yesterday!— only yesterday it did not exist, because I had not seen it. And to-day, now, I demean myself abjectly before it. I am stricken mad with a desolation I cannot describe at the thought of leaving it. Oh, love can be a great misfortune, Peppi, as you will learn as you grow older— unless the ladies are too assiduous ing their court," she amended slyly.

"And yet," said the capricious creature, turning a disdainful shoulder on the cornfield, "what is it there that should keep me awake nights? It is academic, yes. It is irreproachable, yes. It has a tonal quality which, if it errs at all, errs on the side of too much. It is delicate— sensitive— beautiful and—achieved!" she recited,' beating time with one hand. "Bah!" she cried. "What a tongue these beef-eating Englishmen yoke on our necks. I choke with an emotion I have no words to express! Let us think in French. Or no! You! You shall tell me— in the words of a child— you, who still see through the glass clearly! Tell me, I command you!"

This last to Peppi with a dramatic gusto that almost carried him off his feet. He inclined slightly toward her, like a diplomat conveying some dread secret under the very eyes of his enemies,

"It is the Van Duersen haze," he said, without moving his lips.

She looked up suddenly and he nodded. They were silent. Then: "There are others?" she asked in a level tone. He nodded again, his eyes on the far end of the gallery. He held up two hands twice, indicating in dumb show eighteen.

"He has painted no more than eighteen?" she breathed.

"No, madame."

"All with the haze?" she asked with her lips.

Peppi nodded. Peppi loved this scene. He had hypnotised her. And she' was so beautiful, so vivacious,. so tense.

"All with the haze," agreed Peppi.

She turned to the Sedimentary luminosity, regarded it, troubled.

"What is the value of this one?" she inquired, with the air of one who always asks the value, but never the price.

The diplomat bent lower.

"Forty thousand," he sighed.

"Ah"— with a tragic gesture— "he is dead, then?"

"Dead? Good Heavens! No!" cried Peppi, taken aback. He crossed himself hurriedly., "Dead? Heaven forbid! He is only now revealed to the cognoscenti! To-morrow. the ateliers will be ringing with his name!"

"But— forty thousand dollars!" she protested, with a wan smile.

Peppi stole a secret look at the Van Duersen, which, to tell the truth, he was seeing through new eyes, the eyes of this woman. Certainly never had he been moved by his present inspiration in regard to it. It is always well to view a piece through the eyes of the would-be purchaser, especially when they show that tell-tale gleam. She was protesting, yes, but not too much. She must be lined with gold, inside and out.

He thought of his absent august pater, the great and unchallenged doyen; and how that illustrious personage would beam with the pride of a doting father when Peppi confessed that he had appeased the passion of an exotic nymph by selling her a nobody for forty thousand dollars. Peppi stole another look at the Van Duersen— the Van Duersen haze. Haze! Yes, the haze! He had coined that phrase on the spur of the moment.

That was the secret, the touch of genius! This thought flashed across his brainpan like an electric spark. Then he was conscious of an inductive kick-back. No; the doyen would not beam with paternal pride. Instead, he would pinion his handsome son with a stern look and cry. "Ho! A nobody, eh? Let us see this nobody— this nobody that appeases the passion of a nymph!"

Peppi surveyed it with sheep's eyes. For Father Centimeri had never seen this daub.

Young Peppi had hung it only yesterday. Some fellow, who had evidently been peddling it from gallery to gallery had pleaded so earnestly that Peppi, to get rid of him, had promised to give it houseroom— in the storeroom. Then there appeared a yawning hole in the south wall, left by a borrowed Goya— Sacarelli was always borrowing that Goya— and this thing had fitted.

It was not half bad; better men had done worse, he told himself. And within twentyfor hours tnis enchanting creature should be standing before it, and saying, with a wan smile, "But— forty thousand dollars!"— not as if  mocking" his effrontery, but her own passion.

She opened her bag and dropped in her lorgnette, and shut it with a decisive click.

"Eighteen, you say?" she said, raising her eyes to his.

"Madame." acquiesced the palpitating Peppi, bowing from ihe hips.

'"And there will never be any more."

She offered this as a statement of fact. Her tone was blithe. Her eyes defied him to deny her. Peppi started. Only for an instant had he slept and dreamed.

"No more?"  he repeated, struggling to ward the surface.

"No more," she said, with awful finaliiy. "Only a dead man can afford to paint like that."

"Name of a name!" ejaculated Peppi, shocked. "A young man, madame! Not yet come into his full powers'."

"So? A young man! He is to erupt like a volcano, then?" Vixenish, she beat down his guard.

"No, no, no, no!" protested poor Peppi; then, with cunning: "I have him sewed up in a sack!"

"Then drown him," said the lady tartly, and she turned to the Florentine mirror to adjust her little hat. "Forty thousand for a live one! Peppi, you disillusion me. I shall sleep to-night. I thank you, mon cher. Faugh!" she cried, bursting out again. "Inconceivable! For a dead one, yes," she admitted, to her own pretty image; but she must qualify, mitigate this, too; "That, is," she told her reflection confidentially, "if he would consent to stay dead. No turning in his grave to mix colors again, like Papa Corot, and flood the market."

She patted her exquisitely tinted cheeks with a little wad,of lace handkerchief, still confessing to the mirror: "Papa Corot had a little haze, too; but it was not the Van Duersen haze!" She sighed for a thing lost. Her soft eyes caressed the Indian summer twilight that seemed indeed to be perceptibly lowering, like those microscopic powders which scientists weigh and separate in the still air. "Ah, if the gods might reach down and touch him now!" she prayed in a half voice, which Peppi's quick ears, nervously acute with the dawning of a weird fancy, had no difficulty in catching.

Then, as. one resolutely abandoning hope, she drew her fur about her, bowed with ironic solemnity to the handsome youth, and was departing. He hastened to open the glass grille, and bow her into the foyer. He took the street door out of the hands of the little Punch-nosed dwarf in a cap and bells and managed to stay her progress for an instant.

"Papa comes home soon?" she inquired, buttoning her glove.

"Alas! two months yet," responded the tragic Peppi.

"And you are quite alone?"— with the air of complimenting him on his responsibilities. "Now that Leon Midor has gone, you are quite alone?"

She was looking full at him. He bowed, trying to smile. He wondered how much this lovely, creature-knew; for this Leon Midor of whom she spoke had until recently stood in Centimeri's stead her at the gallery But, alas! only a few weeks gone, Leon had been politely but irrevocably requested by the police to return to his native Mediterranean, for what ominous reason Peppi knew not. In fact, the police had seen him aboard, so there might be no mistake.

"You will come again?" he urged with boyish impetuosity.

Her sleepy-eyed smile might mean any thing, everything. Peppi leaned suddenly toward her...

"Tell me who you are— else I will follow you through the streets!"

Her stern look opened up a gulf between them. Peppi fell back, abashed.

"But I will tell you something else," she said, smiling, relenting a little. "The doyen has faith in you! More than merit it! Do yourself proud for him on his return." She passed out, signalling to her car, which rolled up to the awning.

Pelts, a shabby little fellow, Pelts of the police, nosing about for volunteer scents on his day off, a time when he really indulged his fancy, was slinking by. At sight of her Pelts came as near to starting perceptibly as was physically possible for this emotionless human sleuth hound. He got a good look at her when she paused to instruct the driver.

"No!" he said. "Her eyes are too dark— by two shades."

And this observation being irrefutable, he shoved his gloveless hands into his pocket and sniffed along his way.

YOUNG CENTIMERI, with the air of Lord Byron nearing the end, moved back to his high desk and resumed mechanically his pick-up task of thumbing an old folio to make it older. But, let alone his mind, he could not even keep his thumbs interested in this peurile task, which his august parent had commanded to him on departing. He went inside and draped himself carelessly on a stone bench, where he could bathe his soul in the translucence of the  Van Duersen haze.

"I have some money from my sainted mother," mused he, as if communing with the picture, which responded to his confidence with the calm serenity of a dying son. Either that woman had hypnotised him, or else here was something indeed! He wished for his father. Then he hoped for his father. Then he hoped, his father might, be delayed in sailing; for home.

The glass grille opened and Angier del Sol entered; Angier was dressed for an afternoon wedding, as usual. But he knew pictures. And he had a patter that was like the brook, flowing on for ever. Although he had only one suit and a dressing gown to his name, his wardrobe of adjectives was that of a Beau Brummell. And he was in demand, not so much for his opinions as for his fluency and plausibility. He edited catalogues; he wrote feuilletons for magazines, printed on heavy paper; and such was his discretion that he could accept a confidential commission from an approved dealer without prejudice. At the present moment he was heaven-sent.

"Bel ami!" he breathed, as he tapped the musing Peppi lightly on the shoulder. This fledgling copy of the great sire rather amused the great poseur. "And Leon Midor is no more, then?" he said, in the tone of one who knew all, but asked nothing.

"Pouf!" said Peppi, imitating a smoke ring.

Angier decided to sit down, having nothing on his mind. He was apparently gazing at the haze, but saw nothing for some mote in his eye. Peppi waited with a noncbqience that pleased, himself immensely. After a long time Angier turned suddenly on young Centimeri a look of deep penetration, which Peppi bore unruffled.

"You are coming on," said Angier. "Tell me, when the doyen is away, you are not tempted to try a little pas seul?"

"Pas si bete!" smiled the heir of the house.

"Ah! You are beginning to feel your toes! You will dance yet, my friend. As for the cunning, I see it even in the lift of your fingers."

"Let us take a little stroll," invited Peppi; and, rising, he took Angier by the arm and walked him up and down the gallery, like an invalid. Then they sat down again. "I feel my toes." said Peppi. "I have this moment conducted you past a picture for which I have just refused forty thousand— and you did not turn a hair."

Angier's perspicacious eye flitted from Constable to Teniers, to Carlsen, to Murphy, to Inness, with the surety of a society reporter spotting Blue Book entries at a church wedding.

"Refused?" he murmured mildly. "The doyen should hasten home."

"There was an impossible condition."

"Impossible? How? Impossibility gets off the track-for forty thousand. What was the condition?"

"That the artist die at once, without argument."

"Oh! It is. murder they want, then, not art, for their forty thousand."

A look of annoyance passed over the countenance of Peppi.

"Take a little stroll by yourself," he said.

The complete Angier rose and strolled like Lord Dawlish in Hyde Park. The earnest little group about the seasoned masterpieces, who had noted Angier del Sol, and hoped he might approach, opened their circle, for him; and, regarding the seascape of the great Dane, Angier said the usual thing in his unusual way, with a brand-new set of adjectives.

This aloud, to the ineffable bliss of the audience. But as he turned away from the picture, "It is not his throat we are to cut!" he said to himself. As he passed on, stopping here and there, he made a moving picture that they watched breathlessly. He gave a moment to some skied pieces, but, for the most part, as he moved on, he saw nothing.

Now a curious thing occurred. Directly abeam the haze he. paused. MIowly revolving on his heel, he took off his hat; which, until this moment had remained on the spot it was designed for, and he bowed ceremoniously to the Van Duersen. Then in the attitude of a seer he stared on and through it, much as if the gravitational field of that unattainable light presented some magic filtep through which eternity was revealed to him.

Peppi's heart stopped beating. The group at the other end of the gallery craned its neck. A little old lady in black, with rings on top of her gloves, came creeping down and asked liim in a staring whisper who did it.

"Anonymous," said the savant, wiping his face clean of thought. He languidly rejoined Peppi on the bench.

"How many has he done?" he asked limply. It was true, then. Peppi's heart pounded like a surf.

"Eighteen others," he said glibly.

"Kill him," counselled Angier. He nodded profoundly over a job well done. He got up and went over to the Van Duersen and examined one corner of it through a special monocle he had for such occasions, and when he went back to Peppi the earnest little group that had gathered there turned their attention to that corner.

"Let us go inside and talk," begged Peppi.

"No," said the big Del Sol, setting his tie. "Out here. It is good training— to talk about things in front of their faces. You know where these eighteen are?"

Peppi gulped and nodded.

"Kill him! Kill him!" muttered the redeyed assassin.

Peppi trembled.

"Let me tell you something that you do not know," Angier said. "That man can never be copied. There is something unearthly about the stroke."

"The Van Duersen haze!" murmured'Peppi, nodding.

''What! A perfect line! A psychic epigram! The Van Duersen haze!" Although his artistic sensibilities were deeply moved, to the outward eye Angier might have been condemning the flavor of his cigarette, which he flecked on the velvet rug. "The Van Duersen haze!" repeated the critic. "Do the other eighteen have it? What? We will make our fortune in one stroke! With no more to come, the price is anything— anything."

"But he is unknown— undiscovered."

"Leave it to me!" retorted Angier complacently. "He will be discovered, I warrant you. As soon as you can conveniently arrange for his demise. Sainted Mother!" Here the overwrought critic seemed to lose control of himself. He sprang up and stood before the picture. "It is epochal! It is the atmospheric ecstasy of the century! Pardon me, my friends," he said, as if taken aback by the interested group who gathered about him, open-mouthed. "It is not often my enthusiasm runs away with me." He returned to his seat, mopping his brow. "See," he muttered to Peppi behind the barrier of his handkerchief, "they buzz like flies about a dead fish. I can do more with a word than another man can do with a club."

"It will take money," said Peppi. "A fellow like that doesn't stop painting for the asking."

"You have it— the money," said Angier; adding, "He is a full partner with us."

"Us?"

Del Sol turned with his magnificent air.

"It could not be done without me!" he said. "Go to him! Go at once! He may be desperate— and dash off another!"

But when Peppi begged him to accompany him he put aside the suggestion with a grand manner.

"No," he said, "I would frighten him. He will be soothed by your youth and inexperience. Go now!"

And without another word Angier tucked his stick under his arm, his hat on his head at the supernal angle, and strode off, Lord Dawlish to the last button. At the door he turned back and stood again smiling down on Peppi.

"Who offered you the forty thousand?" he asked.

"I do not know. A woman."

"And you let her slip through your fingers! Good heavens, what a child! Go! Go! Go!" And Angier took his final exit.

An instant later Peppi was giving his orders to the bookkeeper, Aylmer Moelyns.

"Fetch this fellow to me," he said. He handed him a memorandum. "And don't try any of your airs on him," warned the young intendant, for Aylmer. though elderly, was given to high-flown manners when using the gallery landaulet.

Mr. Moelyns replied with a significant look. He departed. Twenty minutes later he came back, alone. There was some error, he said.

"Error? Impossible. He wrote the address himself."

"You will pardon me. young sir," said the bookkeeper, loftily. "It was a low place, forbidding of exterior."

"But he lives there, nevertheless."

"I did not think your father would wish me to inquire." Aylmer shuddered at the thought of a retainer of the house of Centimeri sinking so low.

"Humph!" snorted Peppi.

He would go himself! But he had some qualms as he arranged himself in the mirror, for he had the eye of the mythological Narcissus, and dearly loved his own image. He was too elegant. The chauffeur's overcoat would disguise his quality. It developed from the chauffeur's conversation that Aylmer had become involved in an argument with an old lady sorting rags on a fire-escape landing at the entrance to the alley, as the chauffeur described it, and some of the soiled rags had fallen on his head, knocking his hat off.

At Second Avenue, Henri pulled up to the kerb, saying, with a wise eye. "I will wait for you here."

The alley was not so bad. It was an accidental collection of back yards, on which greedy landlords had superimposed front doors. There were signs of better times, indeed. One facade was painted a robin's-egg blue with orange stripings, and displayed a sign, "Atelier a louer," after the fashion of Greenwich Village.

Thither Peppi, as by instinct, directed his steps. The crony on the balcony, still hudi dling her rags, hardly gave him a look. But inside on the stairs he found the way completely blocked by a large charwoman craw-fishing down step by step as she lifted, with a dusty brush, broad footprints of plaster, suggesting that some slovenly sculptor came this way often, without wiping his feet.

"Is there a lime kiln on the top floor?" asked Peppi jovially, for the ominous expedition i had begun to take on the aspects of an adventure.

"If he was a lime kiln he would at least pay his rent, bad cess to him!" said the industrious woman.

"The Dutchman?"

"The same." said she, dusting her brush on a spindle.

Peppi looked around mysteriously.

"Doesn't he pay his rent, then, mother?" he asked.

"Divil a cent in two months. Out he goes to-morrow, with a saucer to collect pinnies on the pavement."

"I've come to turn off his gas," said Peppi, thus establishing the most cordial of relations, and winning a path to get by and up.

Peppi followed the tracks of the modelling clay on and up till they brought him to a door on which, was tacked, what he perceived by the light of the trap window to be an ejectment summons, calling, in the name of the law, on one Yosef Van Duersen to appear and show cause why not. The door was warped and gave a view of the interior. On an untidy table lay a collar and tie and a heap of cigarette butts.

There was a shrouded effigy on a pedestal under the light, evidently still wet from the rancid odor of modelling clay that filled the air. He modelled, too, eh? Good. A man in veleteens sat lacing a little fire on the other side of the room, a smoky fire that had been writing its name on these walls for uncounted years. He was paring a lump of cheese and some Italian bread with a jack-knife. Peppi pushed open the door softly and entered.

"Well, whit luck?" asked the feaster through a mouthful.

When Peppi did not answer. Meinherr Van Duersen turned in his chair to inspect his guest. The face fell, aghast. Peppi had seen many a face like that in the dark of a cinema auditorium, staring, intent, about to laugh. This one, through a great beard, burst into a roar. He struggled to his feet, stumbling towards Peppi, clawing at him, and finally fell on his shoulder, overcome. The spasm passed. The artist backed off, swaying slightly, and blinking in an effort at recollection.

Then, with a Jovian nod, he said, "You're all right. You're sly! I didn't know you."

Quite sure that his mind was still a blank in his direction. Peppi eased him into the chair he had quitted.

"What is this I hear about your putting out a saucer on the pavement to-morrow?" asked the young man, to gain time.

"It is a custom in this neighborhood," said Van "Duersen, with a wide gesture, "when one is distrained for rent, to expose a saucer on his chattels on the pavement, into which kind passers-by will drop coins."

"I will pay your rent," said Peppi soothingly.

"No," said Van Duersen, rising and stumbling to the door and tearing off the iegal notice. "These little love lyrics mean nothing, my friend. You must not let them stampede you into a liberality you may regret."

"Let us get down to business at once." said Peppi with an uneasy feeling that he was not the visitor expected, and there was no time to be lost.

"Good! Money melts! Let us do so," said the householder, and he lifted the shroud from the green sketch on the pedestal and stood back. But something awry caught his eye, and with one look at the light above he lifted the nymph's arm with a magic touch of his left hand— for it was a nymph teasing a sleeping faun. This Tellmv had singing thumbs, too, thought Peppi, whose nerves were tingling.

"You paint," said Peppi, letting his eyes Tali on an incrusted palette and a quiver of brushes.

"At times," admitted Van Duersen, with a shrug. "But I never finish anything. Except now and again, in desperation. Yesterday. when they tacked that thing on the door. I took a walk— peddled a stretcher." He laughed with a youthful humor, and tusrgod" at his beard.

"And?" said Peppi, inviting full confession.

Van Duersen narrowed his eyes.

"I chance to hear," he said craftily, "that old Centimeri, the smuggler, was off on another cruise, and had left his infant son in charge. I put it on the boy!" He shook his head. "But I will never hear of it again," he said complacently. "I only tell it to illustrate how occasionally, under stress of— circumstances— I do finish a picture. But much against my will. I assure vou. Here," he said, taking up a spatula and turning the pedestal critically, "is my metier!"

"I am Centimeri's son, said Peppi sweetly.

"Oho!"

He completed a gouge in the soft clay with his spatula, before turning with twinkling eye.

"And I took you for young Sacarelli." he said apologetically. He thumbed the nymph. "He comes— this evening— this hour. I mistook you— for that little angel face."

"This evening!" gasped Peppi, in a cold sweat.

"Even now" said the sculptor dramatically. "Listen! I hear his foot on the stairs!"

But the theatric footfall that at. this instant fell on their ears providentially turned off on some landing below.

"For what does he come?" rasped Peppi, caution torn to tatters.

"For this, of course," said Van Duersen, falling back from his nymph and wiping his hands. "Do you see anything else that would fetch him?"

It was the moment for instant action.

"Van Duersen!" Peppi's tone rang with command.

"I am here, yes."

"I will buy your picture!"

"Oho!"

"On one condition!" The tones of young Centimeri cut like steel.

"I thought so." His indifference was real.

"You are to be evicted to-morrow?"

The artist disposed of this trifle with a gesture.

"You are to leave here— now!" cried Peppi. "With me! And never return!"

"Huh! I don't know about that."

"I have a studio for you. You will want for nothing. You can do what you wish. There is nothing here that you cannot leave behind if I pay for it, is there?" cried the feverish Peppi, all ears at the stairs.

"There is nothing here you could pay me for," said the contemptuous Van Duersen. "Except this!" he exclaimed, indicating the sketch on the pedestal. "And this displeases me," he concluded suddenly, and with one mighty paw he crushed the beautiful thing, tearing out the armature and flinging; it into the fire.  A cry escaped Peppi.

Van Duersen picked up his vest, coat, and overcoat, which he had; evidently taken off as one garment, like so many skins of an onion. And he put them on again as one. He was putting his tie and collar into a pocket. "There is one thing, however," he said, hesitating. "That is the saucer. I should stay for that. Usually I hire a child to sit on my trunk and cry. It is very affecting."

"But I'll cry for you," promised Peppi. "Hasten! Someone comes. No— someone goes. Are there any pictures here?"

The artist rummaged in a corner. "Here is something," he muttered, and put his foot through a canvas, throwing this, too, into the fire.  Name of Adam! it was a haze, thought Peppi. No matter.

"Come! Come!" cried the youthful Centimeri. "But wait. You forgot to turn off your gas stove."

"Oh, the company will turn that , off," said the easy master.

They got out without mishap. Threats of Sacarelli, who never let loose, once he got his teeth into anything, lent wings to Peppi's heels. But a few steps down the street Van Duersen mysteriously buttonholed Peppi and drew him down a little flight of steps into a queer underground , room with a long counter, at which men sat on high stools drinking coffee and eating eggs and pie.

Behind this was another descent, into a more conventional dining room that stood empty and waiting for guests. Van Duersen stopped by a table in a corner, and, as if by pre-arrangement, a waiter slipped out through a secret door, and set down two whisky glasses, filled with some vile, murky fluid, over one of which Van Duerson. with a ceremonious "Sant'," made a terrible face.

"You do not like it?" said Peppi, pretending to drink.

"Like it? And did you ever hear of a drunkard who liked it?" demanded the astonished man. "It is not the taste. It is the effect. Come. We will go now. Wait. I pay. It is agreed you are to furnish me with money, eh, Centimeri?"

"Yes, all you want: more!"

"Good! Money melts! Come."

They plunged into the void of the city.

IT WAS HOURS later— past midnight. There were no street sounds now. Instead there was the musical undertone of a little river tumbling among stones somewhere near at hand. There was a fire, burned to shards, on the hearth. A great dog dozed, nose on, now and then rousing itself to draw a deep breath of c intent. The room was velvety in its sombre lights.

Peppi lounged easily in a deep chair, and opposite stretched out flat and blowing smoke at the ceiling, was his friend Van Duersen. r1 lt place was Dolce Far Niente, the Centimeii country seat, with the atelier on a little island. They had travelled forty miles and dined. An eavesdropper would have said they were friends, from their long easy silences.

The great artist finally bestirred himself to renew a cigarette.

"There is only one thing I take exception to, marvellous infant," said he.

"Only one?'' said Peppi, well pleased.

"That I must paint," replied the artist. "I do not like to paint."

"Also, you must finish what you paint," added Peppi.

"Ho! I forgot that! That is something else. I do not like to finish pictures."

"But only eighteen of them." said Peppi, soothingly. "Can you give them the look of not too new? Of accumulated misfortunes, in other words?"

"Peppi," said the painter, "once, when I was a poor devil of a Czecho-Slovak, just landed, I touched up a Greuze for no less a saint than your father— and he expressed his complete astonishment."

"Oh, you have been a Czech, then, have you?"

"Yes, before I was a Dutchman. I am ihinking of taking English lessons from this fellow, Balieff, and becoming a Russian— or an Armenian, even. There is money in that palter. There is none in American."

"There if the one last condition," said Peppi, regarding the cosmopolite fixedly.

"Oh, I thought we had named them all!"

"No. When you finish the eighteen,"said Peppi, clipping his words, "you are to drink yourself to death."

"Oho! That is not a condition! That is a promise!" cried the painter with a guffaw. "See! The gods have sent me a sample of doom. Come, let us have a foretaste of the end now!"

He filled a glass from the decanter. "And to think I am to be paid for that, too! Sant'," he cried, tossing it off. "Good! Money melts'"

SPRING CAME. Providentially the doyen was detained abrooad. Summer passed. Finally the day came when Peppi turned over the reins to Angier del Sol for the driving finish

"You have planted the crop, then?" inquired the big critic, who was now to fit the haze with a glamor.

"I have worn out two sets of tyres," boasted the weary Peppi. "They— these eighteen— are planted so cunningly that not even their owners suspect me. In fact, they do not own them. I have a little string tied to each that I will pull at the proper time."

"Mordioux!" exclaimed ,the man of letters, in the manner of the famous Captain of Musketeers. "The doyen had better return and look to his laurels! Else he will discover that he is not the Centimeri, but merely an emeritus parent. Is he reconciled to death, then, this fellow?"

"He was, from the very beginning." said Peppi. "He is tired of being a Dutchman. "When I give the word he will shave off his beard and appear as a Viking. He has been making love to our Swedish cook."

"Appear? Disappear, you mean," interrupted Angler, in alarm.

"Oh, never worry; he will keep off-stage. Besides. he has singing thumbs when it comes to plasticene. We will discover him in good time."

"A sculptor with singing thumbs! Another psychic epigram! You should have been an ad. writer. But, no. First, you are my cashier. Let me have sixty-seven dollars for funeral expenses."

"What, is it so inexpensive?"

"The county would do it for nothing," confessed Del Sol, "but that gives rise to awkward inquiries. So this little sum will seem to have been contributed by— ah— some poor ignorant folks who were with him in his lastmoments, not knowing they were nursing a celebrity. Is there one unfinished picture, at which death stayed the hand of the artist?"

Peppi admitted dolefully that there was one, the eighteenth, over which even his tearful entreaties had been of no avail.

"Magnificent!" cried Angier. "We will elevate it as a memorial, as a symbol of  an unrequited life. Now I will go out into the street and ask the stars if the time is propitious."

Del Sol sauntered down the Avenue with hat and stick in symmetry. It was 4 o'clock in the afternoon in early September. True, the Avenue was packed with glittering vehicles from kerb to kerb, agitated by the ceaseless pause and flow of the eternal tide. There: was surely no room for more; indeed. there was scarce room for those at hand. Nevertheless, the all-seeing eye of the critic decided that nobody was in town yet, arid the moment was not ripe.

ON THE twenty-seventh Centimeri came sailing up the bay on the Majestic, and father and son embraced with mute emotion that brought tears of happiness to the eyes of beholders. For the instant the doyen held Peppi with a kindling gaze, then he turned from affairs of the heart to affairs of the head, for he was engaged in a delicate mission for a distinguished amateur.

It was two weeks before the doyen came to the gallery. In that two weeks a certain number of people died. Actuaries turn down their thumbs on a prescribed number every day. Only the actuary, with all his knowledge, cannot give you the names of the doomed.

In this, Angier del Sol had the better of' the argument, for, alas, he at length decided it high time to write on the scroll tne name of Van Duersen. Van Duersen of the haze; and did so. That morning, a Thursday, he was holding the first of his series of fashionable drawing-room conversaziones, and concluding, he came out of his part like an actor who had sung to hide his sorrow.

In a voice of deep melancholy he said: "Now, my friends, I will speak no more of art— which is true and beautiful; but of life, when it is hard, cruel.-and unrequited. We will speak of a god who has passed among us unknown!"

He paused and bowed his head.

About the same hour Centimeri. having lifted the cloud from his brow  by two weeks' hard work, went to his gallery. The little dwarf at the door. Aylmer the bookkeeper, everybody beamed with pleasure; and the august doyen, resting a proud hand on the shoulder of his handsome son, passed down the long gallery hung with glories, returning with gracious courtesy the salutations of those earnest seekers after light who were present.

NOW a curious thing happened. Arriving midway of the gallery, opposite the Van Duersen haze, he entered an area in which the force of gravity seemed suddenly accentuated. It tugged at his legs. His feet become tons. Finally, it was impossible to proceed. He was looking into the Van Duersen. He had great command of his emotions, the old doyen.

He turned his mild gaze on young Peppi, whose guilty eyes failed him at this supreme test. Peppi's gaze faltered, fell. The doyen overcame the extraordinary force of gravity of this spot, and moved on, his hand still helping itself to Peppi's shoulder. In the office , he directed Aylmer to dismiss the visitors, a task to which Aylmer lent his most suave graces. The street door clicked on the last.

"Come," paid Centimeri to Peppi, and he went out and stood before the picture. "You have something to tell me," he said to young Centimeri.

It was half an hour later that the street door burst open as from the puff of a squall, and Angier del Sol rushed into the gallery. At sight of the doyen he advanced upon the pair and announced solemnly, "Sainted Mother, he is dead!"

The doyen, judicial, imperturbable, twisted his imperial.

"Describe the lady," he commanded.

"The lady?"

Peppi looked up, surprised. In truth. In his confession he had not given the lady of the first scene as much credit for the idea as she. perhaps, deserved. He described her, from memory, with a glowing pencil. The austere doyen shook his head; he did not know any lady with only one dimple. He rose and departed.

"He knows all?" whispered Angier. Peppi nodded assent.

"Good!" ejaculated the big Del Sol, preening himself. "Then he is a full partner. Now we will show the world how the elephants dance!"

THERE was a memorial loan exhibition of Van Duersens the second week in December. It was Art. It was merely necessary to see to believe. It was said by our elders that Jenny Lind sang so easily that whole audiences went home with the firm conviction that'they, too, could sing. Certainly groups of artists and students haunted Centimeri's dtiring the fortnight; but of the stretchers that were stretched in vain emulation we have no record.

That numerous body, the Man in the Street, which seizes on some newly-discovered profundity in philosophy, like the girth of Betelgeuse, the relativity of Einstein, the two million volts of Steinmetz, or even September Morn, and makes a catchword of it, adopted "haze" into its everyday vocabulary. During its run as a seven-day wonder, one could hear it at cafeterias, at cinemas, and during the straphanging hours on the Subway.

It may have been the subtle Angier who distilled this poison drop by drop into the cup of daily intercourse. Certainly the glamor he infused into the occasion was universal. And not without honor to himself. There is always a knowing inner circle to attribute the real cause of greatness to someone behind the scenes when the public is crowning some new favorite with its deciduous laurel. If you listen with your ear to the ground you can even hear the names of these Warwicks whispered in their secret Hall of Fame.

The complacent Del Sol, lunching at the round table in the back room at Doriot's— the so-called Vicious Circle— found himself accorded full credit by that band of virile young critics who thrive so lustily on that particular brand of food. As for the august doyen, he was always just about to illuminate his austere countenance with a smile, a familiarity, however, which he never quite achieved.

"you are a purse-proud plutocrat, Centimeri!" saw Sacareni, the dealer, rubbing his  long nose as if it were out of joint. He was making a tour of the exhibition. "Have a care," he cried, comically, "lest you vaunt yourself unseemly. Here you have the effrontery to hang nineteen Van Duersens, when I— who am not such a small potato as I look— when I am put to my wit's end to scare' up one!"

"Only one?" said Centimeri, who appeared to be not at all mindful of Sacarelli's banter.

"Only one," admitted Sacarelli, lugubriously. His eyes lighted with generosity. "It was selfish of me not to offer it for the loan. I will do so at once. And then you will have a round twenty instead of a broken nineteen."

The doyen shook his head as if refusing his very heart's wish.

"But I am on the track of some others," whispered Sacarelli craftily, his green eyes on the buzzing crowd. "When crumbs fall, a hungry man must eat; otherwise the dustpan swallows the alms. Centimeri, let us step over here, where the light is a little better. This haze plays tricks with my sight."

There was no air of distinction about Sacarelli, and men were apt to put him down, until he looked at them with these eyes which he was complaining about now. He raised his gaze to Centimeri. Taking consent for granted, he ran his arm through the well-tailored crook of the doyen, and drew .him to a less crowded spot, where they could talk without being overheard.

"I am on the track of several others," he sighed, tapping the same note a second time.

"Centimeri," pursued Sacarelli, unfolding the little catalogue of the loan, "I have been going over the list of the distinguished owners who have been kind enough to lend their hazes to make this exhibition a success.

"It only verifies my frequent suspicion that there are resources in our profession into which you alone, of all my colleagues, have had the good fortune, discernment, and courage to penetrate. Now, Centimeri," said Sacarelli, lowering his tone and talking to the third button on the doyen's vest, "between ourselves as man to man, attend! When I say that I am on the track—"

Centimeri, whose eyes were everywhere, at this juncture espied the arrival of one of his distinguished amateurs, and he bowed heartily and strode toward him, leaving Sacarelli talking to thin air. After a time he was free again, and seeing Sacarelli still alone, he recollected, and rejoined him.

'What were we talking about, Sacarelli?" he asked. "And," he added in apology, "I do not have to tell you that these big fellows demand a good deal of knee oil."

"I was saying I will send my little Van Duersen around here to sit with your nineteen, so it will not feel so lonesome," said Sacarelli; "and also I was apologising for not having thought of it sooner. I think it was envy that withheld me."

"There is a vacant spot over there on the. west wall," said Centimeri; and again he discovered some distinguished amateur entering for whom he must oil his knees.

The twentieth Van Duersen came at eight. The gallery was dark, cathedral quiet. Only Aylmer Moelyns was in the office, under the green lamp. Aylmer signed for the crate, Sacarelli having come himself, it being a matter of some ceremony with the dealer. Some time later Aylmer looked up in surprise to see Sacarelli still there.

"You wait?"

"If you please," said Sacarelli. "He is dining out."

"I wait," said Sacarelli.

And then the 'phone rang. It was Centimeri, to say he was detained at Bedford, and would not be in. Sacarelli took his departure. And the echoes of the closing street door had scarcely died away when Centimeri came downstairs from his study.

"My compliments to my son. and ask him to attend me he said gravely. "Have the limousine at me other number and send the man here."

The other number was another house, around the corner in Fiftyth Street, which communicated through the rear with the gallery. The precious crate was carried into the car and father and son entered. Peppi, disturbed, but unable to ask questions, which had been forbidden him from an early age, gave the address of a certain Lindholm, a sculptor, at the doyen's bidding.

Thither they were driven, and up three flights of stairs the crate was carried, where Lindholm, with outstretched arms and a big voice, bellowed: "Marvellous infant! Enter!"

Lindholm had been recently married, and was so neat and clean that Peppi scarcely knew him.

"And this is the great Centimeri himself!" boomed the late Van Duersen of the haze, at sight of the doyen's grave visage.

"It is your opinion, I wish," said Centimeri, after dismissing the chauffeur. "Come. Assist me. Be careful. Bruise nothing."

In a moment they had it out of the case. Peppi, with a little hollow cry, fell back, staring. As for Lindholm, he took it up, held it at arm's length, his smooth face flushed with pride. He set it on a table against the wall, where the light fell at just the right angle. It was a haze.

"Good heavens! How I can paint!" he exclaimed.

"It is yours, then?" asked Centimeri.

"You, Centimeri— do you come all the way across town to ask me that?"

Poor inarticulate Peppi, sensing the abyss into which he was falling, strode forward with murder in his eyes, trying to speak.

"Silence!" roared Centimeri.

"Base ingrate! You gave me your word!" cried Peppi, beyond the paternal mandate.

"Yes, child. I gave you my word," murmured Lindholm, gazing at the picture. "I give you my word now," he cried, turning on them, "that this is a Van Duersen. But I never saw it before!"

They stared at him.

