PAST MASTERS

SEVENTY-EIGHT

18 May 2022

Produced by Terry Walker

("Pulpmeister")

Contents

1: Black Murder / Roger Torrey (novelette)

2: Man of Ages / E. F. Ziska

3: Sea-Tiger / Henry S. Whitehead

4: The St. Bernard Myth / W. L. Alden

5: Straight Griggs / Stacy Aumonier

6: Bothon / Henry S. Whitehead

7: Inside the Limousine / Ernest M Poate

8: An Unlocked Window / Ethel Lina White

9: The Price of Perfidy / Scott Campbell

10: The Witching of Elspie / Duncan Campbell Scott

11: Armistice / Anonymous

12: Lured to His Doom / E Randolph

13:  Haunted / Anonymous

14: Making the Grade / George Ade

15: The Red Hand / Howard Fitzalan

Cumulative Index # 61-78

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1: Black Murder

Roger Torrey

1901-1946

Private Detective Stories Aug 1944

1: Mr. Larkin

IT WAS tough to have to close, but I just couldn't keep in stock. I'd built up the business on good whiskey and the rest of the hard liquor, and the stuff wasn't for sale any more. I could get plenty of beer, all right, but there's no profit in that— and the allotment the whiskey dealers allowed me just would not carry my trade.

My lease was up and I wasn't renewing, and I was feeling pretty bad about the whole thing.

It was like that when Amos Larkin came in. Just like he did on the average of twice day and like he had for years.

He said: "Just time for a quick one, Danny. I'm on my way to a committee meeting on the Red Cross drive."

The guy spent more time on various relief committees than he did on his own business. He was some sort of broker, wheat I think. Anyway he had a seat on the exchange and I'd heard him and a couple of his pals talk about May wheat, whatever that means.

It was one of the reasons I'd always liked him— that giving his time to charity, when his time must have been so valuable to himself.

I gave him his usual Scotch and plain water chaser and rang his half dollar up in the register. I thought it would probably be the last half buck of his I'd ever see, and that made me feel even worse.

Not because I needed his money—I'd put a little away—but just because I'd always liked the guy so much.

He must have read my mind. He said:

"What's this about closing the place. Danny? I heard it but didn't believe it."

"I've kept open as long as I can, Mr. Larkin. I just can't get the stock. The dealers give me what they can, but they've rationed us, you know. They're playing fair, all right, but I just can't get along on what they allow me. Of course there's the Black Market— I've had a few bids on that— but I don't want any part of it."

"Rather close up, eh?"

"I would. I damn' well would."

He made another motion and got another drink. I got another half buck.

He said: "Let me see, Danny. I've heard — I think you told me yourself— that you used to run a little rum."

"That's close. Whiskey from Canada, mostly. I made a few trips out to the boats, but not many. It was safe enough, as long as you took care of the pay-off."

"And you kept a book, I heard." "Just when I opened up. Before business was good. It helped, but now and then I'd get overloaded on some nag and lose all I'd made the month before. That's no part-time business— you can't follow it close enough if you're doing something else."

"I see."

I laughed and said: "I even handled some hot fur. Three or four times, I guess, in all. But I quit that because if I'd ever been caught, I'd have lost my license. I've thought a lot of this little bar, Mr. Larkin."

"I know you have, Danny. That's why I don't understand why you feel that way about the Black Market. If they've got liquor to sell, somebody's going to buy it. Why shouldn't it be you?"

He'd been coming in there three years and more and I suppose I'd talked to him as much or more than any other customer. And I liked him besides. But I told him something then he'd never heard.

I said: "Did you know I had two brothers?"

"I didn't, Danny. I don't believe I ever saw them, even."

"If you did, Mr. Larkin, it wasn't in here. They've never been in the place. It's like this. Ma was strict— she never liked the saloon business. In fact, she hated it. She brought the kids up the same way. I don't say they don't take a drink or anything like that, but they don't think it's a respectable business or that I should be in it. Ma didn't, and because she felt like that, I backed her up with the kids. They're younger, you see. One was working in a bank, up-state, and the other was in his last year in college."

"Working his way through, Danny?"

"I was maybe helping a bit. Well, anyway, John, that's the one that was in the bank, is a second-looey in the Infantry, and the kid, his name's Michael, is a Navy flier. And the kid's already a full lieutenant. He's in the South Pacific and he's got twelve planes to his credit already."

"Why, that's great, Danny. Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"I guess because I didn't want anybody to know they were connected with anybody in this business. Anyway, that's why I don't do business with the Black Market, damn 'em all. You can see that now, can't you, Mr. Larkin?"

IF HE saw my side of it he didn't show it. And I don't blame him. All he knew about me was a bad record. Bootlegging, rum running, book making, and now I'd even told him how I'd handled stolen furs. I didn't blame him for not believing me.

He took a third drink, something he very seldom did.

And then he asked: "You'd know something about a gun, wouldn't you, Danny?"

I didn't know what he was getting at and said so. I said: "I've got one and I've shot it quite a lot, but I was never a hand at using it. That is, in business, if you know what I mean. I was never one of the boys who figured to shoot their way out of a jam. I always figured that if I got caught up with, why I'd taken the risk and I'd taken the profits and it just was my turn to pay up."

"I didn't mean quite that. You'd be handy with it, that's what I meant."

"Oh, sure. I still practice some."

"You're closing tomorrow?"

"This is the last day."

"Then how would you like to go to Florida with us?"

I didn't think I was hearing right and he grinned at me and repeated it. He said: "That's right. How would you like to go along with us? You'd be a good man to take care of Sonny, I think. For one thing, he's too wild a kid to trot around the hot spots down there alone. He gets in too much trouble. There's too much liquor, too many women, and too much gambling down there for Sonny to take by himself. You could teach him boxing— the boy could be in far better condition than he is."

I said automatically: "I didn't box. It was wrestling."

"All the better. A better body-builder, I believe. And frankly, Danny, I'm worried about the boy. I'm afraid he's in trouble right now—trouble that might follow him down there."

"What's that, Mr. Larkin?"

"Do you know a boy about Sonny's age named Frank Alderdyce?"

"Barely," I said. "He's been in the bar a couple of times. I think with Sonny, if it comes to that."

"Well, Frank's down in the morgue. I have to make arrangements about that, after this meeting. I promised his father— you know Alderdyce and I are old friends— that I'd look after it for him. He's in Chicago, and the boy can't be left in a public morgue. I'll arrange to have him taken to a decent funeral parlor and held there until his father can get back here."

"What happened to him?"

Larkin shrugged then. He said: "He was found down by the river in an alley. Shot five times in the belly. Gangster stuff, the police think."

"It could well be," I said. "It sounds like a hired killer who wanted to make sure he'd earned his money."

"Exactly. And he and Sonny ran around quite a bit together and Sonny, I'm afraid, owes as many gambling debts as did young Alderdyce. So you can see why a guard would be a good thing for Sonny to have."

I said I could understand it.

"Would you like to go down with me after the meeting?"

I certainly didn't want to go to the morgue with anybody, but it looked like I was going to work for him and I couldn't very well say no.

So I said yes and Larkin took another drink and left the place. I thought that having to take a dead kid out of the morgue, a boy he knew and a friend of his son's, accounted for the four drinks at one time.

Because he'd never taken over three at one sitting like that since he'd been coming in the place, and that was for three years and more.

He didn't drink as much as I did, and I'm no lush if I say it myself.

IT WAS five o'clock when he came back for me and my bar man was working and I was set and ready. And I got a notion then of why he wanted me to go with him, something that had been puzzling me. He had Sonny with him as well as a man named Milton Sawyer, who I gathered was Larkin's lawyer. Also I met the chauffeur, a bird named Lew Sands, and a guy I didn't like the second I saw him.

Sonny had been in my place probably half a dozen times and I liked the kid all right. Sawyer I'd never met, but he seemed okay, too. A big, chunky guy that looked the way lawyers do in moving pictures and hardly ever do when you see 'em in court. Sands was a smooth, hard-looking bird, but I will say he drove Larkin's big car in a beautiful way—cutting around and taking more than his share of traffic, but getting away with it in great shape. I put him at around thirty, and I knew he'd been around plenty just by looking at him.

Sonny was just a brat, even if he did tip the scales at around a hundred and ninety, my weight. He was twenty-two, I knew that— and he'd been kicked out of every school he'd ever attended. Blonde and good looking if you like 'em a little pouty.

When I saw Sawyer and Sonny along with the old man, I knew why I'd been asked along. Larkin wanted to see how Sonny and I would get along, and he'd probably brought Sawyer along to confirm any idea he got. He didn't say that, though.

He said: "I brought Mr. Sawyer along just in case there's any trouble in getting custody of the body. A lawyer, in a case like this, can do more than a plain business man can ever do."

Sawyer said that Mr. Larkin flattered him— that a man of Mr. Larkin's prominence could do just about as he pleased.

Sonny said nothing, just looked longingly at every bar we passed. Another thing I liked was that I rode in back with them instead of up in front with Lew Sands. I'd been afraid I'd be treated too much as a servant, something I was damned sure I wouldn't go for very long.

We got down to the morgue and it seemed we were expected. Anyway, two cops, one of them a captain, were waiting for us, as well as the regular morgue crew.

Larkin said briskly: "Well, Captain Hayes! I'm glad you could meet us here. Of course you know what I'm after. Here's my authority from Mr. Alderdyce— he wired me as soon as he'd heard what happened."

The captain looked at the wire Larkin showed him but as though he didn't care what was in it. I could see that the captain had already made up his mind to do anything Larkin asked him to do.

And I thought what a swell thing it would be to have the dough the guy had and the standing the money gave him. My few bucks didn't look very big right then.

Then we went inside to the cold room, or whatever they call it, to look at young Alderdyce.

THE place wasn't nice, though it was as clean as it could be. It smelled of formaldehyde mostly, but there was something more than that. It must have been death. There were no bodies in sight and when Larkin asked about that, the morgue attendant told him they kept the newcomers in another room. Here, all there was was sort of sliding shelves in the walls, all numbered, and with doors that fitted tightly.

It was the first time I'd ever been there and I hoped the last.

The attendant took the handle of number seventeen and pulled, and the shelf slipped out as though it was on ball bearings. The boy was covered with a canvas sheet and he pulled that down to show us, and when he did, I wished I was outside in the air.

The kid had been cut open and sewed up again in a neat little cross stitch. But there were five neat holes in the poor guy's belly, all along the stitching that ran there.

Any one of them would have killed him and the attendant told us more. When the doctors did their post mortem they found the kid had a heart that was no good at all.

Sonny, who was looking a little sick, said: "I knew that That was why he was 4-F.  Mine is a bad ear. That's one reason I always liked him— because the Army didn't like either one of us."

I'd been remembering something and I spit it out. I said: "Listen! Maybe I got something, captain. This kid, if I'm right, was putting on a personal fight with the Black Market. I remember something about it in the papers, I think. He said that if he couldn't fight in the Army, why he'd fight on the home front, or something like that."

The captain said: "We remembered it too, Mr.— what did you say your name was?"

"Dan Morahan."

"Run a bar, don't you?"

"This is my last day."

Larkin laughed and said: "Danny here, captain, is hipped on this Black Market stuff. If you take my advice, you'll check young Alderdyce's gambling. I understand the boy owed quite a lot of money around town. It may be—it's my idea anyway, that he didn't pay one of them promptly enough."

"We're checking that angle too, Mr. Larkin," said the captain, woodenly.

I happened to look at Sonny and I saw him give his father a worried look. I decided that papa and Sonny had had words on the matter of gambling debts and many of them.

Sawyer said smoothly: "We'll have someone come down for the poor lad then, captain. I surely hope your investigation won't lapse, because of our having the body taken to, let us say, a more attractive surroundings."

"It won't," said the captain. "We don't slow up much on murder cases in this town. We don't drop them, sir."

We went away then, with Sawyer and Larkin giving each other satisfied looks. Sonny and I had a few words about what was running at the Florida tracks, Sonny knowing I'd made book at one time and asking advice, and I saw Larkin and Sawyer look satisfied at that, too.

I figured they wanted to see how Sonny and I would get along, and I'd show them. They dropped me at the bar and the last thing Larkin said was to the point.

"When you get straightened out on the closing, Danny," he said, "come up to the office and see me. If I shouldn't be in, my secretary usually knows where I am or when I'll be back. We'll be leaving for the South in four days, I think, so plan on it."

I told him I had what would be left of my stock all disposed of and would be ready to go the next day, if necessary.

And that was that. I spent the evening in my own bar, getting a little bit tight while saying good-by to my best customers.

2: The Set-up

GOT a bang when I met Larkin at the station. I knew he had money and lots of it, but I also had heard of how hard it was to get rail reservations. And how anybody with priority could take it away from you if they needed it.

All he had was a drawing room for himself and his wife. It was the first time I'd seen her. She was about forty-five and she weighed close to two-fifty if I'm any judge. She was screwy as a toad, too. She looked at me as if I'd crawled out from under some rug, and told her husband what she thought of me as if I was a mile away instead of three feet.

"Why, Amos," she said. "This man will be impossible. I can't allow Sonny to be seen with him. Why he's a type, my dear."

Larkin winked at me and I let it go. The wink said she was nuts as plain as if he'd spoken out loud.

Sonny and I had a compartment together. And very nice— they are when you're riding an extra fare train.

Then I met the sister. Dinah. Sonny told me she was eighteen but she looked about twenty-five. One of the kind of kids that have their noses up in the air as if she was smelling something bad. But pretty!— oh my. She had a compartment to herself, as did Milton Sawyer, who it seemed was also traveling with us.

I was surprised at this but Sonny took it for granted. He said: "Dad always takes Milt along with him, wherever he goes. Dad's the only client Milt's got and the only one he needs. Dad's paying him better than a hundred grand a year and expenses, and that ain't hay."

Sonny gave me some more news, just as soon as we were settled in the compartment and he'd broken out a bottle of whiskey, which it seemed was about all the baggage he carried. He told me that Sands was taking the big car down, along with a Mrs. Watson, the housekeeper, and Mrs. Larkin's maid, who was named Mary O'Day. I asked him about gas rationing and he said it didn't bother the old man at all, and just laughed when I asked how he got around it.

I could see Sonny didn't give me credit for being more than a half-wit, which was okay with me. I was giving him the same rating, you see.

That's the way the trip started and it went that way for the time it took to make the trip. Everybody ate in their own rooms —the Larkins, you could see, weren't the kind of people who'd eat in the diner with the common herd, nor would their guests.

It was nice but I felt guilty about it. I also felt guilty about the way young Sonny lapped up the hootch on the trip, but when I told his father that, he just laughed and said to never mind it— that Sonny always drank himself sick while riding on a train.

THEIR place was between Palm Beach and -L Miami and when we got off the train, there was a station wagon, complete with chauffeur, to meet us, if you please. This chauffeur, a colored man named Charles. And the station wagon wasn't a rickety old one, like most of those you see these days but a brand new one built on a Buick chassis.

This dazed me, too, but Sonny just laughed at the way I took it, so I kept my mouth shut.

The train was a bit away from the ocean, and we had to drive maybe four miles to reach their place. And then I really bugged my eyes.

It was beautiful. There was a little point of land running out and the house was on the very tip of it. Ocean on three sides and pines and palms behind. The road in was private, Larkin's alone, and it was like a graveled drive leading up to a house in town. There were four cars in the garage besides the station wagon, and there was room for as many more.

Sonny said: "I'll be damned if I know why dad wanted the big car down here but I suppose it was because he wanted Lew. He depends a lot on Lew. And then Mrs. Watson and Mary O'Day had to come down, too, and it was as easy for them to drive down with Lew as it would have been to ride the train. For that matter, I'd have rather driven down. Of course not with Mrs. Watson."

"Why not with Mrs. Watson?"

Sonny laughed at that again. "Dad's a jealous— "he said. "Or do I have to draw you a picture?"

I hadn't seen this Mrs. Watson yet but I'd seen Mrs. Larkin and I could gather what was meant. All this was while we were still in the garage and while the others had gone over to the house. We stayed because Sonny wanted to see what care they'd been taking of his convertible, which was a special job.

It was a half block long and had two hundred dollars at least worth of extras on it but he wasn't satisfied with it at all. In fact, he kept growling because his father wouldn't give him a Rolls, like the big car was.

I'd have been more than satisfied with any of the four cars, and for that matter with the station wagon. The smallest was a Dodge and they used that for the help to go to town and get the groceries. And it was only two years old, and looked brand new.

Then we went to the house, passing two houses which were built the same way as the big one, very Spanish and each with a patio. These were the servants' quarters, and the average citizen would be glad to have one of them for the rest of his life to live in. They looked to be about eight rooms, coming out in that U-shape like that.

And then we came to the big house and I really had something to stare at. The patio was sixty feet wide and the same deep, Sonny told me that. It had a fountain in the middle full of fish, big goldfish of all shapes and sizes. It was planted with every tropical thing they can grow in that country, and if there's anything that don't grow in Florida that Chamber of Commerce has never heard of it.

The house, coming out around the patio in that U-shape, was two stories high on the sides and three in the back. There was a balcony running around the second floor and this was screened— I could see the sun glint on the brass screens but that was all. Sonny explained it beautifully.

He said: "If the wind's from the sea, there's no mosquitoes or anything. But from the other way, from the beach, the house protects against the wind and the bugs get bad. So then we sit on the balcony instead of in the patio to do our drinking."

WE MET his father just inside and Sonny gave him a blast about the car. He claimed they hadn't taken proper care of it, but the old man just grinned and paid no attention to him.

Instead, he said to me: "Come along, Danny, I'll show you where you're to stay."

He left Sonny standing there talking to himself and I followed him into the back part of the house and through that to a hall that led down through the right wing. Rooms on each side, those on the right facing the ocean and those on the left facing the patio. I forgot to say that all the windows were full width of the rooms, as near as I'd seen— and I found out afterward I was right. I didn't have a room— I had a large living room, bedroom and bath.

The old man said: "I wanted to get you in here and settled before Mrs. Larkin fills the house with the people she'll pick up. She's got a gift— she can find more people I dislike than you'd think possible— and she'll give them the best rooms in the house. This will do you, I think."

I said, and told the truth: "I never lived in such a nice place in my life."

"I want you satisfied, Danny. Maybe by and by I'll have a better job for you than just looking after Sonny. I want you satisfied with the way you're treated."

I said I was more than satisfied.

"I suppose you're wondering how and why I do this in war time?"

"I didn't think it was possible, that's all, Mr. Larkin."

"There's two reasons for it, Danny. First, there's Mrs. Larkin. While she looks healthy, she has a bad heart condition that means she has to live as she's been accustomed to live. Her doctors have testified to that, she has several, so there's no doubt about it."

Mrs. Larkin looked as healthy as a horse to me but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. That is, I didn't say what I thought.

He went on with: "And then I have to consider my position, though I don't want to seem to brag. The ration board has also taken that into consideration. While a good part, the main part for that matter, of the entertaining we do down here is done by Mrs. Larkin, I occasionally have business consultations with people from the North who visit us. Some of these are of vital importance and I have to put myself in as good a light in these as I can to be successful in them. I'm sure you understand, Danny."

"Sure, Mr. Larkin."

"How old are you, Danny?"

"Forty-one."

"Oh, I see. You look much younger— I was wondering, to be frank, why you hadn't joined the Army, feeling as you do."

I said: "It was that damned wrestling I did when I was a kid. It gives you what they call athletic heart, and I got turned down by 'em all."

"It don't seem to bother you any."

He hit my pet gripe and I told him about it. There was nothing wrong with me that should interfere with Army duty that I could see and I said so. I could still do anything that anybody ten years younger could do, or so I thought. I said that, too. Altogether, I guess I made quite a speech.

HE SAID: "You don't drink much, Danny?"

"Some. Once in a while. Not much." "You know, Danny, I've got no objection to it. For that matter, you'll probably get along better with Sonny if you drink a bit."

I must have looked funny about that because he laughed and said: "You're wondering why I don't shut down on the boy, eh?"

"Well, to be honest, I have."

"It just upsets Mrs. Larkin when I do and I have to bear in mind that heart condition of hers. She gets upset and she has an attack. I can't have that, of course. I just want you to go along with Sonny and keep him out of trouble. Of course if you can get him in better shape, get him to cut down on his drinking, why, that would be fine. But we can't make any issue of it because of Mrs. Larkin's heart condition, now can we?"

I said I could see where we couldn't do that. And then he told me that no doubt I'd want to clean up a bit after the trip and that he'd leave me.

And right at the door he stopped and turned and told me something else that I didn't like at all.

He said: "And oh yes, Danny. I want you to go down with Sonny tomorrow, to the city, and get some clothes. Sonny will know— he's got some shopping to do himself. You understand, I'm sure— I can't expect you to furnish clothes for a climate like this, coming right from the city and all. It wouldn't be fair to you to spend your money."

It made me sore— I'd been buying my own clothes since I was fourteen and was able to buy 'em out of the salary he was paying me, too. He was giving me a hundred bucks a week, which was more than my bar had ever made.

But I could see his side of it at that— he wanted me dressed so I wouldn't shame him in front of his guests and those his wife would have there.

So I didn't object too much— I told him I could well afford to get what I'd need and he laughed and told me to put my money in the bank or buy war bonds with it.

So I let it go— there was nothing I could gain by being stubborn, and that war bond argument was a big one.

He left me then— and I figured he'd left me in clover. I was in a soft spot for a guy who didn't have any schooling to speak of and who'd led the sort of life I had. Take a roughneck like me, whose only ambition up to then had been to run a decent little bar, and put him in a place like that, making that kind of money and being treated like a king, and it's easy to see how I felt.

I thought I was really on top of the world. And I kept that thought for all of four days and by that time things were in full swing and I thought I was in a madhouse.

3: The Madhouse

MRS. LARKIN had found a Countess and her son, or that's what they claimed to be. Refugees, they said they were and I believed that part of it, but my idea of it was that they were refugees from a chain gang. If I ever saw two crooks, two hustlers, it was those two, and I'd seen enough to be a judge.

They were high class, that's all I could give them. The woman was about forty-five, about Mrs. Larkin's age, and the kid was about Sonny's age. I didn't think they were even mother and son, but just working an angle that made that a good story.

The Countess was too flashy— Mrs. Larkin said that was the way Countesses all were and the kid was too slick and greasy. Mrs. Larkin said that was Continental. He had long sideburns and put stuff on his hair and used perfume, but he was no sissy. He was nuts about the girls and no mistake. Any and all of them.

They were staying for all time, as near as I could see— they had one of those lasting invitations.

Mrs. Larkin had other people, too, but they were just there for week-ends and for days and overnight, and they seemed all right. Most of them were screwballs, but Larkin had told me to expect that.

That was bad enough but the family set-up was something to turn a man's stomach.

Lew Sands had come in with the big car and with Mrs. Watson and the O'Day girl, and there was hell to pay from the time they drove into the yard.

Sonny hadn't been fooling when he'd hinted that his father had ideas about Mrs. Watson. The woman was built like Mae West and she didn't have the manners of an alley cat. I'm hard-boiled, or thought I was, and it got even me. She and Larkin were so careless about what people thought — that's what made me sore. If Mrs. Larkin hadn't been deaf, dumb and blind, she'd have had to know what was going on, but she didn't seem to see a thing.

That was only part of it. Mrs. Larkin was trying to fix things between the Count— I guess that was what he was— they all called him that, anyway, and her daughter Dinah. And the Count was for it, too— he took one look around and he wanted to move right in. He'd have been interested in the kid if she was cross-eyed and half nuts, but she was a good-looking kid and that would have taken the curse off marrying into money for him.

But Dinah, the little fool, couldn't see anybody but the chauffeur, this Lew Sands. She was nuts about him, and the more I saw of him the less I could see why. He was as crooked as the Count and a damned sight tougher.

The maid, Mary O'Day, was as cute as a bug's ear and Sonny thought the same. Every time he found her alone he passed at her, and she couldn't see him for dust.

She was the only decent one in the place, except little Dinah, and Dinah was such a little fool I didn't count her as more than half human.

I WAS getting along all right with her, though. She only acted snooty because her mama did and she thought it was the thing to do. When you knew her she was just a damn' fool kid with damn' fool kid notions.

She was the kind I'd have sent home from my bar in a cab— and the O'Day girl was the kind I wouldn't have let in unless she came with her brother or her old man.

There were a dozen more servants but they were all colored. Sands had a little room at the back of the house and Mrs. Watson had the same set-up I had but in the other wing of the house. That was closer to Larkin's suite, which probably explained it. The little O'Day girl had a room, a small one, in the same wing I had, and I was glad of it. I was afraid that sometime Sonny would get too much of a snoutful and try to break in on her, and that was the only reason.

It was like that when the fireworks began to happen.

They started when Larkin got company from the North. Two big fat men, brothers by the name of Morrison. Larkin and Milton Sawyer, who'd been a swell guy to me right along, and these brothers had a big meeting in the library, not even coming out for dinner. They had ale and sandwiches sent in to them instead, and I could hear them arguing in there at the tops of their voices when I had to go past the room.

It apparently ended peacefully enough because when they left, late the next day, they all seemed good friends. They just stayed overnight.

THAT next evening, right after they left, Sonny decided he wanted to go to town and make whoopee, and of course I had to tag along. I give the kid credit at that— outside of that first day when we went to town and got clothes, he hadn't broken loose once. He'd drunk steadily and far too much but he'd done it at home where he belonged.

But he wanted to go out that night and away we went in that damned convertible of his.

In the first place, he didn't recognize any speed limits. He was a good driver, all right, but I don't feel safe with anybody that thinks eighty miles an hour is loafing along the road.

I was a wreck before we even got to town, and watching Sonny going into action didn't ease my pain.

The first place we went into had a fiddle and piano, both of which sounded good to me, although they were playing what Sonny said were Strauss waltzes. I don't know a thing about music— just what I like— but this was all right with me. It fitted the place, which was sort of dim, and furnished the way a high-class cocktail bar should be.

But Sonny said: "That's com, right off the cob," and went over with a twenty-dollar bill in his hand to the musicians.

I saw them nod and smile and right away they started in trying to play swing— and a fiddle and piano can't play that sort of stuff. At least not the way it should be played. Even if I don't know music, I could tell it sounded like hell.

However, Sonny grunted and said: "That's some better," and started ordering drinks.

Not just for himself and me but for everybody in the place.

He started by giving the two bar men a ten-spot apiece and half that to each waiter.

And the drinks started whirling around, with the guests looking bewildered when they'd be served a drink they hadn't ordered. They'd ask the bar men and the bar men would point at Sonny and the guest would bow and Sonny would hold both hands above his head and shake 'em, like a prize fighter does when he goes in the ring.

I've got no manners, other than what I've picked up in the bar by watching people who have, but even I felt like a fool.

And then the way he drank. Martinis, which is a nice drink but nothing to take down like so much water. One after the other and instead of sipping them, drinking them down like they were straight whiskey.

It was embarrassing.

We stayed in that place for almost an hour and how he managed it I don't know but he wasn't very drunk when we left for another. I took it slow— made two ryes and sodas last me the full time.

The next place had just a piano and the guy was playing what Sonny seemed to like. Popular stuff, and slow and soft. Sonny liked it enough, anyway, to pass over another twenty.

He did the same with the bar man— there was only one in this place, and he gave both waiters five-spots. And then started buying for the house.

NOW this isn't good, unless you're in a place where you know just about everybody. Like the crowd that used to hang around my little place. I had the same trade day after day, night after night, and if somebody won, say In a crap game, or really beat the bookies bad that day, why he could buy a round or two and nobody thought anything about it. But when you go into a barroom full of perfect strangers and insist on paying for every drink, why that's something else again. A guy taking his girl out, for instance, resents it. He took the wench out with the idea of spending a little dough on her and showing her a good time, and it makes him sore to have a Coal Oil Johnny come in and flash twenties where he's been flashing ones. And it's even worse with the older men. They're like me— used to buying and paying for what they get, and they don't like to have a young cub force free drinks down their throats.

I could see where Mr. Larkin thought Sonny should have somebody along to look after him in case of trouble. I could see where trouble was a cinch if Sonny was on the prowl.

It happened in the third bar— or cocktail bar, as they call 'em down there. Sonny was getting pretty high by then and it was God's own wonder he was able to stand on his own two feet with the amount of liquor he'd had. This bar was like the first, except the music was an accordion, a longnecked banjo, the first one I'd seen in years, and a guitar. Sonny paid 'em off right at the start, as usual, paid off the bar men, there were two, and fixed up the waiters.

And then started his drink-buying.

There was a young officer with a bunch of ribbons on his chest, sitting right next to us with his lady. He wore captain's bars, though he couldn't have been over twenty-five or six, and his ribbons showed plenty of active service. He had wings above 'em, and I wanted to ask him if he'd ever happened to have met Michael, who was in the South Pacific, too. I could tell by the ribbons that this boy had seen service there and lots of times the Army fliers and the Navy fliers are together on some mission.

His girl was about twenty and seemed like a nice kid. She was sipping a highball, but the captain was just playing with a glass of beer.

Sonny waved an arm and the waiter came over. Sonny waved an arm around the room and said: "I'll buy a drink for the house." And then he happened to look over at the captain's table, and made his mistake.

He said: "And don't bring the officer any of that belly wash. Buy him a man's drink.''

The captain stood up and came over and put both hands on our table. He leaned down and spoke to Sonny and he still managed to speak pleasantly.

He said: "I'm sorry, mister, but I'm flying early in the morning. That is, if I don't do any drinking tonight. So I'm sure you'll excuse me."

Now he spoke quietly and all that, but he was sore as a goat. It showed in the flush in his cheeks, the very quietness of his voice, and in the way he had his hands made into fists, where they rested on our table.

Sonny paid this no attention. He said: "Oh, what the hell! Why drink beer when you can drink a man's drink."

I knew the captain didn't want to be mixed up in any barroom brawl, but I could see he had as much as he could stand.

I said: "He's drunk, captain. I'm sorry. I'll try and tone him down."

"Please do," said the captain, and started back to his table. It gave him a decent out and he was glad to take advantage of it— which was why I spoke. I didn't have any hopes at all of toning him down and both the captain and I knew it.

THEN a big man whom I hadn't noticed was with us. He spoke to me but looked at Sonny and he looked at Sonny in definitely an ugly way.

"What's the trouble?" he asked.

Sonny said: "What the hell's it to you?"

"Out," the guy said, and picked Sonny up by one shoulder. He used one hand and didn't seem to have any difficulty lifting him, though Sonny was up around a hundred and ninety.

I said: "You the owner?"

He said: "What the hell's it to you?" mimicking Sonny, of course.

If he'd given me a polite answer— I spoke to him that way— I'd have had to sit there and watch him pitch Sonny into the street. There'd have been nothing else I could have done— Sonny had earned it in a big way. I could fight for the kid if he had half a leg to stand on, but I couldn't take up for him when he was so far in the wrong— not and look at myself in the mirror when I shaved.

But this made it different. If put it more on a personal basis.

I stood up and said: "Take your hands off the boy."

"And if I don't?" he asked.

I moved then. I went in fast and under the arm that was holding Sonny up, and I put my left hand clear up to the wrist in is belly as I did. He didn't expect it— he expected an argument, and he didn't have his belly muscles tightened the way they should have been. He let out a grunt that sounded all over the room and bent over, with both hands around his middle, and I got Sonny by the elbow and started toward the door with him. He tried to twist away and I put my fingers right into the joint, where it bends, and caught the nerve there.

He went then like a little lamb, with his face all screwed up from the pain of it. And outside I told him the score.

I said: "You Chump! If we'd stayed there, we'd have been mobbed. What the hell's the idea insulting that officer?"

I'd let go his arm by then and he stood rubbing it and looking bewildered. He said: "Why, I just asked the guy to have a drink, is all."

I let it go. There's nothing you can say to a drunk that means anything, anyway.

We left after the next spot. All of a sudden his liquor really took hold of him and he started to put his head down on the table and go to sleep. I paid the check out of his money—he had his billfold out on the table and it was still crammed with dough, and got him outside and started him up the street toward where we'd parked the car. And ran into a cop before I'd gone ten feet.

