Past Masters Sixty Nine
Author: Various
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: There are three long stories, novelettes, in this issue, one by the unknown author Walter Ripperger. All I have managed to discover is that he published stories from about 1935 to 1940 in the crime pulps, plus an unclear hint that he may have died in 1944. As usual, the stories are from magazines and newspapers, and are in the Life + 70 Public Domain. 1: The Anarch / Malcolm Jameson 2: A Cameo / E. Temple Thurston 3: The Terrace / E. F. Benson 4: Meave's Ride / Dorothea Conyers 5: The Squirrel Motor / J. J. Meehan 6: Unconscious Interloper / Sir Geo. Douglas, Bart. 7: Bengal Rebellion / Talbot

PAST MASTERS

SIXTY-NINE

21 March 2022

Produced by Terry Walker

("Pulpmeister")

Contents

1: The Anarch / Malcolm Jameson

2: A Cameo / E. Temple Thurston

3: The Terrace / E. F. Benson

4: Meave's Ride / Dorothea Conyers

5: The Squirrel Motor / J. J. Meehan

6: Unconscious Interloper / Sir Geo. Douglas, Bart.

7: Bengal Rebellion / Talbot Mundy

8: The Red Peri / Stanley G Weinbaum (novelette)

9: School For Murder / Walter Ripperger (novelette)

10: The Ninety and Nine / Ellis Parker Butler

11: Coward's Kill / Arthur Leo Zagat (novelette)

Cumulative Index #61-69

______________________

1: The Anarch

Malcolm Jameson

1891-1945

Astounding Science-Fiction, June 1944

IT WAS a death paper.

Medical inspector Garrison shifted uneasily in his chair and stared at it. It was all wrong. It was on pale-green paper for one thing, and it had been altered. Down near the bottom where there was a place for a date and a signature, the word "Discharged" had been xxx'd out and "Died" supplied.

"Look here, Arna," he said to his scribe, "this won't do. This... er... ah... Leona McWhisney was admitted only last week... neomalitis, the diagnosis says... treated with sulfazeoproponyl, and due for discharge tomorrow. Treater Shubrick has scratched out the discharged and put in 'died.' That's absurd. People just don't die of neomal."

"She did," replied Arna primly. "Here's the morguemaster's receipt."

Garrison took it and frowned. Not only did she give him the morgue slip, but the report of the autopsy as well. The McWhisney woman's dead arteries had been found to be crawling with neomal bugs—and nothing else. It was a hard fact to face, and he did not want to face it. He couldn't face it. It was Earth-shaking, outrageous, impossible. It could not be reconciled with anything he knew. It put him in an awful hole.

"But look," he insisted, "we can't use the green form. That's the one for case histories of nonfatal diseases, and the Code classifies—"

"I know," she snapped, "Neomalitis is a Category N malady, a mild, easily controlled undulant fever. I looked it up. Article 849 of the Code says Category N must be reported on the green form. That is what I have done."

"That is not right," he growled, glaring at the offending sheet of paper. "If the woman died, it has to be reported on an authorized death certificate. Anyhow, we are not allowed to change any form. Not ever. It means a lot of demerits for both of us."

She sniffed. She knew that as well as he. She had been struggling with the problem for two hours, and her desk was littered with volumes of the bulky Medical Instructions— those bits of the Grand Code by which they lived and which prescribed their every act.

"All right," she said coldly. "You select the right form and I'll fill it out."

Medical Inspector Garrison started to make an appropriate reply, then thought better of it. He was in no ordinary dilemma, and was beginning to know it. It was more a being caught between two opposing sets of antlers bristling with scores of prickly points. The death, as far as that went, of the obscure Leona McWhisney meant nothing to a seasoned doctor. People were dying at Sanitar all the time. But they were dying in approved ways that could be reported on approved forms. Her departure from the normal played hob with the whole Autarchian set-up. Garrison groaned aloud, for he was, until that moment, a thoroughly indoctrinated, obedient, unthinking cog in the vast bureaucracy that was Autarchia. Not once in the thirty years of his life until then had the Code failed him. He had never doubted for an instant that that wonderful document was the omniscient, infallible, unquestionable guide to human behavior. It was unthinkable that he could doubt it now. And yet—

Yet Leona McWhisney was dead, and it was his duty to sign the death papers. By doing it he would certify that her case had been handled in accordance with the Code. There lay the rub: It had been, he was sure, for he knew the superb organization of Sanitar and especially the wards under his control, and it could not have been otherwise. There was no one who would have dreamed of departing from the sacred instructions by an iota. The problem lay, therefore, on his own desk— how to close the case and still keep out of the Monitorial Courts.

The dead woman's disease, as was every other, was curable, and must be recorded on the green. So decreed the Code. But she had died inexplicably despite the Code, and having died, she must be given a death certificate. But there were only three forms of those, for there were only three possible ways for an Autarchian to die. The most common— reportable on the gray form— was by euthanasia after recommendation of a board of gerocomists, and approved by the Bureau of Population Control. Elderly citizens beyond further salvage, or those in excess of the Master Plan were disposed of in this fashion. Then there was the yellow form that was employed when violent accidents occurred. Even the all-wise framers of the Code had not known how to recapitate or re-embowel a citizen thus torn apart. Last of all there was provided the scarlet form for the use of the executioner at Penal House after the monitors had finished dealing with dissenters. That one was on the road to obsolescence, for in recent generations there had been few who refused to abide by the Code, or scoffed at it. The trait of rebelliousness had been pretty well bred out of the race.

Still there must have been some taint of it left, for even Garrison could not bring himself to accept meekly his predicament. If people could die of neomalitis, he thought, the Code should have foreseen it and provided for its proper reporting. Apparently they could, and apparently it had not. There was something smelly somewhere.

"When you make up your mind about that," broke in Arna, sweetly, "here are a couple of other questions they want rulings on. The treater on Ward 44-B says that he has twelve patients with neomal that should have been up and out today. The prognosis says so. He wants to know if he keeps on shooting sulfazeproponyl. He has given all the therapeuticon prescribed."

"No, of course not. Better run 'em through the Diagnostat again and take a fresh start."

He watched unhappily as she made a note of it. It was an unsatisfactory answer and he knew it. There was no more authority for rediagnosing a case than for prolonging treatments after it was supposed to be cured. But it seemed to him that as long as they continued to be sick something should be done.

"And the admission desk wants to know," she went on, "what about quotas? According to vital statistics Sanitar is supposed to get only three hundred cases of neomal a quarter. We've admitted that many in the last ten days. Shall they keep on taking 'em in, or turn 'em away?"

"Oh, we can't turn 'em away," said Garrison weakly. He was right, too. The Code specifically forbade it. But the Code had also set the admission rate for Sanitar, based on the known incidence of various diseases, and it could not be much exceeded for the excellent reason that the hospital's capacity and personnel were fixed by the Master Plan.

"Yes, sir," said the exasperating scribe, and jotted down his answer.

He glanced worriedly at the McWhisney papers on his desk. He could not sign them as they were. He had to make sure.

"I'm going to make an inspection," he announced, and stalked out of the room.

MEDICAL INSPECTOR Garrison was what the Autarchian Code had made him. It was no fault of his that he had been born into a perfect, well-ordered world where every detail was planned and there was no room for independent thought or initiative. He was the natural result of his training. His very first memories had to do with the Code, and from then on he had never encountered anything else. At the age of five the Psychometrists had come and taken him from his creche and tested him with glittering instruments that gave off dazzling multi-colored lights. That was when his first psychogram was made and his Cerebral Index established. That was what set him on the road to doctorhood, and made him an interne in a Sanitar at the age of fifteen. By that time he had mastered the Junior Social Code and most of the Medical, and along with it he learned those portions of the Penal Code that applied, plus such other fragments as would be of use. No man alive, with the possible exception of the Autarch himself, could know the whole of the Grand Code, for it covered the entire field of human knowledge. Garrison only knew that whatever there was to be done, the manner of doing it was to be found in some part of the Code. And he also knew that there was no other way of doing it. That is, unless he wanted to invite the attentions of the monitors. And it was common knowledge that no one who went to Penal House was ever seen again. The Autarchs did not encourage nonconformity.

It was with this background and the puzzling conflicts of the morning uppermost in his mind that he strode along Sanitar's endless corridors. Hitherto the Code had never failed him. Now he was lost in a maze of contradictory instructions, not one of which he dared question or refuse to abide by. Heretical ideas kept flitting through his troubled brain. Long dormant traits began to stir and come to life within him. Curiosity was one. Somehow it had survived in his heritage of genes. He wanted to know— wanted desperately to know— why Leona McWhisney had died, when the book said she couldn't? What was happening in neomalitis? Why was it fast becoming more prevalent? What was making it more virulent? Why didn't the sulfa drug still cure it as it had always done before?

He arrived at the admission desk and looked about him. Everything was exactly as it should be. There the applicants were being logged and turned over to the attendants to be stripped and scrubbed prior to their full examination. Their dossiers were being sent for.

He picked up one at random and examined it. It was a magnificent document, many inches thick. In it was the record of its owner's medical history from birth, complete with the X rays and body chemistry findings taken at every successive annual examination. There were curves of growth and change, and accounts of incidental illnesses. Everything the most exacting doctor could want was there.

Garrison laid it aside and went on. He passed by the various examining rooms and laboratories with little more than a glance in. All were carrying out their functions perfectly. In one place blood and spinal fluid were being analyzed; in another, men sat in rows having their electrocardiograms recorded. A group of psychomeds were probing neural currents to find out a patient's attitude toward his own condition, and elsewhere the newcomers lay on cots having their current basal metabolism established. In the biological lab observers were scrutinizing bacteria cultures and dissecting tissue. Everywhere there were checkers, going over the other fellow's work.

The young inspector knew there could be no slip-up in the collection of basic data. A quick turn through a couple of wards revealed things going well there also, so far as the medication was concerned. He even consulted with the chief pharmaceutical inspector to make sure the drugs used were up to standard. Perfection reigned in exact accordance with the Code. The only jarring note was that the wards were becoming crowded. There were ever more sick, and the sick ones were not recovering as they should. In 45-B Garrison was stunned to learn that two more neomals had just died, and that several others were about to. It took the McWhisney affair out of the freak class. It denoted a trend. It also ended the hope of overlooking that first case.

There could be but one other factor. The data were correct, and the treatment given as prescribed. The only other room for error was in the diagnosis, so Garrison went to the elevator bank in the great central tower. No one had ever questioned a Diagnostat before, but he meant to now. He punched the button for the express car to the sub-basement.

THE ONLY word to apply to the cavern where the ponderous machines purred and ticked was— vast. The great monsters stood in long rows— the Sorensons down one side of the room, and the Klingmasters the other. Those massive calculators were the only examples in all Autarchia where two distinct models of machines were doing the work of one. In every other case the framers of the Code had selected the best type and discarded all the others. But the Sorenson and Klingmaster Diagnostats arrived at their findings through radically different channels. Since they were equally efficient both were kept, to be used in opposing pairs, one to check the other.

Garrison offered the foreman of the room the dossier of Leona McWhisney.

"Hm-m-m," mused the foreman, glancing at the record. "This has already been through— done on Sorenson 39, cross-checked by Kling 55. Neomalitis, Type III, sub-type C. What's wrong?"

"She's dead," said Garrison.

The foreman shrugged.

"All we do here is diagnose 'em. If they kick the bucket, it's somebody else's fault. You'd better check up on your treaters, or on the dope they use."

"I have. It must be the diagnosis. It can't be anything else."

"Oh, can't it?" countered the Diagnostat foreman. "Did you know they lost ten pneumonia cases over in Bronchial wing last week? Did you hear about the guy up in Psychopathic? A mild neurosis was all we had on the fellow here. Well, he ran amok last night— cut the throats of four fellow patients and then jumped out the window. There is something screwy going on, all right, but it's not down here."

"I want a recheck on this," insisted Garrison.

"But she's dead," objected the foreman. Then he saw the glitter in Garrison's eye, "O.K.," he mumbled, and reached for the book.

Garrison looked on in silence while the monster did its work. The data was fed in by various means through various orifices. Queerly punched cards bore part of the information— such items as could be expressed by figures, as weight, pulse, blood pressure, respiration, and, so on. The curves of the cardio and encephalograms were grabbed by tiny steel fingers and drawn into the maw of the machine. It clucked loudly as the X-ray plates were slid into a slot. The amplitude and frequency of the undulant fever readings were given it. When all was in, the foreman closed one switch and opened another.

"This is a different Sorenson, and hooked up with a different Kling," he said. "Both were overhauled last night, but I'll bet you get the same answer as you got before."

"That's what I want to know," said the inspector.

The machine purred and groaned. Then it set up a clicking and stopped momentarily. Up to that point it had ignored the symptoms, Garrison knew, and was engaged in breaking down and analyzing the basic factors. Now it reintegrated them and was ready for its first pronouncement. A window lit up with glowing letters:

Constitution fair. Physical Resistance Factor: 88.803; Psychic Factor: 61.005. Composite Factor: 72.666.

The light died, and a confirmatory card dropped out. The purring was resumed. Garrison considered the figures. They were about right. The woman had been of excellent general physique, though a trifle depressed in spirits. She should have thrown off any disease with reasonable ease.

Now a red light was burning, indicating the Diagnostat was taking into account the developments due to infection. After a bit a gong sounded, and the machine growled to a full stop. Another card dropped out:

Neomalitis, Type III, sub-type C.

Garrison looked at it, then walked across the hall to the Klingmaster. It was slower to reach its conclusion, but when it did it was identical.

"All right," said the foreman, "that's that. Now let's do the rest."

He poked one of the cards into a smaller machine— a therapeuticon, with prognosticon attachment. It took the contraption less than a minute to cough out the answer:

Indication: 6 g. sulfazeopronyl every four hours for eight days. Tepid baths daily; abundant rest.

Prognosis: Discharge in nine days, ten hours.

Garrison looked crestfallen. He thought he had an out. Now he was where he started. He shook his head dismally.

"She's dead," he said, "and it's only a week."

"An autopsy ought to settle it for you," suggested the foreman.

"It has," said the miserable inspector. "It said neomalitis."

And he walked away, leaving an indignant Diagnostat man glaring after him.

GARRISON signed the pale-green paper reluctantly. There seemed to be nothing else to do. Then he glanced at the chronodial add saw that it was nearly seventeen, time for the day-watch to go off duty. At that moment there was a shrill warning buzz and the omnivox lit up. A fanfare of trumpets warned that something big and unusual was about to come through. He got to his feet and stood at attention. A uniformed figure appeared on the screen.

"By order of his supremacy, the Autarch," he proclaimed in a deep, sonorous voice. "Effective immediately, those provisions of the Social and Penal Code requiring attendance during Renovation Hour at Social Halls is suspended for officials of C.I. one-thirty or better. Such officers may attend or not, as they choose—"

Garrison blinked. He had never heard the word "choose" before and had but the faintest idea of what it might mean. More obscure ones were to follow.

"If they so elect, they may stay within their own quarters or visit other officers of similar rank in theirs. Restrictions as to topics of conversation are lifted during this period. Officers will not be required to discuss assigned cultural subjects, but may talk freely on any topic they prefer. Monitors will make note of this alteration in the Codes.

"The order has been published. Carry on."

The light failed, and with it the figure on the screen. Garrison continued to stand for about a minute, entirely at sea as to what the communication he had just heard meant. Such words as "elect," "choose," and "prefer" had long since become obsolete if not actually forbidden. The concept of choice was wholly absent under the autocracy. It never occurred to one that there could be such a thing— it was inconsistent with orderly life. One simply obeyed the Code, which always said "you shall." To think of anything different was rank heresy and treason, and subject to the severest penalties. Garrison puzzled over the order a moment and gave it up. No doubt there would be further clarification later. Perhaps the Propag lecturer of the evening would have a word to say about it. The order would be carried out of course, but to Garrison's well-disciplined mind it had the bad fault of ambiguity.

The ringing of the corridor gongs snapped his attention away from it. It was time to assemble for supper. He closed his desk, slipped on his tunic, and stepped out into the hall. There he faced to the left as the others were doing, and waited for the whistles of the monitors.

The signal was sounded, and the tramp of feet began. Garrison stepped along as he always had done, but with the difference that on this afternoon there was turmoil in his mind. Having to sign that altered document had done something to him. It hurt, and hurt deep. It is difficult for anyone not imbued with bureaucratic tradition to comprehend the poignancy of his anguish. He had been forced by the rules themselves to break a rule. For the first time in his existence he was compelled to question the all-wisdom of the Code. The Code had declared neomal curable; he had seen the exception. And while he was still quivering with mortification at that discovery, the pronouncement of the Autarch had come. He did not know what it meant precisely, but it signified one more thing clearly. The Autarch had seen fit to modify a Code. The implication was inescapable. The Codes were not infallible. If one provision could be altered, so could all the rest. It was food for anxious thought.

The marching men came to a downward ramp and took it. On the level below Garrison had to mark time while the officers of that floor cleared the ramp below. He took the occasion to look them over critically— something he had never thought of doing before. Like himself not a few of them but also had had inexplicable deaths in their jurisdictions, and every one of them had heard the message just received from the Autarch. But not one of them showed the flush of suppressed excitement that he was awkwardly aware warmed his own cheeks. If there was any who shared his newborn doubts, none exhibited it.

They marched like so many automatons. Nowhere was there a sign of perplexity or frustration. Instead, he now observed that all were sunk in the same dull apathy that he had noticed in the incoming patients. It was not the apathy of weariness or despair, but a sodden, negative something— sheer indifference. They did not care. There was no motive to care. Their personalities were not involved, if a citizen of Autarchia could be said to have such a thing as a personality. They were required to put in so much time, and to obey certain inflexible rules. So long as they did that they had no responsibility as to the outcome. Now they had done their stint and were on their way to replenish the energies they had expended by the ingestion of necessary food. The evening to follow would be but an extension of the day— planned, orderly, meaningless.

At times the worm turns in a curious way. In that split second the spirit of some long dead ancestor stirred within Garrison and woke him up. The breath taking realization came to him that he was an individual— he, Philip Garrison, Medical Inspector of the B wards of Sanitar. He was different somehow from those others. They were clods, puppets. What did it matter what their Cerebral Indexes were, so long as they could read and punch the proper buttons? Anyone above the moronic level could do the same. No thought or judgment was demanded to conform to the Code. Small wonder they swung along like men stupefied.

Garrison could not avoid a slight shudder. The trend of his thoughts were highly treasonable. Then he reminded himself that the monitors possessed only hidden mikes and scanners; they were not telepathic. They could not read the heretical notions striving to make themselves dominant in his brain. He calmed himself, and tried to change his line of thought, for he knew that madness lay that way. He endeavored to recall what a Propag had said at a recent lecture about the "dangers inherent in independent thought" and the hideous predictions of how disruptive such ungoverned activity could be.

The arrival at the dining hall put a temporary end to that. He handed his ration card to the Dietitian of the Watch. She glanced at it, scribbled the prescription, and dropped it into the messenger tube. That was all that was required. He marched on with the living robots about him. Shortly he would get food that would no doubt be good for him— sustaining, and containing what he needed, neither more nor less. It would have the calories required, and the vitamins, and the minerals. It might be tasteless, it might be unpalatable, it was almost sure to be mostly synthetic. But it was what his metabolometer called for, and with that there was no arguing.

GARRISON ATE in sullen silence. So did the others, but with a difference. Theirs was the stolid silence of oxen at a trough. Even the direction and the ranking members of his staff on their raised dais ate in the same manner. It was a thing they had to do— it was part of the routine, joyless but necessary. Now Garrison was beginning to understand why people were falling ill with such ease, and being ill, failed to rally. Life was empty. They did not care, nor did their physicians care. It was that spirit of don't-give-a-care that was pushing Autarchia to the brink of ruin.

"I'm going to do something about this," muttered Garrison to himself, "and I'll start by finding out why neomal kills."

He went out with the crowd when the "dismiss" signal was given. He took the elevator to the tower where the gyrocar was waiting. Then he sat in the seat his position rated— one by a window, and hung on as the car teetered drunkenly as it cleared the slip. After that it straightened up and went whizzing along its elevated monorail, careering around curves on its nightly trip to Dorm.

The sun was on the point of setting, but everywhere there was full light. It was rolling country, covered with fields, and the horizon was broken only by the occasional bulk of a plant where alcohol or plastics were made from the products of the soil. The intervening fields were planted in corn and tomatoes, bulk crops that could be grown more profitably outdoors than in the hydropones. An army of low C.I. laborers was still at work, spraying the lush weeds under the watchful supervision of the agronomists who sat perched on lofty chairs set up among the tasseled rows.

Now that Garrison's eyes were opened, he saw what he had looked at daily but had never comprehended before. It was that the laborers' work was futile. The cornfields and the acres of tomatoes were like his wards in Sanitar. Uncontrollable and malignant weeds and blights had moved in and were taking them. As the car rushed over a hilltop where the ground rose up almost to it, he could see the details better. Where once the fruit hung bright and red and round, it was now sparse, discolored and misshapen. Plump ears of corn were replaced by scrawny spindles riddled with wormholes. Garrison could glimpse them now and then despite the weeds which in many places towered even above the tall corn.

The sight added to his glumness. It had not always been that way. Only a few years before the fields had been clean and sparkling— good reddish soil topped with orderly rows of the desired crop plants and nothing else. Insecticide sprays and selected chemical soil treatment used to work. Lately they did not seem to. Why? They had successfully done so for two hundred years. What was bringing about the change? Was the Agricultural Code inadequate, too?

The car swerved and swept across the highway. A pile of grim gray buildings flashed by. That was one of the many structures known as Penal Houses. To Garrison's new awareness it took on a change of significance. It was another symptom of what was wrong with Autarchia. Designed to hold ten thousand unhappy rebels awaiting execution, today it stood empty. Seven generations of systematic extermination of dissenters had done its work. The breed was now extinct. No one thought of, let alone dared, dissent these days. The very concept of nonconformity was extinct. Garrison knew of it only because of the warnings of the Propags and the presence of the watchful monitors. Yet the prisons still stood. They were useless anachronisms now, complete with large garrisons of monitors waiting boredly for more grist for their mills. But they could not be abolished because they, too, were part of the Master Plan. What was must always be.

Garrison turned away from the prison in disgust. It would be better, he thought, if the idle monitors were put to work in the fields tearing out the weeds by hand. Then they would be at something productive.

The car swirled on. Suddenly, but briefly, the panorama underwent a change. For about a mile there stretched a field that was uncontaminated like the rest. It looked as all of them used to look. Then the car left it and was over another planted with the same crop, but as weed-choked as the earlier ones. The contrast of the one well-kept field with the others was startling.

Garrison craned his neck to look back. As he did he became aware that the officer sitting behind him was watching the act intently. He was an old man and wore the distinguishing marks of a high ranking psychomed. It was that that made Garrison uneasy, for many of the senior psychomeds seemed to possess the uncanny knack of reading people's minds. In the state of agitation he was in he preferred not to be under one's scrutiny.

"Rather different, eh?" queried the older man, with a quizzical smile. "Why, I wonder?"

"Different soil, probably," ventured Garrison, feeling some answer was expected.

"Hardly," remarked the psychiatrist. "They took such differences into account when they drew up the Master Plan. All these fields are assigned to the same tillage."

"I'm only a medic," hedged Garrison, "I wouldn't know."

"For the very reason that we are medics," pursued the other, "it might pay us to know. Below us are fields that have been successfully farmed for centuries. Now the pests refuse to be kept at bay. They are conquering except in that one field that seems to interest you. It would indicate, I think, that one Agronomist knows something the others do not. That fact is worthy of our consideration."

"Why?" asked Garrison stupidly. He knew it was stupid, but the conversation was taking a perilous turn. This psychomed was probing dangerously near to his heretical inner thoughts. Garrison wanted to mask them.

"The analogy between vegetable blight and human disease ought to be apparent to anyone," shrugged the elder doctor. "We study both and find remedies. Then, in the course of time, one or the other or both get out of control. Haven't you found it so?"

"A woman died in one of my wards last night," hesitated Garrison, "if that is what you mean. She should not have, so far as I can see. But we did our duty under the Code—"

The psychomed glanced cautiously about. The other passengers dozed sluggishly in their seats. The noise of the car precluded eavesdropping.

"Our duty is to save lives, my friend," he said in a low tone. "In that the truly excellent Code is our best guide. But there is coming a time, and soon, when it must be changed—"

"Yes, yes, perhaps," said Garrison, flurried, half frozen with alarm. Those were fearful words, and a lifetime of listening to Propags had set his reflexes. It was not a light matter to change their patterns. "If such a time should come, no doubt the Autarch will give consideration to it."

"The Autarch is neither doctor nor agronomist, nor any one of the hundreds of other kinds of specialists it takes to operate a world like ours. He may sense impending peril, but how will he know how—"

"Sir," said Garrison stiffly, scared through and through, "your words border on treason. I refuse to listen. Have a care, or you will find yourself in trouble."

The old man gave a contemptuous snort.

"Trouble? Listen, boy. I am inspector general for all the Sanitars in this hemisphere. You know of several unaccountable deaths; I know of thousands. You have seen a handful of stricken fields; I have seen abandoned wastes stretching hundreds of miles. It adds up to one dire result—pestilence and famine. Not yet, but soon. If you think the monitors are to be feared, think on that pair of scourges."

Garrison kept silent. He was afraid still in spite of himself, but he wanted to hear more.

"As for myself, nothing matters," continued the psychomed. "I chose to speak to you because you turned back for a second look at the one well managed field. It showed me that regimentation had not made a clod of you altogether. There are not many of us like that, so I broke the ice. Tomorrow I appear before a Disposal Board. The gerocomists say my heart is beyond aiding and my course is run." He grinned. "And having a bad heart I am immune from torture. Euthanasia or standard execution— it's all one to me."

"I'm sorry, sir," said Garrison.

The gyrocar was slowing for the approach to Dorm.

"You needn't be," growled the old doctor, taking in the other occupants of the car in an all-inclusive sweep of the arm. "Be sorry for those dumb inert creatures. And by the way, if you care to pursue the subject further, the name of the agronomist in charge of the field you liked is Clevering."

The car reeled to a stop. Garrison scrambled to his feet and crossed the spidery bridge that gave access to the high tower of Dorm. Beneath were the huge public rooms, the baths and gymnasiums and the libraries of the Code. Down there were kept the individuals' records, and also where the vast social hall was. The rooms and dormitories were in the star-like wings.

Garrison took the elevator to his floor, and walked along the corridor of his section. The door of the cubicle he called home was open, as all doors had to be when the room occupant was absent. He went in and lay down on the narrow bunk for the prescribed period of rest. From it he surveyed his habitation with some curiosity, never having thought to do so before.

There were the plain plastic walls, dimly luminous, and the Spartan cot he lay on. There was a chair on which he hung his clothes at night. During the night an attendant would come and replace them with others. He had no need for any but the authorized costume of the day, and it was always provided. There was a small wash-bowl with a shelf and mirror above it, beside which was posted his individual hygiene instructions— the hours of rising and going to bed, the hour and nature of the bath he was to take, and such details. On a small table lay a copy of the Social Code. That completed the furnishings.

Ordinarily Garrison spent the rest period relaxed and with a blank mind. Today he could not. He kept turning over in his mind the problems that seemed to be growing more complex hourly. There was the death of Leona McWhisney, the enigmatic edict of the Autarch, the provocative remarks of the psychiatric inspector, and the mystery of the one uncontaminated farm. Now he had to decide also what he was going to do about the Social Hour. The daily event was always boring, as was most of the well-ordered life he led, but it was a way to while away the time until the hour set for sleeping. He wondered how one went about visiting another in his room, and if he did visit what they would talk about. And that caused him to open an eye and wonder where was the scanner-mike that kept watch on his room, and whether it was alive all the time, or only now and then.

Habit is strong. He was already sitting up on the edge of the bunk when the stand-by buzzers sounded. That meant five minutes until Social Hour began. He was already tired of his cell and wanting to move. He heard doors outside being opened and the shuffle of feet. The others were on their way. He hesitated, then got up and went out, too. There was not a closed door in the hall. The man opposite him had just come out— a master electrician in charge of the X-ray machines.

"You are going as usual?" asked Garrison.

"Where else is there to go?" answered the fellow.

"We could stay here and talk," suggested Garrison.

"About what?" he asked curtly, and turned down the hall.

The harried glance he gave the walls and ceilings as he did was the clue to his behavior. Garrison instantly read it aright. The Autarch's edict of the afternoon stated that certain regulations were "suspended." There was nothing in the way of assurance that the free conversations allowed would not be listened to and recorded by the monitors. Garrison frowned. Could the Autarch's seeming generosity be a ruse to entrap the unwary? Small wonder the fellow had ducked. For his part Garrison realized he had just had a narrow escape. He meant fully to discuss the McWhisney death and other things with anyone who would listen.

GARRISON went on to the Social Hall. The evening proved to be, if possible, duller than usual. Garrison found the other officials ranged in chairs before the lecture platform waiting stolidly for the Propag to begin. None had so much as delayed his coming. Garrison sat down at his customary place. The Propag was coming on the stage.

"It has come to my ears," he began in the sing-song voice affected by the members of his profession, "that a few of you are troubled. In hours of weakness it is human to falter, and there may be some so debased as even to doubt our wonderful Code in the dark moments. That is evil. The Code is all-wise. Believe in it, follow it, and trouble not. All will be well. Let us, my friends, go back and remember our first lessons.

"In the beginning there was chaos. All the world was divided into many nations, speaking different languages, having different customs, and struggling one with another—"

Garrison did not have to listen. The famous "Basic Lecture" had been dinned into his ears at yearly intervals all his life. Once it meant something, now it was an empty piece of ritual. Men sat through it unhearing, for they knew its words by heart.

It told of the Bloody Century—the Twentieth—and of its devastating wars. Those were the bitter conflicts between Imperialists and Republicans, Totalitarianism and Democracy, and the varicolored races. Then would come the story of the infant leagues and unions of nations, and the bickerings among them for top power. Afterwards there were fierce revolts in certain quarters. The world before The Beginning was a world of strife and murder and destruction. It was a horrid world.

"Yes, horrid!" the Propag would scream at that point. "An insane world. A world where there were many opinions about the simplest matters. Men differed, and because they differed they fought. It was under the sage Harlking the Great—the Autarch of the Fourth Coalition—that the Grand Code came into being. He perceived clearly that the world, though not perfect, was good enough if men were only content. So he convoked an assembly of the thousand wisest men of the age. These were the men we now call the framers, for their task was to sift the world's store of wisdom and select the best for inclusion in the Code. It took forty years for them to complete their colossal work, but when it was done the Autarch pronounced it good. That was Gemmerer the Wise, for Harlking did not live to see his glorious idea come to fruition.

"Gemmerer promulgated the Grand Code, and in doing so forbade that it ever be altered. He foresaw that there would still be impatient men, or dreamers who might try vainly to better things. Man in primitive societies is hopelessly inventive. He is never content with things as they are. This was an admirable trait in the formative days of civilization, but in a highly integrated world community it harbors the germ of warfare. The introduction of a new thing is always a challenge to the old, and the partisans of the old invariably fight back. There must be no more war. Therefore there must be no new thing. Stand men, and repeat the creed of our fathers!"

Sheeplike the audience stood. The Propag led off, and the mumbled chorus of responses followed.

"The Code given us is good!"

"It must not be altered."

"It is the quintessence of the wisdom of the race!"

"It must not be questioned."

"It must be obeyed forevermore."

"Amen."

The rumbling echoes of the whispered responses died, and the men dropped back into their seats. The Propag treated them with his professional glare for one solemn moment. Then he partially dropped the cloak of solemnity.

"Is there anyone present," he asked, still stern, "who ... ah, prefers to talk about a topic other than the one we have been studying?"

Several men shifted uneasily in their seats, but no one answered.

"Very well," said the Propag, "we will break up into the usual groups. Group directors please take charge."

There was a rustling as the men found their way to the places where they were to be treated to cultural enlightenment. Garrison joined his proper group dejectedly. He cared less than ever for the plump, curly-haired young man who was his renovation director. That worthy looked his small flock over and saw that they were all present.

"Last night," he chirruped with a false heartiness that made Garrison want to smack him, "we were discussing the complementary effect of strong colors when placed in juxtaposition. Now, if we take a vivid orange, say, and put it alongside an intense green.—"

Garrison heard it out, bored stiff. Real problems were stewing inside his head, and the froth he was compelled to listen to angered him. Otherwise it was simply dreary. But eventually it came to an end, and the Social Hour broke up. Garrison caught up with a departing agronomist, and asked him where he could find Clevering.

"Clevering? I think he's sick. He collapsed in the field today. As I was coming in I saw a Sanitar ambulance going in the gate."

"Thanks," said Garrison, and tramped down to his cubicle, and to bed.

Nine more neomals died in Ward 44-B that night, and in the morning there were no discharges. But waiting at the admission doors were hundreds of new cases—too many to be accommodated under the quota. Garrison noted with a wry sort of satisfaction that the admitting doctors were also struggling with an insoluble problem. There were others besides, as he found out when he reached his office. Treater Henderson was awaiting him mere with a sheaf of new diagnoses.

"What am I supposed to do with these?" he asked, plaintively, shoving them into Garrison's hands. Garrison took the topmost card and stared at it.

Diagnosis: Neomalitis, Type $ # ... etaoinshrdlu ... sputsputsput.

Treatment: Suifazeoproproproproppropopop .... nyll

Prognosis: ????????

He scowled and grabbed up an inter-communicator. In a moment he had the foreman of the Diagnostat room on the wire.

"Have your machines gone crazy?" he snapped. "They stutter. They give us gibberish."

"Can't help it," came back the answering voice. "We tried machine after machine. They all do it. And our tests conclusively show—"

Garrison flipped off the connection. He was up a blind alley there and knew it. He turned to the treater.

"Keep on giving 'em the standard sulfa treatment."

After the treater left Garrison sat down weakly and wiped the sweat from his brow. So far he was within the Code, for sulfa drugs were indicated for all cases of neomal regardless of type. But intuition told him that hereafter it would do no good. The stark truth was that the neomal bug had bred itself into a new type—a strain far hardier than the old, and more malignant. What he had to contend with was a bacillus that was practically immune to sulfazeoproponyl. It was, therefore, causing an utterly new disease, one not contemplated by the august framers. And, unless something was done quickly, a decimating plague would shortly be sweeping the world.

But what? The Code prescribed only the sulfa drug in such and such quantities, and the penalties incurred for administering any other were cruel. Garrison stared miserably at the stack of diagnosis slips. For once he felt a sense of personal responsibility to those sufferers down in the wards. He felt like a murderer. Then his eye lit on a name atop a card. The name was, "Henry Clevering, Agronomist 1st Class."

He lost no time in getting down to the ward.

The wards of Sanitar were not wards in the old sense, but groupings of rooms, and Garrison found his man in the fourth one on the left. The moment he saw him he knew his hours were numbered, for the chart showed the oscillations of the fever hitting ever new highs with a shortening of the period between. Already the ever vigilant monitors had set up a portable mike beside the bed to record his ravings when a little later he would be in delirium. In earlier days such deathbed revelations had often given them valuable leads to subversive dissenters still living.

Garrison saw the fever eyes of the sick man following him about the room, but he went about what he had to do. He closed the door softly, and then stuck a wisp of cotton into the mike so as to damp its diaphragm for the time being. He sat down beside the patient and placed a cool hand on his forehead.

"The weeds have got me at last, I guess," said Clevering, smiling feebly, "weeds or blight. They're getting bad, you know."

"Yes, I know," said Garrison, "and that is why it is bad for Autarchia to lose a man who knows how to fight them."

"Autarchia?" whispered the other, "a lot Autarchia cares. If they knew what I know, they would have crucified me long ago. But you are not speaking for Autarchia, or you would not have shut off that spy's ear."

"By Autarchia I meant the human race," replied Garrison, soothingly. "I saw your farm last night. I really saw it, for I've been blind up to now. I want you to tell me how you kept your field clean. We have needs of a sort here too, you know."

Clevering smiled wanly.

"You want to know what I did, eh? Well, I forgot the Code when I saw it wasn't working any more. I tried this and that until I found something that did work. Organic things don't stay put. They grow and change and evolve. What stood off the blights when the Code was drawn isn't worth anything these days. I found that out years ago when it first got bad. I falsified my records so the inspectors wouldn't know. That is how I kept out of Penal House. Maybe I should have spoken out before, but who was there to hear? I do love a clean cornfield, though, and that's why I kept plugging. The books helped, too."

A spasm of shivering shook him as a fresh chill came on. Garrison gave a worried look at the chart. He had not arrived too soon. The next fever peak would probably be the last. Clevering was a dying man.

"What books?" asked Garrison sharply. "There are no books that I know of except the Code."

"The ... the ones in the Autarch's secret library," managed Clevering through chattering teeth. "A few were stolen years ago by a dissenter who was a palace guard until the monitors found him out. They have been handed down through several generations to trusted fellow believers. I am the last one. There are no others that I know of."

"I am one," said Garrison quietly. He was astonished at his own coolness when he said it, for twenty-four hours earlier he would have allowed wild horses to pull him apart rather than utter the blasphemous words. Now all that was changed.

"I am seeing people die who should not be dying," he explained. "I don't like it. The Code is—" here he almost choked on the words, such is strength of inhibiting doctrine, "the Code is—well, the Code is all wrong! It's got to be changed. It's got to be repealed!"

"I believe you," said Clevering, and pulled Garrison toward him so he could whisper, "the books are under a false flooring in a shed—"

Garrison listened attentively to the instructions, but before the patient quite finished, the fever got the better of him and he rambled off into incoherent nonsense. Garrison stayed on, for it was not all nonsense. There were lucid stretches in which Clevering lived his experiments again—the trying of this or another spray on the blights, and the application of various chemicals to learn which helped the corn and discouraged the weeds. At length the end came, and there was no more to do. Neomal had claimed another victim, this one appallingly swiftly. Garrison removed the plug of cotton and softly left the room.

Garrison's life for the next five weeks was a frenzied jumble of concealed activity. Taking infinite care to wear the mask of common apathy, and covering his movements with studied casualness, he steadfastly pursued two aims. One was the reading of the forbidden books, which he dug up during his first available free time. Thereafter he read them in his room, hiding them meanwhile in his mattress. The books were a strangely variegated lot. Some were on scientific subjects, others social or philosophic. There was history, too, and something about religion. The book he came to love most of all was a very slim one—a little volume on "Liberty" by a John Stuart Mill. His limited vocabulary troubled him much at first, but he shrewdly arrived at the meanings of such words as "choice" and "freedom" by considering the context. He discovered to his delight that there were shades between good and bad. There were the words "better" and "best" as well as the bare, unqualified "good."

While the books opened up vistas unimagined to his thinking, it was at Sanitar that he performed his most imperative work. He wanted to find out why neomalitis had suddenly turned killer, and how to foil it. On the pretense of checking the biologists, he pored over blood and lymph specimens of the ever arriving patients. He built up culture colonies, and then tried to destroy them with modifications of the sulfa drug. The results were negative, so he tried other compounds. Then he cultured viruses, and pitted one strain against another. And as the average Psychic Resistance Index kept dropping lower he pondered that feature. Apparently the Diagnostats were not calibrated for patients so consistently depressed and without desire to live, for shortly the uncanny machines balked at giving any prognosis whatever. All that would come out was a meaningless jumble of characters.

At last the day came when he found a drug that killed the new strain of neomal bacilli in the laboratory. He was careful to restrain any expression of joy, though his impulse was to leap into the air and yell "Eureka!" Instead, he cautiously loaded a number of hyperdermic needles and wandered into a ward.

He sent the attendants away on various errands, and set about the risky job he was compelled to do. He injected all the patients in the rooms on the left-hand side of the corridor. Then he went as soon as possible to his office and awaited results.

They were not long in coming. Within the hour an agitated treater rushed in.

"All hell has broken loose in 44-B," he reported. "It can't be neomalitis those patients have. They're in convulsions."

"I'll be right down," said Garrison. His bones had turned to water, but he had to see the thing through. He knew, from his belated reading, that one was supposed to experiment on guinea pigs and monkeys before injecting strong and untried medicines into human beings. But there were no longer any such animals. They had been decreed useless and were long extinct. Yet the patients were doomed anyhow— he felt justified in taking the chance. But he had not foreseen convulsions.

By the time he reached the ward the worst of the spasms had subsided. Some of his inoculated patients had succumbed in their agony. The remainder lay spent and gasping, with expressions of utmost horror on their faces. Garrison surveyed them stonily, but his heart was cold with anxiety.

"Very odd," he remarked, making notes. "I shall report it, of course."

He was too upset to do anything else that day, but that night he thought long and hard about it. The following morning he learned to his immense relief that only a few more of his illegally injected patients had died, whereas the half ward under Code treatment had lost its normal number— about eighty percent. During the tense day that followed; the survivors among his experimental subjects began to rally. By nightfall several had lost all symptoms. In a day or so, barring relapses, they could be discharged.

"I'm on the track," Garrison exulted. "Perhaps I used too strong a solution."

He attacked the problem with renewed fury. Day after day he tried dilutions and admixtures of other chemicals. There were unhappy results at times, but on the whole he was making splendid progress. At last there came a day when there were no deaths among the ones he treated by stealth. A grand glow of achievement warmed him, and when he returned to his office he could not help walking like one who had conquered the Earth. He had tried, fumbled, and then gone over the top. Now he understood the rewards that come to those who achieve by their own wit and handiwork.

But there was another kind of reward awaiting him. At the door of his office two grim monitors met him. They shut off his remonstrances with a blow across the face. Then he was hustled into an elevator and shot to the top of the tower where an angry director was pacing the floor. A smug inspector of Pharmaceuticals was standing by with a packet of inventory sheets.

"Explain yourself, sirrah!" snorted the pompous, red-faced man who headed Sanitar. "What do you mean by forging chemical withdrawals? Sulfa drugs— pah! You have not used a gram of sulfazeoproponyl in ten days. Instead you—"

"Instead, I have been saving the lives of my patients," said Garrison quietly. "I gave them the Code stuff and they died, just as they are doing in the other wards. Therefore I knew that—"

"Silence!" roared the director, shutting him off. "Not a word more. Nothing... nothing, mind you... is as hideous as willful violation of the Code. What does it matter whether a thousand or more weaklings die? It is better so than to return to chaos. Monitors, do your duty!"

THE MONITORS did their duty. They did it precisely as the Penal Code said they must, exactly as it had been found necessary in the early days when there were many rebels, and those tough and fearless. They flung chains about his wrists and dragged him to the elevator, kicking and cuffing him at every step. They paraded him through the great lobby on the ground floor for the edification of his brother ratings. And then they hurled him half unconscious into the waiting prison van. After that for awhile Garrison hardly knew what happened to him. There was a prolonged session under a dazzling light, during which venomous voices hurled abrupt questions at him. They injected him with scopa, and they brought psychomeds of the Penal branch to try hypnosis on him. They beat him at intervals, and confronted him with the books they had uncovered in his room.

"You are fools, fools, FOOLS, I SAY!" he screamed when he could stand it no more. "Yes, I had an accomplice. His name was Clevering... Clevering the agronomist. He's dead now, so it does not matter. He kept the weeds out. He kept the blight out. So you have corn. That was contrary to the Code, but you have it!"

That was when his memory ceased to register. The things they did to him after that did not matter. Or they did not matter until hours later when he found himself crawling miserably on the hard steel floor of a cell. He felt his wounds and the stickiness of them made him faint again. After that he slept for many hours.

How many days he languished, sore and battered and hungry, in the dark he had no notion. He was hauled out one day for questioning by a solemn board of psychomeds. That was to determine his sanity. He answered them defiantly from between swollen lips and with words that had to be mumbled for lack of teeth. They overwhelmed him with scorn, and pronounced him sane. The Penal Code could take its course. After that there was more of darkness. Not one person in Sanitar or from Dorm attempted to communicate with him. He was unclean. He was different. He was a convicted dissenter. His name was already erased from the roster of the living.

It was an eternity after that when the four burly monitors came in the dead of night. He heard the heavy tramp of their feet in the corridor, and the crash as his door was thrown open. Then hand flashlights played on him.

"Up, snake!" snarled one, and yanked him to his feet.

"Don't mark him any more," warned another. "The captain said not. The Autarch is going to work on this one in person, and they say he likes 'em fresh and able to take it."

The other monitors snickered, and something whispered was said that Garrison's ears did not catch. Then he was shoved into the desolate corridor and propelled forward. Next came a jolting, mad ride to the airport, and then comparative quiet as the giant stratoplane soared through the sky. Sometime later there was another ride in a van, with a stop after a bit for challenges and explanations. Then Garrison heard the creak of great bronze gates opening on seldom used bulges, after which he was handed through a door and into a small elevator.

The moment he stepped out he knew he must be in the palace. He had not imagined such grandeur. The floors were heavily carpeted in rich designs, and the walls glowed with an eerie softness. Uniformed flunkies and guards stood everywhere, eying him curiously. Garrison became painfully aware of his own drab appearance, for he wore only a very dirty shirt badly stained With blood, and his body was encrusted with the muck of his cell floor. His beard had grown untouched since the first day of his incarceration. Add his bloodshot eyes and battered features to that and he knew he must present a perfect picture of a desperate criminal.

A silver robed official of the palace intercepted them.

"Oh, he can't go in like that," he said. "He'll have to be washed. This way with him."

Garrison felt better after the repair work was done. He had resigned himself to taunts and tortures and ultimate death, but it felt good to be clean for once. They even trimmed his hair and shaved him, and dressed him fully with dark-blue silken clothes after applying pleasing ointments to his welts.

"You needn't mock," Garrison cried out, as they slipped the smooth cloths onto him. "I am a dissenter and proud of it. Let's get on with it."

"Take it easy," said the treater who had patched him up. "The Autarch would not have sent for you if you had been just an ordinary case."

They gave him a sweet mixture of chocolate and milk and put him in a darkened room to rest awhile, telling him that his audience was not to be until noon. He tried to rest, but could not. Too much was running around inside his head. He knew that he was condemned to die, for the monitors had told him as much. His hope was that before the hour came he could at least get the reason for his rebellion on the record.

AN OFFICER of the guard came and escorted him down the carpeted halls. This time there were no harsh words or cuffing, but stiff civility. He took him to a pair of richly paneled doors which two flunkies drew open. Garrison was told to go in, and the doors closed silently behind him. He had entered alone; the officer remained outside.

It was an immense square room, luxuriously appointed, and facing him was a massive desk beside which stood a man he knew must be the Autarch. He was a magnificent specimen of manhood, tall, barrel-chested and commanding. He wore a robe of wine-red satin bound with cloth of gold, but his gray-streaked leonine head was bare. His gaze was steady on Garrison—a coldly appraising gaze from hard blue eyes, and under them an unsmiling mouth of iron. When he spoke it was with a deep and vibrant voice without a trace of emotion in it.

"So you are a rebel," said the Autarch, almost as if he were speaking to himself.

"I am."

Garrison was desperately afraid he was about to tremble, for the man's personality was overpowering, and nothing in his previous career had conditioned him to cope with it.

"Why?"

"I was failing in my job... despite the Code," said Garrison slowly, "and I felt I should do something about it. I did, and succeeded, after a fashion. I saved the lives of some of our citizens. That is my crime. If I had it to do over again, I would do the same."

"Ah," said the Autarch, taking a deep breath. "So you defy me?"

"You do not understand, or you would not call it defiance," said Garrison, astonished at his own boldness. But he had already suffered death a hundred times in anticipation and was beyond fearing it. Nothing mattered now. The Autarch frowned momentarily, but continued to size up his prisoner for a minute or so more.

"A real rebel, a genuine, sincere dissenter," he said softly, "at last."

He moved across the room.

"Sit down," he said, "I want to talk with you."

Garrison sat down and took the proffered cigarette, wondering whether he was on the cruel end of the cat-and-mouse game.

"During my reign," said the Autarch, "I have long wanted to meet one of you. From time to time they have brought me what was alleged to be such. They were sniveling cowards all— stupid, lazy, careless or inept people who had infringed the Code without intent. They had to die, of course, and did. It is the rule, and I am as helpless in the face of it as anyone. But I did hope to find out what was wrong with the world. They could not tell me. Perhaps you can. There is more than one way of dying, I may remind you, and I have considerable latitude in that matter."

"I see," said Garrison. Things were churning about inside his skull. There was the temptation to tell his captor what he wanted to hear and thereby earn a painless death. Yet he did not know what the Autarch wanted. Besides—

"The trouble with the world," said Garrison carefully, "is the Code itself. Civilization is an organism, made up of a myriad of lesser organisms. Organisms— men, animals, plants, and on down into the microcosm of minute life— are living things. They grow and develop and evolve. Or else they degenerate. They never stand still. Only the Code stands still. It is too rigid."

"I am not prepared to admit that," said the Autarch, "but go ahead. Prove your point if you can."

IT WAS the opening Garrison hungered for. He recited the recent behavior of neomalitis—the strange turn it was taking, and the helplessness of the doctors in the face of an uncompromising Code. He explained how bacilli could differentiate into fresh and hardier strains, more contagious and deadlier than their predecessors. And how they might become immune to treatments formerly effective. Then be detailed his own experimentation, handicapped as that was by non-co-operation and the necessity of secrecy. He mentioned Clevering and his cornfields and emphasized the parallelism between the two situations. The conclusion was inescapable. However good the old procedures may have been in their day, they were not valid now. Radically new approaches were demanded.

"Perhaps," agreed the Autarch, thoughtfully. "There appears to be truth in what you say. I may as well tell you that other diseases are becoming rampant as well— new varieties of cholera, dysentery, and pneumonia. There is a wave of suicides, too. Cattle are dying. Many of our vital crops are failing from blight or insect attack. That is not all. Nonorganic things are awry. Despite controls, gradual shifts of population have thrown central power plants out of balance, and left us with highway systems that are either congested or disused."

"A city or region may be regarded as an organism, too," Garrison reminded him.

"So I see. At any rate, it is a problem that has weighed on me for some time. It is growing urgent. Something must be done, and quickly."

"I know that," said Garrison dryly.

"If," suggested the Autarch, "I should see my way clear to grant you an indefinite reprieve— perhaps amounting to a full pardon— would you undertake to bring the diseases mentioned under control?"

Garrison smiled a thin, hard smile.

"I am only one man, excellency, and an ill-equipped one at that. I happened to be lucky in stumbling on the remedy right off. In another case it might take an army of research workers years. Only by putting thousands of trained men at it in ample laboratories could such a thing be done."

"Very well. You are the new Director General of Health. I delegate you to find such men and modify the Medical Code."

"How?" asked Garrison, with a short, scornful laugh. "It is too late for that— by a half dozen generations. Not to modify the Code, but to find the men. The kind of men we need do not develop under an autarchian regime. It is the senseless persecution of your predecessors that has brought us to the brink of ruin, not the plant and animal parasites you complain of. Free men would have disposed of them long ago.. But that would have required initiative and adaptability, traits long since obliterated. Now the premium is on blind obedience. Men have lost the art of thinking; they will only do what they are told."

"That makes it all the easier," said the Autarch, reaching for a pad. "You write the order stating what you want done. I will promulgate it. It is as simple as that."

Garrison stared at him in blank amazement.

"Order what?" he asked. "Men of force and talent to reveal themselves? Who is to judge whether they have those qualities? And if there are such, they will take immense pains to conceal themselves. They are afraid. I know that, because I know my own reaction to your recent order, relaxing the Social Code. I didn't understand it, and I didn't trust it. For all I knew the Monitors might be listening and taking it all down."

"They were," said the Autarch, "but nothing happened. I was worrying about the state of affairs throughout the world, and hoped to pick up a clue as to what was wrong. There was only silence."

"Ah," said Garrison, grimly. "That shows the effect of fear. And the deadliness of inertia. There must be many men among our billions who see what is happening and care, but they dare not speak. They see only the Penal Houses ahead for their pains. As to the vast majority... bah, they are sheep. They are accustomed only to orders from above. Without positive orders specific to the last little detail, they will not act. What else do you expect from a race of slaves?"

"Slaves!" exclaimed the Autarch. "In the high position you held, how dare you compare yourself with a slave?"

"Wasn't I? I could cast about and find a sweeter euphemism for it, but essentially that was it. I have never known anything but regimentation. I was flattered with the label of a high cerebrad rating, but why they assigned me to my job on the basis of it is more than I can understand. The commonest field hand above the moron class could have done the work I did. A machine could have. What use is intelligence if you are not permitted to use it?"

"Yes," admitted the Autarch slowly, "I see that now. But that was then. You are not only permitted to use yours now, but ordered to. Use any means you please to assure them immunity from persecution, but issue your call—"

"It will take more than negative action," Garrison reminded him. "To break away from a life of routine a man needs positive motivation. And I do not mean promotion to a job as sterile as the one he has. It will have to be one to fire his soul and kindle his mind. Simply writing an order will not suffice."

THERE WAS an interruption. The major-domo of the Palace brought in a folder of papers. It was the weekly summary of events in Autarchia. The Autarch studied it with a face of thunder, then handed it to Garrison.

It was a story of regression on all fronts. The worst news came from Asia, where the strange disease that resembled cholera but responded to none of its known controls was sweeping the continent. Millions were already dead, and every ship and stratoplane was spreading the epidemic farther.

"In the absence of anything better," Garrison remarked, "this should be isolated. You should declare an immediate quarantine."

"What is that?"

Garrison told him.

"That is out of the question," decided the Autarch, after a moment's consideration of what it implied. "It would be disastrous. The entire workings of the Code hinge on dependable supply and distribution. It—"

"It," flared Garrison, "shows you how rotten your precious system is. Even you, presumably the ablest man of us all, are stopped by it, though millions die. When things start cracking you're sunk. The holy framers thought they had attained perfection and saw no alternative. Well, cling to your sacred Code and ride to doom with it. But let's end this farce. Call your executioner and finish it."

They were both on their feet on the instant. The Autarch was visibly trying to control his anger, but Garrison was not to be stopped. The sickening sense of futility he first felt when Leona McWhisney died was back with him, a hundredfold more strong. His voice rose shrilly, and he threw discretion to the winds.

"The race is facing a life-and-death crisis," he shouted. "Pestilence is here, and famine is right around the corner. In the wake of those will come economic pandemonium. The Grand Code cannot cope with them. It was not designed to. All it does is stifle us. What we need is men of imagination and boldness, not content with covering themselves by complying with some stereotyped provision of the Code. We need them by the tens of thousands, and we cannot find them on account of this unwieldy body of stupid, frozen laws. There is no time for temporizing. The Code has got to go— lock, stock and barrel!"

Garrison said a lot else along the same line. The Autarch heard him out in moody silence. Then he grasped him by the arm and led him to a side door.

"My apartment is in there. Go rest. I believe there is something in your argument, but I want to think."

THAT INTERVIEW was the beginning of a curious friendship. They dined together that evening, and later talked far into the night.

By the end of the week Garrison came to appreciate that the office of Autarch was as empty as any in the realm. There, too, the dead hand of the past lay heavily. Being top dog of the pyramid of bureaucracy meant little, for in Autarchia precedent ruled. Autarchs had occasionally added to the Code, but not one had ever repealed a provision.

The books confiscated at the time of Garrison's arrest were sent for by the Autarch. He was amazed at their contents, and began to understand better the workings of his guest's mind. He liked the technical ones best; the one he could stomach least was the little essay by Mill. The idea of an individualistic society was beyond his comprehension, but on the whole he was impressed.

"Garrison," he said, "I am convinced you have more practical ideas than I. I am ready now to take advice. We will modify the Code for the emergency. You write the orders, I will issue them."

"I won't do it," said Garrison. "I don't know enough. And if I did, I still wouldn't. The principle is wrong."

"What principle?"

"The principle of handing down wisdom from aloft. The principle of autocracy, if you want to know. It is an evil thing. History has never produced a man who knew everything—"

"He can surround himself with advisers."

"Of his own picking," countered Garrison. "Yes-men they used to call them. Which is worse. It is a device to reinforce a dictator's illusions as to his own infallibility. What he needs is not a chorus of undiscriminating yessing, but frank and brutal criticism. He can get that only in a democracy."

"Democracy!" cried the Autarch scornfully. "Anarchy, you mean. What is a democracy but a howling mob of forty opinions, each as little informed as the next? Where, after an infinity of muddling and compromise, some self-styled leader manages to wheedle an agreement among fifty-one out of a hundred of the mass, whereupon he proclaims a half truth as the whole. That is clumsy nonsense. The world had democracies once. Look what happened to them!"

"Look at what is happening to their flawless successors," said Garrison quietly.

The Autarch reddened.

"At least," Garrison argued, "in a democracy the ordinary man had something to live for. He wasn't a poor pawn. If he hit on a good idea and had the will and personality to promote it, he had a chance of getting somewhere. He didn't vegetate or degenerate into the flesh-and-blood robots we have about us now. Competition with his fellows kept him from doing that. Sure, he made errors. But he did not make the stupidest of all— of freezing them into an inflexible Code. Where freedom is, a man can develop. If he is wrong, others are free to say so. Some will back him, others oppose, which is the very thing the framers of the Code thought so deplorable. But out of the conflict the better idea usually won."

"After years of wrangling and with many setbacks," objected the Autarch.

"Rather, after continual adjustments to current needs," corrected Garrison. "Democracy may have had its faults, but lack of adaptability was not one of them. In freedom of speech and reasonable freedom of action it had the machinery for correcting any intolerable fault. Which is more than you can say for your own absurd system."

"All right," retorted the Autarch. "For argument's sake suppose I grant your point. How, in view of the sheeplike nature of my people which you keep harping on, could we reinstitute an obsolete form of society such as you advocate? I offered 'em free speech, and you know what happened."

"Wake 'em up," yelled Garrison. "Make 'em mad. Then you'd see."

"With no Code to guide them? I see nothing but chaos."

"We needn't repeal the whole of the Code. Considered as a guide it isn't bad at all. Its evil feature is its pretence of being infallible. We'll teach the people how to judge when to follow and when to diverge."

"That from you," snorted the Autarch. "You, who wouldn't even tackle the revision of the Medical Code! Now you propose to upset the entire applecart, and destroy the people's confidence. What will you replace it with, and how?"

"What with?" smiled Garrison. "There is always your great sealed library. You have seen a small sample of it and liked it. The Code was based on it. It must be good. As to how, that will come later."