"This fellow paints with his right hand. I paint with my left. It is a forgery! To think," he cried, "that I almost should have lived to see myself forged! It is an honor, doyen, that few artists have achieved in this world. And such a forgery!" He gazed, unbelieving, yet convinced.

NEXT MORNING at eleven Sacarelli came strolling through the gallery, although the prudence that held him off till that hour was hard-bitted. With an eye that did not seem to look, he noted the vacant spot on the west wall, noted that it was still vacant. He wandered on, and through, into the workroom, like an employee. Beyond, he saw Centimeri at a desk and he joined him. drawing up a chair and sitting down.

"It was a very clever forgery, eh?" said Sacarelli.

"Are there any more?" asked Centimeri, making a sum with his pencil.

"All I want," said Sacarelli. "The supply is inexhaustible."

"Excuse me while I add this column of figures," said Centimeri.

Centimeri did not want to add, he wanted to think. It was irrefutable. The likeness was all but perfection. The method, the stroke, the color, the haze— it was all there. No two experts in the world could have agreed on which was the true, which the spurious; no one knew, except Van Duersen— and he was dead! Even Del Sol, than whom there were few more skilled, as the doyen well knew, had been stumped that morning, and he with his monocle!

"Between ourselves," said Sacarelli, "I think we will have no difficulty in coming to a satisfactory settlement. We pass through life but once, Centimeri. Come. Let us be friends! You have been abroad all summer," he said, with a little ring in his voice that all but goaded the doyen to desperation. "You have been gone so long! We can forget all our little differences and be friends now, eh?"

"How much?" Centimeri's eyes were calm, but in his heart were daggers.

"I must consult my principal."

"Oh, you have a principal then?"

"Yes. I have already paid her twenty thousand, on account.  She put her foot clown— put it down on the twentieth, so to speak, ha! ha!— and would have the option counted into her hands— in gold, mind you!"

"She?"

Centimeri felt a draught and shuddered. Sacarelli nodded. Contimeri drew a long breath.

"She has a dimple in one cheek," he said, with conviction.

"I am an old fellow," laughed Sacarelli. at a happy recollection. "But I give you my word, I grow young again at the thought of that single dimple. It is unique, Centimeri! It is absolutely unique!"

"How much?" insisted the desperate Centimeri.

Indeed, it was merely a question of how much. In the end. Sacarelli consented to take two full shares in the syndicate, for his principal would require one, and he the other.

"And these forgeries will be destroyed? All delivered to lis in hand, and, the forger will cense to utter?" was Centimeri's final condition.

"She gives me her word," said Sacarelli.

This did not seem to impress the doyen. "I give you mine," said Sacarelli, simply, and that ended the matter.

LINDHOLM, a sculptor coming through the ruck into the stretch swiftly, had a little parlor exhibition at the gallery in the spring. Peppi, beaming, for the syndicate had done handsomely— and was not this beloved fellow the cause of it all?— looked in the first morning, and in the act of greeting the big fellow, his eye caught the profile of a bust. With a cry of surprise, he approached it. staring. It was a woman's head, a truly wonderful conception of femininity.

"Who is it?" he demanded.

Undoubtedly this was the enchanting creative of the one dimple, who one afternoon not a year gone by had begged him to do himself more than proud for his father. Well, he had done so.

Lindholm tapped his forehead. "He got it out of his head," he said.

"But you must have seen her, known her!" protested Peppi. "Think! Think!"

Lindholm thought. "Ah, wait; Oh, it is gone! No, I have it!" The Viking held up a linger. "Marvellous child, behold! She is the angel of our good fortunes."  He bowed to the bust. "Do you recollect the afternoon you first called on me? Yes? Well, the day before that, she called on me; she said she was a model. I was painting, that day; it was the 'Sedimentary Light.' I remember very well, for she said, in confidence, that the old smug— excuse me! She informed me that your father was away, and you were home alone. Marvellous infant! To think I have carried her, imagine, in my brain all this time, not knowing why!"

AMONG other visitors at the gallery during the Lindholm exhibition was Deputy Parr, of the police, famous man hunter, in company with his friend Oliver Armiston, the extinct author, who occasionally read riddles in Parr's criminal index. Parr affected an interest in art, because he had a feeling that Centimeri's place sooner or later would blow up, and he would be called to take charge.

"That is Sophie Lang!" said Parr, stopping suddenly in front of the bust of Peppi's inspiration. The deputy was referring to a notorious confidence woman, famous for her evasions. "Isn't it, Oliver?"

Armiston knew Sophie; he had been face to face with her. He gazed at the head, nodding; it was Sophie to the life, with her superb challenge to Fate.

"That's probably as close as I'll ever get to her," laughed Parr. "Curious," he added, "but my man Pelts told me he thought he saw her coming out of Centimeri's one day last spring. It was Sophie, all but her eyes. They were too dark. I don't suppose even Sophie could change the color of her eyes."

"Lemon juice will do it. Pour it into the eyes. It hurts, yes? But it does the trick," said Oliver. "That was the disguise adopted by a famous Tibetan explorer to get to Lhasa."

Lindholm refused to sell the bust. Centimeri intervened, promising Parr a copy. But the copy never arrived. Centimeri said there had been a tragic accident, not explaining just what.

___________________

8: The Phantom Alibi

Frederick Irving Anderson

World's News (Sydney) 13 Jan 1932

"NO! NO!" said Armiston, the extinct author, with the air of a sorely tried man doing his best to be civil. He turned to his desk, made a great to-do of being busy and interrupted. He had an impulse to rise and dismiss the persistent visitor with a bow. But he hesitated to be so abrupt. The fellow should take the hint!

"Murder," said the author, "is distinctly not in my line."

Oliver Armiston's visitor smiled, throwing a look of secret understanding at the fat Buddha who reposed among folds of flesh in one corner of the elegant room.

"You turned it to very good account once," he said mildly.

"I recollect your crew did me the compliment to tell me I was guilty," nodded Armiston.

"The guiltiest man unhung!" retorted the visitor, with relish. "You procured that crime! Our moderation on that occasion still astonishes me."

He was a man of fierce aspect, but his eyes had the habit of merriment. Parr, the deputy commissioner, for it was that exalted policeman himself, was recalling an incident in Armiston's career several years gone by, when the famous author of thrillers was gulled by a clever stranger into solving as fiction what proved to be a problem of fact. The fertile author not only contrived (on paper) to rob the unprincipled wife of a diplomat, but when the tale was published, tasted the bitter triumph of finding the clever stranger had executed the crime according to printed direction, not even eluding the murder which to Armiston, engrossed in the plot, had seemed unavoidable. This atrocity, succeeded as it was by a mysterious gift from the grateful perpetrator, had created such a sensation as to drive Armiston into retirement. No! Decidedly murder was not in his line!

Parr rose. Armiston forbore to look up for fear of detaining him. But Parr was not departing. He removed his top coat, remarking it was warm, and sat down again, smiling with sly satisfaction.

"You inspired that crime," said Parr easily.

"Your moderation on this occasion astonishes me!" broke in Armiston testily. "You arrest a reputable citizen for murder. You admit that the mere statement of the known facts, to any sane jury, would convict him. And then, as an officer sworn to uphold the law, you come privately to me, and say, 'Please, sir, as a personal favor, won't you prove my prisoner innocent?' Is the man innocent, then?"

"Yes."

"Then why arrest him, why accuse him of murder, if you know that he is not guilty? Does the law require a victim? Do you intend to prosecute him?"

"Certainly. I have no option."

"Even if you know he is innocent?"

"Facts, my dear boy. Facts. I can't go behind facts. I can't. You can. That's why I come to you."

"How do you know he is innocent?" In spite of himself, Armiston was giving heed Nevertheless he was determined to smash Parr by logic, if insolence failed.

"How does a bird know North, in spring?" answered the imperturbable policeman, to whom nobody, not even his best friend, would have ascribed the smallest touch of imagination. He dealt with facts, as such; he was incapable of going beyond facts. He believed in shoe-leather and elbow-grease, not divination. Thus he had made his reputation as the very Nemesis of the law. And yet to-day, he had come privately to the extinct author, whom he had not seen since that lamented circumstance of long ago, and said, somewhat astonished at his. own words: "I am about to convict an innocent man of murder. Indeed I will, I must, unless you can find some way to prevent me." It was a tribute to the cogency of Armiston's fiction mind.

"Just what are the facts?" said Armiston, softening. And Parr, finally convinced that he had struck fire in his quest for subtlety of imagination to op-pose his facts, hitched his chair nearer.

"Finger-prints " he began

"Bosh! Finger-prints are not facts!" cried Armiston, now fairly in the saddle. "Anybody can counterfeit finger-prints. It's merely a process of photography."

"There you are!" exclaimed the deputy, beaming on Buddha. "I didn't know that. I don't know yet. Can it be done?"

Armiston daubed his thumb with the ink-bottle cork, and stamped it on a sheet of paper, making his own thumbprint.

"Photograph that, life-size,' said Oliver. "Print it on a pellicle of gelatine sensitised with bichromate of potash. Soak the gelatine in cold water. What have you? You will find on that pellicle of gelatine, in relief, the exact duplicate of the lines of my thumb. The lines stand up like type. Smear it with inks grease, blood, anything— leave the imprint any place you want to— on a revolver handle, safe door, window— any place."

"Marvellous!"

"Not at all. Elemental," corrected Anniston dryly. "So much for your fingerprints! It's as old as the art of photography— it's used as a commercial process, to imitate photogravures. The trouble with you, Commissioner, is that you don't recognise a fact when you see it. You accept somebody's say-so. A finger-print is gospel to you; It isn't to me. It's the first thing I suspect. I wonder how many poor devils you've sent up, with your facts?" He paused, rather pleased with himself. "Now trot out some more facts." He looked at his watch, as a gentle suggestion that his amiable mood would be of brief dura-tion. Parr settled himself restfully in his chair.

"The murdered man was Sauer— J. H. Sauer," said the deputy.

"A reputable party?"

"No, I believe not. He had a process for making gold out of aluminium. It can be done, I am told."

"Did he do it?"

"Well, he did, and he didn't," said Parr. "He quietly interested a few people— good people— Brown, president of the Elm Park Bank, and Westcott, a technical man employed in the Assay Office, as another. Why is it," asked Parr, "that the clever crook selects the expert for his boob? This one did. Imagine Brown and Westcott, of all men in the world, falling for that sort of thing— the two men who above all others should have been wary. He demonstrated his process for them, and they were convinced he had what he claimed. There would be a pot of money in it, of course. But it meant a costly plant, to start. Well, when he found he had these two hog-tied, when they were willing to back him to the limit, Sauer got cold feet."

"Sauer? That's a new line for a crook." Armiston, idly whittling a pencil, looked up.

"Wait." Parr was warming up. "After he had convinced the experts; the in-ventor himself began to have doubts. They were willing to go ahead, but he wasn't. He got the queer idea that he had been fooling himself, that there was a flaw somewhere. There was quite a row, I believe; but he wouldn't go ahead. They repeated that they were satisfied. He told them he didn't think their opinion was worth two whoops. Finally Brown, the banker, who saw riches slipping away from him, asked Sauer if he would be content to call in an umpire and let him decide. Well, Sauer backed and filled, and finally he said if they would call in an expert of unquestioned authority, all right. He would abide by the verdict. He didn't seem to be worrying over the fact that he might be fooling them. That was their lookout. He was afraid he was fooling himself."

The functionary of police chuckled softly to himself.

"Armiston," he said, "you told me once you were interested in electrolytic work. Didn't you study at the Polytechnic?"

Armiston nodded He indicated a file of electrolytic journals on the bookshelf as indication that this branch of sci-ence was one he pursued from day to day, as a hobby.

"You know the big men in that line," said Parr. "Whom would you pick for umpire? Is there one outstanding man?"

"Pettibone— Dean Pettibone," said Armiston, without hesitation.

Pair nodded, as if he had expected this answer.

"They picked Pettibone," he said turning to smile at Buddha.

"And he took one look, and gave them the laugh, put in Armiston. "I know just how he would do— without batting an eyelash. But what has this to do with murder? And your executing a man who didn't commit it?"

"Patience! I am coming to that," said Parr mildly. "Well, they made several dates. Pettibone agreed to come, not because he took any stock in it, but just to humor Brown. Then our friend Sauer contracted a jumping tooth. And for about three weeks he groaned in a dentist's chair, more concerned about saving that tooth than he was about his million dollars. Finally the tooth was fixed up, and they had a session. Pettibone handed Sauer some aluminium, and Sauer went ahead with his usual hocus-pocus. When the thing was cooked, or pickled, or whatever there was to be done, he opened up the crucible to show the gold. Not a trace!"

Armiston grinned.

"Count on Petty for that!" he said.

"Well, they tried it again, and again. Nothing doing." Parr regarded "Armiston with his dry smile. "It seems Sauer had been furnishing his own aluminium, hitherto. Salted it, I suppose. Those two experts never suspected him. You can get a trace of gold out of any sample of commercial aluminium— not enough to pay, but you can show it. Pettibone suspected what had happened. He handed Sauer a piece of chemically pure aluminium. And he didn't give him a chance to dope the brew. Then he laughed at him. There was quite a blow-up. Brown quit cold, feeling as if he had been made a fool of. So did Westcott. They left in a huff. But Petty stayed behind, Sauer button-holing him. The last Brown heard, Pettibone was explaining to Sauer, in words of one syllable, just what kind of a crook he was."

"He'd do that— make it a point of honor," agreed Armiston. He yawned. "This is all very thrilling, Commissioner," he said. "But when do you produce the corpse?"

"We don't," said Parr, grimly.

'What? You can't execute a man for murder, in this State, without a corpus delicti."

"We can't produce it," repeated Parr. "And yet, we are going to send Petti-bone to the chair."

"Pettibone!" ejaculated the extinct author, now sitting up stark. "You're going to execute Pettibone?" he repeated. "Oh, my dear fellow! Come, this is too much of a good thing—"

"Pettibone was the last man seen with Sauer, alive." went oh Parr. "Something happened. Nobody knows just what. The engineer in the basement was roused by a racket. Then water began coming through the ceiling as if there was a flood upstairs. He called up the office, and with the nightman broke into Sauer's rooms, and found—

"What?" explodeed Armiston, for Parr had paused, smiling queerly.

Nothing," said Byrnes. "Nobody there. The safe was open, a lot of papers were scattered about the floor. A chair or two were upset and broken; and the city water was pouring out of a broken pipe, from a connection that Sauer had put in for his experiments. There had been a three-foot length of galvanised pipe over a lead sink. This pipe had been twisted off at the elbow, and there it lay on the floor. Somebody had been bludgeoned with it. On one end there was blood and hair. Otherwise— nothing."

Here the deputy paused again for dramatic effect.

"Have I hooked you on now?" he demanded nasally.

Armiston had sprung to his feet and was pacing the floor. He stopped in front of Parr.

"Pettibone arrested for murder! Oh, come, Parr," he said disagreeably. "This is too stupid, even for you." Parr grinned, with no ill-feeling. This was why he had come; he had deliberately played for this explosion.

"But the body— what became of the body?" demanded Armiston.

"What becomes of a lump of sugar in a glass of water?" retorted Parr. "It dissolves." He said in the same odd tone: "Well, that's what happened to our friend Sauer. He dissolved."

"Dissolved?"

"Pettibone's finger-prints were on one end of that pipe," said the policeman.

"Finger-prints, bah!" cried Armiston, angrily. To think that even police bungling would lay a sordid crime of this sort at the door of a man of Dean Pettibone's prestige was maddening.

"I will allow you that," said Pair. "But they led us to Petty. We searched his place. Why, I don't know. Only a fool would expect to find anything there. Still, he was the last man seen with Sauer alive— and something had happened to Sauer. In his laboratory Petty had a big lead tank full of liquid. We asked him what it was. He said it was residues. Residues of what, I don't know. Well, we drained that tank, and we found— this!"

He pushed his clubby fingers into a Test pocket and drew out a tiny ball of tissue paper, which he unwrapped carefully. He laid this small object of irregular shape on the desk. Armiston stared at it. He examined it under a magnifying glass.

"It's gold, isn't it?" he said, puzzled.

Parr nodded.

"It's the residue of our friend Sauer," he said coldly. "It is the corpus delicti that's going to convict Pettibone. It is the gold filling out of Sauer's tooth— the sole mortal remains of Sauer, that Pettibone couldn't dissolve in his vat."

Armiston sat down dumbstruck.

"Remember," continued Parr, with painful certitude, "it was only three weeks before, that the dentist made that filling. He used the amalgam process in making the pattern. He has the matrix— and it fits to a crossed T and a dotted I. Furthermore," said the policeman as he watched Armiston with keen eyes, "the dentist happens to have the preliminary rubber impression he took of Sauer's Jaw. "You won't tell me you can counterfeit that. Those are the facts, Armiston," he concluded, and he leaned back in his chair to await the verdict.

In his school-days Dean Pettibone had been Armlston's kindly guide and friend, one of those rare teachers who achieve something like saintship in the memory of their students.

"It's— preposterous " Armiston began, and halted. "Are you going to maintain in court that dear old Petty— why he doesn't weigh a good hundred pounds— carried the dead body of Sauer across town, in the middle of the night, to get rid of him in his vat?"

"'Preposterous,'" said Parr. "Not at all. It was midnight. Sauer's apart-ment was on the ground floor—with a private entrance in the side street. Pet-tibone admits he came and went in his coupe, alone. Nobody saw him leave Sauer's rooms. His laboratory is on a lonely road—I believe there was an ele-ment of danger in his research work, and a bad smell—and he had to get off by himself. Now do you say 'preposterous'?"

"Cobwebs!" cried Armiston contemptuously. "Use a little reason, Parr."

"Reason'?" said the deputy. There is no reason in a crime of violence. But that!—" He pointed to the tiny fragment of gold, every accidental irregularity of whose surface testified incontrovertibly to its identity. He turned fiercely on Armiston. "What are you going to do about that?"

"You can't establish a murder with only a gold tooth to show," muttered Armiston.

"Can't I? Take the classic WebsterParkman case as an example."

The deputy commissioner rose and pulled on his coat slowly. 'The jury won't leave its seat," he said absently. "Regrettable, yes, to balance a man like Petty against a cheap trickster." He picked up the particle of gold and restored it to its tissue paper, and as he put it back in Ms pocket he murmured, "It will send your friend Petty to the chair."

Without a leave-taking he stalked out. In the street the police functionary permitted himself a complacent smile as he looked up at Armiston's windows. Unless he was very much mistaken, he had started a fire.

When Armiston emerged, he at once became conscious of something in the air. Not infrequently, even in a city of such involved complexes as this, there cranes a moment, an occasion when street-sweeper and applewoman, milady and her maid, stockbroker and greengrocer, think the same thought, as if an idea had become static, and anchored itself over them like a fog. On this day every street corner had its little group, heads together; in the restaurant where Armiston lunched, usually decorous people craned their necks over their neighbors' newspapers; the female ccushier instead of saying, "It's a nice day," said, "Wasn't it awful about the vat?"

The latest extra blared in large type— "HELD WITHOUT BAIL!" One couldn't escape it; in the quietest side street the eddies of the news danced and swirled, the vat murder was on the tip of the tongue wherever one turned. The sleuth hounds of the press, long fretting on leash, were loose, full cry. This single obscure crime summoned into being myriad phenomena of human interest and activity. On every corner stood impatient groups jingling pennies and waiting for fresh extras. It isn't often that the public gets a best-seller. When it does, newspaper circulation must stand ready to expand, like a rubber band.

Momentarily there had been doubt, unbelief. But the facts were overwhelming. Then, as if by some common process of thought, the world of newspaper readers became sophists. At Armiston's club his friend Ballard voiced the tone of public debate when he said:

"The real crime was Fettibone's overlooking that gold tooth. He deserves the chair for that. Fettibone, a chemist, tripping up on a solvent for gold! I condemn his bungling after the blow was struck. But for the grace of Codas someone said somewhere," said Ballard, eyeing the cultivated circle, "You, or I, might have struck that blow. In each of us is a moment of blind fury, waiting to be summoned. Most of us escape the summons. Pettibone didn't. What then? Should his career of public usefulness be annihilated, simply because instinct overwhelmed reason, for a split second? I say, no!"

"I say no!" responded several of the circle.

"Pettibone is a man of rare mind," went on the sophist. "He knew what he had to lose. Therefore the more reason to conceal his act. And he, a chemist," cried Ballard in disgust, "trips up on a problem a schoolboy wouldn't have missed— the solvent for gold."

"What is the defence?" asked Armiston, for Ballard was a famous pleader.

"None!" said the lawyer savagely. "Not yet— not for another hundred years. Sauer was a despicable swindler. A decent man, a righteous man, removes him— kills him And now we, in the name of justice, purpose to annihilate Pettibone, a man with a brain a thousand years ahead of his time!"

ARMISTON went through a daily ritual before his typewriter. He inserted a recording sheet, lightly brushed his finger-tips, and gazed abstractedly at the keys. He had great faith in this oracle; time and again with almost clairvoyant powers it had solved problems for him. It was probable that the cerebral ganglion in Armistoa's finger-tips led him, on those occasions, through the maze of the keyboard. But now the oracle was mute.

"Petty slipped up, for once in his life," mused Armiston for the hundredth time as he stared at the blank wall with opaque eyes, his fingers poised above the keys.

Then suddenly, and without admonitory signal, the oracle spoke! Armiston's fingers,moving moving mechanically, tapped the the keys.

"Did Sauer?" demanded the typewriter.

Armiston felt a queer pricking at the back of his neck. There was something uncanny in the way those two words spontaneously formed themselves before has eyes. He let his thoughts drift. Did Sauer? Did Sauer slip up any place?

That was as far as he could get Hie typewriter relapsed into Delphian silence, his fingers refused to move.

"Obviously," said Armiston. "that implies motive on the part of Sauer."

The oracle refused to be drawn into an argument

Armiston took a stroll through the park, conjuring himself to think. But that typewriter had become so necessary to his process of thought in his years of scribbling that without it he found himself stranded.

"PARR," he said to that person of the police an hour later, "who was Sauer? Did he ever really exist?"

"Apparently he was a fact You might ask Brown, or Westcott" answered Parr.

"Who was he, before he came here?"

"A mining engineer," said Parr. "Brown looked up his references. Sauer wasn't exactly a shade, Armiston. Be was flesh and blood enough to be bashed on the head with a bludgeon."

Oliver ignored the sarcasm.

"What did he leave as an estate, besides that gold filling?" he persisted.

"There's a bank balance— about eight hundred dollars."

"That's something. What else?"

This was a demand for material detail, not the flash of divination the deputy had hoped for when first he laid before the exiinct author the advance proofs of the now-celebrated vat murder. He drew forth a small bundle of slips, on which J. H. Sauer had, on one insignificant occasion or another, signed his name. It was the handwriting of an habitual draughtsman, as characteristic in its way as that of a telegrapher. Armiston studied the script with the interest of one who, for the first time, comes on the incontrovertible proof of the life and activity of a person who heretofore has existed for him merely as a name.

The sprite here nudged Oliver's elbow. "Did Sauer?" it whispered, out of the thin air. Armiston departed. Late in the afternoon he presented himself at the home of Dean Petiibone, a little red brick house encircled by a verandah, near. the University. Armiston had smoked many a contemplative pipe here in his school days, and the sight of the comfortable study with its swept hearth gave him a pang. Parr had given him a line to the policeman in charge, for the Law had put its seals here.

"I'm trying to help," he exclaimed lamely to the dried-up little secretary, a woman who had not aged by a hair in twenty years, as he remembered her. "We are all trying to help. I want to look round."

"His life is an open book," she said. "You remember his 'log.' They've been through it again and again."

It was a life of an open book, a book of volumes. Dean Pettibone's one marked peculiarity was the desire to set down everything from day to day, as a conscientious navigator would make up his log. Pettibone, with the precise mind of a born scientist, had the habit of saying that, of all the human faculties, one's memory was the least entitled to trust and respect. Endowed with a photographic memory, he never permitted himself to trust it. That Sauer should not have left some premonitory shadow in this human document, which reflected so minutely, seemed absurd— at least from a metaphysical standpoint. But Armiston was not voyaging in the realms of metaphysics, as he turned page after page, under the scrutiny of the sleepy policeman and the anxious little old maid.

A month passed. The rubber band of public interest, measured by the barometer of newspaper circulation, was moving on through other fields of force. Hie vat murder had subsided. On the side of Pettibone there was nothing to be expected. The Dean had contented himself with a single explicit statement, in the beginning. His respect for words and their usages gave his denial of guilt at once a simplicity and a completeness that were almost classic. Here was a man accused of murder, with no resources save the dignity of his bare word, who made no effort to coneeal his contempt for the stupidity of inflexible justice. The little savant passed his days of waiting in a cell amid peace and quiet that he had always craved, but never before achieved. He immured himself and begged his friends to spare him; he buried himself in his books.

The mighty voice of the press even found time to record with much humor how Oliver Armiston, the once popular author of thrillers, absent-mindedly dropped his eyeglasses into a mail-box Instead of a letter, rendering himself visually helpless until a postman appeared and permitted the author to paw among the letters for his lenses.

"They never come back!" muttered the deputy commissioner with conviction, as he noted this silly item. More and more, as the days dragged on without incident, the police official regretted having exposed his own fallibility to the extinct author in the vain hope of some supernormal help.

"The State rests."

Fielder, the District Attorney, turned to Ballard, counsel for the accused, and he sat down he muttered under his breath in a tone that carried only to that man's ears:

"God help you! I have done what I could. Facts are facts!"

Parr sat back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest, looking glum. Judge and jury turned, expectantly to Ballard, famous barrister, who had stepped into the case at the last minute. During the presentation of the State's evidence against his client Ballard had indulged only in formalities; in several incidents it seemed that he went to extraordinary lengths in inducing witnesses to emphasise the damning facts of their testimony.

"Make a plea. We will accept anything in reason," muttered the District Attorney under his breath. Ballard turned on him a look of slow astonishment, and indicated the placid little figure of the prisoner with a slight nod, as who should say: "Can you imagine such a man as that accepting a mitigation of the charge!"

Ballard rose to his feet, stood for a long time surveying the jury, whose appetite had been whetted for one of the great forensic addresses for which this man was famous. The master of sheer oratory, that curious species of hypnotism by which one man moulds the mind " of a mob, said only:

"The defence will call only one witness in refutation."

A little thrill ran through the room.  Ballard looked at his watch and stepped to the bench, where he consulted in low tones with the Court and the prosecutor, and a brief recess was declared. Court room and jury box, held in vague suspense, waited; the scene wore that tension of dramatic action momentarily flared.

The first interruption was the entrance, somewhat breathlessly, of Oliver Armiston; he dropped into a seat beside Ballard, giving the inquiring deputy a scant nod. Parr noted with surprise that the extinct author sported a badly swollen eye. The green doors opened a second time, and two court officers appeared, followed by a middleaged man, evidently a person of some position in life. He looked neither to right nor left as he came down the aisle and stolidly took his place in the witness chair, as the court was called to order again. Then he glanced around stiffly, and when he encountered the face of Dean Pettibone his eyes lingered there for a moment.

"Your name?" said Ballard.

The witness wet his lips. "Hilary Jerome Swett." "Your occupation?"

"I am an inventor," said the man, looking curiously over the jury.

"Do you know the defendant, Mr Swett?" pursued Ballard.

The witness nodded, and turned his gaze again on Pettibone.

"When did you last see him?"

"In 1912," said the witness, without hesitation. "In the Federal Court"

"What was the occasion?"

"A patent suit," responded Swett acidly. His eyes, as if drawn by fascination, again sought the prisoner's face.

"You were an interested party?"

"I was the plaintiff."

"And Dean Pettibone?"

"He was called to give exper testimony."

The man drew a deep breath, and the whole room hitched forward in its seats.

"What was the outcome of the suit, Mr. Swett?"

"I lost— my case was thrown out of court" The words were so low as to be hardly audible. Ballard moved slowly hack and forth before the witness.

"Was the expert testimony responsible for the verdict?" he asked finally.

"Yes," he said; the witness seemed now to have thoroughly recovered his composure. "Wholly," he added.

Ballard picked up one of the exhibits on the table and examined it absently for a moment. Then he raised his eyes to the witness and asked with great gravity.

"Are your teeth entire, Mr. Swett?"

The effect of this question Was like a pistol shot. The Dean, the prosecutor, even the Court, exclaimed audibly. The witness started violently; he blanched. He grasped the arms of the chair until the veins stood out on his wrists, and, turning mechanically, he sought again the now searching eyes of the prisoner.

"Are all your teeth intact Mr. Swett?" persisted the lawyer, cold and incisive. He held up to view the object in his hand; it was the rubber impression of the upper jaw of the murdered man, one incontrovertible link in the chain of circumstantial evidence that the law had been forging about Dean Pettiborte these last three days.

"I ask particularly," continued Ballard, now suddenly stentorian, "about the first bicuspid of the right upper jaw. Will you please show the jury," he urged, advancing on the witness, who seemed to have become stone. Ballard opened his own mouth and indicated with a finger the tooth.

The answer was unexpected action, almost too swift lor the staring eyes to register. With a single bound Swett was out of his seat; he cleared the steps in a stride, and bowled over the obstructing figure of his tormentor. With almost the same gesture he seized a chair, and, raising it above his head, charged on Dean Pettibone, cried shrilly:

"You die! You die now! I take you with me!"

It was Armiston, unused to protective reflexes as he was, who fell on the advancing madman as he towered over the little Dean, and the pair went to the floor with a crash. The next instant the court officials had pinioned the struggling Swett.

"Your Honor and gentlemen of the Jury!" rang out the triumphant voice of Ballard over the din of pounding gavel and the shouts of the officers restoring order, "behold the corpus delicti! Behold the murdered man, in person."

"SAUER was a phantom," said Armiston, moulding a cigarette with finished care. He was tasting tribute. This was the first time wittingly the author had ever set the stage of his typewriter with real characters and watched them walk through their parts. "Luckily we were able to provide the corpus delicti with an alibi. Else," added the beaming author, turning to the little Dean, who sat balanced on the end of a sofa, "our conscientious friend here might have added another notch to his gun, Dean."

Parr took this sally woodenly.

"Ninety-nine per cent. of my work is common sense," said he. "I leave the ouija-board one per cent to the fiction writers.

"Swett set up the fictitious identity of Sauer, with proper make-up to be murdered," went on the author. "That was his game from the beginning. He took eight years to do it. Once he established the identity he plotted to be brought to Pettibone, to quarrel with him, to have Pettibone the last man seen with him alive. Then he planted his bludgeon, his fake finger-prints, and the goia tilling— and vanished, leaving the rest to Parr. That's all there is to it."

"But how— how?" demanded Parr, who had arrived at the state of openly admiring his own perspicacity in enlisting the aid of the hectic author.

"Habit," said Oliver sententiously. "It's the strongest impulse we have. It's not born; it's acquired. It attacks man's faculties in their weakest spot. If you ask the Dean, he will tell you that man's weakest faculty is his memory."

The Dean admited as much with a nod.

"Still I don't see," said the deputy. "Swett hasn't a criminal reheard. How trace one 'H. J Somebody' among a million?"

"Oh, it wasn't as bad as that." laughed Armiston. "The only 'H. J. Somebody' to interest me would be in Pettibone's log book. I found H. J. Swett's name there. That was enough to go on. Then I found H. J. Swett himself, living obscurely— the discredited plaintiff of a million-dollar patent suit can't exactly lose himself. During the three months J. H. Sauer was dickering with Brown and Westcot to be brought to Pettibone there was no trace of J. H. Swett That was another trump card. Then I wanted his handwriting. I schemed all sorts of ways, but failed. Finally I robbed the mails." Oliver shook with merriment. "I saw him mail a letter. After he was gone I absent-mindedly mailed my own eyeglasses in that same drop-box, and then yelled bloody murder till the postman came along and opened the box for me. Then with a facility that actually alarmed me I palmed Swetts letter. There was no doubt which one it was when I saw the handwriting."

The little circle, Ballard, Parr, the District Attorney, and the Dean himself, nodded their admiration at this confession of robbery of the sacred mails.

"That brings up to the final curtain I wanted to ask H. J. Swett one question— about that tooth. He must have pulled it out extract that gold filling Then he probably had another put in in its place. How to find out stumped me. I consulted Ballard, who has the direct mind of a child— and some lawyers," said Armiston. "Ballard said: 'Put him on the stand as a material witness, and ask him.' Nothing simpler. Swett might reasonably be called as a witness, because he lost a million dollars through the Dean's expert testimony in that patent suit. It jarred Swett when he found where he was. But he had great nerve, and he carried it through until Ballard asked him about that tooth. Then you saw what happened."

The little group broke up. Dean Pettibone sat for some time with his hand shading his eyes, as he codified his thoughts. Then, "Miss Pruyn," he called, and his little secretary entered "We have quite a hiatus to fill, haven't we? One must never neglect such things."

_______________

9: The Loaded Dog

Henry Lawson

1867-1922

Joe Wilson and His Mates, 1901

DAVE REGAN, Jim Bently, and Andy Page were sinking a shaft at Stony Creek  in search of a rich gold quartz reef which was supposed to exist in the vicinity.  There is always a rich reef supposed to exist in the vicinity; the only questions are whether it is ten feet or hundreds beneath the surface, and in which direction.  They had struck some pretty solid rock, also water which kept them baling. They used the old-fashioned blasting-powder and time-fuse.

They'd make a sausage or cartridge of blasting-powder in a skin of strong calico or canvas, the mouth sewn and bound round the end of the fuse; they'd dip the cartridge in melted tallow to make it water-tight, get the drill-hole as dry as possible, drop in the cartridge with some dry dust, and wad and ram with stiff clay and broken brick.  Then they'd light the fuse and get out of the hole and wait.  The result was usually an ugly pot-hole in the bottom of the shaft and half a barrow-load of broken rock.

There was plenty of fish in the creek, fresh-water bream, cod, cat-fish, and tailers.  The party were fond of fish, and Andy and Dave of fishing. Andy would fish for three hours at a stretch if encouraged by a 'nibble' or a 'bite' now and then— say once in twenty minutes. The butcher was always willing to give meat in exchange for fish when they caught more than they could eat; but now it was winter, and these fish wouldn't bite.  However, the creek was low, just a chain of muddy water-holes, from the hole with a few bucketfuls in it to the sizable pool with an average depth of six or seven feet, and they could get fish by baling out the smaller holes or muddying up the water in the larger ones till the fish rose to the surface.

There was the cat-fish, with spikes growing out of the sides of its head, and if you got pricked you'd know it, as Dave said.  Andy took off his boots, tucked up his trousers, and went into a hole one day to stir up the mud with his feet, and he knew it.  Dave scooped one out with his hand and got pricked, and he knew it too; his arm swelled, and the pain throbbed up into his shoulder, and down into his stomach too, he said, like a toothache he had once, and kept him awake for two nights— only the toothache pain had a 'burred edge', Dave said.

Dave got an idea.

'Why not blow the fish up in the big water-hole with a cartridge?' he said. 'I'll try it.'

He thought the thing out and Andy Page worked it out.

Andy usually put Dave's theories into practice if they were practicable, or bore the blame for the failure and the chaffing of his mates if they weren't.

He made a cartridge about three times the size of those they used in the rock. Jim Bently said it was big enough to blow the bottom out of the river. The inner skin was of stout calico; Andy stuck the end of a six-foot piece of fuse well down in the powder and bound the mouth of the bag firmly to it with whipcord.  The idea was to sink the cartridge in the water with the open end of the fuse attached to a float on the surface, ready for lighting.  Andy dipped the cartridge in melted bees'-wax to make it water-tight.  'We'll have to leave it some time before we light it,' said Dave, 'to give the fish time to get over their scare when we put it in, and come nosing round again; so we'll want it well water-tight.'

Round the cartridge Andy, at Dave's suggestion, bound a strip of sail canvas— that they used for making water-bags— to increase the force of the explosion, and round that he pasted layers of stiff brown paper— on the plan of the sort of fireworks we called 'gun-crackers'.  He let the paper dry in the sun, then he sewed a covering of two thicknesses of canvas over it, and bound the thing from end to end with stout fishing-line.  Dave's schemes were elaborate, and he often worked his inventions out to nothing.