I had the kid half draped on me and was rushing him along, so that I wouldn't have to pick him up and carry him. Once I let him stop I knew he'd sag and go clear out. The cop stepped in front of us and there was nothing I could do but stop— and hold Sonny up.

The cop said: "Trouble?" in a bright and interested way.

I said: "My friend just had one or two too many. I'll take care of him, officer."

"Tourists, eh?"

"This is Sonny Larkin— his father's got a place up the beach."

"And you?"

"I'm staying with them."

He said: "Lemme give you a hand, friend," and got his shoulder under Sonny's other shoulder, and we went up the street that way. And when we got to the car he helped me put Sonny in it and told me how the cops did there.

"We try to give the outside people a break here, friend. Understand, you can't fight on the street but if a man's just a little drunk, we'll try and see he gets to where he's staying. You all right to drive the car?"

"I coasted. I came along to look after the kid."

He waved me good luck and sauntered away and I searched Sonny for the car keys and slid under the wheel.

And we didn't drive back at any eighty miles an hour, either.

4: Hell to Pay

THERE was hell to pay at the house. The driveway was full of State Police and sheriff's cars and the house was alive with the men that brought them there. I had Sonny propped up, just out of the car, when a big State man came bouncing out at me from the dark. He wore corporal's stripes and he must have weighed at least two hundred and thirty pounds.

He said: "And who's this?"

"Sonny Larkin," I said.

"And you?"

"My name's Morahan."

"You live here too?"

"Sure. What's happened?"

"The kid drunk?"

"Drunker than a fool."

"Where you two been?"

"In town. Where he got that way."

"How long?"

"Three hours, maybe a little longer."

"Prove it, can you?"

"Hell, yes."

"I'll help you inside with him."

"What's happened?"

"Larkin's dead."

"How?"

"You'll see it, mister. Here, let me have him."

He picked the kid up in a fireman's carry like he was a child, and we went in the house that way. The big guy didn't even grunt when he picked him up, and he walked along with him like he didn't weigh a thing.

And the first thing I saw was Larkin, in the main hall, and on the floor in a mess of blood.

THERE were a bunch of cops there, too, but none of the other people in the house except Milton Sawyer. The cop that had Sonny carried him up to another one, this one wearing sergeant's stripes, and put him off his shoulder and held him on his feet.

"This here's the son, spurge," he said. "He just got in. This guy here, says his name is Morahan, just brought him home."

The sergeant took one look at Sonny and turned his head and bawled out: "Hey, doc!"

That brought a thin, dignified looking bird that wore a clipped mustache that was as grey as his hair. At that I didn't think he was more than fifty, fifty-five at the most. He came from the left wing, and he had his coat off and his sleeves rolled up.

He still managed to look dignified, though.

The sergeant said: "Take a look at just what came in. Think you can bring him around so he can talk sense?"

The doctor looked at Sonny and then doubtful.

I said: "He's had a hell of a lot to drink but all of it in the last three hours. Maybe a stomach pump would clear part of it out"

The doctor swore and said: "Another one!"

I found out later that he'd been working on the Countess at the time the sergeant called him. And with a stomach pump— she'd decided that was her night to howl and they were trying to bring her to life to see if She could tell them anything.

The doctor said: "Where's his room?"

I said: "If the corporal will carry him, I'll show the way."

He did it easy and I made heavy weather of it. I was just using my head. He picked the kid up on his shoulder and I led the way and we took him in his bedroom and dumped him on the bed.

The doctor followed and said, fretfully: "Put him in the bathroom, men. I've got to work on him. Oh, damn me! Why did I ever learn medicine?"

We left them together and went back to the hall, with the corporal telling me: "He's a sort of society doctor and most of his cases are bringing people out of hangovers and using stomach pumps on 'em and things like that. I don't blame the poormuch, but look at the dough he makes.".

I said I guessed he earned it.

Then he looked at me and said: "Hey! You said you was staying here with these

"How come?"

"What d'ya mean?"

"Don't kid me, bud. You're not like these folks. You're a roughneck and nothing else. No offense meant, of course."

I said: "I'm staying here but I'm working here, too. I'm supposed to be looking after the kid. He gets in trouble with liquor, women, and gambling, and I'm supposed to see he don't get in too much of it.

"I get it."

"I've got a private license, if you want to see it. Larkin got it for me. Not that it makes any difference here— the kid and I were in town and don't know a thing about this."

"You mean you're a private detective?"

"Yeah."

"You might be able to help at that."

"Nuts. I've only been a private detective four days and I don't know a damn' thing about it."

"Well, you know these people here, don't you?"

"Sure."

"You can help then, mister, believe me. I never seen such a crew in my born days."

WE WERE standing away from the bunch that was still around the body. Sawyer saw me and came over and joined us. "A terrible thing, Danny," he said.

"I still don't know what happened."

"Amos was in the library the last anybody saw him. That is except the one who killed him, I guess. Then there was a shot and we all rushed out and there he was, just like you see him now."

"Where was everybody?"

Sawyer looked troubled. "That's what's going to make it bad, I'm afraid. Everybody had separated, for a few minutes. The Countess had gone to her room to lie down. She'd— well, she'd taken a few too many. I'm afraid."

The State Police corporal laughed, and said: "So says the doc!"

"Well, the Count and Dinah— I'd better put that another way. Dinah got angry at the Count and said she was going for a walk. The Count watched winch way she went, I'm afraid, because in about five minutes he slipped out after her. He didn't find her—they both say that, but it leaves both of them alone; neither can support the other one's alibi."

"Hell, man! Dinah wouldn't kill her own father."

The corporal said: "You're right, mister, you're new in this business, all right. There's plenty of cases where a girl has killed her old man. There's a few of them doing life for it right now."

Even Milton Sawyer thought I'd made a funny crack. He didn't grin much but he said: "I thought everybody had heard about Lizzie Borden, Danny."

"I still don't think she did it."

"I don't either, of course, Danny, but in a case like this an alibi is a very good thing to have and poor little Dinah has none."

I said: "What about Mrs. Watson? Mrs. Larkin? For that matter, what about Lew Sands and the O'Day kid? For that matter, where were you, Mister Sawyer?"

"Don't get sore, fella," the corporal said.

"I don't like these cracks about Dinah, that's all."

SAWYER said: "I'll answer the last part of your question first. I have no more of an alibi than anybody else. I was in my own room. I went there for a cigar, but I also went in my bathroom. I barely heard the shot, as a matter of fact. You see there's a turn in the hall and I had three doors closed after me besides that. The door to my suite— the door leading from the sitting room into the bedroom— and the bathroom door. I just heard a sort of thud, to be honest, and I didn't even bother to come out of the suite until I heard the screaming."

"Who screamed?"

"Mrs. Watson. She must have heard it and dashed right out. It's a wonder she didn't see who did it."

Sawyer was on the right wing, where I was, and Mrs. Watson was on the left, the same as Larkin and Mrs. Larkin and Sonny. "What did she do then?"

"When she saw him, she stood there and screamed for a minute. Then Sands came running just in time to see her keel over in a faint. We brought her out of that, this was when we were all there, and she had hysterics. We got her quieted somewhat, but the doctor had to give her a hypo when he finally got here."

"What time was this?"

"About nine."

I thought back and decided Sonny and I were in the second bar about then.  I asked: "And the rest? What about Mrs. Larkin? And Sands?"

"Sands was in his room. He said he'd been taking a nap— that he was still catching up on the sleep he lost on the trip coming down."

"Believe it?"

Sawyer shrugged. "I'm just telling you what he said. He's got no alibi— no more than the rest of us. Mrs. Larkin was in her room— she says she was changing her make-up."

"Why? At that hour?"

Sawyer shrugged again. "If you or any other man can figure what Mrs. Larkin does or why, I'd like to know how it's done. I've never been able to do it in the years I've known her."

I could understand that— I'd always thought the woman was the original screwball. He went on with: "The little O'Day girl was also in her room. For that matter, I saw her when I left my room, after the screaming I heard. She was coming out at the same time."

"Well, then, it's an alibi for both of you, isn't it?"

The corporal said gently: "Not so, Morahan. Either of them would have had time to have shot Larkin and then run back to their room. And then to have come out when Mrs. Watson found the body and screamed. Isn't that right, Mr. Sawyer? Not that I'm saying either of you did it, of course."

"That's right, corporal. There's not a soul in the house with an alibi, except you and Sonny. I presume you two were together all evening?"

"We were. I had a hell of a night."

"I'd like to hear about it sometime," he said, this time grinning. "Well, I'm glad to hear somebody's in the clear, anyway. This is going to be very bad."

THE corporal said: "Larkin had a pile of dough, didn't he?"

"He was a very wealthy man, corporal, yes. I've been his attorney for a number of years and am in a position to know."

"Then it'll be hell," said the corporal, comfortably. "They try to work with those kind of people in this country. If it was some poor guy, it'd go on the back page of the newspaper and the cops would work two days and then forget about it."

"You're not a local man, corporal?"

"Lord, no. From Georgia."

He didn't pronounce it that way but that's what it meant. He said it something like, "Gawga."

"What was he shot with? Maybe there's a lead that way?"

"The bullet went all the way through but the doctor thinks a .45. At least a very heavy gun."

I said: "Oh hell!" and both the corporal and Sawyer looked at me. I explained: "I didn't take the thing along with me tonight. We were just going to do a little drinking, Sonny said, and I didn't want the nuisance. Maybe it was mine— it's a .45 Colt Auto."

"Let's go see."

The three of us went to my room then, with the others apparently not even noticing we were leaving. I'd left the gun in my top dresser drawer, and sure enough it was there, but when I started to reach for it, the big cop just grabbed my hand.

He said: "Hey! Wait! Maybe it's the one. D'ya want to spoil any prints there may be on it?"

He took a pencil from his pocket and stuck that in the gun barrel to lift it from the drawer. And he smelled the barrel and nodded.

He said: "It's a damn' good thing for you, Morahan, that you had an alibi. And 'll tell you now it's going to be thoroughly checked. This gun's been fired and just a little while ago."

WE ALL trooped out front again, with the cop holding the pistol up on his pencil like it was a lollypop on a stick. By that time they'd busted into groups in the hall, with the sergeant at the side, talking to the doctor, who now had his coat on.

The corporal said: "I've found the gun, sarge. Belongs to Morahan, here."

"I thought you were with young Larkin tonight," the sergeant said. "What's this? Where'd you get the gun and what right have you got to have it?"

The corporal said: "He's got a private license, sarge. And he says he's got an alibi with young Larkin and I'll believe it until we check it and find different. His room was open—anybody could have walked in and snaffled the gun and turned and walked out again."

He gave the sergeant a look that meant something— I hoped something in my favor. And it seemed to be that way because the sergeant quit acting like I was a suspect.

He said: "You might give the gun to Jolliffe, corporal, and have him check it for prints."

The corporal turned the gun over to a thin little guy with glasses, but who was wearing the State uniform just the same. The fingerprint expert. He handed it over by the pencil and the little guy took a tiny bellows. We all watched him, none of us with much hope. There's been too much in the papers and in detective stories for much chance of a slip on a thing like a gun.

And so it proved. The little guy looked up and said: "Clean! Not a thing, either on the butt or the barrel. Want me to look at the inside?"

I said: "My prints will be all over that. I cleaned and oiled and loaded it just a few days ago. On the way down here."

The corporal said: "That won't be necessary, Jolliffe. It's a cinch the killer didn't take it apart. He probably yanked the slide back far enough to see there was a load in it and let it go at that."

He gave the gun back to the corporal who put it in his pocket. And who told me: "I'm sorry, Morahan, but I'll have to hold this. I can get you another one if you think you'll need it."

"What do you think, Corporal?"

"Well, you were hired to guard the boy, weren't you?"

"Sure."

"You're going to keep on doing it until you're told the job is through, aren't you?"

"Sure."

"Then you'd better have a gun, I'd think."

THE two of them drifted back to talk with Sonny then, and that left me with about a dozen cops I didn't know and the doctor. And with Sawyer, who was talking to him. I went over that way, just so I wouldn't be standing by myself. I said: "Don't these cops have anything to do? It looks like every cop in this district is on this job."

The doctor said severely: "Mr. Larkin was a very prominent man, young man. A fine citizen— I have known him since he built here. I have been his physician since that time. It's the same with the police. They all knew Mr. Larkin and liked him. He gave heavily to all police charities. The boys take a personal interest in getting this case solved in a hurry, with his murderer brought to justice."

I'd known Larkin for almost four years and said so. I'd also liked the man and I mentioned that as well. And then I thought of something else. I took Sawyer to the side and asked him about it, though, before saying anything to the cops.

I said: "Look, Mr. Sawyer! You'd know more about this than I would. What about those two men, brothers, that were here? Their name was Morrison, I think. There was an argument between them and Mr. Larkin, wasn't there? Maybe they came back and did this."

Sawyer said: "They went North the next day. That next evening, right after they left here."

"Maybe they didn't. The cops could check, couldn't they? There was an argument, wasn't there?"

"Not much of a one, Danny. Amos was a man who liked his own way, I'll admit that, and the Morrison boys are the same type. Anyway they went North."

"They could have changed their minds and stayed over. They could have doubled back."

"Tell the police if you like, Danny. If those two were here, in the house, I'd be inclined to think that way myself, possibly. It certainly doesn't pay to pass anything that might help, I'll admit that."

I waited until the sergeant and the corporal came back and started to talk to the sergeant about it. And he waved at the corporal and said: "Tell him your troubles, Morahan. He's the one to talk with."

I told the corporal and he took their name and their description down in his notebook. And then called one of the other cops and gave him the sheet he'd written on.

"Get on the phone and call the good hotels in town. Check with the trains. See if these men are still around, or if they left, find out when."

I said: "How come the sergeant turned me over to you with this?" and he seemed to think it was a good joke and on himself.

"Since I joined the force here," he told me, "I've been a lucky guy. I've cracked a couple of funny ones and they think I'm a detective."

"What did you do in Georgia, corporal, if you don't mind my asking."

He gave me the name of some county and told me he was the chief investigator for the sheriff's office there, and then added something else.

He said: "I've been with the cops since I was old enough. But I get tired of one beat and move on to another force. It's a hell of a way to get any promotion but a man sure sees a lot of country."

I thought he had something there and said so.

He got serious then. "It's like this, on this one, Morahan. I haven't got a thing to go on. I can't see any motive for this one. Not one at all."

5: Inside Job

WASN'T any investigator but I could see a lot of motives for a lot of people. I had one for Mrs. Watson— they'd been mixed up and she might have got sore at

Larkin over something. I could see a dandy for Mrs. Larkin— her husband was playing around and maybe she'd just found it out. I could see one for both the Countess and the Count.

If my hunch was worth a thin dime, they were both as crooked as wagon tracks, and maybe Larkin had found it out and told them about it and maybe they'd killed him to keep him quiet about it. There was an additional one about the Count— maybe he'd made a bad pass at Dinah and the old man had seen it. I knew that Larkin had thought ten times as much of the girl as he had of Sonny.

I could see a dandy for Lew Sands, too. That was another bad one, and maybe Larkin had caught wise to his playing around with Dinah. Dinah was the one that was doing the chasing, but that wouldn't make any difference to her father.

I could see one for Milton Sawyer. While I didn't know a thing about it, there was always the chance that he'd chiseled some money from Larkin in some way— he had every chance to do it— and maybe Larkin had found that out. Maybe he'd threatened him with jail and Sawyer had killed him to cover up the theft. I had no reason to suspect Sawyer— I really didn't, for that matter, but the thing was entirely possible.

Mary O'Day was the only one I'd give a clear board to. She might have slapped the old man's face if he got fresh with her— I knew damned well she could have— but she wouldn't have gone in my room, taken my gun from the drawer, and gone back and blasted him with it. I didn't think Dinah would for that matter, but she was such a little fool I couldn't put her entirely out of the thing.

I didn't think she had a thing to do with it of course... it was just that she did have a motive. Her father might have caught her with Lew Sands and raised hell, and she was so nuts about Sands she'd have done just about anything to get him and keep him.

Sonny had a motive, too— but he also had an alibi. He was the only one in the party that I absolutely knew was innocent.

I gave this all to the corporal and he listened and nodded at each one. And when I was through he said: "That's what I meant when I said you'd be a help, Morahan. Now here's what I want you to do. I'm leaving now, and so is the sarge. We're leaving three men here, two inside and one patroling the grounds. We've talked to everybody and have got nowhere. We made them go back to their rooms after we'd asked them what they knew, and they're in there now."

"Sawyer wasn't."

"Sawyer's different. He helped us. He knew everything that was going on and the rest just knew their own part in it. That's why he was out. I want you to keep your eyes open when they get together again. After we're gone. We'll leave as soon as the ambulance gets here— it broke down and we had to send for another, or we'd have had the body away an hour ago. You just keep your eyes open and if you see anything wrong, you tell me."

Just then the cop who'd done the phoning came up. He said: "They're registered in the Regis. I talked to the clerk and he says they were out all evening."

The corporal said: "Maybe you had something there, Morahan. The sergeant and I'll go down there right now and find out. Then he gave me a number and said: 'Call me there if anything comes up. They'll relay the call to me if I'm out."

"Who'll I ask for?"

He laughed and said he thought he'd told me.

His name was Joe Costello.

EVERYBODY got together as soon as the police went away. The cops they left kept out of the way, one of them sitting out in the patio, another in the kitchen, and the third just prowling around outside the place. What good any of the three were doing I couldn't see, but the corporal thought they should have been left and that was good enough for me.

I had a lot of respect for the guy by that time.

Both the Countess and Sonny showed their hangovers badly, this in spite of the stomach pump treatment. Beside that, it was three o'clock in the morning and nobody looks their best at an hour like that. I thought holding a meeting at an hour like that was silly, but I just worked there and what I thought I kept to myself. Anyway, it was Milton Sawyer's idea, and I had a notion he'd be in charge of the family finances for some time— at least until the will was probated.

Mrs. Larkin looked the same as usual. She didn't even seem to realize her husband had been murdered, but I was wrong on this. It was just that she didn't care a damn.

Mrs. Watson looked like the wrath of God after a bad Indian. She had a Mae West figure but it had slumped. She'd had big baby-blue eyes, but the lids were so puffed from crying they could have been any color in the rainbow and nobody would have known. They looked like somebody had smacked her between them. Her nose was red as a beet and as shapeless—it was swollen, too. Her cheeks were all raddled, with the veins standing out, and she hadn't even bothered to put on make-up.

I'd never liked the woman but I felt sorry for her then. She was taking Larkin's death harder than his own people, if looks meant anything.

Dinah looked sullen, and I took it the cops hadn't talked to her the way she thought they should have. If she'd cried, she showed no signs of it. The Count was his usual greasy little self, going around telling every one how sorry he was about "My good friend being so foully murdered."

I could have slapped his pretty little face and loved it.

Sands looked the same. He was the original hard customer, anyway, and I wouldn't have expected him to change expression if he'd watched a train wreck.

The little O'Day girl had been crying and she told me, quietly: "Mr. Larkin has always been so good to me. Like my own good father, who's dead, bless his soul."

THAT was all of them except Sawyer, and I wouldn't expect him to show much emotion. I've never yet seen a lawyer that had any more heart than an iron statue, anyway.

I sat at the side, with a highball, and watched them all. And all except the little O'Day girl had something to match my drink— one of the colored men was a pip of a bar man as well as a butler.

They all said the usual thing. What a terrible thing it was and how bad they all felt. And who could have done it? Who could have had anything against poor old dad, who'd never harmed a soul in his life, or against poor Mr. Larkin, who'd been such a good friend to them, as the case might be? They all sounded as though they meant it. Sawyer said the first really sensible thing.

He said: "One thing now, folks. It's almost a certainty the killer is one of us. Barring the possible chance of it being one of the Morrisons, and frankly, I don't see any reason for them to have killed Amos. Their dealings with him were highly profitable, they'd have been killing the goose that laid the golden egg, if you don't mind a figure of speech."

"What are you getting at, Milton?" demanded Mrs. Larkin. It was the first time I'd ever seen her show good sense, and I watched her and listened to her and realized I'd made a mistake when I'd thought she was a fool. She was, maybe, in some things, but she caught on when the chips were down. "Do you mean the rest of us are in possible danger?"

"Just that, Martha."

"Why?"

"Who knows why Amos was killed? Certainly it was over money. Probably over the money he'd leave."

"You infer than, Milton, it was one of the family?"

"No, dear. He left bequests as you know. And in considerable amounts to many people."

"Certainly not to me or my son," the Countess said. "He had no reason."

"There could be other reasons why either you or the Count would have wanted him out of the way, madam," Sawyer told her acidly. "I assure you the police are taking that into consideration."

The Countess said: "How dare you!" but she didn't say it with any push behind it. And she didn't say any more.

Mrs. Larkin said: "Of course money will be behind it. It has to be. Or does it?"

WITH that she gave Mrs. Watson a level stare that told me she'd known what was going on all the time. Either she didn't care about it or couldn't stop it, one or the other— it certainly wasn't ignorance that was holding her back.

Mrs. Watson gave her a blank look and just sniffled a couple of times.

Mrs. Larkin said, and oh so sweetly: "Of course after this you won't want to stay here, will you, Mrs. Watson?"

Mrs. Watson said: "What's that?"

"I said that with Mr. Larkin dead, there's no further reason for your presence here. I'll ask you to leave as soon as the police permit you to go. Is that plain enough?"

Mrs. Watson stopped the sniffling and began crying in a big way. I didn't blame her much— there she was, going along great guns, and now she's out on the street.

I felt sorry for her even if the street was where the big tramp belonged.

I said: "Just for a suggestion, how about this? Suppose everybody goes to bed now. And suppose everybody sees their door's locked. That ought to do the trick—this killer can't go through locked doors."

Sonny said: "There's more than one key to the doors in this house."

"Where are they?"

He laughed and I caught what he meant. His old man certainly had had a key to Mrs. Watson's room. There was a fair chance that either Lew Sands had a key to Dinah's or that she had a key to his. What the angle was between the Countess and the Count I didn't know— but I was damned well sure they weren't mother and son. As far as I knew, Mrs. Larkin was okay, but I didn't know her very well and Milton Sawyer was a good-looking guy. And her husband had left her alone, and not alone that but had sported another woman right in her face.

The only one I was sure of was little Mary O'Day, and Sonny would have had that key if she'd have given it to him, that I knew.

I said: "Well, it's worth a try. We can't go the rest of our lives with no sleep. At least I can't."

Sawyer said: "I think that's a good idea, Danny. After all, we can't decide anything at an hour like this. Certainly not anything that makes sense."

Sonny said, in a querulous voice: "Whose idea was this meeting, anyway?"

"Nobody was sleeping," said Sawyer, "and I thought a drink or two might help everybody. And I thought that warning might be in order."

So that was that. We went to bed after another drink around, and I didn't wake up until almost noon.

IT WAS Joe Costello who woke me up by knocking at my door, and he told me he almost tore it down before I heard him.

And I said: "Why not? That's the door to the living room and I had It locked. I also had the door to the bedroom locked. And I was sleepy."

He said: "The news I've got won't bring you awake, either. I'm afraid. That Morrison business proved out all wrong. Both the brothers were in a night spot all evening —if not one, then another. And it takes time to make that drive. And they have no car and there's no record of them renting one of the U-Drive-Its or of a cabby bringing 'em out here. We didn't even trust the people in the spots— we even checked their possible transportation."

"Did you check where Sonny and I were?"

"Sure. They remember Sonny— they'll never forget him. Anybody that tips ten and twenty bucks before he sits down isn't forgotten soon. They'd just as soon not see him again though, tips or no tips."

I could understand that and I told Costello something of what had happened. He thought it was funny but the memory was too fresh for me to go along with him on the thought.

Then he said: "Everybody but you was up and doing. Except the little girl."

"Dinah?"

"Oh, no, she's up. I mean the maid. Mrs. Larkin was raising hell about not waking her."

I knew part of the answer right then. It clicked just like somebody had snapped their fingers.

"Let me get my clothes on," I said. "This is going to be plain pure hell, mister."

"What d'ya mean, Morahan?"

I said: "The kid's dead."

6: Smart Money

THE colored butler had a spare key so we didn't have to break in the door. The kid had had a nice little room, all finished up with chintzy stuff in blue, with drapes of that stuff on the windows and with the chairs and dressing table finished the same way.

Costello mentioned it. He said: "It's a hell of a room to have a murder in."

There was just the two of us. He had his three cops still there but we hadn't been sure just what we'd find. That is, he hadn't been sure—I'd been sure since I'd heard she hadn't answered her bell.

She was on the bed and it looked as though she'd been killed in her sleep. She was in a mess of sticky bloody bed clothes —and it made me sick to look at her. She'd been wearing a thin little cotton nightgown and the knife had gone right through it, just under her breast. Just that one wound but it had been plenty— she'd died instantly and probably hadn't even known what had struck her. She probably hadn't even woke up, Costello thought.

The way the killer had come in was as plain. The chintz drapes were blowing in the breeze that came in through the still open window.

She didn't look to be more than fifteen, though I knew she'd been twenty— she looked like a baby in spite of being in that mess of blood.

I didn't look very long. I said: "I can't stand this. I'm getting out. I'll kill the man that did this if I can get my hands on him."

"Don't be a fool," Costello said carefully.

"Unless he resisted arrest, you'd hang for it. Let the State do it for you. It's better that way— he has to sit in jail and wait for what he knows is coming. Who is it?"

"I don't know. I know that the kid saw something or that the killer thought she did.

That's the only possible answer— this baby never did anybody harm in her life."

"You said 'he.' What makes you so sure it was a man?"

"It would take a man to drive a knife in that way."

"You're wrong, Morahan. A ten-year-old kid could've done it unless the knife struck bone. It would slide in like it was going through butter. You can see where it went in between the ribs."

I looked, though I didn't want to. I still thought it was a man, though if Costello said it could have been a woman, I believed him.

He had experience and I hadn't.

I said: "What now?"

"We go through the same thing. Only I hope that damned ambulance don't break down like it did last night. I didn't mind having Larkin on the floor like that for hours, but it's different with this kid."

"I liked Larkin fine, but it's different with me, too. I barely knew this kid, but somehow it's different."

Costello told me something else then from experience. "It's always different when it's a woman. And it's even worse when it's a kid. That's why most people are lynched, over women and kids."

We went out and closed the door and Costello went into the library and used the phone to call his crew.

I spent the time in my bathroom being sick.

Lying there on the bed, she looked as though she had been killed in her sleep.

THIS time the questioning didn't take long. The doctor put the time of death at about five-thirty, when it was still so dark that the cop prowling the ground couldn't have seen a thing unless he'd been within a few feet of whoever had gone through the window. Everybody said they were sound asleep at that time, of course. Certainly little Mary O'Day had been, because if she'd screamed, either Sawyer or I would probably have heard her. I had my window open and so did he. Hers had been open and Costello pointed out how somebody had cut through the screen, right by the hook that opened it, and had got in that way.

I felt worse then. Mrs. Larkin told us the kid had no people at all— that her father had died when she was seventeen— he was the last she had— and how the kid had been with them since that time.

Somehow that made it worse— to think of the nice little kid, alone in the world and with the only people who'd ever befriended her, being killed in such a way.

Costello took me to the side and said: "I remember what you told me about Sonny passing at her. It could have been him, you—"

"He might have passed at her but he wouldn't have passed at her with a knife, Mister. Besides that, he wasn't sore at the girl, he was crazy about her."

"She might have turned him down and got him sore that way."

"Hell, man, she's been turning him down a dozen times a day, since I've been here. The Lord knows how long before. And he wouldn't have gone courting with a knife, and you know it. He isn't that kind of a man."

"A drunk will do crazy things."

"He wasn't drunk last night. He was sick as a dog with a hangover. You can rule him out."

"I don't rule anybody out, Morahan."

"What about me? This is one I don't have an alibi for."

He said seriously: "It isn't that. I think, just like you do, that she was killed because whoever killed Larkin thought she'd seen or knew something. But the cops have to figure every angle— that's their business."

They all went back to town then except the three men still on guard duty, and what the hell good they were expected to be I never did know. None of us were supposed to leave the county but there was no restrictions on us going to town or around like that. We just had to stay in the jurisdiction of the State police, and everybody was not alone willing but anxious to do just that— or at least appeared to be.

MUST have been hell for Mrs. Larkin to have to live where her husband and her maid had both been murdered but she never whimpered. Nor did Dinah, and I didn't expect Sonny to'. That was another reason I didn't take Mrs. Larkin off my list of suspects—she was taking the whole thing too calmly.

But staying there like that gave me a chance to go over everything—we went out in the speedboat some, Sonny and me, and the Count kept chasing Dinah and Dinah kept chasing Lew Sands, and things seemed about normal.

There was always that thought behind every move though—somebody you were eating with and talking with was a killer, twice over. And that don't help your appetite or your flow of conversation—that I found out right then.

Sawyer was the best off in the lot because he'd had a job to do. He was in the library for the next two days, wiring and phoning up North and going through the papers Larkin had brought with him to work on. He had something to do—something to take his mind off what had happened—and I'd have given my share in Heaven to have been in the same spot.

All I had to do was think about the murders and why they'd been done—and it's no wonder that I finally caught on to something.

And I did it an easy way.

SAWYER called me in the library and gave me a nice smile. "Would you do me a favor, Danny?" he asked. "Take a trip to town for me? Mrs. Larkin is going to need Sands this afternoon."

I said I'd be glad to get away from the house for a while and he said he thought we all would.

He went on with: "There's a boat at the docks downtown that just came in from Jamaica. Its name is the John P. Johnson — it's a converted lumber schooner— you know they're using everything that can carry cargo these days."

I said I'd heard that.

"I've been trying to get hold of the skipper on the phone and I can't catch him. He'll be around the boat, sooner or later, and you could spot him if you were there. His name's Josephs — just ask for Captain Josephs. When you find him ask him to call me here."

"Sure. I'll be glad of the excuse to get away."

"Take any of the cars. Sands will see it's gassed and oiled. Tell him I said to see you on your way."

"Sure."

That was all there was to it. Sands wanted me to take the little Dodge they used to carry groceries back from town with and I laughed at him. Instead I got a Buick sedan, with only four thousand miles on the ticket — and I had a swell time driving in, taking my time, just loafing along. And I had a swell time at the docks, locating the John P. Johnson, which turned out to be a half sail, and half motor ship.

And Josephs was on the boat, talking to what I took to be some custom man of some kind. I waited until he got through and gave him Sawyer's message, and he nodded and said he'd call as soon as he could get away.

That left me free so I sort of strolled around the boat and looked it over. I'd taken enough liquor off boats to judge a cargo pretty well, and they had a lot of theirs on deck, which helped. I judged the load to be between eight and nine hundred hogsheads of rum, it was marked so on the hogsheads and from what I saw and the cargo space I knew was below, it had to be about that many.

Then I drove back and told Sawyer I'd delivered his message all right.

He said: "Mr. Larkin had many and varied enterprises, Danny. It's a wonder one man could have gone into so many things. He'd contracted with Captain Josephs to bring over a cargo of sugar, but the captain had this priority load of rum to bring. Those little boats have done a lot for our war effort, believe me."

I said I supposed they had— that I'd never thought much about it— and then forgot the whole thing.

And then I read the newspaper article. It was plain enough. It had a picture of Captain Josephs standing on the deck of his unloaded boat and it went on to say how small converted vessels like that were holding the West Indian trade, while the bigger steamers were making the long run overseas, with cargo for the Army.

The pay-off was when it said the John P. Johnson had just brought back four hundred and twenty-five hogsheads of rum.

I'm not smart but I'd played the rackets long enough to know one when I see one. And I'd seen the boat and the cargo, and that was enough. I didn't do a thing— I just waited until the next night, when Sonny decided he wanted to go to town and wanted me with him.

I w'ent to town, but I parked Sonny in the first cocktail place we came to and kept on going.

I went to the OPA.

I HAD the usual time with Sonny, but managed to keep him out of fights and out of fights myself. It took a bit of doing, too—Sonny had been a good boy too long, and wanted to break loose and tear things up. I got him home a little after two, though, and one of the cops still on duty at the house helped me carry him inside and to bed.