"Let's look," said the Autarch, with sudden resolution. He dug keys and combinations out of a safe.

They reached the library through a long underground passage heavy with the dust of time. Once they passed the guards at the outer barrier they were on pavement untrod for decades. Then they came to a heavy circular door that had to be opened by a complicated group of methods. At length it swung open and they stepped through.

Both gasped at the immensity of the place. Not every book ever published was there— only the ones considered by the framers in compiling the Code. But since they covered every field of human activity in utmost detail, they numbered in the millions. The stacks stretched away for thousands of feet of well-lit, air conditioned space. The magnitude of the task they had so lightly assumed almost overwhelmed them.

After a long hunt Garrison found the medical section. He was again appalled at the extent of it, for the volumes dealing with any single aspect of his profession took up yards of shelving. He skipped histology, obstetrics, dermatology, and dozens more. There was just too much of it. How was he ever to read it all, let alone sift the chaff from the substance? He ducked the questions neatly by concentrating on the volumes devoted to the techniques of research.

Meanwhile the Autarch was delving elsewhere. He was deep among the histories and philosophies, with occasional excursions into political economy. Soon the aisles where he roamed were cluttered with "must" books. His first samplings had produced material for half a lifetime of study.

Hours later they left the place, exhausted, but burdened with books. Sheer fatigue cut their dinner talk that night to the barest minimum.

"How can we know," groaned the Autarch, "what part of this stuff is bad, and what not?"

"We'll have to leave it to the people," was Garrison's reply. "We need too many people and in too many varied fields to try to select for them. They will have to do that themselves."

"That will bring chaos, I say," grumbled the Autarch. "Anarchy. Your cure is as bad as the disease, I'm afraid."

"All right," grinned Garrison, as a sudden inspiration hit him. "I'm an anarchist. Let's analyze it. Autocracy is the complete denial of the individual. Anarchy is his fullest possible assertion. Democracy lies halfway between. Under it an individual can be himself, but is subject to certain restraints. Very well. You continue to play the Autarch. I'll be the Anarch—"

"And between us we'll produce the Demagogue," remarked the Autarch, sharing his grin. "A fascinating gamble, I must say. And pray tell, my insane friend, how do we achieve this miracle?"

"You continue to issue edicts."

"Yes?"

"And I will see that they are not obeyed," chuckled Garrison.

Strange happenings came to pass shortly after that. The sprawling radio center known as Omnivox overflowed into adjoining buildings hastily remodeled as annexes. Peremptory calls were sent out to Propags all over the world. Soon they came streaming into Cosmopolis on every arriving stratoliner. There they met a puzzling individual— one Philip Garrison, the newly appointed Chief of Propaganda. He told them that for one month they would read and not talk. In the meantime the standard lecture courses were to be suspended.

At the same time the citizens of the provinces were treated to a bewildering succession of orders. The Grand Code, they were informed, was to be revised in the near future. Until that time they should continue to use it as a guide, but might depart from it in certain stated emergencies. Propag lectures stopped as the lecturers were withdrawn, but the culture courses were continued for the time being. There was a difference, though. An army of carpenters descended on the various Social Halls and cut them up into many small compartments by partitions. Each was fitted with an omnivox screen. The most startling innovation was the broadcast instructions to the Monitor-Corps. They were forbidden to molest dissenters. On the contrary, they were given strict orders to protect them from the orthodox, should those show signs of resenting their heresies.

The results as both Autarch and Garrison had anticipated, were meager. They listened in at random over the monitorial wires and knew. For a few days there was a buzz of excitement, then the people relapsed into their customary apathy. They continued to do the things they always had done, and in exactly the same manner. In all the world there were less than five hundred who took the strange edicts at anything like face value. Some were doctors, who now openly experimented as Garrison had done. The rest were in other professions.

The Autarch wanted to send for them and add them to his staff.

"No," said Garrison, "they will be more useful where they are. Moreover, if you do that you may scare others. There must be more than half a thousand alert minds on five continents. We've still got those to smoke out."

The preliminaries took the whole of the estimated month. The zero hour was near at hand. The Propags had finished their assigned readings and had prepared their scripts. The Autarch was signing them at the rate of hundreds at a time, using a giant pantograph. Each was in the form of an edict, almighty law to replace a portion of the outmoded Grand Code. For the first few hours he tried to read them as they came, but there were too many. He gave it up and went ahead with his part of the bargain— signing orders, for in the end he and Garrison had arrived at a complete understanding. Now he meant to see it through, though the skies fell.

He checked off the subjects on his lists as the edicts went on their way. There appeared to be one set missing. He sent for Garrison. Garrison was busy at the time coaching the regiment of omnivox announcers he had recruited.

"What about religion?" asked the Autarch. "There was about an acre of books on it, as I remember."

"Oh, yes, religion," said Garrison, thoughtfully. "Yes, I suppose we ought to include that, though I omitted it because it was one of the activities abolished altogether."

"I think we'd better give it to 'em," said the Autarch. "People used to think a lot of it. They fought over it. It had something to do with the spirit, I believe, and we certainly need pepping up in that direction."

"Yes," agreed Garrison. "What kind shall I dish out?"

"How would I know? Let 'em have all of it."

So Garrison put another hundred script writers to work.

At last zero hour came. Garrison was in the master control room of Omnivox with stop watch in hand. At his nod the talkers went into action. It was the hour when the citizens in his part of the world were assembled in the Social Halls. At later hours the same discourses would follow the sun around the globe. Then he went off to his private booth and plugged in on a spyline. For a sample spot in picked on the Hall at his old home Dorm. It was different now. Instead of being scattered groups in one big hall, the doctors and agronomists were segregated in many small rooms. Each was listening to a different lecture. Garrison chose to follow the doctors.

In the first room a group of them were listening rapt to the new orders that were to replace the Code. The voice proclaiming that particular one was reading from a script that declared that most bodily ills had endocrine gland imbalance as their cause. Hence glandular therapy would cure anything. Garrison listened to it well pleased. It was most convincing. Then he switched over to another room. There, other doctors heard the new law of the land. It asserted that diet was nine tenths of the battle. Feed a man right and he would become practically immortal.

Garrison smiled and went on to the next. The lecturer was quoting osteopathic doctrine. The disposition of the bones had everything to do with disease. It was fundamental. Garrison flicked the switch again. The next fellow was yelling about the dangers of ever-present bacteria and demanding strict attention to the sterile technique. On and on it went, in each room a different set of dogma. And each of them was sound enough as far as it went, except that each was emphasized at the expense of every other. All the cults and schisms of old-style medicine were there.

Garrison grinned happily. He could not predict with any exactness what the outcome would be, but he knew it would be worth watching. Then he turned to other fields where similar conflicting lectures were being read. The announcers were doing well; he was content.

"How'm I doing?" he asked the Autarch, ten days later.

"Swell, I guess," said the Autarch dubiously, "if chaos is what you're driving at. There are riots all over the place. I ordered a new bridge built across the river ten miles below here. I had to send a squad of monitors to restore order."

"Yes?"

"Four pontifexes of the steel arch persuasion ganged up one who stood out for a suspension bridge. A fellow who happened to think cantilevers are better horned into the argument and got battered in the melee. Pretty bloody affair."

"They'll learn," said Garrison cheerily. "And when they do, they will not only know what is the best type, but why. They'll feel all the better for it. That's the democratic way."

"Maybe," said the Autarch grudgingly, and added with a twinkle, "You have a thing or two to learn, too."

"Now what?"

"Discrimination. Do you know what happened at Chicago? Better check over your scheduling of religious stuff. They've been preaching Hinduism out there. Now we have a strike on our hands. Hindus won't kill cows, it seems."

IN THE succeeding six months pandemonium broke loose. It was all according to plan, but trying. The world's population had been divided into cells, and each cell ordered to believe in some particular method and carry it out in the face of every opposition. Since no two groups were taught alike in the same locality, friction developed almost immediately in the citizens' daily work. On Sundays, when all were thrown together for an afternoon of free discussion, the monitors had their work cut out for them. They found their new instructions as to preserving order the biggest job in their history.

But Garrison listened in with glee. The only way to reach the populace was through flat, categorical orders. It was the conflict of orders, each reasonable and workable of itself but incompatible with the others, that was waking them up. Men got angry, and backed up the reasons fed them by the Propags with ones thought up by themselves. Still others were unsettled by their opponents, and wrote troubled letters to their higher-ups asking for clarification. Since their higher-ups were equally as confused, the letters eventually reached the palace. Garrison faithfully recorded their names on a gold-starred list.

"There," he said to the Autarch, "are some of the men you asked for."

"Humph," exclaimed the dictator, "I am getting a lot more than I asked for. Riots. Revolution. Call it democracy if you want to, but anarchy is what it is. You stirred 'em up, I admit, but what has it got us? A nation at one another's throats. I don't like it. Summon the best of these men you've found and direct them to draw up a new Code. Then—"

"Then we'll be right back where we started," Garrison broke in. "You can't put mankind in a strait jacket and expect anything but atrophy. When our thinking is done for us we become stupid. There is a saying that Nature abhors a vacuum. She also abhors an idler. The unused limb withers and dies."

"But listen to the noise outside," said the Autarch, "they'll be killing each other next."

There was plenty of tumult outside, all right. All Cosmopolis was lit with red flares, and the night was hideous with the roar of crowds and the ranting of stump orators. Autarch and Anarch stole out onto a balcony where they could better see and overhear. A political parade was passing, waving banners aloft that called for the establishment of a monarchy. It met another head-on, a group yelling for an election and the adoption of a constitution. The monitors intervened, swinging nightsticks, and dispersed both crowds. But the relative quiet that followed was short lived. A mob howling "Death to Mohammedans" poured out of a side street. When the monitors finished with them their placards and banners were in shreds.

"I think you overdid the religious angle," remarked the Autarch dryly.

"Yes," admitted Garrison glumly. "I had no idea they would take it so seriously. After all, we don't actually know much about the soul. Ours have been in a state of suspended animation for a long time."

"I know, but don't you think we might be a little more... ah-uh... selective in what we put out. Now that sect we just saw in action, for example—"

"At least we gave the monitors only one set of instructions— to maintain order," said Garrison, doggedly sticking to his guns. "The few broken heads we see are worth the price. It will all work out. Have patience."

It did work out. The Propags had done their job. The seeds had been sown and now the crop was coming up. Controls were being established over diseases and blights again. Other able men were untangling the economic mess resulting from those. Still others were observing and approving them. The Codes were not being used much any more. People attacked their problems directly, and were learning the art of promise. There was but one thing left to do.

The Autarch was reluctant to do it, but he had gone so far that he was willing to go all the way. He revoked the Code, including the fantastic recent additions. The printers that formerly made up its volumes were now turning out copies of the books in the secret library. The only portion of the Code retained was the completely revised Social Code. Into it Garrison wrote the bill of rights and the laws compelling tolerance, and appended instructions for forming a representative government. He abolished the practice of holding men in jobs by virtue of their cerebral ratings. It might come out to the same thing, and might not. Hereafter results were all that would count.

It was the Autarch who issued the call for the elections, and of his own volition. That was months later, after the new Code had been digested.

"Do you know, Garrison," he said, "this anarchy of yours is panning out pretty well. But I've worked myself out of a job. I think I'll run for president."

___________________

2: A Cameo

E. Temple Thurston

1879-1933

World's News (Sydney) 17 Aug 1918

EVERYTHING to its life history is like some cameo of life itself. A profound remark of Mr. Fladgate's, on the last occasion when he dined at Casuto's restaurant, was to the effect that "life is very different from its purpose."

This was no doubt the sub-conscious realisation of those twenty-two years during which Mr. Lindemann and himself had dined every Thursday night at the same restaurant in Soho. On the occasion of that profound re-mark, he was dining alone. But to describe that dinner is like setting the cameo before it is cut.

"Life is very different from Its purpose"— it is with the keen edge of that remark that we may cut our cameo out of the solid stone.

Casuto's was one of those many little restaurants that have opened in Soho ever since the Italians made it their quarters. They have appeared and disappeared in those Bohemian streets like plants transplanted into a strange soil, in which some have thriven and some have withered away. Some have done both, and Casuto's was one of these.

Casuto was a waiter. He had seen service in London, Berlin, Paris, Lugano, Lucerne, and finally in Venice, having acquired such language of five countries at his fingers' ends as is needed for the serving and consumption of food. Seeing how much he conversed by means of the gestures of his hands, this is no exaggerated simile.

At his last place, at the Hotel Danieli, he met one of his own countrywomen, a few years older than himself; found her to be possessed, of a comfortable dowry, found also that this was an active stimulant to the grandest passion he had ever had in his life; married her and came back to London after an absence of four years, taking those pre-mises in Dean Street which bore the name Casuto's— for the twenty odd years over which the purpose of this story runs.

The premises of Casuto's restaurant in those early days, so far as the public were concerned, were composed of one fair-sized room on the ground floor. What lay behind that room in the way of kitchens, the public neither cared nor were they asked to see. You liked the food or you did not, and in the latter case, perhaps, your mind turning towards that vague beyond, hidden from your gaze by a door that closed automatically with a suspicious swiftness whenever the waiters passed in and out with their dishes, you left Casuto's with the determination never to return.

There were thin white curtains across the window looking into the street. The door of the room opened directly on to the pavement.

In the early days there was sawdust on the floor. The walls were white with splashes of gold here and there, and some large mirrors, which not only seemed to increase the size of the rooms as you looked into them, but multiplied the occupants of the tables to such an extent that when the room was only half full you were given the impression of a crowd of people which subconsciously had the effect of making you think the place was one of increasing popularity.

Bunches of flowers were always on the tables. The table linen had that look of cleanliness which just escaped inquiry. There was a printed notice on the wall, just where the hat-stand stood in a corner of the room, to the effect that the management was not responsible for hats, coats, or umbrellas belonging to the visitors. During the whole period of its history, there was never a license for the sale of wine or spirits on the premises of Casuto's restaurant. A waiter took your order and your money and dived with it into the street, returning with your drink and your change in inevitable copper money.

Between the tables, Casuto himself, in the costume of an ordinary gentleman at large, moved up and down, with a quick brown Italian eye alive to all possibilities and requirements, advising his customers in convincing confidence what was the best for them to order, lifting his hands and raising his eyebrows towards the ceiling when he mentioned the name of a dish, as though he had got it down specially that evening from the gates of heav-en, instead of its being the creation of a per-spiring cook in those black regions beyond the swing door.

The history of Casuto's, as has been intimated, runs parallel with the history of Mr. Fladgate and Mr. Lindemann. It is as though the history of the one were a complement of the other, as though neither Mr. Fladgate not Mr. Lindemann would have been capable of the complete expression of their lives without Casuto, and that Casuto's restaurant would never have established the career it had if deprived of their custom.

To describe both these gentlemen is to make but little distinction between those many thousands of men who are to be seen every morning between nine and ten emerging from St. Paul's station, and making their way to business in the neighborhood of Ludgate Hill and St. Paul's Churchyard. Certainly Mr. Fladgate was an Englishman and Mr. Lindemann was a German, but both were merchants in the same small way in ready-made clothing; both therefore had interests in common. They supplied the trade, and those individual customers who were sent with special introduction by card from any of their clients. They talked of articles of clothing in the gross as we should speak of one. A stocking did not fit a leg with Mr. Fladgate, it had to fit a thousand legs; a silk dressing gown did not look well with the wall-paper and the bed-trappings in one bed-room in Mr. Lindemann's eye, it looked well with five hundred or it did not look well at all.

They made their first appearance at Casuto's when it was first opened, in those days when the sawdust was on the floor, and the letters on that notice regarding the safety of hats, coats, and umbrellas was still fresh with the gloss of new printers' ink. Casuto himself actually waited at table in those days, and his wife stood behind the counter in the middle of the room, prepared to sell you any thing from the pyramid of fresh fruit that was heaped upon it. It was her voice first of all, as you entered, that greeted you with good-evening; it was her voice last of all, as you departed, that wished you good-night. She always gave these salutations with an ample smile and a generous flashing of the whitest of teeth. But over her eyes— eyes of brown and "bramble dew"— as Stevenson might have described them— there was a blue mist in which lurked no sign of pleasure, but, when you looked at them, as if the fogs of London were lying between you and the glittering sunlight of Italy, and were turning the juice of the grape in her heart to vinegar.

As young men, thirty-six and thirty-seven, Mr. Fladgate and Mr. Lindemann came first to Casuto's one evening when they were en-gaged upon such an adventure as requires an out-of -the -way place for dinner and such an air of Bohemianism as contributes to the gaiety of these occasions.

The young ladies who accompanied them, being attendants in one of those superior West End shops where wealthy ladies are convinced they are kept strictly in touch with Paris, were somewhat over-dressed; not unfashionably, but so fashionably as to attract the attention of the most casual passer-by. Casuto's was the very place to bring them to. It was out of the way. For young married men, engaged upon an adventure so harmless, yet so capable of being misunder-stood, it seemed to have the very reason of its being.

They drank sparkling Asti, because to young women of this class it is not only impressive, by reason of its likeness to champagne, both in the bottle and the glass, but it is sweeter, and, so far as the man who orders it is concerned, it is cheaper. They drank sparkling Asti, and they ate the contents of those dishes which M. Casuto indicated with his eyes had come straight down from the gates of an Italian heaven— a culinary heaven of which we English are so bewilderingly ignorant.

Midway through the meal, Mr. Fladgate looked across at Mr. Lindemann with the remark that the cooking was jolly good, and, calling M. Casuto, he asked in French if he could have some more of that same dish. To persist in the faithfulness of this story, it must be reported that he said:— "Encore le menme chose." The two girls ceased from the height of their laughter at that moment, feeling that somehow it was out of place. They asked Mr. Fladgate if he knew France well, which, as a question, is a large order for a mail who has been no further than to Boulogne on a pleasure steamer from the pier at Hastings. It cast a wet blanket over the rest of the evening, but could not take away from the fact that the food was good.

This was the beginning of that association between Mr. Fladgate and Mr. Lindemann and Casuto's restaurant. It became the meeting place for their little Bohemian adventures, and whether because they talked of it themselves, or because others saw them coming out or going in, the popularity of the restaurant increased. Young men needing a quiet place to dine took their young women there, until there came a time when Casuto secured the services of two more men and dropped the waiter's livery himself for the costume of a gentleman at large. At this period Madame Casuto was to be seen in a black satin dress, with flowers in her bosom, no longer inviting anyone to buy from the ever-increasing proportions of that pyramid of fresh fruit, but saying "Good-evening" and "Good-night" with just the same smile and just the same blue mist about her eyes.

So it was Casuto's came to be recognised generally as a place of good cooking, and the haunt of the Bohemian world, and every Thursday night came Mr. Fladgate and Mr. Lindemann, accompanied or unaccompanied, for their little weekly dinner, to drink the Chianti which the waiter still brought out of the darkness of the street outside, to eat those Italian dishes which Casuto still conjured down with his eyes from the gates of heaven.

It was one Thursday evening, about seven years after Casuto had opened his restaurant in Dean Street, that there appeared out of the street, opening the door somewhat ten tatively and entering the room with no little uncertainty, a lady and gentleman in evening dress. Mr. Fladgate looked up at Mr. Lindemann as Casuto hurried forward and Madame Casuto rearranged the flowers in the bosom of her dress.

Was this Casuto's?

The little Italian's elbows turned in toward his ribs, and his hands shot out. What else could it be?

Could they get a little dinner for two— quickly— before the theatre? Could they get a little dinner for twenty before the theatre? Could they get a little supper for twenty after the theatre?

The next moment the lady was seated, and the gentleman, with an eye towards that notice on the wall, was hanging his coat over the back of the chair and placing his opera hat beneath it.

Mr. Fladgate leant across the table and said to Mr. Lindemann:— "By the way, I'm not going to bring that girl next Thursday night."

"Why not?" asked Mr. Lindemann. "Oh, I don't know. No fun."

It was about a fortnight later that both Mrs. Fladgate and Mrs. Lindemann met at Casuto's restaurant, entertained there by their husbands, when the notice about customers' property had disappeared from the wall beside the hat stand, and the period of respectability in the life of Casuto, no less than of Mr. Fladgate and Mr. Lindemann, had begun.

This period of respectability in Casuto's lasted in increasing proportion and prosperity for fifteen years, and every Thursday evening Mr. Fladgate and Mr. Lindemann, with likewise increasing prosperous respectability, partook of dinner at the table always allotted to them, shared their bottle of champagne, and solemnly went through their four courses towards that coffee which Casuto made better than anyone in London.

For about five of those fifteen years they had frequently brought their respective wives on these occasions, who, year by year, as their figures settled down into that adipose condition of respectability, were seen less and less often, and finally not at all. The date of their first appearance might be reckoned with the period when Madame Casuto was looking in her prime, a fine Latin type, daring, yet subdued, imprisoned by those fogs and smoke of London, as a tigeress is caged behind the unyielding bars of her home in the Zoological Gardens. The occasion of their last appearance would seem to have coincided with the moment when Madame Casuto had admittedly passed her prime. That smile of hers seemed more and more to be wanting in amplitude, less and less generosity there was in the flashing of her teeth, and behind that blue mist before her eyes there was a sulleness telling of the acidity which had lost its sting and was reverting to a mere mawkish condition of tired submission.

This period then disposed of Mrs. Fladgate and Mrs. Lindemann, but it was by no means the climax of Casuto's popularity. The place was full every night, and every Thursday you might have seen those two middle-aged gentlemen at their table, growing a little greyer about the head, a little more particular and appreciative about their food, a little less talkative except upon the matters of health, as the weeks went by.

The only person who seemed to retain an imperviousness against the advancing years was Casuto himself. More and more, as the years went by, he became the gentleman at large; more and more he seemed to detach himself from his customers, only speaking to and advising those upon the various dishes who were well known to him; last of all, only those, such as well-known actors and actresses, who, when once the restaurant was known, had contributed so largely to the still further in crease of its popularity.

His manner, indeed with those whose faces were unfamiliar to him became almost brusque and abrupt, and often, when he spoke sharply to his waiters, it could be seen that his lips curled like a dog that is disturbed with a bone, when in the old days he could utter the most terrible Italian oaths with the most charming of smiles and a graciousness of manner which to the public concealed the awful threat beneath.

Mr. Fladgate and Mr. Lindemann, as might well be supposed, being in such close touch with the life and development of Casuto's, noticed none of these things. They had, moreover, at about the period of their wives' disappearance from those Thursday dinners, become partners in their separate businesses, and the amalgamation was leading to the happiest results.

Everything in relation to Casuto's restaurant— and this is the main substance, if not the purport, of this history— seemed to be leading to the conclusion that prosperity is the complement of respectability. From the day on which that notice in reference to customers' hats, coats, and umbrellas was removed from the wall and Mr. Fladgate and Mr. Lindemann gave up their adventures with young ladies of little regard for propriety, with whom they made casual acquaintance after business hours, events seemed to combine in their efforts to create an atmosphere of respectability in the midst of prosperous achievement.

Only Madame Casuto, with the growing sullenness in her dark brown eyes and the decreasing generosity of her smile, would ap-pear to have been an indication that the true balance was wanting in this little scheme of life.

Ten years went by, notwithstanding, before the balance was upset, and the ultimate completion, with its obscure meaning, made itself apparent to Mr. Fladgate. During those ten years, Mr. Lindemann, with his trade connections in Germany, brought much in addition to the business that was valuable in its way. He secured goods at marvellously low prices, while Mr. Fladgate secured clients who bought them at such a price as to secure exceptionally large profits. There was a mutual trust and understanding between the two which made the silence at those Thursday dinners seem comfortable interludes be tween their remarks about food or the business. Mr. Fladgate knew that Mr. Lindemann was thinking how he would have to take a dose of bi-carbonate of soda as soon as he got home, and likewise Mr. Lindemann knew that Mr. Fladgate was wondering whether his Sandow exercises were really good for him or not.

And then, at the end of those ten years, came the announcement to a stupefied world of the Sarajevo murders. Mr. Fladgate and Mr. Lindemann discussed the possibilities of war all through the beginning of July, and always Mr. Lindemann assured him that Germany knew where her bread was made and certainly would not think of going to war.

On Thursday, July 23, Mr. Fladgate, who had been in the country on business, returned to town by arrangement In time for his dinner with Mr. Lindemann at Casuto's. It had always been agreed that they should wait ten minutes for each other before beginning the meal. Mr. Fladgate waited ten— he waited twelve— and then he ordered the first course. It was not until he had begun this— indeed, tasted the first mouthful, and found it extra-ordinarily badly cooked— that he looked round the room and became conscious of the absence of M. Casuto. He called the waiter.

"Tell M. Casuto I want him," said he.

In place of the proprietor came his wife. There was no smile on her lips. The blue mist before her eyes had disappeared, and left them cold as stone, like little brown pebbles that were dry and hard.

"Where's Casuto?" asked Mr. Fladgate. "This dish is shocking."

She sat down in Mr. Lindemann's vacant chair, an action which so surprised Mr. Fladgate he could say nothing in criticism of its familiarity, and she leant across the table.

"He's gone," she whispered; "all my money— everything— with that girl he used to go about with."

Mr. Fladgate did not know in the slightest anything about the girl. He had gone. So far as that was concerned, one girl was as good or as bad as another. He had gone with all her money, and Madame Gasuto had to carry on the business alone. It was as if a flash of lightning had struck the premises of Casuto and levelled them to the ground. This was the end. The only thought that flashed through Mr. Fladgate's mind, and not for any want of sympathy, was, "I wonder where Lindemann and I will dine on Thursday nights?"

She told him no more than this. Directly she had imparted her information, she rose from the chair and disappeared out of the room through the swing door into the Kitchen.

Mr. Fladgate went on with his dinner, more and more conscious with the arrival of each course that this was the end of Casuto's. Then he came to the savory, and was just paying the waiter for his glass of port, when the door from the street opened, and his wife looked into the room— his wife, whom he pictured seated at home in Brixton with her knitting in her lap.

Directly she saw him she hurried across the room and seated herself in the chair which Madame Casuto had vacated. So obviously had some terrible thing happened that Mr. Fladgate could not bring himself to ask her what it was, and there they sat opposite to each other in silence, whilst she regained her breath.

"It's because there's going to be war," she said at last; "I know it's because of that."

"What is?" he asked, bewildered.

"Well, he's a German," said she.

"Who— Lindemann?"

"Yes—"

"Why, what's happened to him?"

"Haven't you been to the office?"

"No— came straight here from St. Pancras."

"He's gone."

"Gone where?"

"Nobody knows. He's just gone."

"Margate, perhaps," said Mr. Fladgate, who knew all Mr. Lindemann's past, and had reason to associate it with the attractions of that seaside town.

"No— gone!" repeated Mrs. Fladgate; "and drawn a cheque at the bank that'll simply stagger you."

Mr. Fladgate could just say "How much?" and Mrs. Fladgate had just the power and no more to tell him.

For a long, long time Mr. Fladgate sat looking across the table at the place which his partner had occupied for twenty years in his company, while the fortunes of Casuto's restaurant, now wrecked and broken, had grown up beside their own, and then, after that tremendous pause, it was that he delivered himself of the profoundity of his statement:—

"Life is very different from its purpose," said Mr. Fladgate.

___________________

3: The Terrace

E. F. Benson

1867-1940

World's News (Sydney) 5 Oct 1918

"THE Terrace"— known to postmen and other aliens as Aylesbury Terrace— was a notable exception to the ordinary unsociable London street in the general district known as the "West End." In the West End, nobody except by the merest chance has the smallest idea of who his neighbors are, and even if he knew who they were, he would no more think of calling on them, and of initiating an acquaintance by reason of local propinquity, than he would attempt to call on the man in the moon.

But "The Terrace" thought differently about such matters. It was a cul-de-sac to begin with, and in front of each house was a small space of garden. This probably in the beginning of things had led neighbors to be neighborly. If you lived in No. 26, which was the end house but one, and your name was Mrs. Jones, it was impossible not to be aware that the lady from No. 28, which was absolutely the end house in the cul-de-sac, looked to see how your daffodils were getting on, when you, Mrs. Jones, were admiring them in your little front garden, day after day, at the precise moment when Mrs. Smith, in No. 28, was doing exactly the same thing. Horticulture, in fact, probably induced the neighborly spirit, but whether it was horticulture or not that led to that very desirable result, there was no doubt that at the date of this present chronicle of "The Terrace," everybody living in that delightful little street knew everybody else. When a newcomer settled in "The Terrace," the other inhabitants always called on him or her, and behaved, in fact, as if they were all living in those much more sociable districts— the East End, for instance— where every inhabitant knew all other inhabitants of the street; or in the country, where neighbors are rarer, and so must be plucked and enjoyed like nosegays.

More than half the householders in "The Terrace" were for the moment celibate. That is to say, they consisted chiefly of widows and bachelors, who met with great frequency, but not with any design on each other. It was reserved for the minority of married folk to make designs for their less fortunate neighbors. Sometimes they succeeded, in which case two tenants left a house vacant, and lived together in one, and thus there was a house "To Let" in "The Terrace." But it was never "To Let" for long, for rents, somehow, in this delighful backwater were low, and the vacant premises were soon occupied.

Such an event had only recently taken place at the time when this story opens, and in consequence there had been a good deal of curiosity to see who would become the fortunate occupier of No. 27, which was exactly opposite No. 28, for the houses ran in odds and evens down the street. This proved to be a widow, Mrs. Bruton, and in a very short time she was a sort of uncrowned queen of "The Terrace." Her bereavement— rather a fortunate one, so the Terrace understood was of sufficiently ancient a date to allow her to take part in at first, and very soon after to lead, the gentle gaieties of "The Terrace," and under her inspiring example they blossomed out into extravagances hitherto undreamed of. Up to the time of her advent, lunch, or tea, or occasionally a rubber of bridge in the evening, had been the quality of the social exchanges, but Mrs. Bruton at once started giving the most charming little dinners for four or six people. When there were four there was usually bridge after wards; when there were six there was often a very amusing game called poker. It was an extremely easy and entertaining affair, and at the points played, you could sometimes go home with as much as ten shillings unearned increment in your pocket. In fact, "The Terrace" underwent a mild sort of revolution. Hitherto it had chiefly blossomed by day; now it began to bloom by night, like the gentle unfolding of the evening primrose.

It took "The Terrace" a very short time to discover that Mrs. Bruton was intended to marry Mr. Hollingsley, who lived next door, and when his sister, Lady Lewiston, came to spend her usual couple of months with him before Easter, it took her no time at all to acquiesce in and endorse the verdict of "The Terrace." For years she had tried to find a really suitable wife for her brother, but the moment she saw Mrs. Bruton, and observed her gaiety, her charm, and withal her wise maturity, she felt she had found the partner who would lead poor darling Frederick but of the miserable prospect of a perennial
bachelorhood. There was not much time to lose; already he was forty, and already he seemed to like his old prints, and his old silver, and his wonderfully well-ordered house too well to contemplate any change from that which, at forty, appeared so agreeable. And the ideal partner for him, whom she now saw inhabiting the very next house, had not much time to lose either. She was thirty-five, and truthfully acknowledged her possession of that charming age. She had married once, unhappily; now she must marry again with better fortune. Lady Lewiston had had the same sort of career; she had married for the first time an wholly unsuitable person, and for the second time a most marvellously suitable one, who adored her. His adoration did not go so far as to induce him to live in London, or, if he could ever avoid it, set foot in that grim and grimy place. It was for this reason that she stayed with her brother for two months before Easter, when the country seemed so intolerable to her.

She had been here now for a week, and several signs on the part of her brother had caused her to think that his mind was moving in the same direction as hers. To-night they were dining alone, for an engagement for him to dine out had been cancelled at the last moment, owing to influenza on the part of his hostess, and they still lingered over an im-promptu and excellent dinner. Outside the rain was flung against the windows in squalls of south-west wind, which added to his sense of comfort.

"Upon my word, Madge," he said, "I don't know how you manage it at all. If I had been alone I should have had to go and dine at the club. I couldn't have risked offending Spicer by saying I should dine at home after I had told her I should be out."

"I know, dear. If you had, she would have given you a raw chop and some strongly-toasted cheese by way of protest. I never came across such wonderfully good servants as you have got, or servants so severe on their master. As long as you do as they tell you, you will always live in perfect comfort. Bachelors are always more comfortable than other people, if they are quite obedient. And as long as they don't find that at al degrading, I'm sure everybody is pleased!"

He understood from long experience the moral attached to these remarks, and anticipated the sequel.

"Now, if you don't take care, Madge," he said, "I shall marry some detestable woman, and when you come up to town like this, you will be sorry you badgered me."

Lady Lewiston always had a sparkle in her eyes, and to-night that was more than usually scintillating. It seemed as if she was en-joying some private and excellent joke.

"But, my dear, I don't badger you," she said. "Certainly I wish you had married ten years ago, but now I see so clearly that it is too late. After all, you have your prints and your china and your silver, and since you are so content with them, why should you change your whole mode of life at this time of day?"

She knew him well enough to be aware that this was the very sort of thing to make him become an advocate, for the purposes of argument, of matrimony.

"Forty. I'm only forty," said he, "and that's no age at all in these days when only grand-parents marry. You speak as if I had one foot, if not two feet, in the grave."

She waited, with eyes downcast to hide the sparkle that lurked like an inaudible laugh within them, while he pushed back his chair. She guessed what was coming,

"To tell you the truth, and just to show you how wrong you are," he said, "the fact is that I have been thinking about getting married."

He spoke as if he had told her that he was thinking of getting the Victoria Cross for some deed of unprecedented valor.

"My dear, how interesting," she said; "you thrill me!"

He continued outlining the proposed feat. "Well, I am," he said. "And it's Mrs. Bruton. I think she likes me; I know I like her immensely. Why should two people live alone when they might so comfortably live together? As you so feelingly remind me, I am getting on in years, and so Is she. I don't pretend there will be much romance about it, but I thoroughly like and admire her. She's delightful, quite delightful. She has all the qualities which make a woman charming."

Suddenly the sparkle died out of his sister's eyes. It was completely extinguished by this terribly sensible statement of the reasons for getting married.

"But surely, if you only feel like that, you're not going to ask her to marry you?" she said.

"I certainly am. She's very sensible, and will easily see my point of view. Besides, I do like her very much. And, as a matter of fact, I'm going to trot across now and ask her. I telephoned just before dinner to know if I could come in for a minute or two. I've wound myself up for it, and I'm not going to stop now; I'm going to strike."

Lady Lewiston jumped up in great dismay.

"But you don't know what you're doing." she cried. "You will spoil it all if you approach her like that. No woman of spirit would listen to you!"

He laughed.

"Oh, I know her better than you," he said. "I'm going now."

"But listen to me a moment," she began. "I will listen to you afterwards," said he. "I'll be back presently."

That was certainly true. Ten minutes had scarcely elapsed before she, still waiting in the dining-room, heard the front-door again open and shut, and in another moment he entered. He looked rather puzzled, rather scared.

"I don't understand," he said. "I—"

"What has happened?" she asked

"I asked her to marry me. And— and she said I was insulting her, though she added that she saw that I didn't mean to. She said, 'You are not asking me to be your wife, you are only looking out for a companion. Go to an agency instead.' "

"Ah! if you had only stayed here and listened to me," said she. "Was she angry?"

"Yes. But just as I left the room I heard her laugh. I don't understand."

Lady Lewiston could have found it in her heart to shake him for his stupidity.

"Come upstairs, Frederick," she observed "I shall devote the rest of this evening to making you understand. Dear me! Is it as bad as that to be forty and a bachelor?"

Frederick Hollingsley was always punctual at the office in Whitehall of a morning (for he had highly-developed, that middle-aged virtue, and he was scarcely out of the house before Lady Lewiston was out of it also. Her neighbor was confidently expecting her; had she not flown like a cork out of a bottle from her front gate the moment her brother had vanished down the street, Mrs. Bruton would have flown like a cork out of hers.

As it was she opened the door to her without waiting for the ascension of the parlor-maid from below.

"My dear Nellie." said Lady Lewiston the moment the drawing-room door was shut, "I despair of Frederick; I positively despair."

Mrs. Bruton smiled at her from her great grey Irish eyes. Instead of wrinkling them up when she smiled, as is the dimpling way of some of her sex, she opened them wider.

"I don't," she said.

"But he is a lunatic, idiotic," said his sister, "and just when he was getting on so nicely. I fully believe, as I told you yesterday, that he is in love with you, only he doesn't know it yet. It's— it's like suppressed measles; you may have measles, but it doesn't come out. However, when suppressed measles do come out, they are the worse for having been suppressed, that's one comfort. Oh, I gave it him so hot when he cause back last night, and you gave it him cold, I gather. And to think that he should behave like that, when we had planned everything so beautifully! What are you going to do?"

"I? Why, marry him, of course. He's a darling, is that Frederick of yours; and do you think I'm going to give him up for a little mistake like that?"

'"But suppose that you've frightened him off altogether?" asked his sister.

"Not I. But he's got to want me properly before he gets me. He told you what I said, maybe?"

Despite her annoyance Lady Lewiston laughed.

"He did," she said. "And, oh, dear me, it was so funny— he told me that he knew you better than I did. It never occurred to him that you and I, when we met a week ago for the first time, knew that we had known each other all our lives. We both felt that. And just as little does he know that we made plans for him and you at once. Now let's be practical. "What are we going to do?"

"Well, I've written him a little note, and if I called it a clever little note I should not be deceiving you. I said that we would meet again just precisely as we met before, and be just as good friends as ever. That's all my little note said, and now I come to think of it, the clever part was what I left out."

"And what was that?"

"Why, that we can't meet again precisely as before, my dear," Mrs. Bruton said. "When one very good friend has asked another to marry him, and the other has up and said, 'Sir, you insult me!' do you think that they can meet as before? He's asked for half, and he'll find be must ask for the whole or else get nothing at all. What a lot of babies are these men, to be sure. No man ever understood a woman yet, and I dare say that's a good thing, because if they understood us they mightn't like us. But I understand him, and his wife I'm going to be, but, Lord in heaven, he's got to want me first."

For a little while it looked as if this whole scheme was doomed to complete failure, for Hollingsley was so greatly relieved by this note, and by the subsequent finding that in no way had Mrs. Bruton abated her friendly, jolly geniality towards him, that he seemed content with the little dinners and the bridge parties and the poker parties, and all the other constituent atoms of the "nothing at all." But before long a change, subtle as the first glimmer of light before dawn, began to unfold itself within him; the relief passed, and a certain uneasiness took its place. It appeared that Mrs. Bruton experienced so difficulty in cordiality to him, but he noticed, with a vague premonition of jealousy, that she had precisely the same degree of charming welcome for everybody else. That piqued him; after all, he had paid her the compliment (though she chose to consider it an unintentional insult) of asking her to share his life, or such part of it as he proposed to give her, and she didn't seem to appreclate the fact that never had he paid any woman such a compliment before. Insult, was
it? Very well; let it be an insult.

Slowly, but by degrees not so imperceptible as to make her miss them, a frigidness came over their almost daily meetings. It did not in the least come from her; he was the sole refrigerating agent. He did not care to be only just so much as anybody else to her, when she had been so considerably more to him. Probably, after all, she was a very superficial sort of woman; these little poker parties and bridge parties seemed quite to content her, and at their conclusion she went with a jest and a smile back to her own solitary house.... And yet he knew quite well that she was not a superficial sort of woman. Her kindliness, her welcome for everybody, sprang, as he was perfectly aware, from a heart that transfused with its warmth everything she did. It was but his own growing bitterness, his sense, somehow, of having missed something, that prompted his judgment.

But he even hated to have no more from her than everyone else had.

The change and the dawn unfolded with a fresh spurt of light. He accepted with gratitude the world's small tokens of friendliness that were scattered about, and those small tokens he paid to and took from everybody else. But he did not want to pay them to her, nor to receive them from her. They were nothing; they meant nothing. Once they were current, now they were obsolete.

IT WAS the last evening of his sister's visit to him, and, coming down to dinner, he suddenly had a vision of himself all alone in the house to-morrow. He was not going out anywhere; indeed, he had just refused an invitation to dine with Mrs. Bruton, on the plea of a previous engagement, which did not exist. A few months ago, he rather used to look forward to a solitary evening, and he amused himself very well with his prints and his old silver, and the comfortable sense of being surrounded by his collections. But now the pros-pect seemed very drab and monotonous; there was no "give and take" about these inanimate things. You might love them, but none of them cared a straw for you. Human beings were scarcely more satisfactory... and then, sharp as the ringing of a telephone-bell at night, came the definite call. He knew it now; he knew, too, or thought he knew, that if he went to the instrument he would find that it was the wrong number. He was no more to her than everybody else was.

He expounded something of this very uncomfortable gospel of the barrenness and boredom of human interests to his sister after dinner, and, as once before, she heard him with a certain sparkle in her eye.

"Do you want to know what's the matter with you?" she said.

"I know perfectly well. I am getting old."

She came and stood opposite him by the fireplace.

"That is the worst diagnosis I have ever heard," she said. "Exactly the opposite is the truth; you are getting young. You're not bored with your prints really; you are only putting them in their proper place, now that you want something else so much more."

He got up too.

"Oh, that is over and done with," he said. "Madge, why didn't you stop me by force on that fatal evening? Ever since then—"

He paused for a moment.

"It was like giving someone a sham piece of jewellery," he said. "She said it was an insult at the time, and now I understand it. How could I have done such a thing?"

She took him by the shoulders and propelled him to the door.

"Get on your coat," she said, "for it's a freezing night, though you only have to go a step. Good-night, dear. You won't be back presently this time, and I shall have gone up to bed. You might just tap at my door, though, as you go by. Tap three times, that will mean 'yes.' "

There is another house vacant in "The Terrace."

_____________________

4: Meave's Ride

Dorothea Conyers

1869-1949

World's News (Sydney) 19 Sep 1914

GREY clouds billowed and eddied over a background of pallid blue— sometimes their edges were softened to pearl, with lights of silver and gold through the white, sometimes they met and massed and lowered greyly and ran more slowly before the sobbing wind.

Cahircullane Castle looks down across a stretch of green park land, with gnarled old trees standing too thickly in it, to wide tracts of bog and rock and on to where the Cullane river runs between it and the distant Murvoe Hills. Peace itself seemed to live in the soft evening light, in the uneven whisper of the west wind as it whistled through the newclothed trees, in the calm of the wild country, the quiet of the big terraced house.

The Castle seemed to stand asleep, until voices rose from the stables, with clatter of buckets and the sough of the pump at work, and then slept again until fresh voices, low and ill-humored, broke from the patch of straggling, unclipt laurels beyond the sunk fence.

"If he dares to do it I tell ye we will do for him; thim days is done with, they is done— "

"He says that he will have me out— that Miss Meave wants the place for her dogs."

"It will be onhealthy for the dogs," Marty Connell said grimly. "An 'tis but a handle he is making of Miss Meave's name. A handle, Mike Malone —"

Two sturdy country fellows crouched in the laurels, evidently escaping observation. Big, good-tempered looking men, children at heart, easy to lead and manage, save when the land hunger touched them. Driven on by the all powerful League, led as the children they were—t heir rights must not be touched.

Sir Shamus O'Neill had not sold his big estate. He was old-fashioned, liked to hold the reins of power in his fingers, and even with the leagues urging them, his tenants hung back, making no effort to buy. Sir Shamus might swear at them, ride recklessly where he chose, insist on his rents, but if a bad year came he knew how to help them. If a small farmer's cow died, the steward at the Castle would have orders to replace it. He bought hay and straw and oats lavishly; he lived as his fathers had done— lord of his land, but always generous, and he gave open warning that once he was no longer landlord his days of help were done with.

"When I am gone, Meave can sell," he said. "She'd only muddle it all—"

And now there was trouble. Sir Shamus, in ill-health, had gone away for a sea voyage. Meave O'Neill stayed at the Castle with a meek aunt as chaperon, and her cousin, Peter Barry, the agent, found out that it was not so easy to keep things going.

Mike Malone, a ne'er-do-well tenant, who held a cottage on the banks of the Cullane, had not paid his rent for years; sometimes he came smilingly with a pound or two, sometimes he did not. Miss Meave had started otter hounds, and she wanted the cottage for herself to camp out in— on the banks of the river, there were outhouses which could be turned into kennels, the cottage was stout and comfortable, Malone never paid, and Malone must go

"And I tell you there will be trouble, Meave, and you are foolish."

Voices broke the silence now as two people came out of the terrace.

The watchers in the laurels crouched low.

"And I tell you I shall do as I choose, Peter, and you will have the Sheriff, and send Mike packing. I've offered him money, I've done all I can, and I want the house—"

Fair skinned, grey eyed, youthfully imperious, Meave O'Neill was a spoilt child to her fingertips. Peter loved her; he would have been stone and not man if he had hunted, fished, and played tennis with her for two years and not done so. Meave condescended to like him, and to promise to marry him— some day.

"Very well." Peter smoked a pipe philo- sophically. "I obey your order. I've had no answer from Sir Shamus, and he left you in charge— they'll shoot me, no doubt, and then you'll come and weep over me at Moyarta and be sorry. You may keep Diver."

Diver was the nondescript beast whose forefathers had alliances with water spaniels and retrievers, while his nearer relatives would seem to have been terriers. But his eyes were liquid brown and all the intelligence of varied races seemed to have concentrated behind them.

"They are talkin' about meself," Mike muttered; the crouching men were too far off to hear what the others were saying. "Look at her pinting out beyant— to me house."

Meave O'Neill's pointing finger wavered across an area which might have represented several miles of country. But Mike believed it was focused on his particular cottage,

Diver put his silky head against his master's hand, and Meave laughed scornfully. "I shall pay the man," she said. Henessy's little house is empty, and we don't mind getting no rent for that." Peter sighed with marked resignation; he made a quotation concerning fools and angels, and his cousin, with heightened color, retaliated with something concerning cowards— just as the butler brought tea into the library.

Mr. Peter Barry's temper was far from be- ing angelic; he got up with ominous calmness, and did not improve it by an absentminded gulp of scalding tea, which had no sugar in, and he liked it sweet.

Miss Eva O'Neill was out driving; she adored paying calls. Presently, after a prolonged pause, Peter said that he really believed Meave cared far more about her childish whim of the cottage than she did about any danger which he, Peter, might run into— and he might have known that no girl of twenty could possibly overlook the word childish. They had reached the stage of stony and bitter politeness when old Dayly, the cakes— "An' just to tell ye, Mister Peter, that there's black work on foot," he almost whispered. "Let Mike Malone be, sir, he comes of a wild stock. He was over to the town but yesterday, and I heard tell he was buyin' catheridges."

"If he's a bad lot we shall be well rid of him," scoffed Meave, "that's all; it helps things." Dayly put down his cakes with the sapient remark that it was very ugly to put ye're hand in a wild bees' nest— and that he wished the master was back again. "He havin' sense," said Dayly regretfully.

He still looked on Meave as a baby. "Sure ye cannot put ould heads on to young shoulders."

"If you are not careful, Dayly— I shall send you with Mike Malone," stormed Miss O'Neill fiercely. To which old Dayly said, "Aisy, missy," very soothingly, and without the faintest emotion. "To-morrow, then"— Peter got up— "I shall see about this business, and finally warn Malone; those are your orders, Meave— you prefer your own way to anything else."

Meave burst out that she certainly did, that she was mistress in her father's absence and would do as she chose, and she finished up by further hints as to cowardly people not dealing with the Irish or taking up agencies —

"Mike Malone and Marty Connell is outside ta see yer honor," announced Dayly, coming back. The men could not have come at a worse time.

Meave sat and fumed while Peter interviewed, to stroll back presently with his face quietly set.

"Malone quite understands now," he said coldly. "He has had all the grace that is possible, and I shall go to Aillane to-morrow to settle with Keogh, for Malone says he won't go quietly, that is all—"

Not quite all; he stood waiting, foolish enough to expect sense from a thoroughly vexed girl.

"And— if you insist upon this," he said after a pause, "on my obeying orders as merely agent and servitor, that is all I shall be for the future, Meave."

It ended in one of those foolish quarrels of youth— in Meave telling him that he could do as he chose, and rolling an emerald ring across the table, and promising to send back every thing else, and in Peter's flying out of the house, swearing he would never come into it again, and in Miss Meave watching him go with her head very high, and telling herself proudly that she was simply delighted to be rid of him, delighted, and at the third delighted in her putting her head on the table and sob- bing bitterly to show her joy.

At this point her Aunt Eva entered with the annoying quietness of light-footed spinsters, and Meave had to explain.

"A wasp stung me," flung out Miss O'Neill fiercely, "on the face— it hurt."

"A wasp— my poor child. But it is only May," said Aunt Eva a minute later as she scurried to the kitchen for the blue bag and some soda, "wasps in May", how odd "

Still the remedies cured Meave, but affected her appetite, and she ate no dinner; and the wind had risen, sobbing round the old castle, bring splatters of rain against the window panes.

Half-way through dinner Miss Eva asked for Peter, at ten o'clock she noticed that the emerald no longer gleamed on Meave's finger.

"I might have known," said Sir Shamus's sister wisely, "that there were no wasps in May."

Next day the clouds had rolled away, the world was sunlit, with a keen wind blowing coolly, the thorn bushes were puffs of powder scattered on emerald turf, the tall tulips in the garden flared gaudily in the sunshine. It was a day to love life and be glad one was alive, but Meave O'Neill, aged only twenty, called it cold and dark and horrible, and could not find anything to do which pleased her— she could not ride her big blood horse. Bargate was exercised by Ted, the only boy he allowed on his back. In the afternoon Meave drove toward the ruin and saw Mike Malone planting cabbages as if he never meant to stir.

Meave's Sunbeam was a source o' danger to dogs and carts as she let it out going home— the chauffeur set his teeth more than once as they whizzed round bends, but, being Irish, he hoped not to die before his time came.

As they reached the avenue a back tyre went off with a whish, and the spare wheel had scarcely been adjusted when the second tyre banged furiously.

Dickson got out for the second time, peering at the avenue.

"Playin' games here with glass, miss," he announced significantly, "the place is covered with broken bottles."

Two tyres were gashed to ribbons— a third was not likely to survive, there was nothing for it except to crawl to the yard and do repairs next day. Dickson was going home that evening for his sister's wedding, so the repairing would be delayed.

Meave walked home in a bad humor, she was restless, ill at case. All day she had listened for the thrum of a motor bicycle or the crunch of a horse's feet— she had waited for Peter, passed from the stage of being prepared to receive him haughtily to that of abject contrition and to resentment again.

Her aunt was dining out. Meave saw the brougham depart with the twenty-year-old carriage horse prancing down the avenue as if he were but four, then she ordered her own dinner to be put back until nine, and went out. A clear chill twilight held the May evening. It would be moonlight early, with black shadows and silver lights ghostlike across the park. Meave turned into the woods where the high wall looked down on to the road. If Peter came she would hear the thrum of the mo- tor and rush back to the house through the trees, to stroll down from her room as though she had never thought of him.

Two men came slouching along the road. She drew back, hiding in the branches which overhung the wall, They stoped close to her; she heard the splutter of a match, and, peering down, saw Mike Malone and his friend Connell.

"An' so, faix, will pay to-night," Mike said. Meave caught the boughs so that they rustled; her heart seemed beating in her throat.

"Ye are not afraid, Mike, o' being cot."

"Won't Mike Malone be in his house in another hour, and yourself with him for all to see, an' he firin' off his gun at the birds for the neighbors to hear— an', besides," the man's's voice dropped to a fierce whisper, "there is no shootin' in it, a broken neck tells no tales."

A broken neck! Frozen, holding her breath, Meave looked down.

"He will be late out, he tawlt his man he would dine to-night with Doctor Flannagan. Tom and Mak'll have the rope out ready where the two threes sthands up before the bog and the turn is suddint. If Pether Barry turns out' more poor men after that 'twill be a quare sthory, the pace he rides." They were going to rope the way, to catch the bicycle as it flew along the lonely road. Meave could see it— theh figure flung on the hard stones, bruised and broken, if not dead. And— she knew now— the man she had mocked at and quarrelled with was all the world to her.

She could save him in the car; then with a sob she remembered that the car was use- less, and Dickson away. The horses! A man
could gallop; the only horse in was her own Bargate, and the boy who could ride him slept two miles away from the Castle.

"They're say'n' 'tis Miss Meave's fault that hidin' he is," she heard the voices again. "He has a shpite agin meself ever since he cot me gettin' a few rabbits up here, and I spoke short to him. Come on, we shud be home. The pony cart is above at the forge."

The voices and steps died away. White-faced, terror-stricken, Meave stepped away towards the house. The path had never seemed so long— the boughs caught at her, her feet slipped on uneven places, the avenue had surely doubled its length, and she looked behind, afraid that the men might have heard her.

The Castle stood grey against the moonlight, quiet and massive.

"Miss Meave, ye were running. Asthore, what is it?"

Dayly forget the child had grown up as he saw the girl, scratched, drawing sobbing breaths, run up the steps.

"Dayly, it's Peter. Quick, come to the stablles, they're killing him."

Some, portions of the story were gasped out as Meave rushed to the stables. The coachman was out, caddies, straps, girths were enchanted things, hiding themselves away. Bargate lashed out at them, resenting disturbance. A bit was crammed between his unwilling teeth, and he was led out in the worst of tempers. Twice he plunged away from the mounting block, kicking irritably, then, as in her ordinary dress Meave landed in the saddle,
the big clock above the archway chimed eight and the quarter. It was nine miles to the bog road which led from Dr. Flanagan's house to Peter's, barely five across the fields. Meave set her teeth and determined to go across country.

Bargate humped his great back as he clattered over the stones, then as his feet fell on the cool grass outside the swing gate he plunged and flung light-heartedly, reaching out into a raking canter. With a thrill of dismay Meave realised that the horse had a light snaffle in his mouth, and not the long bit she rode him in. She steadied him with difficulty at the stout gates, called to the woman there to open the one opposite.

"Miss Meave, where are ye goin' to so late? Ye will be hurted."

"I will not, Bridget. I must not be—" The hill rose before her cold and shadowy, black bars showing the high narrow banks— Meave steadied the great horse up the steep rise, felt her heart thump as they came at the first ghostly fence. Bargate had never refused. With a snort, his ears pricked forward, his strong quarters humped— he was ever with a scramble. Meave knew the small place here, near the gorse, but further on she must ride' blindly at the wide banks and ride fast if she was to be in time— faster than she wanted to when the great hill seemed to fall away into a sea of silver. Bargate, maddened by the dewy night, stretched himself recklessly. Through meadows, high and fragrant, ever sprouting corn; cows sprang away from them; the pair were as phantom horse and rider fleeting through the elusive light.

Danny Heggarty, staggering home to his long- suffering wife, stood cursing himself frantically, when, as he described it, a black horse spoutin' fire from his nose, galloped through the air over the fences, with a devil in white crooked
up on his back— and twice it called him by name. Which was true, for Meave had shouted at him to get out or the way.

"Never another dhrop," said Danny, "or the next time I'd be whipt up behind."

How many times Bargate nearly missed his active feet Meave dared not think of; the big brute seemed untirable as be flew on. Black shadows, which she knew to be wide ditches, slipped beneath them— twice she heard tbe twang of wire. She steadied the horse in deep, churning ground; they were down in the hollow now, with the bog road not half a miles away, there were huge ditches here with crumbling banks, difficult to jump in the day time, horrors, as a wedge of black across the silver plain.

They landed into a field of plough— hedges ran all round with posts which spoke of wire flickering white on the bank; there was no other way out. Meave knew the field, and the gate at the end; she galloped to it, Bargate pulling hard. It was, of course, shut; if she got down, she might never climb on again. If she had to run she might be too late, yet could any horse clear these five black bars out of a rutty track in the elusive treacherous light?

She was answered. Bargate had got his wind, he raked his head away and sailed to the gate with a snort, took off too soon, dashed against the top bar, landed on his knees, lay, rolled, and was up again.

Mr. Andrew Clancy never knew what smashed his gate in the night.

Meave could see the road now. She rode carefully, found a broken down spot in the boggy bank fencing it, and wheeled on to the broad strip of grass which ran between the road and the bog ditches—Bargate's great stride ate up the yards. He flung himself on, glory- ing in his own pace. Far off through the rush of air, Meave heard the throb of a motor.

Two crouching figures heard it also, and with it the sound of the hoofs.

"There is a loose horse come, run out an' beckon at him," one whispered. The rope was taut across the road, a short way from the ground— wound carefully round each tree. They meant to take it away, and leave no trace where Peter lay smashed on the hard stones. Throb, throb, Meave heard it, coming fast; she lost her head in an agony of sheer terror. If the two were farther off than she thought, the throb might stop any moment, the murderous rope do its work, and she would be the real murderer.

"I shall have killed him," muttered Meave. "Oh. I shall have killed him."

Something darted out of the shadows waving its hands. Her hunting crop, held ready, swished across a man's face, left a red weal there and fell on Bargate's shoulder. His long easy gallop was as a crawl to his sudden wrathful burst of speed.

Someone shouted loudly, the world of silver and black fled from under Meave as the horse crashed down, and she was flung far out on the soft turf at the side of the road.

Peter, fleeting round the corner, heard the wild yell, slackened speed just in time to see Bargate scramble to his feet, blown and terrified, and to see a black smudge on the side of the road stir faintly.

"Peter, the rope— Peter!" Meave struggled to her knees, "the rope." She believed that she had been there for hours, that her whole ride had been in vain, and she would see Peter lying dead in the moonlight.

Someone was lifting her.

"I won't be helped as you've killed him,"

stammered Meave. "No, I won't. Oh Peter— Peter. Where is Peter?"

"Meave. what is it?" It was Peter who was helping her.

"Murder," wailed Meeve, "and Bargate and I are dead, but we were in time."

Then she felt the world reel again.

"Bargate is all right and you will be, but what are you doing here?"

Listening, Peter heard something scrambling through thorns, and leaping into the bank, saw two figures scurrying away along a fence, then they disappeared in the shadows.

There was no rope now on the road, nothing to show it had been there, Peter looked carefully when he had heard the story, when he knew, with a shudder, what Meave had risked for him.

"You cared— so much as that," he whispered— "to ride across these fences in the moonlight to save me."

"And all the time as I rode, I could see that rope," said Meave tearfully, "and felt that I had done it, and poor Bargate's shoulder is all cut— and it was all my fault, all mine."

"And so you'll just marry me when your father comes home, and all your faults will be on my shoulders," said Peter stoutly.