The cartridge was rigid and solid enough now— a formidable bomb; but Andy and Dave wanted to be sure.  Andy sewed on another layer of canvas, dipped the cartridge in melted tallow, twisted a length of fencing-wire round it as an afterthought, dipped it in tallow again, and stood it carefully against a tent-peg, where he'd know where to find it, and wound the fuse loosely round it.  Then he went to the camp-fire to try some potatoes which were boiling in their jackets in a billy, and to see about frying some chops for dinner.  Dave and Jim were at work in the claim that morning.

They had a big black young retriever dog— or rather an overgrown pup, a big, foolish, four-footed mate, who was always slobbering round them and lashing their legs with his heavy tail that swung round like a stock-whip. Most of his head was usually a red, idiotic, slobbering grin of appreciation of his own silliness.  He seemed to take life, the world, his two-legged mates, and his own instinct as a huge joke. He'd retrieve anything:  he carted back most of the camp rubbish that Andy threw away.  They had a cat that died in hot weather, and Andy threw it a good distance away in the scrub; and early one morning the dog found the cat, after it had been dead a week or so, and carried it back to camp, and laid it just inside the tent-flaps, where it could best make its presence known when the mates should rise and begin to sniff suspiciously in the sickly smothering atmosphere of the summer sunrise.  He used to retrieve them when they went in swimming; he'd jump in after them, and take their hands in his mouth, and try to swim out with them, and scratch their naked bodies with his paws.

They loved him for his good-heartedness and his foolishness, but when they wished to enjoy a swim they had to tie him up in camp.

He watched Andy with great interest all the morning making the cartridge, and hindered him considerably, trying to help; but about noon he went off to the claim to see how Dave and Jim were getting on, and to come home to dinner with them.  Andy saw them coming, and put a panful of mutton-chops on the fire.  Andy was cook to-day; Dave and Jim stood with their backs to the fire, as Bushmen do in all weathers, waiting till dinner should be ready. The retriever went nosing round after something he seemed to have missed.

Andy's brain still worked on the cartridge; his eye was caught by the glare of an empty kerosene-tin lying in the bushes, and it struck him that it wouldn't be a bad idea to sink the cartridge packed with clay, sand, or stones in the tin, to increase the force of the explosion.  He may have been all out, from a scientific point of view, but the notion looked all right to him. Jim Bently, by the way, wasn't interested in their 'damned silliness'.

Andy noticed an empty treacle-tin— the sort with the little tin neck or spout soldered on to the top for the convenience of pouring out the treacle— and it struck him that this would have made the best kind of cartridge-case:  he would only have had to pour in the powder, stick the fuse in through the neck, and cork and seal it with bees'-wax.  He was turning to suggest this to Dave, when Dave glanced over his shoulder to see how the chops were doing— and bolted.  He explained afterwards that he thought he heard the pan spluttering extra, and looked to see if the chops were burning. Jim Bently looked behind and bolted after Dave.  Andy stood stock-still, staring after them.

'Run, Andy! run!' they shouted back at him.  'Run!!!  Look behind you, you fool!'  Andy turned slowly and looked, and there, close behind him, was the retriever with the cartridge in his mouth— wedged into his broadest and silliest grin.  And that wasn't all.

The dog had come round the fire to Andy, and the loose end of the fuse had trailed and waggled over the burning sticks into the blaze; Andy had slit and nicked the firing end of the fuse well, and now it was hissing and spitting properly.

Andy's legs started with a jolt; his legs started before his brain did, and he made after Dave and Jim.  And the dog followed Andy.

Dave and Jim were good runners— Jim the best— for a short distance; Andy was slow and heavy, but he had the strength and the wind and could last. The dog leapt and capered round him, delighted as a dog could be to find his mates, as he thought, on for a frolic.  Dave and Jim kept shouting back, 'Don't foller us! don't foller us, you coloured fool!' but Andy kept on, no matter how they dodged.  They could never explain, any more than the dog, why they followed each other, but so they ran, Dave keeping in Jim's track in all its turnings, Andy after Dave, and the dog circling round Andy— the live fuse swishing in all directions and hissing and spluttering and stinking.  Jim yelling to Dave not to follow him, Dave shouting to Andy to go in another direction— to 'spread out', and Andy roaring at the dog to go home.

Then Andy's brain began to work, stimulated by the crisis: he tried to get a running kick at the dog, but the dog dodged; he snatched up sticks and stones and threw them at the dog and ran on again.

The retriever saw that he'd made a mistake about Andy, and left him and bounded after Dave.  Dave, who had the presence of mind to think that the fuse's time wasn't up yet, made a dive and a grab for the dog, caught him by the tail, and as he swung round snatched the cartridge out of his mouth and flung it as far as he could: the dog immediately bounded after it and retrieved it.

Dave roared and cursed at the dog, who seeing that Dave was offended, left him and went after Jim, who was well ahead.  Jim swung to a sapling and went up it like a native bear; it was a young sapling, and Jim couldn't safely get more than ten or twelve feet from the ground. The dog laid the cartridge, as carefully as if it was a kitten, at the foot of the sapling, and capered and leaped and whooped joyously round under Jim.  The big pup reckoned that this was part of the lark— he was all right now— it was Jim who was out for a spree.

The fuse sounded as if it were going a mile a minute. Jim tried to climb higher and the sapling bent and cracked. Jim fell on his feet and ran.  The dog swooped on the cartridge and followed.

It all took but a very few moments.  Jim ran to a digger's hole, about ten feet deep, and dropped down into it— landing on soft mud— and was safe.  The dog grinned sardonically down on him, over the edge, for a moment, as if he thought it would be a good lark to drop the cartridge down on Jim.

'Go away, Tommy,' said Jim feebly, 'go away.'

The dog bounded off after Dave, who was the only one in sight now; Andy had dropped behind a log, where he lay flat on his face, having suddenly remembered a picture of the Russo-Turkish war with a circle of Turks lying flat on their faces (as if they were ashamed) round a newly-arrived shell.

There was a small hotel or shanty on the creek, on the main road, not far from the claim.  Dave was desperate, the time flew much faster in his stimulated imagination than it did in reality, so he made for the shanty.  There were several casual Bushmen on the verandah and in the bar; Dave rushed into the bar, banging the door to behind him.  'My dog!' he gasped, in reply to the astonished stare of the publican, 'the blanky retriever— he's got a live cartridge in his mouth―'

The retriever, finding the front door shut against him, had bounded round and in by the back way, and now stood smiling in the doorway leading from the passage, the cartridge still in his mouth and the fuse spluttering.  They burst out of that bar. Tommy bounded first after one and then after another, for, being a young dog, he tried to make friends with everybody.

The Bushmen ran round corners, and some shut themselves in the stable. There was a new weather-board and corrugated-iron kitchen and wash-house on piles in the back-yard, with some women washing clothes inside.

Dave and the publican bundled in there and shut the door— the publican cursing Dave and calling him a crimson fool, in hurried tones, and wanting to know what the hell he came here for.

The retriever went in under the kitchen, amongst the piles, but, luckily for those inside, there was a vicious yellow mongrel cattle-dog sulking and nursing his nastiness under there— a sneaking, fighting, thieving canine, whom neighbours had tried for years to shoot or poison. Tommy saw his danger— he'd had experience from this dog— and started out and across the yard, still sticking to the cartridge. Half-way across the yard the yellow dog caught him and nipped him. Tommy dropped the cartridge, gave one terrified yell, and took to the Bush.

The yellow dog followed him to the fence and then ran back to see what he had dropped.

Nearly a dozen other dogs came from round all the corners and under the buildings— spidery, thievish, cold-blooded kangaroo-dogs, mongrel sheep- and cattle-dogs, vicious black and yellow dogs— that slip after you in the dark, nip your heels, and vanish without explaining— and yapping, yelping small fry.

They kept at a respectable distance round the nasty yellow dog, for it was dangerous to go near him when he thought he had found something which might be good for a dog to eat.  He sniffed at the cartridge twice, and was just taking a third cautious sniff when―

It was very good blasting powder— a new brand that Dave had recently got up from Sydney; and the cartridge had been excellently well made. Andy was very patient and painstaking in all he did, and nearly as handy as the average sailor with needles, twine, canvas, and rope.

Bushmen say that that kitchen jumped off its piles and on again. When the smoke and dust cleared away, the remains of the nasty yellow dog were lying against the paling fence of the yard looking as if he had been kicked into a fire by a horse and afterwards rolled in the dust under a barrow, and finally thrown against the fence from a distance.

Several saddle-horses, which had been 'hanging-up' round the verandah, were galloping wildly down the road in clouds of dust, with broken bridle-reins flying; and from a circle round the outskirts, from every point of the compass in the scrub, came the yelping of dogs. Two of them went home, to the place where they were born, thirty miles away, and reached it the same night and stayed there; it was not till towards evening that the rest came back cautiously to make inquiries.  One was trying to walk on two legs, and most of 'em looked more or less singed; and a little, singed, stumpy-tailed dog, who had been in the habit of hopping the back half of him along on one leg, had reason to be glad that he'd saved up the other leg all those years, for he needed it now.  There was one old one-eyed cattle-dog round that shanty for years afterwards, who couldn't stand the smell of a gun being cleaned.

He it was who had taken an interest, only second to that of the yellow dog, in the cartridge.  Bushmen said that it was amusing to slip up on his blind side and stick a dirty ramrod under his nose: he wouldn't wait to bring his solitary eye to bear— he'd take to the Bush and stay out all night.

For half an hour or so after the explosion there were several Bushmen round behind the stable who crouched, doubled up, against the wall, or rolled gently on the dust, trying to laugh without shrieking. There were two white women in hysterics at the house, and a half-caste rushing aimlessly round with a dipper of cold water. The publican was holding his wife tight and begging her between her squawks, to 'hold up for my sake, Mary, or I'll lam the life out of ye.'

Dave decided to apologise later on, 'when things had settled a bit,' and went back to camp.  And the dog that had done it all, 'Tommy', the great, idiotic mongrel retriever, came slobbering round Dave and lashing his legs with his tail, and trotted home after him, smiling his broadest, longest, and reddest smile of amiability, and apparently satisfied for one afternoon with the fun he'd had.

Andy chained the dog up securely, and cooked some more chops, while Dave went to help Jim out of the hole.

And most of this is why, for years afterwards, lanky, easy-going Bushmen, riding lazily past Dave's camp, would cry, in a lazy drawl and with just a hint of the nasal twang―

''El-lo, Da-a-ve!  How's the fishin' getting on, Da-a-ve?'

_________________

10: Servant of Satan

Otis Adelbert Kline

1891-1946

Strange Stories, Feb 1939

TIME IS SAID to be a great healer— a bringer of forgetfulness of pain, and tribulation, and horror. But I cannot think back to that fateful evening two years ago without a shudder of revulsion— without again feeling myself in the grip of the ancient and incredibly malignant creatures known as Elementals.

Those Elementals—  blasphemous monstrosities which orthodox science will tell you do not and cannot exist— were known to the ancients, described in their writings, depicted in their paintings and sculptures. And those of them with which I came to such horrible grips in this, our twentieth century, were restored to their immemorial and terrible power by the evil machinations of one modern man.

I felt and saw them then. I even smelled the charnel reptilian odor that emanated from their foul bodies as they materialized.

Aye, they are all around us in our daily lives. But they are unable to manifest themselves to us without human help— without living mediums from whom to suck the strength they require for their hideous and revolting materializations. God help— and God alone can help— the person who gives way to them; who lets them gain dominion over him.

I THOUGHT THAT I, Tom Carter, was the happiest man in the world that Friday afternoon, two years ago, when I locked my desk and prepared to say good-by to the gang at the office. For five years I had slaved in order to work my way up to the job of assistant general manager of the Brinkman Express Company. And I had slaved with a double purpose.

April Harris and I had fallen in love five years before when our desks adjoined in the Manhattan Business College— April, with her big violet eyes and honey-colored hair. And now at last we were to be married.

Half a dozen of the boys rode down the elevator with me, waved me off as I climbed into the cab and slammed the door. "Three Stuyvesant Place," I told the driver. "Down in the Village. Make it snappy and I'll go heavy on the tip."

He made a swift U-turn in the middle of the block that flung me back into the corner, then speeded south on Park Avenue. He knew his business and it wasn't long before we turned into the comparatively quiet Stuyvesant Place, where April's Greenwich Village apartment was located. My heart beat joyfully. Yet underneath, was there a premonition of evil? Maybe I'm reading back into it something that wasn't there— not at that moment anyway. I don't know.

And it meant nothing special to me, when, as we lurched around the corner, I saw a big shiny black limousine pull away from the curb in front of us. It roared away, a big luxurious Isotta with drawn curtains, that must have cost a small fortune. Vehicles of that sort were rare in this neighborhood.

Yet how was I to dream that this particular one had any special significance for me? Did any mental shudder come to warn me, any spinal chill? Perhaps. But if it did, I mistook it for a thrill of happiness. My mind was too full of April, and of the joy I believed we were soon to have together.

My cab stopped with an abruptness that threw me forward and knocked my hat askew. I didn't mind. I gave the driver a five spot, told him to keep the change, flung the door open, dashed across the sidewalk and up the steps. I jabbed the bell button and waited.

There was no response. I could hear the bell ringing in April's second floor apartment. I thought perhaps April was having her bath and couldn't get to the buzzer just then. A delivery boy from the corner delicatessen came out, carrying an empty box. Evidently he had just made a delivery of groceries. I recognized him.

"Hello, Bob," I said.

"Hello, Mr. Carter," he answered— and his next words, usually spoken, were like the blow of a fist: "Looking for Miss Harris? I just saw her go out with a man."

"What!" I cried. "What man! Where!"

"Never saw him before," Bob answered. "Dressed like a million bucks, but all in black. Had a big car parked out in front, too, and a chauffeur in black livery."

"But his face, Bob?" I cried, worried and perplexed. "What did he look like?"

"Like the devil," he answered amazingly. "And I'm not cussing, Mr. Carter. It's just how he looked— like one of those pictures of Meph— Meph—"

"Mephistopheles," I broke in impatiently.

"Yeah, Mr. Carter. Black hair that came down to a point in front— eyebrows slanting upward— glittering black eyes. Sort of gave me the shivers when I saw him. I couldn't imagine where Miss Harris would be going with a guy like that."

I darted past him and bounded up the stairs. Perhaps he had been mistaken— had taken some other girl for April in the dimly lit hallway.

But the door of April's apartment stood wide open. I knew she never left it that way. I entered. The place was in disorder. Her new steamer trunk— a gift from me— was closed and locked. But her two bags stood open, only partly packed. I looked into the bath room. The shower curtain was wet and still dripping. The wet marks of April's small bare feet were on the bath mat. Her negligee hung over the chair.

APRIL had left! On the eve of our wedding!

I was like a man distraught, running hither and thither about the apartment, peering here, peering there. Suddenly I stopped. My frightened eyes had glimpsed a note lying in the middle of the coffee table, held down by a tiny ash tray. It was addressed to me. Reading it, my happy world crashed about me, my visions of joy splintered into tragic grief:

Dear Tom:

By the time you read this I will be gone to where you will never see me again— gone with the man I really love. Perhaps I should have remained to face you and have it out. But on second thought, I decided that this would be the easier and kinder way.

Good-by and good luck.

April.

I was stunned— uncomprehending. I fell back upon the studio couch. A pin stuck me, and I became dumbly aware that I was sitting on a newly pressed gown to which was attached a fresh corsage of orchids— the orchids I had sent to April. The pin that held them had pricked me. Savagely, I hurled it into a corner. I spread the crumpled note on the coffee table and read it once more— to convince myself I was not dreaming. Thank God I did so!

April and I had taken secretarial courses, had both learned shorthand. I hadn't used mine for nearly three years, but the rigid training I had received in the business college had done its work well.

Now I suddenly recognized, attached to the very first word, the shorthand character for the sound "p." What could it mean? I looked at the next word and there was the character which indicated the sound "s." P. S. A message within a message! I drew an envelope from my pocket— the envelope which contained our marriage license— and rapidly transcribed the symbols on the back.

When I was done, I had the following ominous message which had been blended in terse shorthand characters with the original note:

Pasquale forcing me write this. Taking me away don't know where. Torturing me. Horrible threats. Wire noose around my neck. Suffering and deathly afraid, but thinking only of you dear. Find me quickly. His license number 126-8347 A.

His license number! The only clue. The swift picture flashed through my mind— she, sitting at her writing desk by the window— a kidnapper, resembling the Devil, strangling her and dictating what she wrote— she, seeing the waiting car outside, noting down the license number!

And Pasquale! Pasquale could only be one man! Pasquale Sarasini! My most persistent rival during my schoolboy romance with April! The description of the delivery boy fitted him perfectly. He had taken a book-keeping course, hence had not learned shorthand. I had almost forgotten him in the intervening years— had even forgotten the malignant threats he had mouthed when he came upon April and me suddenly, one day, in the empty classroom after school, and saw us in each other's arms.

April had broken with him completely the day before. He had seemed to take it calmly, hiding his chagrin and disappointment. But that afternoon, seeing the proof that she loved another, he had said through hate-whitened lips:

"I'll see that you suffer the tortures of the damned for this, April."

I had not seen Pasquale after that, nor had April, for nearly four years. But then we heard rumors. He was delving into the occult, mystifying scientists. His picture began to appear in American and British papers. His fame spread to continental Europe. At first he acted as a materialization medium, giving private seances. Later he went on the stage, producing illusions.

THEY were not illusions— I know that now.

He became famous, rich, sought after. He was billed as "Sarasini the Great." He got motion picture contracts at fabulous prices. Wealthy people patronized his private seances. They came away with amazing tales, not only of their loved ones materialized before their eyes, but of strange monsters and creatures like those depicted in ancient tombs and writings.

There was the cat-headed Bast of the ancient Egyptians, which talked to them in a mewing voice. There was the ibis-headed Thoth, scribe of the gods— hawk-headed Horus, son of Isis and Osiris. There was the Lamia of Greek legend, a serpent that became a woman and once more turned into a serpent before the eyes of its auditors, a seven-headed hydra, a Gorgon with snaky locks.

During the seances, Sarasini played an instrument of his own invention— a sort of combination piano and organ. The music was weird and uncanny, of his own composition, and he stated that it was necessary to the materialization of his creatures, which he claimed really existed in another plane. Also, there were two tall poles, surmounted by rectangular caps. It was said that these were somehow connected with the instrument, and that materializations took place only between these poles, as if some electrical force were involved, the force traveling between them as a static spark leaps the gap between the knob of a Leyden jar and a conductor brought within range.

Sarasini made enemies in his profession. One spiritualistic medium and profound student of the occult, accused him publicly of being in league with Satan. And Sarasini had coolly admitted it!

In another generation he would have been burned at the stake; the horrors that he perpetrated would have been blotted out forever. But in this so-called "enlightened" generation, when all such things are scoffed at, it only created a sensation in the press— and was duly tagged by astute columnists as a publicity stunt. My God! How far it was from a mere publicity stunt I have reason to know!

Then, at the height of his career Sarasini retired from public life, disappeared from the sight and ken of men. A year passed.

And now— and now he had suddenly to claim the vengeance he had sworn more than five years before!

All this flashed through my mind as I frantically dialed the police. Swiftly, I requested the desk sergeant to give me the name and address attached to the license number April had written down. I told him who I was— the manager of the Brinkman Express Company. We often gave employment to ex-policemen. The sergeant snapped that he would get me the information.

I didn't tell him what had happened because I felt that this was a matter requiring discreet attention rather than the brusque tactics of the police. I think I was frightened at the thought of April disappearing completely, mysteriously, should the law intervene. It seemed an age before the phone rang.

The sergeant called back a moment later— it seemed ages to me. On the back of the envelope containing our marriage license I jotted down the name he gave me— Pablo Simister. Pasquale Sarasini hadn't changed his initials, at any rate, even if he had changed his name. The address was the penthouse at an uptown number on Riverside Drive near Washington Park.

Jamming my hat down on my head, I dashed downstairs and sprinted to the nearest subway kiosk, choosing that mode of transportation as the quickest. Two minutes later I was hurtling northward on the express. It reached One Hundred and Eighty-first Street Station at last.

I got off, dashed through the turnstile and up the steps, then over to Riverside Drive. I reached the apartment building, entered the foyer.

THERE WERE four self-service elevators. The lights showed two were in service. I entered one of the others, closed the door, pressed the top button. A few moments later the cage stopped, the door opened automatically. I stepped out. A stairway led upward at my left.

I climbed it, stood on the landing, and manipulated the brass knocker. I noticed that it was shaped like the head of a Medusa, with snaky locks. The door, I observed, was of steel, but painted and paneled to resemble wood.

I heard no sound on the other side. I knocked again. Before I could release the Medusa-headed knocker, the door swung silently open. Behind it stood a man in black butler's livery— black trimmed with silver. His face was completely concealed by a black mask— a domino with a sort of veil that hung down beneath it. His head was covered by a black hood. Startled though I was, I stepped forward so as to be able to block the door with my foot and knee, and said with simulated jocularity:

"Ah! A masquerade, I see. Is Mr. Simister in? I'm an old schoolmate of his— from out of town. Thought I'd drop in and say 'hello'."

"I'm sorry, sir; Mr. Simister is not at home," he replied politely.

"If you're expecting him soon I might step in and wait."

"I'm afraid I couldn't permit that, sir," he replied. "You see the master is exceedingly busy today, and I have orders to admit no one. Perhaps tomorrow—"

He started to close the door, but I blocked it with my foot. I did more; I uncorked a left for the spot beneath that black veil where I judged the point of his jaw would be. As ill luck would have it his jaw was shorter than I thought. My knuckles only grazed it. Then, before I could recover my balance, I felt my wrist caught in a grip of steel.

"I wouldn't do that, sir," he said, calmly. "You might hurt yourself."

Desperately I jerked my wrist toward me, and as the butler was gripping it tightly, he came with it. His other hand was still on the doorknob. Before he could get it up I gave him a right uppercut. His head snapped back, and he let go of my wrist. I drove a left and right to his solar plexus, doubled him up, then a left hook to the jaw that spun him around and broke his hold on the door. He fell on his face.

Softly I closed the door, then bent over him cautiously. He might be shamming. I stripped the hood and mask from his head. He appeared to be a Latin. He was out cold— the eyes turned upward and inward.

I looked around quickly. I was in a long hallway draped to the ceiling with black velvet hangings, like a sound-proofed radio room. Not a door was visible except the one through which I had just come. And that, I saw, could be rendered invisible, also, by two drapes now drawn up on either side and caught with silver cords.

There were places where the hangings overlapped. I went to the first of these, drawing it back, saw a door, which opened inward. It was a cloak room. Swiftly, I dragged the unconscious butler inside, and as swiftly divested him of his livery. Then I removed my own clothing and put on his. I bound him with the stout silver cords which hung on either side of the doorway, and which could be used, when required, for holding back the drapes. Then I gagged and locked him in.

I found no other doors until I reached the end of the hallway. Here, double doors opened into a spacious, modernistically furnished living room. The walls, like those of the hallway, were completely concealed by black velvet hangings.

I was about to go back and take my post before the door, when the drapes at the opposite side of the room suddenly parted, and a man stepped through.

I recognized him, instantly. He was in evening clothes, and had not changed greatly since I had last seen him. There was still that diabolical expression, those uptilted brows and glittering black eyes.

"Did you get rid of our caller, Dominick?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," I replied, mimicking the voice of the butler, while my heart pounded. "He's gone, sir."

He raised a quizzical eyebrow. "Mix my cocktail," he ordered.

I had previously noted the liquor cabinet standing against the drapes at my left— an ornate thing of ebony and silver. I recalled that his favorite cocktail during our school days had been a Martini, with an extra dash of orange bitters, but without the olive. Strange to say, he, a Latin, detested olives, and could not even stand food cooked in olive oil. I mixed the drink.

I thought I was getting away with it, but—

"Get 'em up, Carter," his voice said behind me, and I felt something hard prodding my back.

"Clever," he drawled. "Damn' clever. You almost got away with it. But it so happens that since last year, I've been allergic to gin. Get your hands together over your head."

Perforce I obeyed, and he snapped on a pair of handcuffs. Then he stripped off the hood and mask and ordered me to turn around.

"You haven't changed much, Carter," he said. "Still built like a battleship, with a mug like the Great Stone Face. I don't see how the devil you traced me here so quickly. But it doesn't matter, now. All that matters is that you're here. Sit down."

I seated myself in a black-upholstered chair. He sat down on the davenport, and slipped the automatic back into his shoulder holster.

"You've come for April, of course," he said.

"Clever of you to guess it," I answered him.

"What have you done with Dominick? Did you kill him?"

"Knocked him cold and tied him up."

"So? Well, he can stay that way for awhile. Perhaps it will teach him not to be so careless again. I suppose you realize that you're in a tight spot— that I can kill you and get away with it. No one will ever trace you here."

"That's where you're wrong," I lied as calmly as I could. "The police not only know I'm here. They actually gave me your address. If you'll release April at once— "

"Just a moment, Carter. Not so fast." He raised a slim white hand. "April has gone to a place where even I can't bring her back— permanently. I can only bring her temporarily— from the different plane in which she now resides."

I HALF ROSE from my chair, straining at my shackles, longing to reach his throat. "You mean you've killed her?"

He jerked the automatic from the holster. "Back into your seat, Carter. That's better." He laid the gun on the table top.

"No, I haven't killed her. I have transformed her. She is in a different and superior plane of existence. I have powers of which you do not dream, Carter. People have accused me of being in league with the devil. It is true.

"Aye. Satan is my master. He has made me what I am. I was baptized— but not by a priest of the church. When the time came for my baptism, both of my parents were ill— a flu epidemic. My nurse, an Arab girl, was a Yezidi— a secret worshiper of Satan. They call him Malik Taus in their language, because they fear to pronounce his real name— Shaitan.

"She took me to her own priest— deceived my parents— and I was baptized into the cult of the Yezidis. Later, I sat at the feet of their priest— Shaykh Ibrahim— drank in his teachings, absorbed his knowledge, mastered the esoteric truths that the worshipers themselves do not know, truth that is reserved for adepts alone.

"When I had learned all that the Shaykh could teach me, I went on by myself. Delved into the ancient writings of all peoples— athirst for greater knowledge. After many trials and failures, I learned how to summon the Master himself. He came, and made a pact with me— dictating the terms, to which I acceded. My soul in exchange for a temporal power such as no man has ever before enjoyed. He summoned seven of his creatures to be my servants— to work my will.

"Enough of that. April is here in this room— now— but you cannot see her. Perhaps you can see her a little if she makes a supreme effort."

HE TURNED his glittering eyes to a point beside my chair.

"April, show yourself," he commanded.

Suddenly my left side felt cold— as if all of the heat had been drawn out of it. There was a cold breeze blowing against my face, as from an underground burial vault suddenly opened up. And there came to my nostrils a dank, musty, reptilian odor— incredibly foul.

Horror of horrors! A tiny whirlpool of gray mist began forming on the floor before my eyes. It enlarged until it was five feet tall. Streamers of mist, like arms, extended from it. Two black orifices formed in the top, not solid, but like the hollow eye-sockets of a skull.

"The great Sarisini," I mocked, even though mystic fingers of fear clutched my heart, "pulling his magic tricks! Do you mean to tell me that this apparition is April? Come again."

No, I did not believe my words. I knew there was some alien and unutterably evil presence in the room. Not April. No, not April. I could not conceive of April becoming such a creature. But it was something alive, and sinister, and incredibly loathsome.

As I spoke, the apparition suddenly disappeared. The cold breeze stopped. Once more my left side was at normal temperature. But the nauseous odor was still in my nostrils— I could still feel the invisible presence of the thing from which it had emanated.

"So you mock me— scoff at my powers," Sarisini cried. "Wait. I can't bring her back completely here, but I can with the proper equipment. You wait here. I'll show you April— let you talk with her— for only a short time. Don't try any more tricks. You are absolutely helpless— in my power."

He rose and returned the automatic to its holster. Then he said: "Watch him, my beauties," and turning on his heel, parted the black drapes and disappeared.

His last order was apparently addressed to empty air. But the air was not empty! I could feel sinister presences around me, pressing against me, watching me with hollow, cavernous eyes.

I tried to tell myself that I was the victim of a delusion. Reason came to my aid. Sarasini had forgotten one thing— my profession. Every employee and executive of the Brinkman Express Company had a pistol permit, and carried a gun when on duty. I'd forgotten to take mine off when I left the office. It was still in my hip pocket, supported by a leather holster attached to my belt, and not noticeable under the butler's coat. I moved my manacled hands around, and found that I could easily reach it with my right hand.

I wasn't yet ready to draw, however. Instead, I stood up. Then it happened. I was about to walk silently toward the opening through which the magician had disappeared, when a misty spiral shape suddenly materialized on each side of me. Again I felt the cold. In an instant, my muscles grew numb— all the strength and heat oozed out of them as though sucked. I slumped stiffly back into the chair. Instantly, the two wraiths dissolved and disappeared. Once more I grew warm, got back the use of my muscles.

I remembered Sarasini's seemingly directionless command just before he had left the room— "Watch him, my beauties." These, then, were his "beauties"— these horrid wraiths, these shapes of writhing mist, that had sucked the strength from me and then given it back, that had frozen my blood and then allowed it to grow warm again. Like the Gorgons of Greek mythology, which had supposedly had the power to turn men to stone, so these shapes had given me the promise and the threat of the same power!

Could it be? Could it be that the terrible sisters, Stheno, Euryale and Medusa had actually existed? Could it be that I was now held prisoner by similar beings?

The black drapes in front of me parted once more. Sarasini appeared. Gone were his immaculate evening clothes. In their place he wore the tight-fitting scarlet costume of Mephistopheles. The costume suited his diabolical features far better than dinner clothes.

"Release him now, my pets," he said, again apparently speaking to empty air. Then he addressed me. "Come ahead, Carter."

He held back the drape while I walked through into the next room, my hands manacled before me.

I had seen pictures of the apparatus he used on the stage, and it was now duplicated in this room, which was a small auditorium with about two dozen chairs that faced the stage.

"Take a seat in the front row, Carter," he ordered.

I did so, and he walked to the keyboard of the strange instrument he had used so often in his public performances.

"Before I begin," he said, "I'll make a deal with you. You are completely in my power, yet I have no particular reason for killing you— yet. You hate me, but so do many others I have spared. You have never wronged me. April did that. She is the one I hate, and she is paying the penalty. If I convince you that April has passed to another plane where neither you nor any other human being can reach her, will you agree to go away peaceably, and say nothing to anyone about what you have seen?"

"I'll make no compact with you," I answered.

"I'll convince you anyhow," he said coldly. "Then, perhaps, you'll change your mind. If you don't— it will be just too bad for you."

His hands pressed the keys. A peculiar wailing sound arose. It could not be called music. Not harmony, not melody, but a hideous cacophony of sound that grated on my ears, caused icy shivers to run up and down my spine, and set my teeth on edge.

It grew louder, rising and falling in waves of horrific discord. At the same time I suddenly became aware of another sound— a noise like the crackling of an electric spark between the two upright posts with their strange, rectangular caps.

Once again I saw a misty spiral forming. But this time it swiftly took human form. A halo of light gradually grew brighter about the head as it gained solidity. Within this halo I saw the formation of writhing tentacles.

The human figure became a lovely girl, scantily clad, holding a sword in her hand.

I cried out. She had the form and features of April! But her hair! Good God, her hair! A writhing mass of hissing snakes, that snapped and fought among themselves, coiling and uncoiling and darting their forked tongues from their scaly mouths!

The wailing chorus died down to a soft undertone.

The materialized, Gorgon-headed creature spoke. The voice was the voice of April!

"Go back, Tom," it said. "Go back and forget. You were foolish to follow me here. You should have heeded my letter. I am now an entirely different entity, living in a different plane. The old April whom you knew is gone— gone forever— gone beyond your reach."

The head shook, and the serpents that were the hair of it, increased their hissing and writhing.

"Would you want to take me in your arms, now, with these?" the voice asked, and her free hand pointed to the reptilian crown.

"April! April!" I cried. "I'd take you in my arms in spite of hell!"

"Sit down, you fool," said Sarasini. "Her touch, now, would mean instant death to you— a horrible, agonizing death. She is beyond your reach— forever. Show him, April— show him that you are no longer human— that you have powers that are superhuman."

Thrice the girl whirled the sword in a shimmering arc above her head. Then, with the fourth swing she brought it lower in a back-handed motion. The keen blade passed beneath her chin, severing her head from her body! With her other hand she caught the toppling head and held it aloft!

The snakes continued to writhe and hiss in the aura of light surrounding the severed head. There was no blood on the sword blade, or the cut edges of the neck. The closed eyes opened. The lips spoke.

"You see, Tom? Could any human being do this and live? Are you satisfied?"

My words, my heart, strangled in my throat. "Your message— " I choked.

"I meant it— every word," replied that incredible head. "I mean it now when I say: Leave me. Forget that I ever existed."

Then I was to learn that love could be stronger than death, than horror. My love for the April that was, fought with my horror at the April I saw. I wanted her, the old April. This horrible materialization of some hell-spawned creature that was not the girl I loved, was, and forever would be, beyond my ken. But the old April seemed to send a call into my heart— the April who had written me that secret appeal of which this creature was unaware. I whipped my gun from my pocket at last, and stood up, aiming it at Sarasini's heart.

"Stick 'em up, or by God I'll drill you," I cried.

He raised his hands from the keys of the instrument as I advanced to a place beside the apparition. The wailing ceased. Then— horror of horrors— the thing beside me hurled its severed head, with its mass of squirming, hissing snakes, full in my face. I lurched back, flinging the revolting thing from me. It had a slimy reptilian feel and smell.

As it struck the floor, the sword in the hand of the headless figure swept down, striking the gun from my hand. Sarasini whipped his automatic from his shoulder holster and fired, just as I stooped to retrieve my gun. His bullet passed over my back. Before he could fire again I shot without aiming— merely elevating the muzzle of the gun with the butt resting on the floor.

I shot to kill, but miscalculated. The bullet caught him in the groin. He doubled up with a shriek of anguish, and fell on his face— the automatic clattering from his hand.

I retrieved it. As I stood erect I saw the Gorgon apparition dissolving— turning back into a mist. The head was going through the same process. Its writhing, snaky locks became tentacles of gray mist. Then these too were withdrawn into a cloud, which moved toward the platform and joined the larger cloud that had been the body. Quickly, the whole dissolved to nothingness.

Sarasini was groaning weakly on the floor, his knees drawn up nearly to his chin, his blood staining the crimson suit a darker red as it welled from the bullet wound.

"At him, my pets," he moaned. "Freeze him. Suck the life from him."

Funnels of mist swirled all about me. There were six of them, clutching at me with their wraithlike tentacles, glaring at me with their hollow eyes. I felt as if I had suddenly been deprived of all bodily heat and strength. Frantically I fought them— fought them with every nerve and muscle in my body.

Gradually, the wraiths dissolved. The warmth returned to my body. Suddenly I knew! By wounding their master I had weakened their power!

Sarasini was groaning and cursing. There was froth on his lips. The fire was dying into embers in his eyes. Suddenly they widened with fear. And as suddenly, I saw why. Six funnel-shaped wraiths descended upon him— the apex of each touched his body.

"Back, my beauties," he groaned. "Away from me, my pets. You are attacking me— your friend and master."

But the things fastened themselves to his body like anemones growing on a submarine stone. His groans and struggles lessened. He shuddered, stiffened, lay still— his eyes began to glaze. But still the wraiths clung to him, each a good six feet tall, and all undulating lightly in the air as undersea plants move in the water.

Sarasini was on the point of death— I could see that. The life force was being sucked from him by these creatures of his that had turned on their master. But suddenly he rallied, mustered his strength. And it was now that he turned to his Master for succor.

"Shaitan! Satanas! Beelzebub! Great Lord of Darkness! Emperor of Evil! They have turned on me! I die! Save me, Master!"