For the next two days nothing happened at all. Corporal Costello came out, supposedly checking things to see they were all right. He got me to the side and in the first five minutes he was in the house. He was more excited than I was—I was sure. He said: "It checks out, Morahan. It checks out. Hickey told me to tell you there were nine hundred and twenty barrels of rum on that ship and that it only reported in as having four hundred and twenty-five. D'ya know what it means?"

I said: "Sure. I've figured it out. It makes about five hundred hogshead difference. Checked in legally that five hundred kegs would be worth about a hundred thousand. Bottled and taxed and all, the customers would pay about three bucks a quart for it instead of the four dollars a gallon it stands at the dock. But leave out the taxing and selling it for what it could bring in the market, that hundred grand worth of rum's about two and a half times that. That's rough figuring because I've been out of the business quite a while, but it won't miss it far."

"Hickey's tracing the shipment now. He's got somebody going right along with it."

I said, from experience: "It'll be diverted to some warehouse along the route and listed as turpentine or something like that. If they can bribe a customs man like they must have to have passed a shipment like that, why they can fix it up with some shipping clerk on the railroad. For that matter, if they can get it to the freight yard, they don't even have to bother with that. All they've got to do is paint out the heading on the hogsheads and relabel them."

"That's what Hickey said. Morahan, I want to apologize. I figured you were sort of a dope and here you step into something really big."

"Trying to kid me?"

"Hell, no."

I said: "This is just a drop in the bucket. Sawyer didn't start this, he s just carrying on what Larkin started. And you don't think Larkin was just fooling around with small potatoes like this, do you?"

"I don't get it."

"If he was fooling with black market rum, or bootleg rum or whatever you warn to call it, he'd have been fooling with something else. He was a money-maker and a big one. I'd have never known the guy except my bar was near the financial district and a quiet little place where he could duck in and not be bothered by people. I stepped into something a damn' sight bigger than a deal in bootleg rum, mister, believe me."

"I still don't see how you caught wise, Morahan. I've tried to figure it out. As I get it you just happened to notice the boat had more of a load than the papers said."

"That was part of it. Now look! Sawyer tells me he wants to talk to that Captain Josephs but that he couldn't catch him on the phone. That could well be, but it also could be that he didn't want a call going out from this house, where it could be traced back, and that he wanted the captain to call him on a pay phone instead. I know that trick—that was one we used in the old days and plenty. Now that isn't enough. But here's a full load on the boat that's reported as half of a load. The two of them together add up— two and two make five, when they come like that. Then, when you put a double murder on it, you don't get two and two and two make six, but they make about sixteen."

"You think it was Sawyer that did the killings?"

"Sure. But how are you going to prove it?"

Costello thought about it and admitted he couldn't think of a way. I'd gone nuts trying to, myself, so I knew how he felt.

I SAID: "About the only thing to do is coast another couple of days and see what Hickey can dig up here and what his little pals up North can find."

"How come you told Hickey to get in touch with you through me?"

"Because it's a cinch if an O.P.A. man

called me at the house here, I'd be third on

the list. As it is, every time I make a move

I've got to dodge Lew Sands."

"D'ya think the boy's in on it?"

"Hell, no! I think he knows about it, though."

"Any reason for it?"

"You bet. There was a young fellow up North who was very chummy with Sonny. This kid, his name was Alderdyce, was turned down by the Army and he was a very patriotic kid. He started out to beat the black market all by himself, and he ended up dead in an alley. I think that he found out something through Sonny, or through running around with him and being at his house or something like that. I think Sonny knows about it but wouldn't turn his old man in. Sonny's not patriotic— all he's looking for is a good time."

"It sounds reasonable."

"Another thing. The old man never cracked down on him for anything. He let him do as he liked, just paid his bills. I think the old man knew Sonny was wise to what was going on and was afraid to say anything to Sonny about what he was doing."

"The little rat!"

"Not so. He was brought up that way, is all. He was brought up to think anything's all right that you can get away with. And that anybody that joined the Army was a fool. There was plenty of kids like that before Pearl Harbor, Costello, and you know it. The colleges were full of them."

"Most of them got over it."

"My kid brother did, Mister. That's one reason I'm interested in this mess."

"I didn't know you had a brother."

I told him I had two and where they were and just how I felt about them. Costello told me he'd tried to join, himself, but that his feet were flatter than pancakes and that they'd told him he'd do more good in the job he had than in the limited service they'd have to give him if he joined up. I told him what they'd told me when I tried, and we had a nice little chat about Army doctors and their mistakes.

Then he left, but not before warning me to be careful, something I assured him I'd be.

And I tried to be and didn't do too bad at it.

7: Guarding Sonny

IN THE first place, I started wearing my gun and not in any holster. I tucked the thing under my belt inside my shirt and kept a jacket on and buttoned so nobody would notice a bulge. You can jerk your coat open, tearing off the buttons of course, and take your shirt out of your pants with the same grab. This with your left hand, of course. That leaves the butt of your gun in the handiest place in the world, to grab— that across the body draw is up to now, anyway, the fastest way the boys have yet discovered. I've got the front sight of my gun smoothed down—it used to have a square Call sight but I took the front comer off with a file. I rounded the outer edges of the back sight, a Patridge, and that couldn't catch in my pants any more than the front.

THE gun itself, a Colt .45 Automatic, is the Target model and a sweet little gun after you get used to it. I carry it with the hammer back and the safety on, which is the thing to do if there's any chance of having to use it. That's as safe as leaving the hammer down and the safety off, and a man can throw off that safety faster than he can get his thumb up and yank back that stiff little hammer.

Costello had taken it but he'd brought it back to me as soon as he thought I might be in any actual danger, and I was glad he had. It's a lot of satisfaction having a gun that you're used to and trust— and it gives a man a lot more confidence.

I packed the thing two days and nothing happened except that Costello came out and told me Hickey had the rum shipment traced to Norfolk, Virginia, and if ever there was a town that could take up a load of bootleg stock that was the one. There are State liquor stores there and the people are rationed until getting a drink is a day's wait at one of the local dispensaries. The town's full of war workers with a lot of dough and with sailors who've got enough, and there are plenty of outlets around the town, as well as in the town itself.

I know nothing about the police there, but a town with a force just big enough to take care of a normal hundred and sixty people can't take care of three times that with the same number of cops.

I figured it was a sweet spot to unload the rum— even better than farther North.

Costello said: "And Hickey's been going back into other rum shipments and he's uncovered at least three other times the same thing's happened. They've taken the customs man that let it through up, along with three others, for Federal Court, but they're keeping it quiet until they find out what's what up North."

I said that was swell and he left— but I'll always think that Hickey's investigations were the tip-off for Sawyer. That was close to home— and four men can't be spirited away like that without some talk. Of course Josephs, the John P. Johmon's skipper, had been taken up right along with the others, and he might have found out that way.

Anyway, found out he must have.

I was taking a walk along the beach with Sonny when it happened. There was no particular reason for it—Sonny had wanted to go to town and make whoopee and I'd talked him into taking a walk, instead. I didn't know it but the Count and Countess had gone ahead of us, probably to talk over future tactics, but it wouldn't have made any difference, anyways, the way the thing turned out.

We were just loafing along, with Sonny picking up shells and pitching them at birds flying by and kid stuff like that. We were right down by the surf, and every now and then we'd have to step back so the wash wouldn't catch us. Sonny had asked and I was telling him something about the way they used to bring the liquor trucks down from Canada, in the prohibition days, and how if the way was greased the way it usually was, the only danger a man ran into was from hi-jackers.

I did notice Sonny acted pretty nervous but I put that down to wanting to go to town and celebrate. And then a young fellow like that who's just had his father murdered is bound to be nervous—or so I thought.

We were almost to a little point when Lew Sands came down through the brush and to the ocean to meet us. I thought that probably he'd had a date to meet Dinah down that way and thought little about it— but I was canny enough at that to open my coat and get a grip on the front of my shirt, just above the gun's checked grip.

I've never lost anything yet by playing safe.

Sonny said, as if surprised: "Why here's Sands. That's funny, ain't it?"

The minute I heard his voice I knew I was in for it. I noticed then that Sonny was also wearing a jacket, something he never did except when going out in company or when waiting for somebody to build up the fire for him.

I was between them— that is Sonny was nearer the water than I was and Lew was coming down from the shore side. Lew was sixty yards away and walking fast and purposely. So I decided to start the ball.

I yanked my shirt away and got my hand on the gun and spoke to Sonny at the same time.

"On your face, you punk," I said.

He had his hand up as though he was going to scratch his chin. I could see the play as if it was written out. Lew Sands would start blasting about any time, and when I turned, as of course I would, why. Sonny would have a shot at me he couldn't miss. He wasn't ten feet from me.

He said: "Ugh— ugh!"

I said: "On your face!"

THE damn' fool started for his gun and I yanked mine and waited for his to come in sight. And when it did, I shot him through the thigh.

I sort of liked the kid and didn't want to either kill or cripple him too bad. And I didn't have time to see if I'd put him out of action or not—by that time Sands was close enough to do me damage and he was the one I was afraid of.

He was close enough for comfort at that. About thirty yards away, standing there and trying to take a bead on me. He got it just as I turned and I could see the flame bloom out from his gun muzzle just the faintest fraction of a second before I heard the gun.

I didn't hear the slug but it must have been close. Any man that's ever shot a pistol much, and it was a cinch that Sands had, couldn't miss very much at that range. But I shot back and I missed, too. Nervous, I guess— I know I was plenty excited.

It's one thing to shoot at a target and another thing to shoot at something that's shooting back at you— and I supposed it affected Sands the same way.

He shot again and he didn't miss. He almost did but not quite. I felt a tug at my pants and my leg jerked under me, but not enough to let me down. I tried back, twice, as fast as I could get him in the sights and pull the trigger and it was the second one that got him. He started ahead, but dropping the arm that held his gun down by his side, and he must have taken at least half a dozen little steps before he caved in and went ahead on his face.

I swung back to Sonny and he was squirming on the sand like a fish somebody's pulled out of the surf. He was screaming— but so help me, I hadn't heard a sound. He'd dropped his gun, with which he could have shot me half a dozen different times, and he'd wriggled his way at least six feet from it.

Then I looked past him and saw the Count and the Countess running toward me. And, believe it or not, both of them were screaming, too. The Count as loud or louder than the Countess. The Continental idea, I suppose. I saw they had empty hands and didn't pay them any more attention but went up to look at Sands.

I'd caught him just to the side of center and at the base of his throat. What had kept him on his feet as long as he'd stayed there I couldn't understand, except that possibly he'd been leaning ahead against the recoil of his gun and had gone ahead to hold his balance. He was as dead as mutton, so I went back to Sonny.

BY THE time I got there the Count and Countess were there, too. She was kneeling by him and she turned and glared up at me and screamed: "You murderer!"

The Count started to pick up Sonny's gun and I flashed mine out while I waited to see what he was going to do with it. He looked up from it to see me watching him and I thought he was going to faint. He dropped the gun as if it was red hot— and it was for him, if he'd known it. I'd always hated the sneaky little punk, and in the state of mind I was in at the time, I'd have blasted his leg out from under him as fast as I had Sonny's.

I said: "You two get on back to the house in one hell of a hurry and tell 'em to send somebody after the kid. I'll stay here and wait and look after him."

The Countess said: "I will not move one step, you murderer. You would kill him, the minute I left him."

"Nuts! Get moving! And fast."

I had no intention of shooting her but I accidentally let the muzzle of my gun swing toward her. She squawked like a chicken and got off the sand— she was on her knees —and she made the first hundred yards like a sprinter.

The Count had taken off when I first looked at Sonny then. He'd quieted down— he was crying and saying over and over again: "I've been shot! I've been shot!" but he'd quit his fool squirming and was lying fairly still. I pulled his pants down and off him— the right trouser-leg was saturated with blood, anyway, and saw I'd missed the bone entirely, but that I just had. The slug had gone clear through, of course— it takes bone or a lot more of a leg than the kid had to stop a big slug like that at that range. I'd hit an artery, though, probably the big one there, because the wound was pulsing with each heartbeat.

I took his belt off and put it above the place and tightened it with his own gun.

He cried about that, too— said it hurt him. It was hard to believe he was the same one who'd planned on mouse-trapping me with Sands.

Then I looked at myself and found what I'd expected to find. Sands had creased me— his slug had cut a shallow groove along the outside of my leg. It was about four inches long and not over half an inch deep in the middle of it, and while it stung and smarted and ached a little, it didn't really hurt.

I sat with the kid and talked to him, and he was in a shape to talk. I helped this out, maybe, by telling him I'd take the belt off his leg and let him bleed to death right there if he didn't talk, but I don't think I needed to do that.

He'd have talked anyway— he didn't have what it takes to play those sort of games.

I GOT the lowdown on a lot of things that were going to be handy to know. His old man was heart and soul in the black market, as I'd figured out. When I told him who'd killed his father he didn't believe me.

He said: "Why, he told me you did that. He was sure. He said you'd probably slipped away from me during that evening."

"What made you believe him?"

"Because of Mary O'Day. He said that she was killed because she'd seen whoever had killed dad, and that's why she was put out of the way. And then he explained why he was sure you were the one who did it."

"What was the argument?"

"Why that you and she were in the same wing. He told me that nobody from the other wing could have gone around the house on the outside like that and gone through her window without running into the guard. It sounded like good sense."

"Didn't you stop to think that he was in that same wing?"

"Why, no! Somehow I never thought of Milt doing a thing like that."

I said: "Well, I'll be honest, kid, and tell you I didn't either. I was as much up in the air as you were, until I found the reason he killed your father. And then everything made sense— everything clicked at once."

"You mean that black market stuff?"

"Sure. He knew your father's business inside out. He'd have the use of your father's money, at least until the estate was settled. For that matter, your father probably had a bunch of dough sunk away because of taxes— money hidden in different places. He could get his hands on that and have all the capital he needed to run with. He couldn't have taken over your father's legitimate business that way but he could take over the racket. Why did your father ever go into the thing? He was doing all right the way he was."

"You didn't know dad. He went all the way. Lock, stock, and barrel, Danny!"

"Yeah!"

"I wouldn't have cut in with Lew Sands like that if I hadn't thought you'd killed dad. Honest, I wouldn't."

"I believe you, kid. You thought the cops would never prove it and that you'd have to take the law into your own hands."

"That's what Milt said. How'd you know?"

"I knew what he'd say without hearing him say it. You're lucky, kid—I think I can pass this off as an accidental shooting,

if you want it that way."

"I'd like it, Danny, you know it."

I left him then and went up and looked at Sands' gun, which was where it had fallen. I was leaving it there until the cops came—I wanted my story to be clear. It was a short-barreled .38 Colt Detective Special—a belly gun and the probable reason he missed me as he did. They're a good little gun but not made for long-range stuff —and when a man's shooting back at you, thirty yards is a long, long ways.

I went back and said: "It'll pass, if Costello tells the doctor not to be too fussy. Now I'll loosen the belt for a minute to keep the circulation going and then I'll tighten it up again. Then we'll keep on waiting."

"How long will it be, Danny?"

"That depends on how screwy that Countess and her son are. I wouldn't bet a thing one way or the other."

"What d'ya mean?"

"There'll be trouble about this, too, kid. I wouldn't put it past those two to pack up and get out and not say a word."

"They wouldn't do that."

"Why not?"

I decided then that the kid had more brains than I'd given him credit for. He said: "They saw you kill Lew Sands— he'll stick around now, thinking he's got more of a chance with Dinah. Dinah'll have money of her own, now."

I told him that he maybe had something there.

8: Three-Time Killer

MRS. LARKIN led the parade with Dinah a close second. Then came the butler and the five colored men servants, Mrs. Larkin was crying and waving her hands like she was crazy. Far behind them all I could see was the Countess and her son bringing up the rear.

I said: "Okay now, Sonny! Here comes just about the whole household. And I'll bet not one of the damn' fools thought of bringing anything we can use as a stretcher."

I'd have lost. The butler had a blanket. They had other things, too. A first aid kit — Dinah had thought of that. An ice bag, and whose idea that was I never will know. A beach chair, one of the long ones that you lie down in. A thermos of hot coffee and a quart of whiskey and a quart of rum — Mrs. Larkin said, quite seriously, that "Poor dear Sonny sometimes drinks whiskey and sometimes drinks rum."

They had the first aid kit but I was the only one that knew how to use it. So I used it first on Sonny and then on myself.

I said then: "I don't see Sawyer. How come? Didn't he care if Sonny was lying at death's door?"

Mrs. Larkin said: "Why, he said he'd follow right along. He was going to telephone for a doctor and an ambulance."

I knew then what had happened. My leg was stinging some from the antiseptic, but I could walk on it all right. I'd had a little time, chasing the help away from where Sands was lying in the sand, and I turned that job over to the butler.

I said: "You'll have to help carry the boy back, of course. But I want you to pick the best boy of these and leave him here until the police come. Tell him not to touch a thing. I've got to get back to the house in a hurry."

He said: "Yes, sir."

I told Mrs. Larkin I'd go back to the house and get things ready for Sonny at that end and by that time, of course, the Countess was there, ready to put her oar in.

She said: "Don't let that man leave here, Martha. He shot Sonny— he'll escape."

Sonny wasn't feeling so good by that time but he heard that all right. He said: "Tell that old witch to keep her mouth shut. It was Sands that shot me. He must have lost his mind. He just started shooting at us, and if it hadn't been for Danny, he'd have killed both of us."

Mrs. Larkin said: "Is that right, Mr. Morahan?"

"Why, sure. The first thing I knew Sands started shooting and then Sonny fell and I started to shoot back."

"But I tell you, Martha, that my son and I saw the whole thing. This man here shot Sonny down in cold blood and then turned and started shooting at poor Sands."

Mrs. Larkin looked bewildered, but she wasn't fooling me any on that. She was smarter than she acted and I knew it.

I said: "Well, Sonny would certainly know who shot him, wouldn't he?"

And turned and started back to the house.

WE WERE about a mile and a half up the beach and I never thought I'd make it. It wasn't that my leg was bothering me so much— it was that I was getting the kick-back from the excitement I'd had. And I was worried about Sawyer and whether Costello could catch him before he got clear away.

There was no question in my mind about him having made plans about a getaway, just in case. I thought that was probably the reason he'd worked Sonny up into going along with Sands cm trying to kill me, for that matter. I figured he'd heard about the investigation that was going on and had realized his number was up, and was going to skid out and knew I'd stop him if I was there.

Or at least give the alarm so he'd be stopped. It was the only possible explanation for the attack on me. He had hired Sands, certainly, and he'd talked Sonny into it just as a matter of policy. There was always the chance that Sonny might have been a help to Sands in the job, and Sawyer had nothing to lose in any case.

I got to the house and found nobody there but some colored maids and the cook. Sawyer had cleared out, taking the big car —and he had better than an hour's start on me. I called Costello and told him what had happened and he said he'd be right out.

I said: "To hell with that. Try and stop that damn' Rolls before it gets out of the country."

"I did that before I came out, Morahan. Don't get excited."

"Excited, hell! I've got the answers to every tiling. The kid knew about it, just as I told you he did, and he spilled the works."

"You tell Hickey yet?"

"I'll call him when you hang up."

He hung up and I got the OPA man on the line and told him what had happened. He talked calmly enough but I didn't think he felt that way inside. He said he'd keep in touch with me and with Costello and that for me to take care of myself."

That last crack was the tip-off to how high he was up in the air. I started to tell him what I'd found out from Sonny and he listened a minute and said:

"Good Lord, Morahan! I'll be right out. This is big! Big."

I said I'd wait for him.

And then I sat down and waited for the rescue party to come back with Sonny— and I had a bottle of Scotch and ice and soda right alongside of me. Scotch tastes to me a little like medicine, but I thought that was what I needed.

HICKEY got there right after they brought Sonny back. I'd forgotten all about calling the doctor and the ambulance —but I passed that hurdle by saying that I'd thought Sawyer did. I just had time to tell him what I'd learned from Sonny when Costello steamed up. He told us he'd put out a stop order on the Rolls and that it was just a question of time before it was picked up.

Well and good. It wasn't five minutes later— I wasn't through telling him about the shooting— when he got a call that the Rolls had been found. Up the road at a little station thirty miles away. And that Sawyer had managed to get on one of the refugee trains going North.

They called them refugee trains because they ran them just for people who were stuck in the State. A lot of them had reservations for months ahead but that made no difference— the trains, that is the Pullmans, were jammed full and they had to run these chair cars to take care of the overflow.

Costello said: "Have him pulled off at the next stop. Wire ahead— you've got his description."

I could hear the phone rattle back at him and then he said: "Damn it! Then have them stopped. I can't take a chance of him getting off in between."

He turned to us and said: "There's going to be a hell of a row about this but it's the only thing to do. He tells me the train's jammed full, and that there'll be no chance of picking Sawyer out of it. He looks like any other middle-aged business man come down here for the season and stuck, and that train's full of them."

I asked: "Can they get them to hold a train?"

"For a three-time killer they can, Morahan, believe me. Want to go along— you and I are the only ones that can identify him. It's in the next district— all the boys that were here at the house are on patrol— we're as near as any of them."

I said I wanted to go along, naturally. We piled in Costello's car, and if I thought Sonny was a fast driver— and I did— I found I hadn't seen anything. That State trooper put his foot on the gas, all the way down, and he left it that way from the time we left the house until we pulled into a little whistle stop a hundred and ten miles north. So help me, if that car had wings, we'd have taken off and flown. We made that hundred and ten miles in an hour and fourteen minutes and that's driving, even if he did have the siren to help him with all the traffic and on all cross roads.

He slammed into this little station wide open— his radio had told him where the train had been stopped— and when we got there we found four troopers patrolling outside the train. Boys from this district, that weren't sure what we were looking for but who'd been told that nobody got off there. Costello took one of them with us and the two boys and Hickey and I started through, going down from the head end.

I NEVER saw anything like it. Every seat was full and the aisle was jammed with luggage. The racks overhead were piled so they bulged. There were half a dozen men standing in each vestibule, which should give an idea of how crowded that train was.

We went all the way through and it took half an hour. By that time we "had two conductors with us, and they, the poor devils were going crazy. They were going to complain to the Governor— they were going to lose their jobs or at least their seniority, if they didn't get underway right then and there.

Costello was a pretty sick man by then. He'd held a train— not a good one but still a train that had a schedule to maintain— for an hour and a half and he didn't have a murderer to show for it.

And then I got a brain storm. I said: "Listen, Corporal! There's one place we didn't look."

"I'd like to know where."

I told him and we went back through again.

WE FOUND him in the third car from the back and Costello had to threaten to shoot the lock out of the door before he'd open up. He was in the washroom, of course, all bolted in. He came out, cringing like a pup, and this in spite of us finding two guns where he'd tried to hide them in the fuse box that was stuck in there.

Costello said: "You're under arrest, mister, for murder. Three murders, to be exact."

Hickey said: "And if you should by any chance beat that, the Government wants you for OPA violations. I don't think we'll ever get you, though— murder takes precedence over our charge."

Sawyer didn't deny but part of it. He said: "Three murders. I don't understand."

"Killing Mary O'Day," Costello said.

Sawyer just looked at his feet.

"Killing Amos Larkin."

Sawyer looked at the handcuff that linked him to the State trooper who'd gone through the cars with us.

"And killing a boy named Alderdyce."

Sawyer looked up at that one. He said: "You can't put that one on me, Corporal. Sands did that." And then he turned to me.

"Did you really kill Sands?"

I said I had.

"I don't understand it."

"Why?"

"Sands was supposed to be a good man with a gun."

I laughed at that one.

We took him off the train and loaded him in Costello's car and he didn't have a word to say except just once. And we were half-way back to the house before he said that.

It was: "I suppose Sonny told all he knew?"

I said that Sonny had opened all up.

And that was all.

Sawyer got life and Sonny got a pat on the back from the cops for being an innocent victim of Sands' wild shooting. However, the Larkin family didn't fare so well at that because the Government levied on the dough Larkin had pulled out of the black market and really made it stick.

They still had more than enough left, though. His legitimate business had always been a money-maker and they had better than three million dollars to split between themselves after all taxes were paid.

Of course I didn't know about that until quite a while afterward. I was on a job— Hickey had got me one with the OPA as an investigator— and it just happened they sent me South again. And it just happened I drifted into one of the spots Sonny and I had favored with our trade, during the time of the murders.

This was three months after Sawyer had been tried.

The first thing I heard was somebody bawling out: "I'll buy a drink for the house!"

Sure enough it was Sonny. I went over to his table and met a dirty-looking blond wench I wouldn't have walked down an alley with. Sonny was as drunk as a skunk and looked like hell— but he seemed glad to see me.

I said: "Folks down, too, Sonny?"

"Dinah's married," he said.

"To the Count?"

"Oh hell, no. They arrested those two. Just after we went back North. Some bunco game they'd run on a woman out in Chicago. I haven't heard another thing about them."

"Who'd the kid marry?"

Sonny straightened up and looked proud. "A guy in the Army. And Danny, he was only a private, not even a private first class, and you know what?"

I said: "What?"

"By golly, he's already a second looey. He went to that officer's school and made second looey. And only in a year and a half. We're pretty proud of him, all of us."

This from a black market family. I said: "How's your mother?"

"Mother's fine. She's chairman of the bond drive up in Connecticut. We've got a place up there, too."

"And you?"

He said, and I got another explanation of why he looked so bad. "I'm working here at the Port, Danny. I just got off a seventy-two-hour shift. We're running short-handed and a man's got to put in extra time to keep things moving."

I shook hands with him and was proud to do it.

___________________

Pre-John W. Campbell science fiction from Astounding under the editorship of F. Orlin Tremaine (1899-1956); in 1937 Tremaine was promoted to Editorian Director of Street and Smith Magazines, and hired Campbell succeed him as Editor.

2: Man of Ages

E. F. Ziska

Astounding, Oct 1934

Nothing is known of E. F. Ziska, who produced a tiny number of stories for Astounding in the mid-30s.

IT WAS the year 2150. The advances in transportation enabled men to cross oceans in an hour and travel around the earth in ten. Selective breeding had been extended to the human race ; there were classes of workers, artists, and scientists. Besides the language of their nationalities, men spoke a universal language, similar to Esperanto.

A football game was in progress in the City of New York. A weighted football, weighing nearly ten pounds, was employed, but the seven-foot giants who played handled it with ease. The game was between the Universities of New York and Chicago, and the score stood at 94 to 13, in favor of New York.

This discrepancy did not astonish either the spectators or the news writers, because Johnson was playing on the New York team.

Johnson was the marvel of the world of sports. He had established records at which the world's finest athletes shook their heads in hopeless surrender. A pole vault of twenty-three feet, a broad jump of forty-two feet, a high jump of eight feet and three inches, a mile run in two minutes and twelve seconds— these were some of the records which had left athletes gasping with unbelief.

"Look at that! Look at that!" shouted a sports writer, pointing to the struggle below.

A young man, considerably smaller in stature than the other players, had caught a pass and literally flew across the field. Looks of despair, of baffled determination, spread across the faces of the opposing tacklers who ran to intercept him. He did not try to evade them, but struck them with terrific force and scattered them like so much chaff. Several who somehow had managed to cling to him were dragged along till he had made his touchdown.

"Oh, what's the use," groaned a Chicago rooter, "the man isn't human! New York could let him play the whole damn game alone, and he would still win it."

The game was over. A triumphant New York team carried Johnson from the field on its shoulders. His elevated position gave a good view of him.

He was a young man in his early twenties, and of a complexion so dark that he looked like an Indian, except for his sharply chiseled features. He was smaller by a foot than his teammates and, although of compact build, seemed lithe in comparison to them. Evidently, his exertions told little on him because there were but a few beads of perspiration on his brow, while his bearers were stained with sweat.

Later, in the showers, they playfully slapped his back. There was something hard, unnatural, about his appearance. He looked like a bronze statue come to life. One of the players pinched his biceps.

"Boy," he exclaimed, "I don't know how you got them, but you sure have muscles! And is your skin tough!"

"Yes," agreed Johnson, brushing off the hand with a touch of annoyance. "I know it." He left the room.

The coach looked after him, a puzzled expression on his face. "Oh, well," he muttered, "what if I can't figure him out! He wins the games."

Johnson was an enigma to his fellow students and teachers. He spoke very little, kept himself aloof from social activities— a difficult thing to do in view of his athletic prowess— and offered no information whatever about himself.

He did not specialize in his studies, but took a general course. He seemed quite interested in physics and chemistry, however, and mastered these subjects with phenomenal rapidity. The head of the physics department took a liking to him and prompted him to specialize in this field.

"Johnson," he said, "you have the mind of a thinker. With study, you may some day become an outstanding scientist. You have been called super- human because of your athletic achievements. Your mind is as great as your body. Why not give it a chance?" Eagerly, the professor peered into the young man's face.

The dark face remained immobile. Its black eyes gazed into distant space. Seemingly, they looked through the pro- fessor, forgetting his existence, pondering some hidden thought. They were eyes of age, of wisdom, oddly at variance with the young face.

At last he answered: "Perhaps I may. And now, will you excuse me?" With a short bow he departed, leaving the physicist staring after him.

THIRTY YEARS had passed. Many gray heads, and some bald ones, were sprinkled through a group of men, assembled to celebrate a reunion of Johnson's class at college. Considerable banter passed over the tables and much of it was aimed at him.

"Look at him!'' was the universal comment. "Not a wrinkle, not a gray hair, not an ounce of fat. He's found the philosopher's stone. No! He eats yeast. Sh-sh-sh! He takes an atom with every meal."

Johnson sat there quietly, replying with an occasional witticism, but his smile seemed frozen, mechanical. A shadow of relief appeared on his face when the dinner broke up.

IT WAS the year 2250. Centuries of suppressed hatred had united the Mongolian race to wipe out their former oppressors— the Caucasians.

The air forces of the Caucasians quickly assembled to stay destruction. Already, disintegrating rays had decimated the population of unprotected sections of Europe. Deadly gasses, germ-laden bombs, and streams of liquid fire, made living on the surface impossible and drove noncombatants into subterranean chambers.

The English air fleet maneuvered into attacking position. The immense bat- tle cruisers were surrounded by hundreds of small, projectile-shaped scout ships, capable of incredible speed. They darted ahead, forming an apex.

In the foremost of these sat a dark-complexioned man. His face betrayed neither hatred nor joy of battle. Coolly, he watched the instrument board and scanned the sky at intervals. Tiny specks on the horizon quickly grew into the yellow-and-red-striped planes of the Mongolian fleet. There were thousands upon thousands— the total Mongolian strength amassed to deliver one crush- ing blow.

The battle was on. The American fleet maneuvered to attack one flank of the invaders, while the European fleet shifted to attack the other flank. The clash of forces soon resolved itself into hundreds of miniature battles, groups of planes attacking similar groups, scout plane engaging scout plane in an effort to withdraw protection from the tremendous cruisers, flying slowly, majes- tically, as they dealt destruction.

The yellow flyers were superb in their defiance of death, but, as the scene of the battle spread, pitting airman against airman, the superior training and equipment of the Caucasian forces began to tell. Invisible rays cut melting paths through aircraft, sending them earthward. Planes suddenly dissolved into flaming puffs of smoke. Others miraculously broke in half as if sundered by an imperceptible giant sword. Still others lost equilibrium and direction, plunging downward, even though they seemed untouched.

In far-off London, at the British Air Ministry, a number of uniformed men sat in a room of vast proportions. On one of its walls was shown a sector of the battle by means of a televisionary picture. Brief consultations resulted into laconic orders to a row of men speaking into individual microphones. These orders were transmitted directly to the British battle cruisers and informed them of the developments of the entire battle.

Sector after sector was brought into view, showing the staff the rapid shift- ily of gains and losses. The sector containing what had been the apex of the British fleet was flashed on. The lips of the watching group tightened as they observed the vicious attacks and counterattacks. A cry of admiration was wrung from them.

"My word!" exclaimed a general, sitting bolt upright. "Look at that scout plane!" His finger pointed to a plane which swooped, whirled, and zoomed dizzily as it attacked a Mongolian cruiser.