Mike Malone, waiting for judgment to fall upon him, guessing and fearing that someone must have overheard or found out, was surprised to find that the matter seemed to have dropped completely, so he was reassured, and planted more cabbages.

"Twas only that wild one, ridin' out be chance," said Mike.

But later on, he decided that the air of America would suit him better than that of Ireland. That was after Meave's wedding, when the bride stopped, coming down the path from the church, and spoke to him.

"Have you no present for me, Mike?" said Meare softly.

Mike flushing fiercely, stammered unreadily.

"I thought you might have had a spare rope," said Meave quietly. "Unless you're keeping it to lend the country when they want it for you in gaol."

Mike remarked, "God save us," as he backed away among the tombstones.

He left the cottage himself after that, but Meave would not use it. She shuddered at its name. Bargate's picture hangs on the dining-room wall, crowned by a little silver crescent, and underneath it the words: "Meave's Ride. May, 1912."

____________________

5: The Squirrel Motor

J. J. Meehan

Fl 1900s-1910.

World's News (Sydney) 23 Sep 1911

[The Argosy July 1911]

Nothing could be found about this author

MacWALTERS? I met him when I was first courting Jennie. He used to watch us when I called for her to go out walking. He often happened to meet us at the street entrance of her mother's apartments.

I knew that he envied me. I knew that he was jealous, and I knew that he wanted Jennie. He did not get her, however; I looked out for that. We were married inside of a year. Then we took a little set of rooms in a comfortable house in West One-hundred and Fourteenth-street, and I fondly hoped that I would see him no more.

It took us some time to get settled snugly, and then I began to find out tilings. I learned that a towel-rack is no place for a man to hang his neckties, and that closet floors are made to hold masculine shoes and rubbers. Also that a male human, even if he is married, cannot place a wet glass on top of the family ice-box without incurring the wrath of his orderly spouse.

I began to see how much I had lost in the years of my quiet bachelor existence, and to wonder how old Mary, who used to make up my room, had borne with me so long. But order can come out of chaos; and in due time I came to order, as I am quite peaceable by nature, to say nothing about training.

The greatest strain on our domestic relations arrived when Jennie began to attend a cooking-school. There she learned many new things and new methods of doing old things. Incidentally I learned a few things myself, at second hand.

But the breaking point, or the near-breaking point, was coffee. I had always flattered myself that I knew something about this soothing product. I bought it carefully, had it properly ground, and carried it home with punctual regularity. It was the cooking-school that led to the crisis.

"George, dear," said Jennie, as I opened a fragrant can. "this must be done differently."

"Well?" I ventured.

"I mean," she said, "that it must be ground."

"But it is ground," I answered. "I saw the man grind it myself."

"But, dear," she went on, "you don't imagine that I am going to let you drink coffee that has been put through the common grinder of a grocery store!"

So that was it! I was too precious to be imperilled by a drink that had been made in the old, plebeian way. There was certainly some comfort in that. Therefore, the best grade of domestic coffee-mill was bought and duly in-stalled in the kitchen equipment.

The next morning I heard a furious grinding in our apartment. Going to the kitchen I found Jennie hard at the task which had always been performed by our grocery boy.

When she finished the grinding she looked at me. She did not say anything, but I got her message without the aid of the Marconi code. Then I reflected that no manly man would let his wife grind coffee, and I made up my mind that I would do that part of the household work in future. And I did.

I turned the crank daily. I nearly tore the machine from its fastenings on the wall. Then I shaved, as was customary, but alas, not as usual! I covered up some of the results with court-plaster, and went down-town to think it over.

At last I concluded that I could not shave after the muscle-racking operation of grinding coffee. Plainly there was only one thing to do. I could stop grinding or I could stop shaving. I stopped shaving.

Then I made the acquaintance of Tantino, the barber. Tantino was a mind-reader. He knew what I was thinking of every time I sat down. Under the spell of Tantino's eloquence, I was repeatedly shaved, trimmed, massaged, and shampooed, until I longed for the time when I could keep a barber on my household employment list. Meanwhile I was spending some money with Tantino; but not as much as other people have spent with more pretentious seers and prophets.

During all this time an idea was revolving in my mind that would separate me from Tantino, and make me again master of my cup and brush. It would also solve the overwhelming problem of the daily coffee grind.

I have always been partial to pets. In my single loneliness I was attended by a strong and handsome squirrel, securely maintained in a brass cage. I gave him to old Mary when my bachelor days came to an end; I now longed for him again. I felt that he could help me.

So I went to Mary and bought him back. His was Hero, and he lived up to it. I got him a new cage, containing the necessary rooms and bath. He had also the latest device in tread-wheels.

He travelled so fast that all I could see of him was a furry tail hiding a body that seemed to make an incredible number of revolutions per minute.

Here, surely, was energy going to waste. I took up the study of machinery. I delved into the science of belts and pulleys. I found that units of applied motion have to be increased in direct proportion to the volume of resistance to be overcome. In short, I reduced horse power to squirrel-power.

I worked in the kitchen, night after night. Hero seemed to understand what I was doing; I knew that he was on my side. Jennie watched with amazement and wonder. At last the job was completed, and the motor was connected up, as the machinists say.

A belt hung from the wheel-rim on the coffee mill. When the belt was thrown over the wheel projecting from the cage, Hero would do the rest.

It took but a moment to adjust the belt. The next moment saw Hero at work. It was beautiful to watch the application of power. Hero started. His tread-wheel revolved and the grinding-wheel inside the mill began to go round.

"I'll fill it up with coffee," I said to Jennie. "We might as well commence now."

"Fill it up with ground coffee," said Jennie. "Don't make it too hard for poor Hero."

Hero had no trouble with the ground coffee. When I filled the mill with full-grown beans, however, my heart sank within me. The machine would not work!

I looked at Hero, and he looked at me. I never saw such an expression before in the eye of man or beast. It was sorrow and failure combined.

I was disgusted and discouraged. Here was my pet project knocked flat. How I wished that Hero had been born a bull-dog instead of a squirrel!

Jennie soothed me as best she could.

I went to bed and dreamed. Visions of power units came and went. Amperes, volts, and reostats cast their awful shadows over me. Like Columbus, Galileo, and Lincoln, I had tried to rescue my fellow-men from slavery. They had succeeded; I had failed.

It was an hour beyond my usual time when I awoke in the morning. The aroma of fresh coffee floated in from the kitchen. Had Hero put on a spurt?

Ah, no! Jennie had arisen before me; my breakfast was ready. I ate it and went downtown with some courage, not unmixed with resignation.

When I came home that night Jennie was all smiles. The dinner was perfection. After dining, she took my hand and led me to the kitchen. The squirrel was discreetly covered from my sight. Jennie showed me plenty of newly ground coffee; but my eyes were fixed on the cage.

It seemed to have grown since morning. I went over to it and lifted the cover. Then I understood. My dear Jennie had exchanged Hero's box for one that was much larger. It now contained Hero— and three squirrels. Woman's wit won!

"It was only a question of power," she said. "Your idea was all right; all you needed was more units."

After a triumph like that it was hard to have MacWalters butt in.

As my squirrels were grinding merrily, a few mornings later, I chanced to look across the open court which separated us from the vacant apartment opposite. Vacant, did I say?

No; it was now tenanted by an attractive young woman and MacWalters.

They were shouting with glee. I knew that they had seen my squirrel-motor at work. Even as they looked I thought I saw the woman trying to conceal a field-glass in the folds of her apron. So I gave our elevator-boy a dollar, to find out the names of the new tenants.

"Mr. and Mrs. MacWalters, sir," he said to me that evening. "Fine people, too. Just married and moved in. Gave money to the janitor and elevator-man. Fine people, sir."

Well, perhaps they were. I didn't care. The squirrel-motor was good enough for me. It worked splendidly, for a time. Then it came to a halt, which I hope will be only temporary.

One evening after dinner our bell rang sharply, and Jennie admitted two men to our modest parlor. They wanted to see me. One of them had a brusque, business-like air. The other one looked decidedly clerical in dress and appearance. The business man gave me a card which indicated that he represented the S.P.C.A.

I was amazed.

Then the clerical gentleman told me, with tears in his voice, of the shocking cruelty of mistreating dumb animals. He went on to say that household pets should make a special appeal to our sympathies on account of their helpless condition and their absolute dependence on their human keepers. He had no desire to cause my arrest in this instance, although the use or abuse of my squirrels might fully warrant such a proceeding.

I was speechless; but Jennie found her tongue. She wanted to know what was the penalty.

"No penalty yet," replied the business man. "It is customary in such cases, however, to make a small donation, as an evidence of repent-ance and good faith."

What could I do? I wanted to fight, but there was poor Jennie!

Something had to be done. She did it.

"Here is a ten-dollar bill," she said. "Please place it to our credit."

That was nearly all. Then they went their way.

The next morning I saw my clerical friend in the subway. He was talking to MacWalters. I kept discreetly silent.

Still, I could not help hearing the latter quietly say:

"You certainly ought to have made it twenty-five!"

__________________

6: Unconscious Interloper

Sir Geo. Douglas, Bart.

1856-1935

World's News (Sydney) 31 Aug 1918

THE morn of July 26 broke with brightness suitable to the season, but to Gipsy Lee the brightness was purely external. Her spirits were overclouded, and for this reason— that July 26 was the day on which she had promised to return an answer to a proposal of marriage.

"Give me three months to think it over," she had urged, the pleading look in her dark eyes seconding her words.

"Three months!" her suitor had ejaculated; "I cannot possibly do that. I will give you a month— will that do? Even that is too long, and few other fellows would consent to it, I think. But I want you to have your own way, Gipsy, as far as possible. Shall we say a month?"

"Very well."

And they had left it at that. This had been on the 26th of June, and now, as I have already said, the 26th of July had arrived.

How that month had sped! From the first Gipsy had made up her mind to think the matter over very seriously. Then she had put off doing so. Several things had come in her way. There had been no fewer than four tennis matches— one a week— with ties to be played off; and she and her partner had come off winners in two of them. Then there had been the illness of her Aunt Thisbe, with whom she lived, for Gipsy was an orphan. Nor, by the way, was Gipsy her real name, but a pet name which had been given her as a child, because of her rich complexion and dark brown hair and eyes. And, as she grew up, it had remained so ideally appropriate and so essentially her own that I believe there were many among her friends who scarcely knew that she had been christened Olive.

Interrupted, however, as her thoughts had been, Gipsy had still contrived to give spas modic consideration to the answer to be given to David Muir's proposal, and even to ask advice upon the subject, and in so doing she had come to the following conclusions. First, it was desirable that she should have a home of her own; and, secondly, David was beyond question eligible. A Scot from the Lothians, who had come up to London, his native endowment of industry and acumen was already telling at the English Bar— so much, indeed, that, at thirty-five, he was already on the point of "taking silk." In a word, David Muir was successful. And, though in his case she had to accept it on hearsay, Gipsy was young enough and woman enough to admire success for its own sake. For failure, upon the other hand, she professed a dislike. It was es-sentially depressing, a thing with which her strong and confident young nature had nothing in common. So far, so good. But then, again, on the other side of the account, there was that about David Muir with which she was not in perfect sympathy— a certain practical hardness (though she did not analyse it) which might serve him well in chambers and in the courts, but might be a little wearying to live with. Not that David was a pure pedant. He could unbend, could hold his own on the tennis-court, and would listen with courteous deference to her opinions when she chose to express them. What, then, was wanting to him? It was difficult to say. Did Gipsy blindly and instinctively suspect that he did not take her quite seriously, that the opinions to which he listened with such deferential courtesy made not the slightest impression on his own, and, indeed, that, au fond, he regarded her as a pretty and desirable adjunct, whose annexation would make for the delectation of his leisure moments, but who, from all that was really serious in his life, must necessarily and inevitably remain "a thing apart"? No, Gipsy did not feel this, or did not feel it in this way. For few girls of nineteen are psychologists. And yet she felt that there was something wanting. But so vague and so occasional was this feeling that she scarcely trusted it. Was it feeling, after all, or merely fancy? Surely, at best, it was something weak and unsubstantial by the side of the solid arguments drawn from David's reputation as a man of brains and of high character.

It was in the hope of solving this little difficulty that she had sought advice of Miss Panton, her former governess and present friend, a lady of middle age, and of kind but somewhat cold disposition, who had been the guiding-star of her childhood.

Now, Patricia Panton was in her way really fond of Gipsy, and, moreover, she was the last person in the world to mislead youth willingly. She also knew David Muir very well, having met him repeatedly, and conversed with him at length, when he was calling at Aunt Thisbe's. Then she had the further qualification for giving advice— an absolute belief in her own judgment. In fact, there was only one slight disadvantage under which she labored— that she had never herself been a principal in a love-affair. Having bound herself to secrecy and received her erstwhile pupil's confidence, this excellent person sapiently asked:—

"Do you care for Mr. Muir, my dear Gipsy— care for him, I mean, in the way in which a girl ought to care for a gentleman who is to make her his wife?"

"My dear Patricia, that is just what I don't know!"

"Ah, I see you have not yet got over your old waywardness! Now, Gipsy dear, remember that you are no longer a child. Collect your scattered wits, I beg of you. If you do not know, who is to know? You surely will not expect me to know?"

Gipsy with difficulty repressed a smile, for, serious as the present circumstances were, and great as was her respect for Patricia's judgment, the mannerisms of the old institutrice had always tickled her.

"At least you do not care for anyone else?" Patricia continued.

"I don't think so." So far as in her lay, Gipsy was speaking the simple truth. Yet Miss Panton frowned, suspecting her most unjustly of levity.

"Be pleased to treat the matter seriously, Gipsy, or I must decline to discuss it. It is not a subject for joking. Here is a gentle man of blameless character, high-minded, greatly gifted, who has proposed to entrust his happiness to your keeping— whilst you, I fear, are showing yourself little worthy of the compliment. You should be thankful, Gipsy, for the love of a good man, and pray God to make you worthy of it."

The old governess spoke with genuine feeling, the source of which was lost in years long past. And her speech was not without its due effect on the girl who bad been so long accustomed to her authority.

"Then you think, Patricia, that I ought to accept Mr. Muir?" she questioned, with a gravity of manner which no longer left any thing to be desired.

"I think," returned the governess oracularly, "that you ought to consider yourself a very lucky girl."

No more was said between them upon the subject. But upon Gipsy, who was more easily influenced than she herself suspected, the interview made a lasting impression, which was strongly in Muir's favor. Henceforth the question— to accept or to refuse— which has exercised so many girls, became for her, in a sense, a choice between a higher and lower line of conduct. And Gipsy was instinctively high-minded, and anxious to do the right. None the less, and notwithstanding the best intentions, Miss Panton's teaching in this case had been mistaken. For she had been laying down the law upon a subject of which she had no real knowledge.

And thus it was that the morning of the 26th of July brought to Gipsy less of bright-ness than of a sense of difficult moments to be lived through. Yet she liked David well enough. It was now nearly two years since he had first rented a bungalow on the river-bank not far from Miss Thisbe's miniature demesne, and since Gipsy, on her solitary rambles, had grown familiar with the sight of him— wearing boating clothes, and propelling his outrigger with all the vigor of a man whose time for exercise is limited. That was during his vacations. The spectacle of so much strenuousness produced its due impression on the girl; so that her first feeling, when at last he was formally introduced to her at the house of a neighbor, was that between him and her there could be little in common. And first impressions such as these are more often true than false, but Muir had taken obvious pains to interest her and make himself agreeable, whilst she in return had done her best to play her part prettily. Ere long he had proposed to take her for a run in the trailer of his motor-bike, and, the consent of old-fashioned Miss Thisbe being tardily obtained, they had had several outings together. It was on one of these that he had first spoken to her of marriage. Then, the outings had ceased, and she had made him the promise which must to-day be carried out.

Poor Gipsy sighed more than once as she went about her dressing. For the moment her hair was put back in a way in which she never wore it during the day, but which, for all that, was ravishingly becoming. She glanced in the mirror, and she herself was perhaps the only person whom the sight would have left entirely unmoved. Men would have admired, women would have en-vied; but Gipsy merely sighed again. She was no coquette, and yet was quite feminine enough to give careful consideration to the rival claims of the two blouses which had been laid out for her to choose from— the one being cream-colored, the other apple-green. She had an onerous duty to perform? Well, was that any reason why she should not look her best while performing it? She decided for the cream-white blouse, relieving its severity with a touch or two of cardinal red. As she did so, her eye happened to fall upon a silver-framed photograph of the barrister, which he had given her unasked. It represented him in wig and gown, the shaven cheeks and somewhat heavy features indicating will-power rather than versatility or sympathy. In three, or, at most, three hours and a half, the original of that portrait would be there. Well, he should have his answer. Patricia had been right, and Gipsy was not going to shirk her destiny, or the just claims that life made on her.

I DOUBT IF she herself could have told you how the next two or three hours were passed. Miss Thisbe being confined to her own room, Gipsy bad the premises to herself, and it was almost as one in a dream that she went about her duties, feeding fowls and watering plants.

"You look thoughtful, almost troubled, to Gay, my dear," said, her aunt, when she visited that good lady after breakfast. "There is nothing wrong, I hope?" And she scrutinised Gipsy through a lorgnette. But the niece had long since tested her aunt's powers as a confidante— tested and found them wanting.

"Indeed there is!" she answered lightly; "the Madonna lilies are swarming with little black insects, just as they were last year, and one at least of the bantam chicks is taken "with gapes."

The old spinster seemed perfectly satisfied with this explanation. But a touch of com-punction visited Gipsy, so that she added:—

"Besides. I have something on my mind which I will tell you very soon."

It was a relief to be alone again. But what a shock when, ever so long before anyone was expected, the little aproned maid tapped at her door, with the remark:—

"A gentleman for you. Miss, in the drawing-room."

Why, it was barely eleven o'clock! And no one ever called before twelve. But, soon or late, the situation must be faced, and as well soon as late. So "Here goes," said Gipsy, with a tremulous affection of courage, and with great outward composure walked down stairs.

Here another surprise awaited her. For, on first opening the drawing-room door, there appeared to be no one in the room. The great bulk of David Muir's figure at least was not there. But over against the plants near the French window she descried little Harry Conybeare, the partner of her successes in the recent tennis tournament. So it was he, after all, and not David, who had called at thiS informal hour!

Harry's fox-terrier, Gyp, sprang forward to meet her, and, slowly and dejectedly, at Gyp's heels, followed his master.

"Why, Harry, what on earth is the matter?" cried Gipsy, struck by the profound sadness of the young man's manner, so wholly diff-erent from his usual easy-going cheeriness.

"Oh, Gipsy, can't you guess? It's all U.P."

"Not the exam?"

"Of course! See for yourself." And, after handing her a crumpled telegram, he sank down upon a chintz-covered ottoman, and looked very much indeed as if he were going to cry.

Gipsy glanced at the message. It was a mere bald line, announcing the fact that Conybeare had not been one of the successful competitors at the recent examination of candidates for the Indian Civil Service. "Oh, Harry, I am so sorry!"

"You remember, Gipsy, I promised to let you know the result before anyone else."

"Of course I remember! Oh, how I wish it had been different."

In the rose-scented drawing-room there was gloomy silence, which was presently broken by a small, still sound like that made by a water-pipe after rain.

The girl looked up, or rather down— for Harry's face was buried in his hands— and saw that what she had never thought possible had happened. For simple, home-bred boy though Conybeare was, he was no milk-sop— she had seen that proved. Yet he had broken down indeed, and was now struggling to conceal his tears.

"Gipsy, I am ashamed of myself."

She answered, full of sympathy:—

"You have no need to be, dear boy! Why should you be? I know how hard it is."

"Yes. it is hard— after waiting so long, between life and death, as you might almost say, and hoping so fervently."

"And after working as you worked! You deserved to pass..."

But here the boy at once looked up, in protest, through his half-shed tears. For he had not it in him to take praise or comfort to himself on false pretences.

"No, that's just the worst of it! I didn't work hard enough— or, at least, not hard enough where I was weak. It was those Higher Mathemats that floored me, I know.

I did so loathe 'em!"

"I do not wonder— hateful things!" cried Gipsy vindictively. Then she tried another source of comfort. "But, Harry, you need not take it so much to heart! You have at least one try more. You won't be over age this time next year."

"I know, I know!" he answered impatiently, "but, Gipsy, it is the mater I am thinking of. She has made such sacrifices to keep me at a crammer's up in town..."

Mrs. Conybeare was the widow of a clergyman, who had died, leaving her to bring up four children, of whom Harry was the eldest, on a very small income. "And it's such a bad lead for the youngsters!" he continued.

"And Dad was such a splendid man, and she has always held him up as an example to me! And she won't say anything reproachful to me, I know she wont— that— that's the worst of it!"

And a very queer sound, between a sob and a hiccup, broke from poor Harry, notwith-standing that he had previously pulled himself together. Many people would have found that sound irresistibly laughable. But Gipsy was not one of these. It brought the hot tears to her own eyes, but she forced them back again. And at that moment, with characteristic inconsequence, a revealing thought flashed through her brain. She had been mistaken all her life. For had she not always said that she adored success? She had been wrong. It was not success that she adored, but failure; poor, sorry, only not ignoble failure, that she could take to her heart, and soothe, and en courage! That was what really appealed to her. And she had it here before her.

But there was a question to be asked.

"Do you mean to say, Harry, that your mother doesn't know yet?"

The boy's head shook dolefully.

"For better, for worse, I said that you should be the first to know, Gipsy, and, as it has turned out, it is 'for worse.' But I must go and tell mother now."

He had risen to his feet, and once again his boyish features expressed manly determination. But Gipsy intercepted him.

"Stay, Harry!" she exclaimed; then added, very gently, almost tenderly, "Will you let me tell Mrs. Conybeare? I'll promise to soften the blow as best I can."

In her heart she knew that she was a favorite with Harry's mother, who was Miss Thisbe's best and oldest friend. The bad news would come in its least trying form from her, and she would take such care to mention how much cut up poor Harry was! So a bitter disappointment might be softened for both mother and son.

The boy sprang at her offer.

"Oh, Gipsy! will you do that for me? That will make all the difference in the world. You are good— you are a brick! What wouldn't I give to have a girl like you to share my troubles always? No, not a girl like you, be cause there isn't one— to have yourself, I mean."

Gipsy noticed the abrupt and entire change in his mood, and at once sought to improve upon it.

"To share your troubles, Harry— not your pleasures too?" she asked him, with a glance that was just midway between mischief and gravity.

"Oh, of course, my pleasures too!" he answered eagerly. "For better, for worse, didn't I say, just now?"

The quotation came so pat that both of them laughed merrily, and Gyp, who had been half asleep, chimed in. But their laughter died away as suddenly as the song of a gramophone that has run down. For they had all at once become aware of a sudden splendor round them. So they stood still, astonished in their own despite, holding each other's hands and looking in each other's eyes, and never thinking of kissing, poor fools— not just then! Gipsy was just her old sweet self, perhaps; but Harry was transformed indeed from the blubbering boy of twenty minutes earlier. And all was wonderful about them; and neither knew exactly how they had got there, though Gipsy remembered certain moments, in the intervals of their tennis-play-ing, whose significance was now made plain, and Harry recognised that he had at last arrived where he had so long wished to be.

"We shall have, of course, to wait a very long time," said she presently, when they were seated.

"No, not so very long," corrected he, "for I am bound to pass next year..." (No one who saw and heard him at that moment could have doubted it.) "And the pay in the Indian Civil is remarkably good— so much so that many clerks marry before they go out!"

They talked a little more in the same strain, and the clock on the chimney-piece was striking twelve when the front door bell was heard to ring. Though she had said nothing about it, Gipsy had been expecting this.

"That is Mr. Muir's ring," she remarked composedly, "and now, Harry, I must ask you to leave me. Mr. Muir and I have an appointment, and a little business to talk over."

He looked at her wistfully, wondering what that business could be.

"You are not going to law, Gipsy?" he asked, half jokingly.

"No— very much the reverse," she answered him. "And now, good-bye— stay, I will let you out by the French window, so that you need not meet him."

They parted, and the next moment Mr. David Muir was announced. And because she was of a gracious nature, which hated to give pain or to disappoint, Gipsy was momentarily saddened. For need I say that Patricia's advice had now been superseded; or that Gipsy had learnt in one short hour that love, when it is really love, is not an affair of calculation, or of reason, but of passion, which is stronger than either, and is able to sweep away their work of years in the twinkling of an eye; and to prefer the possibilities of a loving commonplace boy to the accomplishment of a brilliant but self-centred man?

__________________

7: Bengal Rebellion

Talbot Mundy

1879-1940

Blue Book Jan 1935

IN four years, three commissioners had been murdered in the office in which John Brand sat. At this moment, he wished he might be the fourth.

Chosen as the best man for the most dangerous job in all Bengal, he had betrayed, he felt, the confidence of the governor and Council. "Brand of Bengal," he had been called in admiration for his exploits. And now! Brand stared at the empty secret desk-drawer, which he had thought so cunningly masked. The memoranda were gone. Leaders of the criminal-political underworld were probably already gloating over the draft of plans for destroying their organization. Brand's stubbornly good-tempered face rew ashy gray. His sturdy shoulders rooped in the first recognition of defeat since he took up the appointment.

He must not even admit the existence of the memoranda, they were so important and so secret. Hue and cry was out of the question. He could not employ the Secret Service; the memoranda included a list of names of secret-service agents known or suspected to be disloyal. He set his head between his hands and groaned. Then, with a characteristic gesture of intolerance of weakness, he sat up and touched a button on his desk. A chair creaked instantly behind a screen, and Nava Bala came and stood at his elbow— one of three "specials" selected from among hundreds to protect him from assassination— a tall, bold-looking Kathiawari, alert, immaculate and statuesque in khaki uniform. Brand jerked his head toward the opened drawer. "You have been on duty since—"

"Since noon, sahib."

"Was that drawer locked when you came on duty?"

"I do not know, sahib. Is something missing ?"

Brand nodded. "A sealed envelope."

"I have seen the Sahib take packets of papers to bed to place under his pillow. Shall I search?"

"Yes. A big envelope, several inches thick, marked 'Very Secret ' and addressed to me. It has been opened and re-sealed with my thumbprint half a dozen times."

He knew it was no use searching. The building was surrounded by guards of various sorts, always. And the secret drawer which pulled out behind the obvious drawer— that should have baffled any ordinary thief. But someone, somehow, had discovered it. And anyone clever enough to do this, and to slip in during Nava Bala's absence while guarding his master, would be clever enough to make good his escape.

Brand felt sorry about Nava Bala, whose time would be up in two years. Twice in three months the man had intervened bravely between him and death. He had meant to recommend him for promotion, so that he might draw a higher pension. But recommendations from broken men are the reverse of valuable in a world that reckons values by results. Results? John Brand was one of only three non-members of the Council even to know of the existence of those memoranda. His career was ended, in disgrace. There was nothing to do but to write his resignation. He put paper into his portable machine and started typing it:

"In humiliation, having betrayed a confidence, for which there is no excuse nor any possible forgiveness—"

But that day's mail had gone. There was no hurry. He flung the unsigned letter in the open drawer and slammed the drawer shut. Nava Bala returned from the bedroom.

"Finding no such package, sahib."

"Go on looking. I'll be back soon."

"Not going walking, sahib? Then I follow."

"Stay here."

"But there is danger. Sahib, my honor—"

" 'Rooted in dishonor stands,' if you know what that means. No, of course you don't know. I order you to stay ere until I return."

He would soon have no orders to give to anyone. He walked out and turned shoreward, along the dusty mile between draggled palms and hibiscus, expecting and receiving no recognition; it was years, in that part of India, since a British official had been treated in public with even formal courtesy. The "civil disobedience" campaign had intensified bitterness and let loose anarchy, without providing a bridge for reconciliation. Even the poorest natives turned their backs. Some jeered as he passed, but he was only enough aware of their ill-will to know that he no longer cared. He strode as grimly and deliberately as he had faced death scores of times, but this disgrace was more bitter than death: it involved so many others, one of whom it would hurt cruelly.

The sun dipped below the wide-spread town behind him, turning the Bay of Bengal blood-red. Dusk shrouded the moaning beach. Two miles away to his left, as glorious in the sunset as a gilded city in some drunkard's heaven, stood the Temple of the Triad, acres vast, the home of his arch-enemy the High Priest. Once he had tried to establish acquaintance with that proud hierarch, but the priest had snubbed him with ingenious insolence. Later, when official duty forced him to interfere with the priest's more cruel methods of extorting revenue, he had soon learned, although he could never prove it, who was advising, from behind a screen of sanctity, the gangs that aimed at anarchy through rumor, theft, assassination and a reign of terror. That priest loved power. He condoned all means whatever that could serve his purpose. And he was bold; he ignored precedent and defied the fanatical doctrinaires by courting popularity.

Brand could see the spot where he stood now, half a mile away, on a stone platform above the beach, beside the ancient Bell of Blessings. Thousands of suppliants for heaven's favors waited on their knees for the moment of sunset. They darkened the beach. They were all "untouchables," all forbidden even to approach the Temple of the Triad. But they were permitted this one mercy. With his own thrice-sacred hands the High Priest drew back a beam like a battering-ram. It swung forward against the bell's rim:

"Doom-m-m-m-m-m! " And then the sun went down.

Those kneeling thousands thought the bell's reverberations bore their prayers upward toward Infinite Compassion. But the deep note struck like a knife into John Brand's heart. And then came a worse heart-stab.

He had to call forth all the iron of his being before he could make himself face Ann Gilbert. He saw her suddenly. She was folding a sketch-box and handing it to a servant, almost on the very spot on position. He had promised without hesitation. But afterward he had fallen in love with Ann—the moment he saw her.

Secretary to the American Archaeological Expedition, Ann had called at Brand's office to ask permission to examine fabulously ancient ruins in the neighborhood. He had had to refuse, and so their acquaintance had begun poorly; but it made swift progress, and he had made no promise not to become engaged. Now he must be ruthless. He walked toward her without attempting to hide his misery. Ann said:

"Tell me the trouble. Can you?"

"I will," he answered. "I've no right to tell you an official secret. But one error forces another. I shouldn't have made love to you. I gave you the right to know I'm ruined."

Ann's eyes met his, young, grave, questioning. Then she smiled, and her eyes grew bravely steady.

"Tell me. I'll face it with you."

Grimly he told her. "My career is ended. Ann, it means we lose each other. You mustn't ruin your life. They'll send some one to take my place here. I'll vanish. I can probably get some sort of job in one of the colonies, where I can live forgotten. You'll return to your own country before long. You won't forget me— or I hope not. But you'll find a better man, more worthy of you—"

She interrupted: "You make me wonder what you think I am worth. Have you done all you can?"

"There is nothing to do. I have written my resignation."

"Haven't you any idea who stole the papers ?"

"No. But I can guess who has them."

He glanced toward the High Priest. The full moon shimmered on the sea and on the crowded beach. It silvered the priest's white raiment and shone on his shaven skull; it showed the corpselike pallor of his proud face; it revealed the ferocity of his contempt in the calculated condescension of his gesture as he blessed the kneeling throngs. He had no bodyguard, although repeated threats had been made by fanatics to slay him for his condescension toward untouchables. His icy aloofness kept the throngs at a decent distance. He passed within twenty-five feet, and spared one baleful glance for John Brand, then turned away to bless petitioners for grace who laid their foreheads on the sand.

"See him, Ann? He knows I know who ruined me. He knows I can't prove it. He gloats over it; if he knew how much it hurts, he would gloat more."

"Let him get all he can out of it," Ann answered, "and see what happens. Go and tell him it hurts!"

Brand could hardly see her face. She was bare-headed; the moonlight shining through the edges of her hair made an aureole that graced the curves of her head and shoulders. She seemed unreal— an embodied voice.

"Tell him it hurts. Give him the blood with the pound of flesh! "

The sea sighed on the beach. Reality was weird and shadowed and unreality seemed real. An iron anger, so cold that it seemed impersonal, seized John Brand and he took a few steps forward. Ann followed. But he stopped within ten aces of the priest; his memory warned im he was only courting further humiliation. He watched. Triumph might cause an indiscretion. The High Priest might acknowledge his presence— might even speak first. But the Brahmin, turning, observed, ignored him and passed on, smiling. Brand would have gone away, had not Ann touched his shoulder.

"What is that man doing ?"

The High Priest had paused again to murmur benedictions. Behind him, a man had risen from the fringe of a group of suppliants; he was standing very close to the Brahmin. He had the ends of a silken cord in either hand. Rigid with the concentrated passion of a killer, he stood like a panther that times its spring. His arm trembled with the vibrancy of a panther's sinews strained for the loosing of spastic strength and skill.

There was a smack like the blow of a pole-ax as John Brand's fist hit the Thug's ear. The silken cord writhed and flickered like a snake in the grip of a mongoose. They fell together at the High Priest's feet, straining, writhing, gasping, Brand's right hand gripping the Thug's killing-cord, his left fist flailing like a bludgeon.

No one interfered. The crowd fled; was not one a cursed government official, the other worse— a would-be slayer of a thrice-born Brahmin? Let them slay each other and descend into life forever in the bellies of the worms that writhe in carrion!

Ann was borne backward in the flight and for several minutes Brand fought to prevent that silken cord from being flicked around his neck, while he rained blows on a man who knew all the arts of torture.

The Thug's body was oiled. He writhed out of every hold. Brand felt himself weakening as he pounded away at the man's ribs. The Thug was on top; he was wrenching the cord from Brand's grip when Ann returned. She kicked, not knowing what else to do, and the Thug let go. He was gone like a flickering shadow, into the sea, diving, swimming along the moonlit shoulders of the swell, before Brand could get to his feet....

He and Ann were alone then on the moonlit beach. There was a fringe of fleeing shadows that made no noise on the sand. The sea crooned solemnly, and Ann went and wetted her handkerchief in it because Brand's nose was bleeding.

"Did the High Priest run?" he asked her when she returned.

"No. He turned and went slowly; he didn't look back."

BRAND went to wash the blood from his face at the edge of the sea. Ann chafed his wrist. Then they walked together toward the former hotel that the American party had rented— slowly, because the Thug had twisted John Brand's muscles.

"Stay and dine with us," Ann suggested.

"No. I'd be a ghost at a banquet."

"Very well, come later. They'll go swimming. You and I can talk on the veranda."

"Yes." He agreed to that instantly. It would give him time to think of the right argument. Ann's pluck and loyalty had only strengthened his determination not to let her throw herself away on a man whose career was ended. "When do they go swimming?"

"Ten or ten-thirty."

Wisely she restrained emotion. The wrong word, even the wrong thought, and he might not realize that she too could face calamity, and would rather die than fail him in his hour of need.

He left her standing at the gate, and strode to his own quarters— in torture, but welcoming the pain in his twisted muscles, because it drove humiliation for the moment out of mind. But Nava Bala, standing at attention as he entered, noticed the limp that fortitude could not control.

"Not injured, sahib? What has happened? Said I not that I should follow to protect your honor?" He offered his arm.

"No, no. Nothing serious. Did you look again for that envelope?"

He received the expected answer.

A HOT bath relieved the pain in his muscles. He dressed for dinner, hardly aware of what he did; then he drank his customary glass of sherry and went and sat in the office. He had sat there for fifteen minutes, staring at the desk, when Nava Bala announced a visitor.

"No name, and he will not tell his business."

"Say I'll see him in the morning."

"He is a Brahmin, sahib, and he says it is urgent."

"Oh, all right." He gestured to Nava Bala to take his place behind the screen. Then he went to the door and admitted a lean, ascetic-looking Brahmin whose face was half hidden in the folds of a white cloth, above which his dark eyes glowed with excitement. He cut short the preliminary formal phrases of respect, and even laid a hand on John Brand's sleeve as they stood facing each other.

"Sahib, the most holy High Priest of the Temple of the Triad is beholden. Please permit him to make recompense."

Brand stiffened his stubborn jaw as the mercy of indignation swept over him. He had expected to be thanked for having saved the High Priest's life. The more formal and impersonal, the better. Even barbed with irony, if courteously phrased, an expression of gratitude would have been acceptable. But this second-hand offer of recompense was naked insolence. He answered in the level unemotional tone that he used to reprove subordinates:

"I wasn't interested in any particular person, but in preventing murder. High Priest or sweeper, it was all one."

The messenger winced to hear a priest and sweeper mentioned in the same breath.

"Sahib, he is sacred!"

"All life is sacred, isn't it?"

"Sahib, that thrice-born serves the Higher Law. Preserved by Your Honor's bravery, he is under obligation. Please permit him to repay now. Ask what you will, and if it can be done, it shall be."

"Does his conscience worry him?"

"Sahib, should you not permit him to defray the obligation now, at Your Honor's price, the Higher Law will demand it of him, perhaps ten times over, in ten times ten future lives oil earth."

"That is not my problem."

"Sahib—"

Grim amusement forced a smile to John Brand's lips. He interrupted:

"If he is such a stickler for the higher justice, let him apply to Miss Gilbert. She is the original source of his soul's predicament. It was she who drew my attention to the Thug."

"But sahib, Your Honor's courage and Your Honor's right hand saved that sacred life."

"For which a Higher Law may judge me. Who knows?" Brand showed his barked knuckles. "Besides, it was my left hand." He knew no thrice-born Brahmin would enjoy that information. He saw his visitor shudder; it was almost more humiliating to be saved left-handed than to owe one's life to a hated alien.

"Please, sahib, permit the holy one to recompense you. The importance of it is beyond your understanding; but I assure you there is nothing, if it is only possible, that the holy one will not grant, that he may be free from this encumbrance on his spirit."

"I don't interfere with things that are beyond my understanding," said Brand.

"You make no request ?"

"None. Good evening."

HE showed his baffled visitor to the door, then summoned Nava Bala from his hiding-place.

"You heard that? Did you see him? Recognize him ? Very well, then, shadow him. Report to me where he goes and what he does."

It was a forlorn hope, but it might lead to something. Nava Bala's intuition had more than once turned up a clue to a plot that had baffled investigation....

Brand went to his lonely dinner, and almost enjoyed it. No non-Oriental, he knew, can fathom the full significance of a Brahmin's religious scruples, or the full depth of a power-greedy Brahmin's duplicity. Scruples and duplicity can coexist and cooperate. He had no doubt that the High Priest dreaded the Eternal Law which ultimately forces the fulfillment of all debts. To be beholden for his life to a hated alien was something, also, that his pride might hardly stomach. But John Brand suspected a trap. He had refused to be caught in it.

AT ten-thirty, Nava Bala being still l absent, he locked the office and set off alone to the Americans' headquarters. He would rather have gone to his own hanging. He loved Ann, as he loved his job, beyond compass of phrase or reach of soaring thought. His job was the expression of his uttermost integrity of will to leave life better than he found it. Ann was all that he had needed to make life full to the brim with worth. Well, he had lost both, and it was no use flinching.

He strode in moonlight resolutely up the drive to the hotel portico, and called "Koi Hai?" in a voice like a sentry's challenge. The Goanese servant who answered stared, frightened.

"No. Miss Gilbert not at home, sir."

"Oh. Did she go swimming?"

"No sir. The others went swimming."

"Where did she go?"

"Into the garden."

"Is she not there now?"

"No sir."

"How long since she went out?"

"Fifteen minutes."

"How do you know she is not in the garden?"

The whites of the man's eyes flashed in the shadowy porch. He stammered, hesitated and shrank into the sullenness that some children adopt when they know but won't say. It would be a waste of time to question him; Brand took the path around the house and followed it toward the back gate. In a place where the gardener's hose had leaked and the moonlight shone between clumps of bamboo and bougainvillea, he found Ann's footprint, and a man's. She appeared to have stood speaking to the man. Beyond that spot there were no marks made by Ann's feet. Some one had seized and carried her, or else, walking behind her, had obliterated her footprints. He followed the man's tracks through the back gate to an enormous baobab. Beneath that were hoofprints, and the ruts of wheels.

Cursing himself for having sent Nava Bala on a Tom-fool's errand, so that now he had no bodyguard or weapon, Brand followed the track of t-he wheels in the deep dust. He was afraid now. Fear took concrete shape; the almost limitless but vaguely guessed political disasters that might follow on the theft of the secret memoranda changed, like magic, into one immediate and dreadful fear that Ann might be the first victim of the plot aimed at himself. He hurried. The pain in his muscles, following a line of least resistance, stabbed at the fear he felt on Ann's account.

He soon guessed so confidently whither the track was leading, that he hardly hesitated when he came to crossroads where the milky moonlight shone on the marks of unnumbered wheels. He cast forward, toward the outskirts of the town, along a rarely used unsurfaced road toward an ancient house surrounded by a high wall, and a ditch, and a thick hedge of impenetrable cactus. Four wavering lines, etched in the dust by moonlight, told the story. A two-wheeled cart, an ekka, probably, had come out through a wide gate in the wall, had fulfilled its errand, and returned with its burden. Somewnere within the many acres which the wall enclosed stood the fabulously ancient ruins that Ann had asked, and had been refused, permission to examine. The Americans, careful not to clash with the local prejudices, had observed the prohibition; but their scientific hunger for research was no secret. Had Ann been trapped with that bait? If she were killed, for instance by a snake put in her path, or by any other of a hundred cunning Eastern tricks, there could be no denial of trespass, and there would be one more accusation to hurl at all foreigners— sacrilege— and one more embarrassment for the almost desperate Bengal Government.

BRAND leaned against a tree-trunk, motionless in the shadow. He heard footsteps. A moment later he saw Nava Bala, bulky in the moonlight, striding down a side-road toward a foot-gate near the farther corner of the wall. Good! Luck was with him. He had an official witness. Now he could go to the gate and demand to know where Ann was.

He had raised his foot, to kick the tree, to attract Nava Bala's attention, when he detected other footsteps, much less noisy. They sounded stealthy. He could not see who made them. But when Nava Bala crossed the foot-bridge over the wide ditch and cautiously opened the narrow gate in the wall, some one emerged from a shadow cast by a clump of trees. The cloth over the lower part of his face looked familiar. Brand recognized him after a moment. Instead of Nava Bala shadowing the priest's messenger, the priest's man was shadowing Nava Bala!

He watched the Brahmin stealthily follow Nava Bala through the door in the wall. No latch clicked; there remained a narrow shadow, as if the door were left slightly ajar. Perhaps some one else was expected, who might lock the door after entering; if so, it was now or never. He hurried across the creaking foot-bridge, found the door unlatched, slipped through, groped for the heavy iron bolt, locked the door and waited breathless in deep black shadow.

THERE were no audible sounds. Fifty feet from the shadow of the wall, a rambling stone house stood in silent moonlight amid ancient trees. Far away to his right, a lantern cast pale light on the interior face of an ancient arch. He saw Nava Bala walk swiftly across a wide beam of moonlight; a moment later he again caught sight of him, in the light from the lantern, disappearing through the archway, apparently downward into a bulk of masonry whose form loomed shapeless amid phantom trees and gloom.

He followed, keeping carefully in shadow. Nava Bala might need help if he was on the heels of treason. Or had he learned where Ann was? He had entered that archway like one who knew where he was going and what to expect.

Brand groped his way along in the shadow of the wall, leaped the beam of moonlight where it was narrowest, and approached the archway from an angle to avoid the lantern-light. His fingers clutched stone that had been worn soap-smooth by the passage of centuries. He could only see the cavernous throat of a flight of steps descending into darkness, and could hear nothing but a rumble that might be the echo of footfalls, or of running water.

Suddenly something clammy that felt like a cobra touched the back of his neck. He sprang back from the wall, crashed into some one and faced about, with his heart in his teeth. He couldn't speak; his will seemed paralyzed. But self-control returned in a wave, although the sweat turned cold all over him. He took a short step forward, following a shadow that receded into darkness. Ruins loomed like a lightless chaos on his right hand. Something— this time it felt like a finger— touched his cheek. He tried to grasp it, missed, sprang forward and heard some one step aside to avoid him. An electric flashlight stabbed at his eyes; in another second he recognized the High Priest's messenger.

"You should not be here, sahib. This is sanctuary, and none may enter here uninvited."

"Where's Miss Gilbert?"

The Brahmin stepped backward but Brand made a feint and caught him by the slack of his linen robe.

"Did you hear me? Where's Miss Gilbert?"

"She is receiving a reward for service rendered."

"Lead me to her, or I'll march you to the jail.... Ah—thought so!" He detected a sudden movement— snatched at the man's right wrist, and seized a repeating pistol.

There was a moment's breathless silence. He almost felt the Brahmin furiously thinking. He expected a trick; and when it came, he knew it was one; but it was too subtle to be seen through in a moment.

"It is then your request that you shall see Miss Gilbert?"

"Yes. At once. And take her out of here."

"I have authority to grant whatever possible favor Your Honor chooses. Follow me, then."

A shadow, but it was solid and made a footfall, slid between John Brand and the ruins on his right hand. Some one had overheard the conversation. That might portend anything. And in spite of himself, he had asked a favor! They would grant it literally. Then what? They might accuse him, and Ann too, of sacrilegious trespass.... However, he followed. He must find Ann.

ABRUPTLY the Brahmin faced him in an echoing passage that plunged into cavernous darkness.

"For your own sake and for her sake, silence! "

"Lead ahead."

"The very holy one commanded 'any possible request.' You have made a request. Its possibility resides in silence. To be heard or seen by those who should not hear or see—"

"I will be guided by events. Lead on." He knew he had been heard and seen by some one who hurried away with the news.

The Brahmin's flashlight cast a thin ray forward— downward. Steps between walls, whose monstrous carvings grinned where the flashlight touched them. The stairway turned twice. There were fifty steps, then a smooth-walled passage and a modern door of rare wood strongly made, well polished, fitted between ancient posts of black teak. He followed the Brahmin through the door and heard a latch click. Without ceremony he snatched the Brahmin's light and examined the place.

He was in a four-square chamber hewn from the rock. It resembled a dungeon, except that there were monstrous faces carved deeply on the wall at one end. Light streamed through four of the eyes, dimly through two, strongly through two others. The Brahmin put his ear to a dimly lighted eye and looked through the eye through which a stronger light came. Following suit, Brand discovered he could hear and see through an enormously thick wall into a chamber beyond. He looked straight into the eyes of Ann Gilbert.

SHE was seated at a plain teak table, frightened, evidently facing men whose backs were too close to the wall for him to see them. From the movements of her eyes, he deduced that there were two men, or perhaps three; the sound of their breathing came through the wall exaggerated as if they had asthma. Ann's fingers pressed the table. She was speaking with restraint, but her voice came through the wall, clear, dynamic:

"In the garden you said one thing. Now you propose something else."

A voice answered: "Perhaps you did not understand."

"I understood perfectly. You said I saved the High Priest's life, and his religion obliges him to pay the debt at once, or else be beholden to me in future lives, which he is unwilling to be. And I would not like him even to feel beholden to me. So I accepted your offer to come with you and make a request of my own choosing. I have made it. I ask for the return of the documents that were stolen from the drawer of Mr. Brand's desk in his office."

"But they are not yours. You have never seen them. How could you identify them?"

"Mr. Brand will identify them. Keep your promise."

Brand snatched the Brahmin's light and examined the place.

"Did you not ask to see these ruins, which are forbidden to all but Brahmins? None but Brahmins' eyes have ever seen them. You shall be shown the lower crypt, where are kept greater marvels than you have ever heard of. That is the request you made over your signature."

Ann's voice was firm, steady.

"I ask for those stolen papers. I said so in the garden when you made your offer."

"Is that loyal to your archaeological associates, whose paid secretary you are? Was it not they who through you made a written application to inspect these caverns? So strong was your desire to see these wonders, that the Life Force guided you to be the instrument of Destiny that saved a sacred life, and thus opened a way for fulfillment of an otherwise impossible desire."

"Probably you mean your High Priest hasn't as much influence as he pretends," Ann answered. "If you mean you can't recover those papers, why not say so? I'm not interested in your High Priest's future lives, but in straightforward dealing in this life. Keep your promise, or let me go home."

Some one clucked irritably and then blew his nose. A different Voice spoke:

"You expect to get out of here on your terms? Are you not afraid to speak thus insolently?"

Ann made no reply. John Brand, fingering the Brahmin's pistol, discovered it was not loaded. He walked swiftly to the door. It was locked; he could find no latch or keyhole. He returned to the hole in the wall. Some one was speaking. Ann's face looked drawn and more afraid, but resolute.

"An ill wind," said a voice near the wall, "blows on whosoever asks too much but yields too little. A higher law than any known to you compels our very holy one to grant whatever favor you demand. But take the consequences! It is written: 'Thrice cursed is she who seeketh to snare wisdom in the nets of guile.' Like is she unto a fool who seizeth Hamadryad for his beauty. She tempteth fangs that know not mercy. She shall know death's bitterness, in shame, in the night of despair, and alone."

Ann answered firmly: "Is that meant for a threat? Very well. I will face the consequences. Keep your promise: Unless your boasted influence is bluff, get me those papers. After that, we will see what happens."

Brand's left hand reached out for the Brahmin's neck, to seize him as a hostage for Ann's safety.

"Silence!" the Brahmin whispered. "Her request is granted."

THREE Brahmins, solemnly in single file, passed out through a door at Ann's side. She sat still, drumming her fingers on the table. The Brahmin's right hand touched Brand's lips, commanding silence; he was about to shout to Ann nevertheless, when astonishment gripped his throat. The door opened again, and in walked Nava Bala!

The man looked scared, but at the sight of Ann, he looked shocked. His jaw fell. His eyes betrayed horror. He tried to retreat. The door shut with a thud behind him, almost catching his fingers. Then he braced himself, hesitated for a moment, and strode forward to the table. There was something bulky beneath his tunic that he held in place by pressure of his left arm.

Ann spoke: "I am very glad indeed to see you. But what does it mean?" Her voice shook. Nava Bala's terror had increased hers. He was trembling. His back was toward Brand, but the sound of his tongue trying to moisten a dry mouth was distinctly audible. Saying nothing, he unbuttoned his tunic and laid a bulky envelope on the table.

"Where did you get this, Nava Bala?" Ann demanded. "You should have taken it to Mr. Brand, shouldn't you?"

No answer. He seemed tongue-tied. He had probably been told he would find his sahib in there. Now he knew he was trapped— probably guessed he would be accused of the theft.

WHAT quick-thinking devils! Nava Bala must have scared the man he was shadowing, so they trapped him too— probably told him where to go to get something his sahib had lost. And so now the trick was obvious. An obligation had been literally paid. The High Priest would incur, according to his view of it, no spiritual blame for the death of the three trespassers in a secret crypt held secret from profane eyes. No Brahmin would do the murdering. They would be ambushed on the way out by ignorant "untouchables" who would think they were earning heaven's favor. And the stolen memoranda? Already studied, copied and perhaps photographed, they would be "found" and returned with a smile to their embarrassed owners.

Action! Brand heard the Brahmin beside him slip off his sandals and start for the door barefooted. He stuffed the empty automatic into his pocket, overtook him and cracked his head against the door.

"Open!"

While the Brahmin fumbled for a secret latch, he shouted, hoping Ann could hear him:

"You and Nava Bala try to find your way out! I'm coming. I'll meet you. But get a move on."

The door opened. He discovered a bolt on the outside, slammed the door shut in the Brahmin's face and shot the bolt home. Then he turned to the left and tried to reach the room where Ann was; but a blank wall faced him, and so he turned back and raced up the dark steps with his heart in his throat, breathless, his ears singing and his temples bursting with the effort. Even in that raging haste, he doubted that the Brahmins would do murder in their own sanctuary. They would leave murder to others. Speed might forestall those others.

Gasping at the summit of the steps, he charged into the moonlight, tripped on broken masonry, fell headlong, and lay half-stunned for several seconds. Then he staggered to his feet, groped his way along the flank of the ruins, reached the lantern-lit archway, entered that and started downward into rumbling darkness. At the first turn of the steps he remembered having put the Brahmin's flashlight in his pocket. He fumbled for it, and flashed it— full in Ann's face. Nava Bala was behind her.

"Here," she said, "take this!" And she thrust a package into his hands. He had nowhere to put it; his dinner jacket had no pockets half large enough; he had to keep it in his right hand while he dragged Ann up-steps with the other. He was too breathless for speech until they reached the foot-gate in the high wall. There he shot one word at Nava Bala:

"Weapon?"

"Yes, sahib." He produced a pistol.

Brand opened the gate and led the way out into amber moonlight that east impenetrable Shadows. A night wind rustled in the trees. There were a thousand sounds that might be the movements of fanatics lurking to earn the reward of whoever requites sacrilege with murder. The shadows moved in the wind, but no man showed himself until they reached the road. The wheel-tracks had been smoothed out; there were no longer even footsteps in the dust. Suddenly two shots spat from a clump of bushes. One knocked the package from Brand's hand; a third shot missed him as he stooped to pick up the package. Nava Bala answered with six shots from his pistol, reloaded and stood waiting....

A horn honked near by. Headlights glared through a cloud of dust and nodded along the dirt road. Ann shouted. An old touring-car, with two Americans on the front seat, bucked to a standstill in a dust-cloud.

"Ann, is that you? What the devil have you been doing? Oh, is that you, Brand? What's the trouble? Get in, Won't you?"

JOHN BRAND waited for Nava Bala, calling to him. Three more shots spat out of ambush. Nava Bala answered them, then Brand walked toward him, touched him on the shoulder.

"Come away,'' he commanded. "Sahib—"

"Come, I told you."

He obeyed, and Brand shoved him into the back seat. The car whirled away, and no one spoke. Brand used the little flashlight to examine the seals Of the envelope, until at last he said: "My office first, if you don't mind." After that, silence again until they passed the sentry at the outer gate. Then he said: "Would you fellows mind waiting in your car while I attend to official business?" He glanced at Nava Bala in the rear seat beside him, and gave Ann the key of his office door. "Go in and wait for me, will you?"

Nava Bala sat still.

"Very Well, lean on me," said Brand. A night watchman Came on the run, but he dismissed him. He had to pull Nava Bala out and help him up the three steps to the porch and the office door. Ann was still groping for the light-switch. In darkness he found a lone chair for Nava Bala, and then himself turned on the light.

Ann gave an exclamation and started forward— but Brand stopped her.

"It's a case for mercy," he said. Then he phoned for the doctor, asking him to come in a hurry. After that, he held the heavy envelope toward the light. It had been slit by a bullet, but the seals were unbroken.

"How many years' service?" he demanded.

Nava Bala stared dumbly, then swallowed ahd spoke:

"Twenty; and so little pension, sahib."

BRAND threw the envelope into a desk drawer. He left the drawer open. "Well?" he said. "Go on. Tell me." There was blood on his hahd, but it was not his own. "That bullet that hit you was meant for me. That makes the fourth time you've saved my life. I'm going to save your honor. But why did you betray mine?"

"Sahib,"—the man Could hardly speak above a whisper— "it was told to me, that in that envelope, are names— of men— most honorable— charged with—" He drooped, then summohed all his remaining strength for the last word: "—treason."

"So it seemed like honest money you were offered? Well, old fellow—thank you for having saved my life so often. You shall go on record as wounded while doing your duty."

He carried Nava Bala to his bedroom— summoned servants— gave what first aid he could. Then presently he returned to the office, took his resignation from the drawer and gave it to Ann, lighting a match while she read it.

Ann held it to the flame; and business, after that, until the doctor came, ceased to have the slightest official import.

________________

8: The Red Peri

Stanley G Weinbaum

1902-1935

Astounding, Nov 1935

THE Dutch rocket Aardkin— out of Middleburg, passengers and freight— dropped gingerly toward the mist and cloud-girt Earth some twelve thousand miles below, underjets cushioning the fall. This last leg of the journey from Venus was the ticklish part of the trip; for the great cigar-shaped rockets, beautifully swift in space, were anything but maneuverable in a strong gravitational field; and Captain Peter Ten Eyck had no particular desire to descend in either central Europe or mid-Atlantic, to the resultant disgust of the home office. He wanted to hit Middleburg in Zeeland.

Off to the right appeared a very curious shape, visible no more than a quarter of a mile away through the bridge room port. "Donder !" said Captain Ten Eyck feelingly.

At the same moment the annunciator beside him remarked, "Cut your jets!"

"Aasvogel!" rejoined the captain. "Vaarken!" His other epithets were somewhat too expressive for permanent record.

The apparition against the black sky was swiftly drifting closer. It was distinguishable now as a glittering, metal rocket, but in no way like the tapering, cylindrical Aardkin, nor like any other rocket— save one.

It was a tubular triangle, from each corner of which rose a strong girder to meet an apex above. In effect, its sides and girders outlined a skeleton tetrahedron, and from the apex of the girders, the blue atomic blast flared down to spread fanlike into the space below. As it approached, the strange vessel was dwarfed by the giant freighter; it was no more than a hundred feet on a side, not an eighth the length of the Aardkin .

Again the annunciator uttered its metallic tones. It was responding, apparently, to a beam from the stranger. "Cut your jets!" it repeated. "Cut your jets, or we'll top you!"

Captain Ten Eyck ended his mutterings in a heavy sigh. He had no wish to have his vessel exposed to the withering blast of the pirate. He grumbled an order into the box beside him, and the roar of the jets ceased. Whatever maneuverability the lumbering freighter possessed was gone now; there was no longer any chance of ramming the agile attacker.

With the cessation of the jets came also complete weightlessness, since they were in a free fall; but a twelve-thousand-mile fall takes considerable time to become serious. Ten Eyck sighed again, ordered the floor magnets on, and waited phlegmatically for further directions. After all, he reflected, his cargo was insured, and Boyd's Marine could afford the indemnity. Besides, Boyd's was an English concern, and he had no mind to risk a good Netherlands ship and— if he did say it himself— a good Netherlands captain to save an English insurance company from loss.

The door to the bridge room opened. Hawkins, the first officer, clattered in. "What's here?" he shrilled. "The jets are off—" He caught sight of the glistening shape beyond the port. "The Red Peri! The blasted pirate!"

Captain Ten Eyck said nothing, but his pale blue eyes stared moodily at the painted figure plainly visible on the attacker's bull— the figure of a crimson winged imp. He needed no sign to identify the pirate; the queer construction of the vessel was proof enough, for there wasn't another such ship in the sky.

The voice sounded again. "Open your air lock." Ten Eyck gave the order and stalked grimly out to receive the boarding party. He heard the thud of the extending gangway as it struck, and the faint grind as the magnet bit to the freighter's hull. There came a brisk pounding on the inner door of the lock. The captain gave the order to open, his voice curiously equable. He was thinking again of the insurance company.