I heard at that instant the most hideous sound that has ever fallen on human ears. I could not tell whence it came— it seemed to echo from all points of the compass, to come from everywhere and yet from nowhere in the room— it seemed to my ears to fill the whole world, inhuman, gloating cacodemoniacal cachinnations that resembled a cosmic mirthless laughter.

At that sound hope faded from the glazing eyes of Sarasini. Yet it flickered faintly once more, as he turned his head desperately to me.

"Carter! Help me! Drive them off! If you do, I'll help you to rescue April! I swear it, Carter! My Master has deserted me! He is greedy to claim my soul— the forfeit I promised him—"

I reacted automatically to that cry for help. I emptied my gun into the tenebrous obscenities that were leeching his life away.

"Not that, Carter!" he cried. "Bullets cannot harm them! They are immune to mortal weapons! You saw what one did with the sword. They fear only goodness, and the symbols of goodness— the sacred, symbols of the religions that worship God, the fountainhead of all good. The great seal of Solomon Baalshem, Lord of the Name; the six-pointed star inscribed with the Shem Hamphorash, Ineffable Name; the Cross— the crucifix! It is the simplest. Make a crucifix— quickly— of anything!"

I took the pencil from my pocket, broke it into two unequal pieces, lashed it in the form of a crucifix with a strip torn from my handkerchief.

"Touch my forehead with the point of the cross," Sarasini gasped. "Say: 'Anathema maranatha'."

I did as he bade me. The six undulating things that clung to him disappeared before my eyes.

I mopped Sarasini's face with my torn handkerchief.

"Brandy, Carter," he panted. "I need strength— to carry out my promise to you— before I redeem my pledge to Satan."

I ran into the other room, brought back the brandy bottle and glass. Then I poured a stiff three fingers and supported his head while he drank it.

He sighed, and the color came back to his face, the glaze receded from his eyes.

"April is in the next room," he said, "in a coma— possessed by one of my seven Elementals. That's why there were only six in here. Take the cross and the brandy— you'll need both— and do with her as you did with me. Here, take my keys. First, let me unlock your handcuffs."

As the handcuffs fell from my wrists, he selected the key to the door, and pressed it into my hand.

God be thanked, I found April, half reclining on a chaise longue in a luxuriously furnished bedroom. She was in what I at first took to be a drugged sleep. But her eyes were staring beneath her half closed lids.

Lightly I tapped her on the forehead with the crucifix and repeated the words: "Anathema maranatha."

A gray, funnel-shaped wisp started up from the place I had touched. With incredible rapidity it grew, elongated. Then it detached itself, and, whirling away like a miniature waterspout, disappeared beyond the black curtains in the doorway.

And dear April opened her eyes, smiled up at me under the fringe of her long lashes. She held up her arms, and as I bent over her they went around my neck. Our lips met— and clung.

Presently, I asked: "Can you walk, dear, or shall I carry you?"

"I can walk— in a minute or so," she replied.

I poured her a sip of brandy. Strengthened, she went with me into the next room.

Sarasini was propped up on one elbow. He asked for another drink of brandy and I poured it for him. He took it at a gulp.

"My minutes are numbered," he said in a low, sad voice. "When my life has ebbed away my Master will claim the soul which I have sold to him. You wronged me once, April, and I have hated you for it— hated you through the years. But you have suffered and paid— and the debt is wiped out.

"As death approaches, a new understanding comes to me. I have a new, and greater hate. My Elementals, which derived their strength from me and from the machine which I created for them under the direction of my Master, turned against me.

"I suspected that some day they might do so. I controlled them, yet I could feel that they were watching and waiting for the chance to turn on me. I was like an animal trainer in a cage of wild beasts, not knowing when or how I would be attacked."

He paused, asked for a cigarette. I lighted one for him.

"They brought me power and wealth," he went on, "and now they have brought me death. I could have survived your bullet, had it not been for their attack on me. I hate them. With your help, I'll break their power forever— the power I gave them.

"I have the knowledge— you the strength. Look in the room behind the instrument board— then do as I bid you. There you will find seven girls, connected with the instrument. I abducted them, one by one, hypnotized them, and turned them into mediums.

"Their bodies are the dwellings of my Elementals— their earthly homes. And they are not only the source of their power, but supply the mediumistic force which— amplified by my machine— make it possible for one Elemental at a time to materialize solidly between its poles, in almost any desired form. One of their favorite forms is one of the Gorgon, as you have seen.

"My time is short and I am going fast. Release those girls from the possession of the Elementals as you released April. They have suffered, and are suffering. I had intended to put April in the place of one who will soon die. But, through the power and mercy of the symbol in your hand, they will forget, even as she has forgotten, the agonies they now suffer. Disconnect them from the machine. Do this quickly. Then return to me."

April and I went into the room behind the fiendish instrument that was the product of Sarasini's perverted and devil-directed brain. There we saw seven pedestals, and on each a beautiful young girl, covered only with a scarlet, diaphanous drape. A leather band passed around the head of each, clamping an electrode to each temple. These electrodes were connected by wires to the instrument on which Sarasini had played his ugly discords.

"Give me the crucifix," said April.

I handed it to her, and while she touched, one by one, the possessed girls, I removed the electrodes from their heads.

Leaving April to care for them, I returned to the instrument room. Sarasini was now lying on his back, breathing stertorously. The death rattle was in his throat.

"Smash it," he whispered hoarsely. "Destroy the machine! Break it to bits!"

I picked up the stool and smashed that hell-spawned instrument until it was unrecognizable. I ripped all of the wires loose, and broke the connection between the smashed instrument and the two poles.

THERE ISN'T much more to tell.

I was not accused of murder because the evidence showed I had come to rescue April, and had been attacked. Dominick got a prison term for kidnaping, as an accessory. And we were forced to postpone our honeymoon until after his trial.

Then we decided not to go to Europe as we had originally intended. Instead, we took a cottage in Maine. Great stuff, that Maine air. Now there are two Aprils in my home. I'm back on the job, working like a beaver to save enough for the college education of April the Second.

But I have not forgotten the writhing shapes, the charnel reptilian smells. I shall carry the memory of them to my grave.

_____________________

11: Silver Jemmy

Stephen Vincent Benét

1898-1943

Cosmpolitan, Feb 1936

IT IS Hector Delavigne, speaking to his sons, in the old house in New Orleans:

When they raised the United States flag for the first time in our square, on that cool day of December many years ago, Jules Passecrainte turned to the rest of us. We were a dozen or so in that curtained rcom—all young, all hotheaded, and all of the best blood of New Orleans. And I still remember the bitter smile on Jules Passecrainte's face.

"Well, gentlemen," he said, "the Yankee invaders have done it. They have bought us like a basket of grapes in the market. Now, let us see how long they will keep that flag of theirs flying. Stripes and stars," he said reflectively. "A little gaudy, I fear, for our Louisiana taste."

I had never liked Jules Passecrainte. If he found the Stars and Stripes too gaudy for his taste, I had always found him a trifle too exquisite for mine. But when I went to the window and looked out and saw the new flag, I too felt sick at heart and angry.

We Delavignes had been long in Louisiana— we believed in the old royal France— not the France of the Corsican corporal, Napoleon Bonaparte, as it was in that year of 1803.

And to tell the truth, we were somewhat weary of our Louisiana's being passed from France to Spain and then back to France again, like a counter in the card game of Europe. But belong to the United States? In our wildest dreams we had never wished for that.

And yet, there was the flag and the rough-bearded men beneath it. Mr. Jefferson had bought us for fifteen million dollars— the fact was accomplished. I stared at the flag and the men, and something burned in my breast. New Orleans had been a proud city. I let the curtain fall.

"Gentlemen," I said, "Jules is right. They have bought us. But shall they keep us?" And in a moment they were all buzzing around me like bees.

You do not remember that time, my sons— it was years before you were born. But it is the reason I have called you about me tonight. For that was my first sight of the United States of America. And now you say that the new year the year 1860— will see the end of those United States. And for a long time I have listened and held my peace. You are my good children— you must act as you see fit— I do not wish to interfere in your lives. But I, too, once was young— and I, too, once stood in the very center of such a storm as the one you see rising now—I, Hector Gustave Toutant Delavigne, of some repute in this city.

It is the first time you have known them—the cries and the wild voices, the prophets of calamity. And yet they come not once in the life of a nation but many times. Your sons in their turn will know them, and their sons also.

Now, all over the land, there is discontent and dispute— and Washington boils and sputters as it did in my youth.

And elsewhere, in North and South, there are the cries of the would-be men of destiny— the men who would have their way or wreck the great ship. But those cries are newer to you than they are to me. For once, in the youth I speak of, I dealt with a man named Aaron Burr at Blennerhassett's Island. And I still remember the Irish squire, Blennerhassett, and his fantastic house— and the old man called Silver Jemmy who had the step of the wilderness. And how it all came about because of a girl with gray eyes.

Yes, in the end it all came about because of her. But it began with the scene I speak of— when a hotheaded boy called Hector Delavigne looked at the Stars and Stripes of the United States in the square of his city and wished for a wind to blow it down. I can see him swearing with his friends to rid Louisiana of the invader, and I smile a little ruefully as I see him. Although I must say, to his credit, he had a few grains of common sense.

"Let us form a secret committee!" said Victor Claretie, and that was passed by acclamation.

"Let us call ourselves the Friends of Glory— les Amis de la Gloire!" said young Servadac de la Haye, in his squeaky voice, and that was passed also.

"Death to this Monsieur Jefferson!" cried Cagnoul de Poulbois. "Vive le roi! We shall make a New France in the Yankee invader's teeth! Let the Corsican usurper rule the old France if he chooses! We will bring our king, Louis XVIII, over here from his exile and crown him king of all Louisiana! And then we will conquer Mexico and—"

Well, that was all very well, and I heartily agreed. Nor did it seem in any way impossible— it was a time of youth and the making of new nations and the astounding acts of young men; a time when innkeepers' sons, like Murat, put on crowns. And why should we not do likewise? I thought. Perhaps I was overconfident. But they had just made me the chief of the Friends of Glory for my fine speeches. I did not yet realize that one is never made head of anything without a price to be paid.

"Excellent, my friends, excellent," I said. "I honor your sentiments; I honor your love for Louisiana. Yes, we will do all that. But first of all, the cool head— the long view. After all, as yet we know little of these Americ— these Yankees."

"Do we not?" said Jules Passecrainte scornfully. "The hard-case skippers and bucko mates of New England? The sweepings of the frontier who float down our river in their flatboats to drink themselves drunk in our taverns? My faith— I think we know them!" He started to give an excellent imitation of a whining New England parson. But I was not pleased.

"Monsieur Passecrainte is very witty," I said, "but this is a serious matter. After all, they are a nation. They have, even," and I permitted a slight smile to drift over my features, "a capital called Washington, where the pigs run wild in the streets."

"Down with Washington!" howled Cagnoul de Poulbois. "And down with its pigs!"

"Precisely," I said. 'Nevertheless, Brag is a good dog but Holdfast better. And before you engage your adversary— it is well to try out his sword."

"What do you mean?" asked Jules Passecrainte.

"This," I said, "that one of us— one, perhaps, who knows the great world," and I smiled again a trifle deprecatingly, "should journey North to— er— examine this preposterous United States and its rulers before we strike. Many tell us that, even now, it is ready to fall apart. If this is true, it but makes our task easier. But only fools strike in the dark. We must ripen our plans."

"Is it our honored chief's suggestion," said Jules Passecrainte, "that one of us should go North as a spy?"

"I think you will not use that word to a Delavigne, Monsieur Passecrainte," I said. "A spy? No. A conspirator? Well—"

But there my voice was drowned out by their shout of acclaim. It gave me a thrill, that shout— I am ready to admit it. But after all, I thought soberly, whom else could they have chosen?

"It is then agreed," I said, "that your chief is to journey North. To examine the— er— relations between the United States and Louisiana. And perhaps," I added softly, "to enlist in a good cause such notable persons as may be well disposed to it. For example, I hear of a person named Aaron Burr."

And here, my sons, I must break off the thread once more. For there are certain men whom, for good or evil, one does not easily forget. I judge there are such men now. I have heard much of Mr. Rhett and Mr. Yancey— of Mr. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and this Abraham Lincoln who comes from IIlinois. I have heard Mr. Davis speak, and he speaks very well; Mr. Lincoln has been unfavorably described to me, yet I think he must have powers. But few men are like Aaron Burr— and perhaps it is as well that they are not.

A little man with witchery in his glance and dark, dark hazel eyes. His nose was a trifle skewed to the right, though you did not notice it unless you viewed him closely, and he had the lips of a boy. He could have great dignity, great merriment and great courage. He had boundless ambition—at the time I speak of, it had led him to the Vice Presidency and he had missed the greater prize only by a hair.

Oh, yes, his ambition destroyed him, and his later shifts were pitiful. But when I saw him first, though the stain of Hamilton's death and the outcry after it lay upon him, and he was nearing fifty, he still had the air of a man of destiny.

And I saw him and dealt with him as you shall hear— I, Hector Delavigne, conspirator and chief of the Friends of Glory. It was as I said— I did not go to Washington as a spy, and I tried to keep an open mind. But I realized from the first what some of the Friends did not realize— that if we were to succeed in pitting ourselves against the United States we must find someone to lead us.

So I heard Aaron Burr make his last Speech to the Senate— the speech at which even his enemies wept. And I had one or two small conversations with him. Then he left for the West, and I had news of him later, living like some sort of petty king on Blennerhassett's Island in the Ohio and meditating great acts.

I was drawn to him— greatly drawn. But I was also a conscientious conspirator. I intended to perform my task with a thoroughness, if it took me months in the North. And if, after careful examination, it should even seem best for us of Louisiana to accept this Yankee Republic, I meant to tell my committee so. But the more I saw of Washington, the less possible that seemed.

"Figure to yourself," I wrote my committee, in cipher, "a raw, muddy city of impossible distances, where the pigs run down the main streets and the Senators are hard to distinguish from the pigs. In the ramshackle boarding houses and taverns of this preposterous capital live the delegates of the great Republic. They refresh themselves continually with tobacco juice and oratory.

"There is neither opera nor court; there is neither pomp nor splendor. The inhabitants spend their time erecting vast schemes for the future and are entirely neglectful of the aristocratic graces. At the head of this government sits a charming madman, Mr. Thomas Jefferson. I interviewed him but yesterday and— I do not say it in arrogance— I was by far the more correctly dressed.

"In certain respects, no doubt, he is a man of some intelligence— he has, for example, designed the plans of his own house and has also invented a whirling chair of which he is very proud. He wears yarn stockings, and though he speaks excellent French, his dress is not of the tidiest. He talked to me for some time of his belief in 'the common man' and 'democracy'— beliefs which we know to be both subversive and impossible of realization. It is obvious that he has been a good deal tainted by the detestable radical doctrines of the French Revolution.

"However, not having expected much from him, I was not greatly disappointed. In any case, his influence is rapidly waning and his doctrine of 'the common man' has roused much resentment among the better educated. It seems likely that he will be the last President of this present confederation—and that the nation will then either fall apart of its own weight or give rise to some dictator."

I put that down, for that is what I wrote. And in writing it, I forgot the big brow and the singular searching eyes. But I could not imagine a man of destiny in yarn stockings. And I would have been off already to seek Aaron Burr on his fantastic island, had it not been for one small matter.

There was a young lady in Washington named Miss Sarah Comfort—a Bostonnaise, with the grave gray eyes of Minerva and the white throat of a swan. We had found the quick liking of youth that makes little of South or North. So, after writing my report to my committee, I went to her for solace— she had admitted that conversation with me always amused her. And within ten minutes we were quarreling.

It was nothing, I give you my word. Perhaps I was a little disappointed, a little angry with my months in Washington. Perhaps I felt queerly hurt, in some odd way, that this new Republic lacked the glitter of the elder nations. But I was quite cool; I did not even raise my voice. I merely expounded to her, as I thought logically, the faults and imperfections of her nation as I had noted them. As she listened an adorable crimson mounted to her cheeks— I could see that I was impressing her. At the end I paused for breath— I had, I think, been pointing out the advisability of a speedy reunion of the Northern States with England.

"And you, my charming Miss Sarah," I ended, :"what is your advice?"

"I can give you only one piece of advice, Mr. Delavigne," she said, and her eyes were no longer their usual gray— like a dove's feathers— but gray as Boston ice. "It is that you pray to Providence to make you less of a puppy. Though the task," she added thoughtfully, "will be a difficult one."

I stood before her thunderstruck. "I do not understand," I said. "I have wounded your feelings?"

"You have not wounded my feelings," she said. "You have insulted my country."

"your country?" I said. "But you are Bostonnaise as I am Louisianan. You have nothing to do with this raw, dreary city of pigs and mud and—"

"Boston is a city in the United States of America," she said, and there was an accent in her voice I had never heard before, "though some people mightn't admit it. We had a tea party there, once. Perhaps Mr. Delavigne has heard of that."

"I do not understand," I said. "Tea party? I was talking about this Jefferson— and only yesterday you yourself said—"

"Mr. Jefferson is a French Revolutionary who is destroying our Constitution, and I will never forgive his treatment of Mr. Adams," she said in one breath. "But I will not have the President of the United States insulted by foreigners in my father's house."

"Foreigners?" I said, and my voice rose. "You buy us for fifteen million dollars, and then you call us foreigners? There were Delavignes driving their coaches in Nouvelle-Orléans when Boston was a nest of unsuccessful smugglers."

"Do not crack your coachman's whip at me, Mr. Delavigne!" she said, and curtsied mockingly. "I call you a foreigner because you are one. For you see what foreigners see of this country, and no more. And what you do not understand, you bark at, only. Oh, I am sorry I ever talked to you, Mr. Dela- vigne. Go back to your fine safe Europe with its queens and kings— go to your friend, Aaron Burr! But do not come back to this house till you can come as a citizen of the United States."

"And what, may I ask," I said, "has Miss Comfort against Colonel Burr?"

"Only that there is blood on his hands," she said.

"All men of honor fight duels at need."

"Is it a duel when one man does not fire?" she asked. "Ah, no, Mr. Delavigne— our conversations are ended. If you cannot see the difference— well, no matter. It is not only a great man's blood that I hold against Colonel Burr. But you claim him as friend. And I repeat my words."

"Very well," I said. "I accept them. I shall not return to this house till I return as a citizen of the United States or until there is no longer any United States at all. I bid you a very good morning, madam."

I made a very handsome exit, if I say so myself, but my heart pained me in spite of it. It is difficult to control all one's feelings, in youth.

Then I went back to my lodgings, tore open my report and added one line below my signature: "I am off to our man of destiny." And if, I thought bitterly, resealing it, I were to be devoured bears on my way to find Aaron Burr, T hoped that a full report of that painful event would reach Miss Sarah Comfort's ears and burn them. Once or twice I had dreamed of her walking in my mother's garden.

It gave me time to reflect, that journey to the Ohio. Over roads of a badness incredible, it was— and the food in the taverns burnt grease— and yet, a beautiful country. I had not realized how fine a country could be that was not Louisiana.

To Pittsburgh first I went, and then down the river by boat. The rough tall men who came down the Mississippi in flatboats seemed out of place in our pleasant New Orleans— they did not seem out of place on their Own wilderness streams. There was no Vieux Carré in Pittsburgh but there were other things. Everywhere I went, I felt a swarming, a driving. The axes were in the forest; something was being made.

It seemed to me, at moments, a pity that the attempt must fail; that this wide, adventurous land must split apart into warring little states like Europe. Then I would remind myself sternly that I was a conspirator and working for the good of Louisiana. Also, I would think of Miss Sarah Comfort's eyes.

But when I ran Colonel Burr to earth on Blennerhassett's Island— I felt like a real conspirator, then. I had had some talk with him in Washington— and when he said to me graciously, "I am pleased to see you, Delavigne," I felt an accolade. And the fantastic island was a perfect setting for his dark, dubious grace.

Harman Blennerhassett had spent forty thousand dollars on the house alone, like the odd fish he was— and he lived there in his Irish squire's fashion, dabbling in astronomy, chemistry and botany. There were painted rooms in the house and a library of books, and Mrs. Blennerhassett (she had been her husband's own niece, by the way) would sing to us after supper while we looked out upon the fan-shaped garden. All this where there had been Indians but a short while before. Oh, yes, it was a place to dream of incredible conquests! After the rawness of Washington, it soothed me to the soul.

Nevertheless, I proceeded cautiously. I was angry with Miss Sarah Comfort, but I was not quite an imbecile— and I did not intend to commit my friends or myself till I was sure of my man. So we talked together— Colonel Burr and I— and as we talked, I watched the projects turn in that restless brain. The Western States were to be split from the Union and a new nation founded; or, again, there might be a new conquest of Mexico; or, again...

The projects appeared and vanished like golden cities of legend, never quite clearly seen. But always there was a web and the trembling of the web.

Till I, too, began to dream dreams. Oh, there was honey in that man's voice, and there were times when I saw myself— well, at least the Marshal of a New France. For if Burr were willing to deal with a mere British minister, why would he not be willing to deal with an exiled Louis?

Mr. Jefferson, with his yarn stockings and his interest in architecture, seemed a faintly ridiculous figure, very far away. We would have a new flag— stars quartered with fleur-de-lys. And the Duc de Nouvelle-Orléans, perhaps, would make a gracious and forgiving speech to an astonished Miss Sarah Comfort.

It was a wrong dream and I know it now. And God knows where it would have led me, if it had not been for Silver Jemmy. I had seen him about the place half a dozen times— a shy, neat old man who had a little workshop near the stables and seemed to be something between a servant and a pensioner. I did not bother my head much about him, till one day I happened to save a squirrel he had tamed from a lout of a gardener's boy who was plaguing it.

"My kindest thanks, young sir," he said with a quaint dignity, as he smoothed the beast's fur. "There, Pug, you are safe now! Thank the young gentleman, Pug. And thank his young lady, also."

"My young lady?" I said, a little amused. "But I have no young lady."

He stared at me with oddly disquieting eyes. "Oh, yes, you have," he said gently. "Though she is far from you now, and that is why you are here. But be careful of wandering too far. One gets lost in the wilderness."

"Are you telling my fortune?" I said, but with less amusement, for his words had brought Miss Sarah Comfort disquietingly before me.

He shook his head quickly. "Oh, no," he said. "Silver Jemmy does not tell fortunes. But one knows by the note in the voice and the glint in the eye." He took my hand and dropped it. "A good hand," he said. "An honest hand. Keep it for the young lady. Do not let it dabble in dark waters."

"Why, what dark waters are here except the waters of the Ohio?" I said gently; for now, of course, I saw what was the matter with him— and felt sorry.

He shook his head. "Dark and deep," he said; "dark and deep. Oh, Silver Jemmy knows! He did not know why he was sent here, before, but now he knows. A kind hand, a good hand— it must go back to the young lady. Go back without darkness upon it. Silver Jemmy was deep in the woods when the whisper first came to him— he did not wish to come back— but the whisper was right. There must be no more hands in dark waters. Good morning, young sir, and thank you."

I watched him go away swiftly, with the squirrel on his shoulder, and though I could make nothing of his rigmarole, I felt oddly discomposed. It occurred to me, not for the first time, what persons like Miss Sarah Comfort might think of my exploit, even if I succeeded in it. For a moment I felt like going into the house and washing my hands. Then Mr. Blennerhassett came up with Aaron Burr.

"I hope Silver Jemmy has not been bothering you," he said in his bluff way. "He is rather a privileged character— quite harmless, but one of your wanderers of the rivers. He can do any sort of work in metal— and, oddly enough, he must have been a fine silversmith in his time. He has made some excellent pieces for me— astonishing, really— but he will never take aught but food and lodging for his work, and when the fit comes on him, he slips away to the woods again.

"One never knows how long he will stay under roof. But. he is quite safe in the woods: He is a little," and he tapped his forehead, "but very gently, and the savages will not touch him. It appears he served in the army during your revolution. Perhaps he was wounded, then."

"An old soldier?" said Colonel Burr quickly. "I must have some talk with him."

"WE WILL have him in tonight after supper— he spoke to me of it as I passed him just now," said Mr. Blennerhassett. "It seems he has finished some new pieces I ordered of him." He lowered his voice. "There is a messenger for you, Colonel Burr," he said.

I shall always remember the rest of that day, for it was the high point of my adventure. There was the messenger for Burr, and the letters he carried in cipher; there was the charm of Burr's voice. I felt the threads of the web tremble faster— I almost had my hand on the clue.

My soothsaying friend and his squirrel were forgotten. There were flatboats to be built on the Muskingum, and men to be raised and armed, and always, behind it all, a gilded vision— a cloudy empire, rising, dwarfing the petty Union as it rose. By evening, I had almost decided to throw in my lot with Colonel Burr.

So after supper, when we sat over walnuts and wine, we three gentlemen, it irked me that Mr. Blennerhassett should remember his Silver Jemmy and send a servant for him. But I was enough of a conspirator not to cross my host, and when Silver Jemmy came in, I poured myself more wine and sat back to watch.

"You were in the army, I believe?" said Colonel Burr, his voice like honey.

"Yes, Colonel Burr," said the old man. "Sergeant Jeremy Walden, Ninth Continental Foot. Called Silver Jemmy, after his trade. Since his discharge, a wanderer— for his own reasons."

"H'm," said Colonel Burr. "Ninth Continentals. That'll be Massachusetts men."

"Mostly Massachusetts, colonel; a few nutmeggers. Germantown, Valley Forge, Trenton, Princeton and West Point."

"A gallant record," said Colonel Burr. "You should have a pension. When I am— any old soldier with such a record should have a pension."

"Silver Jemmy needs no pension," said the old man quietly. "I understood the gentlemen wished to see Silver Jemmy's silver," he added a little vacantly.

"Why, yes," said Colonel Burr, looking puzzled— he was not used to his compliments going astray.

"Mr. Blennerhassett has very fine silver," said Silver Jemmy; "much finer than Silver Jemmy's. But Silver Jemmy will show what he can show. Now, first, take this dish that Silver Jemmy mended."

He showed us the mark and the almost invisible mend; then he began to show other pieces, both Mr. Blennerhassett's and his own.

"Man," said Colonel Burr, "you would make your fortune in Philadelphia or Boston."

"Silver Jemmy is afraid of fortune," said Silver Jemmy. "When men strive too hard after fortune, they tarnish, blade and hilt." He was looking at Colonel Burr, and an uncomfortable silence fell. Mr. Blennerhassett broke it.

"Come, Jemmy," he said. "What of your latest work? You spoke of it this morning. Is it finished?"

"Yes, Mr. Blennerhassett, all finished."

"Good," said Mr. Blennerhassett heartily. He turned to us. "I chanced to have a set of apostle spoons that Silver Jemmy admires," he said, "so he thought he would turn his hand to a similar set. But he has not made apostles; he has made his own heroes—the Makers of Liberty. Is that right, Jemmy?"

"Yes, that is right— the Makers of Liberty," said Silver Jemmy, and again a queer silence fell. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a flannel case that chinked. "They are small," he said doubtfully. "Silver Jemmy would have liked to make them larger. But that would have taken much silver." He spread the case carefully on the table and took from the first compartment a small, exquisitely wrought spoon. At the end of the handle was a man's head, worked in beautiful detail.

"George Washington? Masterly!" said Colonel Burr, picking it up. I admired the steadiness of his hand, for his hatred of George Washington was well known.

"Yes, that is General Washington," said Silver Jemmy. He looked eagerly at Mr. Blennerhassett. "It is hard to see the faces without a strong glass," he said. "But there is another way. May I snuff some of the candles?"

Mr. Blennerhassett nodded and Silver Jemmy rose. He went about the table, snuffing candles. He moved without noise, like a hunter of the woods, and for some reason I felt eerie. When he had one candle arranged to his satisfaction before a white panel of wall, he held the spoon in front of it.

"Look!" he said in a clear voice, and the shadow-portrait leaped at us on the wall, sharp, black and distinct. I heard Colonel Burr suck in his breath, "If I did not know that George Washington sleeps at Mount Vernon," he said in an odd voice, "I would swear that was his living shadow! You are a master craftsman, Sergeant Jemmy!" The old man chuckled. "He is first," he said. "Has any a better right?

If so, let them speak."

"Nay, they call him the Father of his Country," said Colonel Burr in a smooth, mocking tone, "though the child, some think, hath distempers."

The old man did not seem to hear. "I saw him at Valley Forge," he said. "A lighter man would have lost us."

HE PICKED up the second spoon, and another face leaped on the wall—no general's face, this time, but a statesman's, full of resolution and pride. Full, too, I thought vaguely, of touchiness—and yet you could see its clear honesty.

"John Adams," droned Silver Jemmy. "John Adams who would not give in and made a Virginian commander in chief though he himself was Massachusetts born. And then Tom Jeffer— he's the third— he wrote the Declaration."

It was my President of the yarn stockings but it was different. You could see the greatness I had not seen, face to face. Oh, a craftsman was Silver Jemmy! Aaron Burr looked at the image, and I heard his fingers drum on the table.

"A marvelous shadow-show!" he said.

"Here is Wayne— Wayne of Stony Point— Mad Anthony," said Silver Jemmy. He went on— at the time I did not know all the names and faces, But there was Greene and Marion and Franklin, Steuben, the Prussian drillmaster, and Lafayette, French and boyish. They had built a nation, among them.

And I thought of the man who sat next me, the man with the honey on his tongue. He had known them all, with love or hate; he had been one with them in a great effort. And now, what was he— a man of destiny, or an aging adventurer trying to tear down what they had built?

"Is that all," said Colonel Burr, when I had counted ten faces, "or do we have the full dozen?"

"Nay, Silver Jemmy has the full dozen, if Colonel Burr can look at them."

"If you mean that you have sculptured General Hamilton," said Burr steadily, "I did not fear him alive. I shall hardly start at his shadow."

"Be it so!" said Silver Jemmy. He held up the spoon. I had seen many pictures of Alexander Hamilton but none like this. There was such vivid life in the outline of the face that you could not believe a bullet could snuff it out.

"Enough!" said Burr hoarsely. "Will they rise from the grave, then? Is the shadow-show played out?"

"Nay," said Silver Jemmy, "there is one more. Twelve spoons for the twelve apostles. And among the twelve..."

He held up the last spoon and a profile leaped on the wall— young, daring, handsome and arrogant— a face with all the magic of Burr's own.

"Who is it?" I said.

"That, sir, is my own General," said Silver Jemmy. "Colonel Burr knows him well— he served with him before Quebec. That is General Benedict Arnold."

"They hounded him to the treason— the liars and dawdlers of Congress!" said Burr in an unrecognizable voice. "Do you think such men turn their coats lightly? I saw him in the snow when Montgomery fell. Could they not remember Quebec and Saratoga?" .

"He was my General," said Silver Jemmy. "I was by the river that day on outpost duty. I saw him take the boat and row to the British ship. I knew that he was a traitor— yet I let him go," said Silver Jemmy. His breath caught for a moment. "He was very kind— always very kind, was General Arnold. He said he would watch over me if I eame with him, but that I could not do. Then he said, 'Do you despise me, Jemmy?' and I said, 'No, sir.'

"He looked at me for a moment and said, 'If they'd all been as true as the lads who tried to take Quebec with me— put the hand's played out now. There is one last service, Jemmy—let Mrs. Arnold know that I am safe.' Then he looked at the British ship, and his face changed. 'Safe!' he said. I could not look at him then, and he did not give me his hand. He— he might have thought I would not take it, though I would have. Then he was rowing to the Vulture, his back very straight as he rowed. I watched till they took him aboard."

"And then?" I said.

"Oh, then I went back to the fort, sir. There was much confusion— and no one ever knew. They thought me stupid but honest— it is not for a sergeant to stop his Commanding General from taking a boat at his pleasure, and my General had deceived greater men than I. But I knew— and I could have stopped him— and they would have hanged him like André. No. Nevertheless, I betrayed my country. When the war was over, those who could went back to their homes, but Silver Jemmy could not. You can see that, sir."

"Yes," I said, with Miss Sarah Comfort's eyes before me, "I can see that."

"The skill of the trade itself had left his hand," said the inexorable voice. "That was a sign to him. It was right that Silver Jemmy should become a wanderer, then. And a wanderer he became— in the woods, by the streams of the wilderness. And the Indian arrow would not touch him nor the wild beast tear him— that was his judgment— to live and know always, waking or sleeping, that he too had betrayed his country. It was a hard judgment but a just one. Now it draws to an end. My old General died four years ago, and it will not be long for Silver Jemmy. When the whisper sought him in the woods, and his skill came back to him— that was the sign."

"An odd tale," said Mr. Blennerhassett. Colonel Burr made no sound.

I said, "Is that all, Silver Jemmy?"

"Not quite all, sir," said the old man. "You see, Silver Jemmy saw his General again. It was fourteen years ago. He did not know that his General was in New Brunswick, but it was put upon him to go there." He paused for a moment, and his voice sank. "It was put upon him to go to St. John, New Brunswick, and look through the window of a merchant-house for the West India trade. It was not a prospering house, though St. John is a good port for that trade. There was a man at a desk. The man was staring at the wall. Silver Jemmy had meant to go in— he thought it had been put upon him. But he could not go in when he had seen that face."

He stooped and reversed the spoon in front of the candle. The same profile leaped on the wall— and yet, a different Profile. It was a face twenty years older, and it was blasted as if by lightnings. I could feel the ghost walk in the roomthe ghost of pride and genius, ruined by its own pride.

"He died in England four years ago," said Silver Jemmy gently. Then his voice rang. "God save the United States of America!" he said.

I heard my own voice say, "Yes!"— and there was silence. I turned my eyes away. I had no wish to look at that face on the wall. But when I turned them back again, it had gone. Silver Jemmy had put the spoons back in their case.

"Your servant, gentlemen," he said, but none of us answered. Then he had gone, too, with his light, silent footfall.

Colonel Burr rose to his feet, and I heard his tongue click on his teeth as he tried to speak. "An excellent shadow-show," he said, at last. "I shall go to my room, I think. I walked in the sun too long today— and I fear I am not well."

Blennerhassett was up in a moment, but Colonel Burr pushed his arm aside and walked to the door like an old man. A very ingenious person, Colonel Burr— a man able for better things than he accomplished. I have seen others, since. There will always be such men. They succeed to a point, to a point— but never entirely; that is not in their grain. The Jeffersons last them out— at least in this country. It is well to remember that; it goes deeper than parties or politics.

No. I did not see him again. I left early in the morning before he had risen. I wished to get to New Orleans as swiftly as I might. It was not very swiftly but perhaps that was as well, for I thought a great deal on the journey. My thoughts were chiefly on the subject of the United States of America, though Miss Sarah Comfort kept coming into them. But I became very dogmatic on that first subject when I saw my committee. Too dogmatic, doubtless, as the young are apt to be. Nevertheless, I made an impression.

Jules Passecrainte said, at first, that I had turned Yankee— but the muskets they had bought were never fired, and we did not follow Colonel Burr. And when the whole gilded dream fizzled out a year later in a trial for treason, they called me a prophet— even Jules.

Colonel Burr had a tongue of silver— but that was not enough. Oh, there were flatboats built on the Muskingum, but he said he meant to colonize the West with them. Perhaps that was true, by then—I think myself he had a different dream in the beginning. But that was before he saw Silver Jemmy's spoons.

It would be pleasant to tell you, my sons, that I have the spoons, but I have them not. I do not know where they are. They are not on Blennerhassett's Island. I know that, for I saw from my window that early morning an old man go down to the river's edge and take a small boat and cast off.

I wished to call him back and tell him the hand was going back to the lady, but he did not hear. Then I thought I would pass him on the river, but I did not. Perhaps they are deep in the river, perhaps buried in the woods. I should like to see them again— all but the one. I think that might burn in the hand.

My Bostonnaise was very curious about them— I sent her a small, white puppy, you see, when I returned to Washington. He was a very engaging puppy, and he had a note tied to his collar. It said: "From a citizen of the United States of America." It seemed a long time while I waited outside, though I dare say it was not long.