The men sat spellbound, shaking their heads at the daring displayed by the unknown aviator. Miraculously, he evaded the planes which attempted to block his mad endeavor. His fellow flyers, divining his attentions, engaged these planes, drawing them away from him, one by one. Unmindful of the few enemy planes which trailed him, he made directly for the gigantic ship.

Clumsily, it tried to turn aside, but like a flash of lightning the tiny ship zoomed up and over its top, raking it from pit to tail with a disintegrating ray. A fine line of smoke marked the trail of crumbling metal, but the massiveness of the cruiser and the rapidity with which the ray had passed over it prevented it from being disabled entirely.

Again, the small plane tried to attack it, but several Mongolian planes, noting the plight of the cruiser, came to its assistance. One of them came directly at the British ship with the deliberate intention of colliding with it, but with uncanny skill the Caucasian waited till the last split second, then sharply swerved and passed the other.

The watching group expelled its collective breath with an explosive sound.

Then one of them recovered his power of speech. "There is only one man in the service who has the skill and nerve to do a thing like that," he announced.

"Jones!" exclaimed several officers in unison.

"Yes, Jones," agreed the speaker. "A hero if there ever was one! As young as he is, death seems to mean nothing to him. Sometimes, I'm led to think that he courts it."

"Rather quiet sort of a chap, as I recall him !" interjected another.

"Yes; he doesn't say much. You know, he refused advancement to the staff, said he preferred service in the line. And now— quick! He's got him!" Excitedly, he pointed to the screen.

THE SCOUT PLANE had taken advantage of a hole created by numerous dog fights around the cruiser and now traveled alongside. It was so close that the few unengaged Mongolian scout planes which hovered near by dared not attack. Slowly, it traversed the length of the cruiser, playing its ray over the surface. Then, darting through the yellow-and-red planes, it joined a battle between a number of small planes.

The cruiser suddenly zoomed sky- ward, almost standing on end, appar- ently out of control. Then it crumbled. Large sections of the ship detached themselves; the last remnant plunged downward.

Seemingly, the tiny plane was not satisfied with its signal victory. Taking advantage of the gap in the Mongolian line, it broke through and repeated its harebrained attack on another cruiser which had arrived to close the line. Again it gave a thrilling performance of aerial pyrotechnics. Ten minutes later another cruiser shared the fate of its predecessor.

A spirit of dare-deviltry possessed the Caucasian flyers as they witnessed the feats of their leader. They appeared to have lost all regard for caution or life as they followed him. The viciousness of their attacks confounded the enemies, caused them to falter momentarily. And when, a half hour later, another yellow supercruiser plunged to earth, confusion spread among the Mongolian ranks.

Immediately, the Caucasian forces pressed their technical advantage. The sheer strength of their frontal attack on the wavering line broke through the enemy's center and forced it against its flanks. The disorganized yellow forces fought stubbornly, but the outcome was inevitable. Caught between deadly fire from the wedge which had been driven through its center and the circular seg- ments which hemmed its flanks, the yel- low fleet attempted to save itself from utter annihilation. But its efforts to withdraw in orderly retreat were circumvented, and it fled in a disastrous rout. The Mongolian fleet was shattered.

A young British officer, visibly embarrassed, shook hands with his fellow officers who were ringed about him. His face, naturally dark, was darkened still further by the blood which flushed his cheeks. His protestations, half amused, half annoyed, were unheeded. A babel of congratulations rained on him.

"Well done, Jones You're a blooming hero— Deserve those medals— Let's celebrate— Don't be a bloomin' violet— You've got to come—"

IT WAS the year 2350. A spare, elderly man laid a sheet of paper on top of a mass of notes. He wiped the steam from his glasses and peered near- sightedly at an assembly of medical men. Except for a few nervous coughs, an unnatural silence gripped the scientists. Dr. MacPherson, the speaker, had just revealed the results of his experiments. They offered a seemingly impossible hope— a millenium in the science of medicine.

"My work dares us to expect unbounded possibilities," he resumed, "but in order to realize them there is a price that must be paid. I am convinced that my serum will arrest all diseases caused by bacteria and, before long, eradicate them entirely. Up to the present I have confined my experiments to animals, but now— now I must test my findings on the human body.''

He drew his frail body erect. "I believe you know me well enough to know that I do not lack personal courage. I am too old to be afraid of death. On the other hand, I could probably find some poor devil who would welcome this means of committing suicide. But he could not help me. I must have the cooperation of a scientist who can give me exact descriptions of his reactions, uninfluenced by fear or hysteria. I have given a lifetime to this work. Success is nearly within reach. I cannot die till I have achieved it."

His slender frame trembled visibly with the intensity of his emotions. His eyes flashed, his arms spread with mute appeal. He finished, speaking slowly, in a low, vibrant voice: "It means almost certain death. Who will volunteer?"

The scraping of a chair broke the silence which followed his appeal. A young man, dark-haired, with blade piercing eyes, stood erect. "I am ready !'' he announced. There were no dramatics, no flourishes in his quiet an- nouncement.

The tension broke. Three, four men jumped to their feet. "No! No!" one of them protested, vehemently. "Take me! He is young. He has a full life before him. Take me! I insist on it!"

"And what, please, is wrong with me?" asked another of the volunteers.

"And me?"

Despite the seriousness of the occasion, smiles appeared on the faces of the audience, and there were a few barely suppressed titters.

Doctor MacPherson wiped beads of perspiration from his forehead. He eyed the young man in puzzlement. "The point which Dr. Swanson has raised," he dedded, "seems to be well taken. May I ask why you volunteered, Dr. Smith? You are a young man. You have already made a name for yourself, and I believe you will go far."

The eyes of the entire gathering focused on the youthful candidate for death.

"If I must give a reason for my decision," he replied, "I am willing to do so. However, I must insist on giving you this information in strict privacy. May I suggest that you take the names of the doctors who have volunteered. Then, after you have heard my reason, if you should decide against me, you may choose any one else."

He turned to the standing men. "Does this proposal suit you, gentlemen?"

They accepted with an alacrity which bespoke their apparent relief.

DR. SMITH leaned back comfortably, holding a goblet of wine against the soft light in Dr. MacPherson's study. "To the success of your experiment!" he toasted.

"To its success!" echoed MacPherson.

They sipped thoughtfully. The older man tried to read the other's face, but it was devoid of expression and gave no hint of its owner's feelings.

"How old do you take me to be?" asked Smith suddenly.

"About thirty-five, but—" He hesitated.

"But?" prompted the young man.

"But I have an odd feeling that you are much older."

Smith nodded. "You're right. Physically, I am thirty-three years of age. But, counting years of terrestrial chronology, I am three hundred and eighteen years old."

"Three hundred and eighteen years?" MacPherson sat bolt upright. "That's impossible, man!"

"Improbable, you mean, doctor. Unfortunately, it is true!" Every word was tinged with hopeless weariness. "I have grown tired of this thing called life. I am filled to surfeit with its cruelty, its stupidity, and its suffering." He waved a hand— a forlorn gesture. "Do you wonder that I volunteered for your experiment?"

"But how could you have attained such an age?" interrogated MacPherson.

"I don't know how much of a physicist you are, doctor, and I think I can explain it best with an example. Let us suppose that two men of the same age lived on the earth. Let us further suppose that one of them remained here, while the other— if such a thing were possible— flew through space at a tremendous speed. As his speed increased, so would the inertia of his mass.

"Atomic activity within his body would decrease greatly, and the physiological processes of his body would slow down proportionately. His breathing would be slower, his heart beat less often, in short, he would live much slower. Depending on the speed he traveled, he would age one year while the man on earth aged twenty years, fifty years, or even a hundred. If then our traveler returned to earth after several years, the man who had remained would be fifty or a hundred years old, or more likely be dead and buried. Is that clear so far?"

"Quite! An interesting point in physics, but how is it to be applied to your own case?"

"Not in the same way, of course, but it was applied nevertheless. If it had not been, I would not be here talking to you. And now to my story. My father and mother lived in the twentieth century. He was a physician who spent most of his life doing research work of one kind or another.

"His interest in biometry and a natural bent for physics led him to speculate on the possibilities of prolonging life through means other than those usually adopted by physicians. He attacked his problem by considering the human body as so many atoms, following recognized physical laws. The question in relativity which I expounded to you started him on a line of experiments which at last culminated in me. "If he could reproduce a similar inertia of matter, he could arrest the expenditure of energy and lengthen life far beyond its normal span. But here he struck an almost insurmountable barrier. If through some means he could induce this inertia in a human body during its fetal stage, its period of growth would exceed the life of its mother, and it would be highly problematical if artificial delivery would preserve its life.

"Plainly, he could not attempt his experiment till after the birth of the child. Even if he should succeed, the child might take a century or more to grow to maturity. Who would supervise its upbringing, its education, or defray its living expenses? These considerations quickly caused him to abandon the earlier course of his work."

SMITH took another sip and puffed at his cigar.

MacPherson, who had hung on every word, relaxed and slowly shook his head. "Just think," he remarked, "that millions of people read trashy novels as a sublimation of their uneventful lives when a little study of the sciences would open to them a vast field of astounding interest."

Smith smiled cynically. "My dear doctor," he reproached, "a story such as mine would never fit into their scheme of things. Being beyond the scope of their comprehension, they would undoubtedly jail me or cry for my blood. But I am getting off the track. Well, as I was saying, he found it necessary to proceed along other lines.

"At that time he was the father of three children, my sister, an older brother, and myself. My sister and brother who lived natural lives have been dead many many years. I was one of those children who sometimes happen in the late years of marriage; I was an infant when my brother and sister were already matured. That, I suppose, accounted for the fact that my father conferred his gift on me.

"Believing that matter and radiation could be interchanged— which is not difficult to believe if we think of them as two kinds of waves, one traveling round and round in circles, the other in straight lines— he considered matter as nothing but a sort of greatly compressed radiation, traveling at less than its normal speed. Why should it be impossible to transform the waves which make up the human body, providing, of course, that such a transformation did not disturb bodily functions sufficiently to cause death? As a doctor, you know the revolutionary changes in the study of cytology which his work made necessary. His was a bold step, and no one suspected his reason for it.

"As a result of his investigations he developed an apparatus which he called a wave synchronizer. It would take too long to explain it in detail, and I shall touch only on its fundamentals. It was constructed similar to an X-ray tube, emitting radiation. Through inductance, he harnessed the immense energy of the cosmic ray. He was unfamiliar with the application of this vast store of energy, and his earlier experiments with animals produced surprising results.

"There was the case of the guinea pig which weighed seventy pounds just before its death. There was a chimpanzee which retained its normal weight, but shrank to the size of a cat. There was a dog which almost ruined the laboratory. He could jump its entire length, forty feet, in one leap. And there was a sparrow larger than a full-grown turkey.

"He could translate energy into mass, or vice versa, but was unable to control the physiological reactions of his experiments. All of them proved fatal to the animals long before they attained a normal span of life.

"In the year of 1950, when I was a young man of eighteen— my actual age then— he finally solved this problem. From my infancy till that time he had struggled unceasingly. If he had not been a wealthy man, he could never have carried on. Even so, the construction of the apparatus needed for his work consumed the greater part of his wealth.

"Now came a crucial point in his life. On whom was he to try the final ex- periment ? He was faced with a serious question. If he was right and the ex- periment proved successful, the person who received this almost divine gpft would live long after he was dead. He might well unleash a potential force of horrible evil because he felt certain that this characteristic would be transmitted through heredity. Dare he attempt it?

"Just then a circumstance arose which forced his decision. I was attending college at the time and carried far more work than was good for me. I caught a bad cold. My resistance was low because of overstudy, and I developed double pneumonia. My fever rose rapidly, and father was called. The doctors who attended me frankly expressed their fears. My death was imminent.

"ALL THAT medical science could provide had been done," Smith went on. "In desperation he decided to perform his experiment on me. If it would arrest the fever, I might pull through. There was serious danger in performing it, but there was little hope for me otherwise. The apparatus was transported, and I was subjected to his wave-synchronizer. The fever quickly subsided, but I was in for the battle of my life.

"Although my health improved slowly, I grew thinner from day to day. I was ravenously hungry and ate astonishing quantities of food. With the aid of a dietician, father contrived a diet of highly concentrated foods. I seemed to be in a constant stupor. Through a haze, I could see him approach me, pat my shoulder, and admonish gently, 'Eat, my boy! Eat!'

"It may have been a fantasy born of my illness, but I thought that his eyes held a strange gleam whenever he looked at me. I was too weak, however, to give it much thought.

"I began to feel a little stronger and stopped losing weight. I still ate voraciously; there seemed to be no way to satisfy my ever-present hunger. For several weeks my condition remained stationary, then I started to put on weight. I no longer felt ill, although a feeling of extreme lassitude held me bed-fast. My mind now functioned more clearly, and I noticed with alarm that my rate of breathing was two or three times as slow as it had been before my illness.

"Several doctor friends of my father were dumfounded when they discovered that my heart beat was twelve times a minute. They published numerous accounts of this in medical journals, and I would have been examined a hundred times a day if father had not forbidden it.

"Four months had passed till I reached this stage of recovery. I did not know the reason at the time, but I found that my flesh had become strangely firm— almost like leather— and my skin had darkened till I looked like a desert Arab. A few weeks later, father permitted me to take short walks. I still noticed a feeling of tiredness, but otherwise I felt as well as ever. Just the same, he insisted on giving me a daily treatment with his rays. Claiming that I was not fully recovered, he would not allow me to return to school, but made no objections when I resumed my studies at home.

"I did not know what had happened to me till I made a strange discovery. Although I had observed that I seemed much stronger, I attributed this to my long rest and thought nothing of it. One day, I felt that the chair near my desk was uncomfortable and decided to change it for a morris chair which stood in another part of my room. This chair was of leather, and quite heavy.

"I leaned over to lift it, straining my muscles to support its weight. I was stupefied with surprise when I found myself holding it on a level with my shoulders. I set it down again, refusing to credit my senses. I lifted it again and easily raised it above my head. Something had happened. I rushed out of the room to tell father.

"He bounded to his feet when I told him. 'I have done it! I knew it!' he shouted, with exultation. 'Show me! Come on!'

"I returned to my room and repeated this feat of strength. By this time I realized that I was endowed with super-human strength. Curiously, I lifted piece after piece of furniture until he stopped me.

"Shortly afterward I observed another unbelievable fact. I had weighed about one hundred and eighty pounds before my illness. I knew I had gained in weight because my build had become stockier. One evening, after a bath, I went to the laboratory and ascended the scale. The dial spun dizzily past the two hundred mark and stopped at four hundred and sixty pounds.

"I looked at the figure and shook my head. It could not be. The scale must be wrong. Father was out, and I called my brother to weigh himself. He got on, and the scale stopped at one hundred and sixty-four— his weight. 'What is it?' he asked, curiously, noting the strained expression on my face. Right then I knew that I dared not tell. 'Nothing,' I replied. 'I just thought the scale was wrong.'

"Before I returned to school, father took me into his study. He looked serious. 'James,' he said, 'I must give you a warning. Through my treatment you have acquired physical characteristics possessed by no other human being. Human nature is strange. It resents the unfamiliar. History is replete with cases of persecution of individuals who dared to stray from familiar paths. You are young and have not yet learned these unfortunate facts. Please follow my advice and don't show that you are different. It will save you many a heartache.'

"I sensed the truth of his advice £md promised him to follow it. Yoirth is headstrong and impetuous. You have no idea what it meant to me not to display my prowess. Even though I easily broke all athletic records, I never really extended myself. If I had, life would soon have been unbearable. Nevertheness, I gradually became the target of malicious envy."

MacPHERSON'S thoughts returned to the land of reality. "It is well that I have scientific training, otherwise I, too, would scoff. However, I am also human. May I— do you mind if I feel your biceps?"

Smith smiled with understanding. "Not at all!" he agreed. He leaned forward, flexing his arm. "Feel!" he invited.

MacPherson's fingers tightened over the other's arm. Disbelief spread over his features as he felt the muscles. Truly, they might be designated as muscles of steel. They were smooth and hard, resisting pressure with the density of a metal.

"I still did not know," continued Smith, "what my state really meant. I merely thought I was extremely strong, but, apart from that, no different from any one else. In fact, I did not know till a few years later when my father told me on his deathbed. He had meant well, but never realized that his gift might become a curse.

"Like the Wandering Jew, I have traveled over this earth, knowing no peace, finding no rest. I have never known the blessings of love, fearful of transmitting my fate. I could not stay in any community over twenty or thirty years, lest my secret should be revealed. Can you imagine the natural revulsion fostered in the heart of a normal person who would see me, year in, year out, never changing, eternally young? Could he think me else but an inhuman monster?"

"You are overwrought, my boy!" counseled the older man.

"My boy!" repeated Smith with a bitter laugh. "Even you make the same error. I am eight or nine times as old as you, and you say 'My boy!' Several times I tried to terminate my existence, but father did his work too well. It would be a horrible death, indeed, which would destroy me. Your experiment is one way out. Won't you grant me that favor? I am tired, utterly tired."

"But my experiment may not prove fatal," expostulated MacPherson.

"Frankly, how much chance do you think the average person would, have of surviving it?"

"Very little!" admitted the scientist grimly.

"Another thing!" pleaded Smith. "I could withstand the dangers of it much better. I would survive longer, and you would have a better opportunity of studying my reactions. Think of how much that would help you!"

MacPherson pondered. He raised his head with sudden dedsion. "All right!" he agreed. "I will take you."

A WEEK later Smith submitted to the experiment. Surrounded by doctors and scientists, MacPherson adminis- tered the first injection of his serum. The watchers observed Smith narrowly. Were they mistaken or did they detect a faint smile of happiness on his face? They could not be sure ; it was too fleet- ing.

Smith's temperature rose to an alarming degree. He babbled deliriously of happenings which had occurred a century, two centuries ago. He directed a squadron of flyers during the Caucasian-Mongolian war. He performed amazing feats of athletics and contributed valuable data to science.

"Fever!" declared the attending corps of doctors.

MacPherson's eyes narrowed, but he remained silent.

The second and last injection was about to be given. "We do not believe he will survive it," stated the physicians. "He is in grave danger now."

MacPherson thought of Smith's desperate pleas. He thought of the work to which he had devoted his life. He thought of the blessing to humanity it promised, if he should be successful. His lips drew into a straight line.

"I must!" he announced. The second injection was given.

For two weeks Smith hovered between death and life. His resistance was incredible. The doctors visited him, examined him, and shook their heads. MacPherson stood by, torn with conflicting emotions. He dared not confide in any one, and the struggle within his soul tortured him.

The crisis passed. Smith lived. He recuperated with a rapidity which left the physicians doubting their knowledge. MacPherson frankly admitted that he had erred and that his serum would have killed anyone else. But— his eyes blazed with the intensity of a fanatic— he would keep on. He would succeed yet.

They faced each other, their hands clasped in parting. "Why are you going?" asked MacPherson.

"I must go!" answered Smith. "I had thought— I had hoped— oh, well, it was not to be. And so I shall go on— and on. Good-by!"

"Good-by!" said MacPherson. He hesitated, then added: "My boy!"

There was a suspicious glint in his eyes.

____________________

3: Sea-Tiger

Henry S. Whitehead

1882-1932

Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror Oct 1932

ARTHUR HEWITT'S first intimation of the terrific storm which struck the Barbadian off Hatteras, en route for the West Indies, was a crash which awakened him out of uneasy sleep in the narrow berth of his cabin. When he staggered up to the saloon-deck the next morning after an extremely uncomfortable, sleepless night, he looked out of the ports upon a sea which transcended anything he had ever seen. The Barbadian, heeling and hanging, wallowed in the trough of cross seas which wrenched her lofty bridge-deck.

A steward, who was having a rather difficult time keeping his feet, fetched him a sandwich and a cup of coffee. In a little while two other passengers appeared for breakfast: one a British salesman, and the other an American ship's officer, out of a professional berth and going to Antigua to help take off a sugar crop. The three men, warmed now by the coffee and the comfortable security of the lounge, snored and chattered intimately.

Nevertheless, a sinister foreboding seemed to hang over them. At last Matthews, the American, voiced it plainly:

'I hope she'll make St Thomas! Well— I've always heard that Captain Baird knows his business; a good sailorman, they say.'

'Do you think there'll be any let-up when we get into the Gulf Stream?' This was the Englishman, breaking a long, dreary silence.

'More likely a let-down, I'd say,' replied the pessimistic Matthews. 'She'll be worse, if anything, in my judgment.'

This gloomy prediction justified itself the following morning. The Barbadian had entered the Gulf Stream, and the malevolent fury of the sea increased with daylight. Hewitt came on deck, and, leaning against the jamb of a partly opened hatch on the protected leeside, looked out upon a world of heaving gray-green water with that feeling of awe which the sea in all its many moods invariably awakened in him. A gust of wind caught his unbuttoned coat, and out of a pocket and onto the wet, heaving deck slid the morocco-bound Testament which his mother had given him years before.

He stepped out through the hatchway, cautiously, making his way precariously across the deck to where it lay caught in the metal scupper. He arrived safely against the rail, which he gripped firmly with one hand, while he stooped to recover the book with the other. As he bent forward the tail-end of an enormous overtopping wave which had caught the vessel under her weather-quarter, caught him and raised his body like a feather over the rail's top.

But Hewitt was not cast into the sea. With a frantic, instinctive movement, he clung to the rail as his body struck violently against the ship's side.

With the Barbadian's righting herself he found himself hanging on like grim death, his body dangling perilously over the angry waters, the Testament clutched firmly in his other hand.

He attempted to set his feet against one of the lower railings, to hook his legs about a stanchion. He almost succeeded, and would doubtless have been back upon the deck in safety had not the crest of the following wave dislodged his one-hand hold on the rail. The angry sea took him to itself, while the laboring ship, bounding into the teeth of the gale, bore on, all unconcerned over his sudden, unceremonious departure.

The incidents of Hewitt's life marched through his consciousness with an incredible rapidity. He remembered his mother poignantly— his mother dead these eight years— and a salt tear mingled with the vast saltiness of this cold, inhospitable ocean which had taken him to its disastrous embrace.

Down and down into the watery inferno he sank, weighted down with his winter boots and heavy overcoat. Strangely enough, he was not afraid, but he responded to the major mechanical impulses of a drowning man— the rigid holding of his breath, the desperate attempts to keep his head toward the surface so as to stay the sinking process, the well-nigh mechanical prayer to God.

His lungs were bursting, it seemed! Hot pain seared him, the red pain of unendurable pressures. He must resist as long as he had consciousness. He clamped his jaws desperately together.

It was calm down here, and dark! Here was no trace of the raging tempest on the surface, that tumultuous surface of lashed fury. The water seemed constantly heavier, more opaque, a vast, pervading indigo.

The pain and the burning pressure were gone now. He seemed no longer to sink. Nor did he rise, apparently. Probably he could not exhale his breath now if he wanted to. Well, he did not want to. It was no longer cold. Here was a world of calm, of perfect peace. Drowning is an easy death, after all...

He hoped the Barbadian would make St Thomas...

His last conscious sensation was of a gentle sinking through a vast, imponderable blueness, which seemed pervading the universe, a restful blueness to which one could yield readily. He relaxed, let himself go, with no desire to struggle. He sank and sank, it seemed...

He lay now upon a beach, his chin propped in his cupped hands, his elbows deep in the warm sand. It was from this warmth that he derived his first conscious sensation. A soft sea-wind, invigorating from its long contact with illimitable expanses of tropic seas, blew freshly. He felt very weary, and, it seemed, he had newly awakened out of a very protracted sleep. He turned his head at some slight sound and looked into the face of a girl who lay on the sand beside him.

He realized, as the march of events passed through his mind, that he must have gone through the gate of death. This, then, was that next world of which he had heard vaguely, all his life long. It was puzzling, somewhat. He was dead. He knew he must be dead. Do the dead lie on tropical beaches, under faint moonlight, and think, and feel this fresh wind from the sea? The dead, surely, do not dream. Perhaps they do dream. He had no knowledge, no experience, of course. He had read tales of after-death. Most of them, he remembered, revealed the surprise of the hero at the unexpectedness of his surroundings.

The girl touched him gently on the shoulder, and her hand was unbelievably cool and soothing. As he turned and looked at her in a kind of terror, the faint moonlight abruptly faded. Then the rim of the sun broke, red and sharp, like a blazing scimitar blade, across the horizon. The leaves of many trees stirred, welcoming the tropic day. Little monkeys swung and chattered overhead. A great flaming macaw sped, arrow-like, across the scope of his vision. The girl spoke to him: 'We must be gone to the sea.'

The girl moved delicately towards the place where, near at hand, the turquoise sea lapped softly against weed-strewn boulders and freshly gleaming white sand. As he, too, induced by some compelling impulse beyond the scope of his understanding, moved instinctively to seek the refuge of the sea, he saw his companion clearly for the first time. Stupefied, incredulous, he glanced down at his own body, and saw, glistening, iridescent in the new light of fresh dawn, a great flashing, gleaming tail like that of some fabled, stupendous denizen of enchanted deeps. Then, his wonderment losing itself in a great exultation, he followed his mermaid into the shining, welcoming waters...

ON AN EARLY AFTERNOON— for the sun was high in the heavens— he emerged from the sea into the shallows of that sandy beach where he had awakened to amphibian existence seemingly ages ago. Slowly, painfully, he dragged himself up on the warm sand. He was very weary, for he had finished an enormous swim, away from the scene of a fearful combat which he had waged with a now dimly remembered monster of the great deeps of the warm sea. His companion, who, during these long, dimly remembered eras, had been dear to him, was gone. She had succumbed in the direful struggle with the sea-beast. His heartache transcended the immediate painfulness and fatigue of his bruised and weary body.

He had had his vengeance, though. Beside her body lay that of the seabeast, crustaceous, horrible, slain by him after a titanic struggle, mangled in the imponderable ooze...

He rested at last, prone upon the yielding, sun-soaked sand. The insistent light of the glaring sun troubled him, and he moved impatiently. A vague murmur, too, was disturbingly apparent. He decided, wearily, to shift his position to the nearby shade of a palm grove. He turned over, slowly, painfully.

Then the light from the sun smote his eyes, attuned to the cool dimness of the sea-deeps, and as he moved towards the palms he raised a hand to his brow. That disquieting murmur took form abruptly, became intelligible. It seemed, somehow, to take on the familiarity of a remembered human voice. He lowered his hand, puzzled, disturbed, and found himself looking at an electric-light bulb. In its light he saw three men sitting on a leather sofa. He rose on his elbow, still painfully, for he was very weary after that dire combat, and peered at them. He now fixed his dazed stare on Matthews, who was in the middle of the row, and mumbled some incoherent words. The man seated at the end of the sofa rose hastily, and came towards him. He saw that it was Hegeman, the Barbadian's doctor.

'Back awake, eh?' It was Hegeman's cheerful voice. The doctor placed a hand on Hewitt's pulse. 'You'll do,' he announced confidently.

Matthews was standing beside the doctor. Over Matthews's shoulder Hewitt could see, peering, the spectacled face of the salesman. Matthews was speaking.

'We were through the Gulf Stream a day ago, and the sun's out. It was a narrow squeak! Old Baird should have the Board of Trade medal for getting you. Thought you'd never come up!'

'A bit battered but right as rain, what!' The Englishman had added his word of cheer.

'You'll be on your pins in a day or two,' said the doctor. 'Keep still for the present.' Hewitt nodded. He did not want to talk. He had too much to get settled in his mind. Those experiences! Or what seemed to be experiences, the chimeras of the unconscious mind.

'One of the stewards saw you go,' added Hegeman. 'Two of your teeth are chipped, where you clamped your jaws to hold your breath. Plucky thing to do. It saved your life.

Hewitt held out a heavy hand. The doctor took it and placed it gently by his side. 'Go back to sleep,' he ordered, and the three filed out.

During the remainder of the voyage Hewitt slowly recovered from the severe shock of his long immersion in wintry seawater. He was chiefly occupied though, with the strange history of his experience, which continued to stand out quite sharply in his mind. He could not shake off the notion that it had been, somehow, a real experience. Why— he could remember the details of day after day of it. He seemed to have acquired some unique knowledge of the ways of the sea's great deeps: the barely luminous darkness of animal phosphorescence; the strange monsters; the incredible cold of that world of pressure and dead ooze; the effortless motion through the water; the strange grottoes; above all, the eery austere companionship of the mer-woman and the final dreadful battle.... His mind was filled to overflowing with intimate details of what seemed a long, definite, regulated, amphibian life, actually lived!

There remained, permanently, even after the process of time had done its work in rendering most of the details indistinct in his mind, the desire for the sea: the overwhelming urge to go into, under, the water; to swim for incalculable distances; to lie on dim, sandy depths, the light, blue and faint, from above, among the swarming, glowing, harmless parrot-fish. And, deeper than all, in this persistent urge of consciousness, was the half-buried, basic desire to rive and tear and rend— a curious, almost inexplicable, persistent set of wholly new instincts, which disturbed his mind when he allowed himself to dwell on them. He looked forward to the first swim in the Carribean, after landing at his port, St Croix, in the Virgin Islands.

Fully restored to his ordinary physical vigor, he joined a swimming party on the afternoon following his arrival in Frederiksted. There had been rumors of sharks, but his hosts hastened to reassure their guests. No! Sharks were virtually negligible, anyhow. Sharks were cowardly creatures, easily frightened away from any group of swimmers. If it were a barracuda, now— that would be quite another matter. Over in Porto Rico, so report had it, there had been a case of a barracuda attacking an American school-teacher. Terribly injured— permanently, it was said. Months in the hospital, poor fellow.

But, barracuda rarely troubled the bathing beaches. Occasionally, yes, one would take the bait of one of the Negro fishermen, far out in their little boats, and then the fisherman, if he were agile, would cut his line and row, gray-faced, inshore, perhaps not to venture out again for days. They were the sea-tigers, the barracudas.

Their attack was a fiendish thing. With its eighteen-inch jaw, and its rows of rip-saw teeth, it would charge, and charge again, tearing its helpless victim to ribbons, stripping flesh from bones with relentless avidity. There was no escape, it seemed, once those lightning rushes had begun. They came in such rapid succession that unless the victim were almost on shore there was no escape. Yes, a kind Providence save us from a barracuda!

The party, a gay one, entered the water under the declining afternoon sun. The beach here shelved steeply, four or five steps being quite enough to reach swimming depth. The water was so clear, over its white, sandy bottom, that a swimmer, floating face downward, could see bottom clearly, and count the little parrot-fish, like flashing sunbeams, as they sported about, apparently near enough to be gathered up by extending the hand; a curious, amusing delusion.

Hewitt swam easily, lazily, revelling with satisfaction in the stimulating clear water which in these latitudes is like a sustained caress to the body.

He had never felt so much at ease in the water before. It seemed, however, quite natural to him now. It fitted, precisely, into what had grown to be his expectations during the past few days on the ship. It was as though latent, untried powers deep within him had been stimulated and released by the strange, mental experience he had undergone during those few hours of his unconsciousness. He dived deeply, and all the processes involved— the holding of the breath, the adjustment of muscular actions and reactions, the motions of underwater swimming— were as natural and effortless as though he had been, he told himself musingly, really amphibious.

Unnoticed by him, the remainder of the swimming party, only about half of whom he had met, retired to the beach and spread themselves in little sociable groups along the sandy edge. A few lingered in the shallows.

He was floating on his back, the little waves of that calm sea lapping against his cheeks, when he heard faintly the terrified, cutting scream of a girl. He treaded water, and looked towards the beach, where he saw the various members of the large party rushing towards a young girl whom he had not especially noticed before. The girl was one of those who had remained in the shallows, and as he looked he saw many hands extended towards her, and drawing her upon the sand, and he saw, too, a pinkish froth of fresh blood about the place from which she had emerged.

Something seemed to snap inside his brain. That terrible, atavistic, inexplicable sense of combat, the desire to rend and tear suffused him. In the grip of this strange, primitive, savage urge, he turned abruptly and dived straight down to where a flickering gray shadow passed; to where an enormous barracuda slowed to turn for its lightning rush at its second victim. Hewitt sped down like a plummet, exulting...