Most of the Aardkin 's score of passengers were crowded along the passage. The cutting of the jets, and perhaps the sound of Hawkins' voice from the beam room as he called hopefully for assistance, had apprised all of them of the events, and the glittering triangle of the Red Peri indicated their nature.

The lock swung inward, opening upon the steel-ribbed, rubber-sheathed tunnel of the gangway.

Figures in space suits, worn either for disguise or simply as precaution against the possible need of cutting their way in, filed through the circular doorway, automatics and gas guns menacingly visible.

There were no words spoken; a dozen buccaneers clanked methodically away toward the aft bold, and one, a slighter figure, stood grimly guarding the lock. In five minutes they were filing back, dragging whatever loot they had found, with the queer movement of inertia without weight— much as if they floated the objects through water.

Ten Eyck saw the cases of xixtchil pods, valuable as so many diamonds, disappear into the lock; and the seventeen crated ingots of Venusian silver followed. He swore under his breath as he recognized the casket of emeralds from the mines in the Dutch Alps of Venus, and wondered blasphemously how they had managed to crack the Aardkin's safe with neither torch nor explosive.

Glancing into the purser's office, he saw a queer, jagged hole in the big steel box, that looked more as if it had rusted or simply broken away than as if it had been cut. Then the freebooters were silently passing back to their vessel, having neither addressed nor molested officers, crew, or passengers.

Except, perhaps, for one: among the group of watchers was young Frank Keene, American radiologist and physicist returning from the solar-analysis stations of Patrick's Peak in the Mountains of Eternity. He had edged close to the air lock, and now, as the departing marauders passed through, he suddenly leaned forward with narrowed eyes, and peered boldly into the cloudy visor of the guard.

"Huh!" he mid. "A redhead, eh?"

The guard said nothing, but raised a steel-guantleted hand. The metal thumb and forefinger bit viciously into Keene's suntanned nose, and he was thrust violently back into the crowd, with two spots of blood welling from the abused organ.

Keen grunted in pain. "O.K., fellow," he said stolidly. "I'll see you again some day."

The guard spoke at last in a voice that clinked out metallically from the helmet's diaphragm. "When you do, there'd better be two of you." Then this figure followed the rest; the outer lock clanged shut; the magnets released the gangway's grip; and the Red Peri , agile as a swallow and swift as a comet at perihelion, flared into the black void.

Beside Keene sounded the voice of Captain Ten Eyck. "What a ship! Mynheer Keene, is that not a ship— that Red Peri?"

He was still exclaiming over it at intervals during the laborious task of laying a new landing course; and when, an hour later, a blunt little League rocket appeared in answer to Hawkin's call, he informed its officers flatly that the pirate was hopelessly beyond reach. "Even if your fat beeste of a boat could match its acceleration, which it couldn't."

A year later Frank Keene had almost completely forgotten the Red Peri and the red-headed pirate, though occasionally, during the interval, mention of the famous marauder had brought his experience to mind. After all, when a freebooter has scoured the skyways for nearly fifteen years without capture, he becomes something of a legend, a figure of heroic proportions. Papers and broadcasts give daily references to him, and he is blamed for, or perhaps credited with, many a feat performed by some less-celebrated desperado.

The lair of the Red Peri remained a mystery, though League ships scoured asteroids, the far side of the desolate Moon, and even the diminutive satellites of Mars. The swift pirate, striking invariably as his victim inched gingerly through some planet's gravitational field, came and went untouched.

But Frank Keene had little time at the moment for consideration of the famous freebooter. He and his companion, fifty-five year old Solomon Nestor of the Smithsonian, were out where few men had ever been, and in a predicament that was perhaps unique. They were dropping their rocket Limbo toward the rugged, black disc of Puto, two billion miles from home, and they were not happy about it.

"I tell you," growled Keene, "we're got to land. Do you think I'm settling on this chunk of coal from choice? We've got to make repairs. We can't navigate with one stern jet gone, unless you have a notion to fly in circles."

Old Solomon was a marvel on hard radiations, stellar chemistry, and astro- physics, but hardly an engineer. He said plaintively, "I don't see why we can't zigzag."

"Bah! I told you why. Didn't I spend five hours figuring out the time it'd take to reach the nearest inhabited place? That's Titan near Saturn, just one billion— one billion, I said— miles from here. And at the speed we could make zigzagging, because we couldn't keep a constant acceleration, it would take us just exactly four years and three months. We've got food enough for three months, but what would we live on during the four years? Atomic energy?"

"But what can we do on Pluto?" queried old Nestor. "And why didn't we carry a spare jet?"

"Jets aren't supposed to melt off," muttered Keene disgustedly. "As for what we can do, maybe we can find a virgin deposit of some refractory metal— platinum or iridium or tungsten, or any other with a high melting point— and build up a jet long enough to keep the blast from melting our stern away. Because that's what it'll do if we try running it this way."

"There's tungsten here," observed the older man hopefully, gazing down at the black expanse. "Hervey reported it, and so did Caspari. But there isn't any atmosphere, or rather, what there is, is liquid or solid, except about half a centimeter's pressure of helium. Pluto has a diameter of about ten thousand miles, a surface gravity of about 1.2, and an albedo—"

"Not interested," grunted Keene, and then, relenting, "Listen, Solomon, I'm sorry. I guess I'm taking it out on you because we had a defective jet. But it's a hell of a mess all the same, and somebody's going to suffer for it when we get back. With all the money the institute has, you'd think they'd be able to afford respectable equipment." He glared down through the floor port. "There she comes!"

With a rasp and a jar, the Limbo came to rest. Outside, a mixed column of dirt and smoke billowed around the glasses, rose and then settled as quickly as a burst of sand, in the near vacuum that surrounded the ship.

Keene cut the blast. "Come on," he said, turning to a space suit swaying on its hook. "No use wasting time. We'll take a look around." He clambered into the heavy garment, noting irritably its greater weight on the surface of the black planet. The Plutonian gravitation added thirty-six pounds to his Terrestrial hundred and eighty.

"No gun?" asked Nestor.

"Gun? For what? This planet's dead as the brain of whoever tested that jet. How can there be organic life in no air and ten degrees absolute?" He pulled open the inner door of the air lock. "Well," he said, his voice sharply metallic through his helmet's diaphragm, "here goes the Smithsonian Expedition for the Determination of the Intensity of Cosmic Radiation in Extra-planetary Space. We determined it all right; now the only problem of the expedition is to get home with our statistics." He flung open the outer door and stepped out on the black surface of Pluto.

So far as Keene knew, he was the fourth man and Nestor the fifth to set foot on the black planet. Atsuki, of course, was the first, if one credits his figures and photographs, the intrepid Hervey the second, and Caspari the third. Here on this lonely outpost of the solar system, high noon was hardly brighter than full moonlight on Earth, and the queer, black surface that gives Pluto its low albedo made it seem still darker.

But Keene could distinguish the outlines of fantastic mountains beyond the hollow where the Limbo rested, and innumerable mysterious crags and hillocks, unweathered by wind or water, loomed closer. Directly to his right lay a patch of glistening, snow-like white; but he knew it wasn't snow, but frozen air. One dared not step in such a drift; for the cold would bite through his insulated space suit, since frozen air was a far better conductor of heat than the rocky ground.

Overhead glittered all the stars of the galaxy, as changeless as though he stood on a pleasant green planet two billion miles sunward, for what was two billion miles to the infinite remoteness of the stars? The landscape was bleak, black, desolate and cold. This was Pluto, the planet that circled at the very edge of the System.

The two started heavily toward a ridge where something glowed faintly, something that might be virgin metal. Strangely, their own footsteps were audible, for the substance of their space suits conducted the sound; but all else was a vast and ominous silence. They did not speak, for their suits, designed only for emergency repairs in space, had no radio; and to communicate it was necessary to touch hand or arm to one's companion; over such a material bridge, sound traveled easily enough.

At the ridge Keene paused, glowering down at a vein of bright, starlighted fragments. He placed a hand against Nestor's shoulder, "Pyritic," he grunted. "We'll have to look farther."

He turned right, treading heavily under nearly sixty pounds mom than his Earth weight. Surely, he mused, old Solomon Nester wouldn't be capable of an extended search in such circumstances. He frowned; Caspari had reported great quantities of heavy metals here, and they shouldn't need such a lengthy search. He stopped sharply; a stone came sliding past him on the rocky surface. A signal.

Off in the dusk Nestor was gesturing. Keene turned and hurried back, clambering along the uneven terrains with such haste that his breath shortened and his visor began to cloud. He clapped his hand on the old man's arm. "What is it?" he asked. "Metal?"

"Metal? Oh, no." Nestor's voice was triumphant. "What did you say about no organic life on Pluto, eh? Well, what about inorganic life? Look there!"

Keene looked. Out of a narrow chasm or cleft in the ridge something moved. For a moment Keene thought he saw a brook flowing, but a brook— liquid water— was an impossibility on Pluto. He squinted sharply. Crystals! Masses of crystals, gray-white in the dusk, crawling in a slow parade.

"I'll be damned!" he said. "Caspari didn't say anything about this."

"Don't forget," said Nestor, "that Pluto has thirty-six per cent more surface than the whole Earth. Not a ten-thousandth part of it has been explored— probably never will be, because it's such a task to get a rocket here. If Atsuki—"

"I know. I know," interrupted Keene impatiently. "But these things aren't tungsten or platinum. Let's move on." But he still stared at the crawling, faintly radiant mass. In the silence he heard infinitely faint rustlings, cracklings, and susurrations, transmitted through the ground to his feet, and thence to his helmet. "What makes them move?" he asked. "Are they alive?"

"Alive? I don't know. Crystals arc as close as inorganic matter comes to life. They feed; they grow."

"But they don't live!"

Old Solomon Nestor was in his element now. "Well," he proceeded in professorial tones, "what is the criterion of life? Is it movement? No; for wind, water, and fire move, while many living forms do not. Is it growth? No; for fire grows, and so do crystals. Is it reproduction? Again no; for again fire and crystals reproduce themselves, if their proper food supply is present. Then just what differentiates dead matter from living?"

"That's what I'm asking you!" snapped Keene.

"And I'm telling you. There's just one, or perhaps two criteria. First, living things show irritation. And second, and more important, they show adaptation."

"Eh?"

"Listen," continued Nestor. "Fire moves, grows, feeds, and reproduces, doesn't it? But it doesn't run away from water. It doesn't betray the irritation life shows in the presence of a poison, though water's poison to it. Any living thing that encounters poison makes an attempt to throw it off; it develops antibodies or fever, or it ejects the poisonous matter. Sometimes it dies, of course, but it tries to survive. Fire doesn't.

"As for adaptation, does fire ever make a voluntary attempt to reach its food? Does it deliberately flee from its enemies? Even the lowest form of life known does that; even the miserable amoeba makes positive gestures of adaptation to its environment."

Keene stared more closely at the sluggish crystalline stream, which was now impinging on the black plain at his feet. He bent over it, and suddenly perceived a fact that had hitherto escaped him.

"Look here," he said, touching old Solomon's arm. "These things are organisms. They're not loose crystals, but masses of them."

It was true. The rustling crystals moved in glittering chunks from thumbnail size to aggregations as large as dogs. They crackled and rustled along, apparently moving by a slow shifting of the lower crystals, much as a snake moves on its scaly belly, but far stiffer and slower. Abruptly Keene sent his metal boot crashing into one. It shattered with a blue flash of released static electricity, and the pieces passively resumed their progress. "They certainly don't show irritation," he remarked.

"But look!" shrilled Nestor. "They do show adaptation. There's one feeding!"

He pulled Keene a few feet down the ridge. There was a small bluish deposit of something that looked like frozen clay, a product, perhaps, of the infinitely remote past when Pluto's own heat had maintained liquid water and gaseous air to grind its rocks to powder. A crystalline mass had paused at the edge, and before their gaze it was growing, gray-white crystals springing out of it as frost spreads over a winter-chilled windowpane.

"It's an aluminum-eater!" shrieked Nestor. "The crystals are alums; it's eating the clay!"

Keene was far less excited than old Solomon, perhaps because he was considerably more practical.

"Well," he said decisively, "we can't waste any more time here. We need refractory metal, and we need it bad. You try along the ridge, and I'll cross over."

He broke off suddenly, staring appalled at the foot with which he had shattered the moving crystals. On its surface glittered a spreading mass of tiny, sparkling points!

A break in the surface of his space suit meant death, for the oxygen generator could certainly never maintain its pressure against any appreciable leakage. He bent over, scraping desperately at the aluminum feeders, and then realized that the infection would spread— had spread to his gauntlets. While Nestor babbled futilely and inaudibly behind his visor, Keene rubbed his hands in the gritty, pyritic soil on which he stood.

That seemed to work. The rough substance scoured away the growing crystals, and with frantic vigor he rasped a handful along his shoe. If only no hole, no tiniest pin prick had opened! He scoured furiously, and at last the metal surface showed scratched and pitted, but free of the growths.

He stood up unsteadily, and placed his hand against the gesturing Nestor's side.

"Keep away from them!" he gasped. "They eat—"

Keene never finished his sentence. Something hard jarred against the back of his armor. A metallic voice clicked, "Stand still— both of you!"

ii

"WHAT the devil!" gulped Keene. He twisted his head within his immovable helmet, peering through the rear visor glasses. Five— no, six figures in blue metal space suits were ranged behind him; they must have approached in the inaudibility of a vacuum while he had been scouring his suit free of the crystals. For a moment be had an eerie sensation of wonder, fearful that he faced some grotesque denizens of the mysterious black planet, but a glance revealed that the forms were human. So were the faces dim in the dusk behind the visors; so had been the voice he had heard.

Keene hesitated. "Listen," he said. "We're not interfering with you. All we want is some tungsten in order to fix our—"

"Move!" snapped the voice, whose tones traveled through the weapon hard against Keener back. "And remember that I'm two thirds inclined to kill you anyway. Now move!"

Keene moved. There was little else he could do, considering the appearance of the threatening automatics in the hands of their captors. He tramped heavily along, feeling the thrust of the muzzle against his back, and beside him Solomon Nestor trudged with pace already showing the drag of weariness. The old man touched his arm.

"What's this about?" he quavered.

"How do I know?" snorted Keene.

"Shut up!" admonished the voice behind him.

They walked past the looming shape of the Limbo— five hundred feet past it, a thousand. Directly ahead was the other rim of the cup-shaped depression in which they had landed, high, black cliffs in fantastic shapes. Suddenly Keene started; what had seemed but a smaller cliff showed now as a skeleton, tetrahedral frame of metal, three webbed shafts rising to a point from a tubular triangle below.

"The Red Peri !" he gasped. "The Red Peri!"

"Yeah. Why the surprise?" queried the sardonic voice. "You found what you were looking for, didn't you?"

Keene said nothing. The appearance of the pirate ship had amazed him. No one had ever dreamed that the swift marauder could operate from a base as infinitely remote as the black planet. How could even the agile vessel scour the traffic lanes of the minor planets from dusky Pluto, two billion miles out in the empty cosmos?

To his knowledge only two ships— three, if Atsuki hadn't lied— had ever reached those vast depths before their own Limbo , and he knew what endless travail and painful labor each of those journeys had cost. In his mind echoed Captain Ten Eyck's words of a year and a half before. "What a ship!" he muttered. "Lord, what a ship!"

There was an opening in the cliff wall as they rounded the bulk of the Red Peri . Yellow light streamed out, and he glimpsed an ordinary fluorolux bulb in the roof of the cavern. He was shoved forward into the opening, and suddenly his visor was clouded with moisture. That meant air and warmth, though he had seen no air lock, nor heard one operate. He suppressed the impulse to brush a metal-sheathed hand across the glass, knowing that he couldn't wipe the condensation away in that fashion.

The voice again, still queerly sardonic, yet somehow soft. "You can open your helmets. There's air."

Keene did so. He stared at the figures surrounding himself and Nestor, some still helmeted, others already removing the uncomfortable space suits. Before him stood a figure shorter than the rest, and he recalled the red-haired pirate on the Aardkin. The short one was twisting the cumbersome helmet.

It came off. Keene gulped again at the face revealed, for it was that of a woman. A woman? A girl, rather, for she seemed no more than seventeen. But Keene's gasp was not entirely surprise; mostly, it was sheer admiration.

Her hair was red, true enough, if one could call red a lovely and subtle shade between copper and mahogany. Her eves were bright green, and her skin was the silken, soft, and pale skin of one whose flesh is but seldom exposed to the sunlight, yet gently tanned by the violet-rich rays of the fluorolux.

She let the cumbrous metal suit clank away from her, and stepped out in the quite civilized garb of shirt, shorts, and dainty, laced buskins, such as one had to wear in a space suit. Her figure— well, Keene was only twenty-six, but even old Nestor's pallid eyes were fixed on her as she turned toward them. She was slim, curved, firm; despite her slimness, there was a litheness and sturdiness to her limbs, the result, perhaps, of a lifetime under the supernormal gravitation of Pluto.

"Take off your suits," she ordered coldly, and as they complied, "Marco, lock these up with the rest."

A tall, dark individual gathered up the clanking garments. "Yes, commander," he said, taking a key she held out and moving away into the cavern.

"Commander, eh?" said Keene. "So you're the Red Peri!"

Her green eyes flickered over him: She surveyed his own figure, which was still hard and brown and powerful from his swimming days at the university. "You," she said impassively. "I've seen you before."

"You have a good memory," he grunted. "I was on the Aardkin ."

She gave him a momentary smile of amused remembrance. "Yes. Did your nose scar?" She glanced at the organ. "I'm afraid not."

People— two or three of them— came hurrying up the long corridor of the cave to stand staring curiously at Keene and Nestor. Two were men; the third was a pale, pretty, flaxen-haired girl. The Red Peri glanced briefly at them and seated herself on a boulder against the rocky wall.

"Cigarette, Elza," she said, and took one from the pale girl.

The scent of tobacco tantalized Keene, for such indulgences were impossible in the precious air of a space ship. It had been four months since he had smoked, in the frigid little town of Nivia, the city of snow on Titan.

"May I have one?" he asked.

The green eyes turned an icy glance on him. "No," said the Red Peri briefly.

"Well, I'll be— Why not?" He was angered.

"I don't think you'll live long enough to finish it," responded the girl coolly, "and our supply is limited here."

"Yeah, limited to what you find on looted freighters!" he snapped.

"Yes," she agreed. She blew a tormenting plume of smoke toward him. "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll trade you a cigarette for the information as to how you managed to trace us here."

"Trace you?" he echoed, puzzled.

"That's what I said. It's a generous offer, too, because I'm quite capable of torturing the knowledge out of you."

Staring into her lovely, glittering green eyes, Keene was not disposed to doubt her capability. He said mildly, "But we didn't trace you here."

"I suppose," she retorted, "that you came to Pluto looking for a good business corner. Or perhaps on a little camping trip. Is that your story?"

He flushed under her cool insolence. "We came here by accident," he growled. "One of our afterjets melted off, and if you don't believe it, go look at it."

"Jets don't melt unless they're planned to," said the Red Peri coldly. "And what were you doing in the neighborhood of Pluto anyway? And I suppose that out of all the millions of square miles of surface, you just accidentally picked this valley as a landing place. Well, it won't do you any good to lie, because you're going to die regardless, but you might die a little less painfully if you tell the truth."

"It just happens that I'm telling the truth!" he blazed. "Whether you believe it or not, we landed in this valley by pure chance. We're the Smithsonian's expedition to study cosmic rays in outer space, and you can verify that by our clearance papers from Nivia."

"A good disguise for the secret service," she sneered. "You could get any sort of government papers you want, couldn't you?"

"Disguise! Listen, if we were hunting the Red Peri, do you think we'd come armed with cameras, interferometers, electroscopes, polariscopes, and fly- wing bolometers? Search our ship; you'll find one gun in it— one measly automatic. I'll tell you where it is. It's in the upper right-hand drawer of the navigation table. And we landed here because Pluto was the nearest solid place to where we burned off our jet— and that's the truth!"

The Red Peri's glance was faintly speculative. "I don't see," she said thoughtfully, "that it makes much difference. If you're telling the truth, it simply means that you're a very unlucky expedition, because I certainly can't let you go, and I haven't any particular desire to keep you here. In other words, it still looks very much as if you were destined to die." She paused. "What are your names?"

"This is Smithsonian's Professor Solomon Nestor," he said, "and I'm Frank Keene, radiation engineer."

Her green eyes shifted to the old man. "I've heard of Solomon Nestor," she observed slowly. "I really shouldn't like to kill him, but I don't see exactly what other course is open." She flashed her gaze back to Keene. "Do you?" she asked coolly.

"You could take our words not to give out any information," he grunted.

She laughed. "The Red Peri trusts very little to promises," she retorted. "Anyway, would you give your word to that?"

For a full half minute he stared into her mocking eyes. "I wouldn't," he said at last. "When I entered the Smithsonian's service I took their usual oath to uphold the law in the far places. Maybe many of their explorers consider that oath just so many words; I know some of them have found wealth at the expense of the institute. But I keep my oaths."

The Red Peri laughed again. "No matter," she said indifferently. "I wouldn't trust my safety to any one's word. But the question of your disposal still remains!' She smiled with a faint hint of malice. "Would you prefer to die instantly, or do you think you can stand the torture of suspense while I check your story and think it over? Because frankly, I think it will he necessary to kill you anyway. I see no alternative."

"We'll wait," said Keene stolidly.

"Very well." She flipped away the stub of her cigarette, crossed her dainty legs, and said, "Another, Elza."

Keene looked sharply at the yellow-haired girl as she held a light to the cigarette. There was something dimly inimical in her manner, as if she were struggling to suppress a hatred, a hidden enmity.

She withdrew the flame with an abrupt, irritable gesture.

"That's all," said the green-eyed leader. "I'll lock you up somewhere until I'm ready."

"Wait a minute," said Keene. "Now will you answer a few of my questions?"

She shrugged. "Perhaps."

"Are you the only Red Peri?"

"The one and only," she smiled. "Why?"

"Because you must have been born like Lao-tse at the age of eighty, then. These raids have been going on for fifteen years, and you're not a day over seventeen. Or did you start your career of piracy at the age of two?

"I'm nineteen," she said coolly.

"Oh. You began at four, I suppose."

"Never mind. Any further questions?"

"Yes. Who designed your ship, the Red Peri?"

"A very clever designer," she said, and then murmured softly, "a very clever one."

"He must have been!" snapped Keene angrily.

"He was. Have you anything else to ask?"

"You haven't answered one question so far," he growled. "But here's another. What do you think will happen when the Limbo doesn't arrive in Nivia when due? Don't you know that the next government rocket will be out to look for us? And don't you realize that they'll look for us first on Pluto? Your base here is bound to be discovered, and if you murder us it'll go just that much harder with you."

The Red Peri laughed. "That isn't even a good bluff," she said. "Titan isn't a quarter of the way between the Earth and Pluto, and it's getting farther from us every day. The next conjunction of Saturn and Pluto is fifty years in the future, and about the only time your clumsy rockets can make the jump is at conjunction. You ought to know that.

"And what's more, by the time you're missed, there won't be a thing to do but give you up as lost, and you'll not be the first Smithsonian expedition to be lost. And finally, if they did send out a searching party, how would they expect to find you? By blind reckoning?"

"By radio!" grunted Keene.

"Oh. And have you a radio on the Limbo ?" she asked gently.

He groaned and subsided. Of course there was no radio on the little expeditionary rocket; all its precious space was occupied by fuel, food, and necessary equipment, and besides, what possible use could a radio be to explorers out in the lonely vastness of extraplanetary space? The nearest settlement, Nivia on Titan, was hundreds of millions of miles beyond range of the most powerful beam yet developed.

The Red Peri knew as well as he how utterly hopeless was the expectation of any search for himself and Nestor. They'd simply be given up, called martyrs to science, regretted by the few experimenters who were interested in their results, and then forgotten,

"Any more questions?" asked the flaming-haired one inoctingly.

Keene shrugged, but suddenly and unexpectedly old Solomon Nestor spoke. "That entrance," he squeaked irrelevantly, pointing to the arch of the cave. "How do you keep the air here from rushing out?"

Keene whirled and stared in amazement. It was true; the cave was open to the frigid, airless outdoors; he could see the dusky Plutonian twilight through an unglassed, unblocked archway.

"At least that question is sensible," said the Red Peri. "We do it with a field."

"A field!" echoed Keene. "What sort—"

"You've asked enough questions," she cut in tartly. "I answer no more." She turned. "Elza, take these two into any unoccupied room with a metal door. If they're hungry, send them food. That's all."

She rose without a glance at the prisoners. Keene's eyes followed the exquisitely graceful figure as she trod as lightly as if she walked an Earthly corridor, followed by the five men who remained. Her radiant hair glowed far down the length of the passage until she turned aside and vanished.

He and Nestor followed the flaxen-haired Elza, and behind them, grimly silent, came the two men who had first appeared with her. She led them past a number of niches, side aisles, and several obviously artificial chambers. The cavern seemed to stretch indefinitely into the depths of the Plutonian mountain, and was undubitably a natural cave, though here and there the floor or walls showed signs of human workmanship. At last the girl indicated a chamber to the right, and they entered a small room, furnished comfortably enough with an aluminum chair, a table, and two couches. These last were covered with deep and gloriously beautiful brocades, beyond doubt plunder from some freighter's cargo.

"This is yours," said Elm, and turned toward the door. She paused. "Are you hungry?" she asked.

"No," said Keene. He saw the two men standing in the corridor, and lowered his voice. "But will you talk to us a while, Elza? Alone?"

"Why?"

"I'd like to ask you something."

"What is it?"

He dropped his voice to a whisper. "You hate the Red Peri don't you, Elza? As much as we do?"

She turned abruptly to the door. "Father," she said evenly, "will you and Basil bring something to eat? I'll stay here; you can bolt the door on us."

There was a murmur without.

"Hush!" she said. "You heard. These two are gentlemen." The door closed and she faced them. "Well?"

"Can we be heard here?" asked Keene, glancing around the rock-walled chamber.

"Of course not. The Peri has no need to spy on her followers. She's clever enough to read men's feelings in their glances and the tone of their voices."

"Then she must know you hate her, Elza."

"I haven't said that I hate her."

"But you do. Does she know it?"

"I hope not."

"But you just said that she could read—"

"I said men," cut in the flaxen-haired girl.

Keene chuckled. "Why do you hate her, Elza?"

Her blue eyes hardened. "I will not say."

"Well, it doesn't matter, I suppose." He shrugged. "Elza, is there any chance of our escaping? Would you help us to— say, to steal the Red Peri? Our own ship's useless."

"They've gone to repair it. As for the Red Peri, I don't think you could operate it. It doesn't control like your rocket. I don't know how to run it."

"I could make a good try at it," said Keene grimly. "It would have to be the Red Peri anyway. They could run the Limbo down in three hours and blast it." A thought struck him. "Unless we could cripple the Red Peri first."

"I don't see how you could," said Elza. "She has the key to it hidden somewhere. And how could you even reach it? The space suits are locked up, too. You can't even step beyond the entrance."

That brought a new thought. "How do they seal the air at the entrance, Elm?"

"I don't understand how."

Solomon Nestor spoke. "I know that. She said they used a field. She meant—"

"Never mind now," said Keene. "Elza, are there any others here that might— well, side with us against the Peri?"

"No men. All of them worship her and"— her face darkened —"half of them love her."

"For which you can hardly blame them," muttered Keene. "She's about as lovely a female devil as you'd find this side of hell. Still, one would think she'd have some enemies, if only because of her cruel nature."

"She isn't cruel," said Elm reluctantly. "She's ruthless and arrogant and proud, but she isn't cruel— not exactly. I don't think she really enjoys torture."

"Well, her green eyes look cruel enough. Say, Elza, that dark fellow she called Marco. What of him?"

The girl flushed. "He's Marco Grandi. Why do you ask me about him?"

"Because he looks like a sly, calculating, shrewd customer, and there's a big reward for the Peri. I thought we might work on him."

Elm's flush darkened to anger. "He's— he's wonderful!" she blazed. "And if you think money would tempt him— or any of us— you're wrong. Each of us has a dozen times the amount of the reward."

Keene saw his error. "I'm sorry," he said hastily. "After all. I just caught a glimpse of him." He paused. "Does he, by any chance, love the Red Peri?"

She winced. "He's no different in that way than the rest."

"I see. But you— perhaps— wish that he were different— in that way?"

Elza brushed a white hand across her face. "All right," she said sullenly. "I love him. I admit it. That's why I hate her. He's dazzled; he thinks she'll learn to care for him; he can't see how utterly heartless and indifferent she is. That's why I'll do what ever I can to hurt her, but nothing to endanger him. If I help you, you must swear to protect him. If you escape, you must swear to that."

"I'll swear to it, but— can you help us?"

"I don't know. I'll try. I don't think she really wants to kill you, or she'd have blasted you there in the corridor. It isn't her way to hesitate and temporize and think things over. But you are a problem to her."

"That's good news," said Keene. "Say, how many residents are there in this pirate's paradise?"

"A hundred and five, including the children."

"A hundred and— Lord! This must be a pretty well established colony. How old is it?"

"Sixteen years. Her father built it, and it's almost self-supporting. There are gardens off in the side passages." She frowned. "I've lived here since I was four. I'm twenty now."

"And have you never seen the Earth?" Keene saw a chance now to offer more tangible inducement for aid. "Elza, you've missed the most glorious planet in the system— green fields and white snow, great cities and rolling, blue oceans, life, people, gaiety—"

"I went to school there for five years, at Gratia," she interposed coolly. "Don't you suppose we all visit there? Only of late the Peri has refused to let me go. I— I suppose she suspects."

"If we escape," said Keene softly, "you'll be free to live there forever. There will be life and happiness for you, Elza, once this pirate queen is taken and her band destroyed."

"Destroyed?" Her face paled again. "Not Marco. Not my father and my brother Basil. You promise me that. Promise it!"

"I'll promise. All I want is to bring the Red Peri to justice. I don't care about the rest, but— he rubbed his nose—"I've a little score to settle with her. Just the Red Peri herself."

A knock sounded. "Elza!" came a voice.

"Yes, father. Unlock the door and I'll take the tray." She turned.

"But you'll help?" whispered Keene. "With the Red Peri gone, you and Marco— do you understand, Elza? Will you help— just against her?"

"To my last breath!" she whispered.

iii

KEENE woke with a sense of unaccustomed luxury, and for a moment was at a loss to account for it. Then he realized that it was the sweetness of the air, strange to his nostrils after so many months of an atmosphere that, despite the hard-working rectifiers of the Limbo , was anything but sweet. He wondered casually where the Red Peri secured her colony's supply of oxygen.

The Red Peri! He sat up sharply at the memory of the fantastically lovely pirate princess, for despite the reassurance of the girl Elza, he mistrusted the intentions behind the Peri's mocking green eyes. He rose, fumbled for the light switch, and glanced at his wrist watch. Though night and day were one in the cavern, he perceived that Pluto's ten-hour night was past, and that whatever daylight the black planet enjoyed was trickling over it.

Old Nestor still slept. Keene pulled a hanging aside and found water in a tiny pool; he bathed and pulled on the shirt, shorts, and shoes that were the only clothing he possessed. He ran his hand over his sandy, one-day beard, but his razor was inaccessably remote on the Limbo . Then he turned to see old Solomon's pale-blue eyes blinking at him.

"Morning," he grunted. "Glad to see we weren't murdered in our sleep by our pleasant hostess."

Solomon Nestor nodded. "I haven't slept so well since we left Nivia," he quavered. "Fresh air is a blessing."

"Yes. Wonder where she gets it."

"Mines it, I don't doubt," said Nestor. "There are millions of tons of it frozen out on the surface."

"That's true."

"And," continued the old man, "did you notice anything queer about it?"

"No, except that it smells good and fresh."

"I did. When that yellow-haired girl— Elza— lighted the Peri's cigarettes, did you notice the cast of the flame? Purple, distinctly purple."

"So what?"

"Why, it means neon. Nitrogen is scarce here; Hervey and Caspari both said that, and so they use neon as their filler. No one can breathe pure oxygen, and neon is a good substitute for nitrogen, nearly the same density, and absolutely inert and nonpoisonous. That's important to remember. It may help us."

"Help us?"'

The old man waggled his head. "You'll see."

"Say," asked Keene suddenly, "what is the explanation of the cave entrance? We walked right through it— vacuum on one side, air on the other. She said they did it with a field remember?"

"I remember. She meant an electrostatic field. You know that like charges repel, and the molecules of air, battering against the field, acquire the same charge. They're repelled; they can't cross the field. It's like the electric wind from a static discharge, but here the wind that tries to blow in just balances the wind that tries to go out. Result, no wind either way."

"But we walked through it. Motion through a field produces a current. I didn't feel any."

"Of course not. You didn't walk through at a mile per second like a gas molecule, did you? Whatever current your motion produced was instantly grounded through your body and space suit, which are conductors. Air at normal pressure is a very poor conductor, so it retains its charge. Gases do retain static charges, as witness ball lightning."

"I see," muttered Keene. "Clever. Better than an air lock as far as convenience goes, though heat must radiate away through the field. But if they use atomic heat, they can afford a little waste."

"There'd be less loss there," said Nestor, "than to the rock walls. Heat could radiate, true enough, but it couldn't escape by conduction. A vacuum is the best heat insulator there is; look at our thermos containers on the Limbo . Radiation at temperatures below red heat is a very slow process. And remember that, too."

"I will," grunted Keene, "but right now I'm remembering that we have had no breakfast. Do you suppose her method of execution is slow starvation?" He strode over to the door and pounded vigorously on it. "Hey! Hey, out there!"

There was no response. Irritably, he seized the knob and rattled it, and almost fell backward as the door swung smoothly open. It was unbarred!

"I'll be hanged!" he exploded. He peered into the deserted corridor. "Do you suppose this is Elza's doing?"

"If it is, it's not much help," said old Solomon.

"No. All the same, I'm going to take a look around. Come on; perhaps we can find some space suits."

"You'd need the key to the Red Peri, too, or at least the key to the Limbo , if they've locked it. I think"— old Nestor's brow wrinkled—"I'll sit right here and figure out something I've been thinking of. Even old heads sometimes get ideas."

"Suit yourself," grunted Keene, with very little faith in the potential ideas of the impractical old scientist. He strode boldly into the passageway.

There was no one visible. He turned left and proceeded toward the entrance of the cavern. Ahead of him a figure came suddenly out of an aisle— a feminine figure. He recognized the girl Elza, carrying a bright aluminum spade, and called her name softly.

She turned. "Hello," she said briefly, as he fell into step beside her.

"Been burying some pirate treasure, Elza?"

"No. Just some seeds in the garden."

"Did you unlock our door?" he asked.

"I? Yes. The Peri ordered it unlocked."

"Ordered it! Why?"

"Why not? Can you escape from here?" She gestured at a massive metal door as they passed. "Behind that is her room, and behind another within it are the space suits and the keys to both ships. You're as much a prisoner as ever."

"I know, but isn't she afraid— well, of violence? We could kill her."

"She isn't afraid of anything," said Elza. "Anyway, what good would killing her do? It would be simply committing suicide."

"That's true," said Keene. They were approaching the entrance with its invisible electrostatic seal; now they stood staring out over the dismal, black, airless, Plutonian valley, where a thousand feet away was the dark cylinder of the Limbo . Suddenly a flare of light appeared beside it, flashed a moment, then vanished.

"What's that?" he asked sharply.

"Father's out there welding your jet. She thinks she may have a use for your ship."

"For what?"

"I don't know. It has exactly the lines of a League guard rocket. Perhaps she plans to use it as a decoy."

"And perhaps," said a cool voice behind them, "as a flying mausoleum with you two among the occupants."

They whirled. The Red Peri was approaching with her steps muffled by the soft buskins on her feet; besides her stalked Marco Crandi. Keene did not fail to note Elza's flush as she met the gaze of the dark man, but he felt a surge of anger at himself as he realized that his own face was reddening under the green eyes and mocking smile of the red-haired girl. He spat angrily, "You're a pleasant player when you hold all the cards!"

She said only, "Have you eaten breakfast?"

"No."

"Well, perhaps that explains your ill temper. Elza, go order a tray for two sent to my room, and one to Professor Nestor. And you, Marco— suppose you leave me."

"Here with him?"

She laughed and tapped an automatic at her belt. "I can take care of myself. Do you doubt it? You can go, Marco."

He muttered, "Yes, commander," and backed reluctantly away. The Red Peri turned her glorious, taunting eyes on Keene, smiled again, and said, "I've checked over your ship. Your story's straight enough."

"Well? What about us, then?'

"Oh, I haven't decided. You may have to die; it's more than likely that you will, but with no malice on my part. Purely as a matter of convenience, you understand."

He grunted. "Why'd you have our door unlocked?"

"Why not? I'm sure you can't escape. Look here." She took the bright aluminum spade Elza had placed against the wall, and thrust it half through the field into the airless outdoors beyond. He stared at it; except for a slight change in color as its crystals rearranged under the slow radiation of its heat, it seemed unaltered. When the knuckles of her dainty hand began to whiten with the cold of the metal, she tossed the implement on the floor at her feet.

Now it changed. Instantly white frost formed on the part that had been exposed; glittering crystals grew an inch thick, fuzzy covering, and began to spread along the handle. They sprang out as swift as the second hand on a watch, an inch— two inches deep.

The Peri laughed. "Would you like to stroll outside?" she gibed. "It's not cold— just ten above zero. Above absolute zero, I mean. Cold enough to liquefy and freeze all gases but hydrogen and helium. How long do you think it would take to freeze that hot blood and hotter head of yours?"

"Bah!" he said. "What's to keep me now from overpowering you, dragging you into some room, and using you as hostage to bargain for our safety?"

"If you could," she retorted coolly. "Even then it would be a poor idea; if you killed me your own death would follow very soon and very painfully; if you didn't, I'd never be bound to any promises you wrung from the others. Your wisest course is to leave things as they are until I decide what to do with you. And incidentally," she added, with a narrowing of her green eyes, "don't pin your faith on Elza."

"On— Elza?" He was startled. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, I know she hates me. She's in love with Marco, or fancies so. I amuse myself by tormenting her, and I suspect that she'd go to some lengths for revenge, but she's quite as helpless as you. As a matter of fact, I'm doing her a good turn, for Marco is not particularly honorable. So I save her and insure his loyalty to me, all with one stroke."

"You— devil!" Keene gasped. "If there's one thing I'd like above all else, it's to drag you to justice. Ever since that day on the Aardkin—"

"When I pinched your nose?" she queried sweetly. "Here, then." With a rapid snap of her hand she twisted the same member with painful violence, laughed into his exasperated face, and turned away. "Come on," she ordered. "Here's breakfast."

"I'll be damned if I'll eat with you!" he snarled.

She shrugged. "As you like. This is all the breakfast you'll get, I promise you."

After all, breakfast was breakfast— he growled and followed her to the massive metal door; as it swung open he forgot a part of his anger in sheer amazement at the luxury of her chamber.

She had, apparently, culled the prize plunder of a score of raids to furnish this room. There were deep, silken rugs on the floor, rich tapestries, paintings from the salon of some luxurious Venusian liner, delicately worked aluminum furniture, even a carved mirror whose utter perfection must have originated in the incomparable lost art of Mars.

The man who bore the breakfast tray placed it silently on a table and withdrew. Here was another surprise. Eggs! And fresh ones, too, judging by the smell.

"Oh, we have a few chickens," said the Red Peri, reading his glance. "Enough to supply me, at least. Feeding them is rather a problem, you see."

Keene remembered his anger in time to reply with an irritable "humph!" For a moment he wondered why the exquisite presence of the Peri should affect him so violently, for he realized that much of his irritation was directed at himself. But of one thing he was certain, and that was that his most ardent desire was to humble the arrogant, self-sufficient, proud, and mocking pirate princess, to see her pay the assigned penalty for her crimes.

Then he frowned. Was be anxious to see her punished? What he really wanted was simply to see her arrogance and insolence humbled, to see her— well, frightened, or pleading with him, as a sort of recompense for the contemptuous way in which she treated him.

She spoke. "You're a silent table partner," she observed, "and yet I'm rather glad you two blundered in. I was getting frightfully tired and bored; I was considering paying a little visit to civilization."

"I suppose you realize," he growled, "that if we ever get back to Earth, your little visits are over. I'd be very glad to furnish a full description of the Red Peri."

"And do you think I'm the only red-head alive?"

"You're probably the most beautiful, and you know it."

She laughed contemptuously. "Keene, if you think you can play the sophisticated giver of compliments to my innocence, think again. I've been around. I've spend enough time in London, Paris and New York to know the social game. In fact, I have a carefully built-up identity there; my terrestrial friends think I live on Venus. So don't try what they call a fish net on me."

Her words gave him an idea. "Fish net?" he echoed with a deliberate air of sadness. "No. It's just that I have the misfortune to be about half in love with you, while the other half is pure hatred." Suddenly he wondered how much of a lie that really was.

She laughed again. "I half believe you."

"Which half?"

"Never mind. But," she added derisively, "whichever half it is, remember that it takes a better man than you to win the Red Peri's love."

"I didn't say I wanted it!" he snapped. "All you are to me is a vicious law breaker, and all I want is the chance to see you taken."

"Which you'll never have," she returned coolly. She leaned back in her chair and slipped a cigarette from a box. "Smoke?" she asked.

It was in the nature of a peace offering. He accepted both the truce and the cigarette, and puffed with thorough enjoyment.

"Keene," said the Peri, "would you like to see our establishment?"

He nodded. If the girl were proffering friendship, or at least tolerance, he was in no position to refuse it while she held the upper hand. But he would not accept it under false colors.

"Listen," he said, "there are lots of things I like about you. You've plenty of courage, and you've the devil's own beauty. But get this. If I see any chance of escape or any chance to capture you, I'm taking it. Is that plain?"

She nodded. "Keene, if you ever outwit the Red Peri, you're welcome to your winnings. But you never will."

She rose, and he followed her into the stone-walled corridor, glancing briefly at the mysterious archway with its invisible electrostatic seal.

"If your power ever failed," he said, "what would happen to your air here?"

"It won't fail. It's generated directly from disintegration. No moving parts at all. But if it should"— she gestured to the cavern roof—"there's an emergency air door. It will close instantly if there's any appreciable outward current. There's plenty of power to retain our atmosphere; we only keep a pressure of eleven to twelve pounds,"

"About the same as the altitude of Denver," he muttered as he followed her. "Prepared for anything, aren't you?"

He was really impressed by the neat little gardens in the side aisles, raised on Plutonian soil carefully selected for the proper elements. "But nitrogen is a troublesome job," she explained. "There's little of it to be had, and what there is is all mixed with frozen argon. We fractionate it, and then form ammonia, and so finally get it into usable form."

"I know the process," he said.

They penetrated deeper into the series of caverns that pierced the black Plutonian mountain. The fluorolux lights were fewer now, and there were long stretches of dim side passages with no lights at all.

"They're sealed off," said the Peri. "We're approaching the seal of the main cavern now. Do you see where it narrows ahead there? That's an electrostatic seal, but the side passages are blocked with concrete to keep out the crystal crawlers."

"The crystal crawlers!" echoed Keene. He had almost forgotten those curious creatures of the plutonian Salley. "Why don't they come through the electrostatic seal?"

"They do, but they seldom get far. You'll see why."

"What are the things?" he asked. "Are they alive? No one — Atsuki or Hervey or Caspari— ever reported them."

"I think they originated in these caverns. This whole region is honey- combed, and those in the valley are just strays. Explorers wouldn't be apt to encounter them."

"But are they alive?" he persisted.

"No-o-o," said the Red Peri slowly. "Not exactly alive. They're— well— on the borderline. They're chemical-crystalline growths, and their movement is purely mechanical. There are half a dozen varieties— aluminum feeders and iron and silicon and sulphur feeders, and others." She smiled impishly. "I have a use for at least one sort. Do you remember, or did you notice, the safe of the Aardkin? An iron feeder comes in very handy at times."

He grunted; somehow it pained him to hear the girl refer to her piratical activities. Before he could make any other reply they came suddenly into a large natural cavern beyond which showed the narrow opening which the Peri had indicated as the place of the electrostatic seal. A single light shed a dim radiance from far above, and in the faint luminosity he perceived a narrow, deep gash, a gorge or pit, that crossed the chamber irons wall to wall and even split the walls in dark tunnels to right and left.

"Here is our crawler trap," said the girl. She indicated a curious span across the chasm, a single heavy girder of metal that bridged the twenty-foot gap in four sharp zigzags. A precariously narrow bridge; the girder was no more than twelve inches in width.

"Copper!" he said.

"Yes. Apparently there are no such things as copper feeders to destroy our bridge. Do you see how the trap works? The crystal crawlers have no eyes nor sense of touch; they just crawl. The chances are infinitely against any of them moving at the proper angles to cross the gap. They go crashing down and crawl away below; although one blundered across once.

"Most of them aren't dangerous except to whatever they feed on." She gestured. "Beyond the seal is our air supply. There's a regular frozen subterranean sea of neon, argon, and oxygen, and we can draw on it almost forever. Don't you want to cross over and look at it?"

Keene stepped to the brink of the chasm and peered down. It was deep; the light from above trickled away into a mysterious darkness where only a few faint sparkles responded— crystals, doubtless, for a slow flicker of movement showed. He scowled at the precarious slenderness of the copper zigzag, and then, cautiously, he abandoned dignity, dropped to his knees, and crept slowly across on all fours.

It was only when he reached the far side and stood erect that he became conscious of the Peri's contemptuous sniff of laughter, and turned to see her walk casually and steadily across the angling span, balancing as easily as if she trod a wide roadway. He flushed a slow red; the girl had nerves of steel, true enough, but he realized she had done this as a deliberate taunt.

She strode to the narrow opening, where he now perceived the ring of copper points whence issued the electrostatic field, and above, on the roof, a suspended emergency lock like that at the outer arch. "There," she said, pointing. "You can see it."

He squinted into the darkness. A dozen feet away, the passage seemed to widen again, but into such a vast hollow that tile light from behind him failed utterly to show its bounds. But dimly and faintly as a sea of ectoplasm, he made out a shimmering, illimitable expanse of white, a vast subterranean drift of Pluto's fossil air.

"There goes the pipe to it," said the Peri. "We can get all we need by the simple process of heat, but now and then we have to lengthen the pipe. That's why this end of our colony is sealed by electrostatic. Oh! O-o-oh!"

She broke off in a startled scream. Keene whirled; the cave floor between the two of them and the bridge was covered with a rustling, irregular parade of blackish crystals!

"What's the matter!" he gasped. "We can kick them aside." He moved as if to do so.

"No!" cried the Pea. She seized his arm, dragging him back. "They're carbon feeders! Don't you understand? They're carbon feeders! Your body has carbon. They're— Look out!"

iv

KEENE started back, realizing that a gray-black, flat- crystalled, dully shining lump was almost at his feet. He stared at the crawling masses; they had come, apparently, from beyond a jutting wall of rock to his right. The floor was speckled everywhere with them, and now and again one slipped with a faint tinkle over the edge of the central pit. But there were hundreds more; one couldn't wait here until the floor had cleared. He skipped aside; another had silently approached almost to his feet.

He acted. Suddenly he seized the Peri, raised her bodily in his arms, and dashed in an angling, irregular course for the bridge. The girl squirmed and said, "Put me—" Then she lay very still as he picked his way as delicately as a dancer, sidestepping, skipping, twisting, to the copper spars— and over it. Half running, he took the four sharp angles, and at last, breathless, he set the Peri on the rock on the far side.

She looked coolly up at him. "Well!" she said calmly. "Why did you do that?"

"That's pretty thanks for it!" he snapped.

"Don't you think I could have done as well?" she retorted. "I asked you why you did it"

"Because—" He paused. Why had he done it? He suddenly realized that he had no desire to see the exquisite Peri die. To see her humbled, yes. Even to see her punished— but not to see her die. "It was pure impulse," he finished grimly. "If I had thought a second or two, I'd have left you to die."

"Liar!" she said, but smiled. "Well, I thank you for your intentions, though I could have done quite as well alone. But you're very strong, and— Frank!" Her voice rose. "Your foot! Your shoe! Quickly!"

He blinked down. Scarcely visible on the leather, a grayish-black coating of crystals was spreading, and almost immediately came a prickling pain in his toe. With a growling oath he kicked violently. The skin buskin went sailing in an arc over the pit, to fall squarely among the crawlers. Instantly it was a fuzzy mass of needlelike crystals.

The Peri was on her knees. "Your toe!" she wailed. Swift as a serpent she planted her own dainty foot firmly upon the arch of his. From somewhere she snatched a tiny, jeweled penknife, its blade flashing sharp as a razor. Still resting her full weight on his foot, she cut.

Despite his bellow of pain and surprise, she sliced away half his toenail and a goodly strip of skin beneath, kicked the bloody strip into the pit, examined her own pink toes for a moment, and faced Keene. For the first time in their acquaintance she seemed shaken; her wild, green eyes were wide with concern.

But it passed instantly. "Fool!" she snapped. "Fool!"

He was staring aghast at his bleeding toe. "Good Lord!" he muttered. "That was a narrow escape. Well— I'm not so sparing in my thanks as you. I say thanks for it."

"Bah! Do you think I want carbon feeders on this side of the pit? That's why I did it!"

"You could have pushed me into the pit, then," he retorted. "And I wish I had!" she snapped. She turned abruptly, and padded, barefooted, up the cavern toward the colony.

Keene shifted his remaining buskin to his injured foot and limped after. He was in a turmoil of emotions. There was something splendid about this pirate princess, something more than the simple fact of her exquisite and fantastic beauty. He swore angrily to himself for even admitting it, but limped hastily until he caught her.

"What's your name?" he asked abruptly.

"If you need a name to address me," she said coldly, "let it be commander."

"The only person I'll call commander is one I'm willing to serve, and that'll never be the Red Peri."

She glanced sidewise at him. "What's a name, anyway?" she asked in altered tosses. "See here. You're Frank Keene, but you're neither keen enough to outwit me nor frank enough to admit you love me."

"Love you!" he snorted. "Love you! Why—" He broke off suddenly. "Even if it were true," he went on, "do you think I'd have anything to do with a pirate, a murderess? However I felt, I'd still exert every effort to bring you to justice. How many deaths have you caused? How much suffering?"

"I don't know," she said. "But murder? I never killed anybody except in sheer self defense."

"So you say. What about the atrocities on the Hermes ?"

She looked up at him. "Frank," she said softly, "I had nothing to do with the Hermes . Don't you realize that people blame everything on the Red Peri? Every captain who suffers from some sneaking little freebooter blames me for it. Why, I'd need a hundred ships to commit all the crimes they've pinned on me."

"But you're a pirate, nevertheless."

"Yes, but I have my reasons. I have, Frank. And— Oh, why should I justify myself to you, anyway? I don't care what you think of me."

"All the same," he growled, "I'll tell you what I think. I think your parents should have given you a series of good spankings. You're nothing but a spoiled, reckless, dangerous child."

"My parents," she echoed.

"Yes. Do you think they'd he proud of you now?"

"I hope," she said slowly, "that one of them would be." She paused at the door of her chamber, unlocking it. "Come in here," she ordered sharply.

He followed her into the lavish interior. She disappeared into an adjacent room, returning in a moment with a bottle and a strip of gauze. "Here," she said. "Dress your toe."

"It's nothing. It needs no dressing."

"Dress it!" she snapped. "I want no cases of infection here."

"I might"— he observed as he took the bottle—"die of the infection and thus save you a murder."

Her green eyes seemed to soften. "Remember this, Frank," she said in a low voice. "I could have let you die back there at the edge of the pit. I could have, but I didn't."

He had no answer. For a moment he gazed thoughtfully at the exquisite delicacy of her face, and then, irrelevantly, he asked again, "What is your name?"

She smiled. "Peri," she said.

"Really? Peri what? That's a strange name."

"Yes. It's the Persian word for imp or elf."

"I know. I've worked in Iraq. But it means more than just that; it's the name given to the child of a disobedient angel, waiting to he admitted into paradise."

Her features grew suddenly wistful. "Yes," she murmured. "Waiting to be admitted into paradise."

"But Peri what?" he repeated.

She hesitated. "If I told you," she said slowly, "you might understand. I think I will tell you, Frank. Did you ever hear of Perry Maclane?"

He frowned. "Perry Maclane," he muttered. "I— think so. Wait a minute. Do you mean Red Perry Maclane, the inventor who had the famous legal battle with Interplanetary? But that was years ago, years and years. I was a child of seven or eight; you must scarcely have been born."

"I was just born. Perry Maclane was my father."

"Red Perry your father? And— the ship! I see— Red Peri , named after him."

"Named by him, after me. He built it. He built it purposely to be a pirate craft, and you can't blame him!"

"Can't blame him! Why not?"

"Listen to me, Frank." Her glorious eyes were intense and serious. "Perry Maclane was robbed by Interplanetary and their associates. Do you know how dangerous space travel used to be, twenty-five or thirty years ago? Even fifty years after the first colonies were founded on Venus, it was a gamble with death to travel there.

"Trade was all but impossible; because the rocket blasts kept failing, and ships kept crashing in trying to land, or even plunged into the Sun. And then the thermoid expansion chamber was developed; the blasts became steady, safe, usable. Trade was possible, and Interplanetary became an enormous, wealthy corporation. But do you know who invented the expansion chamber? Do you?"

"Perry Maclane did! He invented it and patented it. But Interplanetary wouldn't let a little thing like honor stand in their way. They copied the patent; they claimed one of their engineers had developed the chamber first; they fought the case through every court, and at last they fought Perry Maclane out of money, and won. It took four years to do it; and as the last year I was born and my mother died; and Perry Maclane was ruined.

"But he didn't give up. He worked at anything he could find— he, the greatest rocket engineer in the world! He dug sewers and planned drainage systems; he did any sort of work, but meanwhile, all the time, he was carrying the idea of revenge.

"Evenings he worked on the plans of such a ship as no one had dreamed of, a rocket with inherent stability, one that could flash through gravitational fields as easily as through interplanetary space, instead of teetering down on its jets, wobbling and compensating and inching lower. And when he had it— I was three then— he found those who supplied money to build it.

"He wasn't the only man Interplanetary had ruined; others hated the corporation, too. So he built the Red Peri, and began raiding corporation ships. He had no trouble manning his ship; he could have had a thousand men; but he picked and chose among the best for his crew.

"At first he worked out of the Australian desert as a base, but that became dangerous. He thought of the Moon, and of an asteroid; but at last, because he had a ship to which planetary distances meant nothing, he came here to build his colony. Save for the years I spent at school, I've lived here ever since."

"But what of Red Perry Maclane?" asked Keene.

"He was killed three years ago. Do you remember when Interplanetary's Captain Thorsen of the Lucrece shot one of the pirates? That was my father; he died and was buried as he wanted to be— in space. It was I who killed Thorsen, with my own hand as he shot at me."

He stared at her. Those were certainly tears in the glorious, emerald eyes. "Peri," he said softly, "but what will he the end of it? Arc you going on all your life pursuing revenge for your father? You're not really hurting Interplanetary, you know; they carry insurance. But you are slowing down the development of the planets. It's come to a point where people are actually afraid to travel."

"Good!" she flashed. "Then it's less trade and fewer fares to swell the coffers of Interplanetary."

"But— good heavens, Peri! With a design like that of your ship you could make millions legitimately!"

"Oh, of course!" she retorted sarcastically. "Just as my father did from the thermoid expansion chamber."

There was no answer to that. He shook his head sadly. "Then do you intend to live out your life as a pirate until you're finally captured, or until you die out here on this miserable black planet?"

"I do not. I intend to carry out the plans of Red Perry Maclane. He wasn't fighting out of blind passion, you know. He built up his organization, here and on Earth, for a single purpose. Little by little, the plunder we take from Interplanetary goes back to Earth, to be turned into cash and securities, in banks in New York, London, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo. When I have enough— and a hundred million dollars will be enough— do you know what I'll do?"

"I don't, Peri." His eyes were glued to her tense, lovely face.

"Then listen!" she said fiercely. "I'll open a line competing with Interplanetary. I'll build ships like the Red Peri, and I'll drive their corporation to ruin! I'll have them groveling and begging, but this time I'll have money enough so they can't fight with crooked lawyers and bribed judges. I'll annihilate them!"

For a long time he stared at her strange loveliness, her wild, green eyes and flaming hair. "Oh, Peri!" he said at last, in tones of sadness. "Don't you see how insane such a plan is? Don't you know that once you produce the design of this ship, you'll be known as the pirate? No one else knows of it."

"I don't care!" she blazed. "The law can't touch anyone with a hundred million dollars. My father learned that from Interplanetary." And at his continued silence, she snapped, "Your advice would be to take it lying down, I suppose. I prefer to fight."

"But you don't have to declare war on the whole Earth on account of an injury done your father."

"War on the Earth? I haven't. But"— her green eyes glowed fiercely—"if I ever should, I could give them such a war as they never dreamed of!"

"What do you mean, Peri?"

"I'll tell you! Suppose I were to take one of those carbon feeders, like the ones that nipped your toe. Suppose I took just one tiny Crystal and dropped it in the jungles of Africa or in Middle Europe or in the wheat belt of America. All life has carbon in it. What would happen to the pretty, green Earth, Frank? What would happen to the crooked lawyers and the bribed judges, and all the rest, honest and dishonest, right up to the heads of Interplanetary itself?"

"My Lord!" he said.

"Can't you see the crystal crawlers rustling their way along?" she cried. "Wheat fields, houses, horses, humans!"

"Listen!" he said huskily. "Do you know what I ought to do? I know what my duty is. It's to kill you, right now and here, while I've got you alone. Otherwise that mad and reckless spirit of yours may some day drive you to do just that. I ought to strangle you now, but— by heavens— I can't!"

All the passion drained suddenly from her face, leaving it alluringly wistful. "I'm glad you said those last two words, Frank," she murmured. "Look." She raised her arms; he saw her hand resting firmly on the butt of her revolver. "Would it please you," she asked softly, "if I promised you never to think again of that particular revenge?"

"You know it would!"

"Then I promise. And now, tell me if you still blame me for being— the Red Peri. Do you?"

"I don't know. I think— perhaps— you are justified for feeling as you do, but, Peri, it's madness."

"What would you want me to do?"