When she came out at last, she had the puppy in her arms. I had thought of many fine speeches to make, but I did not make them. Instead, I said merely, "Sarah!" But that seemed to be enough, for her eyes were no longer gray as Boston ice.

She said, "I knew you were true." Then she put the little dog from her, very gently, and I took her hands.

It is his great-great-grandson that sleeps under my desk. The best male of the litter is always called Thomas Jefferson, though your mother still insists that John Adams was the greater man.

_____________________

12: The Vampire

Théophile Gautier

1811–1872

Transl. By Frederick C. de Sumichrast, 1845-1933

Original French title "La morte amoureuse", 1843 ("The Deathly Lover"); the translator gave it the title "The Vampire" in his English translation.

YOU ASK ME, BROTHER, if I have ever loved. I have. It is a strange story, and though I am sixty, I scarce venture to stir the ashes of that remembrance. I mean to refuse you nothing, but to no soul less tried than yours would I tell the story. The events are so strange that I can hardly believe they did happen. I was for more than three years the plaything of a singular and diabolical illusion. I, a poor priest, I led in my dreams every night— God grant they were dreams only!— the life of the damned, the life of the worldly, the life of Sardanapalus. A single glance, too full of approval, cast upon a woman, nearly cost me the loss of my soul. But at last, by the help of God and of my holy patron, I was able to drive away the evil spirit which had possessed me. My life was complicated by an entirely different nocturnal life. During the day I was a priest of God, chaste, busied with prayers and holy things; at night, as soon as I had closed my eyes, I became a young nobleman, a connoisseur of women, of horses and dogs, gambling, drinking, and cursing, and when at dawn I awoke, it seemed to me rather that I was going to sleep and dreaming of being a priest. Of that somnambulistic life there have remained in my remembrance things and words I cannot put away, and although I have never left the walls of my presbytery, you will be apt to think, on hearing me, that I am a man who, having worn out everything and having given up the world and entered religion, means to end in the bosom of God days too greatly agitated, rather than a humble student in a seminary, who has grown old in a forgotten parish in the depths of a forest, and who has never had anything to do with the things of the day.

Yes, I have loved, as no one on earth ever loved, with an insensate and furious love, so violent that I wonder it did not break my heart. Ah! what nights what nights I have had! From my youngest childhood I felt the vocation to the priesthood and all my studies were therefore bent in that direction. My life until the age of twenty-four was nothing but one long novitiate. Having finished my theological studies, I passed successfully through the minor orders, and my superiors considered me worthy, in spite of my youth, of crossing the last dread limit. The day of my ordination was fixed for Easter week. I had never gone into the world. The world, to me, lay within the walls of the college and of the seminary. I knew vaguely that there was something called a woman, but my thoughts never dwelt upon it; I was utterly innocent. I saw my old, infirm mother but twice a year; she was the only connection I had with the outer world. I regretted nothing; I felt not the least hesitation in the presence of the irrevocable engagement I was about to enter into; nay, I was joyous and full of impatience. Never did a young bridegroom count the hours with more feverish ardour. I could not sleep; I dreamed that I was saying Mass; I saw nothing more glorious in the world than to be a priest. I would have refused, had I been offered a kingdom, to be a king or a poet instead, for my ambition conceived nothing finer.

What I am telling you is to show you that what happened to me ought not to have happened, and that I was the victim of the most inexplicable fascination.

The great day having come, I walked to the church with so light a step that it seemed to me that I was borne in the air, or that I had wings on my shoulders; I thought myself an angel, and I was amazed at the sombre and preoccupied expression of my companions,— for there were several of us. I had spent the night in prayer, and was in a state bordering on ecstasy. The bishop, a venerable old man, seemed to me like God the Father bending from eternity, and I beheld the heavens through the vault of the dome.

You are acquainted with the details of the ceremony: the benediction, the Communion in both kinds, the anointing of the palms of the hands with the oil of the catechumens, and finally the sacred sacrifice offered in conjunction with the bishop. I will not dwell on these things. Oh! how right was Job, "Imprudent is he who has not made a covenant with his eyes"! I happened to raise my head, which until then I had kept bent down, and I saw before me, so close that I might have touched her, although in reality she was a long way off, on the other side of the railing, a young woman of wondrous beauty dressed with regal magnificence. It was as though scales had fallen from my eyes. I felt like a blind man suddenly recovering his sight. The bishop, so radiant but now, was suddenly dimmed, the flame of the tapers on their golden candlesticks turned pale like stars in the morning light, and the whole church was shrouded in deep obscurity. The lovely creature stood out against this shadow like an angelic revelation. She seemed illumined from within, and to give forth light rather than to receive it. I cast down my eyes, determined not to look up again, so as to avoid the influence of external objects, for I was becoming more and more inattentive and I scarcely knew what I was about. Yet a moment later I opened my eyes again, for through my eyelids I saw her dazzling with the prismatic colours in a radiant penumbra, just as when one has gazed upon the sun.

__________________

13: The Briar

Valentine Williams

1883-1946

The Detective Magazine March 13 1925

Port Adelaide News 15 Oct 1926

WHEN you have eaten an economical and indigestible lunch, when the east wind pipes briskly through the summer overcoat you should have discarded but haven't been able to afford to, when everything combines to remind you that you are a cheap and obscure clerk without ambition and without prospects, well, it is a pretty pleasant sensation to have a pretty girl pull up short in front of you and call you rapturously by your Christian name.

This is what happened to Ralph Hervey on the street in New York. If he had not known that his fairy godmother had gone into disgusted retirement some six years ago, he might have thought that, with a wave of her magic wand, she had changed the whole world for him. His earth fetters fell away. He felt tightened and braced up, raising his head, squaring his shoulders. A little more and his hand would have gone to his shabby hat in a military salute.

He was vaguely conscious of a radiant face delightfully framed in a little cloche, of slender trimness enveloped in soft sable. But appearances mattered nothing to him. The big thing, the thing he had to remember, was that this was Barbara  Golding and that she saw in him not the humble clerk at Schlosser's, but Captain Ralph Hervey, D.S.O., of the Royal Flying Corps.

"Ralph!" she exclaimed. In New York! Here, come on to the sidewalk! You'll be killed if you stand in the road!"

The driver of a delivery wagon, who had been about to express himself to the same effect but more forcibly, checked himself when he saw the girl's face and winked understandingly at Hervey.

"Well," she declared, "how you treat your friends! To come to America and never let me know!" Her low, pleasing voice enthralled him. He had forgotten its charm. It seemed to raise a corner of the veil that he had dropped over his war years, and— and the years before—

But when one has gone hungry in the streets of London, where one is an obscure clerk in New York and jolly glad of the job, it is folly to let the mind slip back six years and dwell on those epic days of high endeavour and martial splendour, especially when the war would last for ever? He was pursuing past.

"Are you out of the army now?" she asked.

"Yes," he told her. "I hung on for a year after the armistice, but then they demobilised me."

Demobilisation! It had brought him to earth with a bump, the worst crash in his flying career!

"I've got a job in New York," he added simply.

Her eyes rested on his face. He had retained his small moustache, and, with his well-groomed air, he still looked like an army man in mufti. Mercifully discreet, glance took in surreptitiously his thin overcoat and his well-shone but well-worn shoes as well. But he observed nothing. He was grappling with waves of the past that came surging into his memory one behind the other, like breakers, on a beach.

In those years of war the whole world had been mad. Had not he, had not Barbara Golding, whose father was rich, rich— he could see the row of fine pearls about her gleaming throat— had they not imagined, for one moment, one brief moment, four weeks long, at that convalescent hospital at Eastbourne, had they not, mad in their turn, imagined that the war would lost for ever? He was Hervey, the flying ace, with a brevet majority due any day and two bars to his D.S.O., with a new name and a t lean record to efface for ever that bitter passage in his life from which fate had sought sanctuary in the war.

But he had come to his senses time. And when he had gone back to the front he had written to say good-bye— and told her the truth.

"In an office," he went oh to cover up the awkwardness of the silence between them. "And I hate it like hell!"

He laughed at her and showed his firm white teeth. She smiled back in sympathy. But her voice was a little hurt as she replied:—

"That's no reason for not letting me know you were here."

He looked at her rather eagerly.

"I wonder if you ever received a letter I wrote you from the front?"

A little colour came into her cheeks.

"I answered it," she said. "Didn't you ever get my reply?"

He shook his head. "Our transport was bombed twice in a week," he explained, "and we lost a lot of mail."

Silence fell between them again.

"You know, Ralph," she said at last, "I can't imagine you in an office."

He laughed rather bitterly. "I couldn't myself at first. But one gets used to anything. I didn't want— I wasn't keen about coming back to America. But things are hopeless at home. A pal of mine put up the fare across and got me the job, and really they've been very decent at the office. I'm— I'm pretty useless, you know, at anything except flying."

"Don't you miss it frightfully?" she asked softly.

He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't think about it. It was rotten, at first, especially when a 'plane came over. But now, if I hear the buzz of a propeller, I don't look up, that's all. Simple, isn't it? But, Barbara tell me about yourself. You've shingled your hair, haven't you?"

She swung about, lifting a little the close-fitting crown of her hat.

"Yes. How do you like it?"

"It's ripping. You look perfectly splendid. Where are you living now?"

"Dad's built a house over on Long Island."

They stood and chatted together until suddenly she glanced at her wrist.

"But I have to fly. I've got to be at the dressmaker's at two. Listen, Ralph, you must come out and see us."

He shook his head stubbornly.

"Thanks awfully. But it won't do—"

"But how absurd you course, you must come!"

"I'm living very quietly. I don't go around much now."

His shabby clothes told her his meaning, and her cheeks flamed.

"But, Ralph, you stupid, we're very simple folk. There's only dad and mums and me and Lopez, that's dad's private secretary. Look here, come out on Saturday and spend the weekend. We shall be very quiet as dad's got a business conference at the house and he shuts himself up in his room all day. But he'll be awfully pleased to see you. So will mother. I've told them so much, about you."

But Hervey shook his head firmly than ever. more

"Don't think I'm not grateful," he told her. "But, Barbara, it won't do!"

"Why not?"

He looked her in the eyes before he replied.

"My letter—"

She laid her hand on his arm. "You say you never got my answer. Well, I'll give it to you now. It's this— come and spend the week-end at home."

He wrinkled up his brow in a funny, forlorn fashion. She remembered  from of old this little mannerism of his when he was moved. He said nothing. But he gave her hand squeeze.

"You'll come?" she demanded, "Where can I send you a line?"

Hesitatingly he confessed the address of his modest boarding house.

"I'll write and tell you a train to catch," she promised as she gathered up her furs about her.

"I'd better not come," he said.

"You must," she ordered. Then she hurried on her way.

ii

Seated in the rocking chair of his exiguous bedroom he smoked two pipefuls of his cheap tobacco in his old blackened briar with the bitten stem before he decided to accept her invitation. The Indian summer was beckoning out to the reddening hills and the shabbiness of his surroundings had bitten deeply into Hervey's soul. But most of all he wanted to see Barbara Golding again, to tell her that which words had failed him to say as they stood and chatted on the sidewalk. He went into it with his eyes open; for he knew it was sheer, lunacy to try and summon back past happiness.

Schlosser's awkward and unsatisfactory clerk would be none the better for having preened himself over the week-end in the feathers of Ralph Hervey, the flying ace. It is a pretty forlorn feeling anyway to arrive at a house where you are personally known to neither host or hostess, and when Murray Golding's English butler told Hervey that "Miss Barbara" was out in her car, the young man's first instinct was to turn round and make for the station again.

With some relief, however, he learned that Mr. Golding was closeted in conference, and that Mrs Golding had gone to New York for the day and was not expected back until dinner time. Mr. Lopez, the private secretary, however, was in the library.

A knowledgeable fellow, the butler— Bowles by name, from Dorset, as a question of Hervey's elicited. He had no fault to find with America, thank you very much, sir; an agreeable change from post-war conditions in the old country, if he might say so. Perhaps he was old-fashioned, but it had never been his good fortune before to be in a place where a motor was kept exclusive for the servants' 'all. A pleasant situation, and Mr. and Mrs. Golding was most considerate.

This was the library. Mr. Lopez would be back in a minute. He had probably gone to the morning room where Mr. Golding and his friends were holding their meeting.

Hervey's heart warmed to the long book-lined room directly he entered it, with its three tall windows, its pleasant smell of tooled k leather, its soft pile carpet, its log fire blazing in the open hearth (for it would be chilly presently when the autumn sun went in). A French window in the centre gave on the terrace ablaze with chrysanthemums. At the far end was another door, and beyond it an alcove, oak-panelled, in which stood a desk with papers and a typewriter. Hervey grabbed a magazine from the book-strewn table in the centre and took one of the big chairs by the fire. A click and a smooth, grinding noise at the far end of the room suddenly broke in upon his dreaming He looked up from the depths of his stood in the alcove with his back to the room. A long section of the oak panelling had slid away, revealing the gleaming knobs and discs of a steel safe. Hervey stood up quickly. He fell rather embarrassed at having unwittingly surprised what he surmised to be a secret hiding place. At the sound of the castors on the carpet as he pushed back his chair the young man in the alcove whipped round like a flash. In the circumstances, Hervey reflected, it was up to him to introduce himself.

"I'm 'Mr. Golding's secretary," the other replied. "My name is Lopez. Barbara told us you were coming."

The Christian name rather grated on Hervey. He told himself that this good-looking young man with the fine, expressive eyes and the crisp, jet-black hair lived in the house and saw Barbara every day.

Hervey decided that he was not going to like Mr. Lopez very much.

The secretary, who had his arms full of papers, dumped them down on the table and held out his cigarette case. But Hervey declined.

"I mostly smoke a pipe," he explained.

"Go ahead if you want to and smoke one right now," the secretary invited him. "This is where I work when I'm down here, and I can do what I like in this house, I guess."

He glanced at the old lantern clock above the fireplace.

"Barbara's late. She went over to the golf club after lunch in her car. She said she would' be back by four. I expect she's smashed something or else a traffic cop's held her up for speeding. She's a wild driver, that girl. She scares me good and plenty when we got out together, I tell you. Met her in the war, didn't you?"

"Yes;" Hervey agreed curtly. There was an excess of familiarity in the way Lopez spoke of the girl that repelled him. Somehow he couldn't picture Barbara on such friendly terms with the sleek, self-possessed young man in the waisted suit and the cloth-topped boots as the other's manner suggested.

"When folks ask me what I did in the war," the secretary observed, tapping out a cigarette, "I always have to explain that I'm not an American, though people invariably take me for one. I'm from the Argentine. Si, Señor!"

"Mr. Golding has big interests in South America, I think Miss Golding told me," said Hervey.

"Sure. That's why he engaged me. I look after all the Spanish correspondence. A pretty big job. Why, at this very minute in the next room there"— he jerked his head in the direction of the door across the library— "he and his associates are discussing a contract for the Port of Caracas that's a matter of millions of dollars."

Hervey whistled.

"That's worth while!" he commented.

"You bet it is," retorted the secretary, gathering up his papers, "if we land it. But what with the rate of exchange labour's so cheap in Europe that the competition's fierce. You've got to cut prices to the bone to get contracts nowadays— yes, sir."

He fished up a bunch of keys on he end of a chain that disappeared in his trousers pocket and approached the safe. He was silent for an instant as he bent over the bright brass knobs. Then he inserted a key and the heavy steel door swung 'back. He stored his papers away and with a clang the door slammed to again.

"That's a dandy safe," said Hervey, from the fireplace. You've said it," Lopez agreed heartily. "Mr. Golding has only just had it put in. It cost him a few dollars, too, I can tell you."

"They're not cheap, those Harbin double lever models," the Englishman remarked. The secretary turned round and stared at him.

"Say, how do you know this is a Harbin?" he demanded. Hervey laughed. "By the cut of it. The three discs in clover formation are characteristic. I know a bit about safes."

A buzzer whirred.

"That's for me," exclaimed the secretary. "Excuse me, please, will you?"

He bent down beside the safe, and the panel glided gratingly up into place. Then he snatched up a notebook from the table and disappeared through the door beside the alcove.

"Paint in the jet! Ralph, I'm so sorry!"

Barbara burst in from the hall, an entrancing vision in a little leather hat and frock of striped silk tricot. "I broke down three miles from home. If it hadn't been for an adorable young man with red hair I believe I should still be sitting by the roadside. You must think us frightfully inhospitable, arriving at an empty house like this."

"It's all right," said Hervey. "Mr. Lopez has been looking after me."

"Oh, Manuel! Rather an attractive person, don't you think? Well, the main thing is you're here. Come along in to tea. Mums is back and dad will be along in a minute. His people are just going."

With a little gesture of intimacy that thrilled Hervey she slipped her hand in the young man's arm.

They crossed the hall to the big drawing room— all Louis Seize furniture and easy chair. A slim, dark young man gleaming parquet—where they found Lopez chatting to a nice-looking matron whom, Hervey told himself, he would have recognised anywhere as Barbara's mother.

"I am so glad to see you, Captain Hervey," she said. "Barbara has told us so much about you. And she's still always talking about you and your wonderful war record."

"The wonderful war record was Miss Golding's," he replied simply. "Your daughter was the Florence Nightingale of that shell-shock hospital at Eastbourne, Mrs. Golding. Why at least half of us wouldn't go to sleep until she had come and held our hands! I used to tell her she needed as many hands as one of those Brahmin goddesses!" He looked across at Barbara. "Do you remember?"

"What I remember best about you," she answered promptly, "is the morning you had a temperature of a hundred and eight!"

"For Heaven's sake!" exclaimed Mrs. Golding, aghast.

"I was terribly alarmed about you," Barbara went on, "until you confessed that you'd put the thermometer in your tea to dodge getting up for medical officer's inspection!"

At that they all laughed. A great feeling of well-being descended upon Ralph Hervey. He knew that his one good suit was still presentable and the knowledge reinforced his returning sense of self-respect. The warmth of his welcome made him feel that he was again of the world of his kindly cultured guests.

Then Mr. Golding appeared, grey-haired, with a fagged-out expression and rather abstracted air. But he roused himself to be very pleasant to Hervey. "Barbara says you've been working in New York for over a year," he remarked. "Too bad you didn't know we were such close neighbours. Got over your wounds all right, have you? Fine, fine. I hope you've got a good job and are making lots of money. We can't do too much for you fellows, you know, can't do too much, Charlie!"

He turned round and disclosed a burly, broad-shouldered man who had entered the room with him.

"Shake hands with Captain Hervey, a British flying officer that Barbara nursed in hospital in England during the war."

The big man greeted Hervey very cordially.

"This is my old friend, Charles Collins," Golding told the Englishman. "He's stopping with us for a few days. There's only one game he plays worse than golf and that's bridge. We'll show you after dinner!"

The big man laughed noiselessly. He was rather a noiseless person with a very deliberate manner and a trick of looking one carefully in the eye before he spoke.

"I'm sure glad to know you, Captain Hervey," he said. "Flying officer, eh? Well, well!"

"The first man to sail ship over the enemy lines," Barbara explained proudly.

"Then it seems to me you're lucky to be still alive," retorted Mr. Collins. "Do you still go up?"

"No," Hervey replied rather stiffly. He had already turned away when Mrs. Golding called them all over to tea.

Hervey was very quiet during the meal. Mrs. Golding told her husband afterwards that she thought Barbara's Englishman was shy; but Barbara, who knew him better, was quite-nonplussed by his silence. Something, she saw clearly, had upset him; but she racked her brains in vain to discover what it might be. And so after dinner, having seen the others safely settled down to their bridge, Barbara carried Ralph off to the library. She sat him down in one of the big chairs opposite the fire and perched herself on the leather-cushioned guard facing him.

"I know you're dying for a pipe" she said. "I believe you've wanted one ever since you arrived That's why you've been so quiet."

She watched him fill his briar and light it. Then she leaned forward. "Do you know, Ralph," she said, "you haven't even told me that you were glad to see me!"

His face was stern in the firelight.

"You know I am," he answered in rather a forced voice. "But all the same, Barbara," he added rather wistfully. "I was right. I shouldn't have come!"

She leaned back, her hands on the fire rail.

"Why ever not? Don't you like us? Or what?"

"I'm going back to New York in the morning," he announced stubbornly.

She was amazed and a little hurt. But she had seen him in his poverty and dejection that cold day on the street in New York, and she divined that his pride had been wounded.

"Ralph," she said, "something's the matter. Something happened at tea. I was watching you and you changed all of a sudden. Won't you please tell me what it is?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "What's the use? I'll go back by the morning train and we'll say no more about it."

She laughed a little tremulously. "I can't keep you here against your will. But I think you might tell me what we've done—"

He sprang out of his chair.

"Good God!" he cried. "I didn't ask you to invite me here. For fifteen months I've been in New York without trying to see you. When I wrote you that letter from the front I meant to put you out of my life for ever. I didn't want to come here, but you insisted And when I do come, when I do come " She faced him. She was calm, but her eyes were angry.

"Well?"

"I find that you've hired a detective to watch me, to see that I don't pinch the spoons, I suppose!"

"Oh, you're mad!" she protested "Do you really believe that I ever breathed to a living soul of what was in your letter? A detective! In this house! You don't know what you're saying!"

Blindly he knocked his pipe out against the stone mantelpiece and placed it on the mantelshelf. He was deliberate in his actions, like a man trying to gain time to retain his self-control.

"And your friend Collins?" he queried over his shoulder. She caught his arm and swung him round to face her.

"Why, Ralph, you silly. Mr. Collins isn't a detective."

"What's his business, then?" She paused to think. "I don't believe I know. He's an old friend of dad's, though he's never stopped with us before."

"Exactly." His voice was sneering and bitter. "What do you mean?" Barbara demanded, the colour mounting in her cheeks.

"I mean that your father asked him down here to keep an eye on me."

"That's not true! How can you say such a thing? What do you know about Mr. Collins?"

"He's a detective?"

"A detective. It can't be true!"

"It is!"

"How do you know?" For a moment he was silent. Then he said slowly: "Collins was the detective who arrested me!"

"Ralph!" She stared at him aghast, the colour slowly draining out of her cheeks.

"And you think that I "

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I didn't mean to accuse you, Barbara. But your father—"

"Do you really imagine that my father would treat any guest in such a fashion?"

"Barbara—"

But she had turned her back on him and left the library. He sought her presently in the morning-room. But she was not there, and, after watching the bridgites for a little while, he excused himself and went off to bed.

iii

HERVEY sat up and switched on the light. The watch on the bedside table showed the time to be a quarter to three. For hours he tossed about, unable to sleep, for the thoughts that kept crowding into his brain. He could not bring himself to believe that Barbara had betrayed him; and, if she had, would her father have consented to his coming to the house at all?

But Collins, head of the Vigilant Detective Agency, was a concrete fact. He was there, in the house. Why? It is true that at their meeting he had given no sign of recognition. But then a detective is trained to keep his features under control.

There would be no sleep for him that night, Hervey decided. A book and a pipe until morning and then back to New York by the first available train. He stretched out his hand and groped on the table beside him. His fingers picked up his soft doeskin tobacco pouch, but not his pipe. His pipe was not there.

Then he remembered that he had left it on the mantelshelf in the library. Wearily he got out of bed, thrust his feet into slippers and pulled, on his old dressing gown. Then he opened the door of his room.

The house was very still. The stairs were new and did not creak, and he gained the library noiselessly. The room was in darkness save for a faint glow from the dying fire. Hervey did not trouble about the light for the red embers showed him the way to the fireplace, and he remembered the very spot, on the left of the lantern clock, where he had put down his briar. Now he was at the fireplace, his hand feeling gingerly over the smooth oaken surface of the mantel-shelf.

The pipe was pot there. There was a switch beside the fireplace. He depressed the button and a brace of electric candles in a sconce between the book-shelves shed a soft light over the room. But he sought in vain for his pipe, on the mantelpiece. Some officious servant, he told himself with exasperation, must have moved it, and he turned to look elsewhere.

But as he faced the room, he caught his breath with astonishment. In the alcove at the end of the library the panel had been rolled down in front of the safe and the safe door stood open. In a flash he realised what to one with his record discovery before the open safe in that silent room at dead of night would signify.

Instinctively his hand crept behind him to the switch and the library was plunged in darkness once more.

But even as he began to move stealthily towards the door, a slight sound at the window brought him to a dead halt. Very softly he drew back out of the glimmer of the sinking fire and watched. The tall curtains hanging down across the centre window rustled. Then the long white beam of an electric torch fended the gloom. Behind it a dark figure glided noiselessly across the library floor and halted at the safe. At that moment, as luck would have it, a coal crashed noisily into the fireplace.

The figure at the safe whipped round and the glare of the torch fell full on Hervey's face. There was an instant's pause. Then the room blazed into light. In the door beside the alcove Hervey saw Lopez standing wearing his coat and trousers pulled on over his pyjamas, a pistol in his hand.

"Would you mind explaining what you were doing at that safe?" the secretary demanded truculently. As he spoke he leaned forward and pressed a button on the desk and a bell began to clang deafeningly through the quiet house.

"I?" Hervey stammered. "I haven't been near the safe. I came down to fetch my pipe and saw you or somebody come in by the window."

Lopez laughed rather unpleasantly. "I guess you'd better explain that to Mr. Golding," he retorted."You'll oblige me by remaining where you are until he comes."

"But you're crazy," Hervey protested. "You know as well as I do that I was nowhere near—"

The door from the hall burst open and Golding in a dressing-gown rushed in, a revolver in his hand. Behind him came Bowles, the butler, grasping a poker.

"What the devil's happening here, Lopez?" demanded Golding. "Bowles, stop that damned bell!" The butler hurried out, and presently with a jerk the alarm ceased its clamour.

"I heard somebody moving about downstairs," the secretary answered, "and thought I'd come down and investigate. I hate to have to say it about a guest of yours, Mr. Golding, but I discovered Captain Hervey at the safe."

"That's a lie!" the Englishman broke in violently. "Since I came down to fetch my pipe which I left here before I went to bed I haven't been nearer the safe than this fireplace. When I entered the room and switched on the light I found the safe as you see it now, with the panel down and the door..."

He stopped, staring. The safe door was shut.

"As I stood here," Hervey continued, "someone came in by that window there and went to the safe. Whoever it was must have shut the safe again. It was open when I first saw it. When the light went up the only person with me in the room was Lopez."

"You say the safe was open when you came into the room?" asked Golding.

"No, sir," replied the secretary very positively. "It was shut. I thought that Captain Hervey was trying to open it!"

"You damned scoundrel!" Hervey shouted. "You know I was nowhere near it. Besides, how could I open it without a key?"

The secretary laughed and turned to Golding.

"You remember I told you last night, sir, that Captain Hervey had boasted to me earlier in the evening about his knowledge of safes! Besides, you know, he saw me open it?"

In deep perplexity Murray Golding looked from one man to the other. He snapped his fingers nervously at Lopez.

"Give me the key!" he ordered. The secretary obeyed and crossed to the alcove. They heard the bolts click and saw the door swing back. Then Murray Golding came back into the room with a long blue envelope which he examined under the light.

"Well," he said, "the Caracas tender is there all right just as we put it away, Lopez, under that stack of securities."

As he spoke he drew casually. a folded document from the envelope and opened it out. But as soon as his eye fell upon its contents he uttered a great cry and rushed back to the safe. They heard him rummaging among the papers there, then he turned and faced them with a grave and troubled face.

"This is not the Caracas tender," he announced. "The original has been taken and a fake left in its place."

He walked over to the Englishman. "I think I am entitled to ask for an explanation, Captain Hervey!"

"I've told you all I know," Ralph replied. "I have not robbed your safe, Mr. Golding. I came down here to find my pipe."

A deep voice spoke behind them.

"Is that your pipe, Captain Hervey?"

They swung round. Collins stood there, a battered and blackened briar in his open palm.

"Yes," Hervey replied. Collins put a hand inside his coat and from an inside pocket produced a folded document which he handed to Golding. Golding opened it eagerly.

"The original tender!" he exclaimed. Collins grinned.

"You're such a pig-headed fellow, Murray," he observed, "that I took things into my own hands. I knew that this German syndicate would risk anything to get hold of your final figures for the Caracas contract, so I took the liberty, when you allowed me to look at the tender last night, of substituting for the original a little fake of my own."

"You knew it was going to be stolen out of the safe to-night, then?"

"You asked me down here to prevent anything of the kind," retorted Mr. Collins, "and I felt bound to provide for that contingency."

"Then Captain Hervey—" began his friend wrathfully.

"Captain Hervey told you the truth. Since midnight I have been watching from behind the curtain in front of the last window back there, and I have been a witness of all that has passed in this room. The thief had opened the safe, abstracted the fake tender and vanished through the window to show it to his accomplice in the shrubbery behind the terrace before Captain Hervey appeared. When upon turning on the light Hervey saw the safe open, he promptly switched the light off again and a second later the thief returned to restore the document to the safe. Only when he had done this did he switch on the lights and denounce Hervey."

Golding's face was blank with astonishment. From Collin's smooth, fat face, his eyes travelled slowly round the room

"Where's Lopez?" Golding demanded suddenly.

The secretary had disappeared.

"Gone to cash in from the German syndicate, I expect," his friend retorted.

"The low hound!" stormed Golding.

"It's a good thing I persuaded you to keep him out of your final conference on the figures," remarked Collins, "or he might have got wise to the little doctoring I performed in that fake tender. I've had my eye on that fresh guy from the first."

"I'll have him sent to the penitentiary for this!" declared Golding, furiously.

"Let him go! To-morrow is the last day for tenders. First thing Monday morning yours will be handed in at the Venezuelan Consulate General. He and his friends can't do any more harm. Let him run!"

"Let him run, be damned!" raved Golding. "Bowles, get the other men and see that he's not hanging anywhere around the grounds. I'll go and ring up the police—"

In the act of leaving the library he stopped as if a thought had struck him.

"Captain Hervey," he said shyly, "I guess I owe you an apology. I don't know what to say— but I trusted that boy."

Hervey held out his hand. "We'll say no more about it, Mr. Golding," he answered, and the two men shook hands. Then Golding hurried from the room.

When they were alone, Collins handed over the pipe.

"Your pipe, Richard Hawksley!" he said. The Englishman took it and held it in his hand.

"You recognised me, then?"

"Only by your old briar. That time eleven years ago it was through a pipe you left to be mended at a shop in Brooklyn that I traced you. You wanted a new stem. The stem of that one, like this one, was all chewed away on the left-hand side. There was something faintly familiar about you when we met in the drawing-room, but it was not until I found your pipe lying on the shelf there last night that I remembered you."

"And you waited up to see what I wanted in this house?"

"It was lucky I did. You were badly in need of an alibi when I happened along, boy!"

Hervey shrugged his shoulders. His face was tired.

"And what are you going to do now?"

The detective met his challenging gaze.  "Nothing," he said. "If you've forgotten Richard Hawksley, so have I. But before we bury him altogether, Captain Hervey, I want to say this. I didn't want to have you put away that time. I knew that you were standing the racket for your wife."

The other looked up. "You knew?" he repeated.

Collins nodded. "Yeah. It's not the first time that a husband has had to face the music for an insurance fraud of his wife's. I guess the judge suspected something, too. Else you wouldn't have got off with a year. You with her still?"

The Englishman shook his head. "She was drowned in the Lusitania coming across to join me in England," he replied.

"And why in the name of thunder did you tell that skunk Lopez that you knew about safes?"

"Because I do," said Hervey quietly. "I'm working for Schlossers!"

"Holy Joe! The safe people!" exclaimed the detective.

The detective was about to speak again when his eyes fell upon a vision in the doorway. An imperious gesture of dismissal sent him lumbering away muttering: "I guess I'll see what old Murray's after!"

Presently the Englishman glanced up. In Collin's place Barbara was standing, her eyes shining, her hands outstretched.

"I was in the hall: I heard everything. Oh, Ralph, why didn't you tell me before?" she whispered: "In your letter you simply said that you had been in prison—"

"And, knowing that, yet you asked me down to stay with you?" he replied, looking at her.

"Why didn't you tell me the whole truth?" she said, evading his question.

"I couldn't. Besides, I had to break away from you. With my record, with my prospects, once the war was over, what had I to hope for?"

"Why did you want to break away from me?"

"Because if I hadn't, if I hadn't, I should have told you—"

"What, Ralph?" He raised his eyes to hers. Her little slippered foot went out behind her and the library door slammed.

_________________

14: The Judge's House

Bram Stoker

1847-1912

Holly Leaves Dec 5 1891

WHEN THE TIME for his examination drew near Malcolm Malcolmson made up his mind to go somewhere to read by himself. He feared the attractions of the seaside, and also he feared completely rural isolation, for of old he knew its charms, and so he determined to find some unpretentious little town where there would be nothing to distract him. He refrained from asking suggestions from any of his friends, for he argued that each would recommend some place of which he had knowledge, and where he had already acquaintances. As Malcolmson wished to avoid friends he had no wish to encumber himself with the attention of friends' friends and so he determined to look out for a place for himself. He packed a portmanteau with some clothes and all the books he required, and then took ticket for the first name on the local time-table which he did not know.

When at the end of three hours' journey he alighted at Benchurch, he felt satisfied that he had so far obliterated his tracks as to be sure of having a peaceful opportunity of pursuing his studies. He went straight to the one inn which the sleepy little place contained, and put up for the night. Benchurch was a market town, and once in three weeks was crowded to excess, but for the reminder of the twenty-one days it was as attractive as a desert. Malcolmson looked around the day after his arrival to try to find quarters more isolated than even so quiet an inn as 'The Good Traveller' afforded. There was only one place which took his fancy, and it certainly satisfied his wildest ideas regarding quiet; in fact, quiet was not the proper word to apply to it— desolation was the only term conveying any suitable idea of its isolation. It was an old, rambling, heavy-built house of the Jacobean style, with heavy gables and windows, unusually small, and set higher than was customary in such houses, and was surrounded with a high brick wall massively built. Indeed, on examination, it looked more like a fortified house than an ordinary dwelling. But all these things pleased Malcolmson. 'Here,' he thought, 'is the very spot I have been looking for, and if I can only get opportunity of using it I shall be happy.' His joy was increased when he realized beyond doubt that it was not at present inhabited.

From the post-office he got the name of the agent, who was rarely surprised at the application to rent a part of the old house. Mr. Carnford, the local lawyer and agent, was a genial old gentleman, and frankly confessed his delight at anyone being willing to live in the house.

'To tell you the truth,' said he, 'I should be only too happy, on behalf of the
owners, to let anyone have the house rent free, for a term of years if only to accustom the people here to see it inhabited. It has been so long empty that some kind of absurd prejudice has grown up about it, and this can be best put down by its occupation— if only,' he added with a sly glance at Malcolmson, 'by a scholar like yourself, who wants its quiet for a time.'

Malcolmson thought it needless to ask the agent about the 'absurd prejudice'; he knew he would get more information, if he should require it, on that subject from other quarters. He paid his three months' rent, got a receipt, and the name of an old woman who would probably undertake to 'do' for him, and came away with the keys in his pocket. He then went to the landlady of the inn, who was a cheerful and most kindly person, and asked her advice as to such stores and provisions as he would be likely to require. She threw up her hands in amazement when he told her where he was going to settle himself.

'Not in the Judge's House!' she said, and grew pale as she spoke. He explained the locality of the house, saying that he did not know its name. When he had finished she answered:

'Aye, sure enough— sure enough the very place! It is the Judge's House sure enough.' He asked her to tell him about the place, why so called, and what there was against it. She told him that it was so called locally because it had been many years before— how long she could not say, as she was herself from another part of the country, but she thought it must have been a hundred years or more— the abode of a judge who was held in great terror on account of his harsh sentences and his hostility to prisoners at Assizes. As to what there was against the house she could not tell. She had often asked, but no one could inform her, but there was a general feeling that there was something , and for her own part she would not take all the money in Drinkwater's Bank and stay in the house an hour by herself. Then she apologized to Malcolmson for her disturbing talk.

'It is too bad of me, sir, and you— and a young gentleman, too— if you will pardon me saying it, going to live there all alone. If you were my boy— and you'll excuse me for saying it— you wouldn't sleep there a night, not if I had to go there myself and pull the big alarm bell that's on the roof!'