A moment later the attention of the group on the beach was distracted from the young girl whose foot had been cruelly gashed by the sea-tiger's teeth, to a seething, foaming, writhing thing that rose from the calm surface of the sea a hundred feet out from the beach, struggled furiously on the lashed surface for a few seconds, and then as abruptly disappeared in a tortured mass of foam. A sunburned young Navy doctor went on binding up the girl's foot, but the rest, wonder-stricken, silent, scanned the surface eagerly for another glimpse of this strange, titanic combat. 'What is it?' 'What can it be?' The questions ran from mouth to mouth.

The barracuda rose again, this time within twenty feet of the beach, and Hewitt lay locked along the steel-gray back, his hands closed in a vise-like grip about the terrible jaws, his tensed muscles corded with the fearful strain. Over and over, sidewise, backwards, forward, moved fish and man as one, locked together in dives and turns and dashes so swift as to baffle the gaping eyes of the amazed onlookers, standing now in a wondering, intrigued row upon the edge of the sand. And always, with great, powerful lunges of feet and sweeps of elbows and hands and knees, now above, now beneath, but ever unrelaxed in that deadly grip, on the frothing surface or in the quiet depths, Hewitt forced his demon antagonist towards the beach.

In the course of their fourth emergence, the two, rolling over and over upon the bottom sand of the shore shallows, shot out upon the beach, and Hewitt, finding his feet, with a great wrench, raised the sea-tiger in his hands and with a great sweeping motion which bent the iron-like head and its cruel jaws towards the rigid, mackerel-like tail, cracked the giant killer's backbone, and flung the barracuda down on the sand where it lay, crushed and broken, writhing out its life in convulsive leaps.

Hewitt took several deep, restoring breaths, and the killing-lust passed from him, the strange urge satisfied by his successful struggle. The members of the swimming party slowly gathered about him. There was, it appeared, nothing much to say. One of the men cautiously rolled over the crushed barracuda with a tentative foot. Hewitt raised his eyes and looked towards the young girl, who was now standing lightly on the bandaged foot, supported by the Navy doctor.

She looked back at Hewitt, and there was a great wonder in her sea-blue eyes. The fresh wind moved her coppery hair, now released from the rubber bathing-cap.

Oblivious of the chorus of admiration and bewilderment of the rest of the swimming party, Hewitt gazed at her, awed, overcome, feeling suddenly weak. For— wonder of wonders!— leaning on the arm of the solicitous young doctor, there stood before him the perfect embodiment of his sea-companion, that strange, alluring product of his recent subconscious experience, his extraordinary dream.

He drew several long breaths, to steady himself. Now the remarks of the swimmers began to break through his dazed consciousness, and he came to himself. He stepped towards the injured girl, fumbling in his rapidly clearing mind for some suitable expression of sympathy...

Abruptly the members of the swimming party fell silent, realizing that they stood here in the presence of some inexplicable drama; of something subtle and vague, but something unmistakably finished, appropriate.

'I hope you were not hurt very badly,' was all that Hewitt could manage.

The girl answered him not a word but looked steadily into his face, and Hewitt knew that here was the beginning of his real life.

________________

"The Colonel" tells another tall tale...

4: The St. Bernard Myth

W. L. Alden

1837-1908

The Idler, Jan 1893

SOME ONE had told a dog story showing the miraculous intelligence and profound piety of a French poodle. The Colonel listened with an incredulous smile on his grim face. When the story was ended and we had all expressed our surprise and admiration, as is the custom when dog stories are told, and had carefully suppressed our conviction that the man who told the story was as impudent as he was mendacious as is also the custom on these occasions I asked the Colonel to favor us with his views in regard to canine sagacity.

"There are dogs that show signs of good sense now and then, " he replied. "Even human beings do that occasionally. But as to these yarns about dogs who calculate eclipses and have conscientious objections to chasing cats on Sunday, I don't believe a word of them. Talk about fish stories! Why, there isn't a fish caught or uncaught that can begin to stimulate the imagination to the extent that a dog will stimulate it. I have known fishermen who could convert two minnows into a string of thirty trout, averaging two pounds each, and I have seen these men slink away crestfallen before a man who told stories of what his fox terrier had done the day before. What I don't understand is why people pretend to believe dog stories. We all know that the dog is a well meaning, stupid, parish vestry sort of an animal, but we listen to the thumpers that some men tell about him without even a cough.

"Look at the lies that have been told for the last hundred years about the St. Bernard dogs! People really believe that when a snowstorm comes on the St. Bernard dog goes out with a blanket, a flask of whiskey, a spirit lamp, a box of matches, some mustard plasters, and a foot bath strapped on his back. When he meets a frozen traveler we are told that he sits down and lights his spirit lamp, mixes some hot whiskey and pours it down the traveler's throat, gives him a hot foot bath, puts mustard plasters on the soles of his feet, rubs him down and wraps him up in the blanket, and then hoists him on his back and brings him to the convent, where the monks put him to bed and read prayers to him till he feels strong enough to put some money in the contribution box and to continue his journey. Now, I've been to the St. Bernard Convent. I went there just to meet one of these dogs and see for myself what he could do. There was a pack of about forty of them, but the only thing they did was to sit up all night and bark at the moon, while the monks shied prayer books and wooden sandals at them out of the windows. I wanted to see a few travelers rescued from the snow, but the monks said the supply of travelers had been running low of late years; still, they added, if I'd go and sleep in a snowbank a mile or two from the convent, they would see what could be done. I wasn't going to risk the forfeiture of my life insurance policy by any such foolishness as that, so I came away without seeing any dog performance. However, I saw enough, a little later on, to convince me that the St. Bernard dog is about the biggest kind of canine fool that ever imposed on credulous people.

"The monks had a whole pen full of genuine St. Bernard puppies, and I bought one. I am ashamed to tell you how much I paid for it. I could hire an army mule to kick me every time I think of the transaction. I took the puppy to the States with me I was living at New Berlinopolisville, in the State of Iowa, at the time and brought him up as carefully as if he had been my own son. He grew to be a big, rough haired dog one of the biggest I ever saw. And I can't say that the monks cheated me in respect to his breed. Of course it was all a matter of luck that he didn't turn out to be a poodle or a black and tan terrier. The fact is that no man or monk knows what one of those pure blooded St. Bernard pups that are sold at the convent will turn out to be when he gets his growth. He is liable to be anything in the line of dog, from a yellow cur up to a Siberian bloodhound. I once knew a man who bought a St. Bernard pup from one of the very holiest of the entire gang of monks, and that puppy grew up to be a red fox. But you all know of the St. Bernard puppy lottery, and I won't take up your time commenting on it.

"The monks told me that the puppy would not need the least training. His instinct was so wonderful that the moment he should catch a glimpse of snow on the ground he would rush off to rescue travelers. 'You just load him up with blankets and things,' said the monk, 'and send him out in the snow, and he'll rescue travelers till you can't rest.' The dog was nearly a year old before I had a chance to try his powers, but one November we had a regular blizzard, and when the snow quit falling it was at least two feet deep on a level, not to speak of the drifts.

"After breakfast I tied a whiskey flask around the dog's neck and put a blanket on his back, and told him to go out and begin his blessed work of mercy. I was alone in the house at the time, for my wife had gone on a visit to her mother and the cook had got herself arrested for being drunk and disorderly, so there was no one to make any objection to my use of one of my wife's best blankets. The dog barked with delight when he saw the snow, and rolled in it for a few moments just so as to get the blanket good and wet, and then he started down the street at a gallop. I lived something more than a mile from the village, and there were no houses nearer than half a mile, and as the dog took the road leading away from the village, I did not think that he would stand much chance of picking up any travelers. He didn't return until noon, and then he didn't bring anybody home on his back. He did, however, bring six tramps with him, three of whom were pretty drunk, they having drank all the whiskey in the flask. The other three said that the dog had promised them a drink if they would follow him, and they hoped that I would be as good as the dog's word. As I wasn't armed, and as the tramps carried big sticks and evidently meant business, I judged it best to sustain the dog's character for veracity and get rid of them peaceably. They went away after wrestling with a pint of good whiskey, and all the time that idiotic dog was wagging his tail as if he deserved the Humane Society's medal, instead of deserving a thrashing for trying to rescue tramps when Nature had taken the trouble to furnish a blizzard expressly to thin them out.

"I explained to the dog with my riding whip the view that he must take of tramps in the future, and then I sent him out again, after filling up his whiskey flask and giving him another blanket in the place of the one that the tramps had stolen. I told him that in future I should prefer to have him rescue women and children, especially the latter, and that if he found a frozen male traveler he had better confine himself to giving information to the police, instead of lavishing whiskey on possibly undeserving people. He went off, somewhat humbled, but still in excellent spirits, and in a short time rushed up my front steps, dropped something on the doormat, and rushed off again. At first I thought that the idiot had been rescuing somebody's linen that had been hung out to dry, but when the linen began to make remarks in a loud voice, I found that it was a particularly lively baby.

"Of course I couldn't let the little innocent lie and freeze on my doorstep, so I brought it into the house and did my best to quiet it. As I had never had much experience with babies, I found myself in a pretty tight place. I had no milk to give the baby, so I mixed a little flour and water till it looked like milk and got a little of it down the baby's throat. Then I shook it on my knee till it dropped asleep. I put it in my bed, intending to go out and find some woman who would come and attend to it, when I heard the dog barking, and on opening the front door saw his tail disappearing down the street, and saw that he had left another infant on the doormat.

"The first baby was a saint in comparison with this one, which was a sort of infantile tramp in appearance and was as noisy as it was dirty. It would not have anything to do with the flour and water, and though I shook it on my knee till I must have loosened all its organs, it refused to go to sleep. So I finally gave it a rubber overshoe to bite on, and put it in a bureau drawer in the spare room and told it to howl its head off if it felt that such was its duty toward mankind. Then I started a second time to search for a woman, and I nearly fell over a third baby on the doorstep. That infernal dog had brought it while I was struggling with the infantile tramp, and he was now off searching for more infants. I wrapped this one up in a blanket and sat down on the doorstep with it, resolved to wait till that dog came back and to lock him up till I could get enough babies off my hands to give me a chance to kill him. I was bound not to miss him, for if I did he would probably keep on till he had brought me all the babies in the county. This baby was the best of the lot, for it slept in my arms without saying a word or expressing the slightest desire to be shaken. In about twenty minutes the dog reappeared with another invoice of babies. This time he brought a brace of twins, as nearly as I could judge, but it was his last exploit that day. I got him by the collar before he could start out again and locked him up in the cellar. The babies I put in a heap in a big clothes basket that they could not climb out of, and left them to have a crying match for the championship till I could find a nurse.

"I didn't have as much trouble in that matter as I had anticipated, for before I could get out of the house some one rang the front door bell and pounded and yelled as if it was a matter of life and death that the door should be opened instantly. I opened it, and there was a woman who called me every name she could lay her tongue to, and wanted me to give her back her baby instantly. I showed her the babies and told her to take her choice. In fact, I begged her to take away the whole lot, but she said I was worse than a murderer, and after selecting one of the least desirable of the babies, she rushed off with it, promising to send me a policeman immediately. I had never expressed the least desire to see a policeman, but such is female gratitude! I had offered that woman five babies, free, gratis, and for nothing, and instead of being grateful she wanted to get me into trouble.

"I had still four babies on my hands, and as they were now all awake and making all the noise they knew how to make, I put them all in the clothes basket together, so they could enjoy one another's society. It wasn't a bad plan, and I recommend it to any mother with a noisy pair of twins, as it is certain to reduce the noise by one-half. Two of my babies were so occupied with putting their fingers in the other babies' eyes and in investigating their hair that they had no time to cry. I admit that the two who were undergoing investigation did their best to make a riot, but even then there was only half as much noise as there would have been had the other two joined the concert.

"I thought it so probable that the mother who had visited me was only the first of a procession of mothers, that I gave up the idea of going out to look for a nurse, and stayed at home to receive the mothers politely. It was not long before one presented herself. She was an Irishwoman and the only sensible one of the lot. When she saw that her baby was safe and contented and had a good grip on the hair of a black eyed baby, she sat down and laughed, and said that she never saw anything so sweet before. According to her account, she lived about a mile from my house, and she was standing at her front door looking at the landscape, when the dog bounded in, caught up the baby out of the cradle, and carried it off. At first she thought the dog was the devil, but presently she remembered that the devil's time was too much occupied with Irish affairs to permit him to steal babies in Iowa, so she followed the dog as rapidly as she could make her way through the snow. She tracked him by the prints of his paws until she came to my door, and instead of calling me a kidnapper and talking about the police, she was full of pity for me, and volunteered to stay and take care of the whole menagerie until the last of the babies should be called for and taken away.

"The remaining mothers arrived in the course of an hour. I locked myself in the top of the house and left the Irishwoman to explain things. As I afterward learned, the intelligent dog had knocked two women down in the street and stolen their babies out of their arms, and had also broken into two houses, in the last one of which he had bagged his brace of twins. All the mothers, except the Irishwoman, were as unreasonable as they could possibly be. They insisted that I deliberately trained dogs to steal babies, and they had no doubt that my object in stealing them was to vivisect them. As for the dog, they were convinced that he was mad and that their babies would be sure to die of hydrophobia. Two of the women brought their husbands with them, who asked to see me, explaining that they desired to blow my head off. The Irishwoman nobly lied to them, telling them that she had driven me out of the house with a club, and that I was on my way to Chicago and far out of reach. The mothers and their husbands went away at last, and as soon as it was dark I stole out of the back door and took the first train for St. Paul. I didn't show myself in New Berlinopolisville for the next year.

"What became of the dog? Oh! I forgot to say that the Irishwoman promised to take care of him and to cure him of his passion for babies. I am sorry to say that she did not succeed. She kept him tied up for six weeks, but one day he broke loose and captured a baby out of a baby wagon in the park. But the baby's father happened to be with it, and he was one of the best pistol shots in town, having been a judge of the Montana Supreme Court. He got the drop on the dog before the beast had gone ten feet away with the baby, and though they afterward had to pry the dog's jaws open in order to get the baby loose, no harm was done to the latter. I settled all the lawsuits without letting them go to trial, although it cost me considerable, and I finally judged it best to remove to another State.

"Now, I suppose that some one will be enough of an idiot to repeat this story with variations as a proof of the wonderful intelligence of the St. Bernard dog. If it is intelligence that leads a dog to steal other people's babies and dump them on a respectable man, I'd like to see what idiocy would do for such a dog. No, sir! depend upon it, the stories about St. Bernard dogs are invented by the monks after stimulating their minds by reading the 'Lives of the Saints' and by going trout fishing. Probably the monks have gradually brought themselves to believe most of the stories. They look like a credulous set of people, and I should rather like to try them with a good American political speech, full of campaign statistics, and see if they could believe it. I shouldn't be in the least surprised if they could."

_____________________

5: Straight Griggs

Stacy Aumonier

1877-1928

Chronicle (Adelaide) 13 April 1929

THERE WAS no doubt but that the meeting of the parents had been a great success. During their seven years of married life Alec and Barbara Griggs often discussed the regrettable fatality that when his parents came over on a visit from America to stay with them, her parents always happened to be abroad. In a way it is not surprising, because although old Mr. and Mrs. John Griggs were pretty methodical and punctilious in their way of going on, and always gave plenty of notice of an intending visit, Barbara's father, Colonel Whetstone, was one of these restless old gentlemen with a passion for travel, and his wife shared this enthusiasm. In spite of his seventy-two years he was erect and agile, and if he once got the "go fever," go he must, despite any arrangements that might have been made.

But at last it had come off. Old Mr. and Mrs. Griggs had come from Florida to spend a couple of months, and Colonel and Mrs. Whetstone were at home at their house across the valley. The month was August and the visit coincided with that unusual English experience— a heat wave. The weather was indeed glorious. During the day Barbara was fairly occupied with her three children, and Alec motored in to Tellinghurst, where he managed the "South Downs Agricultural Implements Ltd." Consequently the parents were thrown very much together.

At first Barbara was in a fever of apprehension. One never knew who was going to get on with whom, did one? But her mind was soon set at rest. Mrs. Griggs and Mrs. Whetstone, drawn together instinctively by the adoration of their children and grandchildren, were soon immersed in each other's company, whilst the two men struck up an immediate intimacy. Both had travelled and knocked about the world, and sitting side by side in the shade during the day, or on the verandah at night, these two, the Colonel, with his pipe, and John Griggs, with an endless procession of formidable-looking black cigars, would yarn and discuss world affairs all day, and half through the night (if they were allowed to by their women folk).

Barbara was delighted. The whole thing was a great success. Alec's position at the Agricultural Implement Works was a good one and the firm was prospering, but neither he nor his wife made any pretence to their neighbours that it was his income which supported and sustained "Guestling," one of the most beautiful houses in the whole of the Sussex Weald. High up, but protected on the north and east by a thick belt of pine trees, it faced south, with a glorious view right down the Tellinghurst valley towards the sea. It had been a farmhouse in a very dilapidated condition when the Griggs bought it, but had been restored and enlarged by Lutyens. It showed that scholarly reverence for tradition, combined with the happy application of material, breadth, airiness, comfort and fine proportion which one associates with that eminent architect.

It had a sunk rose garden, a Dutch garden, a bathing pool, and two tennis courts. Perhaps its most attractive feature, however, was the broad terrace in front of the dining-room. On this was set a lime-wood pergola, over which trailed azaleas, clematis, and jasmine. The ground was flagged with broad rough stones, between which grew exquisite little crimson, white and blue rock flowers.

It was, of course, Alec's father, John Griggs, who had paid for all this. He was known to be a very rich man and Alec was the only child. The Griggs were very popular on the countryside, and though many may have been envious, no one begrudged Alec "an American millionaire" father, especially as the hospitality at "Guestling" was notorious. Whether old John Griggs was actually a millionaire or not need not concern us. He was certainly a very rich man, but what the natives of Tellinghurst and district did not know— or only a few of them knew— was that although he was an American, he was only an American by naturalization. He was born and had spent the first twenty-three years of his life in England.

Indeed, many English men took him to task for thus forswearing the land of his birth, but his argument was that, although his heart was loyal enough to the motherland, you could not spend over forty years in a country, enjoy all its opportunities of advancement and make your fortune there, without ceding it whatever benefits your citizenship might afford. America had made him, and he was, moreover, indebted to it for the most priceless asset of his career— his wife, the daughter of a professor of physics at Columbia University.

No one seemed to know the details of John Griggs' chequered career. He had been most things. But it was at St. Louis that he had laid the foundation of his fortune, first in connection with a bleaching business and then through a patent of his own known as "Griggs' Fertilizer."

It was in this city too that he acquired a soubriquet, which had stuck to him ever since: "Straight Griggs." No one was prouder of this title than Alec, his son. If his father had handed down to him one of the most honoured titles in the peerage, it would not have given him such a thrill of pride as this simple and well-earned description of his father's character. If his proprietorial conscience sometimes smote him a little when he looked around the beautiful house and grounds of "Guestling," he consoled himself with the reflection that his possession of them was a source of infinite gratification to the man who had really bought and paid for that possession— "Straight Griggs."

During the first fortnight, owing to the excessive heat, the Griggs hardly went outside the grounds, but the colonel and his wife, who were used to tropical climates, would come over in the afternoon, and very often in the early part of the evening the two elderly gentlemen would have a game of bowls, before settling down to their usual evening's "pow wow." In the third week the colonel had to go up to London for four or five days to attend one or two committee meetings. John went with him in the car to the station, and their parting had quite a note of melancholy regret. The colonel said he was afraid he would find the club he was staying at extremely boring after their delightful talks, while John said feelingly that he would be all the time looking forward to his friend's return.

Now if there was one feature about Griggs which had impressed the colonel more than another it was his innate buoyancy of disposition. It was a quality which conveyed itself to the listener. His eyes were the eyes of an incurable optimist. And when he spoke, in spite of his sixty-three years, the bulk of which had been spent struggling against adversity, his voice bad almost a boyish ring. He was full of enthusiasms, sensitive to impressions, and eager to listen.

It is advisable to keep these facts in mind in gauging the colonel's apprehensions on the night of his return. He had parted with "Straight Griggs" in the manner described, and with these impressions of him indelibly graven on his mind. But on the Friday night when he returned he was conscious of a subtle change in his friend. It was not very marked, but it was there— quite definitely. He was just as affable, just as prepared to talk and to listen, but his manner was preoccupied. Some of his buoyancy had gone, some of his enthusiasm. He was not talking quite so well, or listening quite so well. Perhaps it was the heat. Sometimes during the evening his eyes would wander. When they were seated on the terrace he would let those terrible black cigars of his go out and then restlessly light another. When the colonel was talking to him he would suddenly turn and look down the valley, and the colonel knew that there was something on his mind. Moreover, it was something which had happened during his absence.

He made occasion to take Barbara on one side, but she knew nothing. There had been no mail in from America during his absence. The Griggs had received no letters. How had they spent their time? Well, Mrs. Griggs had hardly been out of the grounds, but Mr. Griggs had taken the car out on two afternoons and gone for a run round the country, nowhere special, that she knew of. The colonel was perplexed. He returned to the terrace and found his friend still sitting alone in the dark. He determined to be as matter of fact as possible. Perhaps this mood would pass.

"Well, John," he said breezily. "I hear you have been for a run or two in my absence. Where did you get to?"

Without moving his cigar Griggs mumbled:

"Oh, one or two round trips— nowhere special. Except"— he paused and looked away down the valley— "I got to the sea, and took a look at Ticehurst and Brynne— came back through Wantney and Glendisham— nowhere special—"

There was an awkward little interval. The colonel wanted to hear more of the story of these wanderings, but he felt that any interruption might snap their flow. He merely murmured: "Um— um;" and refilled his pipe. Then John suddenly got up and appeared to stroll casually to the window that looked into the drawing-room. The rest of the family had just settled down to what had become an evening ritual— a few casual rubbers of bridge. It was essentially a family game, in which the three ladies talked all the time about dressmaking and the bringing up of children, Alec behaved like a cheerful martyr, and no one seemed to know whose deal it was, or what were trumps, or what the score was. John's return to his seat had a more furtive character. He almost tiptoed. When he had lighted a fresh cigar he leaned forward confidentially towards the colonel, and the latter noticed that his eyes had an unusual brightness.

"Colonel," he said quietly, "as you pass through Glendisham, going east, there is a broad stretch of marshland on your left, but the road leads up through a pinewood to Worsleydale Common. But looking down through the trees you can just see the roofs of a long stretch of rambling buildings, built of granite and slate-coloured brick."

He stopped, and looked at the colonel as though asking a question. The latter nodded his head and said almost under his breath:

"Yes, that's right. Deadmoor prison."

John Griggs turned his head from left to right and back again, like a large benevolent-looking eagle. He seemed to be assuring himself thoroughly that he had heard aright. When he spoke again his voice had a husky quality. "Deadmoor! Yes, I... I knew it was."

The colonel felt himself on peculiarly delicate ground. His upbringing decreed that the poking of one's nose into another man's private affairs was a detestable form of ill-breeding. On the other hand here was a fellow creature— and one for whom he had developed an affection— obviously anxious to relieve himself of some oppressive mental load. After a decent interval he said as casually as he could:

"You— you knew of it then?"

There was an obvious sense of relief about the face of "Straight Griggs." He seemed to rejoice that the question had been put to him so squarely, that in fact the issue had become so defined. Leaning towards his friend he said in a deep clear voice:

"I escaped from there forty-one years ago last fall."

The two men looked at each other closely. It was the colonel who was the more disturbed. He gasped, and repeated under his breath:

"Good God! Good God!"

Griggs added calmly, as though meditating:

"I don't know how the law stands. Whether there's a time limit or what. But I suppose if they knew they would put me back."

At this astounding revelation the colonel gave a quick apprehensive glance at the beautiful house, silhouetted against the night sky. Through the open window came the sound of Alec's laughter, and his voice:

"Come on, Mother, you owe me one and threepence. Pay up!"

Griggs spoke more quickly, as though anxious to bridge the chasm that was suddenly yawning between them.

"You will first of all, of course, wonder what I was doing in prison. I will tell you in a few sentences. My father died just after I came down from Oxford— my mother had died when I was a small boy. He left me what seemed to be a pretty considerable fortune— about £32,000. I was young, high-spirited and I had no ties. I immediately proceeded to do all those things which dashing youth regards as 'living.' As you may imagine I had no lack of friends and acquaintances eager to help me in my anxiety to dissipate this fortune. Without, I hope, being vulgarly excessive, I did most of the usual things— travelled luxuriously, entertained, and gambled. Incidentally, I'm afraid I gave a lot away to worthless people.

"Anyway at the end of eighteen months I was astonished to find that my capital of £32,000 had been reduced to rather less than £6,000! It was then that I began to make up my mind to pull myself together. This wouldn't do. I must settle down and find remunerative employment. And it was then, unfortunately, that I came in touch with Millingham. Millingham was one of the most ingratiating people I have ever met. He was tall, good-looking, and about twenty years older than I. We met, I remember, at a coffee stall about five o'clock one morning. I told him a good deal about my position, and afterwards went back with him to his flat in Golden Square.

"Millingham, it seemed, had a successful outside brokers business in the City. To cut it short he persuaded me to join him, and I put £4,000 into his business. I was to have a salary of £1,000 a year and a liberal percentage on the profits. The job suited me admirably. I could live comfortably on £1,000 a year. I was learning a business, and I was still my own master.

"I'm afraid dancing and other dissipations of youth still claimed a lot of my time, and my hours at the office were rather irregular. Nevertheless, I did a certain amount of work, and the whole thing seemed to be going swimmingly. It was two years later that the dreadful crash occurred. It was September, and I was going away with a friend to Norway fishing for a month. On the day of my departure I lunched with Millingham. We lunched lavishly, I remember— cocktails, champagne and liqueurs. His hospitality knew no bounds. About an hour before my train was due to depart he suddenly said:

" 'Why, you never signed those Tilbury and Co. documents. I must have your signature before you go. If we take a taxi now you just have time to pop into the office and then have plenty of time for your train.' I nearly said: 'What are the Tilbury and Co. documents?' but I wasn't sufficiently interested.

"My mind was on fjords and fishing. We dashed into the office. I signed everything he put before me, about eight documents in all. His signature was already on them. I caught my train. I had a grand time in Norway. It was perhaps as well, for the day after I returned I was arrested.

"It seemed that I had put my signature to what was nothing more than an appalling kind of bucket-shop swindle. It came out at the trial that Millingham's real name was Malini. He had done this kind of thing once before in New York. He got seven years and I have never seen him since. As for me what could I say or do? As you know ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law. I did not even claim not to have read the documents I signed. I made no defence. Legally I had none. On account of my youth, and the fact that I was probably influenced by my senior partner, I was let off with two years.

"Gee! but I was young in those days. I was sent to Wandsworth first, and when I found myself in that forbidding prison I set my teeth, and determined to go through with it. I would make good somehow. I didn't feel a criminal, that was the great thing, and I was young and buoyant. At the end of four months I was transferred to Deadmoor. Deadmoor was a less depressing prison than Wandsworth, but Golly! how the time dragged! The dreadful monotony of that routine, and then the— how can I describe it? kind of filthy undercurrent of confirmed vice running through the bulk of that unhappy crowd. I lie awake at night now sometimes, and think of it. It's horrible. Living in it you gradually feel it gripping you. I don't pretend to know what can be done, but the system's wrong."

Griggs licked his dry lips and frowned into the darkness.

"It was about six months later that the idea of escape occurred to me. There was a saying that no man had ever escaped from Deadmoor. I can quite believe it. I had very little real hope of escaping. But I felt that the mere effort of trying— however much I was punished for it afterwards— might sustain my momentary interest in life, and stimulate my self-respect.

"I began to take my bearings. At that time I was put to work making mailbags in a large building near the centre of the prison. I was passed daily from my cell to the exercise yard, and then to the mailbag building, and so back again to my cell, always, of course, under the eyes of warders. I could not see the slightest loophole of hope. The outer wall of the prison was a most formidable-looking structure, about 16 ft. high and crowned with a close array of steel spikes. About the end of October, however, I was transferred for two days a week to the laundry sheds. Our 'working party' consisted of about fifteen convicts, and in a long black shed near the south wall we did all the laundry work of the prison.

"On the second occasion of my visit there I began to take an alert interest in certain possibilities that this new situation offered. The windows of this shed faced north. The door was on the east side. But on the south side, where there were no windows, there was a space of less than twenty yards between the shed and the outside wall. In this space we used to hang out clothes to dry on clothes lines. I noticed when I was out there that the position was not overlooked at all except by certain upper cells never occupied in day time, and by the back windows of the sanatorium. But it was, I think, these attractive lengths of clothes-line that put temptation into a young fellow's head.

"I came to the conclusion that this was one of those things that wanted doing without too much planning and forethought. It must be like an act of inspiration done at the exact psychological moment. It came a fortnight later. It was early November, late in the afternoon, and already getting dark. There was a slight mist about. I was sent out to collect some runner towels that had been out there all the afternoon. I found myself alone in this secluded space. Looking back on it after all these years I simply gasp at my own coolness and audacity. Without a moment's hesitation I untied about twenty feet of clothes-line. In a few seconds I had made a noose at the end of it. I flung it up to the spikes. At my third attempt the noose caught over one of the spikes. I then tied one of the runner towels loosely round my neck— an inspiration this, as you shall see. It was again only a few seconds before I was at the top of that wall. But it was then that my more serious difficulties began.

"In the first place, although in the yard below I was not exposed up here I seemed to be silhouetted against the sky line for the whole country to see. I was visible from the upper part of the deputy-governor's house, the doctor's house, the sanatorium, and various parts of the prison grounds. It seemed incredibk that I was not immediately spotted. But I was too occupied to worry about this. My position was perilous. The slightest slip, and I should be impaled on those spikes. There was no space for a foothold, and it looked utterly impossible to leap clear of that wall, which appeared to slope outwards.

"It was then that my towel came in. I suppose it was again only seconds, but it seemed an eternity while I twisted it into a kind of pad. This I perched myself on gingerly on the top of the spikes. There was still no chance of jumping, so I simply let myself slither down the side of the wall. I fell with an unholy crash. When I reached the bottom the skin was torn off both my hands and arms, and my legs and body were badly cut and bruised, but I realised that no bones were actually broken. I staggered to my feet and ran.

"It is a curious fact when I look back on it, and I won't say whether I should take credit for it or not, that during the whole of that night's proceedings I never felt any fear. I reckoned the odds against me about ten thousand to one. I made up my mind to regard it as a kind of gallop and not to be broken-hearted when they caught me. Sportsmen aver that the fox enjoys the chase. I don't know anything about that, but I know that I got a curious kind of thrill out of it. I seemed to regard myself in a detached way, like a man looking down from a racestand on an outsider he has backed.

"Going direct south led, I knew, to the marsh, so I just ran till I was out of sight, then I made a wide detour and worked my way to the north side of the prison. As you know, about half a mile north is a pine wood, as the gradient of the hill begins to get steeper. As I say, it was getting dark, and I reckoned if I could make that wood before they caught me, my chances would improve considerably. The trouble was I had to keep on stopping, hiding and dodging, because there were a few stray people about. But I must have had a good quarter of an hour's start before the gun went off. I knew what that meant, but the immediate danger was that it made the people I was likely to meet more alert. That confounded prison garb!

"But my luck held. I knew if I could make the wood, so far as men are concerned, I could give them a good run for their money, for that night anyway; but what I didn't like the thought of was dogs, which I knew they sometimes used on these occasions. Just before reaching the wood, I had to cross a road and an open field. A cart came blundering along the road, and I crouched down under a hedge. While hiding there a sound reached my ears which gave me a certain satisfaction— the sound of trickling water. It was true. After the cart had gone I found a narrow stream by the side of the field. I stepped into it, and waded over a hundred yards, until I came to the edge of the wood.