"Why— the sane course, the honorable course, would be to make restitution, to return everything you've stolen; and then to give yourself up, to expiate the wrongs you've done, and so be free to live without the need of burying yourself out here at the edge of nothingness. I don't say you could do all of that, but at least you could return what you've taken and live as you were meant to live— honorably and happily."

"Honorably and happily!" she echoed bitterly. "Yes, except for the realization that I had failed my father."

"Your father was wrong, Peri."

She blazed in sudden anger. "Oh, you're too smug and self-righteous to live. I was going to offer you your freedom; I thought you'd understand and protect me, but now do you think I dare trust you to return to Earth? Now you'll stay as my prisoner!"

"Some day," he said evenly, "I'll drag you back to justice, Peri, and after you're free you'll thank me for it."

"Get out!" she cried. "You're stupid! I hate stupidity!"

He looked quietly at her angry, exquisite face, rose, and stalked out of the door. For a moment he stood irresolute in the corridor; then he strode toward the room he shared with Solomon Nestor, ignoring the glances of a number of residents as he went. And as he opened the door, the first person he saw was the girl Elza, in close conversation with the old man.

They looked up as he entered, and the flaxen-haired girl drew away, staring at him with a curious expression in her blue eyes.

"Oh, bosh!" said the old man. "Elza, you're simply letting your imagination make you nervous. Listen, Frank— this girl came running here to tell me that you've been spending hours in the Red Peri's company, and that you were probably falling under her magic charms; and now Elza's afraid you're going to betray her to the Peri. Ridiculous, isn't it?"

"Utterly!" snapped Keene, wondering how much of it was ridiculous. He felt himself reddening, and repeated hastily, "Utterly ridiculous!"

"You see?" said old Nestor triumphantly. "All right, Elza, let's get on with this. You say you're sure you can't smuggle space suits to us?"

"I'm sure I can't. They're kept locked up by the Red Peri, and I can't get to them."

"But your father and brother wear them when they go to either ship, don't they?"

"Yes, but I wouldn't dare ask them. They'd tell the Peri. I know that."

"Well," said old Solomon thoughtfully, "if we can't get space suits, we'll have to do without. But you can get the key to one of the ships, can't you?"

"Not to the Red Peri ," said Elm. "To your ship, perhaps, because my father has that while he's working on it. I could steal it away from him, I think. He just keeps it in a desk."

"What good would the Limbo do us?" grunted Keene. "They could run us down with the other. They could blast us to bits."

"They could, but they won't," retorted the old man. "You leave this to old Solomon. Now Elza when will your father have the jet repaired?"

"I think he's finishing it now."

"And could you smuggle the key to us to-night?"

"I think so. I'll try. To-night or tomorrow."

"Good!" said Solomon Nestor. "You run along now, Elza. You'll have your revenge on the Red Peri— if you're a good girl."

The yellow-haired girl vanished. Old Nestor turned quizzical eyes on Keene and mid mockingly, "Ridiculous, eh! Utterly ridiculous!"

"What?"

"That you should be impressed by the Red Peri. How could so unattractive a being effect the redoubtable Frank Keene? Very ridiculous!"

"Oh, shut up!" growled Keene. "I admit she's beautiful, and I admit that what she told me has changed my opinion of her. All the same, I think she's arrogant and overbearing. I'm just as anxious as ever to see her take a fall, and if I can trip her, that's fine. But I don't see how the key to the Limbo helps."

"Yost will. Tell me what the Peri said to you:"

Keene recounted the story of "Red" Perry Maclane. Despite himself, he told it with a tinge of sympathy, and when, after concluding it, he described the events at the copper bridge, he was uncomfortable aware of old Nestor's steady gaze. He finished his tale and stared defiantly back.

"Well!" said the old man. "I suppose you realize that she risked her life for you— or at least the chance of having to cut off a finger or two. What if she'd touched the carbon feeders on your toe?"

"I-I hadn't thought of it."

"And now that you do think of it, are you still so bitterly determined to humble her?"

Keene considered. "Yes!" he snapped. "I am. I don't want to hurt her, but I do want to get back at her for the way she's insulted, browbeaten, and mocked me. I want to see her take a fall."

"Even though it means capture for her?"

Keene groaned. "Listen, Solomon. Right now I'm so puzzled that I'm not sure. But I do know that I want to see the Red Peri paid back for the way she's acted toward me."

"All right. I think you're in love with her, Frank, though it's none of my business."

"Damn' right it isn't!"

"But," proceeded Nestor, "just how badly do you want to do this?"

"With all my heart!"

"Would you risk your life and hers to do it?"

"My life," said Keene grimly, "but not hers."

"Good enough. Now the first thing to do is talk you out of a few superstitions."

"I haven't any."

"You have, but you don't know it. Listen, now." The old man bent closer and began to talk in a low, earnest voice. At his first words Keene paled and started; then he sat very still and very intent. After five minutes of listening, he drew a deep breath, expanding his mighty chest to the full.

"I used to plunge at the university," he said exultantly. "I could hold my breath for four minutes. I can still do three and a half!"

"That's plenty," said Nestor.

"Yes, if it works. If it works!"

"If I were you," said the old man, "I'd find out— now!"

For a full minute Keene stared at him. Suddenly he nodded, turned swiftly away, and darted out into the corridor. In five minutes he was back again, but sadly changed, for his lips were swollen, his eyes red, and his breath a rasping gurgle. But he was sniffing.

"It works!" he gasped triumphantly. "It's unadulterated hell — but it works!"

v

ELZA did not appear that night, although Keene tossed and twisted wakefully far miserable hours. In the darkness the thing he had to do appeared grotesque, fantastic, impossible; and this despite the fact that he had already tested the truth of old Solomon Nestor's reasoning. His toe ached and his lips and eyes burned, but more painful than all else was the idea of inflicting harm on the courageous and proud Red Peri.

When, well toward the end of the ten-hour Plutonian night, he finally fell into troubled slumber, it was but for a brief while, and he rose sullen and morose to pace the floor of the chamber.

The fluorolux light awakened old Nestor. For a few moments he watched the pacing Keene, and then asked, "Did Elea come?"

"No, and I hope she doesn't," snarled Keene. "I hope she couldn't get the key— and if she does get it, I'm not going through with this!"

"It's your business," said Nestor indifferently. "It doesn't mean anything to me, because I'd never live through it, not at my age. I have to stay here anyway, and I shan't mind, because Elza said they'd move my instruments into the cave; and I can work here almost as well as farther out in space. But if you love the girl so intently, why don't you act like a human being and tell her so?"

"Love her!" yelled Keene. "Just because r feel like a dirty dog at the thought of this, doesn't mean I love her! She's a girl, isn't she?"

"And a very beautiful one."

"Bah! She's a girl, and I hate to fight women!"

"Well, don't then," suggested old Solomon.

"Yet I want like the very devil to get back at her."

"Then do."

"And yet, in a way I can't blame her."

"Then don't."

Keene resuming his pacing. In another minute he stopped, faced the old man, and said defiantly, "Solomon, I can't do it. I know she's a pirate and a menace to trade and civilization, but I can't do it."

Before the other could reply, a knock sounded on the door. Keene whirled. "I hope," he muttered, "that it's breakfast— just breakfast."

It was. Elza brought it in silently, placed it on the table, and retired; and Keene felt a vast surge of relief. She hadn't managed to get the key! He was almost ready to sing until he picked up his cup of coffee and there it was— the familiar key to the outer door of the Limbo's air lock.

He met old Nestor's amused, blue eyes with a cold glare, and it was hardly softened by the other's murmur: "After all, Frank, you don't have to use it."

"I know I don't!" he snarled. "I have a fine choice, haven't I? I can stay here the rest of my life, if our hostess doesn't take a notion to kill me, or I can escape by following your scatterbrained plan of doing a thing I hate. I can't escape alone, for they'd simply run me down with their pirate ship."

"Or you could turn pirate," suggested Solomon Nestor.

"Gr-r-r!" said Keene amiably.

He was unaccustomed to this sort of agonized indecision. He had never encountered a situation that pulled so many ways at once; for in all his experience right had been right and wrong had been wrong— yet now he was not at all sure but that the laws of relativity operated in the moral field as well as in the physical. Certainly the Red Peri was not entirely in the wrong, yet equally certainly she was a pirate, a menace to progress, an antisocial being, and therefore a criminal. If she would only give up this mad purpose of hers; if she would make restitution; if she— He swore bitterly and strode out of the door, scarcely realizing that the Limbo's key was in his pocket.

He turned at random toward the outer arch of the cave. Figures in space suits were passing in and out through the electrostatic seal, and he noticed that the outgoing men were laden with cases, boxes, cans, and bundles. He stood at the very edge of the seal and stared out into the dim, nightlike morning of the black planet. Beside him a row of metal-clad figures clanked outward, their footsteps dropping to sudden silence the instant they trod into the airless outdoors. He watched them carry their burdens to the Red Peri , where an air lock swung open to admit them. They were loading the ship.

Keene stared disinterestedly, without comprehension. Then, abruptly, the meaning dawned on him. He stiffened, peered closely through narrowed eyes, and spun to accost a metal-sheathed figure that approached, Marco Grandi, for he could see the dark, aquiline features behind the visor.

"What's this?" Keene snapped. "You're cargoing the Peri. For what?"

Grandi made no answer, and Keene planted himself squarely in the other's way. "For what?" he blazed.

The metallic voice of the diaphragm clicked. "Stand aside. We're busy."

"I'll keep you busy!" he roared. "I'll— I'll—"

"You'll what?" queried the cool tones of the Peri.

Keene whirled. The girl stood at his side, clad in an all-enveloping, clinging robe of bright green that echoed the infinitely more brilliant emerald of her eyes.

"They're stocking the Red Peri !" he shouted.

"I know it."

"Why? For what purpose?"

"For purposes of business."

"Business! You mean for purposes of piracy!"

"Piracy," she said coldly, "is my business."

"It was your business, you mean!" With a great effort he controlled himself and faced the mocking, green eyes. "Peri," he said more calmly, "I want to talk to you."

"It isn't mutual."

"I want to talk to you," he repeated stubbornly, "alone." He glanced at the hostile eyes of Marco Grandi.

The Peri shrugged. "Go on out, Marco," she ordered, and then to Keene, "Well? What is it?"

"Listen," he said. "I want you to quit this business. I want you to be fair to yourself. You're capable of infinitely greater things than piracy."

"I know it. When I'm ready, I'll achieve those greater things."

"Oh, revenge!" he snapped. "Suppose you succeed. Do you think you'll be any happier?"

"And if I'm not," she countered, "what is it to you?"

He drew a deep breath. "It's a lot to me," he said soberly, "because you see, Peri, I happen to love you."

Her green eyes did not change. "What you call love," she said contemptuously, "isn't my conception. If you loved me you'd take me exactly as I am."

"I was brought up to believe in honesty, Peri"

"And I," she retorted, "was brought up to believe in honor. Red Perry Maclane's honor needs avenging, and there's none but his daughter to see to it."

Keene pounded his fist impatiently against the wall. "Peri," he said at last, "do you love me?"

She made no immediate reply. From somewhere in her heavy silken gown she produced a cigarette, lighted it, and blew a gray plume of smoke toward the seal. "No," she said.

"Why did you risk your life for me back there at the pit? What if you had touched the carbon feeders?"

She glanced out into the cold, black valley. "I may have thought I loved you then," she murmured, eyes still averted. "That was before I knew how little you could understand my feelings. We're just— not the same sort."

"I think we are," said Keene. "We've simply learned different moral codes, but— Peri— my code's the right one. Even you can see that."

"It's not for me. What my father wanted is the thing I want and the thing I'm going to do."

He groaned and abandoned that line of attack. "What do you expect to do with Solomon Nestor and me?"

She made a helpless little gesture. "What can I do? I have to leave you here." She turned her green eyes back to him. "Frank, if you'd promise to keep this place and my identity a secret, I think I'd be willing to release you."

"I can't promise that."

Her voice hardened. "Then here you stay."

"So you've given up the idea of killing us?"

"Oh," she said indifferently, "I'm always indulgent to those who claim to be in love with me."

Her attitude angered him. "You're pretty confident, aren't you? If you leave us here while you're off pirating, you know damn well we'll be doing our best to overcome you."

"And I know damn well that you'll never outwit me," she retorted.

Keene's hand suddenly encountered the Limbo's key in his pocket. "I won't, eh?" he muttered. "See here, Peri. Are you determined once and for all to stick to this scheme of yours?"

"Once and for all, I am."

"And it makes no difference that I tell you I love you?"

She turned abruptly and faced the grim outdoors, staring over the dead, cold, black Plutonian landscape. "It makes no difference, Frank."

"And nothing I can say will make a difference?"

She gestured impatiently, still staring far away. "Oh, what's the use of arguing? No, Frank."

He looked silently at her, seeing her, seeing her glorious hair flaming against the cold background of black mountains. He peered thoughtfully down the deserted corridor, and then at the Red Peri . The valley was lifeless; the men were within the vessel and the air lock was closed. Dim across the plain was the dull bulk of the Limbo , whose key was clutched in his hand.

"Well," he muttered sadly, "you've asked for it, Peri."

She did not turn. "For what, Frank?"

"For this!" he cried, and with a sudden lunge he sent her and himself staggering, unarmored, into the airless Plutonian plain, and into a temperature of ten degrees above absolute zero!

vi

INSTANTLY he was in hell. The breath rushed out of his lungs in a faint expansion mist that dissipated at once, the blood pounded in his aching ear drums, his eyes seemed to bulge, and a thin stream of blood squirted darkly from his nose. His whole body felt terribly, painfully bloated as he passed from a pressure of twelve pounds per square inch to one of nearly zero. He fought his agony grimly; he had to hold consciousness as long as he could. But old Nestor had been right; he was living.

He had a momentary impression of the Peri's green gown billowing up from her glorious body like a balloon, to settle hack instantly as the bound air escaped. Then she whirled, eyes wide, mouth open and straining for air that simply was not there, hands clutching frantically at her gasping throat. She was in full command of her own agile mind, and she sprang convulsively for the archway and the seal. Grimly he thrust her back.

She was trying to scream. Her breast rose and fell in futile, soundless, panting gasps; moisture formed on her forehead and vanished instantly. Swift as a deer she darted again for the archway; and again he controlled his agony to smash her back.

For once in her life the Peri knew sheer panic. No longer had she the coordination of mind and muscle that might yet have encompassed escape. Fierce pain and utter fright had robbed her of it; and for a few seconds she could only thrust aimlessly against Keene's braced body, her hands fluttering frantically, her legs pushing convulsively, her lovely, pain-racked, wild, green eyes but inches from his own.

He had a double task now; he had to hold her back from the entrance and at the same time keep any part of her twisting body save her shod feet from contact with the searing cold of the rocky ground. He clutched her violently against him. Suddenly her struggles grew weaker, her hands went vainly to her tortured throat, her hands closed, and she collapsed.

They were almost at the air lock of the Red Peri. He saw it fly open, he glimpsed Marco Grandi's appalled face behind his visor, but he had no fraction of a second to lose. He swung the Peri across his shoulder and set off on a staggering run for the Limbo , more than nine hundred feet away across a vacuum and a cold only less than those of space itself. Grandi could never catch him; no one could run in a space suit.

The Peri was not light; on Earth she might have weighed a hundred and fifteen pounds, but here it was more like a hundred and forty. His own weight was greater too, but he felt none of that; the excruciating torment that racked his body erased all lesser tortures.

He crashed unseeing through a parade of aluminum feeders, and blood spurted wildly from a tiny scratch on his ankle, and then— then he was fumbling at the Limbo's lock.

The door flew open from its inner pressure; he bundled himself and the Peri within, pulled it to, and collapsed as the hissing of the automatic valve sent a heavenly stream of air against his face. He had crossed a thousand feet of vacuum and still lived!

The air pressure reached normal. He fought to his knees, opened the inner door, and dragged the girl through it. She lay with her magnificent hair streaming on the steel floor; blood trickled from her nose— but she breathed.

Keene had work to do. He thrust wide the feed to the under-jets, and the ship roared, rising shakily as he peered through the floor port at Marco Grandi plodding desperately across the plain. He let the Limbo rise aimlessly; later he could set a course.

He dragged the limp Peri to a chair. About her slim waist he twisted the iron chain from the aft ventilator, and locked it with the padlock of Nestor's empty bolometer case. The other end he locked carefully to a hand hold on the wall, and only then, laboring and gasping, did he turn his attention to the medicine kit.

He poured a half tumbler of whiskey and forced a good portion of it between the Peri's lips. Still pain-tortured, it was yet agony to him to see the lines of anguish on her unconscious face, and to hear the choking of her breath. She coughed weakly from the liquor, and moved convulsively as he sprang back to the controls and set the Limbo nosing sunward. That was close enough for the present; later he could lay a course for Titan.

The Peri stirred. Her uncomprehending green eyes looked vaguely toward him, and then about the chamber. She spoke, "Frank! Frank! Where am I?"

"On the Limbo ."

"On the—" She glanced down; her hand had encountered the chain about her waist. "Oh!" she murmured, and stared at it a full half minute. When she looked up again her eyes were quite clear and conscious. "You— you've got me, Frank, haven't you?"

"Right where I want you," he said grimly. Strangely, there was no satisfaction in it. He had wanted to see her humbled, but now it was pure pain.

"Why— aren't we dead, Frank?" she asked slowly. "We were— in the airless valley, weren't we? How is it that we still live?"

"I'll tell you, Peri. It was old Solomon's idea. Everybody's been believing a lot of superstitions about space, but he figured out the truth. It isn't the vacuum that's dangerous, and it isn't the cold; it's the lack of air. We couldn't freeze, because a vacuum is the best insulator there is; we aren't like that aluminum spade of yours, because our bodies actually produced heat faster than we radiate it away. In fact, it really felt warm to me— as far as I could be conscious of any feeling in that hell.

"And as for all the gruesome stories of lungs collapsing and all that, every high school physics student sees the experiment of the mouse under the bell jar. An air pump exhausts the jar to the highest vacuum it can attain, the mouse loses consciousness— just as you did, Peri— but when the air returns, it recovers.

"Its lungs don't collapse because there's no outer pressure to crush them, and its body doesn't burst because the tissues are strong enough to maintain that much internal pressure. And if a mouse can stand it, why not a human being? And I knew I could stand lack of air longer than you."

"It seems you could," she admitted ruefully. "But still, Frank, that terrible drop in pressure! I see that we didn't explode from it, though it felt as though we should; but I still don't see why."

"I tell you because our tissues are too tough. Look here, Peri. The pressure at sea level on Earth is 14.7 pounds per square inch. The pressure on top of Mount Everest is four pounds per square inch. That's about six miles above sea level.

"A hundred and fifty years ago, way back in 1930, open airplanes flew over Mount Everest. The pilots didn't suffer much from lack of pressure; just as long as they had oxygen to breathe, they could live.

Yet from sea level to 29,000 feet altitude is a drop of eleven pounds per square inch— almost exactly the drop from the pressure in your cave to the pressure outside.

"The human body can stand that much of a drop; all it really does is cause altitude sickness. As a matter of fact, a pearl diver going down in four of five fathoms of water meets a greater variation than that. Plenty of South Sea skin divers work in that depth, utterly unprotected. What might have happened to us is the bends, but your own air system thoughtfully prevented that danger."

"M-my own air system?"

"Yes, Peri. The bends are the result of decreasing pressure, which ordinarily causes the blood to give up its dissolved nitrogen as bubbles. It's the bubbles that cause the disease. But your air doesn't contain nitrogen; it's made of oxygen and neon, and neon doesn't dissolve! So— no dissolved gases, no bubbles, and no bends."

"But— it's fantastic! It's impossible!"

"We did it. What do you think of that?"

"Why"— her voice was meek—"I think you're very courageous, Frank. You're the only man ever to see the Red Peri frightened, and you've seen that— twice."

"Twice? When was the other time?"

"When— when I saw the carbon feeders on your foot."

"Peri!" he groaned. "This whole thing has hurt me enough, but now if you mean—"

"Of course I mean it," she said, looking steadily at him. "I love you, Frank."

"If I dared believe you, Peri— you know I love you, don't you?"

A faint trace of her old mockery glistened green in her eyes. "Oh, of course," she said. "I could tell it because you've been so kind to me."

Her sarcasm tortured him. "I had to do it. I have to bring you over to my side of the fence, Peri— the honest side."

"And you think you can?"

"I can try."

"Really?" she taunted. "Frank, don't you know my ship will be alongside in a matter of minutes? You can't outrun the Red Peri in this tub. You have me helpless now, but I won't be so for long."

"Indeed? Well, tub or not, the Limbo's solid. They don't dare blast the ship with you aboard, and if they try to tie up and cut their way in"— he turned narrowed eyes on her—"I'll ram the Peri! As I said, this ship is solid, far more solid than your triangular speedster. I'll smash it!"

The faint color that had returned to the Peri's face drained out of it. After a moment she said in very low tones, "What are you going to do with me, Frank?"

"Peri, I'm going to take you back to trial. After you've expiated your crimes— and with your beauty in an American court the sentence will be light— I'm going to marry you."

"Marry? Yes, I'd marry you, Frank, but don't you realize piracy is tried under maritime law? The penalty is— death!"

"Not for such a woman as you. Three years— no more."

"But I'm wanted in every country on Earth, Frank. They'll extradite me. What if I'm tried for murder in an English court?"

"Murder?" he echoed blankly. "I— I hadn't thought of that. My Lord, Peri! What can we do?"

"What we do is in your hands," she said dully. He saw tears in her green eyes.

"I— don't know. I swore a solemn oath to uphold the law, I— can't break an oath. Peri," he cried fiercely, "I have money. I'll fight through every court in the country to prevent your extradition. You'll return all you've taken. They'll be lenient; they have to be!"

"Perhaps," she said tonelessly, "Well, I don't care. You've won, Frank. I love you for it."

Impulsively he dropped the controls, strode over to the chained girl, and kissed her. He had to make it brief, for his own eyes were suddenly misty. At the controls again, he swore bitterly to himself, for he realized now that he could never risk bringing the Red Peri to trial. He thought somberly of his broken oath; that meant nothing if keeping it endangered the girl he loved.

He formed a plan. At Nivia on Titan there'd be an inspection of the ship. He'd hide the Peri— in a cool jet, perhaps— and tell his story without mention of her capture. He'd disclose the location of the pirate base and let the government rockets rescue old Solomon and destroy the colony. And then he—

Then? Well, he'd land the Limbo in Iraq. He had friends there who'd keep the Peri safe. He'd fly home and resign his damned official position, and so be free to marry pirate or murderess or any one he chose— and no one would ever know that the lovely Mrs. Keene had once been the dreaded Red Peri.

For the present he'd let the girl believe he was taking her back to punishment; at least that might frighten her into a respectable life. He smiled, and looked up to find the luminous green eyes fixed steadily and unhappily on his face.

Before he could speak the buzzer of the static field sounded the signal that warned of meteors. But meteors were rare indeed out here beyond the orbit of Jupiter. He stared back at the vast black disc of Pluto, and true enough, there was a little flare of light against the blackness that could mean only a rocket blast. Second by second the flame approached, and the Red Peri rushed toward him as if his own blast were silent.

The pirate ship paralleled his course. Suddenly the annunciator above him spoke; they had trained an inductive beam on it. "Cut your jets!" came the words in a cold metallic voice that was still recognizable as Marco Grandi's.

He had no means of reply, so he bored grimly on. The Red Peri flipped close beside him. "Cut your jets," came the order, "or we'll blast you!"

Keene thought suddenly of the communication system from the pilot room to the stern. If he spoke into that, and if their tubes were sensitive enough, it was possible that their receiver might pick up the induced current. He switched it on full.

"Red Peri !" he called. "Can you hear me? Can you hear me?"

Reply was immediate. "We hear you. Cut your jets!"

"I won't," said Keene. "If you come a single yard closer I'll ram you. The Peri's aboard, and if you blast this ship you'll kill her as well as me."

There was a silence. "How do we know she's alive?" asked Grandi's voice.

"Watch the forward port," said Keene. He unlocked the chain at the hand hold. The girl made no resistance as he led her to the port, following as meekly as a puppy on a leash.

"I'll have to make this look serious," he said. "I'm sorry, Peri." He twisted his hand roughly in her glorious hair and thrust her close against the port. After a moment he released her, led her back to her chair, and relocked the chain.

"Red Peri ," he called, "move away or I'll ram you. Keep a quarter mile distance."

There was no reply, but the pirate ship slanted silently away. Like a child's model it hung in the void, tenaciously paralleling his course. But he knew it was helpless; Grandi dared not risk the Peri's safety.

Nearly an hour passed before the Peri spoke. "I don't understand you, Frank," she said miserably. "When your life was in danger I risked mine to save you, but you risk your life to destroy me. Is that what you mean by love?"

"I risked mine, not to destroy you, but to save you," he muttered. "Peri, I couldn't bear the thought of your living such a life as you have been living. I want you to be happy."

"Happy," she echoed mournfully. "If this is your idea of happiness—" She left the sentence unfinished.

Hour after hour the pirate clung grimly beside them. After a long time Keene slept, trusting to the buzzer to rouse him if Grandi should attempt to cut through. The last thing he saw was the luminescent eyes of the Peri, and they were the first thing he saw on awakening. She sat as if she had not moved.

Another day passed. Pluto was a pallid, tiny disk far behind them, Neptune and Uranus were beyond the Sun; but Saturn gleamed brightly. All day the Peri was mournfully silent, and when he kissed her before sleeping, she clung to him almost as if in panic. He remembered that later, for when he awoke she was — gone.

Gone! The chain was missing, and only a square of paper— a star chart— lay on her chair. She wasn't on the Limbo , and the Red Peri no longer hung silent on the left. He seized the note in a frantic clutch. He read.

Frank— dearest Frank— this is farewell. I love you; and the proof of it is that I could have escaped before this while you slept; but I wanted to stay. I was all but willing to suffer before the law if it meant having you— but I can't. Not even three years, because I'd die without freedom.

I had an iron feeder in my pocket, for I always carry them on raids, as you remember from the Aardkin. It's eating the chain now, but it won't attack chrome steel; your floors and walls are safe.

Frank, if you had weakened, if you had promised me safety, I think I should have stayed, but—  perhaps—  then I should have loved you less than I do now.

Good-by

The note was unsigned. She had taken a red chart pencil and drawn a creditable picture of a tiny, winged elf— a red peri. Keene knew what she had done. There were no space suits on the Limbo, for he and Solomon had worn them to the pirate cave. She had signaled her ship, opened the air lock, and braved once more the vacuum of space to fling herself across. When he had finally exhausted his vocabulary of expletives and blasphemies, when he had at last called himself all the varieties of fool he knew, Keene realized what he had to do. He couldn't find her on Pluto, since the Peri would certainly move her base elsewhere for fear he'd direct a government rocket there. But what he could do, what he had to do, was to get a job on an Interplanetary freighter, and then wait. Sooner or later— sooner or later, he repeated grimly— he'd meet the Red Peri again.

____________________

9: School For Murder

Walter Ripperger

No dates available; active 1935-1940

Newcastle Morning Herald (NSW) from 4 March 1940

[Detective Fiction Weekly 26 November 1938]

THE BURKES lived in an ordinary middle-class apartment. Nobody knew much about them and nobody cared. If the truth had come out that the Burkes were sought by the police of every State it is doubtful whether it would have been believed.

True, Liam Burke, the father, wasn't a particularly prepossessing character. He was around fifty, a man of six feet six, with a big, bony frame that gave the impression of housing great strength. There was a grim quality about his face, with its high cheek-bones, its tightly stretched yellow skin, and the hard mouth. And there was something about his pale, unblinking eyes, too, that made a passing neighbour think twice before saying cheerfully, "Hello, Mr. Burke." Perhaps that was due to the fact that Liam Burke was very near-sighted. but probably, in any event those eyes would have held that aloof, forbidding expression. His whole bearing, his manner was that of a man who has no friends and wants no friends.

His wife, Nora, was much the same. She, too, made no friends, and seemingly wanted none. She was a thin, sparse woman of medium height; with grey hair, and blue eyes, the eyes of a woman to whom life presented no hope, no surprises, and no fear.

That the Burkes should have a son as good-looking as "Baby" Burke was a source of never-ending wonder. "Baby" Burke was around twenty, and many feminine hearts in the neighbourhood beat little faster when under the impression that, "Baby" Burke had given them a glance of more than passing interest.

They were wrong. Girls meant nothing to "Baby", Burke. In fact, three-quarters of life meant nothing to him. He had a strikingly fine face, rich in colour, topped by thick, curly dark hair. His eyes were almost black, and alert. His mouth was sensitive, but firm, and he carried himself with an easy, careless assurance as though all the world were his for the asking. Not in a single feature did "Baby" Burke resemble either Liam or Nora Burke.

"Baby" Burke put down the book he was reading, lit a fresh cigarette and eyed his parents meditatively. After a while, in a pleasant, soft voice, he said,

"I don't get it. I don't seem to be like other people— not the kind that there are in books. anyway."

Liam Burke, busy over a table on which reposed a hand-drawn map, looked us briefly and made a growling sound in his throat, but said nothing. The top of  Liam Burke's head was completely bald. mottled with light brown blotches about the size of a quarter. These, on occasion darkened. Beneath the bright reading lamp that sprayed its light on the table, the spots were a dirty brown now.

"Baby" Burke of late had been harping on that same topic— the difference between himself and other people— with increasing frequency.

Ma Burke stopped her knitting. Her thin hands shook a little as she watched "Baby". Burke.

"All people are different," she said, in a dry, unemotional voice.

"Why didn't I ever go to school?" "Baby" Burke asked. "You read about people who went to school, you see it in the movies."

"You didn't have to go to school," Ma Burke said. "I taught yer how to read and write. I taught yer all that any man needs to know."

There was a leaden, insistent quality in her voice, as though she were trying to ward off any contradiction.

"I taught yer how to read and write," she reiterated.

"And I taught you how to shoot," Liam Burke said harshly. He put down the huge magnifying glass by which alone he was able to decipher the streets and the intersections on the map he had made.

"What's ailing you, lad?" he demanded, with cold fierceness. "Isn't life the way it is good enough for you?"

A brooding look came into "Baby" Burke's dark eyes. Something was ailing him but he only realised it in a strange uncertain way. He rose, walked to the window, and stared moodily out into the wide, brightly lit street below. He heard steps behind him and paid no attention. It was only when he felt Ma Burke's hand on his shoulder that he turned.

"I'm all right, Ma," he said.

"I know the way yer feel, 'Baby,'" the woman said, in her dry, rustling voice. "We're going away soon to another country, where yer kin be just what yer want to be."

She turned to her husband. "This is the last, Pa, isn't it? Yer promised me."

"It'll be the last if it comes off," Liam Burke answered irritably. He peered with his cold, near-sighted eyes at the two by the window, without being able to read their expressions, and inwardly he cursed that failing eye-sight of his. It put him at a tremendous disadvantage.

"Yer see," Ma Burke said to her son, and whatever warmth she could muster she pushed into her voice now, "yer'll be able to do anything yer want to, 'Baby.' " She paused a moment. "What is it yer'd like to do? Would yer like to get married and have a house of yer own, with grass and trees?"

"Baby" Burke laughed softly and shook his head.

"Then what is it?" she persisted.

"I want to be—" "Baby" Burke broke off sharply. A blank look came into his eyes. No, he couldn't tell her, especially not in front of Pop Burke. It sounded too silly. It wouldn't make sense to them. It didn't make. sense to him. He wanted to live a different sort of a life— give up the thing he was doing, the thing for which Ma Burke and Pop had trained him almost from infancy. He wanted to be a gentleman— perhaps "gentleman" wasn't the right word, but it was something like that.

What was a gentleman, anyhow? There was "Gentleman" Joe. He wasn't one; they only called him "Gentleman" because of his smart clothes, his flashy shirts and ties, his spats and the sticky stuff he put on his hair to keep it in place. Then there was Miller and Haggarty, who, along with "Gentleman" Joe and himself, carried out Pop Burke's orders, when they looted a bank or snatched a payroll. Miller and Haggarty weren't gentlemen either, and neither. was Pop, for that matter.

"Baby" Burke, standing there, gazing into space, racked his brains, wondering how that image of what constituted a gentleman had first cropped into his mind. Maybe it was someone he had seen in the movies; maybe somebody he had read about or heard about. He couldn't tell. In a vague way he sensed that it was a sort of composite picture. Still, that didn't explain his own longings in that direction.

What was the matter with going on the way they were? What was wrong with, being the head of one of the smartest little mobs there'd ever been when it came to breaking into a bank or cleaning out a warehouse?

There was plenty wrong with it, though he hadn't really realised that until the last two years. But he hadn't mentioned the change in his feelings ever to Pop Burke or Ma: And he, "Baby" Burke, was the leader. Once, "Pop" Burke had been, and he still was in a way, but what with his bad eye-sight he couldn't do much except plan things and give directions. But when it came to carrying out the job he, "Baby"' Burke, was the anchor man. That's what "Pop" had called him the first time he had helped clean out a bank, the man who stood behind to see that everything was safe, and held all pursuers at bay.

That had been an exciting time, that first time. A Sheriff with one of his men had appeared unexpectedly on the scene just as they were dumping the loot into the car. The Sheriff and the man had never had a chance to use their guns. "Baby" Burke had picked them off— one-two— with deadly accuracy. He hadn't even hurried getting into the car after that. It had seemed perfectly all. right then.

"Pop" Burke at the time had been warm in his praise of "Baby." Similar ventures subsequently had been much the same-always "Baby" Burke, the anchor man, standing in some advantageous spot, his face devoid of that carefree, almost sunny look that was generally there only calm and watchful.

How many people had he killed— eight or was it nine? "Baby" Burke shrugged; he didn't remember. What difference did it make anyway? After six months or so, it hadn't seemed very exciting any more, just a sort of profession, the way "Pop" Burke had originally explained it to him. Stick-up men killed police, and police killed stick-up men— just a sort of a business. And after it was all, over you went to some big city and stayed there until the chase was off. You didn't go to night clubs, taking on a lot of women, throwing away money until some flatfoot spotted you. That was a stupid game.

"Baby" Burke never had had any inclination that way.

"Pop" hadn't had any trouble with him in that respect. It had been a little more difficult in the case of "Gentleman" Joe. Haggarty and Miller, however, had kept Gentleman" Joe in line. It wasn't going to be much longer now anyway. They were going to split up— rich men, all of them, due to "Pop" Burke's careful management. The Burkes were going their way, and "Gentleman" Joe and his two pals going theirs.

"Baby" Burke gathered his wandering wits and looked at Nora Burke. She was standing there rigid, her eyes riveted on him.

"I've been a good mother to yer, haven't I, 'Baby'?"

"Of course, you have," he said. "You've been okay." He patted her absently on the cheek and walked out to his bedroom.

Liam Burke came over and stood glowering at his wife. "Leave the lad alone," he snarled. "I told you a thousand times to stop coddling him. You're softening him up, you put ideas in his- head-and stop calling him 'Baby'."

"That's what I called him from the beginning," she said, a far-away quality in her voice.

"If you don't want a beating, stop it and do as I say." He half raised his fist as though to strike her.

The woman held her ground. "This job yer planning, Liam, is it safe?"

"Is it safe?" he mimicked wrathfully. "Ever since the lad has taken my place, or taken it as nearly as he could, with somebody like you around his neck slobbering all over him, you've been asking me 'Is it safe?' You never used to worry about whether it was safe for me."

Nora Burke closed her eyes for a minute, then she looked up steadily at the huge man towering over her.

"Yer were in prison once, Liam. It was before yer married me. Yer did two years, remember?"

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Yer told me about looking out through the bars and there was nothing to see— just a yard of dirty concrete. Only in one corner between a crack there was a flower—"

Liam Burke scowled. What was the woman driving ate "Yes," he said, "I remember it— a miserable dandelion, that's what it was."

"Yes, and 'yer used to look at it. and it meant a lot to yer, yer told me. It wasn't just a flower— it was sunshine, fresh air, hope-everything."

"All right, all right," Liam Burke said, "I told you."

"Yes, and yer told me something else. One day a guard came along and he saw yer looking at that flower. What did he do? He went over and stepped on it. And what did you do? The first chance yer got yer killed the guard, killed him with yer bare hands—"

"Sure, with me bare hands. In those days—" He stopped sharply. "Say, what are you getting at?" he roared.

"My life's been' spent behind bars," she said with sudden intensity, "all of it. They're not iron bars. I don't know what they're made of.

"And when I ask yer 'Is it safe?' I'm thinking of 'Baby.' and you better make sure, Liam, that it is safe. If something was to happen to him, it would be like—yer flower."

Involuntarily Liam Burke fell back a step, staring at his wife, his mouth open; scarcely believing what he heard. Was this frail creature who had been tied to him for over twenty years, whom he had dominated from the very beginning, actually threatening him, telling him she'd kill him if something happened to the boy?

"I've let you have yer way with him," she said, "from the start. I've even helped yer without knowing what it would mean to me in the end. He don't know right from wrong— we didn't want him to know—"

Liam Burke waited to hear no more. He knocked her down.

Slowly, she crawled to her hands and knees, then rose. She didn't cry out, made no attempt- to flee. A drop of blood trickled down the corner of her mouth. "I don't mind the bars," she said in her lifeless voice. "I've grown used to 'em. I don't mind them. as long as I can see something growing that's like sunshine. and alive, and—"

Liam Burke's weak eyes' never blinked. He ought to knock her down again: he ought to take a strap to her for talking to him like that, and yet something held him back. He didn't even answer her when she said again: "You'd better go over you plans again,. Liam, and make sure they're safe. I'm going to church and pray."

Alone, Liam Burke went back to the table and picked up his magnifying glass. His eyes were worse than he had let anybody know. They had grown worse with startling rapidity. People and objects weren't much more than shadows to him, but he wouldn't let on. There was this one more job that he wanted to direct. Nobody could do it as well as he could.

"Baby" Burke could shoot as fast and as straight as he in the old days, but "Baby" Burke hadn't the talent for organisation, for detail that he, Liam, had, and that job had to be carried out successfully. It meant the goal he'd set himself, the goal towards which he had directed all his efforts with grim,  unswerving determination. If the loot amounted to anywhere nearly as much as it ought to, he would then have a quarter of a million dollars after paying "Gentleman" Joe and Miller and Haggarty their share, and with that he and his family could retire. Those long, desperate years would be over, and he could rest and perhaps his eyes would get better.

He put down the magnifying glass and gazed vacantly into space. Suppose he went blind, suppose— suppose Nora deserted him, took "Babe" Burke with her, in order to get him away from his influence. She was crazy about the lad. Suppose.... No, he wouldn't let her do that— he wasn't going to be left alone... blind.

DISTRICT ATTORNEY John Strong's secretary said: "Sergeant Ponder is outside. He wants to see you."

The district attorney put down the papers be had been perusing.

"Let him come in," he said, and a minute later, when the sergeant had entered he said "Hello, Charlie. What's on your mind?"

C. O. Ponder made no immediate reply; nor did he take off that aged, slightly greenish derby perched on the back of his head. He kept the half-smoked cigar firmly clamped in the corner of his mouth.

This sort of familiarity was all right between District Attorney Strong and Sergeant Ponder. They were old friends. There was no one on the Homicide Squad for whom John Strong had a greater liking. When C. O. Ponder made an arrest, it was an arrest— not only that, but it was a conviction. He invariably had the facts and the evidence. "

ii

C. O. PONDER was a medium-sized, somewhat stocky individual with a squarish face, and large, round, lackluster eyes. His manner was lugubrious and leisurely. When he talked it was in a rambling, disinterested way, and when he walked, he ambled. He was wont to refer to himself as just a dumb policeman, which, along with his other characteristics, was highly deceptive. Just now he seemed to be a little at a loss.

"What can I do for you?" John Strong asked again, in a friendly manner.

"Tony Sporatti is coming up for sentence to-morrow," C. O. Ponder said gloomily. "I know he ought to be sent up for life. But—"

John Strong's face hardened. He said nothing, only nodded. C. O. Ponder studied his cigar butt. His eyes, the colour of unripe beach plums, grew more clouded.

"I was wondering," he said, "I was wondering if maybe you'd ask the judge to go easy on him."

John Strong frowned. A harsh note crept into his voice. "He murdered a man, didn't he?"

"I know," said C. O. Ponder, "only he's pretty young. He lost his head, and he's married, and a life sentence is a pretty long sentence. Couldn't you—?"

John Strong shook his head adamantly. "Any time there's a favour I can do you, Charlie," he said, "I'll do it, but I'm going to see to it that Sporatti gets the limit. I've got no use for racketeers, for criminals of any kind."

C. O. Ponder lifted his eyes from the cigar butt and studied District Attorney Strong.

There was something about John Strong that he couldn't fathom. He was a capable, fearless prosecutor, esteemed by all who knew him, without a blemish on his character, absolutely fair, a prosecutor who wouldn't resort to petty trickery to gain a conviction, but there was a relentlessness about him that sometimes shocked C. O. Ponder, that in a way didn't seem quite in keeping with the man's real character.

John Strong, just past his middle forties, was a distinguished looking individual, tall and broad-shouldered, with an air of physical vigour and fitness. His forehead was broad, his grey eyes thoughtful, penetrating. His mouth was firm and his chin square. There was only a slight touch of grey in his thick hair. Altogether, it was a statesman's face, not a politician's, and sometimes C. O. Ponder had the notion that John Strong's eyes could be warm and sympathetic, if he'd only let them be that way, and that John Strong's mouth, instead of being for ever straight and uncompromising, could take on a friendly, almost humorous line, if it weren't for the fact that John Strong had set himself a goal towards which he was heading, and that goal appeared to be the annihilation, the complete destruction of every criminal that he had a chance to prosecute.

People said that John Strong was politically ambitious, that he was trying to make a reputation for himself, that he had his eye on the governorship. But C. O. Ponder felt that that wasn't true, that there was something else— something that was far deeper, more compelling, that was urging John Strong on, and often he had wondered what it was. And oddly enough right now John Strong said something that made Sergeant Ponder feel that he was on the very verge of discovering the secret.

"You think I'm hard, don't you, Charlie ?" John Strong said. "You think there isn't any mercy in me, no understanding, no sympathy."

C. O. Ponder sank his teeth more deeply into his cigar and shifted uncomfortably on his feet. He took a wooden match from his pocket, nicked the head with his thumb nail and applied the flame to his dead cigar -while he waited.

"Some time, Charlie," John Strong said, a sudden unexpected note of sadness in Iris voice, "I'll tell you all about it." A vacant, far-off look came into John Strong's eyes, and his face once more tightened. His voice grew cold. "I'd like to do you a favour, as I said... but Sporatti goes up for the limit."

C. O. Ponder heaved a sigh. His opaque eyes rested for another minute wonderingly on John Strong, then he ambled out.

Alone, the district attorney sat rigid, gazing at the opposite wall with unseeing eyes. Then suddenly he leaned forward, picked up a photograph in a silver frame that stood on his desk and studied it intently. It was the picture of a woman— a girl with a mass of dark brown hair, large, sincere eyes, and lovely curving lips. There was a fragile quality about that face; it was a child's face, and yet not a child's face. There was too much determination in it, too much character.

It was the picture of John Strong's wife, Marlyn. John Strong replaced the picture. How long was it since he had last seen her? Eighteen years since she had left him— yes, all of that, and he hadn't seen her from that day to this, and probably would never see her again.

It wasn't until some 10 days later that Liam Burke was ready. On Thursday night, Gentleman Joe, Miller and Haggarty arrived at the Burkes' apartment. They didn't arrive in a body, but came singly. Liam Burke was at the table with his map, Baby Burke was sitting in a corner cleaning a gun— a flat, snub-nosed automatic that was his favourite. Over to the left Ma Burke sat in a rocker, knitting.

Gentleman Joe was small and slim. He had sharp features and a narrow forehead. His hair was sleek and black, parted in the middle and plastered down flat. He had small darting eyes. A wisp of a moustache made a line between the hooked nose and Gentleman Joe's slit of a mouth. He was dressed in a dark grey pin-striped suit that fitted him to perfection. Whoever had made it had even allowed for the shoulder holster that was invariably strapped under the coat across Gentleman Joe's chest. His tie was a heavy dark blue figured silk. There was a handkerchief to match in his breast pocket, and the tops of his gleaming patent leather shoes were covered by pearl-grey spats.

Liam Burke explained the details of his plan carefully. The bank that Liam Burke had in mind wasn't a big bank but it carried a comparatively large amount of cash on hand in bills of small denominations because it was located in the heart of the downtown manufacturing section and had to take care of the payrolls of its customers. Burke hadn't only "cased" the bank thoroughly, but with Nora driving the black sedan, had gone over the entire neighbourhood several times, mapping out tile route for their get-away, selecting more or less unfrequented streets, wherever possible streets that had no traffic lights, streets that came upon unexpected alleys through which one could sneak and come out on another safe street.

Even though these alleys were narrow, Ma Burke would have no difficulty in negotiating them. If there was one thing that Nora Burke could do, it was to drive a car, so as to effect an escape. She had done it so many times before. And who would suspect that a car driven by a grey-haired, sparse woman like Nora would be a car fleeing from the scene of a robbery?

And Gentleman Joe was no fool, either, when it came to driving. He and Miller and Haggarty were to follow in that little truck that Liam Burke had purchased for the occasion. When he planned a thing of this sort, Liam Burke spared neither time nor expense in seeing that his plan was perfect in every detail.

The job was to be done the next day. Friday was an ideal day, and if it were done just before closing time, there wouldn't be many people in the bank.

Gentleman Joe listened to Pop Burke attentively and nodded.

"You know your stuff, Pop," he conceded a little grudgingly. "That's why I've been playing along with you all this time, though it wasn't no fun. It suits me fine if we split up after this. What's the use of all the dough we made if you can't have any fun? It's all right for old men like you. You don't know what fun is. But me, I want to live. There's Broadway and Chinatown and Harlem where a fellow like me can have himself a time."

He stopped and toyed with the enormous diamond on the little finger of his left hand; then he flecked an imaginary speck from his perfectly creased trousers. He let his eyes drift to where Baby Burke sat cleaning the gun. A supercilious, half-contemptuous expression came into Gentleman Joe's face as he watched Baby Burke.

"It's all right for the kid, too," he added. "He don't know what life is either. He don't know what it's all about."

iii

"LET THE lad alone," Liam Burke said gruffly.

Miller said: "Finish with all that. Let's get down to business."

Miller was forty-four, only a little taller than Gentleman Joe, but much heavier, without being fat. He had a flat, expressionless face, with restless grey eyes, under bushy eyebrows. Right now his manner was tense. He was biting his fingernails. He was always like that just before there was a job to be done. Originally, that had made Liam Burke uneasy, but he had discovered that there was no one cooler, more sure and more reliable than Miller when it came to carrying out an assignment. Miller had been in the war. He had been like that just before it was time to go over the top, while he was whiting for the zero hour to approach. But once he sprang into action, all his nervousness vanished, to be replaced by an icy, devastating, not to say calculating self-possession that was almost invincible.

"How do we get away?" Haggarty asked. Liam Burke stooped down and fumbled around under the table.

When he straightened up he had two cotton laundry bags in his hand and three caps— dark blue caps with patent leather visors, the sort of caps that delivery boys wear.

"In a laundry truck," Liam Burke said. "The lad will be on the outside. There's two columns flanking the entrance. He'll be behind one of them to see you won't be bothered while you're working, and to see that nobody follows you when you come out. When you go inside, there's thee cages. Two of 'em are being used, the other is empty. You herd everybody into the one that's empty, then you grab everything that's in sight and stuff it into the laundry bags, including your own hats. Then you put on the caps. Joe comes out first, sets on the laundry truck and starts the engine. Miller and Haggarty come out, taking it easy, with the laundry bags over their shoulders. Nobody's going to pay any attention to them. You dump the laundry bags into the truck and get aboard and drive off slowly. Ma and me will be there in the sedan. The lad hops into that and we drive past you and lead the way. If we're not tailed we come straight up here. Ma and me and the lad will come up first. A little later you come up delivering the laundry."

There was no elation in Liam Burke's voice. It was just ordinarily gruff. He gave no indication that he was particularly proud of his plan. It was only a job to him, carried out with his customary care and his love for detail.

"What if we're tailed?" Miller asked, nibbling at his fingernails.

"You stop at the first apartment house you come to," Liam Burke said, "take out a bundle of laundry and go inside as though you were delivering it. It's us they'll be chasing and there's nothing they'll find. The lad's going to drop his gun somewhere along the road and we'll get together afterwards."

"It's okay," Haggarty said. He was younger and taller than Miller, and far more stolid. In his youth he had been a prize fighter, as evidenced by his cauliflower ears. He had a coarse, deeply-lined face, with bleak china blue eyes that seemed to take in everything at once; there wasn't a hair on his head.

"Yes, it sounds all right," Miller said, dropping his left hand and going to work on the right.

Gentleman Joe wasn't listening any more. He was eyeing Baby Burke. Baby Burke somehow fascinated him— more than that— irritated him. There was a sort of careless superiority about Baby Burke that Gentleman Joe resented. The kid was dumb; he didn't know anything. He was apparently unconscious of the fact that he, Gentleman Joe, was a man of vastly superior qualities. Look at the way he dressed, look at the way he carried himself, and the people he knew. Where on earth did this boy take on all these airs? Yes, he could shoot, and he always kept his head, but what was that? They could all do that.

Gentleman Joe made his voice condescending.

"When this job is over, lad," he said to Baby Burke, "and the chase is off, I'll show you around, teach you a few things. If you like, I'll have you meet some people you ought to know. There's a little blonde that was just made for you. A swell little Judy if ever there was one. I'll fix it up for you one of these days. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

Baby Burke pushed a clip into the gun and dropped it into his pocket.

"That'd be fine, Joe," he said. "Thanks."

A faraway expression came into his fine dark eyes. He wondered if it would be fine. He had heard Pop Burke and Miller and Haggarty talk about Gentleman Joe playing around with women too much. In a dim way he knew, of course, what that meant. Hadn't he been to the movies? Hadn't he devoured all the stories in the magazines he could get his hands on? But it was strange, now that he came to think of it, he himself had never known a girl. But then he hadn't known many people, just Ma and Pop Burke, and a few others like Gentleman Joe, Miller and Haggarty.

As far back as he could remember, there had generally been only Pop and Ma Burke and they had been constantly on the go. Baby Burke was suddenly conscious of an odd tension in the room— no, it wasn't in the room; it was within himself. This job was no different from the last one they had pulled six months ago, and at that time he had had no premonition of possible disaster, of anything going wrong. And he hadn't any such feeling now, exactly, although he did have a feeling that something was going to happen, something unexpected.

That was silly, he told himself. Nothing would happen. Everything would go just as Pop had planned, just as it had always gone.

"There's a lot of things you don't know, boy," Gentleman Joe went on in a prodding way, more irritated than ever by Baby Burke. The boy should have shown some gratitude for what he just offered to do for him.

iv

LIAM BURKE sounded the table with his fist. "Who's running this ?" he bellowed, and inwardly he cursed the dimness of his eyes. Nobody said anything for a minute, only Miller sided up to Nora Burke.

"I always get the jitters just before a job,"- he whispered. "It don't mean anything, only this time I got a feeling—"

Nora Burke turned and looked at him. There was fear in her hopeless eyes.

"What sort of a feeling, Miller?"

"I don't know," Miller said, then added stumblingly. "During the war I used to pray, Ma, just before they blew the whistle... telling us it was time to go over the top..."

For the second time Liam Burke pounded the table.

"What is this?" he thundered, "a prayer meeting?" Here he held out the caps and the two laundry bags wanting someone to take them. Haggarty reached for them.

"Deal them around," Burke ordered. "Before you go out stick them under your coats. You're not to be seen carrying them."

Haggarty nodded; he distributed the stuff Burke had given him between himself, Gentleman Joe and Miller. Miller was biting his fingernails; he seemed on the point of saying something but changed his mind.

One by one they left. When they had gone, Liam Burke stood up. He gave a hitch to his belt, moistened his dry lips as he tried to make out the figures of Baby Burke and his wife from behind the murkiness of his unblinking eyes.

"You shouldn't be a-quarreling with Joe, lad," he said, to Baby Burke after a long time, "should he, Ma?"

Ma Burke looked at her husband searchingly. It wasn't like him to consult her about anything, and it wasn't his habit to say anything without some distinct purpose. What was he driving at now?

"He's liable to do you harm, lad," Liam Burke continued. "He's not a man to be trusted."

For once Liam Burke's eyelids drooped as though he were trying to conceal the thoughts that lay in the depths of his foggy eyes.

"What are you getting at?" Nora Burke demanded, that leaden voice of hers filled with suspicion.

"Go to bed, both of you," Liam Burke rasped. "There's things I've got to think about."

Alone, he fished a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles from his pocket; the lenses were more than an eighth of an inch thick. He put them on and peered at the front page of a newspaper. The letters swam before his eyes. It wasn't more than a month since he had had those glasses made and at that time they had been adequate, but now they scarcely made it possible for him to read the headlines. Liam Burke's yellow skin took on a greenish tinge.

He took off the glasses and dropped them on the table. His huge frame shook. How long— how long before he would be totally blind? And then what? Nothing in the world meant so much to Nora as Baby Burke. Would she...

THE BLACK sedan, with Nora driving, came to a stop diagonally across the street from the bank at exactly a quarter-past two the next afternoon.

"The truck's not here yet," Ma Burke said, in her lifeless voice.

"I can see that," Liam Burke barked irritably. "They're not supposed to be here until half past." He turned to where Baby Burke was sitting in the back.

"How are you feeling, lad?"

"Fine, Pop," Baby Burke said listlessly. Instinctively his hand felt the pocket that held the snub-nosed automatic. Sometimes he had to use it and sometimes he didn't. Baby Burke didn't care either way. Why should he? It was all in a day's work. Now he was particularly disinterested. His dark eyes pensive, he stared out through the window thinking about what he wanted to be without entirely knowing what it was or how it could be brought about.

The truck drove up and came to a stop a dozen feet or so in front of the Sedan.

"They're here," Baby Burke said. "Do I get out?"

Liam Burke cursed under his breath. Did Ma and the boy think that they had to tell him every little thing? Did they figure that he couldn't even see a truck ally more, that he was that blind?

"Get out." he ordered, "and stand behind the left-hand column as if you were waiting for somebody."

Baby Burke climbed out without a word and sauntered over to the bank. He went up the stone steps land leaned against the pillar. There was an unlit cigarette between his lips.

Unconsciously Nora made as if to rise, then she sank back and sat still. She didn't even follow him with her eyes. Her lips moved but no sounds came forth. Her heart, that had long since ceased to beat for anyone but Baby Burke, was pounding madly. The nails of her thin fingers dug deep into the palms.

Gentleman Joe got out from behind the driver's seat of the truck and walked over to the bank. He had discarded his customary flashy attire for one less conspicuous. The front of his coat bulged a little. It not only covered the gun in its shoulder holster but the cap Pop Burke had secured for him.

Joe walked into the bank without looking at Baby Burke. Less than a minute later Miller and Haggarty got out of the back of the truck and followed Joe. They carried their caps and the laundry bags as well, under their coats. There was no trace of nervousness about Miller now, and like Joe, neither he nor Haggarty gave Baby Burke even a glance as they went in.

"They're inside," Nora said, her voice more lifeless than ever.

"Shut up," Liam Burke growled. He placed his left hand over the wheel, resting it lightly on the button that controlled the horn. Nora saw nothing out of the ordinary in that. It had always been Liam Burke's job to give the signal in case of danger. Two short blasts and a long one. and Miller and Haggarty and Joe were to come out, irrespective of whether or not they had finished their task. But Baby Burke was to stay at his post. He was the anchor man; it was up to him to cover the retreat until Pop gave a second signal.

It never struck Baby Burke that his was a particularly dangerous assignment. He didn't think about it at all, any more than he gave the fact that it was occasionally necessary to kill a policeman, a second thought. That's what he had been trained to do, that's what he was there for.

v

A YOUNG MAN with a briefcase under his arm came up the steps of the bank. Baby Burke stepped out from behind the column.

"Got a match?" Baby Burke asked. He didn't want anybody to go in right away. Joe and Miller and Haggarty hadn't quite had time enough to get things under control. Another minute or so and it wouldn't matter who went in.

The young man nodded amiably, brought forth a package of matches and lit Burke's cigarette for him. Burke thanked him and the young man went inside just in time to hear someone say: "If anybody tries to give a signal it will be bad for him."

The young man, his mouth open, his face grey, started to back out but then something prodded him between the shoulder blades, and a voice behind him, the voice of Gentleman Joe, said: "Get in there."

The young man didn't need to be told where. His knees wobbly, he hastened towards the teller's cage, where a dozen or so terrified people— customers, clerks, and a vice-president of the bank— were herded together.

Miller and Haggarty pocketed their guns and set to work swiftly, but methodically. They had done it so many times before they could have accomplished it with their eyes shut. They didn't waste any time trying to open the doors that led into the cages, and were locked on the inside. It was only a matter of seconds for them to climb over the bronze grills. The laundry bags came out and presently they began to bulge with the notes that Miller and Haggarty scooped up from the cashier's desks and out of the open vaults. They took no silver, no cheques, and none of the securities lying about— just cash.

While they worked they heard someone else come in, but they didn't even bother to turn. Gentlemen Joe, in a spot where he could command every corner of the place, would take care of the newcomer. Outside, Baby Burke stood lounging against the stone column, smoking, and across the street were Nora and Liam Burke, the latter with the palm of his hands still over the horn.

"What keeps them so long?" Ma Burke said. Her sparse frame shivered. There was fear in her eyes.

"What ails you, woman? They haven't been ten minutes yet. Start the car."

Nora pushed her foot down on the starter and heard the engine purr softly. She turned to look where Baby Burke was, and felt reassured. She saw him standing there as though nothing in the world was wrong, puffing away at his cigarette, his right hand in his pocket over the butt of his gun. It had begun to rain, a soft, misty steady drizzle.

"Watch your step when you're driving," Liam Burke said. He hated the rain. It made it harder for him to see, much harder. He ran the back, of his right hand across his eyes. His eyes ached— ached in a way they had never hurt before.

Somewhere far off there was a sound— a sound that caused both Nora and Liam Burke to stiffen— the faint wail of a police siren.

"Police," Nora whispered. "Sound the horn. Pop."