The good creature was so manifestly in earnest, and was so kindly in her intentions, that Malcolmson, although amused, was touched. He told her kindly how much he appreciated her interest in him, and added:

'But, my dear Mrs. Witham, indeed you need not be concerned about me! A man who is reading for the Mathematical Tripos has too much to think of to be disturbed by any of these mysterious 'somethings,' and his work is of too exact and prosaic a kind to allow of his having any order in his mind for mysteries of any kind. Harmonical Progression, Permutations and Combinations, and Elliptic Functions have sufficient mysteries for me!' Mrs. Witham kindly undertook to see after his commissions, and he went himself to look for the old woman who had been recommended to him. When he turned to the Judge's House with her, after an interval of a couple of hours, he found Mrs. Witham herself waiting with several men and boys carrying parcels, and an upholsterer's man with a bed in a cart, for she said, though table and chairs might be all very well, a bed that hadn't been aired for maybe fifty years was not proper for young ones to lie on. She was evidently curious to see the inside of the house, and though manifestly so afraid of the 'somethings' that at the slightest sound she clutched on to Malcolmson, whom she never left for a moment, went over the whole place.

After his examination of the house, Malcolmson decided to take up his abode in the great dining-room, which was big enough to serve for all his requirements, and Mrs. Witham, with the aid of the charwoman, Mrs. Dempster, proceeded to arrange matters. When the hampers were brought in and unpacked, Malcolmson saw that with much kind forethought she had sent from her own kitchen sufficient provisions to last for a few days. Before going she expressed all sorts of kind wishes, and at the door turned and said:

'And perhaps, sir, as the room is big and draughty it might be well to have one of those big screens put round your bed at night— though truth to tell, I would die myself if I were to be so shut in with all kinds of— of "things," that put their heads round the sides or over the top, and look on me!' The image which she had called up was too much for her nerves and she fled incontinently.

Mrs. Dempster sniffed in a superior manner as the landlady disappeared, and remarked that for her own part she wasn't afraid of all the bogies in the kingdom.

'I'll tell you what it is, sir,' she said, 'bogies is all kinds and sorts of things— except bogies! Rats and mice, and beetles and creaky doors, and loose slates, and broken panes, and stiff drawer handles, that stay out when you pull them and then fall down in the middle of the night. Look at the wainscot of the room! It is old— hundreds of years old! Do you think there's no rats and beetles there? And do you imagine, sir, that you won't see none of them? Rats is bogies, I tell you, and bogies is rats, and don't you get to think anything else!'

'Mrs. Dempster,' said Malcolmson gravely, making her a polite bow, 'you know more than a Senior Wrangler! And let me say that, as a mark of esteem for your indubitable soundness of head and heart, I shall, when I go, give you possession of this house, and let you stay here by yourself for the last two months of my tenancy, for four weeks will serve my purpose.'

'Thank you kindly, sir!' she answered, 'but I couldn't sleep away from home
a night. I am in Greenhow's Charity, and if I slept a night away from my rooms I should lose all I have got to live on. The rules is very strict, and there's too many watching for a vacancy for me to run any risks in the matter. Only for that, sir, I'd gladly come here and attend on you altogether during your stay.'

'My good woman,' said Malcolmson hastily, 'I have come here on a purpose to obtain solitude, and believe me that I am grateful to the late Greenhow for having organized his admirable charity— whatever it is— that I am perforce denied the opportunity of suffering from such a form of temptation! Saint Anthony himself could not be more rigid on the point!'

The old woman laughed harshly. 'Ah, you young gentlemen,' she said, 'you don't fear for nought, and belike you'll get all the solitude you want here.' She set to work with her cleaning, and by nightfall, when Malcolmson returned from his walk— he always had one of his books to study as he walked— he found the room swept and tidied, a fire burning on the old hearth, the lamp lit, and the table spread for supper with Mrs. Witham's excellent fare. 'This is comfort indeed,' he said, and rubbed his hands.

When he had finished his supper, and lifted the tray to the other end of the great oak dining-table, he got out his books again, put fresh wood on the fire, trimmed his lamp, and set himself down to a spell of real hard work. He went on without a pause till about eleven o'clock, when he knocked off for a bit to fix his fire and lamp, and to make himself a cup of tea. He had always been a tea-drinker, and during his college life had sat late at work and had taken tea late. The rest was a great luxury to him, and he enjoyed it with a sense of delicious voluptuous ease. The renewed fire leaped and sparkled, and threw quaint shadows through the great old room, and as he sipped his hot tea he revelled in the sense of isolation from his kind. Then it was that he began to notice for the first time what a noise the rats were making.

'Surely,' he thought, 'they cannot have been at it all the time I was reading. Had they been, I must have noticed it!' Presently, when the noise increased, he satisfied himself that it was really new. It was evident that at first the rats had been frightened at the presence of a stranger, and the light of fire and lamp, but that as the time went on they had grown bolder and were now disporting themselves as was their wont.

How busy they were— and hark to the strange noises! Up and down the old wainscot, over the ceiling and under the floor they raced, and gnawed, and scratched! Malcolmson smiled to himself as he recalled to mind the saying of Mrs. Dempster, 'Bogies is rats, and rats is bogies!'

The tea began to have its effect of intellectual and nervous stimulus, he saw with joy another long spell of work to be done before the night was past, and in the sense of security which it gave him, he allowed himself the luxury of a good look round the room. He took his lamp in one hand, and went all round, wondering that so quaint and beautiful an old house had been so long neglected. The carving of the oak on the panels of the wainscot was fine, and on and round the doors and windows it was beautiful and of rare merit. There were some old pictures on the walls, but they were coated so thick with dust and dirt that he could not distinguish any detail of them, though he held his lamp as high as he could over his head. Here and there as he went round he saw some crack or hole blocked for a moment by the face of a rat with its bright eyes glittering in the light, but in an instant it was gone, and a squeak and a scamper followed.

The thing that most struck him, however, was the rope of the great alarm bell on the roof, which hung down in a corner of the room on the right-hand side of the fireplace. He pulled up close to the hearth a great high-backed carved oak chair, and sat down to his last cup of tea. When this was done he made up the fire, and went back to his work, sitting at the corner of the table, having the fire to his left. For a little while the rats disturbed him somewhat with their perpetual scampering, but he got accustomed to the noise as one does to the ticking of the clock or to the roar of moving water, and he became so immersed in his work that everything in the world, except the problem which he was trying to solve, passed away from him.

He suddenly looked up, his problem was still unsolved, and there was in the air that sense of the hour before the dawn, which is so dread to doubtful life. The noise of the rats had ceased. Indeed it seemed to him that it must have ceased but lately and that it was the sudden cessation which had disturbed him. The fire had fallen low, but still it threw out a deep red glow. As he looked he started in spite of his sang froid.

There, on the great high-backed carved oak chair by the right side of the fire-place sat an enormous rat, steadily glaring at him with baleful eyes. He made a motion to it as though to hunt it away, but it did not stir. Then he made the motion of throwing something. Still it did not stir, but showed its great white teeth angrily, and its cruel eyes shone in the lamplight with an added vindictiveness.

Malcolmson felt amazed, and seizing the poker from the hearth ran at it to kill it. Before, however, he could strike it the rat, with a squeak that sounded like the concentration of hate, jumped upon the floor, and, running up the rope of the alarm bell, disappeared in the darkness beyond the range of the green-shaded lamp. Instantly, strange to say, the noisy scampering of the rats in the wainscot began again.

By this time Malcolmson's mind was quite off the problem, and as a shrill cock-crow outside told him of the approach of morning, he went to bed and to sleep.

He slept so sound that he was not even waked by Mrs. Dempster coming in to make up his room. It was only when she had tided up the place and got his breakfast ready and tapped on the screen which closed in his bed that he woke. He was a little tired still after his night's hard work, but a strong cup of tea soon freshened him up and, taking his book, he went out for his morning walk, bringing with him a few sandwiches lest he should not care to return till dinner-time. He found a quiet walk between high elms some way outside the town, and here he spent the greater part of the day studying his Laplace. On his return he looked in to see Mrs. Witham and to thank her for her kindness. When she saw him coming through the diamond-paned bay window of her sanctum she came out to meet him and asked him in. She looked at him searchingly and shook her head as she said:

'You must not overdo it, sir. You are paler this morning than you should be. Too late hours and too hard work on the brains isn't good for any man! But tell me, sir, how did you pass the night? Well, I hope? But, my heart! sir, I was glad when Mrs. Dempster told me this morning that you were all right and sleeping sound when she went in.'

'Oh, I was all right,' he answered smiling, 'The "somethings" didn't worry me, as yet. Only the rats, and they had a circus, I tell you, all over the place. There was one wicked-looking old devil that sat up on my own chair by the fire, and wouldn't go till I took the poker to him, and then he ran up the rope of the alarm bell and got to somewhere up the wall or the ceiling— I couldn't see where, it was so dark.'

'Mercy on us,' said Mrs. Witham, 'an old devil, and sitting on a chair by the fireside! Take care, sir! take care! There's many a true word spoken in jest.'

'How do you mean? 'Pon my word, I don't understand.'

'An old devil! The old devil, perhaps. There! sir, you needn't laugh,' for Malcolmson had broken into a hearty peal. 'You young folks think it easy to laugh at things that makes older ones shudder. Never mind, sir! never mind! Please God, you'll laugh all the time. It's what I wish you myself!' and the good lady beamed all over in sympathy with his enjoyment, her fears gone for a moment.

'Oh, forgive me,' said Malcolmson presently. 'Don't think me rude, but the idea was too much for me— that the old devil himself was on the chair last night!' And at the thought he laughed again. Then he went home to dinner.

This evening the scampering of the rats began earlier, indeed it had been going on before his arrival, and only ceased whilst his presence by its freshness disturbed them. After dinner he sat by the fire for a while and had a smoke, and then, having cleared his table, began to work as before. To-night the rats disturbed him more than they had done on the previous night.

How they scampered up and down and under and over! How they squeaked and scratched and gnawed! How they, getting bolder by degrees, came to the mouths of their holes and to the chinks and cracks and crannies in the wainscoting till their eyes shone like tiny lamps as the firelight rose and fell. But to him, now doubtless accustomed to them, their eyes were not wicked, only their playfulness touched him. Sometimes the boldest of them made sallies out on the floor or along the mouldings of the wainscot. Now and again as they disturbed him Malcolmson made a sound to frighten them, smiting the table with his hand or giving a fierce 'Hsh, hsh,' so that they fled straightway to their holes.

And so the early part of the night wore on, and despite the noise Malcolmson got more and more immersed in his work.

All at once he stopped, as on the previous night, being overcome by a sudden silence. There was not the faintest sound of gnaw, or scratch, or squeak. The silence was as of the grave.

He remembered the odd occurrence of the previous night, and instinctively he looked at the chair standing close by the fireside. And then a very odd sensation thrilled through him.

There, on the great old high-backed carved oak chair beside the fireplace sat the same enormous rat, steadily glaring at him with baleful eyes.

Instinctively he took the nearest thing to his hand, a book of logarithms, and flung it at it. The book was badly aimed and the rat did not stir, so again the poker performance of the previous night was repeated, and again the rat, being closely pursued, fled up the rope of the alarm bell. Strangely, too, the departure of this rat was instantly followed by the renewal of the noise made by the general rat community. On this occasion, as on the previous one, Malcolmson could not see at what part of the room the rat disappeared, for the green shade of his lamp left the upper part of the room in darkness and the fire had burned low.

On looking at his watch he found it was close on midnight, and, not sorry for the divertissement, he made up his fire and made himself his nightly pot of tea. He had got through a good spell of work, and thought himself entitled to a cigarette, and so he sat on the great carved oak chair before the fire and enjoyed it. Whilst smoking he began to think that he would like to know where the rat disappeared to, for he had certain ideas for the morrow not entirely disconnected with a rat-trap. Accordingly he lit another lamp and placed it so that it would shine well into the right-hand corner of the wall by the fireplace. Then he got all the books he had with him, and placed them handy to throw at the vermin. Finally he lifted the rope of the alarm bell and placed the end of it on the table, fixing the extreme end under the lamp. As he handled it he could not help noticing how pliable it was, especially for so strong a rope and one not in use. 'You could hang a man with it,' he thought to himself.

When his preparations were made he looked around, and said complacently:

'There now, my friend, I think we shall learn something of you this time!' He began his work again, and though, as before, somewhat disturbed at first by the noise of the rats, soon lost himself in his proposition and problems.

Again he was called to his immediate surroundings suddenly. This time it might not have been the sudden silence only which took his attention; there was a slight movement of the rope, and the lamp moved. Without stirring, he looked to see if his pile of books was within range, and then cast his eye along the rope. As he looked he saw the great rat drop from the rope on the oak arm-chair and sit there glaring at him. He raised a book in his right hand, and taking careful aim, flung it at the rat. The latter, with a quick movement, sprang aside and dodged the missile. Then he took another book, and a third, and flung them one after the other at the rat, but each time unsuccessfully. At last, as he stood with a book poised in his hand to throw, the rat squeaked and seemed afraid. This made Malcolmson more than ever eager to strike, and the book flew and struck the rat a resounding blow. It gave a terrified squeak, and turning on his pursuer a look of terrible malevolence, ran up the chair-back and made a great jump to the rope of the alarm bell and ran up it like lightning. The lamp rocked under the sudden strain, but it was a heavy one and did not topple over. Malcolmson kept his eyes on the rat, and saw it by the light of the second lamp leap to a moulding of the wainscot and disappear through a hole in one of the great pictures which hung on the wall, obscured and invisible through its coating of dirt and dust.

'I shall look up my friend's habitation in the morning,' said the student, as he went over to collect his books. 'The third picture from the fireplace, I shall not forget.' He picked up the books one by one, commenting on them as he lifted them. Conic Sections he does not mind, nor Cycloid Oscillations, nor the Principia, nor Quaternions, nor Thermodynamics. Now for a look at the book that fetched him!' Malcolmson took it up and looked at it. As he did so he started, and a sudden pallor overspread his face. He looked round uneasily and shivered slightly, as he murmured to himself:

'The Bible my mother gave me! What an odd coincidence.' He sat down to work again, and the rats in the wainscot renewed their gambols. They did not disturb him, however; somehow their presence gave him a sense of companionship. But he could not attend to his work, and after striving to master the subject on which he was engaged gave it up in despair, and went to bed as the first streak of dawn stole in through the eastern window.

He slept heavily but uneasily, and dreamed much, and when Mrs. Dempster woke him late in the morning he seemed ill at ease, and for a few minutes did not seem to realize exactly where he was. His first request rather surprised the servant.

'Mrs. Dempster, when I am out to-day I wish you would get the steps and dust or wash those pictures— specially that one the third from the fireplace— I want to see what they are.'

Late in the afternoon Malcolmson worked at his books in the shaded walk, and the cheerfulness of the previous day came back to him as the day wore on, and he found that his reading was progressing well. He had worked out to a satisfactory conclusion all the problems which had as yet baffled him, and it was in a state of jubilation that he paid a visit to Mrs. Witham at 'The Good Traveller.' He found a stranger in the cosy sitting-room with the landlady, who was introduced to him as Dr. Thornhill. She was not quite at ease, and this, combined with the doctor's plunging at once into a series of questions, made Malcolmson come to the conclusion that his presence was not an accident, so without preliminary he said:

'Dr. Thornhill, I shall with pleasure answer you any question you may choose to ask me if you will answer me one question first.'

The doctor seemed surprised, but he smiled and answered at once, 'Done! What is it?'

'Did Mrs. Witham ask you to come here and see me and advise me?'

Dr. Thornhill for a moment was taken aback, and Mrs. Witham got fiery red and turned away, but the doctor was a frank and ready man, and he answered at once and openly:

'She did, but she didn't intend you to know it. I suppose it was my clumsy haste that made you suspect. She told me that she did not like the idea of your being in that house all by yourself, and that she thought you took too much strong tea. In fact, she wants me to advise you, if possible, to give up the tea and the very late hours. I was a keen student in my time, so I suppose I may take the liberty of a college man, and without offence, advise you not quite as a stranger.'

Malcolmson with a bright smile held out his hand. 'Shake— as they say in America,' he said. 'I must thank you for your kindness, and Mrs. Witham too, and your kindness deserves a return on my part. I promise to take no more strong tea— no tea at all till you let me— and I shall go to bed to-night at one o'clock at latest. Will that do?'

'Capital,' said the doctor. 'Now tell us all that you noticed in the old house,' and so Malcolmson then and there told in minute detail all that had happened in the last two nights. He was interrupted every now and then by some exclamation from Mrs. Witham, till finally when he told of the episode of the Bible the landlady's pent-up emotions found vent in a shriek, and it was not till a stiff glass of brandy and water had been administered that she grew composed again. Dr. Thornhill listened with a face of growing gravity, and when the narrative was complete and Mrs. Witham had been restored he asked:

'The rat always went up the rope of the alarm bell?'

'Always.'

'I suppose you know,' said the Doctor after a pause, 'what that rope is?'

'No?'

'It is,' said the Doctor slowly, 'the very rope which the hangman used for all the victims of the Judge's judicial rancour!' Here he was interrupted by another scream from Mrs. Witham, and steps had to be taken for her recovery. Malcolmson having looked at his watch, and found that it was close to his dinner-hour, had gone home before her complete recovery.

When Mrs. Witham was herself again she almost assailed the Doctor with angry questions as to what he meant by putting such horrible ideas into the poor young man's mind. 'He has quite enough there already to upset him,' she added.

Dr. Thornhill replied:

'My dear madam, I had a distinct purpose in it! I wanted to draw his attention to the bell-rope, and to fix it there. It may be that he is in a highly over-wrought state, and has been studying too much, although I am bound to say that he seems as sound and healthy a young man, mentally and bodily, as ever I saw— but then the rats— and that suggestion of the devil.' The doctor shook his head and went on. 'I would have offered to go and stay the first night with him but that I felt sure it would have been a cause of offence. He may get in the night some strange fright or hallucination, and if he does I want him to pull that rope. All alone as he is it will give us warning, and we may reach him in time to be of service. I shall be sitting up pretty late to-night and shall keep my ears open. Do not be alarmed if Benchurch gets a surprise before morning.'

'Oh, Doctor, what do you mean? What do you mean?'

'I mean this, that possibly— nay, more probably— we shall hear the great alarm-bell from the Judge's House to-night,' and the Doctor made about an effective an exit as could be thought of.

When Malcolmson arrived home he found that it was a little after his usual time, and Mrs. Dempster had gone away— the rules of Greenhow's Charity were not to be neglected. He was glad to see that the place was bright and tidy with a cheerful fire and a well-trimmed lamp. The evening was colder than might have been expected in April, and a heavy wind was blowing with such rapidly-increasing strength that there was every promise of a storm during the night. For a few minutes after his entrance the noise of the rats ceased, but so soon as they became accustomed to his presence they began again. He was glad to hear them, for he felt once more the feeling of companionship in their noise, and his mind ran back to the strange fact that they only ceased to manifest themselves when the other— the great rat with the baleful eyes— came upon the scene. The reading-lamp only was lit and its green shade kept the ceiling and the upper part of the room in darkness so that the cheerful light from the hearth spreading over the floor and shining on the white cloth laid over the end of the table was warm and cheery. Malcolmson sat down to his dinner with a good appetite and a buoyant spirit. After his dinner and a cigarette he sat steadily down to work, determined not to let anything disturb him, for he remembered his promise to the doctor, and made up his mind to make the best of the time at his disposal.

For an hour or so he worked all right, and then his thoughts began to wander from his books. The actual circumstances around him, and the calls on his physical attention, and his nervous susceptibility were not to be denied. By this time the wind had become a gale, and the gale a storm. The old house, solid though it was, seemed to shake to its foundation, and the storm roared and raged through its many chimneys and its queer old gables, producing strange, unearthly sounds in the empty rooms and corridors. Even the great alarm-bell on the roof must have felt the force of the wind, for the rope rose and fell slightly, as though the bell were moved a little from time to time, and the limber rope fell on the oak floor with a hard and hollow sound.

As Malcolmson listened to it he bethought himself of the doctor's words, 'It is the rope which the hangman used for the victims of the Judge's judicial rancour,' and he went over to the corner of the fireplace and took it in his hand to look at it. There seemed a sort of deadly interest in it, and as he stood there he lost himself for a moment in speculation as to who these victims were, and the grim wish of the Judge to have such a ghastly relic ever under his eyes. As he stood there the swaying of the bell on the roof still lifted the rope now and again, but presently there came a new sensation— a sort of tremor in the rope, as though something was moving along it.

Looking up instinctively Malcolmson saw the great rat coming slowly down towards him, glaring at him steadily. He dropped the rope and started back with a muttered curse, and the rat turning ran up the slope again and disappeared, and at the same instant Malcolmson became conscious that the noise of the other rats, which had ceased for a while, began again.

All this set him thinking, and it occurred to him that he had not investigated the lair of the rat or looked at the pictures, as he had intended. He lit the other lamp without the shade, and, holding it up went and stood opposite the third picture from the fireplace on the right-hand side where he had seen the rat disappear on the previous night.

At the first glance he started back so suddenly that he almost dropped the lamp, and a deadly pallor overspread his face.

His knees shook, and heavy drops of sweat came on his forehead, and he trembled like an aspen. But he was young and plucky, and pulled himself together, and after the pause of a few seconds stepped forward again, raised the lamp, and examined the picture which had been dusted and washed, and now stood out clearly.

It was of a judge dressed in his robes of scarlet and ermine. His face was strong and merciless, evil, crafty and vindictive, with a sensual mouth, hooked nose of ruddy colour, and shaped like the beak of a bird of prey. The rest of the face was of a cadaverous colour. The eyes were of peculiar brilliance and with a terribly malignant expression. As he looked at them, Malcolmson grew cold, for he saw there the very counterpart of the eyes of the great rat. The lamp almost fell from his hand, he saw the rat with its baleful eyes peering out through the hole in the corner of the picture, and noted the sudden cessation of the noise of the other rats. However, he pulled himself together, and went on with his examination of the picture.

The Judge was seated in a great high-backed carved oak chair, on the right-hand side of a great stone fireplace where, in the corner, a rope hung down from the ceiling, its end lying coiled on the floor. With a feeling of something like horror, Malcolmson recognized the scene of the room as it stood, and gazed around him in an awestruck manner as though he expected to find some strange presence behind him. Then he looked over to the corner of the fireplace— and with a loud cry he let the lamp fall from his hand.

There, in the judge's arm-chair, with the rope hanging behind, sat the rat with the Judge's baleful eyes, now intensified as with a fiendish leer. Save for the howling of the storm without there was silence.

The fallen lamp recalled Malcolmson to himself. Fortunately it was of metal, and so the oil was not spilt. However, the practical need of attending to it settled at once his nervous apprehensions. When he had turned it out, he wiped his brow and thought for a moment.

'This will not do,' he said to himself. 'If I go on like this I shall become a crazy fool. This must stop! I promised the doctor I would not take tea. Faith, he was pretty right! My nerves must have been getting into a queer state. Funny I did not notice it. I never felt better in my life. However, it is all right now, and I shall not be such a fool again.'

Then he mixed himself a good stiff glass of brandy and water and resolutely sat down to his work.

It was nearly an hour when he looked up from his book, disturbed by the sudden stillness. Without, the wind howled and roared louder then ever, and the rain drove in sheets against the windows, beating like hail on the glass, but within there was no sound whatever save the echo of the wind as it roared in the great chimney, and now and then a hiss as a few raindrops found their way down the chimney in a lull of the storm. The fire had fallen low and had ceased to flame, though it threw out a red glow. Malcolmson listened attentively, and presently heard a thin, squeaking noise, very faint. It came from the corner of the room where the rope hung down, and he thought it was the creaking of the rope on the floor as the swaying of the bell raised and lowered it. Looking up, however, he saw in the dim light the great rat clinging to the rope and gnawing it. The rope was already nearly gnawed through— he could see the lighter colour where the strands were laid bare. As he looked the job was completed, and the severed end of the rope fell clattering on the oaken floor, whilst for an instant the great rat remained like a knob or tassel at the end of the rope, which now began to sway to and fro. Malcolmson felt for a moment another pang of terror as he thought that now the possibility of calling the outer world to his assistance was cut off, but an intense anger took its place, and seizing the book he was reading he hurled it at the rat. The blow was well-aimed, but before the missile could reach him the rat dropped off and struck the floor with a soft thud. Malcolmson instantly rushed over towards him, but it darted away and disappeared in the darkness of the shadows of the room. Malcolmson felt that his work was over for the night, and determined then and there to vary the monotony of the proceedings by a hunt for the rat, and took off the green shade of the lamp so as to insure a wider spreading light. As he did so the gloom of the upper part of the room was relieved, and in the new flood of light, great by comparison with the previous darkness, the pictures on the wall stood out boldly.

From where he stood, Malcolmson saw right opposite to him the third picture on the wall from the right of the fireplace. He rubbed his eyes in surprise, and then a great fear began to come upon him.

In the centre of the picture was a great irregular patch of brown canvas, as fresh as when it was stretched on the frame. The background was as before, with chair and chimney-corner and rope, but the figure of the Judge had disappeared.

Malcolmson, almost in a chill of horror, turned slowly round, and then he began to shake and tremble like a man in a palsy. His strength seemed to have left him, and he was incapable of action or movement, hardly even of thought. He could only see and hear.

There, on the great high-backed carved oak chair sat the judge in his robes of scarlet and ermine, with his baleful eyes glaring vindictively, and a smile of triumph on the resolute cruel mouth, as he lifted with his hands a black cap . Malcolmson felt as if the blood was running from his heart, as one does in moments of prolonged suspense. There was a singing in his ears. Without, he could hear the roar and howl of the tempest, and through it, swept on the storm, came the striking of midnight by the great chimes in the market-place. He stood for a space of time that seemed to him endless still as a statue, and with wide-open, horror-struck eyes, breathless. As the clock struck, so the smile of triumph on the Judge's face intensified, and at the last stroke of midnight he placed the black cap on his head.

Slowly and deliberately the Judge rose from his chair and picked up the piece of rope of the alarm bell which lay on the floor, drew it through his hands as if he enjoyed its touch and then deliberately began to knot one end of it, fashioning it into a noose. This he tightened and tested with his foot, pulling hard at it till he was satisfied and then making a running noose of it, which he held in his hand. Then he began to move along the table on the opposite side of Malcolmson keeping his eyes on him until he had passed him, when with a quick movement he stood in front of the door. Malcolmson then began to feel that he was trapped, and tried to think of what he should do. There was some fascination in the Judge's eyes, which he never took off him, and he had, perforce, to look. He saw the Judge approach— still keeping between him and the door— and raise the noose and throw it towards him as if to entangle him. With a great effort he made a quick movement to one side, and saw the rope fall beside him, and heard it strike the oaken floor. Again the Judge raised the noose and tried to ensnare him, ever keeping his baleful eyes fixed on him, and each time by a mighty effort the student just managed to evade it. So this went on for many times, the Judge seeming never discouraged nor discomposed at failure, but playing as a cat does with a mouse. At last in despair, which had reached its climax, Malcolmson cast a quick glance round him. The lamp seemed to have blazed up, and there was a fairly good light in the room. At the many rat-holes and in the chinks and crannies of the wainscot he saw the rats' eyes, and this aspect, that was purely physical, gave him a gleam of comfort. He looked round and saw that the rope of the great alarm bell was laden with rats. Every inch of it was covered with them, and more and more were pouring through the small circular hole in the ceiling whence it emerged, so that with their weight the bell was beginning to sway.

Hark! it had swayed till the clapper had touched the bell. The sound was but a tiny one, but the bell was only beginning to sway, and it would increase.

At the sound the Judge, who had been keeping his eyes fixed on Malcolmson, looked up, and a scowl of diabolical anger overspread his face. His eyes fairly glowed like hot coals, and he stamped his foot with a sound that seemed to make the house shake. A dreadful peal of thunder broke overhead as he raised the rope again, whilst the rats kept running up and down the rope as though working against time. This time, instead of throwing it, he drew close to his victim, and held open the noose as he approached. As he came closer there seemed something paralyzing in his very presence, and Malcolmson stood rigid as a corpse. He felt the Judge's icy fingers touch his throat as he adjusted the rope. The noose tightened— tightened. Then the Judge, taking the rigid form of the student in his arms, carried him over and placed him standing in the oak chair, and stepping up beside him, put his hand up and caught the end of the swaying rope of the alarm-bell. As he raised his hand the rats fled squeaking and disappeared through the hole in the ceiling. Taking the end of the noose which was round Malcolmson's neck he tied it to the hanging bell-rope, and then descending pulled away the chair.

When the alarm-bell of the Judge's House began to sound a crowd soon assembled. Lights and torches of various kinds appeared, and soon a silent crowd was hurrying to the spot. They knocked loudly at the door, but there was no reply. Then they burst in the door, and poured into the great dining-room, the doctor at the head.

There at the end of the rope of the great alarm-bell hung the body of the student, and on the face of the Judge in the picture was a malignant smile.

_____________________

15: The Ghost of the Marchioness of Appleford

Jerome K. Jerome

1859-1927

Cassell’s Magazine March 1898

THIS IS the story, among others, of Henry the waiter— or, as he now prefers to call himself, Henri— told to me in the long dining-room of the Riffel Alp Hotel, where I once stayed for a melancholy week 'between seasons,' sharing the echoing emptiness of the place with two maiden ladies, who talked all day to one another in frightened whispers. Henry's construction I have discarded for its amateurishness; his method being generally to commence a story at the end, and then, working backwards to the beginning, wind up with the middle. But in all other respects I have endeavoured to retain his method, which was individual; and this, I think, is the story as he would have told it to me himself, had he told it in this order:

MY FIRST place— well to be honest, it was a coffee shop in the Mile End Road— I'm not ashamed of it. We all have our beginnings. Young 'Kipper,' as we called him— he had no name of his own, not that he knew of anyhow, and that seemed to fit him down to the ground— had fixed his pitch just outside, between our door and the music hall at the corner; and sometimes, when I might happen to have a bit on, I'd get a paper from him, and pay him for it, when the governor was not about, with a mug of coffee, and odds and ends that the other customers had left on their plates— an arrangement that suited both of us. He was just about as sharp as they make boys, even in the Mile End Road, which is saying a good deal; and now and then, spying around among the right sort, and keeping his ears open, he would put me up to a good thing, and I would tip him a bob or a tanner as the case might be. He was the sort that gets on— you know.

One day in he walks, for all the world as if the show belonged to him, with a young imp of a girl on his arm, and down they sits at one of the tables.

'Garsong,' he calls out, 'what's the menoo to-day?'

'The menoo to-day,' I says, 'is that you get outside 'fore I clip you over the ear, and that you take that back and put it where you found it;' meaning o' course, the kid.

She was a pretty little thing, even then, in spite of the dirt, with those eyes like saucers, and red hair. It used to be called 'carrots' in those days. Now all the swells have taken it up— or as near as they can get to it— and it's auburn.

''Enery,' he replied to me, without so much as turning a hair, 'I'm afraid you're forgetting your position. When I'm on the kerb shouting "Speshul!" and you comes to me with yer 'a'penny in yer 'and, you're master an' I'm man. When I comes into your shop to order refreshments, and to pay for 'em, I'm boss. Savey? You can bring me a rasher and two eggs, and see that they're this season's. The lidy will have a full-sized haddick and a cocoa.'

Well, there was justice in what he said. He always did have sense, and I took his order. You don't often see anybody put it away like that girl did. I took it she hadn't had a square meal for many a long day. She polished off a ninepenny haddick, skin and all, and after that she had two penny rashers, with six slices of bread and butter— 'doorsteps,' as we used to call them— and two half pints of cocoa, which is a meal in itself the way we used to make it. 'Kipper' must have had a bit of luck that day. He couldn't have urged her on more had it been a free feed.

''Ave an egg,' he suggested, the moment the rashers had disappeared. 'One of these eggs will just about finish yer.'

'I don't really think as I can,' says she, after considering like.

'Well, you know your own strength,' he answers. 'Perhaps you're best without it. Speshully if yer not used to 'igh living.'

I was glad to see them finish, 'cause I was beginning to get a bit nervous about the coin, but he paid up right enough, and giv me a ha'penny for myself.

That was the first time I ever waited upon those two, but it wasn't to be the last by many a long chalk, as you'll see. He often used to bring her in after that. Who she was and what she was he didn't know, and she didn't know, so there was a pair of them. She'd run away from an old woman down Limehouse way, who used to beat her. That was all she could tell him. He got her a lodging with an old woman, who had an attic in the same house where he slept— when it would run to that— taught her to yell 'Speshul!' and found a corner for her. There ain't room for boys and girls in the Mile End Road. They're either kids down there or they're grown-ups. 'Kipper' and 'Carrots'— as we named her— looked upon themselves as sweethearts, though he couldn't have been more than fifteen, and she barely twelve; and that he was regular gone on her anyone could see with half an eye. Not that he was soft about it— that wasn't his style. He kept her in order, and she had just to mind, which I guess was a good thing for her, and when she wanted it he'd use his hand on her, and make no bones about it. That's the way among that class. They up and give the old woman a friendly clump, just as you or me would swear at the missus, or fling a boot-jack at her. They don't mean anything more.

I left the coffee shop later on for a place in the city, and saw nothing more of them for five years. When I did it was at a restaurant in Oxford Street— one of those amatoor shows run by a lot of women, who know nothing about the business, and spend the whole day gossiping and flirting— 'love-shops,' I call 'em. There was a yellow-haired lady manageress who never heard you when you spoke to her, 'cause she was always trying to hear what some seedy old fool would be whispering to her across the counter. Then there were waitresses, and their notion of waiting was to spend an hour talking to a twopenny cup of coffee, and to look haughty and insulted whenever anybody as really wanted something ventured to ask for it. A frizzle-haired cashier used to make love all day out of her pigeon-hole with the two box-office boys from the Oxford Music Hall, who took it turn and turn about. Sometimes she'd leave off to take a customer's money, and sometimes she wouldn't. I've been to some rummy places in my time; and a waiter ain't the blind owl as he's supposed to be. But never in my life have I seen so much love-making, not all at once, as used to go on in that place. It was a dismal, gloomy sort of hole, and spoony couples seemed to scent it out by instinct, and would spend hours there over a pot of tea and assorted pastry. 'Idyllic,' some folks would have thought it: I used to get the fair dismals watching it. There was one girl— a weird-looking creature, with red eyes and long thin hands, that gave you the creeps to look at. She'd come in regular with her young man, a pale-faced nervous sort of chap, at three o'clock every afternoon. Theirs was the funniest love-making I ever saw. She'd pinch him under the table, and run pins into him, and he'd sit with his eyes glued on her as if she'd been a steaming dish of steak and onions and he a starving beggar the other side of the window. A strange story that was— as I came to learn it later on. I'll tell you that, one day.

I'd been engaged for the 'heavy work,' but as the heaviest order I ever heard given there was for a cold ham and chicken, which I had to slip out for to the nearest cook-shop, I must have been chiefly useful from an ornamental point of view.

I'd been there about a fortnight, and was feeling pretty sick of it, when in walked young 'Kipper.' I didn't know him at first, he'd changed so. He was swinging a silver-mounted crutch stick, which was the kind that was fashionable just then, and was dressed in a showy check suit and a white hat. But the thing that struck me most was his gloves. I suppose I hadn't improved quite so much myself, for he knew me in a moment, and held out his hand.

'What, 'Enery!' he says, 'you've moved on, then!'

'Yes,' I says, shaking hands with him, 'and I could move on again from this shop without feeling sad. But you've got on a bit?' I says.

'So-so,' he says, 'I'm a journalist.'

'Oh,' I says, 'what sort?' for I'd seen a good many of that lot during six months I'd spent at a house in Fleet Street, and their get-up hadn't sumptuousness about it, so to speak. 'Kipper's' rig-out must have totted up to a tidy little sum. He had a diamond pin in his tie that must have cost somebody fifty quid, if not him.

'Well,' he answers, 'I don't wind out the confidential advice to old Beaky, and that sort of thing. I do the tips, yer know. 'Cap'n Kit,' that's my name.'