"I reckoned that might put the dogs off a bit. It was beastly cold and uncomfortable, but as I say I was young in those days. In the wood I had a good drink of water and a rest. Whether they used dogs or not I cannot say. I heard no sound of them. In fact I heard nothing of my pursuers that night. I did not run any more, but walked quickly, keeping my eyes and ears on the alert. I walked for about another two hours and then had a rest on a fallen tree trunk. I felt it necessary to have a kind of committee meeting of one.

"The trouble was I didn't know the country at all, or where I was, or in what direction I was going. Not that this knowledge would have been very much use to me. The night was dark, but although one's eyes get used to it, it was impossible to see more than one's immediate surroundings. I could, however, just tell whether I was on a road or a common. After a time I decided to stick to a narrow road. A road in any case must lead in one direction, and I knew I was heading north. If I met anyone with a lantern or a lighted cart or trap I hid in the hedge, otherwise I did not hesitate to call out a cheery 'good night!' to passing travellers.

"The sound of my own voice gave me confidence. You must remember there were no motor cars in those days! I was beginning to get very hungry, and coming to a field I grubbed up a swede and ate it. It was better than nothing. I could see that my most urgent problem was going to be that of clothes. Unless I could get hold of other clothes the odds were going to remain 10,000 to 1 against me. I dare not go near a village or habitation. It would mean hiding in the daytime and travelling at night, both at great risk; and where and to what end was I to travel?

"In the meantime, how was I to live? With a change of clothes I could take risks. It would be fatal to be merely seen. I don't know how long I plunged on through the darkness. Sometimes I tried to approach some sleeping farm, but I was invariably scared by the barking of dogs. But passing along my lane at some unholy hour of the night, I caught sight of a long bungalow-looking building almost hidden amidst trees. There appeared to be a few dim lights about the place. I determined to reconnoitre, and avoiding the carriage drive which led up to it, I got through the hedge, and approached it Indian fashion, moving noiselessly from cover to cover.

"When I got near enough I could see that it had the character of a hospital or sanatorium. Not a very suitable place to burgle, you may say, but still it held out the possibilities of my most vital need— clothes. When I got to the gravel path that ran all round the outside I took off my boots. I then went carefully across it and approached a window. To my surprise the window was open about two feet at the bottom, and the room was dimly lighted by a gas jet. My first glance told me that my surmise was correct— it was a hospital, apparently a small private hospital. In this room were three beds, only one of which was occupied, and that at the far end by a man who was asleep.

"I tried to take in the details of the room, and suddenly my heart gave a jump. On a chair at the end of the man's bed, and neatly folded up, was a suit of clothes and a collar and shirt! Acting on my inspirational policy, I was through that window like a knife. I shot silently out of the room and gripped my treasure. As I lifted it I caught sight of a small pile of money on the mantel piece. It is amazing how quickly one's mind acts in cases of this kind. During my stay in prison I had vowed to myself again and again that when I regained my freedom I would never do a thing that was not meticulously honest and straightforward, and here I was after a few hours' liberty committing a deliberate burglary! At the same time my instinct of self-preservation was telling me that in this lay my one chance in the 10,000, while my mind was registering a decision that these trifles could be easily replaced when I had made good.

"I had just gripped the money when I heard a brisk step in the passage outside. If I had darted into the room, my outward journey was even quicker. When I alighted on the flower bed outside the window I had to peep back to see what happened. A nurse entered and after glancing at the patient she went straight to the chair where the clothes had lain! Then she stopped, and looked puzzled. She looked on the floor, at the patient, and then around the room. She was obviously bewildered. Without waiting for her bewilderment to develop into suspicion of an outside burglary I crossed the gravel path, collected my boots, sprinted across the garden, got through the hedge and in a few minutes' time was among the furze bushes of an adjoining common.

"It was an unpleasantly cold night to change one's clothes in the open, but excitement kept me warm. I had no matches and I could not see how much the money amounted to. But this seemed of less importance than the clothes. They fitted me quite well, and I stuffed the convict garb as far up as I could into a rabbit hole. After walking on for another half hour there seemed to be no point in plunging about in the dark, so I leant against a tree and tried to get a little sleep. I must have slept an hour or two, for when I awoke there was a glimmer of light in the sky, which served the useful purpose of enabling me to locate the east.

"I was soon able to count my stolen money. There was a sovereign, a half-sovereign, and eight shillings in silver. A very useful accretion of capital upon which to start my new career!

"I was feeling stiff and very hungry, but when I looked at my new brown suit my spirits rose. I should now have to risk entering a town or village. I washed my face in a stream and did my hair as well as I could with my fingers. I was bothered by having no hat. Not that I particularly wanted to wear one, but in those days 'the hatless brigade' was almost unknown, and I feared that this little defect might make me conspicuous. I decided, however, that when I came to a town I would amble along the streets very slowly with my hands in my pockets, as though I had just strolled out of a house.

"I made for a road and after walking rather less than a mile I found myself coming to the outskirts of what appeared to be a fair-sized town. It turned out afterwards to be Brindlehampton. I passed a policeman, who I thought looked at me questioningly. I ambled by him, whistling, and to my relief found that he was not following me. The shops were shut, but a little further on I came to a sight which gladdened me— a cheap eating house for carters and market people. I strolled in and sat down, and a girl came up to serve me. I ordered two fried eggs, some grilled ham, bread, butter, marmalade and a pot of coffee.

"Oh, that breakfast! During the whole course of my life I have never enjoyed such a meal. Afterwards I strolled out and bought cigarettes, and matches. I then came across a hosiers. There I invested in a three-and-ninepenny felt hat and a walking stick. The walking stick was a luxury, but I felt it added conviction to my make-up. I looked at myself in the long mirror. In my brown suit, collar, tie, felt hat, with a cane hanging over my arm, a cigarette in the corner of my mouth, there was nothing about me to betoken the convict. Strolling up the town, my body sated with good food and hot coffee, the odds of 10,000 to 1 against me suddenly seemed to shift to a good level chance. Such is youth!"

"Straight Griggs" sighed. During the whole course of this narrative the colonel could not but be impressed by the extraordinary simplicity of the narrator. Having decided to tell the story be never hesitated. He seemed to be living through the exploits of that night all over again, and although he must have done so a thousand times, the recounting of them appeared to give him a certain boyish satisfaction. On account of "youth" he had nothing to sigh about.

"I knew of course that the safest place in the wide world to hide in was London, and thither I made my way. I even had the audacity to ask a policeman the way to the station, and when he addressed me as 'sir' I thrilled with delight. I really wonder I didn't travel up first class.

"In London I made for the inconspicuous neighbourhood of Camden Town, and took a furnished bedroom in a meagre street. I paid the landlady a week's rent in advance and told her my luggage was on its way from Scotland. It was impossible, of course, to make any definite plans. My immediate problem was to remain hidden until the keenness on my search had somewhat abated. Later on I might manage to get out of the country. In the meantime it would be necessary to get some kind of job— however menial— in order to keep body and soul together, and at the same time not to mix among a crowd of men, any one of whom might recognize me from my photograph, which had appeared in the newspapers. I must say I had managed to alter my appearance pretty considerably, from the photograph.

"My luck was in. Two days later I heard from a man on a seat in the Park about a big rush order a large firm of stationers were dealing with for some continental government. They wanted men for all-night work. I called and applied and was taken on at once, without any question of reference or character. My job consisted mostly in folding circulars, putting them in envelopes and stacking them. I had to work on a nine-hour night shift, and I was paid twenty-five shillings a week. A hard job, you may say, but I realized that I was lucky. I saw no one but a lot of down-and-out scallywags like myself.

"Towards the end of the week I had a queer little experience. Every evening I used to go for a two hours' walk before going on duty. I walked about the streets, avoiding the more conspicuous and well-lighted thoroughfares, but I enjoyed this plunge into adventure. One night I went as far as Oxford Street. I was walking briskly down Margaret Street when a man who was passing me stopped and exclaimed: 'Good God!' My heart gave a violent jump as I looked up. It was Rusbridger. Rusbridger had been one of my pals in the old halcyon days. He was a good chap, but a bit reckless, and unfortunately a bit of a drunkard. Many a wild night had we had out together. Almost instinctively he said: 'Come and have a drink, old boy.'

"I hesitated. Rusbridger made the situation a little more dangerous. At the same time I was in no position to flout a man who might be friendly towards me at that moment. A few minutes later we were in the corner of a saloon bar. Rusbridger knew that I had escaped from prison, and of course he wanted me to tell him everything. I realized that he only meant well, but I also realized that he was a dangerous man to tell things to. He was obviously rather thrilled at the adventure of meeting an escaped convict, but I was certain that in his cups he would go and tell others all about me, and they would tell others, and eventually the wrong person would get to know. I showed my delight at his friendly greeting, but was a bit evasive.

"At last he remembered he had an appointment. We went out and he hailed a hansom cab, and got in. Just as he was saying good bye he thrust his hand in my top waistcoat pocket and said: 'Well, good luck, old boy!' When he had driven off I found two five-pound notes in my pocket.

"During the next few days I developed a new obsession. I kept on thinking of the man in the hospital whose suit I was wearing and whose twenty-eight shillings I had stolen. I felt an overwhelming desire to pay him back while I had the opportunity. With Rusbridger it was different. I could regard the £10 as a gift (he had meant it as such), or knowing his address, I could pay him back at any time. I decided to devote the weekend to this act of atonement. We did not have to work on Saturday night, but were supposed to begin again on Sunday night.

"On Saturday morning I took the train down to Brindlehampton. I wanted to be there in good time, for this reason. I should have to restore the stolen property after dark. I did not know the name of the hospital, and was not quite certain of its position. I wanted to take my bearings in daylight. I decided to stay at a cheap little commercial hotel, to buy a ready-made suit in the town, to change, make a parcel of the brown suit, put the money in an envelope inside, and then— if I had any luck— just drop it through the open window.

"There was one thing causing me considerable perturbation. For the last two days I had been feel ing far from well, and when I reached Brindlehampton on the Saturday morning I was feeling much worse. This was the eleventh day after my escape from prison. I booked my room at the hotel, and then started out to try and rediscover the hospital. I thought I would leave buying the suit till I got back. I reached the outskirts of the town and then realized that it was not going to be any good. My head and back ached and I could hardly see which way I was going from giddiness. Somehow I managed to get back to the hotel, and when I got there I just had the wit to tell the proprietor that I was unwell and going to bed, and I thought I had better have a doctor. It was as well I did. I don't remember the doctor coming. I knew I had a very high temperature and was delirious. I think they gave me sleeping draughts.

"I seemed to be in a stage of unconsciousness for an interminable wretched time. At one time I knew they were carrying me in a stretcher. I got it into my head they were going to bury me, thinking I was dead. I cried out and struggled. There was a long interval of blackness after that...Then one night I seemed to emerge, and look around me. And do you know where I found myself?"

John Griggs shook his long index finger, as though lecturing a small boy.

"I found myself in the same room from which I had stolen the clothes! There was the same man asleep in the corner bed, and I was occupying the bed next to his. Almost instinctively I looked round for some sign of the police. 'They've got me all right,' I thought. But there was no sign of police. After a time the same nurse entered the room. She came up and smiled. Close to, I could see she had a kind face. She gave me something to drink, and I whispered: 'Where am I, nurse?' She wouldn't tell me at first, but after a time I got it out of her. I was in a small-pox isolation hospital.

"To cut this part of the story short for your benefit, for twelve days I had been wearing the suit just removed from the small-pox patient in the bed next to me! On the night of my burglary when I had looked back through the window and saw the nurse enter she had just come to take all his things to the disinfecting chamber. Of course, I did not learn this at the time. I pieced it all together afterwards.

"During my moments of consciousness during the next few days I tried to anticipate the result of my burglary of the small-pox hospital. Would it lead to my apprehension? There was nothing at present to suggest that I was under suspicion. I had given a false name at the hotel, of course, and was supposed to be a commercial traveller. I gathered from the nurse that there had been a mild epidemic of small-pox in the county recently, but it was now well in hand.

"In this hospital there were only my room companion and my self, but there were seven women cases in the other section. She told me that my case was considered a mild one, but that my companion was very bad. The doctor who visited me twice a day was kindness itself. But what about the suit? I kept on thinking. When I was brought in and undressed, did either the nurse or my fellow-patient recognize it? The latter I could almost dismiss without question. He was in no state to worry about a suit of clothes. As to the nurse, I guessed that she would have been too occupied at the time of the undressing, and if afterwards it struck her that there was something familiar about the suit, she would hardly suspect it could be the same one. This would be stretching the large arm of coincidence too far.

"Besides, there is not, as a rule, anything peculiarly striking about a man's clothes. She may not even have observed it very closely before. In this surmise I discovered afterwards that I was correct. But who would get the suit of clothes when we got well? It would, I presume, be brought to me. But then, of course, would come the danger. I could assume that by that time he would be much better and alert. He would assuredly recognize the suit. Then how could I explain? It is wonderful how, when one is ill, one's imagination seems to become so active over trifles.

"I lay there for hours during both the day and the night, tossing about, and visualizing all kinds of compromising situations arising out of the brown suit. At the end of another ten days, however, I gave up worrying, and I noticed that my companion was beginning to show signs of some slight improvement. He had nodded and smiled at me on several occasions, and at last we began to have brief whispered conversations. I learnt that his name was Broome. He was only a few years older than I, and had followed several trades. Lately he had been quite successful, I gathered, as a dealer in brass furnishings, had saved a little money, and was talking of going out to Canada as soon as he was well enough.

"As the weeks went by it became more and more obvious that, in spite of the fact that I did not enter the hospital till twelve days after Broome that, so far as condition was concerned, I had already overhauled him. His face was still a dreadful sight. I came through it with only these few little scars on my left chin, and many people now do not recognize them for what they are."

"I certainly had not," remarked the colonel.

"Broome, nevertheless, was quite hopeful. He had no idea how ill he was. When he found a difficulty in writing he got me to attend to his correspondence. There was always a certain amount of trouble over this. They did not mind us receiving letters, but everything we sent out had to be carefully disinfected and so on, and so they didn't encourage us.

"At the end of two months the doctor said that in ten days' time they would be able to let me go. My mind became active with plans for the future. What on earth was I to do? I realized that I was a fool to have escaped from prison. I had only had about another nine months to serve, and then I could have started out, to work out my own salvation in my own way. But as it was, I had contracted this filthy disease and was liable to arrest at any moment. If caught all this period of liberty would be set against me, and I should get a further stretch as a punishment. It was, moreover, almost inevitable that I should eventually be caught. In any case, I could make no kind of honourable and successful career. My only hope lay in being able to get out of the country.

"When I told Broome they were going to let me go, he somehow or other got it into his head that he was to be released on the same date, and began to make his plans accordingly. He got me to write to a shipping company for him and book a passage to Quebec. This was for just three weeks hence. I also wrote and got hold of a passport which he already possessed. Broome became tremendously excited. He had, I gathered, saved quite a useful sum of money, and he had apparently no one dependent on him. He was full of the fortune he was going to make as a brass furnisher in Canada. He would talk far into the night, with corresponding rises of temperature.

"The doctors could not make out what was the matter with him. It went on for a week like this, and then the thing happened which was to affect my whole career. Broome died. A curious chap, and I can't profess to have felt any special interest in him, beyond the fact that he left in my possession a passport and a second-class single ticket from London to Quebec! Three days later I calmly donned the brown suit again and strolled out to the cab that was to take me to Brindlehamptone Station.

"I had a few busy days in London. The first was devoted to getting an interview with Rusbridger. The good chap lent me £50. And so one morning I turned up with a cabin trunk and a valise for the boat train to Southampton. I felt full of confidence. It was three months since I had escaped from prison, and the search for me had probably relaxed, and the attack of small-pox had altered my appearance, to say nothing of the fact that I had grown a beard. In any case, I found myself ten days later a free man walking the streets of Quebec.

"I cannot describe to you the queer sense of thrill I experienced the first night I strolled about the streets of that quaint old town. I had a kind of inspired feeling. I was bursting with hope, determination, and good resolves. I seemed to detect the hand of Providence in all my later experiences. It was as though I had been duly punished and warned, but was now to be given another chance. The escape, the extraordinary coincidence of my burgling the smallpox hospital, resulting eventually in my free passage to Canada, the lucky meeting with Rusbridger, all these things seemed to stimulate my anxiety to make good.

"I don't propose, colonel, to bore you with an account of my life until I did make good. In no case was it very interesting. Of course I had my ups and downs, but generally speaking I was lucky from the first. I worked hard, and discovered that I was no fool, but the thing I kept foremost in my mind was, even in the smallest dealings to play straight. I think you— you know that in later years I succeeded pretty well. Of course, a fellow doesn't forget, not entirely forget, not even after forty years. Do you think, colonel, do you think a thing like that can be entirely lived down...redeemed, as it were?"

The colonel hesitated.

"Yes, I do. I believe every thing is redeemable. Your wife knows?"

Griggs nodded.

"I told her before we became engaged." His eyes glowed. "I believe— I believe she has almost forgotten. It is so very long ago."

The colonel nodded, and then in a low voice he whispered:

"And so you are Alec Stratford!"

The expression of utter amazement had hardly had time to fill the eyes of "Straight Griggs" before he felt his forearm gripped in a friendly pressure, and the colonel was saying:

"I'm sorry. Forgive me, John. I did not mean to be so theatrical. The temptation was too great. Understand at once that not a word you have told me will ever pass my lips. Only it is rather strange. Do you know that at the time of your escape, I had just returned from the East and had accepted an appointment as deputy governor of Deadmoor Prison. I had not been there a month when one of the convicts— Alec Stratford— escaped. I got into trouble about it. In fact, they were so rude to me that I resigned. I did not mind much. I did not like the job. I remember the escape quite well. Our cook, an Irish girl, saw you on top of the wall from one of our upper windows. She did not tell us for two days, and when I taxed her with this neglect afterwards, she burst into tears. She said her first instinct was to call out, but when she saw how young and brave and sad you looked, instead of doing this she went down on her knees and prayed to the Holy Mother to spare you. You may care to cherish this vision of Kathleen. She has since died."

Griggs leant forward, deep in thought. There came the sound of a piano from the drawing-room. Barbara was playing a Schubert impromptu. A large white moth fluttered across the table between the two men. From below there arose the heavy perfume of freesia. The colonel was continuing in his gentle voice:

"There is one point about which I may allay any fears you may have. You mentioned about being 'sent back to Deadmoor.' This shows that on your ride the other day you did not get very near the prison. If you had you would have observed one striking fact about it. It is dismantled."

"Dismantled!"

"Yes. Some four or five years ago, owing to the general decrease in crime the Home Office decided to close four prisons. Deadmoor was one of them."

"But what are they going to do with it?"

The colonel smiled.

"Oh, what does a government do in a case like that? Nothing at all for years and years. And then— oh, I don't know, something happens. The place gets pulled down and disappears. You could probably buy it yourself for an old song!"

Griggs looked up quickly. He waved his long forefinger in front of the colonel's face.

"There's an idea in that, colonel," he said.

SHOULD YOU at some time be motoring through Sussex and you pass through the valley of Tellinghurst, just beyond Glendisham, where the road turns northward, you will come to a plateau. On this plateau is a large stretch of intensively cultivated land, dominated by a low white building of elegant design in the Colonial style. Around the grounds are numerous glass-houses, potting-sheds, and so on. At the entrance to the drive a white board with dark green lettering announces the fact that this is: "The Anne Griggs Agricultural College for Women."

For a month or so every summer you might observe at odd times a sprightly old couple walking amidst the flowers, talking to the superintendent or the students, helping, planning, scheming. No one seems tore member that in years gone by hardened convicts traipsed the dead monotony of the exercise yard, where now on that same spot fresh-complexioned girls move smilingly amidst the flowers, or stoop in loving solicitude above the soil. Perhaps sometimes the old man remembers it, but he gives no sign. The leaves fall, and the soil takes them to its bosom, against the coming of a new and distant birth. The cycle revolves, and in time everything is forgotten...

But the soil goes on, producing, producing, indifferent to the frailties of man, reorganizing neither good nor evil, but eternally concentrated on the perpetuation of life. And the new birth comes, and the young buds thrust themselves forward, eager for whatever life may hold, regardless of the tribulations of the past.

_________________

6: Bothon

Henry S. Whitehead

(with H. P. Lovecraft)

HPL: 1882-1932

Amazing Stories, August 1946

I can't find an earlier publication date than this.

POWERS MEREDITH, at his shower-bath before dinner in the bathroom adjoining his room in his New York City club, allowed the cake of soap to drop on the tiled floor. Stooping to recover it he rapped the side of his head smartly against the marble sidewall. The resulting bruise was very painful, and almost at once puffed up into a noticeable lump. Meredith dined in the grill that evening. Having no after-dinner engagement he went into the quiet library of the club, empty at this hour, and settled himself with a new book beside a softly-shaded reading lamp.

From time to time a slight, inadvertent pressure of his head against the chair's leather-upholstered back would remind him unpleasantly of his accident in the shower-bath. This, after it happened several times, became an annoyance, and Meredith shifted himself into a preventive attitude with his legs draped over one of the big chair's rounded arms.

No one else came into the library. Faint, clicking noises came in from the nearby billiard-room where a couple of men were playing, but, absorbed in his book, he did not notice these. The only perceptible sound was that of the gentle, steady rain outside. This, in the form of a soothing, continuous murmur, came through the partly-opened, high windows. He read, interestedly, on and on in his book.

As he turned over the ninety-sixth page of his book, at precisely that instant's brief and almost unnoticed interruption of the thread of the story which this mechanical act involved, he heard a dull, overwhelmingly heavy sound, like a very large explosion plainly coming from a vast distance. It was the kind of deep booming dull roar which would accompany the destruction of several city blocks simultaneously.

Suddenly alert now, his finger holding his place in the book, he listened, horrified, for the aftermath— some stupendous crashing of falling masonry.

After several apprehensive instants, his mind entirely engaged with that keen process of listening, he heard it, almost with relief. It was a rumbling roar as though of countless tons of wrecked masonry; falling; falling; clearly, unmistakably, the remote thunder of some catastrophic ruin. He dropped his book, and, obeying his most prominent reactive impulse, literally leaped to his feet and started for the door.

He met nobody as he rushed down the stairs. At the coat-room, which he had to pass on his way to the doorway, two fellow members were chatting urbanely together as they took their checks. Meredith glanced at them, surprised at their callousness. He rushed on, to the doorway, and out into the street, where he paused. An empty street! As he shoved his way impatiently through the heavy revolving door an imperturbable doorman checked him out on the club-membership list-board beside his standing desk. Meredith thought, fleetingly, of the sentinel of Pompeii! He turned automatically, naturally, to the right, in the general direction from which that terrific sound had appeared to come. He had been visualizing streets thronged with horror-stricken people crowding westward; mad rush of fire apparatus, clanging raucously westward along crosstown streets; platoons of reserve police moving at the double in the same direction in their disciplined, orderly ranks. He half expected to see some lurid glow, searing the heavens over towards the Hudson River.

There was, strangely, as it seemed to him, disappointingly, almost startlingly— none of these things. The rain, reduced now to the merest light drizzle, made the asphalt of the street shimmer as it reflected upwards innumerable slightly distorted lights. Over towards Broadway, certainly, there was clamor. On this his expectant mind seized avidly. But, as he analyzed this automatically, it reduced itself to an accustomed note, heightened and intensified, now, by the emptying of the theaters. It was only the compound eleven o'clock bedlam of Times Square.

Along Sixth Avenue as he approached it with hurried strides, a pace just short of running, countless weaving taxicabs in a many-hued stream jockeyed for position in the maelstrom of the night-traffic about the Hippodrome. On the corner, a solitary, conspicuous figure, a rubber-coated and helmeted policeman, swinging long efficient arms like a pair of mechanical semaphores, skillfully directed the hypersensitive, crawling traffic, soundless on its multitudinous rubber tires save for the sustained, growling, compound cachinnation of shifting gears and squawking protesting brakes. Against him, as he stood now irresolutely on the curb, scores of hustling pedestrians jostled unheedingly. To his ever-increasing wonderment, all these seemed uniformly to be unmoved, to be totally unconcerned, by what, he supposed, must of necessity be one of the major destructive calamities of modern times.

Now thoroughly disturbed, vastly perplexed and reeling under this sense of quite inexplicable incongruity, Meredith turned and walked back towards the club. He was at a complete loss now, his mind at a standstill as though reason itself had failed to function. He sought for refuge, to find quickly some mental relief in palliative explanations— the terrific explosion he had heard might, of course, have taken place at some very great distance. On that grand scale one could not easily determine either the source or the direction of sound. The lower end of Manhattan Island might have given way! Like everyone else he had read from time to time varying predictions of such a possible calamity in the pseudo-scientific write-ups which now and again and at almost regular intervals made their appearance in the Magazine Sections of the Sunday newspapers. That vast, pro-gravitational, and ever-increasing accumulation of pressure from the crowding sky-scrapers— the well-nigh incalculable massed weight of towering structural steel and heavy stone blocks always encroaching more and more upon the uncalculated supporting strength of the island's lower stratum of bedrock— the reckless undermining of that same solid bedrock by more and more tunnels and subways!

A new idea, a possible explanation! The sudden blowing up of one of the great manufacturing plants across the Hudson in New Jersey! All that territory was to the west and there were many such manufactories far inland. One of them, an ammunition-plant, had blown up during the War. He remembered that that explosion, although some twenty miles away, had blown out windows right here in New York City.

He came abreast of the club entrance, hesitated, a deep frown corrugating his puzzled brow, mounted the three steps hesitatingly, and entered. He paused at the door-man's desk. No, that liveried automaton, his whole attention, as always, concentrated upon his duties, had heard of nothing. Neither had the somewhat sleepy clerk at the cigar counter.

'Send me up an "extra", please, if one comes out,' Meredith requested of the other clerk at the mail desk. He went up in the elevator to his bedroom completely nonplussed.

Half an hour later as he lay in bed wakeful and trying to compose in his thoughts the varying, incongruous aspects of this strange affair, he was all at once acutely conscious of a distant, thin, confused, roaring hum apparently the resultant of several composite sounds. These were such sounds as would be made under the stress of a common excitement by a huge concourse of people at a vast distance. The most prominent element in this sound was the deep, soft, and insistently penetrating blending of countless voices. Through it ran a kind of dominant note— a note of horror. The sound positively chilled his blood. It was horrible, eerie. He found himself holding his breath as he listened, straining every faculty to take in that faint, distant, terrible clamor of fear and despair.

Of just when he fell asleep he had no recollection but when he awakened the next morning there hung over his mind a shadow of remembered horror, not wholly dissipated until he had bathed and begun to dress. He heard none of the sounds at the time of his awakening.

No 'extra' lay outside his bedroom door, and a little later at breakfast he opened expectantly and scanned several newspapers vainly and with a mounting sense of wonderment for any account of a catastrophe which could have caused the sounds. The implication grew upon him staggeringly. He had, actually, heard the convincing, unmistakable evidence of such a catastrophe— and no one else knew anything about it!

He reasoned himself deliberately away from the mist of something like cold fear that gripped chillingly at his heart with a kind of internal chill. There was quite a variety of news in the papers that morning, too. He glanced through the headings— crimes of violence; the execution of a famous criminal; the earthquake in Tokyo; several divorces; a notable prize-fight; the simultaneous crises of two European cabinets. But there was literally nothing which would account for what he, alone, apparently, had heard.

Strange dreams, the details gone, dissipated, the vague, devastating general recollection only remaining now, adumbrated in his mind in the form of an intense, horrific recollection. He had been one of those intimately, indeed poignantly, concerned in some vast and deep, some almost cosmic, cataclysm.

The dreadful thing, vague, disquieting memories of which had seared his mind and heart in those broken, horrific dreams, was not— and this element was entirely clear in his waking thoughts— was not as yet consummated. It was as though in the dream-state, he had been living— that phase of it was also very clear and unmistakable; stamped into his mind— an extraordinarily vivid, tense, and active life in some great urban community, wherein the utter certainty of some forthcoming and inevitable catastrophe was surely impending, a cataclysm the general knowledge of which had keyed up to the boiling-point the whole activity and the entire mental outlook of that community in which he had found himself, and in which he seemed to have been living for a long time under some kind of handicapping condition very irksome to him.

The one element of the horror and disturbance which lingered on, coloring powerfully that overhanging sense of destruction and sheer, paralyzing terror which had shadowed his waking day, was a sound— a vast, ear-filling, nerve-shattering dull roar as of the rising, menacing commotion of all the waters of the world.

Much more vaguely, a visual memory, the memory of a view point, lingered in the very back of Meredith's mind, bound up with, and seemingly a part of the general setting of those horrible dreams. He had been, somehow, under physical restraint in his dreams. It had been through great, massive walls all about him that the roar of impending catastrophe had come, muffled and dreadful, to his ear. And it was not wholly eradicated from his waking consciousness that he had seen through a barred aperture a flaming, red sky and had glimpses of tall towers tottering to the aural accompaniment of soul-shattering detonations, against that awful sound-background of the preternatural roaring of the fury-lashed, earth-shaking, near but unseen ocean.

He did his sensible best to account for these dreams of horror by attributing their outstanding features to his reading of the now detailed accounts of the great earthquake which had occurred in the Japanese capital, a catastrophe which had aroused the horror and sympathy of the whole civilized world. This, he told himself, was the necessary, the obvious, explanation of such dreams. So very keen and vivid had been the dreams' import in his mind, that although he attached no significance to the fact, he had to repeat this process of self-assurance, of every-day, material-background explanation to himself, again and again, throughout a day colored by an ever-recurrent, inescapable preoccupation with those night-dreams of dread, and horror, and impending destruction.

That evening, with his fianceé, Lois Harding, he had a dinner-and-dance engagement. Miss Harding thought him preoccupied; told him he was working too hard.

It was late when he came home to the club afterwards. He was physically tired and he fell asleep immediately after turning in. The following morning was Sunday. The reading-room was full and he carried his book up to his bedroom after late breakfast to read the rest of it in peace. He was soon immersed in it. Some time later his attention was distracted by the tapping of a window-shade, blown in and out by the breeze. It was annoying and he paused in his reading, intending to rise and adjust the shade.

As he withdrew his eyes, and part of his attention, from his book, all at once he heard a new sound. It was precisely as though a distant, sound-proof door had been abruptly opened. The new and different sound came through that imaginary door in the form of the composite noise of a distant battle. The details were vague but not so vague as to impair the certainty that what he was hearing now was conflict, the secondary or accompanying element in the compound aural impact being as unmistakably the sounds of conflagration— the crackle and roar of seething, devouring flame, rampant, uncontrollable. And back of these sound-elements, and carrying with it the recrudescence of the dreams' well-remembered aspect of a communal terror, the deep, underlying, dominating roar of a merciless, barbaric sea.

A mental picture leaped forthwith into his mind, the precise visual 'atmosphere' of those dreams of Friday night.

As he listened, fascinated, there came back to him and grew upon him a paralyzing, cold fear. There was no stopping it now. It was the fear of that which cannot be related to any previous experience; the fear of the unknown; the fear of certain and imminent destruction.

Cold sweat suddenly beaded his forehead. The faint penumbra of a slight nausea shook him. He could distinguish overtones now, high tones, cries of battle; the impact of a charge against a resistant horde; noise of plied weapons.

The window-shade tapped again against the window casing. He snapped back into the familiar environment of his bedroom. He felt a little sick and weak. He rose, rather shakily, walked across the room and into the bathroom, and, noisily splashing the water about, washed his trembling hands and his face. Anything, to disperse those dreadful, haunting sounds from that incalculable world; that No Man's Land of rending destruction which had begun to project its echoes of cosmic calamity into his mind.

He paused, suddenly to listen again, a towel gripped between his shaking hands. But he could 'hear' nothing now, nothing except the tapping of that window-shade in the fresh breeze blowing through the open window. He hung the towel on its porcelain rod and walked back to his chair. He had seen his face, ghastly, in the bathroom mirror.

It was an hour too early for lunch, but he wanted urgently to be where there were people about, even waiters, people who were not 'hearing things'!

In order to prolong his companionship with old Cavanagh, the only other early luncher, Meredith ate somewhat more than usual. The unaccustomed heavy meal at such an hour made him drowsy and after lunch he stretched out on a davenport before one of the two open fireplaces in the now unoccupied reading-room, and fell at once into an uneasy sleep.