"Not-yet," Liam said. "They be through anyhow in a minute or so. Besides, what makes you think they're coming this way?"

A feeling of icy dread went up and down Nora's spine. But then Pop was probably right. There was nothing to indicate that the police car was heading this way. It might not even be a police car— just an ambulance.

And then the siren sounded again, closer this time... much closer.

"Blow the horn, Pop! Blow the horn!" Ma Burke croaked frantically, fiercely insistent.

Pop Burke made no move. He sat there like a figure of stone, conscious only of the pain in his eyes and the incessant throbbing at his temples, brought on by what he was thinking. Nora clawed Pop Burke's hand trying to tear it away from the horn, but she could not budge it. It rested over the button as though it were frozen there.

She pounded the top of Liam Burke's hand trying to blow the horn that way, but Liam Burke held his huge, gnarled hand cupped and the horn stayed silent.

Again that persistent wail of the police car siren. The car couldn't be more than a few blocks away now.

Nora swung around and looked towards the bank. Gentleman Joe was coming out wearing the delivery boy's can. He was walking without haste making for the truck. Behind him came Miller and Haggarty with their caps and the laundry begs over their shoulders.

"They're' comnin' 'out," Nora said in a cracked voice, "Blow the horn for Baby Borke, quick!"'

Liam Burke sat there immovable. The sky must be pretty dark overhead. He could scarcely see anything through the windshield. That vague blurred shadow in front must be the truck. Ma Burke turned her head further around so that she could see Baby Burke standing there carelessly, watching the bank. She tried to call to him. tried to scream to him to come, to get into the car, but her throat closed up.

Someone came rushing out of the bank, shouting: "Help! Police! Help! Help!"

And just then the little green car shot up to the kerb and came to a atop. the tyres screaming. There was a young uniformed policeman at the wheel and a plain-clothes man beside him— a plainclothes man with a squarish face, wearing an old derby on the back of his head, and sucking on a cigar butt wedged in the corner of his mouth.

It seemed to Ma Burke that her heart stopped beating. It seemed to her that she cried out wildly to Baby Burke. But she wasn't sure of anything except that Baby Burke was standing there, watchful, dividing his attention between Joe, Haggarty and Miller, climbing on to the truck, and the man on the steps who kept screaming. "Help! Police!"

The policeman who had been behind the wheel jumped out. His gun was in his hand, but he was a little confused as to what was going on. The laundry truck seemed harmless enough. The black sedan with the woman at the wheel who appeared so excited was natural enough. She was probably frightened by what was happening.

Other people came running out of the bank and joined the first man. One of them pointed to the laundry truck.

"There they go!" The policeman came to life. He raised his gun and aimed at Haggarty, who was just about to climb into the truck, but before he could press the trigger another gun barked. The young policeman reeled crazily, then crashed to the ground, dead.

Baby Burke, holding a smoking gun in his hand, scarcely gave him a glance. The little crowd at the door of the bank huddled together in sheer terror; some of them rushed back into the bank.

Baby Burke paid no attention to them. His eyes were on the plain-clothes man who was out of the police car now.

There was a grim look in C. O. Ponder's face. The police car was between himself and the killer, who stood on the steps of the bank beside that stone column. Never in all his experience had Sergeant Ponder witnessed so cold-blooded and deliberate a killing as he had seen just now. There was something inhuman about that young gangster standing there, smoking a cigarette, firing off his gun, betraying no more emotion than a wooden Indian.

Out of the corner of his eye C. O. Ponder saw the laundry truck drive off and made no attempt to stop it. He saw the black sedan, too, and wondered if the two in the car had anything to do with the whole business. He didn't care; he was going to get this killer if it was the last thing he ever did.

"Drop that gun."

C. O. Ponder's ordinarily lugubrious voice was a savage snarl now. Baby Burke looked at him. There wasn't much of C. O. Ponder that he could see. The sergeant was kneeling behind the car. Only his derby the top of his head and his round, dull eyes were visible— those and C. O. Ponder's gun.

Baby Burke fired. Sergeant Ponder's derby disappeared. Baby Burke wondered why Pop didn't blow the horn. He started to fire again. He was a little late this time. From behind the police car came a burst of flame. Something that felt like a white hot iron seemed to stab into Baby Burke's arm. He tried to hang on to his gun, to raise it again, but the strength had gone out of his fingers. The automatic went clattering to the sidewalk. Baby Burke started for the sedan. Again a burst of flame from behind the ear. Baby Burke swayed. Then he went down.

"They got him," Ma Burke said, "they got him."

She said it as though she herself did not believe it, as though something had taken place that was beyond anyone's belief. Mechanically in a dazed way she turned her head to look at her husband.

"They got him," she breathed. Liam Burke didn't move. She seized him by the arm and shook him. "Did you hear? The police shot Baby."

Liam Burke moved his lips. He said only two words, two words that required all the effort of which he was capable.

"I'm blind."

Blind? Pop Burke had gone blind? Nora heard it, but somehow it scarcely registered with her. It seemed of no consequence at all beside the fact that Baby Burke lay there on the sidewalk. An almost irresistible impulse came to her to spring out of the car and go to his aid, but what could she do? How could she possibly help him?

And then she saw Baby Burke move. He was dragging himself along on his stomach towards where his gun lay, a few feet away.

The plain-clothes man, Sergeant Ponder, came from behind the car. There was nothing lethargic about him now. He moved with unbelievable speed. His hand was on Baby Burke's collar before Baby Burke could reach his gun, and he yanked him to his feet. He shifted his hand to Baby Burke's lapels, then glanced for an instant at the spot where the young policeman lay, rigid.

C. O. Ponder turned back to Baby Burke. Blood was oozing through Baby Burke's right sleeve and there was a dark stain spreading on Baby Burke's trouser leg,  just above the knee. Sergeant Ponder's dull eyes glowed deep down with hate. He let go Baby Burke, drew back his fist and sent it crashing into the latter's mouth. Baby Burke spun around, then went down.

Even if C. O. Ponder had heard the moan that came from Nora's lips he would have paid no attention to it. This brutal youngster here had cold-bloodedly shot a policeman, a young policeman, one of C. O. Ponder's favourites, and the sergeant was overcome by an uncontrollable rage.

He stooped down and again pulled Baby Burke to his feet. For the second time he started to draw back his fist but stopped.

This man was crazy or he was full of liquor or something. He just stood there in the sergeants grasp, a twisted smile on his bleeding mouth, no resentment in his dark eyes, no sign of the pain that he must be suffering from the wounds in his arm and leg. He was taking it all in his stride. The whole thing appeared to have no particular meaning to him. It was unbelievable, something far beyond the realm of the sergeant's experience. And what a nice-looking boy. If C. O. Ponder hadn't seen it with his own eyes, he would never have believed him capable of the crime he had just committed.

For seconds the sergeant stood there with a curious feeling of unreality, then his mind began to function once more. There were things he had to do. That laundry truck was gone and maybe that sedan there had something to do with this. He looked up at the little group at the top of the steps in front of the bank.

"Give me a hand, some of you. Hold this man."

Three or four men came down the steps. Around the corner a policeman cane running. Sergeant Ponder shoved Baby Burke into his arms and spun around just in time to see the black sedan vanish up the street. He climbed into the police car and started in pursuit, knowing perfectly well that it was futile to try and overtake the black sedan.

NORA brought the car to a stop in front of the apartment house in the Bronx.

"I'm blind, Nora, do you understand? I'm blind," Liam Burke said as she helped him out of the car.

He had said that over and over again a thousand times maybe, and she knew it was true, but it meant nothing to her. All the way back she had thought of only one thing. Baby Burke was alive. She'd have to do something. First she'd have to get a lawyer. Julius Himberg was the man. Himberg was the best lawyer there was for this sort of thing. Liam had always told them all that if anyone ever got into a jam, he'd get them Himberg. Nora had a momentary feeling of hope then a feeling of despair. Nobody could save Baby Burke, not even Himberg.

Nora unlocked the door to their apartment. She pushed Liam inside. He made stumbling steps forward, his hands outstretched, groping. Ma Burke closed the door.

"Why didn't you blow the horn when I told you?" Her voice was hard and pitiless.

"It was like a gun going off inside my head," Liam Burke went on dully, "then everything went black and now I'm blind, helpless— Liam Burke is helpless. do you hear?"

"Why didn't you blow the horn?" Nora reiterated with stony monotony. She was glad he was blind— glad! Nothing was too terrible for him. If he hadn't been so stubborn, if he'd only given the signal, Baby Burke would have escaped unharmed. And this was to have been their last job. This fearful life that she had lived so stoically would have come to an end to be replaced by peace and happiness of a sort, at least.

Liam Burke took uncertain steps, reaching out with his hands. He found the table and the chair and he sat down heavily.

"Have you no heart, woman?" he said bitterly. "Your husband's gone blind and you haven't a word to say."

"Haven't I?" Nora's voice went suddenly high, almost shrill. "I don't care whether you're blind. I've been trying to tell you what's happened and you won't listen. The police got Baby Burke. What can I do?"

Liam Burke brought his fist down hard on the table. It was just as he had thought. Baby Burke meant more to her than he did. The horrible calamity that had overtaken him meant nothing to her compared with the fact that Baby Burke had been caught. And what was Baby Burke to him anyhow? Nothing now that they had pulled their last job.

He was about to say as much to his wife when suddenly he checked himself as it dawned on him how helpless, how utterly dependent he was on her now. If she walked out on him what would become of him? She might even take it into her head to notify the police, and how could he escape? Then a more terrible thought. Suppose she took it into her head to turn him. Liam Burke, over to the police for Blaby Burke's benefit— she might get Baby off with a life's sentence that way.

He took off his hat and flung it into a corner. He ran his hand back and forth over the top of his mottled bald head, then a wave of self-pity swept over him and he dropped his head on to his arms and let out a sob.

Nora stood there watching him, no mercy in her thin, lined face.

vi

"HOW do I get a lawyer," Nora demanded, "and how do I get the money to pay him-a lot of money? He can have all he wants."

Liam Burke straightened up. "You think it's all my fault, don't you ?" he said. There was a curious whining quality in that harsh voice of his now. "I didn't know the police were so close. Maybe it was Joe. The lad angered Joe. Maybe Joe gave the alarm from inside the bank just before he went out so the lad would be caught."

Nora's hopeless eyes narrowed. He was lying, deliberately lying. A faint suspicion that he was glad that something had happened to Baby Burke dawned on her.

"If anything happens to the boy," she said, "I'm going to leave you, Liam... I'm going to leave you."

Liam Burke's forehead grew dark with a rush of blood.

"You'd have done it anyhow. You and him would have gone away together once this happened to me. I've known it all along." He broke off sharply with a catch in his voice. It was a fool thing to say.

For a moment a weird stillness filled the room; then:

"You did it— you did it on purpose. You knew you were going blind and you were afraid that I'd take the boy away with me, away from you and the things you believe in. That's why you didn't blow the horn. that's why you waited. Yer wanted him to be caught!"

Nora was leaning forward, her face contorted with hate, her eyes riveted on the blind man, as though in that way she could make him realise what she felt for him.

"It's not so," Liam Burke roared. He stood up, he started to move about, trying to reach her. If he got his hands on her he'd beat her into submission. Blind as he was he'd beat her until she begged for mercy and said she believed the lie he was telling.

Nora backed away, stepping softly, noiselessly, until she reached a far corner.

"Where are you?" Liam Burke roared, stumbling about. Nora made no sound. "Where are you?" he bellowed again, louder. He fell over a chair, straightened up, bumped into the table, then got his hands on a wall and felt his way along, circling the room. Nora Burke kept backing away from him noiselessly.

"Listen, Nora, you're all I got now." There was panic in Liam Burke's voice. "Where are you? Speak, speak up. We'll get the lad off. Speak up."

Nora Burke held her breath.

Liam Burke stood still, swaying on his feet. She had gone! She had left him! His face went from yellow to a dirty-grey. He started again, fumbling about until he found the door. He opened it, was about to step out, but drew back and slammed the door. He was afraid to go out, deathly afraid. He stood still again. Twice more he called out her name without hearing a sound in reply. Tears trickled down his sightless eyes.

Nora Burke watched him, a pitiless expression on her thin face. Then she laughed; it was not a pleasant sound, and her voice drowned out his gasp of relief.

"From now on," she said, "things are going to be different."

MILLER came the next day. He had a newspaper in his hand. He held it out for Ma Burke to see.

"It's tough, Ma," he said. "It was in last night's paper, too. That's why Joe and Haggarty and I thought we'd better not come up right away. How did it happen?"

Nora said nothing. She took the paper from Miller's hand and read the passage that he had marked

BABY BURKE CAUGHT

Youthful Murderer Captured
by Police After Bank Hold-up.

She scarcely read the account that followed, reciting that Baby Burke was believed to be the head of a gang that had perpetrated a score of successful robberies, and that Baby Burke was responsible for the death of at least nine persons, including the policeman he had shot in the course of yesterday's holdup.

But when she came to the end of the article, Nora Burke suddenly stiffened. It was only a sentence, but it had an astounding effect on Nora Burke. Her whole body grew taut, a strange look came into her eyes, a curious, calculating look, not without hope. She read the sentence again.

"District Attorney John Strong in person is planning to present the case against Baby Burke."

Miller was biting his fingernails. He turned to where Liam Burke sat by the window with his back towards Miller.

"I guess we better scatter," Miller said, addressing the back of Liam Burke's head. Liam Burke said nothing. He shrugged listlessly.

"What's the matter with him?" Miller asked Nora.

"Blind— he's gone blind," Nora said. "I'll see that you get your money."

Miller let out a low whistle. He made for the door and stopped. "It's tough about the boy, Ma. I guess— I guess he's safe enough. They won't be able to make him talk." Nora Burke didn't appear to be listening.

"No, he won't talk," she said in an abstract way. Then, with something of elation in her voice, "but I'll talk. If worse comes to the worst, I'll talk."

Miller took a quick step towards her, his eyes suddenly angry. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing," Ma Burke said. There was a smile on her thin mouth. "It's nothing that'll hurt you or the others... it's something that will help Baby."

vii

WEEKS went by before Baby Burke was out of the prison ward of the hospital. Shortly thereafter District Attorney Strong had him brought down to his office for questioning.

John Strong had a notion that he could get out of Baby Burke the names of his accomplices, this, despite the fact that Sergeant Ponder had assured him that it couldn't be done. There was something else, too, that made the district attorney want to see Baby Burke. C. O. Ponder, the last time he had seen him, had made a cryptic remark to John Strong.

"Tch, tch," he had said, "a very unusual case, a very unusual case."

Pressed to explain, the sergeant had only shaken his head in an even more lugubrious fashion than was his custom.

Two officers brought Baby Burke in the next day. There was a look of interest in Baby Burke's face and a smile on his lips. The smile presented a strange contrast to the handcuffs about his wrists. John Strong eyed him sternly, making his face deliberately more austere, because Baby Burke's appearance was so different from what he had expected that it was something of a shock.

Here was no rat-faced, furtive-eyed gangster, shivering with fear. Nor was he the other type— the type that out on an act and rather fancied himself. And he was no drug addict, either. He wasn't bold and he wasn't afraid.

District Attorney Strong hated all criminals with a hatred that was almost beyond belief. He had reason to, but in this instance, for the briefest of. seconds, something like sympathy welled up in him, if not sympathy at least pity. It was almost unbelievable that a boy like this could be a cold-blooded murderer, and yet there was Baby Burke's record, a record which he hadn't denied.

"You can sit down," John Strong said sharply.

Baby Burke sat down. He eyed the district attorney. He knew, of course. despite the narrow limits within which he had lived his life, and despite the fact that the law up to now had never caught up with him, what a district attorney was. He had seen dozens of them in the movies and had read about them in the newspapers, but somehow it had never occurred to him that a district attorney could be so nice-looking. In the movies they always looked mean.

This man here, although he looked angry, was fine looking, really distinguished-looking.

"Before I ask you any questions," John Strong said, "I have to tell you that you are not compelled to answer. You are not compelled to say anything you don't wish to."

Pretty square, Baby Burke reflected. Still, he must know that Himberg had already told him the same thing so maybe he didn't deserve so much credit.

'And I have to tell you, further," John Strong went on grimly, "that I am not making you any proposition. If you are convicted you will be sentenced to death."

Baby Burke gazed at the district attorney. The man was square. Not that it was going to do him any good because he, Baby Burke wouldn't talk. He smiled back at John Strong and said: "Even if you offer to make a deal with me, it would be no good."

"Were you born in New York?"

Baby Burke reflected. The question was harmless enough, and the district attorney was so decent looking that there was no reason why he should not answer anything that he could, so he shook his head.

"Out West," he said.

The district attorney glanced through some papers in front of him, then looked up again.

"On four previous occasions when you and your gang were almost caught, there were an elderly man and a woman with you. Are they any relation to you?"

"I'm not saying," Baby Burke said.

John Strong's eyes narrowed a little. This young criminal was something new to him. He apparently had no intention of being either defiant or sullen, and he certainly wasn't going to whine. His manner-it was incredible-but his manner was pleasant. almost friendly.

"Where'd you go to school?"

"I never went to school," Baby Burke said. "Sometimes I wish I had."

"You mean you think it would have made a difference in your life? That you would have been something else, not a criminal?"

Baby Burke looked thoughtful. He seemed to think that over for a long time. Then:

"I don't think it would have made any difference." he said. "I think I would have grown up just the same, I'd be what I am."

The boy's manner baffled the district attorney.

"I suppose the killing of a policeman means nothing to you, leaves you completely untouched?" John Strong asked more sternly.

Again for a moment Baby Burke considered. He didn't quite know how it should make any difference to him whether or not the district attorney understood him, but somehow it did.

"Not the way you think," he said after a while. "I wouldn't kill just for the fun of it, but then I wouldn't stop if I thought I'd have to shoot it out with him. It's all in the game. There's police, there's district attorneys, there's stick-up men and a lot of other kind of people, all doing their jobs, all trying to make a lot of money."

He paused a moment and studied the district attorney's face. He had a notion that he hadn't quite made his point clear. "The sergeant got me in the arm and in the leg. He was trying to kill me, but I don't hold that against him. That's what he's there for. And I've got to take a shot at him if he gets in my way, and you knows—" Again he paused, "You know, that policeman— I don't think he holds it against me. He's been around to see me a lot, trying to get me to talk. He's not a bad sort."

John Strong had a feeling of exasperation. There was a sort of naive honesty about this young killer that almost annoyed him.

"You don't see any difference between right and wrong, do you?" he rasped.

"I don't think I do," Baby Burke said slowly. It was obvious that he was struggling with the idea.

John Strong's eyes snapped. The boy was trying to be smart; it couldn't be anything else, or else his lawyer had coached him with some crazy notion that he might get his client off on an insanity plea.

"You mean to sit there and tell me you don't know when you're doing something that's wrong, that's a crime?"

"Why, no," Baby Burke said. "That's not what I'm trying to tell you. I know that most people think sticking up a bank, knocking over a policeman. Is a crime. That's why I'm here. It's just that I don't feel the difference between right and wrong. I don't feel it, if you know what I mean. And I think you've got to feel things."

viii

FOR A moment John Strong, despite his vicious hatred for all criminals, unbent. The boy in his own way was perfectly honest, and intelligent, too.

"Suppose," John Strong said slowly "suppose it could be arranged, and mind you, I promise nothing, suppose I could arrange it—"

Baby Burke smiled.

"Don't try," he said. "You won't get anything out of me. I won't talk about anybody who was in this with me. I'd rather talk— well, the way we've been talking—"

"There isn't any point in that," John Strong said shortly. This boy, whom he planned to have sentenced, to death, if it were the last thing he ever did disturbed him in some indefinable way.

"Take him back," he barked at the officers.

"Before I go," Baby Burke said, "do you mind if I ask you something? You look like a decent sort, but you look angry, angry with me. When I bump off a policeman or somebody, I'm not sore. I just do it because I have to. Now you're going to send me to my death. Himberg says he'll get me off. I think Himberg's a liar, kidding me along. You're going to have me killed. That's all right, but why should you be angry about it? Why should you hate me?"

John Strong's face grew grimmer and grimmer. It was hard for him to answer that in a way, this boy being what he was.

At long last, he said: "Because I hate al criminals. I hate thieves, and killers like you, and kidnappers— kidnappers most of all."

DISTRICT ATTORNEY Strong had Baby Burke brought down to his office again the next week, and the week following, and once more the third week, the week before his trial was to come up. Each time John Strong told himself that he was only sending for Baby Burke because he wanted to find out who his accomplices had been, but in his heart of hearts he knew that that wasn't entirely true. There was something about the boy that fascinated him, something about Baby Burke that made him, the district attorney, want to probe into his past, into his mind, so that he might understand the boy's own simple code of life, which, ghastly as it was, had a queer oblique honesty about it.

John Strong was a skilful crossexaminer. True, he hadn't achieved much at that first interview, but then he had been taken by surprise, had been prepared for a totally different type of criminal. Subsequent interviews brought more results. He didn't get out of Baby Burke either the names of those who had helped him or their whereabouts. In fact, he got nothing out of Baby Burke except an ever-clearer picture of the boy's upbringing, of his background, his training, and most of the things that gave him the peculiar outlook on life that he had.

It was an amazing picture as it unfolded itself— a boy who had been raised from infancy, knowing until late in his young life just two people, his mother and father— Baby Burke didn't admit they were his mother and father— he only referred to them as the people "who brought me up," and the District Attorney had only surmised that they were his mother and father. It was astounding how these two had managed to implant in the boy's mind the idea that it was perfectly all right to steal and to kill.

"Just a business," Baby Burke had explained. And yet it wasn't so amazing. What gave people their conception of right and wrong? Who told them. Their elders, of course. And if there was no one to set them right what other result could there be?

Of course as Baby Burke grew older he'd had moments when he'd had his doubts about these teachings. Naturally, they couldn't keep him for ever in ignorance of what was common knowledge. But by that time the seeds of his early teachings had taken such deep root that Baby Burke, despite his intelligence— and he was intelligent— couldn't see what could be done about it.

Apparently, too, he had inherited or acquired from someone a sort of religion. a fatalistic creed that life meant you to be what you were. He expounded this theory to John Strong so simply, with such remarkable force. that even the District Attorney sometimes wondered whether it was possible to escape one's destiny just by sheer will power.

John Strong would like to have met, if only for a moment, Baby Burke's mother and father. What strange sort of creatures they must be to have had a boy like this and brought him up steeped in the idea that crime was a legitimate profession. What a heartless and inhuman couple. Even he, John Strong, who hated all criminals, and to whom Baby Burke was nothing, found compassion in his heart for him. And yet he had to send him to death. The boy would have to pay the penalty for the crimes he had committed. It wouldn't do any good to get him off with a life sentence. In fact, it would be a worse torture than death for Baby Burke.

No, he'd treat Baby Burke no differently than he'd treat any other criminal, The law would have to take its course. Baby Burke knew that too, and it was just as he had said that first time. He harboured no resentment toward the District Attorney. That somehow, too, was a little incredible to John Strong. The boy actually gave him the impression that he liked him, John Strong.

Once or twice he had let slip that he thought the District Attorney was "quite a good sort." That last time he had interviewed him at the very end, John Strong had looked at him soberly and had asked: "You don't really care whether you die or not, do you?"

Baby Burke's eyes had darkened then. His lips had twitched just once. but when he answered, his voice was steady. "You don't think I'm mad," he said. "Of course I care. I don't want to die. What difference does that make? The policeman I killed, he didn't want to die, but he did just the same. I don't want to die, but I'm going to get mine— it's all in the game."

ix

DISTRICT ATTORNEY Strong sat in his study sipping his after-dinner coffee. Baby Burke's trial was scheduled for to-morrow. On the desk in front of John Strong was a pile of papers. He had prepared the case against Baby Burke with his usual meticulous care. There was the opening, address to the jury, a list of the witnesses, a record of Baby Burke's crimes in other States, everything he needed. The case was air-tight and it wouldn't take very long.

"It won't take the jury more than five minutes to bring in a verdict," John Strong reflected with tight lips. And all that Julius Himberg with his great reputation and his cunning could do, wouldn't save Baby Burke. Himberg had been to see John Strong and had tried to make a deal with him; he had offered to let Baby Burke plead guilty to a lesser crime in exchange for a comparatively light sentence, and John Strong had thrown Himberg out of his office. But not before Himberg had had a chance to hint darkly that John Strong would be sorry.

Why would he be sorry? John Strong put down his empty cup, gave a hitch to his broad shoulders while the look in his thoughtful grey eyes grew more tense.

Did Himberg have something up his sleeve? Was he going to pull one of his proverbial tricks and succeed in confusing the jury? John Strong didn't see how he could. The case was as plain as daylight. There was the dead policeman, the gun that had killed him, the bullet that had come from the gun, and the half-dozen people along with Sergeant Ponder, who had seen it all.

Insanity! Maybe! Maybe Himberg was going to try that, was going to claim that the young killer was mentally unbalanced. Well, let him try it. John Strong was prepared for that, too. His features took on a more greyish hue. He began to think a little of himself, his life and the tragedy that had come into it so many years ago, so unexpectedly, so devastating in its results.

How he hated criminals! Sometimes he wondered if his nature hadn't become warped, if his hatred of gangsters and racketeers didn't amount to a phobia. Well, maybe it did, what of it? There were constant rumours in the papers that he was slated for the governorship. He didn't want to be governor; he didn't want to be anything but what he was— district Attorney— to be in a position to send criminals to prison and murderers to their death. Baby Burke had to go, too—even though there were extenuating circumstances. He'd been reared a killer.... he'd always be a killer...

There was a knock on the door. It opened. Carson, John Strong's aged servant. came in.

"There's someone here to see you, sir, a lady—a woman."

"I don't want to see anybody," John Strong said. "Who is she, anyway?"

"She wouldn't give her name," Carson said. "She says it's something to do with the Baby Burke case."

"All right. Show her in," John Strong said wearily. Probably just another witness, someone who had seen the shooting. He had more witnesses of that sort than he needed. Still it wouldn't do to overlook anything.

A minute later Nora Burke came in. She was dressed in black. An old-fashioned bonnet covered her thin, grey hair. Her hopeless, tired eyes were filled with resolution. Under her arm she carried a bundle covered with brown wrapping paper.

John Strong stood up and motioned her to a chair.

"I didn't get your name," he said, "but understand you wish to see me."

"My name doesn't matter," Nora said, in her leaden voice. She stopped, and looked about the room, then back at the District Attorney, as though not quite knowing how to go on.

"What can I do for you?" John Strong asked, his manner unbending, but courteous. Some inner sense told him of a sudden that this was no ordinary witness, that this woman had something unexpected to say, something for which he wasn't prepared, and he was right.

She said: "Have you seen your wife?"

John Strong straightened up in his chair as though he'd been stung by a snake. His face darkened, his grey eyes grew cold, and his voice indescribably harsh.

"What has my wife got to do with this? What has it got to do with your coming to see me?"

The woman looked down at the bundle under her arm.

"I thought she would come to see you." she muttered, a little confused. "I thought surely she would talk to you about Baby Burke."

Lines formed above the District Attorney's nose. He was genuinely puzzled.

"I thought I'd prove it to her and to you—"

"Prove what?" John Strong asked sharply.

With thumb and forefinger Nora massaged the lids of her tired eyes. Then she opened them and said, "Promise me something. They say you're a man of your word. Promise me that whatever I tell you I'll be free to leave here afterwards."

John Strong stared. He wondered if Himberg had sent her He wondered if it was some sort of a game the lawyer was trying to work.

"All right, I promise," he said, fretfully. "Why did you think my wife should be here?"

He stopped. That sounded silly. The woman couldn't possibly know that his wife, Marlyn, had left him some 18 years ago. It was only natural for her to assume that she would be here. But still that didn't explain—

"I thought she'd be here to tell you that you couldn't send Baby Burke to the chair... that you couldn't."

John Strong's mouth took on a razor edge. His eyes grew black.

"I think. you're wasting your time," he said, emphasising each word. "I not only can send Baby Burke to the chair, but I'm going to do it, and nothing's going to stop me."

The woman shook her hand. She began fiddling with the knot of the string that held the package together.

"I don't know how you will get him off," she said, without looking up. "but you're a powerful man, John Strong, and you can do it somehow, and do it you will."

There was a sing-song quality to her voice now. It irritated John Strong, but somehow also upset him. Was the woman mad? What connection did she have with Baby Burke? His mother, perhaps? Yes, that might be it. She might be his mother here to work on his (John Strong's) sympathy. Well, she was barking up the wrong tree. That sort of thing had been tried on him before. Baby Burke was going to die.

And once more he said so to the woman, sad for the second time Nora Burke shook her head in that lifeless but insistent way she had.

"Yer won't send him up."

"Why not?"

"Because Baby Burke is your son." She sad it just like that, in a flat, undramatic way.

John Strong's face went white, His hands tightened on the arms of his chair, making the wood creak— the only sound in a room that was thick with silence,

Seconds went by. John Strong had a feeling that he was separated from the rest of the world, from all life, that he was in a vacuum. Then like a clap of thunder something burst in his mind.

A trick! A horrible lie! Himberg was back of this. That cunning, weasel-like mind of Himberg's had devised this thing. The blood came back to John Strong's face with a rush.

"Get out!" he stormed. "Get out!" His whole body shook with rage.

x

NORA BURKE forgot where she was. She had the string undone now, was folding back the wrapping paper. Without a word she tossed something on the desk— a tiny, faded pair of rompers and an embroidered little Russian jacket.

John Strong started. His eyes far back in his head, he picked up the little garments and fingered them, unsteadily.

"Where'd you get them? Where'd you get them?" he demanded through his teeth. Still Nora Burke said nothing. She bent down and picked, out the rest of what was in the bundle— aged yellow newspapers. The one on top had a picture of a baby and headlines across two columns

DISTRICT ATTORNEY

REFUSES TO PAY RANSOM

John Strong Believed to
be in Touch With Kidnapper

The newspapers rustled in John Strong's trembling hand. He didn't have to read them. He knew what was in them. After eighteen years he could almost have quoted those headlines word for word.

"It's not so," be whispered hoarsely. It's a trick. It couldn't he so. They killed our baby.'' They must have killed him.

"I don't know where you got this stuff, but you and Himberg worked this out between you, thinking you'd put something over me. I promised you you could go, so get out— get out before I change my mind."

Ma Burke sat there immobile. Her voice more lifeless than ever, she said:

"The baby had a birthmark, a thing that looked like a cross. Go down to the Tombs and see for yourself. It's still there, just above his left elbow, where it's always been. Go and see for yourself. God wanted him to have that birthmark that looked like a cross so that you would know him and save him when the time came."

The room seemed to spin around to John Strong, its outline hazy. The grey-haired sparse woman who had sat there so steadily became nothing but a grey shadow as he realised suddenly that she was telling the truth. John Strong sprang to his feet and paced the floor; poignant, bitter memories crowded out coherent thought. He made a tremendous effort, a superhuman effort, and got hold of himself.

"Who are you?" he rasped. "How did you get into this? How do you know about this child of mine?"

He came and towered over Nora Burke, willing her with his eyes to tell him the truth.

"It was me and my husband," Nora said, "who took him, and when you wouldn't pay the ransom my husband wanted to kill him, but I wouldn't let him. He was just a baby. Two years old, wasn't he?"

She stopped and swallowed a few times. The skin over her thin, lined face tightened. A single tear trickled down her cheek.

"I can still remember holding him on my lap, I can see him like it was yesterday— his soft little hind closing tight over my finger, and he was looking up at me as though he liked me— him laughing when I bounced him up and down on my knee. You'll never believe it, but I loved him, right from the minute I saw him. He was the only live human thing there ever was in my life— a starved life— and I wouldn't let him come to harm."

John Strong's hands were clenched. For a moment it looked as though he'd strike. His voice rose to a tortured scream.

"I brought him up," Nora Burke went on steadily, "me who's no good, me who wasn't his mother, loved him more than you did. You had money, John Strong, a let of money, but you couldn't part with any of it to save your baby."

John Strong bent down. His hands closed over the woman's shoulders so hard that the bones cracked, yet she didn't wince.

"The money wasn't anything," John Strong said, not realising that he was defending himself, or why he should defend himself. "It was the principle of the thing. I was a young lawyer, just been made assistant district attorney. You're too stupid to understand, I suppose. It wasn't right for me to encourage rats like you and your husband by paying you ransom. It only meant that other people's children would be stolen. I couldn't do it."

He stopped. He let go of her and straightened up, his grey eyes went blank as he gazed into space.

"You say you loved him and you brought him up," he went on without recognising the sound of his own accusing voice, "and you made a criminal out of him, a ruthless, insensate killer."

"I'm giving you a second chance to save him," Nora said. "I'm ready to give him back to you."

John Strong laughed. It sounded like a file going across the edge of a piece of glass.

"He's a murderer," he said. "I'm going to convict him."

"It will end your career," Nora said, a sudden desperate quality in her voice. "I'll make it public, I'll tell the world."

"I don't want a career," John Strong said icily, and then his self-control left him. The veins stood out like cords on his forehead. "As for you, I promised you I'd let you go no matter what you said, but I'm going to break my word. I'm going to send you where you belong— to prison for the rest of your life. If I can convict you of murder, I'll do that."

There was no fear in Nora Burke's eyes. Oddly enough she wasn't looking at John Strong at all. She was looking beyond him, as though she was seeing something, and involuntarily John Strong spun around.

There was someone else in the room. John Strong tried to say something, but only a strangling sound came from deep down in his throat. Then at long last he managed:

"Marlyn!"

Marlyn stood there just inside the door, a slim, graceful figure. It was unbelievable how little she had changed during those long lonely years. Her hair was still thick and wavy, and a lustrous dark brown. There wasn't a line in her delicate, almost fragile face, and her eyes were as steady, as honest as they had always been.

She said: "I've come to see you, John," in her direct and simple way. "It's been a long time, hasn't it?"

John Strong, his face white, made as if to go to her, but instinctively she retreated a step. He dropped his half-raised hands a little hopelessly.

"Yes, it's been a long time," he agreed. His tone was uneven. He was moved to a point where he forgot everything— the woman who was sitting at his desk, who had just finished telling him that Baby Burke was his own son. He forgot Baby Burke, forgot himself. There was just Marlyn, more lovely, more desirable than she had ever been. It was the woman with the withered, drawn face at the desk who recalled him to himself.

"She's got the same eyes," Nora Burke said, "the same eyes as Baby Burke."

It was as though she were just talking out loud. She didn't address anyone in particular.

xi

MARLYN CAME further into the room. She looked at Nora.

"Are you— are you the woman who sent me the lawyer to tell me that my son is alive, a criminal? The woman who brought him up?"

She waited a moment for Nora to answer, but Nora Burke didn't answer. She could face John Strong; but somehow she couldn't face John Strong's wife, Baby Burke's real mother.

"Why are you doing this to me?" Marlyn said. "Is it because you want to hurt me some more?"

Nora Burke's head came up. Light flashed in her hopeless eyes.

"Hurt you! Who wants to hurt you? I came here to save the boy. I sent a lawyer to look for you, to tell you the whole business, so that you would try to persuade your husband to do something for Baby Burke. Yes, I brought him up....and loved him, do you hear! I'm more his mother than you are. He's a fine, upstanding lad."

"Yes, he's a fine lad," John Strong broke in with a wealth of bitterness in his voice, "he's killed nine men."

"That's not his fault," Nora Burke flared up. "He doesn't know the difference. He doesn't know right from wrong. My husband and me, we raised him that way right from the start. It was my husband's idea, but I fell in with it and I'll take some of the blame. We thought bringing him up that way he'd never he afraid, he'd be valuable to us, and he has been. How could I know?"

She turned from John Strong and looked at Marlyn as if certain that one of her own sex would understand her better.

"How did I know that he'd grow to mean as much to me as my own son, that I'd love him as much as any mother could love a lad of her own? This was to have been the last job. After that we were all going back to Ireland, and I was going ter to fix it so that Baby Burke could start life over again. He knows, do you hear me, he knows—"

"Knows what?" John Strong added.

"He knows that he isn't one of us. Nobody's told him, but he feels it. He knows that there's better stuff in him, that he comes from better stock than we are. You've got to save him. He's worth it; you've only got to look at him to see that."

She bored with her tired eyes into John Strong's and saw no hope there. "Listen," she said in desperation, "you want to send me to prison even if you have to frame me. I'm old, I'm no good. You won't have to frame me. I'll let you send me to prison, to the chair if you want to, but you've got to save the boy."

"You're mad! You're insane!" John Strong said.

"Not only, that," the woman went on, as though she hadn't been interrupted, "you can have my husband," she said. "He's old, too, and he's blind now. I'll turn him over to you. He'll take all the blame if you want him to. You can put it all on him."'

She turned from John Strong to look at Marlyn.

Marlyn couldn't speak. She ought to hate this woman. She and her husband had kidnapped her baby, had wrecked her life. And there was something revolting about, the way she now sat there offering to sacrifice herself, offering to betray her husband, to do anything in order to save her, Marlyn's, son.

And yet Marlyn couldn't hate her. How she must love the boy! Must love him the way she, Marlyn, would have loved him if he hadn't been stolen from her, the way she would still love him if she had the chance.

Marlyn stepped up to her husband.

"You've got to save him, John," she said. He stretched out his hand to touch her, and she drew back. '"No, don't touch me, John, not yet. Give me a little time. I've come back to stay. I've missed you terribly. The boy tore us apart, but now he's bringing us together again. You heard what this woman said. Our boy isn't to blame. He simply doesn't know. I suppose, in a way, he isn't any older to-day than on the day they took him away from us."

"You've got influence, John Strong," Nora burst in. "You can fix it so's he can get away. You can bring him up right in some other country. Nobody ever needs to know."

John Strong felt hemmed in, with his back to the wall. These two women, one of whom he hated with all the hatred of which his intense nature was capable, and the other whom he loved more dearly than he could describe to himself— they stood there with the same single idea— he must let Baby Burke escape.

They had no conception of the difficulties, of the impossibility of the thing. Even if he managed the trial so that Baby Burke was acquitted, there were a dozen other States to claim him and to try him for murder. There was no hope, no chance, for Baby Burke. They talked of fixing it so that Baby Burke could escape. How could he, John Strong, countenance that? How could he, a sworn officer of the State, compound such a heinous crime? Yet how could he make it plain to them? Surely the thin faced, grey-haired woman wouldn't possibly understand. She had no code. The thing to do was to get rid of her so that he could talk to Marlyn alone. Marlyn had to understand. He faced Nora.

"You can go," he said in a flat voice. Slowly, Nora Burke rose to her feet. She reached for the little garments that had been Baby Burke's, then drew her hand back, looking at Marlyn.

"They're yours, I guess." Marlyn closed her eyes for a second and nodded. Nora turned back to John Strong.

"Look at her," she said, pointing a thin finger at Marlyn, "Look at her. She's beautiful, but she's going to leave you again, John Strong. She'll never stay with you for a minute, if you send Baby Burke to die. It'll always be between you. You'll never be together for an hour, for a minute, without thinking of it."

It was astonishing the amount of force that had crept into her leaden voice.

John Strong looked at his wife. Her dark eyes were soft and trusting. There was something almost akin to happiness in them now. She was back with him. They were together again, and she was on sure that he, John Strong, would manage it so that Baby Burke, his own son— he had almost forgotten his real name, Peter— would be saved.

"You've got 24 hours to leave town," he said to Nora, "just 24 hours."

Nora Burke looked him in the eye for a long time, then she went out.

xii

ALONE with his wife, John Strong had a moment of self-consciousness, then lie went to her with outstretched arms, meaning to hold her close to him, but she drew back and again said: "No, John, no."

"Where are you staying?" he asked a little wistfully. "Will you spend the night here?"

She shook her head. Her glance travelled slowly about the room, took in the books, the carpet, the furniture, the little porcelain horse over the mantel, everything.

"Nothing," she said with a little catch in her voice, "has been changed. Everything is just the same. Have you changed, John?" He started to say no, that he felt about her the same as he had always felt, more so, and then suddenly he understood what she meant.

"There isn't anything I can do, Marlyn," he said drearily. "The trial starts tomorrow. I'm not trying our son. I'm trying a ruthless killer— Baby Burke."

Marlyn Strong's lithe, slim figure swayed. She closed her eyes to shut out from him the pain that was there. She half turned towards the door.

"Good-bye. John. We won't see each other again."

"Wait, Marlyn, wait! You're not being fair to me, you're not being fair to yourself—"

"My train leaves at 4 to-morrow, John." Her hand was on the doorknob. "Could you— could you do one thing for me? Could you have it arranged so that I can see him just once? He doesn't have to know who I am. I won't tell him who you are. I would just like..."

John Strong moistened his dry lips. At least he could keep her here another day or two.

"I'll have the trial adjourned, and I'll arrange it so that you can see him."

"Thank you, John."

He watched her go. If his life had been empty before, it was ten times more so now.

And it had all happened so quickly. For a few brief moments it had seemed as though she had again belonged to him, and now that was over and she was leaving him again, and there was nothing he could do about it, even if he wanted to.

To be sure, he could turn the case over to one of his assistants. But that wouldn't do any good. The merest tyro of a lawyer could convict Baby Burke, and it was just as that strange woman, who seemed to be consumed with a passion for his, John Strong's son, had said.

Even if Marlyn came back, consented to stay, it would always be there between them. And yet what could he do? What was there to do? If there was anything that could be done he'd do it. He'd compromise with his principles. forget his duty, overlook his oath— anything to get Marlyn back. And then John Strong found it in his heart to wish that C. O. Ponder had done a better job. If only Ponder's aim would have been more accurate. Instead of wounding Baby Burke in the arm and leg, if he had only shot him through the heart! A cold shiver went up and down John Strong's spine. It was a ghastly thing to wish, and yet wouldn't it have been better for all?

Baby Burke was going to die in any event. There'd be the trial, the futile appeal, the months of waiting in the death house! Even Baby Burke would have been better off with a bullet in his heart. John Strong dropped into a chair exhausted. The strain on his emotions had been too much. An old wound he thought had healed had been torn asunder and was bleeding again. If only Ponder hadn't missed....

John Strong suddenly closed his eyes. He came to a few minutes later, aware of the fact that Carson was in the room.

"Sergeant Ponder is here to see you, sir," Carson said.

John Strong nodded to indicate that Carson should bring him in. Carson did not move. He had been with John Strong a long time, even in the days before John Strong was married.

"Excuse me, sir— Mrs. Strong—" The old servant's eyes grew misty.

"No," said John Strong. "I'm afraid she hasn't come back to stay, Carson."

Sergeant Ponder came in and took a chair without being asked to do so. He balanced his greenish derby on his knee, licked a loose leaf into place on his cigar butt, and said: "I hear one of your witnesses— Federman— has disappeared. I don't think it's going to make any difference. I guess you've got all the witnesses you need."

"Yes, I've got all the witnesses I need," John Strong said.

C. O. Ponder studied his butt with disfavour. There was only about an inch and a half left, and it was not drawing as well as it might. He fished a pin out of the lapel of his coat; he impaled the butt on the end of it and, using the pin as a holder, puffed away.

Then: "Two months ago," he said a little uncomfortably, "I asked you to go easy on a man named Tony Sporatti. You wouldn't do it. You had him sent up for life. You said you'd do me a favour if you could some other time: I'd like you to talk to this Baby Burke before the trial."

"I've already seen him three or four times."

"I saw him shoot that policeman," Sergeant Ponder said, "and I thought I never hated a man so much in my life. I was glad I didn't kill him. I wanted to see him killed legally. I punched him in the mouth just for fun when he was wounded. I wish I hadn't done it."

"Why?" John Strong said, his voice stony.

"The boy's not crazy," Sergeant Ponder said, "and he's not dumb. But he's not to blame. He wouldn't talk, but from the little he dropped here and there I've got it worked out. He just doesn't know that you can't go around shooting people. It seems all right to him. No different from me being a policeman. It's a sort of a game, a kind of a business with him: He's been brought up to feel it's all right to shoot a policeman or anybody else that gets in his way, and he figures that it's all right for a policeman to shoot him or knock him around."

"What do you want me to do?" John Strong demanded. He felt himself on the brink of hysteria.

"Do you want me to tell the judge to let him go, and give him a medal or a pension?"

xiii

SERGEANT Ponder looked abashed. Somehow, he hadn't expected so violent a retort.

"The boy's got stuff," Sergeant Ponder said. a little defensively. "It's the darndest thing, Mr. Strong, but somehow he gets inside of you. I guess I'm just an old, sentimental fool. I guess maybe I'd be better off, maybe it would be better for my job if l was a little—"

John Strong bent forward. His hand closed over the sergeant's wrist, hard.

"You've known me a long time, Charlie. Don't you remember what happened to us?"

The sergeant's great round eyes grew more opaque, more unreadable. After a long time he said:

"Tch, tch, I remember. Your baby was kidnapped. If something like that had happened to me maybe I'd be like you, too. Maybe I would be even harder and tougher, wouldn't give any criminal a break. I guess maybe I owe you an apology. Mr. Strong. I remember—"

He stopped. There was so use bringing up the fact of John Strong's wife having left him.

A wan smile came to John Strong's face.

"It's not only that, Charlie," he said. "I just found out something a few minutes ago. This Baby Burke that I've got to try in the morning, that I'm going to send to the chair... he's my son, the baby they kidnapped...."

For seconds C. O. Ponder didn't move. The pin and the cigar butt slipped from his fingers unnoticed. He made that funny little noise, "Tch, tch." It was amazing how much sympathy he could put into these two sounds.

After a long time he said: "What are we going to do, John?"

The way he said "we," making John Strong's troubles his own, making it plain that he stood ready to do anything to help, was more than John Strong could bear after what he'd been through. The floodgate burst.

He told C. O. Ponder everything— about the women who had come bringing the baby's clothes, the newspaper clippings, and about Marlyn. He spoke mostly about Marlyn. He spoke about her so much that C. O. Ponder took out a fresh cigar and lit it clumsily, and he looked down at his square toed boots to hide. his feelings while he waited for John Strong to finish. "

"It's too bad," John Strong ended sadly. "It's my own boy, and I know he's not to blame, but he's done what he's done... and it's too bad, Charlie, that you had to miss. That first bullet of yours, a little more to the left, and this thing would never have come up, I wouldn't be in the spot that I'm in. It would have been better for the boy, too. But I guess I'm just selfish About it just thinking that perhaps Marlyn and I could have got together, saved something of our lives. Look at that photograph, Charlie. That's Marlyn. She doesn't look a day  older and I'm not so old. I'm just selfish. I want her."

Sergeant Ponder studied the depths of his derby as though somewhere inside he'd find an answer to this tragic situation.

If only he hadn't missed!  That was ironic. He had missed on purpose. He hadn't wanted to kill Baby Burke. He had wanted to take him alive. He had done the one really savage thing in his life: he wanted to take Baby Burke alive so that he'd suffer. If he had only known!

"Marlyn wants to see him." John Strong said wearily. "It's a little irregular, but I'm going to try to have him brought up here. If I can arrange it, will you bring him up, Charlie? You don't have to tell him that he's going to see his mother or that I'm his father. I haven't quite made up my mind on that. Perhaps I'll tell him myself when I see him. Perhaps Marlyn will tell him."

Sergeant Ponder nodded. He put his finger through the hole in his derby that Baby Burke's bullet had made, and twisted the old hat around and around.

"I'm just a stupid policeman," he said miserably. "Can't even hit a man in the right place when he's only twenty feet sway."

SERGEANT PONDER didn't go down to headquarters the next morning. John Strong called him early, telling him that he was trying to make arrangements about Baby Burke, asking him to wait where he was until he heard from him. As a rule, Sergeant Ponder enjoyed the meals prepared by his wife, Molly, but this morning, for some reason she couldn't understand, he scarcely tasted his breakfast.

"What's the matter, Charlie?" she asked him, with just a touch of apprehension in her voice.

"Nothing, Mum, nothing," C. O. Ponder said. He waited until she poured him a second cup of coffee, then lit one of those fat, black cigars which usually were a source of comfort to him, but now seemed to have no taste at all. Molly Ponder, a trim though slightly buxom little figure, with jolly blue eyes and a sweet mouth, came and stood beside his chair. She stroked his hair gently. while she looked down at him with serious eyes.

"Tell me, Charlie, what is it?"

For a time Sergeant Ponder said nothing. He was thinking of John Strong and John Strong's wife, Marlyn. He was thinking what he'd do or how he'd feel if something came between him and Molly.

"You'd always want me to do what I thought was right, wouldn't you, Mum," he asked after a while.

"What I thought," Molly Ponder said with pride in her voice, "wouldn't make any difference. You'd always do what you thought was right, anyway."

Her arm crept around his shoulder and she pressed his head close to her body.

"You've got to stand by somebody that needs you," C. O. Ponder said. "You've got to give somebody a hand, help him out if you can, don't you?"

"Of course you do," Molly said. There was nothing m her tone to indicate the extent of her apprehension.

"Especially if, in a way, it's been sort of your fault," C. O. Ponder went on. "I can mess up things better than any man there ever was."

"You haven't any business to say a thing like that," Molly declared indignantly. "I'd like to know what they'd do down at that old police station of yours if it wasn't for you. Just a lot of stupid policemen with no sense, no feeling, no brain"

Sergeant Ponder lifted his head and gave his wife a fleeting whimsical glance.

"I'm the best there is, ain't I?" he said with mock seriousness. Then again he grew sombre.

"Except when it comes to doing the dishes," Molly said, trying to keep the conversation in a lighter vein. "You've more ways of getting out of doing the dishes than any man there ever was—and don't say 'ain't."

Sergeant Ponder ordinarily might have responded to her teasing, but he didn't now. He rose a little heavily. More than a head taller than she was, he looked down at her, his lack-lustre eyes moody. Then unexpectedly he put his arms around her and drew her to him, holding her tight, without saying a word. Fear came into Molly Ponder's eyes.

"Charlie," she said breathlessly. "Charlie, what is it? You frighten me. Something's going to happen."

She knew in her heart now that he was about to undertake some particularly risky Job, that he was going to fling himself into danger. She had known minutes like that before. How many, many times in the past had she had that feeling. And how often had she forced herself not to express her fears.

"It's nothing, Molly," Sergeant Ponder said laconically. "You know me, nothing ever happens to me."

Molly made no comment. Instinctively her head turned, her eyes drifted out to the little hall where C. O. Ponder's hat hung, the hat she had brushed carefully last night, that old derby of his that had a bullet hole in it now. He patted her lightly on the shoulder, then he grinned.

"I'd help you with the dishes, Mum, only I've got to do some thinking about a case."

With that he walked out into the front room, their little parlour. He took out his service revolver, examined it critically, then slipped it back into his hip pocket. He went over to a desk that stood against the far wall, opened a drawer and brought out a second gun. He examined that, too. It was loaded and he slipped it into his outside coat pocket. Then he sat down. in an arm. chair by the window and stared out into the sunlit street.

He should never have missed. If he hadn't deliberately missed, Baby Burke would be dead, and John Strong wouldn't be in the fix that he was in, and he, C. O. Ponder, wouldn't have to run the risk that he was going to have to run because there was no other way out. No, there wasn't any other way out. He had spent a sleepless night trying to think of some other way, without success.

xiv

PONDER HEARD from John Strong directly after lunch. John Strong had managed it. If C. O. Ponder would go to the Tombs they'd turn Baby Burke over to him to be taken down to the District Attorney's office for questioning. Only C. O. Ponder wasn't to take him to the District Attorney's office. He was to bring him up to John Strong's apartment.

"That's just between you and me, Charlie." John Strong said in an unsteady voice, and hung up.

C. O. Ponder led Baby Burke through the drab, forbidding gates of the Tombs and motioned him into the waiting taxi. Baby Burke got in and eyed the sergeant as the latter climbed in beside him. The sergeant wasn't a bad sort. To be sure, he had knocked him down that time when they had robbed the bank, when Baby Burke's arm had hung useless at his side, but Baby Burke didn't hold that against him. He'd have done the same if he had been in the sergeant's place. And then this sergeant had come to see him many times after that, trying to pump him, trying to find out who was in the job besides himself. And Baby Burke didn't blame C. O. Ponder for that either. That's what he'd have done in the sergeant's place. And the sergeant had been fair about it. just tried to reason with him, hadn't third-degreed him or anything like that.

That was funny! Pop Burke had always told him how brutal the police were. how they beat you up with a rubber hose to make you talk. Of course he wouldn't have talked in any event. You never talked; that had been hammered into Baby Burke's mind almost from the very beginning.

The cab rolled on and Baby Burke got to thinking about Ma. He wished Ma had been to see him. But then that hadn't been possible. Himberg had explained that to him. Ma and Pop Burke had to be awfully careful, and Joe and Miller and Haggarty had gone away, naturally enough. Ma and Pop were doing all they could for him. They must have put up a lot of money to get Himberg to defend him. He had often heard Pop say that if anybody could get you off, Himberg could do it. Maybe, Himberg could do it, but Baby Burke didn't think so, despite the fact that Himberg had been very reassuring and hearty and everything.

"I was supposed to come up before the Judge this morning," Baby Burke said to C. O. Ponder. "I don't know what happened. My mouthpiece didn't come to see me."

"The trial was adjourned," C. O. Ponder said, looking steadily out of the window.

"Then where are we going now?"

"To see the District Attorney. He wants to have a talk with you."

Baby Burke said: "If he's still figuring on making a deal with me, it's no use." He said it without malice, without a trace of viciousness, in an almost good-natured way. The District Attorney was all right, just doing his job.

C. O. Ponder turned and looked at him. "Son," he said, "if you were just a  little bit different I'd like— I'd like you a lot. You're the kind of a lad I'd like to have for my own son, if I had one, that is, if you were different."

Baby Burke looked a little surprised.

"Would you?"' he asked curiously. "Why?"

"You've got some real stuff," C. O. Ponder said. "You've got the makings of a gentleman, only you've been brought up wrong."

Baby Burke looked suspicious. This sergeant wasn't bad, but he wasn't being taken in by this stuff. No doubt, the sergeant was soft-soaping him, trying to wheedle something out of him.

Then Baby Burke said: "The makings of a gentleman? Me? What makes you say that? What's a gentleman, anyhow? I've often wanted to know."

"I can't exactly tell you," C. O. Ponder said after a while. "You don't have to be rich to be a gentleman, you don't have to wear good clothes. you don't—" C. O. Ponder hesitated. "Well, you don't even have to be honest, in a way, necessarily. It's something sort of inside you. It's the way you go at life. I guess maybe it's something you get from your father or your mother."

Baby Burke shook his head. Ma Burke was all right, and so was Pop in his way. But there was nothing in either of them that would make him, Baby Burke, a gentleman. He didn't know why he didn't try to explain it to himself. he just knew.

Sergeant Ponder again looked out of the window. The cab was getting further uptown, and in another few minutes they would be at John Strong's apartment.

"Don't try to pull anything funny," Sergeant Ponder said with an unexpected change in his tone. "Just because I didn't put any bracelets on you, don't think you can get away with anything."

Ostentatiously he took out the gun, the one that was in his coat pocket, and tapped his knee with the barrel several times, then he put it back again in that same pocket, the pocket that was right beside Baby Burke's hand.

With a little stealth, with a little care, Baby Burke thought he might reach into that pocket, might get the gun out, especially since Sergeant Ponder so carelessly didn't even bother to pull out the flap of the pocket and close it over the outside. Baby Burke's dark eyes glowed. It was a chance.

The next time they'd turn a corner, he'd lurch against the sergeant. It was a shame in a way. He almost hated to kill him. Maybe he wouldn't kill him. Maybe he'd just hit him over the head with the butt. That would be better anyway because a shot would create a disturbance, would frighten the taxi driver, might bring some other police perhaps.

Baby Burke's hand moved a fraction of an inch, then he drew it back and laughed to himself. He had almost fallen for that gag. This sergeant was no fool. It was a thousand to one against the gun being loaded. If he made a grab for it, it would just give the sergeant an excuse to shoot. Perhaps Himberg knew what he'd been talking about. Maybe he'd pulled something smart and the District Attorney now didn't count on being able to convict him. Two to one that was it! That's why the trial had been adjourned!

"Aren't you afraid of losing that gun?" Baby Burke said. "If you're not careful I'll take it away from you."

There was still no malice in his voice, nothing unpleasant in that frank, open face. It was all right for the sergeant to pull that one. It was all in the game. It was smart when you come to think of it.

C.O. Ponder frowned. "You're not yellow, are you?"

"You ought to know," Baby Burke said. "If I could have reached my gun that time when I was crawling along on my stomach, I'd have shot it out with you some more. I had a hole in my arm and a hole in my leg, but—" He paused, then added, "You're kind of lucky. You're the first man I ever missed."

xv

C.O. PONDER shook his head wearily.

"I missed you," he said, "but you weren't lucky. I missed you on purpose. It's no fun, son, waiting to be executed."

He looked at Baby Burke. The boy didn't wince, he didn't even pale, and it wasn't sheer bravado either. He wasn't putting on an act. The boy just had courage and he'd take it without whining, just knowing that he had it coming to him. He had gambled and lost. The cab came to a stop. Baby Burke tensed. Somewhere along the line he'd have to try and make his get-away. C.O. Ponder opened the door with one hand and slipped the other under Baby Burke's armpit.

"Come along." Together they stepped out. Baby Burke looked up and down the street. There were a few pedestrians. What would his chances be if he wheeled and knocked Sergeant Ponder on his ear. That wouldn't be any good. The sergeant was tough. He wasn't slow either and could shoot. True, he had only shot Baby Burke in the arm and leg that time instead of letting him have it in the body where he ought to have. But next time he, Baby Burke, mightn't be so lucky. No, he'd have to wait for a better chance.

They went inside. Baby Burke looked at the ornate lobby, at the uniformed doorman, at the uniformed elevator man. This was quite a place. He'd never been in a place like this.

"What is this?" he asked. "It's where the District Attorney lives," Sergeant Ponder said morosely, shoving Baby Burke into the elevator.

They got out on the sixth floor. Carson let them in. He seemed to require no explanation. He conducted them straight into John Strong's study.

The District Attorney was sitting at his desk. His face was more set than Baby Burke had ever seen it before. Over in the far corner, a woman sat. Baby Burke was no connoisseur of feminine beauty, but to him she seemed very beautiful, quite young, despite that strained look in her face.' Her hands were in her lap, clutching a tiny lace handkerchief.