'What, the Captain Kit?' I says. O' course I'd heard of him.'

'Be'old!' he says.

'Oh, it's easy enough,' he goes on. 'Some of 'em's bound to come out right, and when one does, you take it from me, our paper mentions the fact. And when it is a wrong 'un— well, a man can't always be shouting about himself, can 'e?'

He ordered a cup of coffee. He said he was waiting for someone, and we got to chatting about old times.

'How's Carrots?' I asked.

'Miss Caroline Trevelyan,' he answered, 'is doing well.'

'Oh,' I says, 'you've found out her fam'ly name, then?'

'We've found out one or two things about that lidy,' he replies. 'D'yer remember 'er dancing?'

'I have seen her flinging her petticoats about outside the shop, when the copper wasn't by, if that's what you mean,' I says.

'That's what I mean,' he answers. 'That's all the rage now, "skirt-dancing" they calls it. She's a-coming out at the Oxford to-morrow. It's 'er I'm waiting for. She's a-coming on, I tell you she is,' he says.

'Shouldn't wonder,' says I; 'that was her disposition.'

'And there's another thing we've found out about 'er,' he says. He leant over the table, and whispered it, as if he was afraid that anybody else might hear: 'she's got a voice.'

'Yes,' I says, 'some women have.'

'Ah,' he says, 'but 'er voice is the sort of voice yer want to listen to.'

'Oh,' I says, 'that's its speciality, is it?'

'That's it, sonny,' he replies.

She came in a little later. I'd a' known her anywhere for her eyes, and her red hair, in spite of her being that clean you might have eaten your dinner out of her hand. And as for her clothes! Well, I've mixed a good deal with the toffs in my time, and I've seen duchesses dressed more showily and maybe more expensively, but her clothes seemed to be just a framework to show her up. She was a beauty, you can take it from me; and it's not to be wondered that the La-De-Das were round her when they did see her, like flies round an open jam tart.

Before three months were up she was the rage of London— leastways of the music-hall part of it— with her portrait in all the shop windows, and interviews with her in half the newspapers. It seems she was the daughter of an officer who had died in India when she was a baby, and the niece of a bishop somewhere in Australia. He was dead too. There didn't seem to be any of her ancestry as wasn't dead, but they had all been swells. She had been educated privately, she had, by a relative; and had early displayed an aptitude for dancing, though her friends at first had much opposed her going upon the stage. There was a lot more of it— you know the sort of thing. Of course, she was a connection of one of our best known judges— they all are— and she merely acted in order to support a grandmother, or an invalid sister, I forget which. A wonderful talent for swallowing, these newspaper chaps has, some of 'em!

'Kipper' never touched a penny of her money, but if he had been her agent at twenty-five per cent. he couldn't have worked harder, and he just kept up the hum about her, till if you didn't want to hear anything more about Caroline Trevelyan, your only chance would have been to lie in bed, and never look at a newspaper. It was Caroline Trevelyan at Home, Caroline Trevelyan at Brighton, Caroline Trevelyan and the Shah of Persia, Caroline Trevelyan and the Old Apple-woman. When it wasn't Caroline Trevelyan herself it would be Caroline Trevelyan's dog as would be doing something out of the common, getting himself lost or summoned or drowned— it didn't matter much what.

I moved from Oxford Street to the new 'Horseshoe' that year— it had just been rebuilt— and there I saw a good deal of them, for they came in to lunch there or supper pretty regular. Young 'Kipper'— or the 'Captain' as everybody called him— gave out that he was her half-brother.

'I'ad to be some sort of a relation, you see,' he explained to me. 'I'd a' been 'er brother out and out; that would have been simpler, only the family likeness wasn't strong enough. Our styles o' beauty ain't similar.' They certainly wasn't.

'Why don't you marry her?' I says, 'and have done with it?'

He looked thoughtful at that. 'I did think of it,' he says, 'and I know, jolly well, that if I 'ad suggested it 'fore she'd found herself, she'd have agreed, but it don't seem quite fair now.'

'How d'ye mean fair?' I says.

'Well, not fair to 'er,' he says. 'I've got on all right, in a small way; but she— well, she can just 'ave 'er pick of the nobs. There's one on 'em as I've made inquiries about. 'E'll be a dook, if a kid pegs out as is expected to, and anyhow 'e'll be a markis, and 'e means the straight thing— no errer. It ain't fair for me to stand in 'er way.'

'Well,' I says, 'you know your own business, but it seems to me she wouldn't have much way to stand in if it hadn't been for you.'

'Oh, that's all right,' he says. 'I'm fond enough of the gell, but I shan't clamour for a tombstone with wiolets, even if she ain't ever Mrs. Capt'n Kit. Business is business; and I ain't going to queer 'er pitch for 'er.'

I've often wondered what she'd a' said, if he'd up and put the case to her plain, for she was a good sort; but, naturally enough, her head was a bit swelled, and she'd read so much rot about herself in the papers that she'd got at last to half believe some of it. The thought of her connection with the well-known judge seemed to hamper her at times, and she wasn't quite so chummy with 'Kipper' as used to be the case in the Mile End Road days, and he wasn't the sort as is slow to see a thing.

One day when he was having lunch by himself, and I was waiting on him, he says, raising his glass to his lips, 'Well, 'Enery, here's luck to yer! I won't be seeing you agen for some time.'

'Oh,' I says. 'What's up now?'

'I am,' he says, 'or rather my time is. I'm off to Africa.'

'Oh,' I says, 'and what about–'

'That's all right,' he interrupts. 'I've fixed up that— a treat. Truth, that's why I'm going.'

I thought at first he meant she was going with him.

'No,' he says, 'she's going to be the Duchess of Ridingshire with the kind consent o' the kid I spoke about. If not, she'll be the Marchioness of Appleford. 'E's doing the square thing. There's going to be a quiet marriage to-morrow at the Registry Office, and then I'm off.'

'What need for you to go?' I says.

'No need,' he says; 'it's a fancy o' mine. You see, me gone, there's nothing to 'amper 'er— nothing to interfere with 'er settling down as a quiet, respectable toff. With a 'alf-brother, who's always got to be spry with some fake about 'is lineage and 'is ancestral estates, and who drops 'is 'h's,' complications are sooner or later bound to a-rise. Me out of it— everything's simple. Savey?'

Well, that's just how it happened. Of course, there was a big row when the family heard of it, and a smart lawyer was put up to try and undo the thing. No expense was spared, you bet; but it was all no go. Nothing could be found out against her. She just sat tight and said nothing. So the thing had to stand. They went and lived quietly in the country and abroad for a year or two, and then folks forgot a bit, and they came back to London. I often used to see her name in print, and then the papers always said as how she was charming and graceful and beautiful, so I suppose the family had made up its mind to get used to her.

One evening in she comes to the Savoy. My wife put me up to getting that job, and a good job it is, mind you, when you know your way about. I'd never have had the cheek to try for it, if it hadn't been for the missis. She's a clever one— she is. I did a good day's work when I married her.

'You shave off that moustache of yours— it ain't an ornament,' she says to me, 'and chance it. Don't get attempting the lingo. Keep to the broken English, and put in a shrug or two. You can manage that all right.'

I followed her tip. Of course the manager saw through me, but I got in a 'Oui, monsieur' now and again, and they, being short handed at the time, could not afford to be strict, I suppose. Anyhow I got took on, and there I stopped for the whole season, and that was the making of me.

Well, as I was saying, in she comes to the supper rooms, and toffy enough she looked in her diamonds and furs, and as for haughtiness there wasn't a born Marchioness she couldn't have given points to. She comes straight up to my table and sits down. Her husband was with her, but he didn't seem to have much to say, except to repeat her orders. Of course I looked as if I'd never set eyes on her before in all my life, though all the time she was a-pecking at the mayonnaise and a-sipping at the Giessler, I was thinking of the coffee-shop and of the ninepenny haddick and the pint of cocoa.

'Go and fetch my cloak,' she says to him after a while. 'I am cold.'

And up he gets and goes out.

She never moved her head, and spoke as though she was merely giving me some order, and I stands behind her chair, respectful like, and answers according to the same tip,

'Ever hear from "Kipper"?' she says to me.

'I have had one or two letters from him, your ladyship,' I answers.

'Oh, stow that,' she says. 'I am sick of "your ladyship." Talk English; I don't hear much of it. How's he getting on?'

'Seems to be doing himself well,' I says. 'He's started an hotel, and is regular raking it in, he tells me.'

'Wish I was behind the bar with him!' says she.

'Why, don't it work then?' I asks.

'It's just like a funeral with the corpse left out,' says she. 'Serves me jolly well right for being a fool!'

The Marquis, he comes back with her cloak at that moment, and I says: 'Certainement, madame,' and gets clear.

I often used to see her there, and when a chance occurred she would talk to me. It seemed to be a relief to her to use her own tongue, but it made me nervous at times for fear someone would hear her.

Then one day I got a letter from 'Kipper' to say he was over for a holiday and was stopping at Morley's, and asking me to look him up.

He had not changed much except to get a bit fatter and more prosperous-looking. Of course, we talked about her ladyship, and I told him what she said.

'Rum things, women,' he says; 'never know their own minds.'

'Oh, they know them all right when they get there,' I says. 'How could she tell what being a Marchioness was like till she'd tried it?'

'Pity,' he says, musing like. 'I reckoned it the very thing she'd tumble to. I only come over to get a sight of 'er, and to satisfy myself as she was getting along all right. Seems I'd better a' stopped away.'

'You ain't ever thought of marrying yourself?' I asks.

'Yes, I have,' he says. 'It's slow for a man over thirty with no wife and kids to bustle him, you take it from me, and I ain't the talent for the Don Juan fake.'

'You're like me,' I says, 'a day's work, and then a pipe by your own fireside with your slippers on. That's my swarry. You'll find someone as will suit you before long.'

'No I shan't,' says he. 'I've come across a few as might, if it 'adn't been for 'er. It's like the toffs as come out our way. They've been brought up on 'ris de veau a la financier,' and sich like, and it just spoils 'em for the bacon and greens.'

I give her the office the next time I see her, and they met accidental like in Kensington Gardens early one morning. What they said to one another I don't know, for he sailed that same evening, and, it being the end of the season, I didn't see her ladyship again for a long while.

When I did it was at the Hotel Bristol in Paris, and she was in widow's weeds, the Marquis having died eight months before. He never dropped into that dukedom, the kid turning out healthier than was expected, and hanging on; so she was still only a Marchioness, and her fortune, though tidy, was nothing very big— not as that class reckons. By luck I was told off to wait on her, she having asked for someone as could speak English. She seemed glad to see me and to talk to me.

'Well,' I says, 'I suppose you'll be bossing that bar in Capetown now before long?'

'Talk sense,' she answers. 'How can the Marchioness of Appleford marry a hotel keeper?'

'Why not,' I says, 'if she fancies him? What's the good of being a Marchioness if you can't do what you like?'

'That's just it,' she snaps out; 'you can't. It would not be doing the straight thing by the family. No,' she says, 'I've spent their money, and I'm spending it now. They don't love me, but they shan't say as I have disgraced them. They've got their feelings same as I've got mine.'

'Why not chuck the money?' I says. 'They'll be glad enough to get it back,' they being a poor lot, as I heard her say.

'How can I?' she says. 'It's a life interest. As long as I live I've got to have it, and as long as I live I've got to remain the Marchioness of Appleford.'

She finishes her soup, and pushes the plate away from her. 'As long as I live,' she says, talking to herself.

'By Jove!' she says, starting up 'why not?'

'Why not what?' I says.

'Nothing,' she answers. 'Get me an African telegraph form, and be quick about it!'

I fetched it for her, and she wrote it and gave it to the porter then and there; and, that done, she sat down and finished her dinner.

She was a bit short with me after that; so I judged it best to keep my own place.

In the morning she got an answer that seemed to excite her, and that afternoon she left; and the next I heard of her was a paragraph in the newspaper, headed— 'Death of the Marchioness of Appleford. Sad accident.' It seemed she had gone for a row on one of the Italian lakes with no one but a boatman. A squall had come on, and the boat had capsized. The boatman had swum ashore, but he had been unable to save his passenger, and her body had never been recovered. The paper reminded its readers that she had formerly been the celebrated tragic actress, Caroline Trevelyan, daughter of the well-known Indian judge of that name.

It gave me the blues for a day or two— that bit of news. I had known her from a baby as you might say, and had taken an interest in her. You can call it silly, but hotels and restaurants seemed to me less interesting now there was no chance of ever seeing her come into one again.

I went from Paris to one of the smaller hotels in Venice. The missis thought I'd do well to pick up a bit of Italian, and perhaps she fancied Venice for herself. That's one of the advantages of our profession. You can go about. It was a second-rate sort of place, and one evening, just before lighting-up time, I had the salle-manger all to myself, and had just taken up a paper when I hears the door open, and I turns round.

I saw 'her' coming down the room. There was no mistaking her. She wasn't that sort.

I sat with my eyes coming out of my head till she was close to me, and then I says:

'Carrots!' I says, in a whisper like. That was the name that come to me.

'"Carrots" it is,' she says, and down she sits just opposite to me, and then she laughs.

I could not speak, I could not move, I was that took aback, and the more frightened I looked the more she laughed till 'Kipper' comes into the room. There was nothing ghostly about him. I never see a man look more as if he had backed the winner.

'Why, it's 'Enery,' he says; and he gives me a slap on the back, as knocks the life into me again.

'I heard you was dead,' I says, still staring at her. 'I read it in the paper— "death of the Marchioness of Appleford."'

'That's all right,' she says. 'The Marchioness of Appleford is as dead as a door-nail, and a good job too. Mrs. Captain Kit's my name, née "Carrots."'

'You said as 'ow I'd find someone to suit me 'fore long,' says 'Kipper' to me, 'and, by Jove! you were right; I 'ave. I was waiting till I found something equal to her ladyship, and I'd 'ave 'ad to wait a long time, I'm thinking, if I 'adn't come across this one 'ere'; and he tucks her up under his arm just as I remember his doing that day he first brought her into the coffee-shop, and Lord, what a long time ago that was!

THAT IS THE STORY, among others, told me by Henry, the waiter. I have, at his request, substituted artificial names for real ones. For Henry tells me that at Capetown Captain Kit's First-class Family and Commercial Hotel still runs, and that the landlady is still a beautiful woman with fine eyes and red hair, who might almost be taken for a duchess— until she opens her mouth, when her accent is found to be still slightly reminiscent of the Mile End Road.

______________________

16: The Beast with Five Fingers

William Fryer Harvey

1885-1937

The New Decameron, 1919

WHEN I was a little boy I once went with my father to call on Adrian Borlsover. I played on the floor with a black spaniel while my father appealed for a subscription. Just before we left my father said, 'Mr. Borlsover, may my son here shake hands with you? It will be a thing to look back upon with pride when he grows to be a man.'

I came up to the bed on which the old man was lying and put my hand in his, awed by the still beauty of his face. He spoke to me kindly, and hoped that I should always try to please my father. Then he placed his right hand on my head and asked for a blessing to rest upon me. 'Amen!' said my father, and I followed him out of the room, feeling as if I wanted to cry. But my father was in excellent spirits.

'That old gentleman, Jim,' said he, 'is the most wonderful man in the whole town. For ten years he has been quite blind.'

'But I saw his eyes,' I said. 'They were ever so black and shiny; they weren't shut up like Nora's puppies. Can't he see at all?'

And so I learnt for the first time that a man might have eyes that looked dark and beautiful and shining without being able to see.

'Just like Mrs. Tomlinson has big ears,' I said, 'and can't hear at all except when Mr. Tomlinson shouts.'

'Jim,' said my father, 'it's not right to talk about a lady's ears. Remember what Mr. Borlsover said about pleasing me and being a good boy.'

That was the only time I saw Adrian Borlsover. I soon forgot about him and the hand which he laid in blessing on my head. But for a week I prayed that those dark tender eyes might see.

'His spaniel may have puppies,' I said in my prayers, 'and he will never be able to know how funny they look with their eyes all closed up. Please let old Mr. Borlsover see.'

ADRIAN BORLSOVER, as my father had said, was a wonderful man. He came of an eccentric family. Borlsovers' sons, for some reason, always seemed to marry very ordinary women, which perhaps accounted for the fact that no Borlsover had been a genius, and only one Borlsover had been mad. But they were great champions of little causes, generous patrons of odd sciences, founders of querulous sects, trustworthy guides to the bypath meadows of erudition.

Adrian was an authority on the fertilization of orchids. He had held at one time the family living at Borlsover Conyers, until a congenital weakness of the lungs obliged him to seek a less rigorous climate in the sunny south coast watering‑place where I had seen him. Occasionally he would relieve one or other of the local clergy. My father described him as a fine preacher, who gave long and inspiring sermons from what many men would have considered unprofitable texts. 'An excellent proof,' he would add, 'of the truth of the doctrine of direct verbal inspiration.'

Adrian Borlsover was exceedingly clever with his hands. His penmanship was exquisite. He illustrated all his scientific papers, made his own woodcuts, and carved the reredos that is at present the chief feature of interest in the church at Borlsover Conyers. He had an exceedingly clever knack in cutting silhouettes for young ladies and paper pigs and cows for little children, and made more than one complicated wind instrument of his own devising.

When he was fifty years old Adrian Borlsover lost his sight. In a wonderfully short time he had adapted himself to the new conditions of life. He quickly learned to read Braille. So marvelous indeed was his sense of touch that he was still able to maintain his interest in botany. The mere passing of his long supple fingers over a flower was sufficient means for its identification, though occasionally he would use his lips. I have found several letters of his among my father's correspondence. In no case was there anything to show that he was afflicted with blindness and this in spite of the fact that he exercised undue economy in the spacing of lines. Towards the close of his life the old man was credited with powers of touch that seemed almost uncanny: it has been said that he could tell at once the color of a ribbon placed between his fingers. My father would neither confirm nor deny the story.

i

ADRIAN BORLSOVER was a bachelor. His elder brother George had married late in life, leaving one son, Eustace, who lived in the gloomy Georgian mansion at Borlsover Conyers, where he could work undisturbed in collecting material for his great book on heredity.

Like his uncle, he was a remarkable man. The Borlsovers had always been born naturalists, but Eustace possessed in a special degree the power of systematizing his knowledge. He had received his university education in Germany, and then, after post‑graduate work in Vienna and Naples, had traveled for four years in South America and the East, getting together a huge store of material for a new study into the processes of variation.

He lived alone at Borlsover Conyers with Saunders his secretary, a man who bore a somewhat dubious reputation in the district, but whose powers as a mathematician, combined with his business abilities, were invaluable to Eustace.

Uncle and nephew saw little of each other. The visits of Eustace were confined to a week in the summer or autumn: long weeks that dragged almost as slowly as the bath‑chair in which the old man was drawn along the sunny sea front. In their way the two men were fond of each other, though their intimacy would doubtless have been greater had they shared the same religious views. Adrian held to the old‑fashioned evangelical dogmas of his early manhood; his nephew for many years had been thinking of embracing Buddhism. Both men possessed, too, the reticence the Borlsovers had always shown, and which their enemies sometimes called hypocrisy. With Adrian it was a reticence as to the things he had left undone; but with Eustace it seemed that the curtain which he was so careful to leave undrawn hid something more than a half‑empty chamber.

TWO YEARS before his death Adrian Borlsover developed, unknown to himself, the not uncommon power of automatic writing. Eustace made the discovery by accident. Adrian was sitting reading in bed, the forefinger of his left hand tracing the Braille characters, when his nephew noticed that a pencil the old man held in his right hand was moving slowly along the opposite page. He left his seat in the window and sat down beside the bed. The right hand continued to move, and now he could see plainly that they were letters and words which it was forming.

'Adrian Borlsover,' wrote the hand, 'Eustace Borlsover, George Borlsover, Francis Borlsover Sigismund Borlsover, Adrian Borlsover, Eustace Borlsover, Saville Borlsover. B, for Borlsover. Honesty is the Best Policy. Beautiful Belinda Borlsover.'

'What curious nonsense!' said Eustace to himself.

'King George the Third ascended the throne in 1760,' wrote the hand. 'Crowd, a noun of multitude; a collection of individuals— Adrian Borlsover, Eustace Borlsover.'

'It seems to me,' said his uncle, closing the book, 'that you had much better make the most of the afternoon sunshine and take your walk now.' 'I think perhaps I will,' Eustace answered as he picked up the volume. 'I won't go far, and when I come back I can read to you those articles in Nature about which we were speaking.' He went along the promenade, but stopped at the first shelter, and seating himself in the corner best protected from the wind, he examined the book at leisure. Nearly every page was scored with a meaningless jungle of pencil marks: rows of capital letters, short words, long words, complete sentences, copy‑book tags. The whole thing, in fact, had the appearance of a copy‑book, and on a more careful scrutiny Eustace thought that there was ample evidence to show that the handwriting at the beginning of the book, good though it was not nearly so good as the handwriting at the end.

He left his uncle at the end of October, with a promise to return early in December. It seemed to him quite clear that the old man's power of automatic writing was developing rapidly, and for the first time he looked forward to a visit that combined duty with interest.

But on his return he was at first disappointed. His uncle, he thought, looked older. He was listless too, preferring others to read to him and dictating nearly all his letters. Not until the day before he left had Eustace an opportunity of observing Adrian Borlsover's new‑found faculty.

The old man, propped up in bed with pillows, had sunk into a light sleep. His two hands lay on the coverlet, his left hand tightly clasping his right. Eustace took an empty manuscript book and placed a pencil within reach of the fingers of the right hand. They snatched at it eagerly; then dropped the pencil to unloose the left hand from its restraining grasp.

'Perhaps to prevent interference I had better hold that hand,' said Eustace to himself, as he watched the pencil. Almost immediately it began to write.

'Blundering Borlsovers, unnecessarily unnatural, extraordinarily eccentric, culpably curious.'

'Who are you?' asked Eustace, in a low voice.

'Never you mind,' wrote the hand of Adrian.

'Is it my uncle who is writing?'

'Oh, my prophetic soul, mine uncle.'

'Is it anyone I know?'

'Silly Eustace, you'll see me very soon.'

'When shall I see you?'

'When poor old Adrian's dead.'

'Where shall I see you?'

'Where shall you not?'

Instead of speaking his next question, Borlsover wrote it. 'What is the time?'

The fingers dropped the pencil and moved three or four times across the paper. Then, picking up the pencil, they wrote:

'Ten minutes before four. Put your book away, Eustace. Adrian mustn't find us working at this sort of thing. He doesn't know what to make of it, and I won't have poor old Adrian disturbed. Au revoir.'

Adrian Borlsover awoke with a start.

'I've been dreaming again,' he said; 'such queer dreams of leaguered cities and forgotten towns. You were mixed up in this one, Eustace, though I can't remember how. Eustace, I want to warn you. Don't walk in doubtful paths. Choose your friends well. Your poor grandfather—'

A fit of coughing put an end to what he was saying, but Eustace saw that the hand was still writing. He managed unnoticed to draw the book away. 'I'll light the gas,' he said, 'and ring for tea.' On the other side of the bed curtain he saw the last sentences that had been written.

'It's too late, Adrian,' he read. 'We're friends already; aren't we, Eustace Borlsover?'

On the following day Eustace Borlsover left. He thought his uncle looked ill when he said good‑by, and the old man spoke despondently of the failure his life had been.

'Nonsense, uncle!' said his nephew. 'You have got over your difficulties in a way not one in a hundred thousand would have done. Every one marvels at your splendid perseverance in teaching your hand to take the place of your lost sight. To me it's been a revelation of the possibilities of education.'

'Education,' said his uncle dreamily, as if the word had started a new train of thought, 'education is good so long as you know to whom and for what purpose you give it. But with the lower orders of men, the base and more sordid spirits, I have grave doubts as to its results. Well, good‑by, Eustace, I may not see you again. You are a true Borlsover, with all the Borlsover faults. Marry, Eustace. Marry some good, sensible girl. And if by any chance I don't see you again, my will is at my solicitor's. I've not left you any legacy, because I know you're well provided for, but I thought you might like to have my books. Oh, and there's just one other thing. You know, before the end people often lose control over themselves and make absurd requests. Don't pay any attention to them, Eustace. Good‑by!' and he held out his hand. Eustace took it. It remained in his a fraction of a second longer than he had expected, and gripped him with a virility that was surprising. There was, too, in its touch a subtle sense of intimacy.

'Why, uncle!' he said, 'I shall see you alive and well for many long years to come.'

Two months later Adrian Borlsover died.

ii

EUSTACE BORLSOVER was in Naples at the time. He read the obituary notice in the Morning Post on the day announced for the funeral.

'Poor old fellow!' he said. 'I wonder where I shall find room for all his books.'

The question occurred to him again with greater force when three days later he found himself standing in the library at Borlsover Conyers, a huge room built for use, and not for beauty, in the year of Waterloo by a Borlsover who was an ardent admirer of the great Napoleon. It was arranged on the plan of many college libraries, with tall, projecting bookcases forming deep recesses of dusty silence, fit graves for the old hates of forgotten controversy, the dead passions of forgotten lives. At the end of the room, behind the bust of some unknown eighteenth‑century divine, an ugly iron corkscrew stair led to a shelf‑lined gallery. Nearly every shelf was full.

'I must talk to Saunders about it,' said Eustace. 'I suppose that it will be necessary to have the billiard‑room fitted up with book cases.'

The two men met for the first time after many weeks in the dining‑room that evening.

'Hullo!' said Eustace, standing before the fire with his hands in his pockets. 'How goes the world, Saunders? Why these dress togs?' He himself was wearing an old shooting‑jacket. He did not believe in mourning, as he had told his uncle on his last visit; and though he usually went in for quiet‑colored ties, he wore this evening one of an ugly red, in order to shock Morton the butler, and to make them thrash out the whole question of mourning for themselves in the servants' hall. Eustace was a true Borlsover. 'The world,' said Saunders 'goes the same as usual, confoundedly slow. The dress togs are accounted for by an invitation from Captain Lockwood to bridge.'

'How are you getting there?'

'I've told your coachman to drive me in your carriage. Any objection?'

'Oh, dear me, no! We've had all things in common for far too many years for me to raise objections at this hour of the day.'

'You'll find your correspondence in the library,' went on Saunders. 'Most of it I've seen to. There are a few private letters I haven't opened. There's also a box with a rat, or something, inside it that came by the evening post. Very likely it's the six‑toed albino. I didn't look, because I didn't want to mess up my things but I should gather from the way it's jumping about that it's pretty hungry.'

'Oh, I'll see to it,' said Eustace, 'while you and the Captain earn an honest penny.'

Dinner over and Saunders gone, Eustace went into the library. Though the fire had been lit the room was by no means cheerful.

'We'll have all the lights on at any rate,' he said, as he turned the switches. 'And, Morton,' he added, when the butler brought the coffee, 'get me a screwdriver or something to undo this box. Whatever the animal is, he's kicking up the deuce of a row. What is it? Why are you dawdling?'

'If you please, sir, when the postman brought it he told me that they'd bored the holes in the lid at the post‑office. There were no breathin' holes in the lid, sir, and they didn't want the animal to die. That is all, sir.'

'It's culpably careless of the man, whoever he was,' said Eustace, as he removed the screws, 'packing an animal like this in a wooden box with no means of getting air. Confound it all! I meant to ask Morton to bring me a cage to put it in. Now I suppose I shall have to get one myself.'

He placed a heavy book on the lid from which the screws had been removed, and went into the billiard‑room. As he came back into the library with an empty cage in his hand he heard the sound of something falling, and then of something scuttling along the floor.

'Bother it! The beast's got out. How in the world am I to find it again in this library!'

To search for it did indeed seem hopeless. He tried to follow the sound of the scuttling in one of the recesses where the animal seemed to be running behind the books in the shelves, but it was impossible to locate it. Eustace resolved to go on quietly reading. Very likely the animal might gain confidence and show itself. Saunders seemed to have dealt in his usual methodical manner with most of the correspondence. There were still the private letters.

What was that? Two sharp clicks and the lights in the hideous candelabra that hung from the ceiling suddenly went out.

'I wonder if something has gone wrong with the fuse,' said Eustace, as he went to the switches by the door. Then he stopped. There was a noise at the other end of the room, as if something was crawling up the iron corkscrew stair. 'If it's gone into the gallery,' he said, 'well and good.' He hastily turned on the lights, crossed the room, and climbed up the stair. But he could see nothing. His grandfather had placed a little gate at the top of the stair, so that children could run and romp in the gallery without fear of accident. This Eustace closed, and having considerably narrowed the circle of his search, returned to his desk by the fire.

How gloomy the library was! There was no sense of intimacy about the room. The few busts that an eighteenth‑century Borlsover had brought back from the grand tour, might have been in keeping in the old library. Here they seemed out of place. They made the room feel cold, in spite of the heavy red damask curtains and great gilt cornices.

With a crash two heavy books fell from the gallery to the floor; then, as Borlsover looked, another and yet another.

'Very well; you'll starve for this, my beauty!' he said. 'We'll do some little experiments on the metabolism of rats deprived of water. Go on! Chuck them down! I think I've got the upper hand.' He turned once again to his correspondence. The letter was from the family solicitor. It spoke of his uncle's death and of the valuable collection of books that had been left to him in the will.

'There was one request,' he read, 'which certainly came as a surprise to me. As you know, Mr. Adrian Borlsover had left instructions that his body was to be buried in as simple a manner as possible at Eastbourne. He expressed a desire that there should be neither wreaths nor flowers of any kind, and hoped that his friends and relatives would not consider it necessary to wear mourning. The day before his death we received a letter canceling these instructions. He wished his body to be embalmed (he gave us the address of the man we were to employ— Pennifer, Ludgate Hill), with orders that his right hand was to be sent to you, stating that it was at your special request. The other arrangements as to the funeral remained unaltered.'

'Good Lord!' said Eustace; 'what in the world was the old boy driving at? And what in the name of all that's holy is that?

Someone was in the gallery. Someone had pulled the cord attached to one of the blinds, and it had rolled up with a snap. Someone must be in the gallery, for a second blind did the same. Someone must be walking round the gallery, for one after the other the blinds sprang up, letting in the moonlight.

'I haven't got to the bottom of this yet,' said Eustace, 'but I will do before the night is very much older,' and he hurried up the corkscrew stair. He had just got to the top when the lights went out a second time, and he heard again the scuttling along the floor. Quickly he stole on tiptoe in the dim moonshine in the direction of the noise, feeling as he went for one of the switches. His fingers touched the metal knob at last. He turned on the electric light.

About ten yards in front of him, crawling along the floor, was a man's hand. Eustace stared at it in utter astonishment. It was moving quickly, in the manner of a geometer caterpillar, the fingers humped up one moment, flattened out the next; the thumb appeared to give a crab‑like motion to the whole. While he was looking, too surprised to stir, the hand disappeared round the corner Eustace ran forward. He no longer saw it, but he could hear it as it squeezed its way behind the books on one of the shelves. A heavy volume had been displaced. There was a gap in the row of books where it had got in. In his fear lest it should escape him again, he seized the first book that came to his hand and plugged it into the hole. Then, emptying two shelves of their contents, he took the wooden boards and propped them up in front to make his barrier doubly sure.

'I wish Saunders was back,' he said; 'one can't tackle this sort of thing alone.' It was after eleven, and there seemed little likelihood of Saunders returning before twelve. He did not dare to leave the shelf unwatched, even to run downstairs to ring the bell. Morton the butler often used to come round about eleven to see that the windows were fastened, but he might not come. Eustace was thoroughly unstrung. At last he heard steps down below.

'Morton!' he shouted; 'Morton!'

'Sir?'

'Has Mr. Saunders got back yet?'

'Not yet, sir.'

'Well, bring me some brandy, and hurry up about it. I'm up here in the gallery, you duffer.'

'Thanks,' said Eustace, as he emptied the glass. 'Don't go to bed yet, Morton. There are a lot of books that have fallen down by accident; bring them up and put them back in their shelves.'

Morton had never seen Borlsover in so talkative a mood as on that night. 'Here,' said Eustace, when the books had been put back and dusted, 'you might hold up these boards for me, Morton. That beast in the box got out, and I've been chasing it all over the place.'

'I think I can hear it chawing at the books, sir. They're not valuable, I hope? I think that's the carriage, sir; I'll go and call Mr. Saunders.'

It seemed to Eustace that he was away for five minutes, but it could hardly have been more than one when he returned with Saunders. 'All right, Morton, you can go now. I'm up here, Saunders.'

'What's all the row?' asked Saunders, as he lounged forward with his hands in his pockets. The luck had been with him all the evening. He was completely satisfied, both with himself and with Captain Lockwood's taste in wines. 'What's the matter? You look to me to be in an absolute blue funk.'

'That old devil of an uncle of mine,' began Eustace— 'oh, I can't explain it all. It's his hand that's been playing old Harry all the evening. But I've got it cornered behind these books. You've got to help me catch it.'

'What's up with you, Eustace? What's the game?'

'It's no game, you silly idiot! If you don't believe me take out one of those books and put your hand in and feel.'

'All right,' said Saunders; 'but wait till I've rolled up my sleeve. The accumulated dust of centuries, eh?' He took off his coat, knelt down, and thrust his arm along the shelf.

'There's something there right enough,' he said. 'It's got a funny stumpy end to it, whatever it is, and nips like a crab. Ah, no, you don't!' He pulled his hand out in a flash. 'Shove in a book quickly. Now it can't get out.'

'What was it?' asked Eustace.

'It was something that wanted very much to get hold of me. I felt what seemed like a thumb and forefinger. Give me some brandy.'

'How are we to get it out of there?'

'What about a landing net?'

'No good. It would be too smart for us. I tell you, Saunders, it can cover the ground far faster than I can walk. But I think I see how we can manage it. The two books at the end of the shelf are big ones that go right back against the wall. The others are very thin. I'll take out one at a time, and you slide the rest along until we have it squashed between the end two.'

It certainly seemed to be the best plan. One by one, as they took out the books, the space behind grew smaller and smaller. There was something in it that was certainly very much alive. Once they caught sight of fingers pressing outward for a way of escape. At last they had it pressed between the two big books.

'There's muscle there, if there isn't flesh and blood,' said Saunders, as he held them together. 'It seems to be a hand right enough, too. I suppose this is a sort of infectious hallucination. I've read about such cases before.'

'Infectious fiddlesticks!' said Eustace, his face white with anger; 'bring the thing downstairs. We'll get it back into the box.' It was not altogether easy, but they were successful at last. 'Drive in the screws,' said Eustace, 'we won't run any risks. Put the box in this old desk of mine. There's nothing in it that I want. Here's the key. Thank goodness, there's nothing wrong with the lock.'

'Quite a lively evening,' said Saunders. 'Now let's hear more about your uncle.'

They sat up together until early morning. Saunders had no desire for sleep. Eustace was trying to explain and to forget: to conceal from himself a fear that he had never felt before— the fear of walking alone down the long corridor to his bedroom.

iii

'WHATEVER it was,' said Eustace to Saunders on the following morning, 'I propose that we drop the subject. There's nothing to keep us here for the next ten days. We'll motor up to the Lakes and get some climbing.'

'And see nobody all day, and sit bored to death with each other every night. Not for me thanks. Why not run up to town? Run's the exact word in this case, isn't it? We're both in such a blessed funk. Pull yourself together Eustace, and let's have another look at the hand.'

'As you like,' said Eustace; 'there's the key.' They went into the library and opened the desk. The box was as they had left it on the previous night.

'What are you waiting for?' asked Eustace.

'I am waiting for you to volunteer to open the lid. However, since you seem to funk it, allow me. There doesn't seem to be the likelihood of any rumpus this morning, at all events.' He opened the lid and picked out the hand.

'Cold?' asked Eustace.

'Tepid. A bit below blood‑heat by the feel. Soft and supple too. If it's the embalming, it's a sort of embalming I've never seen before. Is it your uncle's hand?'