A little before three he awakened, stale, and as he came to conscious wakefulness he began to 'hear', at first quite distinctly, and then with increasing loudness and clarity as though a steady hand were opening up a loudspeaker, that same sound of fire and human conflict, and the dreadful, menacing roar of a thunderous ocean's incalculable anger.

Then, Old Cavanagh, napping on the other davenport, struggled with senile deliberation to his feet with many accompanying 'hums' and 'ha's', and began lumbering across the room towards him.

Meredith pulled himself together, forced away from him the idea that his sanity was dissolving into something like imbecility, and sat up; but his face, as his fellow club-member saw it, was again drawn and ghastly. Old Cavanagh plopped down beside him on the davenport. The old gentleman's kindly, florid face puffed with startled emotion. His eyes goggled. His mouth opened slackly.

'Lord's sake, what's the matter?' he demanded.

Kindly goodwill looked out of the old man's distorted countenance. Meredith, as though a spring within him had been released, stammered out his incredible story, the older man studying him narrowly as he talked and nodding sympathetically from time to time.

'Hm! mighty queer!' was his comment when Meredith had ended. He produced, lighted deliberately, and puffed upon an enormous cigar. He seemed to cogitate as the two sat side by side in a pregnant silence of many minutes. At last he spoke.

'You're upset, my boy, naturally. But, you can hear everything that's going on around you, can't you? Your actual hearing's all right, then. Hm! This other "hearing" starts up and goes on only when everything's perfectly quiet. First time, you were here reading; second time, in bed; third time, reading again; this time— if I wasn't snoring— you were in perfect quiet once more. Let's test that out, now. Keep perfectly still, and I'll do the same. Let's see if you hear anything.'

They fell silent once more, and for a while Meredith could hear nothing of the strange sounds. Then, as the silence deepened, once again came that complex of sounds indicating devastatingly battle, murder, and sudden death.

He nodded silently at Cavanagh, and at the old man's acquiescent murmur the sounds ceased abruptly.

It took urging before Meredith could be persuaded to consult an aurist. Medical men, Cavanagh reminded him, would keep quiet about anything strange or embarrassing. Professional ethics...

They went uptown together that afternoon to Dr Gatefield, a noted specialist. The doctor heard the story with close-lipped, professional attention. Then he tested Meredith's hearing with various delicate instruments. Finally he gave an opinion.

'We are familiar with various "ear-noises", Mr Meredith. In some cases the location of one of the arteries too close to the ear-drum gives "roaring" noises. There are others, similar. I have eliminated everything of that kind. Your physical organism is in excellent condition, and unusually acute. There is nothing wrong with your hearing. This is a case for a psychiatrist.

'I am not suggesting anything like mental derangement, you will please understand! But I recommend Dr Cowlington. This seems to be a clear case of what is sometimes called "clairaudience", or something similar— his department; not mine. The aural equivalent of "clairvoyance" is what I am indicating, you see what I mean. "Second-sight" has to do with the eyes, of course, but it is mental, although there is often some physical background. I have no knowledge of those phenomena. I hope you will take my advice and allow Dr Cowling— '

'All right!' interrupted Meredith. 'Where does he live? I might as well go through with the thing now as later.'

Dr Gatefield showed traces of sympathy under his rather frosty professional exterior. He dropped the diagnostician, became the obliging, courteous gentleman. He telephoned to his colleague, the psychiatrist, and then surprised both Meredith and Cavanagh by accompanying them to Dr Cowlington's. The psychiatrist proved to be a tall, thin, and rather kindly person, with heavy, complex spectacles on a prominent nose, and then, sand-colored wisps of hair in a complication of cowlicks. He showed marked interest in the case from the start. After hearing Meredith's story and the aurist's report he subjected Meredith to an examination of more than an hour from which, feeling more or less as though he had been dissected, he nevertheless derived a considerable sense of relief.

It was decided that Meredith should arrange at once to take several days off, come to Dr Cowlington's house, and remain 'under observation'.

He arrived at the doctor's the next morning and was given a pleasant, upstairs room, with many books and a comfortable davenport on which, in a recumbent position, the psychiatrist suggested, he should spend most of his waking hours reading.

During Monday and Tuesday, Meredith, now after Dr Cowlington's skillful reassurances no longer upset at 'hearing' the strange sounds, listened carefully for whatever might reach him from what seemed like another— and very restless— world! He 'heard' as he 'listened' for long periods uninterrupted by any aural distractions, the drama of a great community in the paralyzing grip of fear— fighting for its corporate life— against irresistable, impending, dreadful doom.

He began, about this time, at Dr Cowlington's suggestion, to write down some of the syllabification of the cries and shouts as well as he could manage it, on a purely phonetic basis. The sounds corresponded to no language known to him. The words and phrases were blurred and marred by the continuous uproar of the fury of waters. This was invariably, and continued to be, the sustained, distinctive background for every sound he heard during the periods while he remained passive and quiet. The various words and phrases were entirely unintelligible. His notes looked like nothing which either he or Cowlington could relate to any modern or ancient tongue. When read aloud they made nothing but gibberish.

The strange terms were studied over very carefully by Dr Cowlington, by Meredith himself, and by no less than three professors, of Archaeology and Comparative Philology, one of whom, the Archaeologist, was a friend of Cowlington's and the other two called in by him. All of these experts on ancient and obsolete languages listened with the greatest courtesy to Meredith's attempt to explain the apparent setting of the sounds— most of them were in the nature of battle-cries and what Meredith took to be fragments of desperately uttered prayer— some of the material having come to him in the form of uncouth, raucous howls— and with the greatest interest to his attempts at reproducing them orally. They studied his written notes with the most meticulous care. The verdict was unanimous, even emphatic on the part of the younger and more dogmatic philologist. These sounds were quite utterly at variance with, entirely different from, any known speech, including Sanskrit, Indo-Iranian and even the conjectural Akkadian and Sumerian spoken tongues. The transcribed syllables corresponded to nothing in any known language, ancient or modern. Emphatically they were not Japanese.

The three professors took their departure, the younger philologist showing almost plainly his opinion that Meredith was either slightly demented or trying to put something over on him!

Meredith and the psychiatrist Dr Cowlington went over the list again after the experts had taken their departure. They had to agree that the words heard were probably unique in the history of human speech.

Meredith had written: 'Iï, Iï, Iï, Iï— R'ly-eh!— Ieh nya— Ieh nya— Zoh, zoh-an-nuh!' These strange words and various others quite as uncouth occurred mostly as monosyllabic exclamations. There was only one grouping of the words which formed anything like a section of continuous speech, or sentence, and which Meredith had been able to capture more or less intact and write down— 'Ióth, Ióth— Natcal-o, do yan kho thút-thut.'

There were many other cries and, as he believed, desperately uttered prayers quite as strange and off the beaten tracks of recognized human speech as those noted down.

It was quite possibly because of his concentration on this affair of the remembered words— his own interest in them being naturally enhanced by Dr Cowlington's and that of the three experts— that Meredith's dream-state impressions just at this time, and suddenly, became markedly acute. These dreams had been continuous and consecutive since their beginning several nights before, but on this night after the rather elaborate investigation of the words and syllables, Meredith began in earnest, so to speak, upon getting the affair of his environment in the strange city of the flames and conflicts and confusion and of a roaring ocean, cleared up with a startling abruptness. His dream impression that night was so utterly vivid; so acutely identical with the terms of the waking state; so entirely free of the blurred penumbras which accompany nightmares, as to cause him suddenly to feel the cold sweat running down his back when he paused on the way to his shower-bath, in the middle of his bedroom floor, confronted without warning with the unexpected question which sprang into his mind: 'Which of these two is my real life!!!'

Everything that he had derived mentally out of that night's sleep was clearly and definitely present in his mind. It seemed to him precisely as though he had not been asleep; that he had not emerged from an ordinary night's rest into the accustomed circumstances of an early morning's awakening. It was, rather, as though he had very abruptly passed out of one quite definite life into another; as though, as it came to him afterwards, he had walked out of a theatre (where his interest in a scene being enacted had so thoroughly absorbed his attention as to identify him with it as an active participant), into the wholly unrelated after-theatre life of Times Square.

One of the radical phases of this situation was not only that the succession of dream experiences had been continuous, with time-allowances for the intervening periods of those days-in-between which he had spent here in Dr Cowlington's quiet house; not only that, extraordinary as this realization seemed to him. The nearly consecutive dream experiences had been the events of the past few days in a life of thirty-two years, spent in that same environment and civilization of which the cataclysmic conditions which he had been envisaging appeared to presage a direful end.

HE WAS, to set out plainly what he had brought out of that last night's dream-experience, one Bothon, general of the military forces of the great district of Ludekta, the south-westerly provincial division of the continent of Atlantis, which had been colonized, as every Atlantean school child was well aware, some eighteen hundred years before by a series of emigrations from the mother continent. The Naacal language— with minor variations not unlike the differences between American speech and 'English English'— was the common language of both continents. From his native Ludekta the General Bothon had made several voyages to the mother land. The first of these had been to Ghua, the central eastern province, a kind of grand tour made just after his finishing, at the age of twenty-two, his professional course in the Ludekta College of Military Training. He was thus familiar by experience, as were many other cultivated Atlanteans of the upper classes, with the very highly developed civilization of the mother continent. These cultural contacts had been aided by his second visit, and further enhanced not long before the present period of the dream-experiences when, at the age of thirty-one, Bothon, already of the rank of general, had been sent out as Ambassador to Aglad-Dho, joint capital of the confederated south-eastern provinces of Yish, Knan, and Buathon, one of the most strategic diplomatic posts and the second most important provincial confederation of the mother continent.

He had served in his ambassadorial capacity for only four months, and then had been abruptly recalled without explanation, but, as he had soon discovered upon his arrival home, because of the privately communicated request of the Emperor himself. His diplomatic superiors at home offered him no censure. Such Imperial requests were not unknown. These gentlemen were, actually, quite unaware of the reasons behind the Imperial request. No explanations had been given them, but there had been no Imperial censure of any kind.

But the General, Bothon, knew the reasons very well, although he kept them strictly to himself. There was, indeed, only one reason, as he was acutely and very well aware.

The requirements of his office had taken him rather frequently to Alu, the continental capital, metropolis of the civilized world.

Here in the great city of Alu were assembled from all known parts of the terrestrial globe the world's diplomats, artists, philosophers, traders and ship-masters. Here in the great ware-houses of solid stone and along the innumerable wharves were piled the world's goods— fabrics and perfumes; strange animals for the delectation of the untravelled curious. Here in the endless stalls and markets were dyed stuffs and silks; tubas and cymbals and musical rattles and lyres; choice woods and implements for the toilet— strigils, and curiously carved hand-fitting little blocks of soap-stone, and oils innumerable for the freshening of beards and the anointing of bodies. Here were tunics and sandals and belts and thongs of soft-tanned, variously perfumed leathers. Here were displayed carved and cunningly wrought pieces of household furniture— glowing, burnished wall-mirrors of copper and tin and steel, bedsteads of an infinite range and design, cushions of swans' feathers, tables of plain and polished artizanship and of intarsia with metal scrolls set flush to their levels; marquetry work of contrasting woods— chairs and stools and cupboards and chests and foot-rests. Here were ornaments innumerable— fire-screens, and spindles for parchment-rolls, and tongs, and shades for lamps made of the scraped skins of animals; metal lamps of every design, and vegetable oils for the lamps in earthenware jars of many sizes and shapes. Here were foods and wines and dried fruits, and honey of many flavors; grains and dried meats and loaves of barley and wheat-meal past computation. Here in the great street of the armorers were maces and axes and swords and daggers of all the world's varieties and designs; armor of plate and chain— hauberks, and greaves, and bassinets, and shelves with rows and rows of the heavy plate and helmets standardized for the use of such fighting men as Bothon himself commanded in their thousands.

Here were to be seen and examined costly canopies and the elaborate litters in which the slaves of the rich carried their masters through the narrow streets and broad, airy avenues of Alu. Rugs there were in an endless profusion of size and shape and design; rugs from distant Lemuria and from Atlantis and from tropical Antillea, and from the mountainous interior regions of the mother continent itself, where thousands of cunning weavers of fabrics worked at their looms; ordinary rugs of pressed felt, and gorgeous glowing rugs of silk from the southern regions where the mulberry trees grew; rugs, too, and thin, soft draperies of complex patterns made of the wool of lambs and of the long, silk-like hair of the mountain sheep.

Here in Alu, center of the world's culture, were philosophers with their groups of disciples, small or great, propounding their systems on the corners of streets and in the public squares, wrangling incessantly over the end of man, and the greatest good, and the origin of material things. Here were vast libraries containing the essence of all that had been written down concerning science and religion and engineering and the innumerable fine arts, of the civilization of forty thousand years. Here were the temples of religion where the hierarchs propounded the principles of life, colleges of priests studying incessantly more and more deeply into the mysteries of the four principles; teaching the people the endless applications of these esoteric affairs to their conduct and daily lives.

Into this fascinating treasure house of a great civilization the ambassador Bothon had penetrated as often as possible. The excellence of his family background, his own character and personal qualities, and his official position, all combined to make him a welcome guest in the mansions of the members of the emperor's court and of the highest stratum of social life in Alu.

An impressionable young man, most of whose life previous to his appointment as ambassador had been spent in hard training for his military duties and in the rigorous prosecution of those as he rose rapidly grade by grade by hard man's work in camp and field during his many campaigns in the standing army of Ludekta, the general, Bothon, revelled in these many high social contacts. Very soon he found within himself and growing apace, the strong and indeed natural desire for a type of life to which his backgrounds and achievements had amply entitled him, but of which he had been, so far, deprived because of the well-nigh incessant demands upon him of his almost continuous military service.

In short, the ambassador from Ludekta very greatly came to desire marriage, with some lady of his own caste, and, preferably, of this metropolitan city of Alu with its sophistication and wide culture; a lady who might preside graciously over his ambassadorial establishment; who, when his term of office was concluded, would return with him to his native Ludekta in Atlantis, there permanently to grace the fine residence he had in his mind's eye when, a little later, he should retire from the Ludektan army and settle down as a senator into the type of life which he envisaged for his middle years.

He had been both fortunate and unfortunate in his actual falling in love. The lady, who reciprocated his ardent advances, was the Netvissa Ledda, a daughter of the Netvis Toldon who was the emperor's brother. The fortunate aspect of this intense and sudden love affair which set all social Alu to commenting upon it, was the altogether human one of a virtually perfect compatability between the two. Their initial mutual attraction had become a settled regard for each other almost overnight. Within a few days thereafter they were very deeply in love. Humanly considered, the affair was perfection itself. Every circumstance save one, and that a merely artificial side of the case, gave promise of an ideal union.

The single difficulty in the way of this marriage was, however, most unfortunately, an insuperable one. The Netvissa Ledda, niece of the emperor, belonged of right to the very highest social caste of the empire. The rank and degree of Netvis lay next to Royalty itself and in the case of the family of the Netvis Toldon partook of royalty. Against this fact, basic in the structure of the empire's long-established custom, the Ambassador, General Bothon of Ludekta— although a gentleman of the very highest attainments, character, and worth, whose family records reached back a thousand years into the dim past before the colonization of Atlantis, whose reputation was second to none in the empire— the General, Bothon, was a commoner. As such, according to the rigid system prevalent at the court in Alu, capital of the Empire, he was hopelessly ineligible. The marriage was simply out of the question.

The Emperor, being called upon to settle this awkward affair, acted summarily, quite in the spirit of one who destroys a hopelessly wounded and suffering creature as an act of mercy. The Emperor took the one course open to him under these circumstances, and the General, Bothon, without any choice being open to him save submission to an Imperial request which had the force of law, took ship for Ludekta, leaving behind him in Alu the highest and dearest hope of his life, irreparably shattered.

For the subsequent conduct of the General Bothon, recently Ludektan Ambassador to Aglad-Dho, there were three very definite contributing reasons. Of these the first and most prominent was the depth and intensity and genuineness of his love for the Netvissa Ledda. Beyond all possible things, he wanted her; and the proud soul of Bothon was very grievously racked and torn at the sudden unexpected and arbitrary separation from her which the Imperial request had brought about.

The voyage from Aglad-Dho to Ludekta, across the two sections of the globe's great oceans and through the ship canals and lakes which bisected the southern continent of the western hemisphere, occupied seven weeks. During this period of enforced inaction the bitter chagrin and deep disappointment of Bothon crystallized itself by means of the sustained reflection inevitable under the circumstances. General Bothon arrived in Ludekta in a state of mind which made him ready for anything, provided only it was action. This state of mind was the second of these contributory factors.

The third was the immediate satisfaction of his desire for activity. During the course of his voyage home the ghoulish and, indeed, subhuman factory slaves, the shockingly Simian Gyaa-Hua, had inaugurated a revolt. This had spread, by the time of Bothon's arrival, throughout the entire province of Ludekta. The state sorely needed the efficient services of this, the youngest and most brilliant of its generals, and his reception on landing was more nearly that of a savior of his country than what a virtually disgraced diplomat might expect.

Into this campaign, which he prosecuted with the utmost rigor and a thoroughgoing military effectiveness, Bothon threw himself with an abounding energy which even his most ardent Ludektan admirers had not anticipated. At the end of an intensive campaign of less than three weeks, with this very dangerous revolt completely crushed and the leaders of the Gyaa-Hua to a man hanging by great hooks through their neck muscles in dreadful rows along the outer city walls on either side of the great archway that pierced the defense of Ludekta's capital, the General Bothon found himself the hero of Ludekta and the idol of his admiring troops. A rigid disciplinarian, the attitude of the officers and men of the Ludektan standing army towards this general had hitherto been based upon the respect which his great abilities had always commanded. Now he found himself the recipient of something almost like worship because of this last brilliant campaign of his. It had been a tour de force.

Although it is highly probable that they would have advanced him because of this achievement in any event, the actual occasion for the action of the Ludektan Senate in rewarding Bothon with the supreme command of the standing army was the speech before that body of the aging generalissimo Tarba. Old Tarba ended his notable panegyric by laying his truncheon, emblem of the supreme command, on the great marble slab before the presiding senator, with a dramatic gesture.

Bothon thus found himself suddenly possessed of that intensive hero worship which would cause the state to acquiesce in anything which its object might suggest. He was, at the same time, in supreme command of the largest sectional standing army of the entire continent of Atlantis; an army, thanks chiefly to his own efficiency, probably the best trained and most effective fighting unit then extant.

Under the combined effect of the contributing causes and his new authority General Bothon made up his mind. On the eleventh day after his triumphal entry into Ludekta's capital city forty-seven Ludektan war vessels freshly outfitted, their oar-slaves supplemented by a reserve of the Gyaa-Hua, selected for the power and endurance of their gorilla-like bodies, with new skin sails throughout the fleet, and the flower of the Ludektan army on board, sailed out from Ludekta westward for Alu under the command of the General Bothon.

It was precisely simultaneous with the arrival of this war fleet off the shores of the great city of Alu that there began unprecedented natural disturbances affecting the entire area of the mother continent. These were comparable to nothing recorded in the capital's carefully kept slate and parchment records, which went back over a period of thousands of years.

The first presage of these impending calamities took the form of a coppery tinge which replaced the blue of the sky. Without any premonitory warnings the long ground-swell of this Western Ocean changed abruptly, along with the color of the water, into a kind of dull brick-grey, to short, choppy, spray-capped waves. These tossed even the great Ludektan war galleys so violently as to shatter many of the sweeps. The wind, to the consternation of several of Bothon's captains, appeared to come from every quarter at once! It tore the heavy skin sails of the Ludektan galleys away from their copper rings and bolts in some cases. In others it split the sails in clean straight lines as though they had been slit with sharp knives.

Undaunted by these manifestations and the reports of his augurs who had cast their lots and slain their sheep and fowls in a hasty series of divinations to account, if possible, for this unfavorable reception at the hands of the elements, the indomitable will of Bothon forced his fleet to an orderly landing. He sent forthwith as his herald to the Emperor himself, his highest ranking sub-general, accompanied by an imposing guard of honor. On slate tablets Bothon had set forth his demand in his own hand. This was in the form of a set of alternatives. The emperor was asked to receive him as Generalissimo of the military forces of Ludekta, and to consent to his immediate marriage with the Netvissa Ledda; or, he, Bothon, would proceed forthwith to the siege of Alu and take the lady of his heart by force and arms.

The message prayed the Emperor to elect the first alternative. It also set forth briefly and in formal heraldic terms the status of the ancient family of Bothon.

The Emperor had been very seriously annoyed at this challenge, as he chose to regard it. He felt that his office and dignity had been outraged. He crucified Bothon's entire delegation.

The siege of Alu began forthwith under that menacing copper-tinted sky and to the accompaniment of a rumbling series of little earthquakes.

Not only not within the memory of living men, but, as the records indicated, during its entire history over thousands of years as the metropolis of the civilized world, had there been any previous hostile manifestations against the great city of Alu. That anything like this terrible campaign which the renowned General Bothon of Ludekta set in motion against her might come to pass, had never even remotedly occurred to anyone in Alu. So promptly did Bothon launch his attack that the tortured bodies of the members of his delegation to the Emperor had not yet ceased writhing on their row of crosses before he had penetrated, at the head of his trained legionaries, to a point within two squares of the Imperial Palace which stood at the center of the great city.

There had been virtually no resistance. This intensive campaign would have been triumphantly concluded within twenty minutes, the Emperor probably captured along with all his Palace guards and household, the person of the Lady Ledda secured by this ardent lover of hers, and the entire objective of the expedition accomplished, save for what in modern legal phraseology would have been described as 'An Act of God'.

The premonitory earth-shakings which had accompanied this armed invasion culminated, at that point in the advance of Bothon's army, in a terrific seismic cataclysm. The stone-paved streets opened in great gaping fissures. Massive buildings crashed tumultuously all about and upon the triumphantly advancing Ludektans. The General, Bothon, at the head of his troops, dazed and deafened and hurled violently upon the ground, retained consciousness long enough to see three quarters of his devoted following engulfed, smashed, torn to fragments, crushed into unrecognizable heaps of bloody pulp; and this holocaust swiftly and mercifully obliterated from before his failing vision by the drifting dust from millions of tons of crumbled masonry.

He awakened in the innermost keep of the dungeon in Alu's citadel.

COMING QUIETLY into Meredith's bedroom about ten o'clock in the morning, Dr Cowlington, who had made up his mind overnight on a certain matter, quietly led his initial conversation with his observation-patient around to the subject which had been most prominent in his mind since their conference of yesterday over the strange linguistic terms which Meredith had noted down.

'It has occurred to me that I might very well tell you about something quite out of the ordinary which came under my notice seven or eight years ago. It happened while I was chief intern in the Connecticut State Hospital for the Insane. I served there for two years under Dr Floyd Haviland before I went into private practice. We had a few private patients in the hospital, and one of these, who was in my particular charge, was a gentleman of middle-age who had come to us because of Haviland's enormous reputation, without commitment. This gentleman, whom I will call "Smith", was neither legally nor actually "insane". His difficulty, which had interfered very seriously with the course of his life and affairs, would ordinarily be classified as "delusions". He was with us for nearly two months. As a voluntary patient of the institution, and being a man of means, he had private rooms. He was in every way normal except for his intensive mental preoccupation with what I have called his delusions. In daily contact with him during this period I became convinced that Mr Smith was not suffering from anything like a delusive affection of the mind.

'I diagnosed his difficulty— and Dr Haviland agreed with me— that this patient, Smith, was suffering mentally from the effects of an ancestral memory.

'Such a case is so rare as to be virtually unique. The average psychiatrist would go through a lifetime working at his specialty without encountering anything of the sort. There are, however, recorded cases. We were able to send our patient home in a mental condition of almost complete normality. As sometimes occurs in mental cases, his virtual cure was accomplished by making our diagnosis very clear to him— impresssing upon his mind through reiterated and very positive statements that he was in no sense of the word demented, and that his condition, while unusual, was not outside the range and limitations of complete normality.'

'It must have been a very interesting case,' said Meredith. His reply was dictated by nothing deeper than a desire to be courteous. For his mind was full of the affairs of the General, Bothon, raging now in his prison-chamber; his mind harried, anxious over the fate of his surviving soldiers; that lurid glare, dimmed by the remoteness of his flame-tinted prison-chamber, in his eyes; his mind tortured and his keen sense of hearing stultified by the sustained, dreadful roaring of that implacable sea. He, Meredith, for reasons far too deep for his own analysis, felt utterly incapable of telling Dr Cowlington what was transpiring in those dreams of his. All his inmost basic instincts were warning him, though subconsciously, that what he might tell now, if he would, could not possibly be believed! Dr Cowlington, looking at his patient, saw a face drawn and lined as though from some devastating mental stress; a deeply introspective expression in the eyes, which professionally speaking, he did not like. The doctor considered a moment before resuming, erect in his chair, his knees crossed, his finger-tips joined in a somewhat judicial attitude.

'Frankly, Meredith, I emphasized the fact that the man I have called Smith was in no sense insane because I feel that I must go farther and tell you that the nature of his apparent "delusions" was, in one striking particular, related to your own case. I did not wish to give you the slightest alarm over the perfect soundness of your own mentality! To put the matter plainly, Mr Smith "remembered", although rather vaguely and dimly, certain phases of those ancestral memories I mentioned, and was able to reproduce a number of the terms of some unknown and apparently prehistoric language. Meredith— ' the doctor turned and looked intensely into the eyes of his now interested patient, '— there were three or four of Smith's words identical with yours!'

'Good God!' exclaimed Meredith, now thoroughly aroused. Then, after a minute's anxious reflection: 'What were the words, Doctor? Did you make notes of them?'

'Yes, I have them here,' answered the psychiatrist, and brought a thin sheaf of papers out of his breast-pocket.

Meredith was out of his chair and leaning eagerly over the doctor's shoulder long before Cowlington had his papers arranged. He gazed with a consuming intensity at the words and phrases carefully typed on several sheets of foolscap; listened, with an almost tremulous attention, while Dr Cowlington carefully reproduced the sounds of these uncouth terms. Then, taking the sheets and resuming his chair, he read through all that had been written down, pronouncing the words, though very quietly, under his breath, his lips barely moving.

He was pale, and shaking from head to foot when he rose at last and handed back, hands trembling, the thin fascicle of papers to its owner. Dr Cowlington looked at him anxiously, his professional mind alert, his fears somewhat aroused over the wisdom of this experiment of his in bringing his former case thus abruptly to his patient's attention. Dr Cowlington felt, if he had cared to put his impression into words, somewhat baffled. He could not, despite his long and careful training in dealing with mental, nervous, and 'borderline' cases, quite put his acute professional finger upon just which one of the known simple and complex emotions was, for this moment, dominating this very interesting patient of his.

Dr Cowlington would have been even more completely puzzled if he had known.

For Meredith, reading through the strange babblings of the patient, Smith, had recognized all the words and terms, and had lit upon the phrase –

'Our beloved Bothon has disappeared.'

Dr Cowlington, sensing accurately that it might be unwise to prolong this particular interview, concluded wisely that Meredith would most readily regain his normal poise and equanimity if left alone to cope with whatever, for the time being, held possession of his mind, rose quietly and walked over to the bedroom door.

He paused there, however, for an instant, before leaving the room, and looked back at the man now introspectively relaxed in a comfortable lounge-chair. Meredith had not, apparently, so much as noted the doctor's movements towards departure. His mind, very obviously, was turned inward. He was, it appeared, entirely oblivious to his surroundings.

And Dr Cowlington, whose professional outward deportment, acquired through years of contact with abnormal people, had not wholly obliterated a kindly disposition, noted with a certain emotion of his own that there were unchecked tears plainly visible in his patient's inward-gazing eyes.

Summoned back to Meredith's room an hour later by one of his house nurses, Dr Cowlington found his patient restored to his accustomed urbane normality.

'I asked you to come up for a moment, Doctor,' began Meredith, 'because I wanted to inquire if there is anything that you would care to give a patient to induce sleep.' Then, with a deprecating smile: 'The only such things I know about are morphine and laudanum! I don't know very much about medicine and naturally you wouldn't want to give me one of those any more than I would want to take it.'

Dr Cowlington resumed his judicial manner. He thought rapidly about this unexpected request. He took into consideration how his story about the patient, Smith, had appeared to upset Meredith. He deliberately refrained from inquiring why Meredith wanted a sleeping potion. Then he nodded his head.

'I use constantly a very simple preparation,' said he; 'it is non-habit-forming; based on a rather dangerous drug, chloral; but, as I use it for my patients, compounded with an aromatic syrup and diluted with half a tumbler of water, it works very well. I will send some up to you at once, and you can take it yourself. Remember, please, four teaspoonfuls of the syrup is the outside dose. Two will probably be enough. Never more than four at any time, and not more than one dose in twenty-four hours.'

Dr Cowlington rose, came over to Meredith, and looked at the place where he had struck the side of his head against the marble wall of his shower-bath. The bruise was still swollen. The doctor passed his fingers lightly over this contusion.

'It's beginning to go down,' he remarked. 'It's just at the posterior edge of the mastoid process of the temporal bone. You're fortunate, I think, that we didn't have to put you through an operation for mastoiditis. A bruise over the network of little laminated bones that are under that spot is always a risk, you know.'

The doctor smiled pleasantly, again nodded his head at Meredith, and started to leave. Meredith stopped him as he was about to go out of the room.

'Yes?' said the doctor inquiringly, as he turned, his hand on the bedroom door-handle.

'I wanted to ask you,' said Meredith— and the acute-minded Cowlington suspected a faint note of diffidence in his patient's tone— 'I wanted to ask you, Doctor, if you would be willing to put me in touch with the man to whom you referred as "Smith".'

The doctor shook his head. 'I'm sorry, Mr Smith died two years ago.'

In ten minutes the house nurse fetched in a small tray. On it was a tumbler, a mixing spoon, and a freshly put up eight-ounce bottle containing a reddish colored, pleasant-tasting syrup.

TWENTY MINUTES later, Meredith, who had compromised on three teaspoons, was deeply asleep on his bed; and the General, Bothon, in the innermost dungeon-chamber of the great citadel of Alu, was standing poised in the center of that dungeon's smooth stone floor, tensed to leap in any direction; while all about him the rending crashes of thousands of tons of the riven and falling masonry of the citadel itself was deafening him against all other sounds except the incessant and indescribably thunderous fury of the now utterly maddened ocean. The lurid glare of the fires from without had been markedly heightened. Detonation after rending detonation came to Bothon's ears at frequent intervals. The Aluans were blowing up this central portion of their great city, as he was able quite easily to guess, in order to check the advance of the terrific conflagration which had raged for days and nights and was utterly beyond control. These detonations seemed actually faint to the alert man in that prison room against the hideous crashing of the sections of the citadel itself, and the well-nigh unbearable sustained roar of the ocean.

Abruptly the crisis for which he had been waiting arrived. The stone flooring beneath his feet buckled and sagged at his right. He whirled about and leaped far in the other direction, pressing himself, hands and arms stretched out above his head, against the wall of the prison-chamber, his heart pounding wildly, his breath coming in great gasps and sobs as the stifling, earthquake-deadened air about him shrank to a sudden and devastating attenuation. Then the solid wall opposite split in a tearing gap from top to bottom; and an even more stifling cloud of fine white dust sifted abruptly through the room as the ceiling was riven asunder.

Stifling, choking, fighting for breath and life, the General, Bothon, lowered his arms and whirled about again in the direction of this thunderous breakage, and groped his way across the now precarious flooring in the faint hope of discovering an avenue of escape. He struggled up a steep mound of débris through the grey darkness of the hanging dust where a few seconds before had been a level floor of solid masonry. He groped his way through thicker clouds of the drifting, settling stone-dust, skirted the irregular edges of yawning holes and toiled up and down mounded heaps of rubble, far past the place where the confining wall of his dungeon had stood, onward and forward resolutely towards that vague goal of freedom.