"I brought him," C. O. Ponder said glumly. He was thinking of that gun in his pocket; Baby Burke had refused to take a chance. It was many seconds before John Strong looked un from his desk. His mouth was hard, his eyes were unreadable.

"Sit down, Burke," he said. There was a peculiar, cracked quality to his voice.

Baby Burke sat down in that easy, careless way of his. John Strong noticed it. The boy had poise, an astonishing amount of poise for one of his upbringing.

Baby Burke looked about the room. He liked it; he liked the panelling, the thick carpet, the comfortable chair in which he sat. He liked the ship models over the bookcases. This was quite a place. He'd never seen a room like this except in the movies.

Then Baby Burke looked at the woman again who sat there so rigid, never taking her eyes off him. A puzzled expression came into Baby Burke's face. She looked vaguely familiar. That was funny. He was sure he had never seen her before, yet there was something about her eyes, about the shape of her face.

"This is your last chance," John Strong said, his voice more strained than ever. "I want to know who was in this with you."

He was only saying that because there wasn't much else to say. Baby Burke made no immediate reply. He kept staring at the woman, and then he looked at John Strong, then at C. O. Ponder, who was leaning in a lethargic way against the wall, with his old derby in his hands and a now cold cigar indeed between his teeth.

"She looks like me," Baby Burke said in an amazed way, "kind of like me."

The wooden paper-knife in John Strong's hand snapped. There followed a silence that threatened to become unbearable.

"Tch, tch." C. O. Ponder said uncomfortably. "Why do you say a thing like that, son?"

"Yes," Baby Burke said easily. The District Attorney had explained that to him before too.

"Didn't anybody ever tell you that crime doesn't pay," John Strong asked huskily, "that it couldn't last? What did you expect to get out of it in the end?"

He wondered how much longer he could keep on, standing there, talking futile, meaningless nonsense like this to his own son who was going to die soon. A smile that was almost sunny, came into Baby Burke's face.

"You're wrong, Mr. District Attorney. It does pay. We got a lot of money saved up and we were going to finish after this one."

He stopped and again looked at. the woman sitting there in the corner, her face so white.

"What did I expect to get out of it? I was going to live nice, sort of like you live here. I was going to find out how to live like a gentleman, in a house with a room like this— maybe not so good as this. I could learn how to fix up a room like this. Maybe some day I was going to get married."

He glanced again to where Marlyn sat and stopped, astonished. A sob had been wrung unwillingly from Marlyn.

Baby Burke didn't understand it. He was even more puzzled by what she did next. She sprang to her feet and stood in front of the District Attorney looking up at him, her eyes filled with tears, clutching the District Attorney fiercely by the arms.

"John," she said pleadingy, "John."

It was funny. The District Attorney wouldn't look at her. He was staring right past her, shaking his head almost imperceptibly, and Baby Burke heard him say: "There's nothing— there's nothing I can do, dear. You can see for yourself—"

"Her face is sort of like nine," Baby Burke said still wondering. "That's the way I look when I see myself in the mirror, shaving. Who is she?"

John Strong got up, walked over to the window and looked out. The boy was right, horribly right. He not only looked like his mother, but he had her same simple, direct way. Here he was, a criminal, knowing that he was as good as convicted and dead already, and yet all he had to say was "who is she?"

He turned and looked at the boy again. For a moment he was tempted to tell him, but there was no use in that, and there was no sense in this whole scene. What could Marlyn get out of it? There couldn't be anything in it for her but heartbreaking agony, just as there was for him.

Wildly he considered the possibility of convicting the boy and then using his influence subsequently to secure a pardon for him. But no, that wouldn't do any good. There was at least eleven other states waiting to try him on the same charge. Desperately John Strong searched his mind for something more to say— something that would sound natural and show Marlyn how hopeless the whole thing was.

"You don't see anything wrong in shooting a policeman, do you? you're not even sorry afterwards, are you?"

Baby Burke shook his head. The District Attorney had asked him that before. Why go over it again?

"I don't mind shooting it out with the police any time," he said, "and I'm not sorry. He—" He made a motion with his head towards Sergeant Ponder, "put two bullets into me. He's not sorry. Why should l be?"

"I'm trying to find something in you," John Strong said, "that might help your case. You know what's going to happen to you, don't you?"

Marlyn's hands dropped to her side. She stood for seconds where she was with her eyes averted, then she straightened up and came over to where Baby Burke sat. She looked at him for a long time. Once for a second he had the impression that she was going to touch him, but she didn't. She said, "Good-bye," looking straight at him, then she said something else. Baby Burke thought it was, "I'll pray for you," but he couldn't be sure. Maybe he only thought she had said that because Ma Burke used to say it to him once in a while. And then before he knew what had happened, she was gone.

xvi

FOR SOME REASON that he couldn't explain to himself, Baby Burke for the first time in his life, felt deeply shaken. What was it all about? he asked himself. Baby Burke's thoughtful dark eyes rested on John Strong, then shifted to C. O. Ponder. The sergeant was toying with his unlit cigar, while he wandered about the room looking at this and that.

On a little side table he discovered those old yellow newspapers that Ma Burke had brought the day before. He picked them up and glanced at them. John Strong had told him about them.

"Could I borrow these for a little while?" asked C. O. Ponder.

John Strong nodded absently. "Take him back," he added, referring to Baby Burke. "She's leaving on the 4 o'clock train for the coast. I'd just like to see her for a minute more before she goes."

C. O. Ponder bobbed his head up and down understandingly. He put his hand on Baby Burke's shoulder and said: "Come on, son."

"There was nothing else I could do, Charlie, was there? Even if I wanted to—"

"Not a thing, Mr. Strong, not a thing," C. O. Ponder said, his round, opaque eyes clouded.

With that he led Baby Burke out of the room, past John Strong, who stood by the door, watching them go, his fine, statesmanlike face devoid of any expression, absolutely stony.

Out in the street, as they were about to enter the waiting cab, Baby Burke held back imperceptibly. He felt a little dazed. The whole thing hadn't made sense to him. He felt sorry that that nice looking woman had cried. Come to think of it, he had never really felt sorry for anyone before. The District Attorney was a fine guy, the real thing. He was— well, he was a gentleman. He was the first man he (Baby Burke) had ever met who came up to his conception of a gentleman.

With an effort Baby Burke steered his thoughts into other directions, along more practical lines. If he were going to escape, he'd have to do something pretty soon. How was he going to work it?

The sergeant's grip on his arm tightened.

"In the cab, son, in the cab," C. O. Ponder said listlessly, then added to the driver, "Police Headquarters."

It took a little over 20 minutes for them to get down to police headquarters, and during that time neither Sergeant Ponder nor Baby Burke said anything. They were both occupied with their own thoughts. Perhaps Sergeant Ponder's thoughts would have been of more interest to Baby Burke than the latter's to the sergeant.

Inside Headquarters, Sergeant Ponder led Baby Burke into a little room. There was no one there, and it was sparsely furnished— just a light oak table in the centre and a few chairs.

Sergeant Ponder closed the door carefully and indicated a chair to Baby Burke that was close to the table. He took another on the opposite side. He put the newspapers he had brought along on the table.

Then he took out the gun from his coat pocket, broke it, extracted the bullets and juggled them in the palm of his hand so that Baby Burke could see. After a while he reloaded the gun and put it down on the table.

Baby Burke's eyes gleamed. The gun was loaded after, all! This sergeant must be mad. It would only take a leap and he'd have the gun, and the sergeant would eat lead and like it. And yet there must be a trick to it.

"You're all washed up," Sergeant Ponder said. "You haven't got a chance. You're through, son. You're going to end up in the chair. It's too bad. It's a pretty awful way for you to die."

Baby Burke's body tensed. Yes, it was a pretty awful way to die. Maybe he ought to take a chance and snatch up the gun.

"You can read," C. O. Ponder said, "can't you? Well, look at this."

He tossed the yellow newspapers into Baby Burke's lap. A little surprised, Baby Burke picked them up.

"Read what it says about John Strong, the District Attorney," C. O. Ponder said listlessly.

Baby Burke started to read, without much interest at first, but then more intently. Endless minutes went by while Sergeant Ponder sat there, puffing away at his cigar. Only once he felt of his hip pocket, where his service revolver reposed. He wasn't going to shoot the boy down in cold blood, even though he could get away with it, claiming that the lad had attempted to escape and he had to shoot him. It was going to be a fair fight, a duel, so to speak. The boy was quick and a good shot, and he'd have his chance. Maybe he, C. O. Ponder, was just an old fool, but there were two people, two fine people, John Strong and his wife, breaking their hearts over a thing that couldn't be straightened out in any other way, and it had all been his, C. O. Ponder's fault. If only he hadn't missed that first time! With Baby Burke dead, John Strong could go to his wife. He could say that he would have fixed it the way she wanted him to, that he never would have sent his own son to the chair, and everything would come out all right, that is, if the boy did not shoot C. O. Ponder first and then get himself caught again

Baby Burke put down the papers. There was a puzzled expression on his face.

"What is this? Why do you want me to read this stuff?"

"Tch, tch," C. O. Ponder said, "you can't guess?"

Baby Burke read some of it again. A look of incredulity spread over Baby Burke's face.

"What can't I guess?"

"Maybe you didn't notice in the paper there," C. O. Ponder explained in tired way "the baby who was kidnapped had a birthmark on its arm like you have— in the same place too. Yesterday an old woman came to see the District Attorney, bringing those papers, bringing the baby's clothes. I suppose it was the old woman who brought you up, whom you always thought was your mother."

C. O. Ponder stopped and shook his head. Baby Burke bent forward in his chair.

"She was my mother. What are you trying to hand me ? What kind of a game is this?"

"You ought to be smart enough," C. O. Ponder said, "to work it out by now. That lady you saw a little while ago who went out of the District Attorney's house crying— she's your real mother, son. She's the District Attorney's wife. She left your father, as you saw in the papers there, a long time ago because he wouldn't pay the kidnappers ransom— he thought it wasn't right and he's the kind of man that would never do anything that wasn't right. And now your mother wants him to fix it so that you can make a getaway, escape, but he won't do that either, so she's going away again, even though she loves your father and he loves her."

xvii

BABY BURKE sat there for a long time. He fiddled with the papers, glanced at them again. It wasn't possible. And yet there was that birthmark on his arm and there was that lady who had cried, who looked in a sort of a way like she did. And why should this sergeant here tell him all this stuff If it wasn't true? What sense would there be to that?

"Does the District Attorney know it— I mean about me being his son?" Baby Burke asked.

"He knows it."

Again Baby Burke fell silent, then hope slowly dawned in his eyes. "He wouldn't let me go to the chair, and I guess he can fix it so I can make a getaway. He can work it out somehow. He wouldn't let his own son—"

"Talk sense," C. O. Ponder growled. "How is he going to fix it? Besides, you always talk a lot about people having their jobs to do and that it's only fair that they should do them. You're a murderer, and it's the District Attorney's job to send murderers where they won't kill anybody else. Son, you haven't a chance."

C. O. Ponder's great round eyes dropped slowly to the gun that lay on the table only a few feet away from Baby Burke. The boy had to pick it up. He had to shoot.

The hope died in Baby Burke's eyes, leaving them blank, vacant. He sat there immobile, making no move towards the gun.

"It wouldn't be his fault," he said after a time. "I don't see why my mother should blame him." He choked a little over the word "mother."

"Why did she go and leave him?"

"Tch, tch," said C. O. Ponder. "It's easy to understand. How do you think your mother would feel every time she looked at your father and remembered that he sent you, her son, to his death?"

Baby Burke could see that. He began to grasp the situation in its entirety. It was a fine mess for his father, a good sort, even if he was a District Attorney, a sort of superior policeman. And it was just as this sergeant had said— there was nothing he could do for him, Baby Burke. Everybody had his own job to do— stick-up men, police and District Attorneys. Baby Burke's whole philosophy of life was based on that. It was that that made it possible for him to shoot a policeman without the slightest compassion.

"I should never have missed you," C. O. Ponder said moodily, "when I caught you in front of the bank. Then all this wouldn't have happened. You'd be dead now. You're going to be dead anyhow a couple of months from now."

Baby Burke shifted in his chair. His face was a little white. His eyes drifted to the gun on the table, then they went back and rested on C. O. Ponder.

"The worst of it is," C. O. Ponder continued, "I missed you on purpose, wanted to take you alive so that I could see you suffer. It's tough. You were born a gentleman and you're going to and up .

Baby Burke's face lit up. That was right. He was born a gentleman.

"This Himberg, my mouthpiece," Baby Burke said, looking past C. O. Ponder, "is pretty good. He might be able to get me off."

"You know better than that," C. O. Ponder said grimly,

"You think I haven't got a chance?"

"Not a chance, not at chance."

"Supposing the judge," Baby Burke said, "found out I was the District Attorney's son, maybe the judge would give me a chance."

"You're mad," C. O. Ponder said. "There are a lot of other judges and police in other States waiting for you. Even if you got off here, they'd still get you. If that stuff gets out about you, a murderer, being the District Attorney's son, it won't do you any good; it will only hurt your mother and father— your real mother and father."

"I'm finished, then?" A strained, brittle look came into Baby Burke's face.

Five seconds went by, then Baby Burke leapt.

The gun was in his hand, flames spurted from the muzzle, even as Sergeant Ponder's own gun came out and barked viciously twice.

Baby Burke's gun slipped from his fingers. He reeled crazily for seconds, then dropped back into the chair behind him. He was pressing his hands to his stomach, smiling.

"You don't— you don't have to shoot again, sergeant," he whispered. "I'm through— done for. You caught me right this time."

C. O. Ponder's face was grey. Suppose the boy was wrong, suppose he wasn't going to die? Then all this for nothing. Oughtn't he to shoot him just once more? But try as he would, C. O. Ponder couldn't bring himself to do that.

Pain twisted Baby Burke's face as he sat there doubled over.

"You said you missed me on purpose the first time we shot it out... well, we're even now. I missed you on purpose. Do me a favour. Don't ever tell anybody that Baby Burke had a birthmark on his arm. Whoever says so is lying. I'm just Baby Burke. Tell—"

Baby Burke stopped. He tried to smile and couldn't. "Tell...my father... that his son— that his son... died like a gentleman."

Baby Burke made an effort. He knew it was the end. He tried to stand up, because of some dim notion that gentlemen died standing up. He managed it halfway, then with a soft moan he toppled forward, dead.

A policeman opened the door. He looked at the body on the floor.

"So this is where the" shooting was," the policeman said.

"Yes," C. O. Ponder said, "this is where the shooting was. Take care of this, will you? I've got to go and see somebody who is trying to catch a train."

THE GATES to the Western Express hadn't opened yet. Marlyn was standing there with a porter holding her bags, along with a score of other people. Someone brushed against her. She turned and then fell hack a step.

"Marlyn!" John Strong said. "Don't go. Give me a chance to talk this out with you. I can't let you go, not this way."

He drew her over to one side to a more secluded spot.

"It's no use; John," she said. "In my heart I know you are right. But there's something beyond that. I don't think I could go on with you. I'd always think of you as being not just, but as being hard and inflexible. If only you had made some futile gesture. I suppose you can't understand that. I don't suppose any man would understand that. It would take a woman ..."

John Strong started to say something when suddenly he discovered C. O. Ponder at his elbow.

"What is it, Charlie?" John Strong said impatiently. The train was due to leave in half an hour, and every moment was precious.

"Baby Burke is dead," C..O. Ponder said lugubriously. "He tried to escape, and I had to shoot him."

John Strong stared at him speechless.

"And I must say," C. O. Ponder said grimly, "that it was hard on me. I know you didn't slip Baby Burke that gun so that he'd use it on me. I don't suppose you wanted him to use it on anybody— just thought it would help him make a getaway, but it was mighty close. Don't try to tell me it wasn't your gun— I know better."

Again John Strong, his mouth agape, started to speak, but Sergeant Ponder. with a fine show of indignation, turned his back on him and walked away.

John Strong faced Marlyn. She was looking at him wide-eyed, a little frightened. She had misjudged him—worse than that— she had goaded him on to doing a terrible thing. That poor policeman or somebody else might have been killed by her son. It was ghastly. And how John must love her! To do a thing like that, so utterly inconsistent with his nature, with all his fine, upstanding principles. What had she done to him?

She went closer to him: her hand reached out to him a little shyly.

"Take me home, John. Take me home and never let me go."

_____________________

10: The Ninety and Nine

Ellis Parker Butler

1869-1937

Australian Town and Country Journal 1 Jan 1919

[All-Story Weekly 9 Feb 1918]

ALTHOUGH her parents named her Hortensia Ardelia Merridew some weeks before she was born, she became Blossom the moment she was tucked into her first white slip, and Blossom she remained. Of course, there were variations; She was May Blossom, and Peach Blossom, and even Honey Blossom (which doesn't mean anything at all but sweetness) to sundry persons and at various times. That was inevitable.

Ben Sturgis called her May Blossom almost from the first day of his vigorous courtship; the rector, as soon as he began to "take notice," called her Miss Blossom.

I think, in all the world, I was the only human being that called her Hortensia. I am her Aunt Hortensia, and if a woman, has money and position and has a child named after her, I think she is entitled to call that child Hortensia in spite of anything.

What was Hortensia like? I've often wondered how I should describe her, if it was necessary (as in case she needed a passport), and I long ago decided the matter. She is a spring day, with warm rain alternating with glimpses of sunshine, and soft green foliage interspersed with flowering peach, birds twittering, and lilac odors....

She came tripping into my room, her face aglow with happiness, and threw her arms around me, and kissed, me.

"My dear!" I expostulated.

"Oh, aunty! I am so happy!" she exclaimed, and then she dropped , on her knees and put her head on my lap, and wept like an April day.

"There, there, dearie," I said. "It's all right. Just move your head on to my apron a little farther; I don't know whether this silk spots or not. Who is it— Robert?"

Hortensia looked up at me with unutterable reproach.

"Why, Aunty! How can you? It is Ben, of course!"

I was perfectly satisfied, that it should be Ben Sturgis. I had had a feeling from the first that Hortensia would make no serious mistake in choosing her life-partner. Under all her tender leaf-fluttering and petal-trembling there was an unconscious desire for what was sound and safe, and true. However, a butterfly, may flit and hesitate, it always knows the honest honey, and desires it. Instinct is safer than brain often enough. So l bent and kissed her.

"I'm glad, Hortensia," I said.

"And I'm glad, aunty!" she cried. "I'm happy, happy, happy! Only—"

"Only?" I queried.

"Only I'm sorry for the ninety and nine."

"I dare, say," I said a little drily, "they'll live through it. Such things have been known."

"I do hope so," said Hortensia, forlornly. "They're all so nice."

I may explain that the ninety and nine were Hortensia's lovers. Of course, there were not ninety and nine— for a girl to have a hundred lovers minus one would be ridiculous — but that was what her father called them, there was so many. I doubt whether, all told; they were a baker's dozen, although counting those who hoped, but did not propose every week— there may have been a score, or even thirty. But ninety and nine was an exaggeration.

Hortensia was" right— they we're all nice. They were fine boys. "No doubt, those who were not fine saw the hopelessness of competing, and abandoned hope at once."

"Aunty," said Hortensia, after a moment of thought.

"Dear?"

"Ben and I don't want it known for a while."

I smiled. Oh! this delicious playing, with love! Even I, old terror of an aunt that I was, knew, the young hearts need playing at tragedy, and difficulty, and secrecy. It is right, entirely right. It is thus love should come in, in a "grey mist shot with gleams of rose and gold, making his own mystery out of nothing. It is one of the wonderful things of life— this making romance out of nothing.

"Of course, Hortensia, if you do not want it known for a while," I said, "it can be kept secret."

"Because of father," said Hortensia.

"That is true," I said.

"In order to give Ben time to win father over," said Hortensia.

"That is, of course, absolutely necessary," I admitted.

Hortensia's father and I had had many talks about Hortensia, and what we hoped would happen to her.

"Now, I'm not going to turn my hand to influence Blossom," he had said to me. "I have faith in Blossom. Look at these young fellows she chooses to make eyes at— all first-class boys, every one. I don't care which she chooses. Of course, if she picked a bad one, I'd say my say; but she won't. If I could have my way, I should, prefer Ben Sturgis—"

"Then why not have Ben Sturgis?" I asked.

"I want Blossom, to choose freely, and chose, and her mother chose."

"But why not have Ben Sturgis?" I insisted.

"How?"

"Object to him. He'll be the poor martyr, then. Hint that he will not do;  that you are against him, and Will take his part. It will emphasis him, and-, Hortensia will lean towards him as the child toddles towards a red- flower in a bed of white. It can be done, Henry, trust your wise old sister!"

"I've heard of such doings," he smiled.

Hortensia (as a good child should having no mother) came to me with these troubles as naturally as a chick comes home to the hen. There was no great harm in playing the game against her as we did. If we drove her into Ben's arms we should be giving her the lad we liked best; if she would not be driven; we should be satisfied with her choice.

Her father, with trouble in keeping back a smile, set his foot down hat against Ben Sturgis. Hortensia complained to me that this was utterly unjust. So it was; but the illogic of her father's reasons for opposing Ben Sturgis was of the same stuff that love logic is made of. It sufficed.

Henry had asked me on what grounds to oppose Ben Sturgis.

"The simplest," I said, "So far as Hortensia is concerned opposition is all that is needed. You might oppose Ben because he is a male, but that would be a little too obvious, since the other ninety and nine are also. male. If you were a mother, Henry, you might object to the color of his eyes. Being a man you must have some deep worldly objection. He is taking a dive into the  contracting business, isn't he? Object to him because he is a contractor."

"I'll do it!" said Henry, laughing. "A daughter of mine marrying a contractor! What! A contractor!"

"That's it," I said; "because he might take a contract, and lose money; or he might have a strike, and be hit on the head with a brick."

"Oh, I can think of plenty of reasons,!" he chuckled.

And now Hortensia had come to me with her news. She had accepted Ben, Sturgis.

We had a darling, half-hour, during which we discussed plans for winning her father over. Hortensia was adorable.

"I'm afraid father will be very, very angry," she sighed. "Father is so serious-minded, aunty."

"As long as you love Ben, dear," I said, '"We must not worry."

"Oh, I do love him!" she exclaimed.

If Henry had been serious about disliking Ben Sturgis, because the youth was a contractor, it is only fair to say that Ben was hardly enough of a contractor to arouse much dislike. His uncle, William Henry Sturgis, was the real contractor. Ben was no more than a raw apprentice. Ben was a contractor by courtesy only. He was doing something in his uncle's office, and for doing it he received pay, but not any enormous sum. Sooner or later it was understood Ben Sturgis was to be made a partner.

I could see that Hortensia was deliciously unhappy, in her unalloyed happiness those first weeks after she had openly announced to me her clandestine engagement. Her meetings with Ben had all the sweetness of crime.

The engagement ring she wore with the small diamond turned inward to her palm was a wild adventure in duplicity. Her father and I had some pleasant chuckles 'over it all.

"Isn't she a Honey Blossom?" he cried. "I remember when I was Ben's age, and I had my secret engagement—"

"Please spare me!" I begged.

What happened, as nearly as I have ever been able to understand it,  was this; William Henry Sturgis sent Ben to Cuba to superintend the erection of a steel bridge there.

I remember that Hortensia's father was sitting in the summer-house on the west lawn, smoking an after-dinner cigar, and I went to him, and told him he had better go elsewhere, because Ben was going away for a while, and Ben and Hortensia would probably want to use the summer-house for their farewell hour, because it was in the summer-house they had plighted their troth. Henry scrambled out of the wicker chair, and prepared to flee.

"Hadn't I better do the forgiving father I business now?" he asked me.

"Oh, why," I asked; "they are having such a lovely miserable time. They can't be married until after Ben returns anyway."

"All right," he said, and we scattered, for we heard Ben and Hortensia coming towards the summer-house.

The next day Ben went to Cuba, and Hortensia's eyes were suspiciously red for fully thirty-six hours.

In the next week there happened to be a Sunday, as is usually the case in our part of the country, and that led to the trouble. I do not blame the rector in the least. Neither he or either of the ninety and nine knew of Hortensia's engagement. How could he? It was well towards six in the evening that Hortensia came— I had almost said crept— to me.

"Oh, aunty!" she moaned.

"What is it dear?" I asked.

"I'm a wicked, wicked girl," she moaned, and that is all she would say for quite a while, but wept copiously upon my silk skirt, which by this time I knew would not spot. The rector— but I cannot use that designation when I speak of him intimately — let me call him Billy Watts, as we all called him from the time he was a baby till he became rector.

Next to Ben Sturgis I think Hortensia's father and I would have preferred Billy Watts as a husband for Hortensia. I hate to say it (Billy being a rector), but I'm afraid his honesty was not quite as rock-ribbed as Ben's. Not that Billy Watts was ever dishonest! Far from it! I only mean that Billy was more logical than Ben, and logic leads into unintentional deviations from the direct line. Do you know what I mean? illogic cuts the deadly straight road. Logic goes around the mountain spurs. Billy Watt's head was better than Ben's head.

Ben was always more or less of a bull in a china shop. It is not necessarily more honest to bolt in at one door and out another, smashing a lot of china on the way, but it seems more honest.

For the rest of it, Billy Watts has enough money to be a rector in comfort anywhere he chose to dwell; he was a gentleman. He loved Hortensia; he had just preached an excellent sermon on "Honor thy Father and thy Mother." No doubt Hortensia felt the moral of the sermon deeply, being a sinner, and having hidden; her engagement from her father. The rector had touched her  hard heart, and Billy Watts fell into step with, her as they left the stone church, after the afternoon Sunday School.

They turned In at our gate, and went to the summer-house on the west lawn.

"Blossom," Billy Watts began, as soon as they were seated, "you know I have loved you ever since you were a child."

"Oh! Billy, don't," Hortensia began.

"But I have, you know I have, I have told you so a thousand times. I tell you so again, Blossom."

"Please don't, Billy," Blossom begged.

Naturally enough, he did not stop, he leaned forward and took her hand, which was cold and limp, and he talked. He is a wonderful pulpit, orator, and no doubt quite as excellent a summer-house orator. As he talked, Hortensia saw herself as she was— a girl driving headlong into selfishness against he father's wishes.

Not that Billy Watts said this; he did not know. But Hortensia saw it. She saw herself as a deceitful, undutiful daughter, untrue to the trust her father reposed in her. Billy Watts is undeniably handsome. Billy Watts was quite passionate in his declaration In spite of the day being Sunday. The rectory, with the stuffy old plush curtains torn down and something lighter at the doors and windows, and the very good old furniture re-upholstered in cretonne, would be a love of a home!

"Will you, Blossom, be mine?" asked Billy Watts.

"And oh, aunty!" sobbed Hortensia on my knee, "I said— said 'yes'!"

"My dear!" I exclaimed.

"It seemed such an easy way— such a I right way— to settle everything," sobbed Hortensia. "I had deceived father so I could do so much good as Billy's wife— he'd made it all so clear. I had to say yes! And it doesn't settle anything.' I'm"— her face showed, the horror her I heart felt— "I'm engaged to two men!"

"That's very, very wrong!" I chided her.

"It's awful!" moaned Hortensia. "I don't know how I could have done it. Aunty—"

"Yes?"

"Don't you see how awful it is? I'll lose them both!"

I had not thought of this, but it was true. In a flash my mind recognised the whole situation. Try how you may, things like these will out. It is impossible to hide them. If only Hortensia had picked out two of the lighter-minded of the ninety and nine to become engaged to! I knew how Ben loathed duplicity, and how Billy Watts felt about even the slightest evidences of it. They loved Hortensia's light-heartedness; they would loathe her light-mindedness. In very truth. It was a serious situation.

"Hortensia," I said, "how could you do it! What in the world were you thinking of?"

She did not answer; she grovelled at my feet; "I'm a wretched girl," she said after a while.

"You are!"

I tried to see the affair as Ben Sturgis would see it. He had gone from Hortensia, and within a week after his departure she had engaged herself to another man without even breaking her engagement with Ben. Even an ordinary man might well refuse to forgive this. That Ben would cast Hortensia out of his heart for ever, whether he heard the story within a week or in ten years, I had no doubt.

I tried to see the affair as Billy Watts would see it. In the concrete, Billy Watts would feel as Ben Sturgis would feel. If normally less 'bitter against duplicity than Ben was, Billy Watts was sufficiently a rector to feel that such double-dealing as Hortensia had permitted herself was a shocking insult to his official ethics. It would have seen so easy for Hortensia to have said: "Billy, I will accept you, but first I must break my engagement with Ben."

There was yet time for Hortensia to write or wire Ben, breaking her engagement; but what if Ben returned and denounced her and Billy heard of it? Apart from his stiff ethics, there was every chance that Billy would feel that he had no right to claim Hortensia. Billy was quite capable of saying: "I resign! By every law of morality you belonged to Ben when you engaged yourself to him."

For a day Hortensia grovelled in her own misery. Then she came to me.

"Aunty," she said, "it's awful! I have thought and thought, and I don't love Billy. It was his sermon, and his voice, and— oh, the day and everything, I seemed so much, better to be a rector's wife than the wife of a contractor. I wish I wasn't engaged to him!"

"Break it off, dear," I said.

"And let Ben, some time, discover I was so false and fickle! Aunty, how can you suggest such a thing? When Ben has always said I was so true and honest and—"  She shed tears.  "And the first minute he is away I— I'm fickle and false and untrue and dishonest! I wish I was dead! I do wish it!"

"Where is Billy?" I asked, for I had not seen him clinging to Hortensia's neighborhood as a newly-engaged man might be expected to, cling.

"In Boston," said Hortensia,  dabbing at her eyes "It's. a. conference or something, for a week."

"Then," I said, trying to speak cheerfully, "we have a week at least to think things over. In a week we should be able to think of something."

I was really relieved to know that Billy was to be away for a week. A newly-accepted lover has some rights, or imagines he has; and I saw how painful it would be for Hortensia if Billy Watts insisted on the embraces and endearments usual in such cases.

"He's going to telegraph me every day," said Hortensia ruefully. Poor Blossom! I saw her later in the day weeping over an envelope.

The first of Billy's daily wires had come. A little later I saw her weeping over a plump letter. Ben's daily message from Cuba had arrived.

Poor little Blossom! She only changed her dress four times that day; she was frightfully distressed. She hardly screwed up enough Interest in life to play tennis with the three or four members of the ninety and nine who drifted in during the afternoon. I expect she played a miserable game.

She came to me for her evening tears that night before she went to her own room. I begged her to try to get a little sleep, but she said that was quite Impossible. She could not hope to sleep, and if she could, she wouldn't. She did not deserve even the brief rest from an aching conscience that sleep might bring. When I tiptoed into her room half an hour later she was sleeping soundly, but her pillow was tear-stained.

I tried to think of some way out of Hortensia's difficulty, but nothing came to me. The next morning there was something in Hortensia's eyes I did not like; it was the reckless misery of a wounded animal. She avoided me, and soon after breakfast she got into her car and started it with a vicious Jerk. She I went out of the drive on two wheels, and by the succession of sounds which reached me I was able to trace her course to the Country Club.

She did not come home until evening— just in time for dinner. I was on the verandah.

"Hortensia!" I said.

She did not stop.

"Don't speak to me; don't have anything to do with me!" she cast at me as she hurried by. "I am a wicked girl!" She was silent through dinner, and after that she sat on the verandah. I heard her counting on her fingers.

"One, two, three, four, five," she counted.

A couple of the ninety and nine drifted in later. Hortensia turned one of them over to me and led the other to see where the warbler had built a nest in the syringa-bush. In the dusk I did not see him leave, but Hortensia came back to the verandah and took the other young fellow away from me. They went toward the summer-house on the western lawn.

"Seven," she said when she came back to the veranda alone.

"Seven what?" I asked.

"Don't speak to me," she said; "I am a wicked girl!"

The next morning Hortensia came down with a steely glitter in her eyes, and the color in her cheeks was rather high. I reminded her that it was the day we had planned to run up to town and shop.

"Quite impossible,"' she said briefly. "Even if I could go you ought not to be seen with me. You would be disgraced."

"Hortensia," I said severely, "what does this mean?"

"I'm a wicked girl," she said, and not another word; but hardly was breakfast over when Hortensia was off in her car again. I did my shopping alone, and had a hard day of it; I simply could not match the red sample in a red. I had to compromise on a contrasting color, and took a green. I was quite exhausted.

After dinner Hortensia seated herself on the verandah steps, and sat with her head in her hands, thinking. I took my book and spread myself in the hammock. After a few minutes Hortensia came and sat by the hammock. She clasped her hands over her knees and looked out at the trees.

"Aunty," she said, "I'm engaged."

"I should think so; to two— I began.

"Oh, two!" she laughed, rather hysterically. "Two is nothing— nothing at all to a wretch like me. Two! Ha!"

She rose and walked up and down before me.

"I'm engaged to all of them— to everybody— to the whole ninety and nine! To every man of the entire seventeen of the whole ninety and nine!"

"Hortensia!" I cried, grasping at her arm and just missing it. She backed against the verandah railing and looked at me defiantly.

"I am!" she cried.

"But what madness!" I exclaimed. "Whatever could you have been thinking of?"

"Well, I did it!" sine said defiantly. "I've accepted them all— the whole lot— and they're all engaged to me, and I'm engaged to all of them— seventeen! I counted them. Seventeen!"

"Hortensia!"

"And they're all so happy!" she cried.  "Ben and Billy, and Jack and Roger, and Spots Cullen and Dicky, and—"

"Hortensia!"

She turned and looked towards the lawn.

"It is wonderful to be able to make so many men so happy," she said.

"Hortensia, have you really engaged yourself to seventeen men?"

"Of course! Why do you speak In that way? To be engaged to seventeen is no worse than to be engaged to two, is it, aunty? And it made them all so happy!"

"They will not be happy long," I said grimly.

"No one is ever happy long," sighed Hortensia. Then suddenly she was in my arms and weeping.

"Oh, aunty, don't you see I had to do it?" she asked. "Don't you see it was the only way I could— could keep Ben, aunty; he's the only one I care for. I don't like Billy Watts; I had to be engaged to him to find, out that I don't like him. So, of course, I had to get engaged to them all."

"I must say, Hortensia," I said, "I don't appreciate your logic."

"But it isn't logic; it is what I had to do," she pleaded.

When she explained it I had to admit that it seemed less mad than it had seemed at first. I tried to put myself In Ben Sturgis' place— as Hortensia begged me try to do — and I did see a sort of mad logic in what Hortensia had done.

Ben Sturgis learning that Hortensia had engaged herself to Billy Watts, while still his promised bride, might well feel a man's honest jealous resentment. Ben Sturgis, or any other man, learning that his bride elect had during his absence accepted the entire ninety and nine, would gasp. What could he possibly think that, would be rational? He would pass his hand across his brow dazed, and wondering whether he was sane or insane, and just gasp! It would all seem monstrous and Impossible, because girls do not engage themselves to seventeen men simultaneously. It is never done. It had never been done.

Ben, learning that his Blossom had become engaged to sixteen other men, could not be jealous. You can't possibly be jealous of sixteen men at once, not in the way lovers are jealous. The human mind refuses the task. No man it equal to it.

"He'll think I'm crazy." said Hortensia "and I don't care if he does think that So you will send this, cablegram, won't you, aunty?"

"What cablegram?"

"Why, to Ben—"

"Come back at once. Hortensia engaged to sixteen more men."

"Something like that," she said.

"I see," I said, and I sent the cable-gram. Hortensia was right, "And you will be ill In bed," I suggested. "Brain fever?" .

"Oh, nothing like that," she cried.

As it turned out, it was nothing like that. Hortensia was sitting on the . verandah, when Ben arrived, travel-stained and angry. He came up the steps in two leaps, and threw his luggage half-the length of the verandah. Of course,  Hortensia wept, and Ben held her in his arms as soon as he reached her.

"Oh, Ben, Ben!" she moaned. "You poor little Blossom!" he cried, "I was a beast to leave you like that. I might have known that your poor little head would go all astray", loving and deserted. How hot your hand is! You poor- Blossom-child!"

"Oh, Ben, Ben!" she moaned. It was the very best thing to say under the circumstances. It was so non-committal, so appealing, so helpless. It was such a wonderfully detailed explanation of everything.

Ben led her to a chair, with the air of a knight leading an invalid butterfly.

"Now, don't fret about it another minute," he said. "I'll attend to it all. I'll arrange it all for you. Of course you don't love those sixteen— ah— cads?"

"Why, Ben!" said Hortensia.

"Taking advantage of your grief and all!" he growled. "I'll— "

Just then Hortensia's father came out upon the veranda. Ben walked up to him and glared in his face.

"And you, sir," he shouted, "as for you,  all I have to say is I'm going to marry your daughter whether you like it, or not!"

"And you, sir," Henry shouted back, "do it if you dare!"

"Hortensia Blossom! May Blossom," said Ben, "are you willing to marry me  this month, this week?"

Hortensia looked at her father appealingly.

"Yes, Ben," she said.

Henry stood a moment trying to look the angry parent. Then he broke down.

"Well, take her, take her!" he cried, and went into the house, where he could grin peacefully.

I must say that Billy Watts took the news in a most philosophical spirit. He even went so far as to congratulate Ben.

"Good wishes, old man," he said, "you are the lucky one. I honestly thought I had her, but I suppose all the others did, too. Well, we're all in the same boat, Ben."

"Yes."

"What made Blossom do it?"

"Poor little kid," said Ben, "there are mighty few women love a man like that, Billy, mighty few that break down like that and go all to pieces under the  grief of a first absence."

"Not one in a thousand," said Billy Watts. "You must he very good to Blossom, Ben."

"The truest thing you ever said," said Ben. And then they shook hands in a solemn, man-like way.

_______________

11: Coward's Kill

Arthur Leo Zagat

1895-1949

Thrilling Detective Aug 1948

1: The Man From Texas

IF THE MAN who stood at the long bar on the mezzanine of Tom Goslin's Biarritz Casino on Long Island was aware that he was marked for death, he gave no evidence of it. Long-limbed, lithe in his impeccable dinner suit, he was young, about twenty-five or -six, but his narrow, bony face was an expressionless mask as he watched a fly that had got itself half-drowned in a spill of cordial and crawled along the blue-mirrored bar top, its wings sticky and useless.

From some three or four yards away, in the buzzing, convivial crowd along the counter, a girl eyed him owlishly.

"Why, Jock?" she asked her baldish, rather obese escort. "Why's he all alone? Why's everybody not talking to him?"

"That, Mimi my dove, is Storme." Jock Haddon, Broadway character about town, seemed to think it was a complete answer. "Ted Storme."

Even Mimi Barton recognized that name, though she was more familiar with another variety of "bohemians," those she knew in Greenwich Village where she was making her home, while playing at learning "art." It had been on the impulse of the moment that she had come to the Biarritz with Jock Haddon, for she was sure a girl could not learn too much about all kinds of people in New York. And now she was learning plenty.

As Jock mentioned the name of the gambler, Ted Storme, Mimi's violet eyes widened.

"The man they say never loses a bet!" she exclaimed.

"Darned near," Haddon agreed. "Too near for the wise mob he's run ragged since he hit Broadway about six months ago. Those pretzels can't figure out if he's so straight they crack up trying to fit their curves to him, or if he's the slickest operator who ever came to town."

"From where, Jock? From where did he come?"

"You ask him that, or anything else personal, and he'll freeze you so hard they'll wrap you in wax paper and label you Birdseye."

"Not me, he won't." Mimi tossed her honey-hued clipped curls. "Watch me go to work on him." She started away, was dragged back by a sudden, fierce grip on her arm. "Keep clear of that bird," Haddon said huskily, black lights flickering in his too-small eyes. "Stay away from him unless you're looking for trouble."

"Trouble?" The girl wrenched free and faced him, her body taut in the shimmering white sheath of her strapless frock. "From you?"

"No not from me. I'm on to your little tricks. I mean bullet-trouble." He glanced fearfully at their neighbors dropped his voice to a murmur. "Storme took ten thousand from Feet Dorgan in the floating crap game last night and Dorgan got the notion he did it with a pair of educated ivories. That bird's blazing hot, what I mean, and anybody near him's liable to get burned with him. Look, honey, the lights are dimming. Let's get to our table before Jennie Wrenn comes on."

"Hang Jennie Wren. I like your Ted Storme and I'm going... Oh-h-h!" Mimi stopped short. "Someone's starting to talk to him. Is he one of Dorgan's—"

"Torpedoes?" Haddon stole a quick look, shrugged. "I never saw him before, but that don't mean anything. Could be he's some out-of-town gunsel Feet's imported to iron Storme out."

"No-o!" Mimi moaned. "Oh, no, Jock. He's too nice."

Then the rush to get to the tables carried them down the short flight of carpeted steps from the mezzanine.

With the crowd gone, one could see the innumerable tiny silver bees—B for Biarritz—that studded the bar front, blue mirror-glass like its top, and the dozen larger, golden ones that were poised along its inner edge to conceal plebian beer taps. But it was the living fly at which the man who had ranged himself beside Ted Storme jabbed a gnarled forefinger.

"Pertinacious little cuss, ain't he?"

"Very."

Storme's eyes, the color and seeming hardness of chilled steel, flicked to the speaker and flicked instantaneously away. The glance had photographed every detail of the gaunt, leather-textured countenance, including the healed bullet-trough that angled down from beneath grizzled hair. A big man, taller than Storme and solidly built, the stranger obviously was ill at ease in a tuxedo as obviously newly bought.

"Hades nor high water," he drawled, "ain't a-goin' to keep that jigger from gettin' to the back edge of this shelf."

"Not the back," Storme corrected. "I've been watching that fly for five minutes. If and when it leaves the top of this bar it will be over the front edge."

The big man's face hardened. "I think he'll go over the back, and down in Brazos County we back our opinions with our cash. What do yuh say, stranger?"

"Suits me." Storme produced a well-stuffed wallet. "For how much?"

The Texan looked at the fly again. It was still crawling toward the back of the bar. "For one thousand," the challenger said. He brought out of his trouser pocket a roll of bills almost as thick as his fist, started counting fifties down onto the blue mirror. A bartender moved nearer, started polishing the bee-hidden draught arm opposite them. In the shadows at the far end of the counter a thin, ferret-faced chap stiffened, black eyes glittering.

"Nine-fifty," the big man finished his count. "One thousand. There yuh are, stranger." The roll he thrust back into his pocket but little reduced in diameter. "Cal Carroll don't back water for nobody." Storme covered the money with ten hundreds. Applause splattered from the big room behind him and he turned to look.

Far across the now dimmed room blue satin curtains swirled apart to unveil a stage high-banked with men in yellow satin monkey-jackets, their instruments glinting as they blared an entreaty to Richard to open the door.

A spotlight noosed a microphone staff that grew upwards at the stage's front, center, with brilliance. A roly-poly little man trotted into the bright disk, brown derby canted back on plastered-down hair, loudly checked coat and pants ludicrously too tight.

From somewhere in the dark a whisky-slurred voice called, "Hi, Sam Slats!" Others shushed it.

Behind Ted Storme's back the fly suddenly stopped short, inches from the bar's rear edge and flattened itself down on the glass.

"Come on!" the barkeep whispered. "Come on, baby. There's two grand ridin' on your back."

In the room Sam Slats took hold of the mike rod, his round, goggle-eyed face bisected by a clown's grin.

"Thanks for the greeting, customers, but you ain't fooling me. I know you didn't come here tonight to listen to my gags. You came to be present at a great event in the history of the American stage—the return from retirement of that tiny songstress, that diminutive interpretess of musical classics who won the hearts of your fathers and your grandfathers with her own inimitable voice."

He turned to the left, held out both arms in a gesture of welcome.

"Ladies and gentlemen. I give you the one, the only Jennie Wrenn!"

And was butted out of the spotlight by the spangled pink buttocks of an enormous female who had galloped from the stage's darkened right wing.

Applause thundered as she loomed above it, blonde-wigged, flabby-jowled, and threw kisses, using both bare, bulging arms. On the mezzanine the barkeep swore softly as the fly started moving again, slantwise across the bar toward its front.

Storme came around, smiled without humor.

"You lose, my friend."

"Not yet," Carroll grunted. "It can still turn back."

"It can, but I don't think it will."

"Okay, Mr. Storme. I've got another thousand says different."

"No."

"No?" The Texan stared unbelievingly. "It's a fifty-fifty bet, ain't it?"

"Precisely. That is why I won't make it."

The bartender snorted disgustedly. Below the balcony the applause faded and from the stage Jennie Wrenn said, "Hello, suckers!" She laughed girlishly. "Your warm greetings bring tears to my eyes, and that reminds me of the fellow who came back from a month in Florida all tanned but with his eyes red and puffy. When his partner asked him how he got that way, he told him about the blonde he'd met on the beach—"

She went on with the smoking-room yarn, but on the mezzanine the fly reached the bar's front edge, went over it and dropped to the floor. Storme picked up the sheaf of bills.

"The drinks are on me," he said, expressionless as before. "I'll have mine as usual, Jim."

The barkeep looked at Carroll.

"Give me the same," the Texan growled, and then to Storme, "Yuh win, but yuh'd a won twice as much if yuh was a real sport."

"I'm not a sport." Storme stowed his winnings in his wallet, dropped two singles on the bar. "I'm a professional gambler. I don't risk any money on any proposition that doesn't give me a percentage in my favor." Oddly enough, now that the issue was decided he seemed gripped by a tenseness that had not been in evidence before. "I told you I'd been watching that fly for five minutes. In that time it approached the rear of the bar three times and turned back each time because it was frightened by the reflection of the big golden bee in the mirror."

Carroll's jaw dropped. "I'll be everlastingly hornswoggled." He reached for the tall glass the bartender had set in front of him, gulped a swallow, choked on it, and stared at the white liquid left in the tumbler, on his raw-boned features a mixtures of disgust and amazement. "C-cow juice," he sputtered. "Milk!"

A faint smile touched Ted Storme's thin lips but did not ease their grimness.

"In my business, Carroll, I can't afford to drink anything stronger. If I'd been doing so tonight, for instance, I might not have noticed the single time you forgot to call me 'stranger' and used my name instead."

The audience whooped as Jennie Wrenn and Sam Slats engaged in Weberfieldian slapstick.

"Yeah," the still-faced Texan acknowledged. "Yuh was pointed out to me." His right hand dropped into the side pocket of his coat and made a bulge there. "I got some business with yuh ought to be done where it's more private." He looked down along the room's side wall to a small door over which a red light burned. "I reckon that gives out on the car-parkin' corral. S'pose we go thataway."

"Very smart," Ted Storme murmured. "If we left the front way, the coatroom girls and the doorman would see us together and they might remember afterward. Down there everybody's looking at the stage." He finished his drink, turned down the empty glass. "Let's go," he sighed. "Let's get it over with."

2: A Child's Plea

SAM SLATS ducked a buffet from Jennie Wrenn's big hand.

"Hey, Jennie!" he panted. "Maybe the customers'd like to hear you sing the 'Gay Caballero'."

"Aw, no." Pink-spangles wriggled in embarrassment. "Not that!" Lavish grease paint could not hide the crowsfeet under mascaraed eyes, nor the unlovely loose skin at an aged throat. "I couldn't. Ruhlly I couldn't."

"How about it, folks?" Slats appealed across the footlights, and affirmatives roared back at him out of a clatter of silverware on Tom Goslin's bee-sprinkled chinaware.

Jennie nodded to the orchestra leader. The strains of the bawdy tune blared out.

The scent of expensive perfume was heavy in the big room that was lit only by shaded electric candles topping the porcelain beehives on each table.

"Jock," Mimi whispered to her companion. "Isn't that Dorgan over there?"

Haddon let his look slide to the table, next but one to theirs, toward which she jerked her dimpled chin.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, that's Dorgan all right."

"I don't see why everybody's so scared of him," Mimi said. He was a little man all sleek tailored curves, his face round and apple-cheeked under a mane of snow-white hair gleaming silkily in the dimness. "He looks like Santa Claus"

"Some Santa Claus," Haddon muttered. He took the girl's dimpled chin in the V of his thumb and forefinger. "If you're getting ideas about Dorgan, skip it. He's a wolf that eats up honey-sweet little gals like you for dessert."

"Jock!" Mimi gasped. "Look over there, by the wall."

He turned, saw the lean figure that moved smoothly along blue silk drapes, and the taller form that kept close alongside.

"Ted Storme and that other man, Jock," Mimi said. "That.... What was it you called him? That gun—"

"Gunsel." Haddon was a little pale around the gills. "Taking Storme out."

"There's another one, Jock!" whispered the girl. "Sneaking along behind them."

A spray of light from a canted candle shade fell across the weasel face of the thin-bodied individual who'd lurked in the shadows at the end of the bar.

"Him I know, Mimi," said Jock Haddon. "That's Gull Foster, of the Dorgan mob. Guess Feet's taking no chances on his imported killer slipping up."

"Killer!" The girl's pupils dilated. "Jock Haddon, how can you sit there so calmly when.... We've got to do something, Jock! We've got to save.... Ohhh! They're going out that side door to the parking lot and that Foster's hurrying to catch up, Jock!"

"Keep still, you little fool! Do you want.... Oh, Christopher!"

Mimi had pushed up out of her chair. Haddon grabbed at her, but she evaded him, was running toward the steps leading from the mezzanine.

Ted Storme went through the side door just ahead of Carroll, stepped to one side as the Texan came through. Storme's rock-hard fist flailed to the big man's midriff, another to the jaw which the first blow had brought down within reach. Carrol sagged, folded down on the threshold, but before he had stopped falling Storme already was feet away along the building's wall.

Glare from a naked three-hundred-watt bulb over the attendant's booth at the entrance glinted on car windows but toward the casino's rear a small shed made a patch of Stygian black. He reached this cover, glanced back as a sudden burst of sound came from within the larger building.

The door out of which he had come was slitted open again. "Gull" Foster squeezed through, shut it softly, stared down at the limp, sprawling Carroll. Traffic sound seething past the high black hedge that divided the lot from the highway was threaded by the thrilling of a traffic cop's whistle. A woman's voice cried out thinly.

Foster peered through the rows of parked cars, started toward them, hesitated, then turned back and bent over the stunned Texan. But a thud of running feet from the gate leading to the lot jerked the black-polled little thug erect again.

His gesture of his hand toward his lapel was paralyed by a hoarse bellow.

"Reach, you! Grab air or I'll let some into you!"

A burly cop pounded toward him, revolver out. Foster's arms lifted.

"It's okay. Officer," he said suavely. "My friend here had a snootful and I brought him out here and he passed out. I was just lookin' after him."

"Lookin' after his jack, you mean."

The policeman glared at Cal Carroll's plethoric bill roll which was clutched in the little thug's raised left hand, jabbed his gun muzzle into Gull Foster's midriff, slid his own free hand under the tuxedo jacket's flap and brought out a flat, lustreless automatic.

"All right, punk," he growled. "Let's have your wrists."

Foster held them out and nickeled silver clicked around them just as the gray-haired parking lot attendant limped up.

"Hey, Grady! Hey! I seen you dive past me and.... How'd yuh know what was goin' on?"

"Gal in a white dress comes sailin' out uh the Casino to where I'm directin' traffic, peaceful-like, and tells me someone's bein' bumped in here." Officer Grady plucked the roll of bills from his prisoner's reluctant grasp. "Listen to them horns blattin' out there on the crossin' ! I ought to be out there an' I ought to be takin' this lush-roller into the house, and I ought to be doin' somethin' about this stew he was friskin'. Now how—"

"Yuh don't have to do nothin' about me, mister." Cal Carroll sat up, dazedly rubbed his jaw. "I'm not stewed. Not on milk, but—" He gulped, his eyes focusing on Foster. "Hey! Where's—"

"Your cash? Here." The cop held it out but jerked it away from Carroll's reaching hand and shoved it into his own pocket. "Sorry. Got to hold it for evidence. You'll get it back from the magistrate in night court, after yuh've signed a complaint."

"What complaint?" The Texas lumbered erect, big hands fisting. "Yuh can turn this pipsqueak loose, Officer. I'll take care of him myself."

"Nix," Grady refused. "Nothin' doin'." He turned to the lot attendant. "Yuh got a phone in that booth of yours, Pop, I can call the house for a squad car from?" He pulled at the chain linking Foster's wrists and the little group got moving. Quickly it was hidden from Ted Storme by the black bulk of a limousine. Storme smiled thinly in his cover.

"I better get distance between me and here before Dorgan puts some more of his hoods on me," he muttered.

He drifted along the wall of the shed in whose shadows he had crouched, got past its corner—and stiffened. A sound half-heard, a feel of movement in the shadows, sheathed his body with iciness...

On the sidewalk before the wide, white-painted steps that climbed to the front entrance of the Biarritz, Mimi touched the back of Jock Haddon's hand with a finger.

"I couldn't, Jock," she said pleadingly. "I just couldn't let him be killed without trying to do something to stop it."

"So you ran out here to call copper." Haddon's face was the color of yeast. "With Feet Dorgan himself watching you, three tables away. Here." He shoved a bundle of electric-blue velvet at Mimi. "Here's your wrap. If you've got any sense at all you'll grab a taxi and keep going right out of this town, but whatever you do, keep away from me. Do you hear?" His voice became a snarl. Keep away from me. I don't want that snake after me."

He wheeled away, stumped stiff legged back up the stairs.

"Jock!" the girl sobbed, the gleaming wrap trailing from her arms. "Oh, Jock." And then what was left of color drained from her small face as the revolving door through which Haddon had vanished disgorged a little man with snow-white hair, a Santa Claus tummy that bulged his starched shirt-bosom, and twinkling, bright blue eyes.

The doorman flipped an obsequious finger to his cap visor.

"Your car, Mr. Dorgan?"

"No, thank you, Bill. I'm not leaving.

I just want to speak to that young lady."

"Feet" Dorgan started down the stairs toward Mimi and she knew it was no use to run. No earthly use. . . .

The sound that had held Ted Storme rigid came again. A tight sob. Vague reflection of light from the casino's white-painted side showed him its source. Apprehension drained out of him, was replaced by amazement as he stared at the little girl, scarcely thigh-high to him, whose small grimy face was tear-stained as she twisted in distraught little hands a knee-length plaid of dress.

"Hello," he said softly. "Where did you come from?"

Enormous eyes lifted to him in the dimness. The child's lips quivered.

"Don't be afraid of me, sweetheart." Storme's low voice was gentle. "I'm not a boogie man. I'm only Ted, and if you'll tell me what's the matter I'll try and help you.

The big eyes studied him with vast solemnity. What they saw seemed to content the waif. She spoke, all in one breath.

"I'm Susan, and Mom's awful sick and I took a nickel from her pocketbook and came on the bus to tell Gram, and the man won't let me in."

He squatted down, but even then his head was above hers.

"What man won't let you in where?" he asked.

"The man with the gold flies on his collar. In the Bee—Beer…  In that place.

I told him Gram works there but he chased me away and I snaked in this lot and hid, and then the cop came after me.... Don't let him get me, Ted!" She snatched at his sleeve in sudden panic. "Don't let the cop get me!"

"Whoa! Whoa up, Susan. The cop wasn't after you. He was after a bad man and he caught him, but the cop's still out there by the gate so I guess we better talk low so he won't hear us. Now, look. Are you sure your Gram works in the Biarritz?"

" 'Course I am. She gave me the paper from the agency for my treasure box, with the address on it and what bus to take, 'cause this is the first time she's working since I was little."

The corner of Storme's mouth twitched at that. She was no bigger than a minute now. About eight, he judged.

"Mom an' me were so happy Gram had work again," she went on, "that we romped in bed like we used to, and all of a sudden Mom got all white and fell down on the bed and wouldn't answer me." A sob caught in the tad's throat.

"Steady." Storme drew the warm little body to him. "Steady, honey."

"It's Mom's heart, Ted, and Gram wasn't there to make her better, and I didn't know what to do."

"Why didn't you call a neighbor?"

"I didn't dass't. We don't dass't talk to the neighbors or—or anybody 'cause if we do, They might find us."

There was so much of fear implicit in the eerie statement that the nape of Storme's neck prickled.

"They? Who?"

"The—the bad men who took Daddy away."

The police? But why should an old woman and an ill one and a child be hiding from the police?

"Well, Susan," Storme said, "in that case we'll just have to get Gram. Look. Go around in back of this big house here and you'll find the door to the kitchen. You go in there and if you don't see your Gram—"

"In the kitchen? What would Gram be doing in the kitchen?"

"Isn't she a cook or—or something?"

"A cook?" There was in the way Susan said it a child's scorn for an adult who is being more than ordinarily stupid. " 'Course not. Gram's vohdvil's greatest star!"

"What's her name?" Storme demanded. "What's your Gram's stage name?"

"Jennie Wrenn."

"Jennie—" Muted by the casino's wall, the ribald strains of the "Gay Caballero" were just ending in a muffled storm of applause. "Good Lord, I can't let you hear... Listen, Susan!" He caught back what he'd been about to say. "Your Gram can't be bothered while she's working, so I'll tell you what. See that cream-colored convertible over there—the one with the top up? That's mine. I'll ride you home in it and we'll get a doctor."

"No. I've got to go in there and get Gram."

"You can't, honey. It—it's a bad place for little girls."

"Then you go get her for me."

"I wish I could, Susan. I certainly wish I could, but there's a man in there who... Well, I don't dass't go in there."

"You promised, Ted." The child's look was accusing. "You promised if I told you what was the matter you'd help me."

The skin of Storme's face tightened over its bones and his lids narrowed.

"So I did. I did promise you." His look drifted to a door in the side wall of the Biarritz, much nearer its rear comer than the one from which he had come. "All right. I'll get your Gram for you." He lifted erect. "You go and sit in my car till I come back, and remember to keep very, very quiet."

His head turned to the black hedge along the parking lot's outer border, beyond which a police car's siren wailed to silence.

3: On The Skids

ON The sidewalk in front of the Biarritz Mimi heard the wailing of the police car siren behind her, but she didn't turn. Watching shiny patent leather pumps come down the stairs toward her she was thinking, with strange inconsequence, that they were too small to explain why their owner was called Feet Dorgan.

"How small your feet are," said Little Red Riding Hood.

"The better to walk on your grave with, my dear."

Quite suddenly blue eyes in an applecheeked moon of a face were twinkling merrily into hers.

"Jock Haddon's a heel." A small red mouth murmured the words. "But that's no reason you should have to go home so early." Pudgy fingers were clammy-cool on the hot skin of Mimi's arm. "Come and join my party, my dear."