'Oh, yes, it's his all right,' said Eustace. 'I should know those long thin fingers anywhere. Put it back in the box, Saunders. Never mind about the screws. I'll lock the desk, so that there'll be no chance of its getting out. We'll compromise by motoring up to town for a week. If we get off soon after lunch we ought to be at Grantham or Stamford by night.'

'Right,' said Saunders; 'and to‑morrow— Oh, well, by to‑morrow we shall have forgotten all about this beastly thing.'

If when the morrow came they had not forgotten, it was certainly true that at the end of the week they were able to tell a very vivid ghost story at the little supper Eustace gave on Hallow E'en.

'You don't want us to believe that it's true, Mr. Borlsover? How perfectly awful!'

'I'll take my oath on it, and so would Saunders here; wouldn't you, old chap?'

'Any number of oaths,' said Saunders. 'It was a long thin hand, you know, and it gripped me just like that.'

'Don't Mr. Saunders! Don't! How perfectly horrid! Now tell us another one, do. Only a really creepy one, please!'

'HERE'S a pretty mess!' said Eustace on the following day as he threw a letter across the table to Saunders. 'It's your affair, though. Mrs. Merrit, if I understand it, gives a month's notice.'

'Oh, that's quite absurd on Mrs. Merrit's part,' Saunders replied. 'She doesn't know what she's talking about. Let's see what she says.'

'Dear Sir,' he read,

'This is to let you know that I must give you a month's notice as from Tuesday the 13th. For a long time I've felt the place too big for me, but when Jane Parfit, and Emma Laidlaw go off with scarcely as much as an 'if you please,' after frightening the wits out of the other girls, so that they can't turn out a room by themselves or walk alone down the stairs for fear of treading on half‑frozen toads or hearing it run along the passages at night, all I can say is that it's no place for me. So I must ask you, Mr. Borlsover, sir, to find a new housekeeper that has no objection to large and lonely houses, which some people do say, not that I believe them for a minute, my poor mother always having been a Wesleyan , are haunted.

'Yours faithfully,

Elizabeth Merrit.

'P.S.— I should be obliged if you would give my respects to Mr. Saunders. I hope that he won't run no risks with his cold.'

'Saunders,' said Eustace, 'you've always had a wonderful way with you in dealing with servants. You mustn't let poor old Merrit go.'

'Of course she shan't go,' said Saunders. 'She's probably only angling for a rise in salary. I'll write to her this morning.'

'No; there's nothing like a personal interview. We've had enough of town. We'll go back to‑morrow, and you must work your cold for all it's worth. Don't forget that it's got on to the chest, and will require weeks of feeding up and nursing.'

'All right. I think I can manage Mrs. Merrit.'

But Mrs. Merrit was more obstinate than he had thought. She was very sorry to hear of Mr. Saunders's cold, and how he lay awake all night in London coughing; very sorry indeed. She'd change his room for him gladly, and get the south room aired. And wouldn't he have a basin of hot bread and milk last thing at night? But she was afraid that she would have to leave at the end of the month.

'Try her with an increase of salary,' was the advice of Eustace.

It was no use. Mrs. Merrit was obdurate, though she knew of a Mrs. Handyside who had been housekeeper to Lord Gargrave, who might be glad to come at the salary mentioned.

'What's the matter with the servants, Morton?' asked Eustace that evening when he brought the coffee into the library. 'What's all this about Mrs. Merrit wanting to leave?'

'If you please, sir, I was going to mention it myself. I have a confession to make, sir. When I found your note asking me to open that desk and take out the box with the rat, I broke the lock as you told me, and was glad to do it, because I could hear the animal in the box making a great noise, and I thought it wanted food. So I took out the box, sir, and got a cage, and was going to transfer it, when the animal got away.'

'What in the world are you talking about? I never wrote any such note.'

'Excuse me, sir, it was the note I picked up here on the floor on the day you and Mr. Saunders left. I have it in my pocket now.'

It certainly seemed to be in Eustace's handwriting. It was written in pencil, and began somewhat abruptly.

'Get a hammer, Morton,' he read, 'or some other tool, and break open the lock in the old desk in the library. Take out the box that is inside. You need not do anything else. The lid is already open. Eustace Borlsover.'

'And you opened the desk?'

'Yes, sir; and as I was getting the cage ready the animal hopped out.'

'What animal?'

'The animal inside the box, sir.'

'What did it look like?'

'Well, sir, I couldn't tell you,' said Morton nervously; 'my back was turned, and it was halfway down the room when I looked up.'

'What was its color?' asked Saunders; 'black?'

'Oh, no, sir, a grayish white. It crept along in a very funny way, sir. I don't think it had a tail.'

'What did you do then?'

'I tried to catch it, but it was no use. So I set the rat‑traps and kept the library shut. Then that girl Emma Laidlaw left the door open when she was cleaning, and I think it must have escaped.'

'And you think it was the animal that's been frightening the maids?'

'Well, no, sir, not quite. They said it was— you'll excuse me, sir— a hand that they saw. Emma trod on it once at the bottom of the stairs. She thought then it was a half‑frozen toad, only white. And then Parfit was washing up the dishes in the scullery. She wasn't thinking about anything in particular. It was close on dusk. She took her hands out of the water and was drying them absent‑minded like on the roller towel, when she found that she was drying someone else's hand as well, only colder than hers.'

'What nonsense!' exclaimed Saunders.

'Exactly, sir; that's what I told her; but we couldn't get her to stop.'

'You don't believe all this?' said Eustace, turning suddenly towards the butler.

'Me, sir? Oh, no, sir! I've not seen anything.'

'Nor heard anything?'

'Well, sir, if you must know, the bells do ring at odd times, and there's nobody there when we go; and when we go round to draw the blinds of a night, as often as not somebody's been there before us. But as I says to Mrs. Merrit, a young monkey might do wonderful things, and we all know that Mr. Borlsover has had some strange animals about the place.'

'Very well, Morton, that will do.'

'What do you make of it?' asked Saunders when they were alone. 'I mean of the letter he said you wrote.'

'Oh, that's simple enough,' said Eustace. 'See the paper it's written on? I stopped using that years ago, but there were a few odd sheets and envelopes left in the old desk. We never fastened up the lid of the box before locking it in. The hand got out, found a pencil, wrote this note, and shoved it through a crack on to the floor where Morton found it. That's plain as daylight.'

'But the hand couldn't write?'

'Couldn't it? You've not seen it do the things I've seen,' and he told Saunders more of what had happened at Eastbourne.

'Well,' said Saunders, 'in that case we have at least an explanation of the legacy. It was the hand which wrote, unknown to your uncle, that letter to your solicitor, bequeathing itself to you. Your uncle had no more to do with that request than I. In fact, it would seem that he had some idea of this automatic writing, and feared it.'

'Then if it's not my uncle, what is it?'

'I suppose some people might say that a disembodied spirit had got your uncle to educate and prepare a little body for it. Now it's got into that little body and is off on its own.'

'Well, what are we to do?'

'We'll keep our eyes open,' said Saunders, 'and try to catch it. If we can't do that, we shall have to wait till the bally clockwork runs down. After all, if it's flesh and blood, it can't live forever.'

For two days nothing happened. Then Saunders saw it sliding down the banister in the hall. He was taken unawares, and lost a full second before he started in pursuit, only to find that the thing had escaped him. Three days later, Eustace, writing alone in the library at night, saw it sitting on an open book at the other end of the room. The fingers crept over the page, feeling the print as if it were reading; but before he had time to get up from his seat, it had taken the alarm and was pulling itself up the curtains. Eustace watched it grimly as it hung on to the cornice with three fingers, flicking thumb and forefinger at him in an expression of scornful derision.

'I know what I'll do,' he said. 'If I only get it into the open I'll set the dogs on to it.'

He spoke to Saunders of the suggestion.

'It's jolly good idea,' he said; 'only we won't wait till we find it out of doors. We'll get the dogs. There are the two terriers and the under‑keeper's Irish mongrel that's on to rats like a flash. Your spaniel has not got spirit enough for this sort of game.' They brought the dogs into the house, and the keeper's Irish mongrel chewed up the slippers, and the terriers tripped up Morton as he waited at table; but all three were welcome. Even false security is better than no security at all.

For a fortnight nothing happened. Then the hand was caught, not by the dogs, but by Mrs. Merrit's gray parrot. The bird was in the habit of periodically removing the pins that kept its seed and water tins in place, and of escaping through the holes in the side of the cage. When once at liberty Peter would show no inclination to return, and would often be about the house for days. Now, after six consecutive weeks of captivity, Peter had again discovered a new means of unloosing his bolts and was at large, exploring the tapestried forests of the curtains and singing songs in praise of liberty from cornice and picture rail.

'It's no use your trying to catch him,' said Eustace to Mrs. Merrit, as she came into the study one afternoon towards dusk with a step‑ladder. 'You'd much better leave Peter alone. Starve him into surrender, Mrs. Merrit, and don't leave bananas and seed about for him to peck at when he fancies he's hungry. You're far too softhearted.'

'Well, sir, I see he's right out of reach now on that picture rail, so if you wouldn't mind closing the door, sir, when you leave the room, I'll bring his cage in tonight and put some meat inside it. He's that fond of meat, though it does make him pull out his feathers to suck the quills. They do say that if you cook–'

'Never mind, Mrs. Merrit,' said Eustace, who was busy writing. 'That will do; I'll keep an eye on the bird.'

There was silence in the room, unbroken but for the continuous whisper of his pen.

'Scratch poor Peter,' said the bird. 'Scratch poor old Peter!'

'Be quiet, you beastly bird!'

'Poor old Peter! Scratch poor Peter, do.'

'I'm more likely to wring your neck if I get hold of you.' He looked up at the picture rail, and there was the hand holding on to a hook with three fingers, and slowly scratching the head of the parrot with the fourth. Eustace ran to the bell and pressed it hard; then across to the window, which he closed with a bang. Frightened by the noise the parrot shook its wings preparatory to flight, and as it did so the fingers of the hand got hold of it by the throat. There was a shrill scream from Peter as he fluttered across the room, wheeling round in circles that ever descended, borne down under the weight that clung to him. The bird dropped at last quite suddenly, and Eustace saw fingers and feathers rolled into an inextricable mass on the floor. The struggle abruptly ceased as finger and thumb squeezed the neck; the bird's eyes rolled up to show the whites, and there was a faint, half-choked gurgle. But before the fingers had time to lose their hold, Eustace had them in his own.

'Send Mr. Saunders here at once,' he said to the maid who came in answer to the bell. 'Tell him I want him immediately.'

Then he went with the hand to the fire. There was a ragged gash across the back where the bird's beak had torn it, but no blood oozed from the wound. He noticed with disgust that the nails had grown long and discolored.

'I'll burn the beastly thing,' he said. But he could not burn it. He tried to throw it into the flames, but his own hands, as if restrained by some old primitive feeling, would not let him. And so Saunders found him pale and irresolute, with the hand still clasped tightly in his fingers.

'I've got it at last,' he said in a tone of triumph.

'Good; let's have a look at it.'

'Not when it's loose. Get me some nails and a hammer and a board of some sort.'

'Can you hold it all right?'

'Yes, the thing's quite limp; tired out with throttling poor old Peter, I should say.'

'And now,' said Saunders when he returned with the things, 'what are we going to do?'

'Drive a nail through it first, so that it can't get away; then we can take our time over examining it.'

'Do it yourself,' said Saunders. 'I don't mind helping you with guinea‑pigs occasionally when there's something to be learned; partly because I don't fear a guinea‑pig's revenge. This thing's different.'

'All right, you miserable skunk. I won't forget the way you've stood by me.'

He took up a nail, and before Saunders had realised what he was doing had driven it through the hand, deep into the board.

'Oh, my aunt,' he giggled hysterically, 'look at it now,' for the hand was writhing in agonized contortions, squirming and wriggling upon the nail like a worm upon the hook.

'Well,' said Saunders, 'you've done it now. I'll leave you to examine it.'

'Don't go, in heaven's name. Cover it up, man, cover it up! Shove a cloth over it! Here!' and he pulled off the antimacassar from the back of a chair and wrapped the board in it. 'Now get the keys from my pocket and open the safe. Chuck the other things out. Oh, Lord, it's getting itself into frightful knots! and open it quick!' He threw the thing in and banged the door.

'We'll keep it there till it dies,' he said. 'May I burn in hell if I ever open the door of that safe again.'

MRS. MERRIT departed at the end of the month. Her successor certainly was more successful in the management of the servants. Early in her rule she declared that she would stand no nonsense, and gossip soon withered and died. Eustace Borlsover went back to his old way of life. Old habits crept over and covered his new experience. He was, if anything, less morose, and showed a greater inclination to take his natural part in country society.

'I shouldn't be surprised if he marries one of these days,' said Saunders. 'Well, I'm in no hurry for such an event. I know Eustace far too well for the future Mrs. Borlsover to like me it will be the same old story again: a long friendship slowly made— marriage— and a long friendship quickly forgotten.'

iv

BUT Eustace Borlsover did not follow the advice of his uncle and marry. He was too fond of old slippers and tobacco. The cooking, too, under Mrs. Handyside's management was excellent, and she seemed, too, to have a heaven‑sent faculty in knowing when to stop dusting.

Little by little the old life resumed its old power. Then came the burglary. The men, it was said, broke into the house by way of the conservatory. It was really little more than an attempt, for they only succeeded in carrying away a few pieces of plate from the pantry. The safe in the study was certainly found open and empty, but, as Mr. Borlsover informed the police inspector, he had kept nothing of value in it during the last six months.

'Then you're lucky in getting off so easily, sir,' the man replied. 'By the way they have gone about their business, I should say they were experienced cracksmen. They must have caught the alarm when they were just beginning their evening's work.'

'Yes,' said Eustace, 'I suppose I am lucky.'

'I've no doubt,' said the inspector, 'that we shall be able to trace the men. I've said that they must have been old hands at the game. The way they got in and opened the safe shows that. But there's one little thing that puzzles me. One of them was careless enough not to wear gloves, and I'm bothered if I know what he was trying to do. I've traced his finger‑marks on the new varnish on the window sashes in every one of the downstairs rooms. They are very distinct ones too.'

'Right hand or left, or both?' asked Eustace.

'Oh, right every time. That's the funny thing. He must have been a foolhardy fellow, and I rather think it was him that wrote that.' He took out a slip of paper from his pocket. 'That's what he wrote, sir. 'I've got out, Eustace Borlsover, but I'll be back before long.' Some gaol bird just escaped, I suppose. It will make it all the easier for us to trace him. Do you know the writing, sir?'

'No,' said Eustace; 'it's not the writing of anyone I know.'

'I'm not going to stay here any longer,' said Eustace to Saunders at luncheon. 'I've got on far better during the last six months than ever I expected, but I'm not going to run the risk of seeing that thing again. I shall go up to town this afternoon. Get Morton to put my things together, and join me with the car at Brighton on the day after to‑morrow. And bring the proofs of those two papers with you. We'll run over them together.'

'How long are you going to be away?'

'I can't say for certain, but be prepared to stay for some time. We've stuck to work pretty closely through the summer, and I for one need a holiday. I'll engage the rooms at Brighton. You'll find it best to break the journey at Hitchin. I'll wire to you there at the Crown to tell you the Brighton address.'

The house he chose at Brighton was in a terrace. He had been there before. It was kept by his old college gyp, a man of discreet silence, who was admirably partnered by an excellent cook. The rooms were on the first floor. The two bedrooms were at the back, and opened out of each other. 'Saunders can have the smaller one, though it is the only one with a fireplace,' he said. 'I'll stick to the larger of the two, since it's got a bathroom adjoining. I wonder what time he'll arrive with the car.'

Saunders came about seven, cold and cross and dirty. 'We'll light the fire in the dining‑room,' said Eustace, 'and get Prince to unpack some of the things while we are at dinner. What were the roads like?'

'Rotten; swimming with mud, and a beastly cold wind against us all day. And this is July. Dear old England!'

'Yes,' said Eustace, 'I think we might do worse than leave dear old England for a few months.'

They turned in soon after twelve.

'You oughtn't to feel cold, Saunders,' said Eustace, 'when you can afford to sport a great cat‑skin lined coat like this. You do yourself very well, all things considered. Look at those gloves, for instance. Who could possibly feel cold when wearing them?'

'They are far too clumsy though for driving. Try them on and see,' and he tossed them through the door on to Eustace's bed, and went on with his unpacking. A minute later he heard a shrill cry of terror. 'Oh, Lord,' he heard, 'it's in the glove! Quick, Saunders, quick!' Then came a smacking thud. Eustace had thrown it from him. 'I've chucked it into the bathroom,' he gasped, 'it's hit the wall and fallen into the bath. Come now if you want to help.' Saunders, with a lighted candle in his hand, looked over the edge of the bath. There it was, old and maimed, dumb and blind, with a ragged hole in the middle, crawling, staggering, trying to creep up the slippery sides, only to fall back helpless.

'Stay there,' said Saunders. 'I'll empty a collar box or something, and we'll jam it in. It can't get out while I'm away.'

'Yes, it can,' shouted Eustace. 'It's getting out now. It's climbing up the plug chain. No, you brute, you filthy brute, you don't! Come back, Saunders, it's getting away from me. I can't hold it; it's all slippery. Curse its claw! Shut the window, you idiot! The top too, as well as the bottom. You utter idiot! It's got out!' There was the sound of something dropping on to the hard flagstones below, and Eustace fell back fainting.

FOR A fortnight he was ill.

'I don't know what to make of it,' the doctor said to Saunders. 'I can only suppose that Mr. Borlsover has suffered some great emotional shock. You had better let me send someone to help you nurse him. And by all means indulge that whim of his never to be left alone in the dark. I would keep a light burning all night if I were you. But he must have more fresh air. It's perfectly absurd this hatred of open windows.'

Eustace, however, would have no one with him but Saunders. 'I don't want the other men,' he said. 'They'd smuggle it in somehow. I know they would.'

'Don't worry about it, old chap. This sort of thing can't go on indefinitely. You know I saw it this time as well as you. It wasn't half so active. It won't go on living much longer, especially after that fall. I heard it hit the flags myself. As soon as you're a bit stronger we'll leave this place; not bag and baggage, but with only the clothes on our backs, so that it won't be able to hide anywhere. We'll escape it that way. We won't give any address, and we won't have any parcels sent after us. Cheer up, Eustace! You'll be well enough to leave in a day or two. The doctor says I can take you out in a chair to‑morrow.'

'What have I done?' asked Eustace. 'Why does it come after me? I'm no worse than other men. I'm no worse than you, Saunders; you know I'm not. It was you who were at the bottom of that dirty business in San Diego, and that was fifteen years ago.'

'It's not that, of course,' said Saunders. 'We are in the twentieth century, and even the parsons have dropped the idea of your old sins finding you out. Before you caught the hand in the library it was filled with pure malevolence— to you and all mankind. After you spiked it through with that nail it naturally forgot about other people, and concentrated its attention on you. It was shut up in the safe, you know, for nearly six months. That gives plenty of time for thinking of revenge.'

Eustace Borlsover would not leave his room, but he thought that there might be something in Saunders's suggestion to leave Brighton without notice. He began rapidly to regain his strength.

'We'll go on the first of September,' he said.

THE EVENING of August 31st was oppressively warm. Though at midday the windows had been wide open, they had been shut an hour or so before dusk. Mrs. Prince had long since ceased to wonder at the strange habits of the gentlemen on the first floor. Soon after their arrival she had been told to take down the heavy window curtains in the two bedrooms, and day by day the rooms had seemed to grow more bare. Nothing was left lying about.

'Mr. Borlsover doesn't like to have any place where dirt can collect,' Saunders had said as an excuse. 'He likes to see into all the corners of the room.'

'Couldn't I open the window just a little?' he said to Eustace that evening. 'We're simply roasting in here, you know.'

'No, leave well alone. We're not a couple of boarding‑school misses fresh from a course of hygiene lectures. Get the chessboard out.'

They sat down and played. At ten o'clock Mrs. Prince came to the door with a note. 'I am sorry I didn't bring it before,' she said, 'but it was left in the letter‑box.'

'Open it, Saunders, and see if it wants answering.'

It was very brief. There was neither address nor signature.

'Will eleven o'clock to‑night be suitable for our last appointment?'

'Who is it from?' asked Borlsover.

'It was meant for me,' said Saunders. 'There's no answer, Mrs. Prince,' and he put the paper into his pocket. 'A dunning letter from a tailor; I suppose he must have got wind of our leaving.'

It was a clever lie, and Eustace asked no more questions. They went on with their game.

On the landing outside Saunders could hear the grandfather's clock whispering the seconds, blurting out the quarter‑hours.

'Check!' said Eustace. The clock struck eleven. At the same time there was a gentle knocking on the door; it seemed to come from the bottom panel.

'Who's there?' asked Eustace.

There was no answer.

'Mrs. Prince, is that you?'

'She is up above,' said Saunders; 'I can hear her walking about the room.'

'Then lock the door; bolt it too. Your move, Saunders.'

While Saunders sat with his eyes on the chessboard, Eustace walked over to the window and examined the fastenings. He did the same in Saunders's room and the bathroom. There were no doors between the three rooms, or he would have shut and locked them too.

'Now, Saunders,' he said, 'don't stay all night over your move. I've had time to smoke one cigarette already. It's bad to keep an invalid waiting. There's only one possible thing for you to do. What was that?'

'The ivy blowing against the window. There, it's your move now, Eustace.'

'It wasn't the ivy, you idiot. It was someone tapping at the window,' and he pulled up the blind. On the outer side of the window, clinging to the sash, was the hand.

'What is it that it's holding?'

'It's a pocket-knife. It's going to try to open the window by pushing back the fastener with the blade.'

'Well, let it try,' said Eustace. 'Those fasteners screw down; they can't be opened that way. Anyhow, we'll close the shutters. It's your move, Saunders. I've played.'

But Saunders found it impossible to fix his attention on the game. He could not understand Eustace, who seemed all at once to have lost his fear. 'What do you say to some wine?' he asked. 'You seem to be taking things coolly, but I don't mind confessing that I'm in a blessed funk.'

'You've no need to be. There's nothing supernatural about that hand, Saunders. I mean it seems to be governed by the laws of time and space. It's not the sort of thing that vanishes into thin air or slides through oaken doors. And since that's so, I defy it to get in here. We'll leave the place in the morning. I for one have bottomed the depths of fear. Fill your glass, man! The windows are all shuttered, the door is locked and bolted. Pledge me my uncle Adrian! Drink, man! What are you waiting for?'

Saunders was standing with his glass half raised. 'It can get in,' he said hoarsely; 'it can get in! We've forgotten. There's the fireplace in my bedroom. It will come down the chimney.'

'Quick!' said Eustace, as he rushed into the other room; 'we haven't a minute to lose. What can we do? Light the fire, Saunders. Give me a match, quick!'

'They must be all in the other room. I'll get them.'

'Hurry, man, for goodness' sake! Look in the bookcase! Look in the bathroom! Here, come and stand here; I'll look.'

'Be quick!' shouted Saunders. 'I can hear something!'

'Then plug a sheet from your bed up the chimney. No, here's a match.' He had found one at last that had slipped into a crack in the floor.

'Is the fire laid? Good, but it may not burn. I know— the oil from that old reading‑lamp and this cotton‑wool. Now the match, quick! Pull the sheet away, you fool! We don't want it now.'

There was a great roar from the grate as the flames shot up. Saunders had been a fraction of a second too late with the sheet. The oil had fallen on to it. It, too, was burning.

'The whole place will be on fire!' cried Eustace, as he tried to beat out the flames with a blanket. 'It's no good! I can't manage it. You must open the door, Saunders, and get help.'

Saunders ran to the door and fumbled with the bolts. The key was stiff in the lock.

'Hurry!' shouted Eustace; 'the whole place is ablaze!'

The key turned in the lock at last. For half a second Saunders stopped to look back. Afterwards he could never be quite sure as to what he had seen, but at the time he thought that something black and charred was creeping slowly, very slowly, from the mass of flames towards Eustace Borlsover. For a moment he thought of returning to his friend, but the noise and the smell of the burning sent him running down the passage crying, 'Fire! Fire!' He rushed to the telephone to summon help, and then back to the bathroom— he should have thought of that before— for water. As he burst open the bedroom door there came a scream of terror which ended suddenly, and then the sound of a heavy fall.

____________________

Index to "Past Masters" stories, by author.

Issues 31-50

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

George Ade

Loafer's Lullaby  49

Hervey Allen

Report to Major Roberts  47

Lewis Allen

Pinched  39

Robert L. Ahern

Murder Needs No Motive 34

Mark Allerton

The Wrong 'Un 44

Frederick Irving Anderson

The Phantom Alibi 50

The Van Duersen Haze 50

Anonymous

The Lady Detective's Story 32

F. Anstey

The Talking Horse  34

Alice and Claude Askew

The Mystery of Chenholt 42

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

Jimmy Riley's "Turn"  42

Randolph Bedford

Filamena's Hula 39

The Man Who Held the Wires  39

H Bedford-Jones

Apache Gold 31

The Arizona Callahan  37

Breakfast at the Savoy 49

The Devil's Fire 31

The Devil is Dead 31

The Fog at Fiddler's Green 31

From the Dark 49

The King's Pipe 34

Lady of the Evil Eye 31

Sons of Kalewa 31

Stormalong  48

The Temple of the Ten 48

J. J. Bell

Blue Blood, or, The Pride of Lady Ambrosia 44

The Message on the Sun-Dial  42

Stephen Vincent Benét

Silver Jemmy 50

E F Benson

The Bed By The Window  48

Ralph Wilhelm Bergengren

Mr Chubb's Burglar 44

J. D. Beresford

The Sceptical Poltergeist  45

Leslie Beresford

Eastern Guile 35

M. McDonnell Bodkin

The Murder on the Golf Links  41

Charles G. Booth

Not According to Text 44

Christopher B. Booth

In His Brother's Job  40

Jimmy the Lug 42

Mr Clackworthy and the Auto Rim  40

Mr Clackworthy Goes to Jail 40

Mr Clackworthy's Pipe Dream  41

Mr. Clackworthy's Return  41

Mr. Clackworthy Revives a Town 47

The Sealed Envelope 43

The Sparrow  40

Tardy, but on Time (as by John J. Chichester)  41

Jack Boyle

Ann of Satan-Town  46

George Bronson-Howard

The Steerage Passenger 44

Miles J. Breuer

Millions for Defense  47

The Stone Cat   47

Ellis Parker Butler

An Experiment in Gyro-Hats  37

Beating The Law 43

Eliph' Hewlitt on the Millinery Problem  44

Hats and Lilies 37

The Heckby Hill Murder 38

Mr. Marston's Chauffeurette  40

"Pigs is Pigs" 50

Scott Campbell

Rings of Dust 43

Hayden Carruth

Active Colorado Real Estate  46

Casper Carson

Wizard or Crook   48

Egerton Castle

The Baron's Quarry 42

The Closed Door  35

Robert W Chambers

As You Choose 44

Anna Alice Chapin

By Way of Experience 40

G. K. Chesterton

The White Pillars Murder 41

Richard Washburn Child

The Screen 45

C. Langton Clarke

The Detective for the Defense 33

Sylvanus Cobb Jr

A Footlight Flash 43

Desmond Coke

The Ghost That Failed  46

Richard Connell

The Grim House  41

Dorothea Conyers

Lord Hillayton's Settlement 35

Ted Copp

Blackmail Moll 36

Oswald Crawfurd

Our Mr. Smith  45

James Oliver Curwood

The Civilizing of Swift Lightning 46

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

Jack Donahue

The Last Letters of a Hoofer 49

Dick Donovan

A Dying Confession 49

A Night of Horror  49

George Allan England

Buzzards   38

Drugged  38

George Manville Fenn

Lady Florry's Gems  34

Francis Flagg

The Blue Dimension 33

By the Hands of the Dead 45

The Heads of Apex 33

The Picture 45

The Smell 45

J. S. Fletcher

The Manor House Mystery  41

Elliott Flower

The Elusive Ten Dollar Bill 36

A Bundle of Banknotes  43

R. E. Francillon

11: Touch-And-Go With a Great Estate

J. M. Fry

The Ring   38

Jacques Futrelle

Mr. John Smith in Paris  47

Emile Gaboriau

The Little Old Man of Batignolles 34

Charles Garvice

The Two Uncles 44

Théophile Gautier

The Vampire 50

Lady Gilbert

Aurora's Treasure 35

Guy Gilpatric

An Affair of Honour  46

The Crafty Jerko-Slovaks 32

The Ladies of Catsmeat Yard  37

One Good Tern  35

Mutiny on the Inchcliffe Castle  49

The Pearl of Panama 42

The Rolling Stone  41

The Toad Men of Tumbaroo  46

Westward, How!  46

The Yogi of West Ninth Street  50

Susan Glaspell

A Jury of Her Peers 44

Winifred Graham

Pan   39

C. J. Hamilton

The Luck of Barney Costello 44

Arthur P Hankins

Eyes of Blue   43

Arthur Sherburne Hardy

Peter  47

Percie W. Hart

Ye Ghoste of ye Olde Bowerie Roade 49

William Fryer Harvey

The Beast with Five Fingers 50

Beatrice Heron-Maxwell

The Dancer's Mascot  35

Lewen Hewitt

Gold-Bricked 42

Headon Hill

Rogue's Legacy 32

William Crawford Honeyman

The Chinese Chessmen  42

Seward W. Hopkins

Dickerson's Bag of Gold 44

J. L. Hornibrook

Captain Cronhelm's Blunder 35

Oliver Madox Hueffer

Mistrusted Sight 41

S. B. H. Hurst

The Brightest Jewel of Them All  32

Washington Irving

The Story of a Young Robber 47

W. W. Jacobs

In Borrowed Plumes 49

M. R. James

Casting the Runes 50

Burke Jenkins

The Anti-Climax of a Bad Man 44

His Christmas Orchid 44

Twenty-Four Hours Start 44

Wimple's Fog-Piercer 44

Jerome K Jerome

The Dancing Partner 50

The Ghost of the Marchioness of Appleford 50

The Man of Science  43

Marianne Kent

A Black Diamond  35

Otis Adelbert Kline

The Dragoman's Slave Girl 35

Servant of Satan  50

George L. Knapp

The Family Compact  37

Thomas H. Knight

Old City of Jade  36

Alexander Kuprin

Menagerie 45

Henry Lawson

The Loaded Dog 50

Henry Leverage

The Petermen of Providence  46

Alun Lewis

Private Jones 39

Sumner Locke

Ragtime 44

William J Locke

Ladies In Lavender 36

F. G. Loring

The Tomb of Sarah 50

Marie Belloc Lowndes

Popeau Intervenes  41

Maarten Maartens

A Comedy of Crime 47

Newton MacTavish

An Unposted Letter 47

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

Florence Marryat

The Box With the Iron Clamps  46

Richard Marsh

The Pipe  48

Mrs. L. T. Meade

Beauty Dear 32

The Yellow Dragon Vases 32

Mrs L. T. Meade and Dr Clifford Halifax, M.D.

The Seventh Step  48

The Strange Case of Captain Gascoigne 31

The Small House on Steven's Heath 33

"To Every one His Own Fear"  34

With the Eternal Fires 32

Gustav Meyrink

Bal Macabre  45

James M'Govan

The Captain's Chronometer 49

Alice Duer Miller

A Lot of Money  46

C S Montanye

Prey  40

The Strength of the Meek  47

Trapped 43

Jacque Morgan

The lnternational Electro-Galvanic

Undertaking Corporation  48

William Morris

Lindenborg Pool  48

Arthur Morrison

A Lucifo Match 36

William Chambers Morrow

The Monster-Maker 42

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

James Jeffreys O'Brien

Queen of the Beggars 44

Owen Oliver

The Cape Conspiracy  35

A Pretty Woman 31

A Rapid Conveyance  36

Success 40

E Phillips Oppenheim

Blackman's Wood 43

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 Black Monk 48

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

Adjudged Incompetent  43

Doctor Bentiron's Addict Case 40

Honest John's Millions 42

Plain Soda 40

The Stolen Story 42

The Third Pinprick 42

Three Alike 40

Through the Looking Glass 40

Vials of Wrath 40

Well Done  40

K. & Hesketh Prichard

The Parole of Gevil-Hay  47

Arthur T. Quiller-Couch

The Lady of the Red Admirals 49

Lewis Ramsden

Désirée 32

C. S. Raymond

The Wireless Death 36

Robert Reeves

Alcoholics  Calamitous 39

Bail Bait  39

Dance Macabre 39

Morley Roberts

The Hut by the Lachlan 44

Morgan Robertson

The Subconscious Finnegan 36

Arthur Somers Roche

The Dayless Diamonds 32

A Flutter in Finance 32

After the Fact 46

"Illimore!" 31

Lady Dick 46

The Premiere Danseuse 32

Riches Can Take Wings  46

Road House 46

The Robbery at the Café Ravasan 31

The Victim of Amnesia 31

William Merriam Rouse

The Nitwit 36

Victor Rowan

Four Wooden Stakes  38

Leroy Scott

The Langdon Mystery  44

Mary Sharon

The Cat of Chiltern Castle  43

George Bernard Shaw

The Miraculous Revenge  43

Perley Poore Sheehan

Dead Men Talk  38

Helen Simpson

A Posteriori   41

George R. Sims

The Mystery of a Midsummer Night  42

Christopher St. John Sprigg

Death at 8.30  42

F St Mars

The Green Devil 43

Bram Stoker

The Judge's House 50

Annie S. Swan

The Diplomat  38

Booth Tarkington

The Old Red Barn   49

William Alexander Taylor

Intermere 33

Guy Thorne

Sir Patrick Armagh's Knife  39

E Charles Vivian

The House Among the Pines 44

Locked In 44

Hugh Walpole

The Twisted Inn 42

Harold Ward

The House in the Forest 49

House of the Living Dead 49

Florence Warden

Grimgriffenhoof  39

Cy Warman

"Sycamore": A Ghost Story 44

F A M Webster

According to Law  49

The Double Problem  49

The Owl 45

Towards Morning 33

Carolyn Wells

The Mystery of the Jade Buddha 40

A Point of Testimony 43

The Stolen Gems 43

H. G. Wells

The Hammerpond Park Burglary  47

Albert Richard Wetjen

The Madness of Captain Jonas 44

Ethel Lina White

The Scarecrow  42

Henry S. Whitehead

Black Terror 45

Cassius 46

The Fireplace 45

Jumbee 37

The Left Eye 45

Mrs. Lorriquer 45

The Napier Limousine 45

The Projection of Armand Dubois 45

The Trap 45

The Tree-Man 45

Raoul Whitfield

The Black Sampan  50

The Caleso Murders 32

China Man 46

Diamonds of Dread  38

Inside Job 36

The Javanese Mask 42

Rivals of the Clouds 31

Shooting Gallery  41

The Siamese Cat 49

Silence House 36

Sinners' Paradise 33

Valentine Williams

The Briar 50

H. C. Witwer

The Barber of Seville, Ill.   46

Not So Big  47

William Tells  47

Leonora Wodehouse

Inquest  42

William Alron Wolff

Bait, Hook and Sinker  34

May Wynne

The Tiara  44

Arthur Leo Zagat

Girl of the Goat-God  43

___________

Table of Contents

- 1: "Pigs is Pigs" / Ellis Parker Butler

- 2: The Tomb of Sarah / F. G. Loring

- 3: The Yogi of West Ninth Street / Guy Gilpatric

- 4: The Black Sampan / Raoul Whitfield
- 5: The Dancing Partner / Jerome K. Jerome
- 6: Casting the Runes / M. R. James

- 7: The Van Duersen Haze / Frederick Irving Anderson

- 8: The Phantom Alibi / Frederick Irving Anderson

- 9: The Loaded Dog / Henry Lawson
- 10: Servant of Satan / Otis Adelbert Kline
- 11: Silver Jemmy / Stephen Vincent Benét
- 12: The Vampire / Théophile Gautier
- 13: The Briar / Valentine Williams
- 14: The Judge's House / Bram Stoker

- 15: The Ghost of the Marchioness of Appleford / Jerome K. Jerome

- 16: The Beast with Five Fingers / William Fryer Harvey

- Cumulative Index 31-50