Mimi's tongue-tip licked her lips. "I... Thank you, but—but I'm not feeling well." Behind her the police car's siren moaned again, going back the way it had come and Dorgan was looking past her, his eyes suddenly the color of an ice-covered lake under a winter sky.

She turned to look, too, saw a green and white car sliding by and in it two policemen and Gull Foster and the big man who had taken Ted Storme out of the Biarritz, but not Storme. He must be... No! The cops wouldn't be taking those two away so quickly if they killed Storme.

"The best medicine for what ails you," Dorgan purred, "is a glass of Veuve Cliquot."

The cold fingers on her arm urged Mimi toward the steps and she was climbing them beside the man people called Feet for no reason she could figure out.

They went through the revolving door, past the check-room. Mimi saw Jock Haddon at the bar and he spied them and choked on his highball. Dorgan jerked a chin at him.

"That phony's going to find out he's made one wrong play too many," he said, loud enough for Jock to hear.

Jock's glass slipped from his hand and spilled, and scared as she was Mimi couldn't help laughing at the way his eyes bugged out of his head.

On the stage Jennie Wren and Sam Slats were swapping jokes and everybody at the tables was laughing. The fingers on Mimi's arm stopped her and Dorgan said:

"Here she is, folks. Say hello to—er—"

"Mimi," Mimi filled in for him.

The two men at the table looked up at her, but the big brunette sitting there, her dusky-red mouth bitter, just kept on looking at the stage.

"That's Bert Judson," Dorgan said, nodding at the younger man, a slim fellow, his close-shaved jaw bluish with hair under the skin. "And the bald-headed shrimp is Judge Ashton Lee."

"A judge!" Mimi exclaimed. "A real judge?"

"No." Lee's voice was as pale as his dough-hued face. His eyes were big and scary behind thick glasses, and his smile made Mimi feel crawly. "Just a lawyer."

"The best mouthpiece in ten states," Dorgan said. "The statuesque Juno there is Norma Wayne. Be nice to Mimi, Norma. She isn't your rival—yet."

"I'm not worried." The brunette's voice was almost as deep as a man's, and the slow, velvet-lipped smile that went with it was like a slap in the face. "I know too much about you, Henry Dorgan, for you to put me on the skids."

"Watch it, Norma." The blue-white frost was back in Dorgan's eyes, and his voice was suddenly deep-throated. "You'll pull that line once too often. Maybe this is the time."

Mimi would have been paralyzed had he spoken to her like that, but Norma merely shrugged her gorgeous shoulders, picked up a champagne glass and sipped from it. Mimi sank into the chair a fussy waiter had brought for her.

"Oh, Judge," Dorgan said. "I'll have to take care of that little proposition by myself. Something's come up you'll have to get busy on right away."

The lawyer got up and Dorgan took hold of his lapel, moved with him into a clear space nearby.

"Guess some of the boys got into a jam," Mannie ruminated. "Well, Lee will spring 'em. He's some fixer."

Mimi was fascinated by the way the lawyer's long, thin fingers kept writhing over one another while he talked with Dorgan. He nodded, went away toward the wide stairs to the mezzanine, and Dorgan came back to the table and sat down. He didn't say anything, just sat there chuckling to himself and listening to Jennie Wrenn singing a song about two sailors and a girl and what happened when her father came home unexpectedly.

Bert Judson took a napkin-wrapped bottle out of the silver bucket on a stand beside him and spilled champagne from it into the fresh glass the waiter had put in front of Mimi. She drank it in a hurry and her nose tickled, but she began to feel a little better.

Outside, Ted Storme peered in through the half-inch slit he had opened between the stage-door and its jamb. The corridor inside was crowded with chorus girls waiting to go on, so he dared not enter yet.

Applause died away and Sam Slats and Jennie Wrenn ran off. The orchestra swung into "The Flight of the Bumblebee," played fast, and girls poured out onto the stage. They wore head-dresses of black fur with great glittering glass eyes and feelers of black ostrich feathers fastened to them so that they looked exactly like bees' heads. Shimmery wings fluttered from the girls' shoulder blades. Three not very big patches of yellow silk were all the rest they wore.

They started dancing and buzzing.

"Look kids," Mr. Dorgan said to his party. "I've got something to attend to backstage." He got up. "Take care of Mimi, Bert. Don't forget I want her to be sitting right here when I get back."

"She'll be here." Judson chuckled. "Don't worry, Boss. She'll be sitting right here at this table."

"Make sure that she is."

The fat little man started walking away, but somebody called him over to a table and he stood talking to the people there. Norma Wayne's maroon-enameled fingernails tapped the side of her glass. Her black-lashed, brooding eyes moved to Mimi.

"Look, youngster," she said. "If you're doing this just to spite the boy friend, my advice is to get right up and get out of this."

"Nix," Bert growled. "Lay off that stuff." He filled Mimi's glass again, and his own. "The smartest stunt you ever pulled, sweetheart, was to run out on that Haddon heel the way you did and Took such a cute trick doing it."

"Did I, Bert? Did I look cute?" Mimi took a big swallow of champagne and wished Jock could hear this. "Was that why Mr. Dorgan came after me?"

"What else? You don't think Feet Dorgan chases every skirt he puts his peepers on, do you?"

"Tell me, Bert Why do they call him that? Feet?"

Judson's smirk faded and he looked uncomfortable.

"I'll tell you, Mimi," Norma said, fighting a long, rose-tipped cigarette. "People who cross Harvey Dorgan have a way of turning up with the soles of their feet burned to a crisp." A slow smile grew around the cigarette between her dusky lips. "See?"

The champagne glass chattered against Mimi's teeth. That lawyer, she thought, has gone to take care of Gull Foster and the big gunsel from out of town. He would find out who had sent the cop in to the parking lot to save Ted Storme and when he came back he would tell Dorgan. Feet Dorgan.

Dorgan had told Bert Judson to keep her there and he would. She would still be here when Judge Lee came back.

The noise of the band beat against Mimi's ears, beat into her skull. The bee-girl's came dancing down off the stage, were dancing among the tables to give the Biarritz's customers a closer view of their "art"—and their flesh. Bert unwrapped the napkin from the bottle and held it up against one of the spotlight beams that followed the dancing girls around.

"There's just about one drink left," he decided. "How's for you killing it, Norma?"

"Swill it yourself, Bert." The brunette dragged her sables around her. "I've got to see a man about a dog." As she got up, her bag, a big one of platinum mesh as fine as hair, thumped against the table edge as though it held something heavy. "That is, of course, if you have no objection."

Bert shrugged, filling his own glass. "The boss didn't say nothing about keeping you here."

"That's right. He didn't." Norma was taller than Mimi had expected, and her lustrous black gown sheathed a figure Hedy Lamarr might envy. "Maybe that will turn out to have been a mistake."

She glided away toward the mezzanine. Something about the way she moved reminded Mimi of the black panther she once had seen in the zoo.

"Huh!" Judson muttered. "She's sure taking it hard."

"Taking what hard?"

"Feet going for you."

"For me!" Bubbles of laughter prickled Mimi's tonsils. Or was it the champagne? "Where do I shine in with her?"

Bert blinked at her owlishly. "Nowheres," he replied, frankly. "But you're not a bad piece of fluff and the boss is ripe for a change. The way he stepped on Norma before, when she cracked wise, was the tip-off she's on the skids. Well"—he shrugged—"it's no buttons off my vest. Here's to crime, kid."

"Down the hatch."

Mimi drank. It didn't do any good. She was still cold. Awfully cold. Judson's glass tipped over as he put it down, and his grab for it only knocked it over. He was pretty high. Mimi got an idea.

"If you'll order up another bottle, Bert," she said, "I'll come around there and sit by you."

How was she going to work this? If she could only think. If the drums would only stop pounding at her head!

4: The Music Stops

THE pound of drums was well-muffled in the backstage corridor, ill-lit and redolent of grease-paint and body sweat. Ted Storme had flattened himself against a plyboard petition, shielded by the half-column that jogged out of it.

He had heard the chorus girls rush out and had slipped in here, but Sam Slats had come into the passage with Susan's Gram and had gone into her dressing room with her. They were talking now, just the other side of this thin wall. Storme could hear them almost as well as though he were inside.

"I'm through," Jennie Wrenn was saying, her voice husky with fatigue. "I haven't got it any more, Sam."

"Through?" the roly-poly little clown snorted. "Through, she says she is and her just after rolling the town's toughest audience in the aisles."

"With what? With a line of burlycue hokum makes me feel dirty all over. Urrgh. If I wasn't at my wit's ends how to buy groceries for Vi and Susan I'd have slapped the script in Tom Goslin's mug."

"Shucks, Jen, the Goose has got to give the customers what they want. Say, I didn't have time at that rush rehearsal to ask you how that red-headed daughter of yours is."

"Bad, Sam." A sigh quivered through the plyboard. "That pump of hers... I've had her all over—Boston, the Mayos at Rochester, every place I heard there was some doc knew something about tinkering with busted tickers."

"And no soap, eh?"

"Not even suds. Worst of it's the way we've dragged little Susan around... Is that lassie a sweatheart, Sam!" Warmth came into the dreary tones. "I... If anything ever happened to her, I'd cut my throat."

"Yeah. I guess you would. Say, all that running around and doctoring must have cost you plenty. So that's where the sock you retired on went to."

"That's where it went to, old-timer. Didn't take long. Five years. And now if you don't get out of here and give me a chance to rest, you'll find yourself doing a single on the two a.m. show. Go on now. Take a powder."

Ted Storme squeezed hard against the wall as the door just beyond the jog opened and shut again. Sam Slats' footfalls plodded away down the hall and another dressing room door creaked open. Storme started out, pulled back behind the column again, his throat drying.

The last man he wanted to see had come into the corridor, down there at the other end. Feet Dorgan.

He glanced back toward the entrance and decided he couldn't make it unobserved. The fat man's heels clicked on bare wood as he neared. Storme held his breath, his body taut. Dorgan was just the other side of the pillar when he stopped coming on. Jennie Wrenn's door rattled open, was shut again.

"You!"The woman's voice inside the room was startled. "Get out of here!"

"I'm disappointed, Jennie," Feet Dorgan purred. "I expected a warmer greeting after all these years."

"Warm? Hot's the word for what I ought to give you! A red-hot poker for choice." Despite the bravado of the words, Storme detected a quaver of something like fear. "Are you getting out, or do I have to call Tom Goslin to throw you out?"

"Go ahead and call him. See if he'll throw out his angel."

"His what?"

Dorgan chuckled. "The Goose is just fronting for me. I own ninety per cent of the Biarritz."

"You own—" Heavy breathing came very distinctly through the thin plyboard. "So that's how—"

"Art Rand got you booked into here. Five hundred for the week, with options. You snapped it up, figuring you could grab a quick stake and drop out of sight again before I got track of you. Where you made your mistake, Jennie, was using the old name."

"I had to use it. It's the only thing I've got left to sell. But I—"

"Didn't give Art your home address, told him you'd come to the office to check on whether he'd found a job for you. You thought you could keep covered that way."

"I'm still covered. If you think you can make me tell you where Viola is."

"I know I can. And you do, too, old gal. You haven't forgotten why they call me Feet Dorgan."

A sharp inhalation.

"No, I haven't." The sound of it told Storme it was said through stiff, suddenly white lips. "How could I forget when every time Vi's heart acts up it reminds me how it got that way?"

"You shouldn't have let her go to the morgue." Dorgan chided. "The police would have accepted your identification."

"Ben Castle was her husband. I had no right to keep her away." Jennie Wrenn checked herself. "But that's water under the bridge five years ago. Suppose you do locate Vi, what then? You'll be no nearer finding out where Ben cached them numbers racket collections he gypped you out of."

"I won't be, eh?" The fat man's tone was still sauve. "We got it out of Ben, just before the cops hopped us and I had to put lead into him, that he'd told her where he hid it. She knows where that seventy-five thousand is, and she's going to tell me."

"Not in a million years she won't."

"So you think."

"So I know, Dorgan. Listen. Last week we didn't have a cent left in the house and I darn near went on my knees to Vi, begging her to get a little of that money, just enough to keep us from starving. She wouldn't. She said—get this, Feet Dorgan!—she said eating food with the money that cost Ben his life would be like eating a piece of Ben himself. Someway that swag, wherever it is, has come to mean Ben to her. Do you think she's going to turn Ben over to you? Do you think you can make her! Viola Castle's got the best protection against your cute little tricks anyone could have, a heart that'll conk out the minute you start on her. You didn't think of that, did you?"

Ted Storme relaxed, the cords in his neck aching as though they had been taut for hours.

"Maybe," Dorgan was saying slowly, "I didn't. Or maybe I remembered something you seem to have forgotten." He paused, and the suspense was agonizing. "Such as that your daughter Viola has a daughter of her own."

Silence again in that dressing room, for ten pounding heartbeats in which the blare of the band from the stage outside was something obscene.

Then, "No!" Susan's Gram moaned. "No! Not even you can be that low."

"Can't I?" Storme heard as he stepped around the pillar, closed fingers on a chipped doorknob and started to turn it with slow, infinite precaution against any sound that might warn the man who was saying, "For seventy-five grand I can be. Stop! Get back, you old—"

A gunshot's flat pound cut off the sudden, startled shout. Inside the room a heavy body thudded to the floor. A single saxophone brassily declared, "That's All-ll," and the muffled music stopped.

People started to applaud as the show ended on the saxophone's brazen, "That's All-ll." Mimi clinked her glass against Bert Judson's. "Here's to crime," she giggled.

"Drink 'er down, Bert ol' top."

"Mudinyereye," Bert mumbled, and emptied his glass, but Mimi once more managed to spill hers into the silver ice bucket between them without his noticing.

The handclaps gave way to a rapping of little wooden hammers on tabletops, a clatter of silverware on plates. Judson's hand fumbled for the bottle, didn't quite make it, and dropped to his side. The music started to play again and the applause to die down. Bert Judson looked blearily at Mimi, slumped over on the table, and cushioned his head on his arm.

Her throat got so tight she could hardly breathe. The bee-girls were on the stage again, dancing an encore, but all Mimi saw was eyeball-white glittering between Bert's almost closed lids. She put her hands on the table-edge to push up.

"Where's Dorgan?" a languid voice asked. Ashton Lee goggled down at her through his thick glasses.

Mimi's mouth opened but she couldn't make words come. The bald little man had on a dark-blue top-coat and his pallid fingers writhed on the brim of a Homburg hat that matched it in color. His look went to Bert, came back to her.

"Where's Dorgan?" he asked again.

"He—he went backstage."

Lee's fingers stopped writhing, but the way they crumpled the hat's brim was worse.

"How long ago?"

"Right after you left."

"Norma go with him?"

"No. She went to the—"

Before Mimi could say where the lawyer was on his way toward the door at the end of the stage, Mimi got to her feet, plucked up her wrap and started the other way, toward the front door.

She wanted to run, but she couldn't. Her legs felt as if she were wading through water up to her waist but she got to the mezzanine stairs somehow; somehow climbed them. She kept going, however, through the lobby, through the revolving door, down the wide entrance stairs. She stopped short at their foot, terror flaring into her eyes as she spied the traffic cop she had sent into the parking lot to save Ted Storme talking to the slim, blackhaired killer Jock Haddon had told her was Gull Foster.

The cop saw her. Pointed to her. Gull nodded and started coming across the gutter.

5: The Show Must Go On

STEPPING into the grimy dressing room, Ted Storme's brain registered the fat body sprawled on the uncarpeted floor. But not Jennie Wrenn. Dorgan, a splotch of crimson marring the silken white of his hair above the stare of his sightless eyes. The actress, her huge, pink-spangled bulk backgrounded by the black rectangle of an open window was straightening up from a feral crouch, and her hand held a pearl-handled revolver. A woman's weapon, but still deadly at this close range.

"Hold it," Storme said quietly as he pulled the door shut. "I'm on your side. I know you had good reason to kill him."

"Reason to kill him?" she repeated dully, apparently too dazed to be startled or afraid. "But I didn't. I didn't have anything to kill him with."

"What's that in your hand? A powder-puff?"

She looked down at it, a sort of horror coming into her face.

"I... It came in through the window." Her features were ghastly under their mask of make-up. "I—" She stared up again at Storme, pupils dilating. "I started for him and he yelled, 'Stop!' and there was a crack and this flew in through the window." Her brows knitted. "Some—someone must have shot him from outside."

"And threw the gun in here to fix you in a kill-frame." Storme said, and moved swiftly across the room. "Which you've made perfect by putting your prints on it." He reached the window, leaned out. "State you're in I'd lay a hundred to one you're not lying, but I'm the only one who'd believe you." He looked out on the casino's dark back yard. The kitchen, a one-story addition, loomed blackly to the left. "Your only chance to beat the frame is to find the real killer and you haven't a whisper of a—"

The rattle of the door knob, behind him, cut him off. Storme vaulted over the sill, lighted catlike and twisted, peered in over the sill in time to see the door shut again behind a shiny-pated little man in a dark-blue topcoat, eyes monstrous behind thick, round lenses.

"Lee!" Jennie Wrenn breathed, her back to the window. "Ashton Lee!"

Light glittered on Lee's glasses as he looked at the gun in her hand, looked at Feet Dorgan's body. A flicker of obscure satisfaction passed across his pallid countenance.

"I advise you to plead self-defence, my friend," he said. "Dorgan attacked you, you shot him to save your honor. We should not find it difficult to convince a jury."

"We?"

"My testimony as to what I saw and heard as I entered can either substantiate that story—or send you to the chair." Teeth showed in a bland—and sinister—smile. "I'm sure your daughter will not compel me to the latter regrettable alternative by refusing to tell me where she hid the money Ben Castle stole from—" Running feet thudded in the corridor. "Quick!" Lee snapped. "Tell me where she is."

"I'll burn in perdition first!"

"You'll burn, Jennie, but not in—" Knuckle raps cut him short, and someone called urgently, "On stage, Jennie Wrenn! They're yowling for you and Slats!"

"No!" the lawyer screamed shrilly. "Don't shoot me too! I didn't—"

The door burst open, let into the room a heavy-set, shirt-sleeved man.

"What the devil?" he barked, and gagged as he spied the corpse but kept on going, plucked the gun from the woman's hand. Then he wheeled to Lee.

"She was going to shoot me, Tom! the lawyer was jabbering. "She shot Dorgan and she was going to shoot me!"

"Shut up, you yellow pup." Tom Goslin looked disgusted. "You're hide's safe now." He turned back to the woman. "Gosh, Jennie! If you had to do it, why'd you have to do it in here?"

"I didn't, Tom! I—"

"Save it, old gal. Save it for the cops. It breaks my heart to have to turn you in, but what can I do? Okay, shyster. You got the nerve to stay in here and keep an eye on her while I go phone the Law?"

"Yes. Yes, of course." Ashton Lee gave a good imitation of a man just reprieved from death and still shaken. "As long as you've got her gun."

Goslin went out. Lee smiled.

"You should have accepted my offer while you had the chance, Jennie Wrenn," he said.

Storme saw the old woman's hand squash on the window sill behind her.

"You'll have to tell the police where you've been living with your daughter," Lee said, "and they'll tell me, and so I'll have my chance for a little talk with her."

"Maybe." she was still undefeated. "And maybe Viola won't be there when you get there. Maybe somebody will beat you to her and take her where you can't find her."

Ted Storme knew that this was meant for him. His countenance was gaunter than ever, his mouth more bitter when he reached the cream-colored roadster in the parking lot and slid in under the steering wheel. Susan sat up.

"Where's Gram?" she asked.

"She can't come just now, honey."

"But you promised. You promised you'd bring her to me."

"I did, and I'll keep that promise." His tone had all the solemnity of a vow. "But Gram's act's onstage." The motor purred to life under the long hood and the car was moving. "Whatever happens, the show must go on."

"Yes," the child sighed. "Yes, I know. The show must go on."

The roadster nosed out of the lot but paused briefly at the cut curb to let a black and red taxi roll past toward the main entrance to the Biarritz. The taxi blocked Gull Foster off from Mimi, stopped right in front of her and she grabbed at its door handle, wrestled it open.

"Help me!" she sobbed to the man inside. "Please help—"

Her throat locked. He was the big gunsel she had seen taking Ted Storme out of the casino to kill him.

Foster came around the back of the cab.

"Gotcha, you little stool pigeon," he snarled.

Strong fingers grabbed Mimi's wrist, pulled her into the taxi and a leg shot out of the door, planted a big foot on Foster's face. He flew backward but Mimi didn't see where he landed because the door slammed shut.

"Get after that yaller car afore we lose it and you're out a sawbuck!" the Texan yelled.

The cab leaped into fast motion, skidded around in a U-turn that piled Mimi in the far corner of the seat.

"If that doddlebug don't quit gettin' in my hair," she heard, "he's liable to get hurt. What was he pesterin' yuh about?"

Mimi's heart bumped her ribs. It came to her that the cop had only just told Foster about her and that this one don't know why he was after her.

"Oh," she said, straightening up. "He made a pass at me and I didn't like it, and he didn't like that."

And then her breath caught again. The roadster they were trailing was rounding a curve in the highway ahead. Light from a car coming this way lit up the face of the man who was driving it, and she saw who he was.

Ted Storme!

The roadster straightened out of the curve.

"Gram's in trouble," Susan said with conviction.

Storme's nostrils pinched. "What makes you think that?"

"Your sayin', 'The show must go on.' That's what good troupers always say when they're in despr'it trouble. You can tell me about it, Ted. Gram always tells me when there's trouble. She says facing it is half the job of licking it."

She had courage, this chestnut-curled tot. "All right, honey. I'll tell you. The people you've been hiding from have found your grandmother."

There was darkness now on either side of the broad concrete highway, a darkness in which the wind from the roadster's speed roused a rustle of unseen shrubbery. Susan's whisper was no louder than that rustle.

"What are they going to do to Gram?"

"She'll be all right till I can figure out how to help her. How to clear her from the murder-frame! "I promised I'd bring her back to you and I always keep a promise, but I'm sure she wants me to take care of your mother first."

"Gram would. That's the way she is."

"So I thought."

This road was a main artery down the Island's North Shore. Far ahead lights made a glow over the clover-leaf intersections where the routes to the various bridges to the city sorted out.

"Gram didn't have time to tell me where you live, Susan," Storme said, "and I've got to know it now because I've got to know which road to take."

Storme's fingers tightened on the steering wheel. The orange blink of a "silent policeman" flitted past. A closed hot-dog stand was a black mass drifting by in the night.

"We live on East Ninety-third Street," Susan said. "Near the old brewery by the river."

There was a lift in Ted Storme's voice as he observed, "That means over the Triboro Bridge and down the East River Drive."

The world in which he moved might hate him but he had won the trust of this cleareyed child. He was too elated to notice the red and black taxi that followed him, far behind.

The house where Susan lived was one of a dismal row of identical five-story tenements fronting the narrow side street, empty and desolate at past two in the morning. A pinpoint of light burned in the vestibule, but the hall within was unlighted, and uncarpeted stairs ascended from dimness to obscurity.

Climbing them, Ted Storme breathed the odors of vermin-riddled wood and moldering plaster, of cabbage and Parmesan cheese and garlic, of sweat-rotted clothing and unaired bedding and unwashed bodies, all merged in the miasmic aura of poverty. From behind scabrous doors came snores, a sick infant's fretful whine—

He stopped short, hand tightening on the child's hand he held. Below, the vestibule door had creaked open.

His tautly listening ears heard no entering footsteps, no human sound below there.

"Come on, Ted." Susan tugged at him. "We've got to go all the way up."

"I thought your mother had a weak heart."

"She never goes out, and the top floor rear's the cheapest rent."

"I see."

They got going again and reached the top landing at last. The door to which Susan pulled Storme and opened shut them into darkness ominously silent save for a pit—pit of water from some leaking faucet.

Her hand disengaged itself from his. He heard her patter way from him, heard a chair scrape, and blinked in the dazzle from an overhead fixture. The child climbed down from the chair she had mounted to reach the pull chain.

"Wait here while I see if Mom's decent," she whispered, and went across the room toward a closed door.

This was a kitchen. At least it held a gas range, a sink and gray slate laundry tub, and an old-fashioned ice-box, but there was also a round dining room table at its center, oilcloth covered. Along one wall was a cot bed and a rickety bureau with innumerable photos stuck around the mirror's ill-fitting frame.

"Mom,"Susan called, opening the door. "Are you decent, Mom?"

6: Rescuers

NO answer. Storme started toward the child, chiding himself for letting her face alone what might be inside that room.

"Mom!"

A bedspring creaked, releasing the breath that hung on Storme's lips, and as the crumpled plaid dress was swallowed by darkness the shadow of a voice came from within.

"Susan! Susan, baby. Where have you been?"

"To the—to where Gram's working. You had a spell and I went to get her to come home and make you better, but she couldn't come."

"You shouldn't have gone all that long way. I just fainted, dear, and.... Who's in the kitchen?" Terror flared into the faint voice. "Whose shadow's that on the floor?"

"Ted's, Mom. Gram sent him to take care of you."

"Light the light, Susan," the mother's voice said, and then more loudly, though still feeble, "You in there! Why are you hiding from me?"

"Not hiding, Mrs. Castle." Storme went through the door into abrupt brightness. "Merely waiting until Susan told you I was here."

This room was almost filled by the double bed on which Viola Castle lay. The deep-toned green silk of lounging pajamas, threadbare but still somehow reminiscent of luxury, outlined the terrible emaciation of her long body. Her disordered hair was a crimson flame about a hollow-cheeked, triangular face sharpened by suffering, and out of which gold-flecked brown eyes as large and terror-filled as a doe's at bay, laid themselves on his face.

"I don't know you," her blue-tinged lips whispered.

"No reason why you should." The hand that Susan had taken was only skin and long, delicate bones, but its nails were meticuously cared-for. "You've never seen me before and the first time I ever even heard of you was tonight, when your little daughter told me about you. So"—Storme smiled reassuringly—"you see you've no reason to know me, certainly none to be afraid of me."

"You—you're not—"

"One of Dorgan's gang? No." There was no time for finesse. He would have to chance the effect on her of what he must tell her. "But I've got some bad news for you. Er.... How about your going out in the other room for a while, Susan, while I talk to your mother?"

"No!" Viola Castle's free hand flung up. "No! She won't leave me alone with you." Storme shrugged. "Very well. She'll have to hear, then. Listen, Feet Dorgan is dead, and your mother is under arrest for killing him."

"Did—did she?"

"No, but she's going to have a hard time proving it, and in the meantime what's left of his mob are hunting you. She found a way to ask me to take you and Susan to a place where you'll be safe from them."

"You're lying!"

"Why should I?" His eyes were on the flutter of heart blood in the dreadful hollow of the woman's throat. "To kid you into telling me where that money is hidden? You wouldn't tell that to your own mother to keep your child from starving." The fingers of the upthrown hand spread with startlement. "To eat food bought with it, you told her, would be like eating your husband."

"You know that," she whispered. "You could know it only from her."

"Precisely. Please believe me, Mrs. Castle. Please believe me that your mother sent me to protect you from your enemies. Please come with me to my own quarters, where you'll be safe from them."

"Let's, Mom," Susan broke into the momentary pause. "Let's go with Ted. He's nice. He's good and kind and—and we can trust him, Mom. I know we can."

"The instinct of a child," Storme urged, low-toned. "You're her mother. You should know how right it must be."

Viola Castle's eyes were still large-pupiled but, studying him, some of the fear went from them.

"Very well," she sighed. "We'll go with you."

"Good."

They decided there was no need to take time for her to change. It would be enough if she put on stockings and shoes while Susan packed the battered suitcase she hauled out of a closet. Storme discreetly withdrew to the outer room, half-closing the door between, and tried to stem his impatience by looking at the photos that encircled the speckled dresser mirror.

The autographs sprawled across them evoked echoes of Homeric laughter out of times past. Eva Tanguay, Pat Rooney. "From Eddie Leonard to a great-hearted trouper, Jennie Wrenn." Great-hearted was right. He had an odd fantasy that these old friends of hers were asking him something and in his mind he answered them.

"I won't let her down. She wants me to take care of those two she loves first, but when I've got them safe in my home I'll do my best for her."

A muscle twitched in his cheek and his head twisted to the sound of footfalls in the hall just outside.

The dark door rattled with a touch on its knob.

Before Storme could get there it was opening. The light showed him Cal Carroll, tall and sinister in the widening slit, left hand on the knob, right hovering near his tuxedo's side pocket.

"I got tired waitin' for yuh downstairs," the Texan rumbled "So ah come on up."

Storme recalled hearing the vestibule door open and Susan's telling him that they were going to the top floor, rear.

"Quite a climb, isn't it?" Storme said.

Did Carroll's not coming right on up after him mean he was unaware of the Dorgan mob's interest in the Castle's? Likely. He was, after all, an out-of-towner, probably imported for the single job of murder.

"Okay," he sighed, trying it out. "Let's get going."

But Cal Carroll shook his head. "No need to go anywhere," he said. "I can give yuh what I've got for yuh right here."

"The devil you can!" Ted Storme grunted, bunching muscles for a struggle he had no chance of winning but which might make enough noise to arouse the house and so bring at least temporary safety for Susan and her mother. "You—"

Once more breath caught in his throat. Carroll had stepped aside and a girl was coming in through the door ahead of him, her honey-hued short hair touseled, her violet eyes drowsy, her bright blue velvet wrap parted on a white shimmer of satin.

"This is Mimi," the Texan said, pushing the door shut.

Storme's mouth twisted. "Brought a witness along so you can be sure of collecting?"

"Collectin' ?" The big man looked puzzled. "For what?"

"The job you came here to do, of course."

"I don't get yuh."

"I do, Cal." The girl put a hand on his arm. "He thinks the same about you that Jock and I did, like I told you in the cab. He thinks Dorgan hired you to kill him."

"Jumpin' Jehoshaphat! I clean forgot." Carroll chuckled. "Shucks, son. I never heard of this Dorgan maverick till Mimi here told me about him, and as for gunnin' for yuh, I ain't had a shootin' iron on me for more years than you're old."

"No? Then what was it you put your hand on in your pocket when you invited me to walk out of the Biarritz with you?"

"In my.... Leapin' bullfrogs! So that's why yuh slugged me. Here!" The Texan's hand went into that pocket, came out with something it thrust at Storme. "This is what I've been huntin' yuh for ten months to give yuh."

It was an oval piece of porcelain not quite big enough to cover a man's palm. Its edges were chipped and the colors in which a young woman's face had been painted on it were faded, but the eyes that looked out from under the piled-up pompadour of a bygone era were wistful, the mouth sad and sweet.

"She looks like you," Mimi said.

"My mother," Ted Storme murmured, the hand that closed over the miniature trembling a bit. "Where did you get this, Cal Carroll?"

"She gave it to me the day she told me she'd decided between me and my best friend." New lines seamed the older man's leathery skin and his eyes were bleak as his voice. "That night I shook foot loose from where I figgered I wasn't wanted any more, bein' that kind of fool, and lost track of 'em. Long afterward I cashed in big, but I found out there was one thing I couldn't buy with money, and that was the only thing I wanted—somebody that belonged to me and me to them.

I started out to backtrack 'em and found out—"

"Skip it," Storme snapped. "What you found out is my business and no one's else." But some of the hardness had gone out of his tone and his expression. "What I want to know, right now, is why you didn't tell me all this at the Biarritz bar instead of—"

Carroll laughed whole-heartedly.

"Wranglin' yuh into that fool bet?" he said. "I wasn't none too shore yuh was the Ted Storme I hoped yuh was, and that was the only way I picked to check. When yuh turned yore back on that fly like it was two bits yuh had ridin' on it instead of a thousand iron men, I knew ah'd come to the end of the long trail." Carroll chuckled reminiscently. "That minute I could have been standin' in front of Peg Dillon's honkytonk watchin' Rod—watchin' yore pa stake a hundred-thousand-barrel oil well on a scrap between a doodlebug and three ants and never turn a hair when he lost."

"He told me that story once." Storme was at last convinced the bronzed out-lander was What he said he was. "But you must know hundreds about him that I've never heard." His gray look drifted to the bedroom's half-closed door. "They'll have to wait, though, till—" He checked, slid an arched-brow glance to Mimi and away again.

Carrol caught it. "The lady's all right, Ted. If it wasn't for her, might be neither of us would be here. She saw that Foster doodlebug trail us out of that honkytonk and run out in front."

"She's the girl in white who sent the policeman into the parking lot?"

"And has been havin' an all-fired rough time of it ever since. This Dorgan ranny got hold of her."

"Dorgan wasn't so bad," the girl protested. "It was Foster and Bert Judson and that awful Judge Lee."

Storme's nostrils pinched. "You were with Feet Dorgan's party?"

"Not at first. I went there with Jock Haddon, but afterward I was at their table."

"I want to talk to you." Excitement pulsed in Ted Storme's voice, repressed but electric. "You're coming along to my place with... Excuse me."

He whirled, thudded heavy-heeled into the bedroom. Viola Castle was up, supporting herself by a hand on the bed's footboard, her flaming hair neat, orange-red rouge livid on her ashen lips.

"You heard?" he flung at her.

"Yes, Ted. They sound all right."

"This mess may be working out better than we had any reason to hope. Hey, look. You can't make it down all those stairs, the state you're in. I'll have to carry you."

"Will you, Ted? I—I think I'll like that."

Her frail body was no weight at all in his arms. Hers went around his neck and her cheek nestled against his with a child's sigh of contentment. But Susan was troubled.

"What about Gram, Ted? You promised you'd bring her home to us."

"That I did, honey, and I'm beginning to hope now that I may be able to keep that promise."

It was Carroll's turn to look bewildered when they came out into the kitchen, Storme carrying a woman in green pajamas with a shabby coat thrown over them, a little girl lugging a valise almost as big as herself.

"No time to explain now, Cal," Storme said. "I'll tell you about it in the car. Grab that bag and come along."

"Yuh're Rod Storme's son, all right," the Texan chuckled as they started out and down the stairs. "That kind of singin' note in yore voice. He used to get it, just like that, when he was on the prod. 'Come along, Cal,' he'd say, his eyes as gray and hard as diamond bits. 'Come along. We got a job to do.' "

7: Poker Date

CAL CARROLL sat with Mimi and Ted Storme in the gambler's almost monkishly ascetic room. The sleep of exhaustion had overtaken Susan even before they had reached here and they had persuaded her mother to lie down with her in the bedroom.

"Two minutes after this Ashton Lee gets to that police station, I was wonderin' if they wasn't goin' to jug me for the crime of bein' robbed," Cal was saying. "Shucks, I says. Give me back my roll and I'll call it a day. Lee shakes hands all around and beats it out in such a tearin' hurry he don't even wait for Foster, and that doodlebug grabs a cab and takes out after him, so I got to wait till another one comes along."

"Lee got back to the Biarritz in time to walk in on Jenny Wrenn four or five minutes after Dorgan was shot," Storme said. "But I'd like to know how much earlier he got there."

"Don't tell me yuh're figgerin' he may be the one done the shootin'."

"Well, think it over. We can discard any theory that some enemy of Dorgan's just happened to be prowling around in the lot behind the dressing room and just happened to see him through that lighted window. The killer must be someone who knew Dorgan had gone backstage, and where. And look at Lee's behavior when he walked in there. He showed no surprise at finding Dorgan a corpse but went right at the old lady, foisting on her a self-defense plea that would avert suspicion from the real murderer and at the same time give him a lever with which to extract from her or her daughter a lead to the seventy-five-thousand dollars which, incidentally, is motive enough for any killing."

"Look, Mr. Storme." Mimi leaned forward eagerly. "Judge Lee didn't know Dorgan was going backstage till just before he went back there himself. I know, because he asked me where he was, and that must have been right the very minute Dorgan was being shot."

"Was it?" Storme's fingers drummed on the arm of his chair. "Mimi—do you remember the music ending with a single saxophone phrase that sounded like, 'That's All' ?"

The girl's efforts to recall screwed up her pert features till she resembled some pigtailed tad in a classroom.

"I don't... oh, yes, now I remember. There was just that one sweet sax singsing, 'That's All-lll.' "

"Good. Now was that before or after Lee showed up?"

"Before. I'm sure it was before. Bert Judson was just drinking his last glass of champagne and then he passed out, but the people were clapping and yelling. I almost cried because I was afraid they'd wake him up, but they didn't and I started to get up, and just then Judge Lee was there, looking down at me through those awful glasses."

"That ties it up." Storme looked triumphant. "I heard that saxophone too, a half-second after the shot and I'd had time to get into the room and talk with Jennie Wrenn before Lee appeared.

Carroll seemed puzzled. "Just what does that prove, Ted?"

"That he had time to establish an alibi. Look. He and Dorgan must have planned to talk to the old lady together, before he went to the police station to fix things for Foster. He rushed back as soon as he could, but instead of coming in through the front entrance he went backstage. Remember, he still had his coat on when he talked to Mimi and he'd have had a tough time getting past the checkroom girls that way. He drove into the parking lot and went around in back of the casino, spied Dorgan where he knew he would be and blasted him. He threw his gun into the room, and dived into the Biarritz through that same fire exit we came out of."

"Gee, Mr. Storme!" Mimi exclaimed. "You're wonderful. The only one I could think it might have been was Norma."

"Norma?"

"The brunette I told you about, the girl Dorgan told she might be cracking wise just once too often. Even I was scared the way he looked at her, almost as scared as Jock was when he heard Dorgan say about him, 'That phony's going to find out he's made one wrong play too many,' but Norma didn't turn a hair. She was burned up, though, I could tell that. And then she went to the powder room and never came back. And the way her bag bumped against the table, I was sure she might have a gun in it."

Carrol chuckled, "Don't I recall yore sayin', Ted, that the murder gun was little and pearl-handled? A woman's weapon."

"Or the kind a man might carry if he didn't want the fit of his dress clothes spoiled by a bulge."

"Mebbe. But Lee wasn't wearin' dress clothes."

Storme acknowledged that to be true. "Nevertheless," he insisted stubbornly, "this murder—the shot from the dark, the way Susan's grandmother was framed for it—isn't the act of a jealous woman or even a frightened one. It's the work of a cowardly one. It's the work of a cowardly rat, and that description fits Ashton Lee. With ten times Feet Dorgan's brains he played second fiddle to him for years. He cooked up all the ingenious rackets for which the Dorgan mob is notorious and was content to take the crumbs Feet handed him. Why? Because he was terrified of Dorgan. He was afraid with every cowardly fibre of his rotten soul of Dorgan's ways of beating down opposition, his ways of extracting information."

He pulled in a breath, gray eyes glowing. "By this time Feet Dorgan's on a slab in the morgue, Jennie Wrenn is in a cell, and Ashton Lee is at home. I'm going to talk to Lee tonight. And I'll bet you the thousand dollars I won from you, and a thousand more, that I'll extract from him the information I'm after."

Mimi's chair fell over as she came up out of it.

"You're not—" Her fingers were at her mouth, her face greenish. "You're not going to bum his feet!"

"What do you think?" Storme's nostrils flared, his eyes were gray agate, and his mouth straight-lined, grim. "Do you think I'd stop at that?"

The girl stared at him horror-stricken, but abruptly Carroll was chuckling.

"Got yuh, Ted. Calm down, gal. He's just a-goin' to run a whangaroo on him. Laughin' hyenas, son, I shore would admire to watch yuh in a good hot game of no limit poker."

"You'll get the chance to tomorrow night—if I'm still around. Even rats are dangerous when they're cornered." Storme came lithely erect. "I'm going to ask you to stay here, Cal, and keep an eye on Susan and her mother. Mimi, I'll drop you wherever you say."

"Hold on." Carroll lifted to his feet. "Where do yuh think yuh're a-headin' ?"

"To Lee's apartment up on Fifty-first street. That's dangerous, I know, but I can't bring him here, not with the Castle's here, and there's no other place I can find at this hour where I can be sure of not being interrupted."

"Yes, there is, Mr. Storme." Mimi was herself again. "I live alone in an old-fashioned flat with thick walls you can't hear anything through. You're welcome to use that if you want to."

"Sounds like just what the doctor ordered, but I hate to drag you into this."

"I'm in it already, ain't I?" Her pointed little chin seemed suddenly to take on new firmness. "You're going to use my apartment."

"Okay. Where is it?"

"East Eighth Street. Two-twenty-one.

The ground floor, on the right as you go in."

"Check."

Storme strode to the phone on a small desk between two monkscloth-draped windows, and dialed a number. The ringing signal's burr was cut off by an irritated rasp.

"Storme calling," the other two heard him say. "Ted Storme. I know it's four-thirty in the morning, but you want to see me tonight."

The watching two saw a grim smile lick his tight gambler's mask.

"I said you want to see me, Judge Lee. That is, you do if you want to beat Feet Dorgan to the seventy-five grand Ben Castle cached five years ago."

Mimi was startled. "Dorgan's dead," she whispered. "Why does he say that?" Carroll spread his hands. "Dunno, unless he's got some reason for wantin' to know has it been on the radio yet."

Evidently it had not, for Storme was saying, "I'll be hanged if I'll split it with a guy who's put his hoods on me to burn me down, but I can't get at it without one of you helping, so you're in luck." And after a pause, "Like the devil I'll come there! You're coming to me, Lee. Alone... Of course, you don't know where I live, and you're not finding out now. You'll meet me at two-twenty-one East Eighth Street in half an hour. The ground floor, right. Walk right in. The door will be unlatched."

Storme dropped the instrument into its cradle, turned. "Okay, Mimi. Let's have the key."

She snapped open the rhinestone-studded little envelope strapped to her wrist, fumbled in it, then looked up, eyes widening in dismay. "I—I haven't got it. I gave it to Jock when we started out and he never gave it back."

"That's nice. That's just fine."

"Oh, it isn't so bad. There's a way of opening my door without a key. But I'll have to go along and show you."

"I don't like that. You—" Storme caught himself. "It's only ten minutes from here. Can you drive a car?"

"No, I can't."

"Then this is what we'll do. Cal will come along and drive you back here after you've let me in. We'll have to take a chance on leaving those two alone here for twenty minutes. Let's go..."

At the turn of the century, the four-story, brownstone house where Mimi lived had been the home of some wealthy family. Now it had been cut up into small, furnished suites, but it still preserved some of its ancient dignity. The entrance hall was wide and high-ceilinged, the dark mahogany staircase was baronial in its proportions.

Mimi led the men to a door deeply embrasured in a marble niche.

"A boy I used to know found out how to do this one time when we had a scrap and I locked him out. You push in on this loose part of the jamb, see, and down hard on the knob."

The door swung open silently, let them into a narrow, dark hall.

"Just a second," the girl whispered, "and I'll light up for you."

As she moved away, Ted Storme pressed the latch-button to hold the bolt back, pulled the door shut. There was a moment of tar-barrel blackness, a click. Yellow luminance struck from beyond the wall-corner that concealed Mimi. A low, startled scream came from within the unseen room.

"You've kept me waiting a long time." It was a man's voice, blurred with drowsiness. "I fell asleep."

Storme relaxed as he heard Mimi's voice, not frightened but indignant.

"You've got a nerve, Jock Haddon, using my key to get in!"

"I had to, kid. I couldn't go home till I'd told you how sorry I am I acted like such a heel, back on Long Island."

"Get out of here, Jock. Get right out!"

"Give me a chance, honey. Please give me a chance to tell you. You can't blame me for going off my trolley with the rep Feet Dorgan has, and when I saw he'd nabbed you—gosh, Mimi! I clean lost my head. All I could think of was to pour a couple drinks down and then beat it out of there, but soon's I hit the sidewalk I got thinking how you've been so sweet to me and all, and what do I do the first sign of trouble? I ditch you."

"Listen, Jock—"

"You listen to me," the fellow pleaded. "Let me finish. I was still too scared to go back in there, but I remembered I had your key so I grabbed a cab and come straight here."

"Straight here, Haddon?" Storme asked, stalking into the stuffy room. "Are you sure of that?"

8: Teamwork

BLOOD draining from his sensuous lips, the fellow in Mimi's apartment goggled at the sudden apparition.

"Storme!" he squeezed from his dew-lapped throat. "Wh-hat are you doing here?"

"I'm asking the questions, Haddon." Storme was past Mimi, standing rigid in the center of the room. "I asked you if you came straight here from the Biarritz bar, without making a detour."

"I don't know what you're driving at," Haddon said surlily.

"You he." Storme advanced on him slowly, menacingly, and behind Storme Cal Carroll entered, slipped an arm around the girl's waist. "You know exactly what I'm driving at. You wouldn't be here if you didn't."

Jock Haddon backed from the slowly advancing, ominous figure. "Not after hearing what Dorgan said as he passed you with Mimi," Storme accused. The wall stopped Haddon and he flattened against it, yellowed cheeks quivering. "What was it again, Mimi?" Storme asked, not turning his head. "The exact words?"

The girl licked her lips.

"Tell him, sweetheart," Carroll rumbled. "Tell him."

"He—he said, 'That phony's going to find out he's made one wrong play too many.' "

"That's it," Storme sighed. "You heard him say that, Haddon. It meant to you that you were fingered for a rubout because you'd let your girl try to save me from his torpedoes, and you were terrified. But you're not terrified any longer or you wouldn't have come here to whine your way back into Mimi's good graces. No. You'd be putting as much distance as you could between yourself and Feet Dorgan's torpedoes. Right?"

There wasn't any answer. There was no sound at all save Jock Haddon's hoarse, heavy breathing.

"Why did you have the courage to come here?" Storme's relentless inquisition was resumed. "Why are you no longer afraid of Feet Dorgan? I'll tell you. You know Dorgan is dead. That hasn't been put on the radio yet, so you couldn't know it if you'd come straight here from the Biarritz bar. I'll tell you how you know. Before you left the bar you saw him go backstage and when you left it you went around in back of the casino. Standing there in the dark, you saw him come into a lighted dressing room and you shot him through the window and threw your gun into that room to frame Jennie Wrenn with the killing."

"You devil!" Jock Haddon squealed. "You were watching me."

Cal Carrol swore softly and Mimi whimpered, but Ted Storme's expression was as granitic as before.

"No, Haddon, I wasn't watching you. But that was a rat's crime and you're a cowardly rat, and cornered rats can be vicious. I realized that Dorgan's threat might have terrified you beyond terror, might have given you enough of the courage of desperation to grab the opportunity to strike back at him. But that kind of courage doesn't last, so I gambled that if I accused you of the crime you wouldn't have nerve enough to deny it."

"Great stuff, Ted!" Carroll applauded, coming up beside him. "Yuh had the kind of animal that beefed Dorgan figgered out correct, only yuh picked on the wrong rat. He ain't squeezin' out of it either. Tracin' that pearl-handled gun to him ought to be easy, and the wax test on his paw'll show he fired it recent. Yuh'll have Susan's grandma out of the calaboose by momin'." A choking sound from Mimi jerked Ted Storme's head around to her, and past her to the doorway from the hall, to the slender, ferret-featured individual who had stepped in, stub-nosed automatic snouting from his hand.

Another man came through, a man wearing a blue topcoat and blue Homburg hat, light glittering on thick lenses, a gun in his gloved fist also.

"You will not move," Ashton Lee said tonelessly, "unless you want lead to shatter the young lady's spine. Gull! Will you please make sure that they are not armed?"

"Pleasure, Judge." Gull Foster's nose was strapped with adhesive plaster, the area around it blue with bruises, and his lips puffy. "Only I'd sure like the chance to work the big gozebo over."

"Patience, my dear fellow. You may have the opportunity."

Foster moved to Storme, patted him from head to foot, looking for a gun, while Haddon, his back to the wall, watched out of hopeless eyes.

"It was most considerate of you to leave the door unlatched, Mr. Storme," Lee continued. "I scented some sort of trap, thought it wise to reconnoiter before letting you know I'd arrived, and what I heard, listening from that passage, was most interesting."

"Okay, Judge," Foster interrupted. "They're all clean."

"Thank you, Gull. Step back here where you can keep the girl covered, and shoot her down at the first untoward movement anyone makes. You may turn around slowly, gentlemen."

They complied. "Look here, Lee," Ted Storme said. "I suspected you of murdering Feet Dorgan and got you down here hoping to wring a confession from you. Now it's developed that Haddon's the killer, there's nothing between us."

Lee's fingers seemed to writhe on the butt of his gun. "Wrong. You wish to clear Jennie Wrenn of the charge against her and I prefer it to stand."

"So that you can use it to bring pressure on her daughter? Sorry, Lee. I made sure to put Viola Castle and Susan where you can't find them, before I did anything else." Lee shook his head. "No go. They're in your flat or you would have had me meet you there."

"Okay. They're in my flat." It might be a game of cards these two were engaged in, so quietly was each verbal trick played and topped. "You don't know where that is."

"Wrong again. Your telephone is unlisted, but I have a conection that enabled me to have your call traced."

Ted Storme's hand made a little gesture of defeat that Lee acknowledged with a wholly evil smile.

"So you see," he continued, "all I have to do now is arrange matters so that you and your two friends—and Haddon, of course—shall not upset a situation which is much to my liking. Much as I abhor violence, the only certain way in which I can do this is to silence you."

"In plain English," Cal Carrol growled, "yuh're goin' to gun us."

The glittering lenses moved to him. "Precisely. These walls are thick enough to muffle our shots. Neither Foster's weapon nor mine is registered with the police and when they're found here in the apartment of a—shall I say bachelor girl?—beside your bodies, the natural conclusion—"

A half-shout, half-squeal from Haddon jerked Foster's automatic toward him, and in the next instant Carroll dived under the orange-red streak from the thug's gun, slammed him down in a bone-jarring smash as Storme's flying tackle, only a breath later, crashed Ashton Lee to the floor.

The thud of fists on fleshed bone ended almost as quickly as it began. Jock Haddon darted past the tumbled sprawl of bodies, but reeled down, his ankle clamped by the Texan's knarled fingers. Carroll raised himself, turned his leather-seamed countenance to Mimi.

"I told yuh this Gull Foster was goin' to get hurt if he kept on pesterin' me," he drawled. His taut smile drifted to Storme. "How yuh doin', Ted?"

"Not so good, Cal." Coming up to his knees, Storme looked sick. "Lee's head hit this chair as he went down and I'm afraid his rotten skull's smashed."

" 'Afraid,' he says. Shucks, boy, that means you can live a normal life again. The kind of hombres him and Dorgan was, yuh can lay yore whole bankroll they're the only ones in the gang know what they was doggin' her ma an' grandma about. But yuh're like yore old man, all right. He never gunned out a blackhearted owlhooter that he wasn't sick over it for weeks." The tall Texan chuckled. "Another thing reminded me of old Rod was the way yuh took off for Lee the second I jumped for this weasel. Shore took me back to the time we worked the same trick once when we was in a mite of trouble in a gully on the Brazos."

"Trick?" Ted Storme gasped. "What gave us our chance was Haddon's howl of terror!"

"Terror nothin'," Carrol grinned. "That was a yelp of pain, son, when I kicked my heel back into his shinbone. An' if yuh think yuh're the only one can figure how a galoot'll act in a particular set of circumstances, the reason I went for Foster is the same motion was because I knew from the way Lee handled his gun he wouldn't get a shot off till yuh'd sized up what was happenin' and got to him."

__________________

Index to Past Masters Nos 61-69

The "Author Index" to Issues 1-60 has now been uploaded separately.

Achmed Abdullah

The Mystery of the Talking Idols 63

"A. E. P."

The End of Sherlock Holmes  67

W. L. Alden

After the Comet 67

How the Fat Woman Eloped 68

Silver Plated   67

The Wild Man of Borneo 67

Anonymous

The Diamond Necklace 62

The Great Auk's Egg Affair 61

The Ruins of the Abbey of Fitz-Martin 64

F. Anstey

Taken By Surprise  66

Francis Henry Atkins

The Lay Figure  63

John Arthur Barry

The Mystery of the "Mountain Maid"  64

Frederick R. Bechdolt

Before Michael Came  63

L. Adams Beck

The Interpreter (novelette) 62

H. Bedford-Jones

The Artificial Honeymoon 66

Death Gave Him His Chance  63

J. J. Bell

The Price of a House  63

"Sir William"  61

E. F. Benson

Negotium Perambulans  64

The Terrace 69

Harold Bindloss

Trooper Jenkins 68

Christopher B. Booth

Mr Clackworthy Collects 63

Mr Clackworthy Gets His Tonic 64

Mr Clackworthy Sells Short  63

Solly's Last Forgery 64

When Mr. Clackworthy Needed a Bracer 64

B. M. Bower

The Ghost in the Red Shirt  63

Max Brand

Five Minutes to Twelve 61

Honor Bright 64

Lion Heart 61

Percy James Brebner

Cat or Devil 65

A Literary Secret  66

Scarsley Moor Mystery  66

Thomas Burke

The Bloomsbury Wonder 61

The Horrible God 62

Laughing Lillian 62

The Yellow Imps 62

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Who Murdered Mr. Thomas? 68

Ellis Parker Butler

The Ninety And Nine  69

Sir Gilbert Campbell

The Mystery of the Essex Stairs 62

Anna Alice Chapin

Through the Dragon's Valley  63

The Scales of Time 63

G.K. Chesterton

The Sword of Wood 65

Peter Cheyney

Cocktail For Cupid 65

Dance Without Music  64

Sylvanus Cobb, Jun.

The Bottomless Jug  64

J. J. Connington

After Death the Doctor 63

Dorothea Conyers

Meave's Ride  69

E. M. Delafield

The Luggage in the Hall  66

Sir Geo. Douglas, Bart.

Unconscious Interloper 69

L C Douthwaite

The London Guillotine 66

Richard Dowling

The Going Out of Alessandro Pozzone 62

Edward Dyson

A Golden Shanty 65

The Third Chair 65

George Allan England

Drops of Death  68

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Three Hours Between Planes 65

Mrs. May Agnes Fleming

How The Lone Star Went Down  68

Ford Madox Ford

Riesenberg 61

Andrew Forrester Jr.

Arrested on Suspicion 61

Robert Edward Francillon

A Circumstantial Puzzle 62

R. Austin Freeman & Clifford Piers

By the Black Deep  64

Arthur Gask

Rejuvenation 66

Strychnine for Village Dogs 62

Theophile Gautier

The Mummy's Foot 62

George Gilbert

In Maulmain Fever-Ward  63

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Yellow Wallpaper  64

Why I wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper" 64

Guy Gilpatric

Crocodile Tears 68

The Glasgow Phantom 66

The Homestretch 61

Where Early Fa's the Dew 65

Susan Glaspell

A Jury of Her Peers 67

Frederick Graves

White Flame  62

Fred V Green

Markham's New Partner 65

A. S. Gregory

The Death Window 68

Julian Hawthorne

Calbot's Rival 67

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Great Stone Face 66

Beatrice Heron-Maxwell

The Outcast 65

Headon Hill

The "Artemis" Mystery 65

The Bank Clerk's Love Story 65

The Dining-Car Clue 65

Limping Justice 65

Malcolm Jameson

The Anarch  69

Val Jameson

"Burglin' ain't the game it was" 61

Otis Adelbert Kline

Stolen Centuries 65

Thomas H. Knight

The Man Who Was Dead 61

Henry Leverage

Black Light 66

The Crimp 66

Crooked Charity 67

R. C. Lehmann

The Umbrosa Burglary 67

Sinclair Lewis

The Cat of the Stars 68

Seven Million Dollars 68

The Willow Walk 61

Marie Belloc Lowndes

An Unrecorded Instance 61

Richard Mace

The Emerald Beetle  62

Julia Magruder

The Secret of the White Castle 65

Huan Mee

The Russian Cipher 65

J. J. Meehan

The Squirrel Motor 69

William Henry Moberley

The Great Valdez Sapphire 63

F. Frankfort Moore

Joan Dark 65

Talbot Mundy

Bengal Rebellion 69

Edith M Nesbit

In the Dark 64

Man-Size in Marble  65

Number 17    61

David Wright O'Brien

Hokum Hotel  68

Fitz-James O'Brien

The Wondersmith  64

Vincent O'Sullivan

The Business of Madame Jahn  64

Thomas Nelson Page

What was the Lady's Choice? 62

Max Pemberton

The Devil To Pay 63

G. G. Pendarves

The Black Camel  65

Ernest M Poate

A Person from the Police 63

William Le Queux

The Baron's Snapdragon 68

The Faith of Men 62

The Mystery Man 68

The Mystery of the Third Thumb 68

The Story of the Chief of Police 61

The Third Cracker 68

The Velvet Hand  68

The Woman Who Hated London 68

The Yellow Jasmine 68

Walter Ripperger

The Cardboard Clue 62

School For Murder 69

Arthur Somers Roche (novelette)

In the Money 67

Thorne Smith

Birthday Present 66

Andrew Soutar

Bluebeard 63

Charles B. Stilson

The Sky Woman 67

Halliwell Sutcliffe

Handsome Jack  67

Miss Phyllis Brown 67

Murgatroyd's Wife  67

Emile C Tepperman

Coffin Cache 63

E. Temple Thurston

A Cameo 69

E Charles Vivian

How the Girl Came to Bentley's 62

R. A. J. Walling

A Chat With William Le Queux 68

Mrs. Rooth's "Murder" 61

The Spook of Cornelius 61

Stanley G Weinbaum

The Red Peri  69

Albert Richard Wetjen

The Chief of the Loch McCree 61

Fred Merrick White

Early Closing Day  64

Gentlemen of the Jury  65

The Purple Terror 66

Victor L. Whitechurch

The Convict's Revenge  61

How the Captain Tracked a German Spy 61

In a Tight Fix 61

Raoul Whitfield

The Great Black 65

Mary E Wilkins

The Shadows on the Wall  64

Arthur Leo Zagat

Coward's Kill (novelette)  69

___________________

Table of Contents

- 1: The Anarch / Malcolm Jameson
- 2: A Cameo / E. Temple Thurston
- 3: The Terrace / E. F. Benson
- 4: Meave's Ride / Dorothea Conyers
- 5: The Squirrel Motor / J. J. Meehan

- 6: Unconscious Interloper / Sir Geo. Douglas, Bart.

- 7: Bengal Rebellion / Talbot Mundy

- 8: The Red Peri / Stanley G Weinbaum (novelette)

- 9: School For Murder / Walter Ripperger (novelette)

- 10: The Ninety and Nine / Ellis Parker Butler

- 11: Coward's Kill / Arthur Leo Zagat (novelette)

- Cumulative Index #61-69