At last, the resources of his mighty body well-nigh spent, himself a solid grey from hair to sandals from the thickly clinging dust, his eyes two tortured red holes, his mouth and throat one searing pain, his heart and lungs well-nigh bursting, the General, Bothon, emerged across the last hill of rubbish which had been the citadel of Alu, and came out upon the corner edge of one of the largest of the city's great public squares.

For the first time in the course of his progress out of that death trap, unscathed save for a long shallow gash where in the darkness he had scraped the upper portion of his right thigh sharply against the rough cutting-edge of a great chunk of granite, but now barely able either to see or breath, Bothon suddenly trod on something soft and yielding. He paused. He could hardly see, and he crouched and felt with his hands, under the thickly mounded dust. It was the body of a man, in chain mail. The General, Bothon, exhaled a painful breath of satisfaction. He rolled the body over, freeing it from the pounds of dust upon it, and slid his hand along the copper-studded leather belt to where a short, heavy, one-handed battle-axe was attached. This he drew from its sheath. Then from the dead man's silken tunic which his hand had encountered he tore off a large section and with this cleansed his eyes and mouth and wiped the sweat-caked dust from his face and arms and hands. Finally he took from the corpse a heavy leathern purse. He sensed that this nook where he had discovered his unknown benefactor was a secluded spot where the dust had concealed the body from looters or the horrible attentions of the ghoulish Gyaa-Hua, mobs of which creatures, freed as he had been from their strict confinement, had added to the city's horrors their bestial chitterings and unspeakable feastings on the bodies of the dead. He lay down for a few moments beside the dead soldier on the soft dust for a brief respite and to rest the tissues of his body and to permit his tear and salivary glands to readjust themselves to their normal functions and so somewhat to relieve the burning torture of his mouth and nose and eyes.

Some ten minutes later he rose to his feet, wiped his lips and the now freely flowing tears from his restored eyes, stretched himself mightily, tested the heavy axe with three or four singing strokes through the clearing air, and dusted out and readjusted his garments, finally tightening a loosened sandal thong. General Bothon, inured to mere physical hardships by the many years of rigid military activity, was his own man again. He stood now free in the center of Alu. He was adequately armed. A great gust of energy surged through him. He oriented himself; then he turned with an instinct as sure as a homing bee's in the direction he had been seeking, and began to march at the unhurrying, space-devouring pace of a Ludektan legionary, straight for the Imperial Palace.

Bothon had thoroughly settled in his mind the answer to a question which, for the first few days of his captivity had puzzled him greatly. Why had he been left alone and undisturbed in that confinement; food and water brought him at regular intervals in accordance with the ordinary routine of the citadel? Why, to put the matter plainly, having been obviously captured by the Emperor's retainers while lying unconscious within two squares of the Imperial Palace, had he not been summarily crucified? His keen trained mind had apprised him that the answer was to be found in the hideous turmoil of the raging sea and in the fearful sounds of a disintegrating city. The Emperor had been too greatly occupied by those cataclysms even to command the punishment of this leader of such an armed attack against the world's metropolis as had not been known in all the long history of the mother continent.

Skirting its enormous outer walls, Bothon came at last to the massive chief entrance-way to the Imperial Palace. This enormous structure, its basic walls eight feet thick, stood massive, magnificent, intact. Without any hesitation he began mounting the many broad steps straight towards the magnificent entrance-gates of copper and gold and porphyry. Before these gates, in a rigid line and under the command of an officer beneath whose corselet appeared the pale blue tunic of the Emperor's household-guards, stood a dozen fully armed soldiers. One of these, at a word from the officer, ran down the steps to turn back this intruder. Bothon slew him with a single crashing stroke and continued to mount the steps. At this a shouted command of the officer sent the entire troop down the steps upon him in close order. Bothon paused, and, waiting until the foremost was no more than the space of two of the broad steps above him, leaped lightly to his right. Then as the foremost four of the soldiers passed beyond him under the impetus of their downward charge, Bothon as lightly leaped back again, his heavy axe fairly singing now as he fell upon the troop's flank with deadly, short, quick-swinging blows. Before they could collect themselves the officer and five of his men lay dead upon the steps. Leaving the demoralized remainder to gather themselves together as best they might, Bothon leaped up the intervening steps and was through the great entrance-doors, and, with a pair of lightning-like right-and-left strokes of his axe, had disposed of the two men-at-arms; stationed just inside the doorway.

His way into the Palace now entirely unobstructed, Bothon sped through well-remembered rooms and along broad corridors into the very heart of the Imperial Palace of Alu.

Traversing the very last of these, that leading to the quarter of the palace occupied by the Netvis Toldon, brother of the Emperor, with his family, it abruptly occurred to Bothon that the deafening intensity of the long-sustained roaring of the ocean and the crashing clamor from the city had lessened. His hearing, after many days of that unspeakable bedlam, had, as he realized, necessarily become adjusted to the incessant impact of the conglomerate thunderings. Might it be breaking down now under the strain of such unwonted continuity? He dismissed that solution as merely improbable. In every respect the terrific complex clamors continued, only there was that general and quite obvious softening in their general effect to be accounted for. Lowered vitality from the wound in his thigh? His long military training had brought that possible solution uppermost. His common-sense dismissed it, together with the problem itself, from his mind. He had something of greater import to tax his energies than troubling his mind over a question of acoustics.

Within thirty seconds he had located the entrance to the Netvis Toldon's apartments, and had passed through the doorway.

He discovered the family reclining about the horseshoe-shaped table in the refectory, for it was the hour of the evening meal. He paused in the refectory doorway, was met with a semicircular row of surprised glances, bowed low to the Netvis Toldon.

'I beseech you to pardon this intrusion, my Lord Netvis. It were inexcusable under other circumstances, at a more favorable time.' The utterly stultified nobleman returned no answer, only stared in the throes of his paralysis of surprise. Then, the dear lady of his heart, the Netvissa Ledda, rose to her feet from her place at her father's table, her eyes wide with wonderment, and a dawning realization of what this strange invasion might mean, her lovely face suddenly of the hue of the Aluan roses. She looked at this heroically formed lover of hers, her whole soul in her eyes.

'Come, my Lady Ledda!' said Bothon quickly, and as lightly as a deer the Netvissa Ledda ran to him.

He took her arm, very quietly, and, before the assembled members of the family of Toldon had recovered from their utter stupefaction, the two were hastening along the corridor towards the palace entrance.

From around the first corner before them came then abrupt sounds of armed men, hastening, the authoritative voices of military commands. They paused, listening, and Bothon shifted his axe into his right hand and stepped before the Lady Ledda to meet whatever force might come into sight within the instant.

But the Netvissa Ledda laid firm hands upon his left arm. 'This way, swiftly!' she whispered, and led him down a narrow passage-way at the wide corridor's left. This they traversed in haste, and had barely negotiated a sharp turn when they heard the guard-troop rush along the main corridor, and a voice, insistent, commanding: 'To the apartment of my Lord, the Netvis Toldon!'

The narrow passage-way led them past cook-rooms and scullery-chambers, and ended at a small door which opened upon a narrow court. Rapidly traversing this, they emerged upon a square at the west side of the palace, and well before any pursuit could have traced their course, were indistinguishable among the vast concourse of the people who thronged the wide avenues of Alu.

Bothon now resumed the direction of their course of escape, with a few low and hurried words of thanks to his companion for her timely guidance out of the palace to the freedom of the streets. Leading the way across a larger adjacent square, he reached the secluded corner, mounded about with débris, where he had secured his weapon. It was not yet past the early dusk of a mid-summer evening, and now there was nothing to interfere with his keen vision.

Yes, it was as he had guessed from the quality of that torn fragment of silken tunic with which he had wiped his tortured eyes free of the stone-dust. The dead man was an officer of one of the Imperial Legions.

Seating the Lady Ledda upon a block of granite and requesting her to watch for any intrusion on their comparative privacy, Bothon knelt swiftly beside the dead body and busied himself upon it energetically with his two large and capable hands.

At the end of two intensive minutes the Netvissa Ledda looked up at his light summoning touch upon her shoulder to see her lover for whom she had unhesitatingly abandoned all else that life held dear to her, apparelled from head to foot in the uniform, armor, and accoutrements of an Elton of the Imperial Legion of the Hawk.

Then they hurried southward, side by side, across the great square with its desolation of shattered buildings, towards one of the few remaining residences of the rich before which four coal-black slaves in the livery of their household were lowering an ornamental litter to the ground.

From the luxurious vehicle, as they arrived beside it, there emerged a stout citizen who stared at them enquiringly, his initial obvious fear of molestation disappearing at his recognition of the Emperor's niece and the uniform of an Imperial Legion.

'We request the loan of your litter, my Lord,' said Bothon.

'Most willingly,' returned the citizen, smirking and flattered at this form of address.

Bothon expressed hearty thanks, handed his companion into the litter, distributed a handful of silver among the four slaves, and gave the destination to the Negro who stood beside the forward left-hand pole. Then he climbed in himself and drew the red silk curtains together.

The strong litter-poles strained and creaked as the load was hoisted to four brawny shoulders, and then the litter swung away from the residence of its still bowing and smirking owner towards the military enclosure which housed and guarded the flying-vessels of the Aluvian standing army.

'You may have observed how very completely I have entrusted my Imperial person to you,' remarked the Netvissa Ledda, smiling. She was very well aware of the reasons for the Imperial request which had sent Bothon back to Ludekta, and for the first armed invasion against the Aluvian metropolis. 'I have not so much as enquired our destination!'

'It is my intention to seek safety to the northwest,' answered Bothon gravely. 'I have become convinced, I may say to you plainly, my beloved, that the prediction of Bal, Lord of Fields, as to the destruction of the Mother Continent, is not a mere classic to be learned, as we learned it in our childhood, as a formal exercise in rhetoric. Here, all about us, is the evidence. More, my four augurs warned me of the continent's danger ere I brought my war-galleys up upon the beaches of Alu. The four great forces, they insisted, were in collusion to that end. Do we not see and hear them at their work? Fire raging through the land; earth shaking mightily; winds such as never were encountered hitherto upon the planet, else the old records lie! Water, the commotion of which surpasses all experience— is it not so, my beloved? Am I not constrained to speak thus to be heard amidst this hellish tumult?'

The Lady Ledda nodded, grave now in her turn.

'There are many deafened in the palace,' she remarked. 'Where are we to go for refuge?'

'We depart straight this night, for the great mountains of 'A-Wah-Ii,' answered Bothon, 'if so be the four great forces allow us possession of a war-chariot. And, to that end, your ring, my beloved.'

The Lady Ledda nodded again, understandingly, and removed from the middle finger of her right hand the ring of the two suns and the eight-pointed star which, as a member of the Royal Family, she was entitled to wear. Bothon received it, and slipped it upon the little finger of his right hand.

The sentinel on guard before the barracks of the officer commanding the military enclosure of the Aluvian supply-barracks saluted the commanding-looking Elton of the Legion of the Hawk who stepped down from the gorgeously ornamented litter at the entrance to that military residence. The Elton addressed him in formal military phrases. It was evident to the sentinel that this officer was here on official duty.

'Report at once to the Ka-Kalbo Netro, the arrival of the Elton Barko of the Legion of the Hawk, conveying a member of the Imperial household into exile. I am requisitioning one battle-chariot of capacity for two persons, and officer's rations sufficient for fourteen days, together with the medicinal supply for a full kit-va of men. My authority, the Imperial Signet. Behold!'

The sentinel saluted the sun-and-star ring of the Emperor, repeated his orders like an efficient automaton, saluted the Elton of the Hawk Legion, and departed at the double to fetch the commandant, the Ka-Kalbo Netro.

The Ka-Kalbo arrived promptly in answer to this summons. He saluted the Imperial Signet, and, as a Ka-Kalbo outranked an Elton by one full grade, was punctiliously saluted according to military usage by the Elton Barko of the Legion of the Hawk, an officer whose personal acquaintance he had not previously made. Within ten minutes the Netvissa Ledda had been ceremoniously carried to and placed upon her seat in the commandeered battle-chariot, and the Elton Barko had taken his place beside her. Then, the dozen sweating mechanicians who had carried out their commandant's orders in record time, standing in a stiff, saluting row, the battle-chariot started off at a stiff gallop, the driver standing and plying his long thong with loud, snapping reports over the horses' backs, while at the great chariot's rear the spare-horse leader whistled continuously to the four relay animals which galloped behind. The empty litter, its bearers freshly rewarded with another heaping handful of coins by this generous officer, swung swiftly through the dust-heaped streets and square towards its owner's residence.

The heights of 'A-Wah-Ii, to the northwest, gave some promise, in Bothon's opinion, of security from the anciently predicted submersion of the continent. Those towering mountains would, at least, be among the last sections to sink, should the gas belts, hypothecated by the scientists of the mother continent, explode, and remove the underseas support of this great land of the globe's most ancient and noble civilization.

Shortly after daybreak, and accurately, according to the map and careful explanations of the painstaking Ka-Kalbo Netro, the chariot paused in the centre of a great level table-land one quarter of the way to his destination. The country hereabouts was utterly uninhabited. They were relatively safe here in a region only lightly visited by the earthquakes, and not at all by fires. The roar of the north wind troubled the Netvissa Ledda severely. Bothon barely noticed it. He was now convinced that he was losing his sense of hearing.

They ate and slept and resumed their journey at noon after a readjustment of the provisions and a change of the now rested animals.

Their four days' journey steadily northwest was uneventful. The charioteer drove onward steadily. On the fourth day, as the coppery ball which was the smoking sun reached and touched a flat horizon, they caught their first view of the lofty summits of the 'A-Wah-Ii region, goal of a possible immunity.

DR COWLINGTON, an anxious look in his face, was standing beside Meredith's bed when he awakened in the middle morning. He had slept twenty hours. However, what the doctor thought of as his patient's 'mental condition' was so entirely normal, and his cheerfulness so pronounced after his protracted sleep, that Dr Cowlington was reassured, and changed his mind about removing the bottle of sleeping medicine. Plainly it had had an excellent effect on Meredith.

Stretched out in his usual quiet-inducing attitude on the davenport just before lunch, Meredith suddenly ceased reading and laid down his magazine. It had occurred to him that he had 'heard' none of the turmoil of Alu during that waking period. He sat up, puzzled. Bothon, he remembered, had been hearing the sounds about him only dimly, a strange, perhaps a significant, coincidence.

He felt the bruise behind his right ear. It was no longer even slightly painful to the touch. He pressed his finger-tips firmly against the place. The contusion was now barely perceptible to the sense of touch.

He reported the apparent loss of what the ear-specialist Gatefield had named his 'clairaudience' to Dr Cowlington after lunch.

'Your bruise is going down,' said the doctor significantly. He examined the posterior edge of Meredith's right temporal area.

'I thought so,' remarked the doctor, nodding. 'Your secondary "hearing" began with that injury to your head. As it goes down, some obscure stimulation of the auditory apparatus, which accounts for your ability to "hear" those sounds, diminishes accordingly. You could probably "hear" only some stupendous sound from "there" now. And in a day or so I predict that you will be "hearing" nothing more, and then you can go home!'

AND, within an hour came the 'stupendous sound' in very truth. It broke in upon Meredith's quiet reading once more as though someone had opened that sound-proof door.

A curious, secondary mental vision accompanied it. It was as though Meredith, in his own proper person, yet through the strange connection of his personality with the General, Bothon, stood on the heights of Tharan-Yud, overlooking the stricken city of Alu. The utter fury of mountainous waves accompanied the now titanic rumblings of malignant earth, the wholesale crashing of the cyclopean masonry of Alu as the vast city crumbled and melted beneath his horrified eyes. With these hellish horrors went the wild roaring of ravaging flame, and the despairing, hysterical cacaphony of Alu's doomed millions.

Then there came, at last, a sound as of the veritable yawning of the nethermost watery gulf of earth, and the high sun itself was blotted out by a monstrous green wall of advancing death. The sea rose up and fell upon accursed Alu, drowning forever the shrieks of utter despair, the piping and chittering of the obscurely gnawing Gyaa-Hua distracted at last from their loathsome banquet— hissings, roarings, shriekings, whinings, tearings, seethings— a cacophony more than human ears might bear, a sight of utter devastation more onerous than man might look upon, and live.

There came to Meredith a merciful stupor, as the waters of Mu-ladon closed in forever over the mother continent, and as his consciousness failed him, he emerged once more out of that quiet bedroom— away from his overlooking of the world's major catastrophe, and as Bothon, walked beside the Lady Ledda along a wooded ravine in 'A-Wah-Ii, goal of safety, among laden fruit trees, yet not, it seemed, upon the towering heights of those noble mountains but upon an island about the shores of which rolled and roared a brown and viscid ocean choked with the mud which had been the soil of the mother continent.

'We are safe here, it would appear, my Bothon,' said the Netvissa Ledda. 'Let us lie down and sleep, for I am very weary.'

And after watching for a little space while the Lady Ledda reclined and slept, Bothon lay down beside her and fell at once into the deep and dreamless slumber of utter physical exhaustion.

MEREDITH awakened on his davenport. The room was dark, and when he had risen, switched on the lights and looked at his watch, he found that it was four o'clock in the morning. He undressed and went to bed and awakened three hours later without having dreamed.

A world and an era had come to its cataclysmic end, and he had been witness of it.

The contusion on his head had disappeared, Dr Cowlington observed later in the morning.

'I think you can go home now,' said the doctor, in his judicial manner. 'By the way, Meredith, what, if anything, was the name of that "mother continent" of yours?'

'We called it Mu,' said Meredith.

The doctor was silent for a while; then he nodded his head. He had made up his mind. 'I thought so,' said he, gravely.

'Why?' asked Meredith, intrigued.

'Because "Smith" called it that,' replied the doctor.

Meredith returned home that afternoon, his mind at rest. He has had no recurrence of his 'clairaudience'; there has been no resumption of the vivid, life-like dreams.

And he is, probably, since 'Smith' is dead, the only person who knows, at first-hand, of the existence and of the high civilization, and of the utter ultimate destruction of that vast continent of the Pacific, mother of all the world's subsequent civilizations, whose traces are manifold, whose very physical fragments survive in fair Hawaii, through whose fruited ravines walked Bothon and the Lady Ledda; in eikon-shadowed Easter Island; in Megalithic Ponape, brooding cryptically under the drenching Polynesian sunlight. There, from the midst of that indigo sea twenty millennia in the past, departed mighty Mu, which colonized the world and ruled imperially from Alu the Great City, until the four great forces conspired to end her glory in cataclysmic doom.

_________________

7: Inside the Limousine

Ernest M Poate

1884-1935

Detective Story Magazine 29 Jan 1921

I WAS in a great hurry. Janet, our baby, had refused to go to sleep until I sang "Sweet Evalina" for her— she, at least, admires my singing voice, which is not generally so well thought of— and Milly and I were going out for a party. We had planned a little dinner; and I had seats for the latest play. For a week we had talked of nothing but this outing, like two children looking forward to a party; for my days were full enough to make such excursions rare.

Now, thanks to little Janet's whim, it was nearly seven o'clock, and my evening rounds not yet finished. I gave the wards no more than a glance; luckily, most of the patients were quiet.

But one sedative order was needed; Margaret Winstead insisted on reciting Poe's "Raven"— con amore, and very loud, indeed. So I raced down the hall to the main office, after the night medication book.

The big room was empty, save for the telephone girl and Miss Manley, the night supervisor, who had just come on duty. One shaded lamp threw its dim light over the deserted desks, and gleamed from the brass rail which divided the office proper from the waiting space for patients. Beyond it the stiff wooden benches which Doctor Bentiron provided for those who sought his care stood idle.

As always, the sight of this darkened, deserted place affected me oddly. It was no more than a month since Doctor Bentiron had given up his evening office hour; I was not yet used to seeing those benches empty, which, when I first came to him, had been crowded with waiting patients until late at night.

"It looks queer to see the place empty," I remarked, and Miss Manley smiled. She had been with the doctor for twenty years.

"It's not like it used to be, even when you first came, Doctor Blakely," she answered. "Then you'd not be going out at this time, all dressed up like you are."

She glanced quizzically at my evening clothes. I threw out my chest, reveling in the touch of a stiff shirt bosom— for I like to dress up, once in a way.

"Not much chance for an open-faced coat then," I admitted. "Well, I don't get away so often, even now. But Mrs. Blakely and I are going to the theater to-night."

"Are you?"

The question was merely rhetorical; but even as she spoke the street door burst open— for the chief's door was never locked, and some one was always on duty near it.

"Am I?' I repeated— and groaned aloud.

For a tall old woman entered precipitately ; a gaunt, gray old woman, all in black. Her plain, honest face was twisted with grief; her eyes bulged, glittering with excitement.

Here would be a whole half hour lost, I thought, sighing— if I could get rid of this visitor at all! And I had left my poor wife dressed in her very best, slim white shoulders bare, powdering her pretty nose. Her big blue eyes had been so bright with anticipation; they would be bright with tears if we must lose our evening together, after all.

But I came forward manfully, trying to smile.

"Is the doctor here?" demanded the intruder  anxiously.

Her voice shook. She advanced to the brass rail and gripped it with both lean hands as though to force her way through. As the light shone upon her upturned face, I saw more clearly the tension beneath which she labored. Her mouth writhed strangely; her lids were red and puffy, and she passed her tongue back and forth across dry, cracked lips. Her neat black hat was awry; one thin wisp of gray hair fell untidily across her forehead.

"Is the doctor here?" she repeated insistently. "I want him. I got to see him! You call him, miss; get him for me right away!"

Miss Manley glanced questioningly at me. I hesitated. Doctor Bentiron was in his own office, I knew; and I was in a great hurry. But I had guarded his leisure too long; I could not disturb him needlessly, even now.

"The doctor is very busy," said I. "Can't you wait until morning. Is it very important?"

"Important?" she clamored, and the brass rail shook beneath her grip. "Important? Sure, 'tis sudden death an' murder, sir. I got to see the doctor, right now! He knows me, sir. You just tell him it's Mary—old Mary Monohan that worked f'r Miss Sevier."

I nodded. I remembered Miss Alicia Sevier; a pleasant, homely old body, unassuming and democratic in spite of— or because of— her distinguished an- cestry and her vast fortune. She was arterio-sclerotic, I knew; must have had an apoplexy to send this old servant here in such disorder. Her mistress was sick, no doubt; and of all the thousands of physicians in New York City, this Mary Monohan had remembered only Doctor Bentiron, and had come straight after him. Well, that was the way of all who knew"the doctor.

"I'll tell him," I promised. If it had been the mistress herself, I might have turned her away; but I knew that the chief would never allow an old serving woman to be sent from his door. He had an especial tenderness for humble folk.

"I'll tell him right away. You want him to come and see Miss Sevier to-night?"

The old woman her head bleakly ; her thin lip trembled. '"Nun— no, sorr." Her brogue broadened distressfully. "No, sorr—my madam, she do be dead, sorr. I'm just after leavin' her up in Westchester, sorr, dead an' gone— dead an' gone!" She twisted shaking hands together, her eyes dull and absent, and began to. croon. "Ochone— ochone! Och, why did ye die!"

Then she pulled herself together, flushing dully. "Tis no time for that, sorr," she apologized. "I do be dreadful upset with it all. 'Tis foul play I'm fearin', sorr. I— I— just lave me see himself, please, sorr— I can tell it to th' doctor better. F'r I misdoubt there's been dirty work done. Och, th' pore lamb!"

Tears hopped down her hollow cheeks; she rocked herself back and forth, struggling for composure.

I pitied her; she seemed on the verge of collapse.

"Just sit down here, Miss Monohan," I urged. "Miss Manley, get a little aromatic ammonia. Try to get hold of yourself, now; I'm going right in to Doctor Bentiron, and you want to be all steady to explain things to him, you know."

I left her weeping quietly, and went back to the private office. Despite my disappointment, my nerves crisped pleasurably. I am not very quick of wit; but my years with Doctor Bentiron have developed in me a certain special perception. This stern old woman's disorder had warned me; I read a message in the almost palpable aura of horror which hung about her gray head. Here was mystery; here was the atmosphere of dark and secret deeds ; and I knew by instinct that presently Doctor Bentiron would set forth, a slouching, apathetic Nemesis, to bring the light into dark places. And I would go with him, of course; an appanage, I hoped, not entirely useless.

And so, seeing Hanrahan in the hall, I called to him without waiting any further explanation of Mary Mono- han's urgent need.

"Tell Mrs. Blakely I'll have to give

it up,' I told him. "Here are the tickets. If she likes, you phone to Doctor Costello and ask him to go to the theater with her. Tell her I'm sorry; but there's trouble somewhere, and I'll have to go out with the doctor, I expect."

I sighed once more. I grudged the loss of this evening with Milly. But my duty to the chief came first, as I knew she would have said. True, he would have excused me for the asking— if some investigation was really on foot. But to me, as to Milly, he was le Roi Soleil; and to play even a minor part in one of the doctor's flashing, uncannily brilliant ventures in criminal investigation had its own irresistible lure. "Murder," the old woman had said; "sudden death and murder!" I must not lose this!

So I rapped on Doctor Bentiron's door, my little theater party forgotten.

There was no sound from within; but the little bulb over the door flashed once. That meant "Come in"; in certain moods, the chief was silent as the Sphinx.

I opened the door and entered. The big, bare, windowless room was brightly lighted and hazy with smoke, which hung in a great cloud beneath the skylight. Between his two huge, squat revolving bookcases at the room's end Doctor Benton sat—or rather lay—immobile in a heavy, wide-armed reclin- ing chair, lean legs outthrust upon its footrest. It is so I always think of him; relaxed and motionless, wrapped in a faded, scorched green bathrobe, to- bacco and papers on one chair arm, ash tray on the other, a half-smoked ciga- rette between his slender, supple fingers; bearded chin upon his chest, his long, dull, inscrutable eyes half veiled beneath overhanging brows, brooding upon the empty wall before him. Indifferent, abstracted, half asleep; yet in some subtle fashion indescribably dominant.

He did not move or look about at my entry; the strong light showed his na row, high-nosed hawk's face immobile and blank. Smoke drifted lazily from his nostrils; he raised one eyebrow almost imperceptibly.

At this invitation I came forward over the bare expanse of floor; for, save for the book cases and the doctor's own chair, the room was empty. Stopping about six feet from the chief's feet and a little to the right, as he liked visitors to stand, I would have told my errand; but the faint movement of a languid palm checked me.

I stood waiting. Years of intimate association with Doctor Bentiron had taught me a little of the workings of his mind—though I never hope to un- derstand him.

His face was half turned from me. His extraordinarily long eyes still gazed dully into space. But I was no longer to be deceived by that appearance of abstraction; with the doctor, close observation had become instinctive, and I knew that he perceived and  interpreted the tiniest thing within a field of vision wider than that of any other man I have known.

Presently he yawned, settled himself more comfortably in the deep-padded chair and fell to the making of a fresh cigarette.

"Umphf," said Doctor Bentiron; an indescribable sound, produced with closed lips, by which he could express a score of meanings. Now it denoted the solution of a problem; it was the chief's occasional whim to read a visitor's purpose from his expression—and I would scarcely dare to tell some of his deductions, lest you write me down a liar.

"Umphf," he repeated. "Your sor rowful countenance tells me that you have given up the theater; but, from the murky gleam of your eye, my son, I infer that you hope for some compensatory excitement. Umphf. Yes. Exactly. Not a young visitor; I miss the gleam in the eye evoked by the sight of a pretty girl. No, it will be an old woman. Well, bring her in, Blakely, and let's hear all about the murder. Is it some of her own folks, or in the family she works for?"

"I think it's her mistress," I answered, then stopped in amazement. "But doctor," I cried, "how did you know it was a woman—and a servant?"

The chief grinned faintly, exhaling a cubic yard or so of smoke.

"You're an ingenuous youth, Blakely, my son," he drawled, his voice flat and expressionless. "Your face is an open book. Shut it." No doubt my mouth was open. "I didn't know: I guessed, aided by my exhaustive knowledge of your mental processes. You'd scarcely have given up an evening out with Milly for a man. And if you had interrupted my meditations for any one but a working woman, I shudder to think of your fate. I keep office hours for people of leisure. And finally, poor old women who work are most likely to be in domestic service of some sort. Who is it? And who's dead? I can read a murder in your avid eye, my child."

"I wish I could read print as you read faces," I told him. "Her name is Monohan; and she says her mistress, Miss Sevier, is dead—murdered, I imagine, though she wouldn't tell me much about it."

"Umphf," said Doctor Bentiron. "Alicia Sevier's had a right to die any time this last two years. And yet Mary Monohan isn't one to exaggerate; she's a good, faithful old thing, Mary is. Well, my son, bring her in. And get chairs."

I brought in a couple of seats, and went back to the waiting room after Miss Monohan. She was sitting stiffly upright on the edge of a bench, hands tight clasped in a sort of desperate composure; she sprang up as I entered.

"The doctor will see you now," I told her.

"Yes,"' she answered. "I've a story f'r him, so I have!"

And she followed me, unsurprised, accepting as a matter of course a privilege which I had often seen denied to folk both wealthy and famous; that of seeing Doctor Bentiron without an appointment. But this old woman knew him only as he was to the poor.

In the private office, she dropped a stiff curtsy, and stood until the chief, his dry, dead voice now warmly courteous, bade her be seated. And then she began her tale.

"My Miss Alicia is dead," said she mournfully. "I'm just after leaving her dead, up in Westchester. Her an' me went up on the train, this very afternoon. She was giving a house party there— at Canaan, her farm, doctor. And she went up a day ahead, to get things settled, like. 'Tis young Mr. Vincent plays at managing the place f'r her, since he gambled away all his own money and all Miss Alicia'd give him— the blaggard! And he met us at the station himself with the big car; the limmy-seen. The shofer had a day off, he says. He put Miss Alicia inside, and her bags; and he shut the door onto her. And I rode up front, beside him. It was real cold, and snowy.

"And when we got to the house and stopped, I got down and opened the door. And my Miss Alicia, she laid there on the floor— dead. She's dead, sir— dead an' gone."

The poor woman repeated her sad tidings dryly, monotonously, as if she wondered at her own lack of feeling. It was as though she held tight to the bare facts, thrusting their emotional significance out of consciousness. Her whole manner said, "Justice must be done; then I shall have time to grieve."

"Umphf," said Doctor Bentiron, tugging at his beard. "That isn't all. There are plenty of doctors in Westchester fit to write a death certificate. Why did you come to me, Mary?"

"I want you should come up and look at her."

The chief said nothing; he blinked mournfully at his bare wall. So I tried my hand.

"But why, Miss Monohan? What can the doctor do, now?"

"I want he should look at my Miss Alicia," she repeated. "I been lady's maid to her this twenty years and more; she didn't have nobody but me. Many's the thing I've seen— but I'm no loose talker. I can't say no more now, sir," with the stubborn loyalty of an

old servant ; "but you'll be coming, won't you, doctor, yer honor?"

For an instant Doctor Bentiron looked straight at Mary Monohan, his gray eyes like rapiers; and she bore that merciless stare bravely.

"Canaan," he said reflectively. "We can get a train at Mott Haven. All right, Mary. You go outside and wait."

He pressed one of the battery of push buttons on his chairarm. And when the night supervisor appeared, "Miss Manley," he ordered, "get Mary here a cup of tea, out in the nurses' dining room. Order my car. And have Miss Taggert telephone to Mr. Vincent Prescott at Canaan Farms, up in Westchester. Tell him to meet me at the station of the electric road; the train gets there a little before nine, I think."

As the two women went out, I turned on him irritably. "You don't mean to say you're going way out into the woods at this time of night, just to please this hysterical old woman?" I demanded.

"Why, there's nothing to it! An arterio-sclerotic had a stroke and died; she's been due for it this twelve months."

"Umphf," the chief  grunted. "Blakely, you don't understand the Irish. Mary Monohan didn't come down here for nothing. There's something queer about this; and mysteries annoy me. She intended to say a lot more and then found that she couldn't. Loyalty stopped her mouth. I think— or fear."

He would say no more; and I had long since proved the futility of ques- tioning the chief when he was not moved to speech. He shrugged out of his shabby bathrobe, and into the equally shabby old ulster which a nurse presently brought; and I went up to my own rooms to make my peace with Milly and get my own overcoat. I would go with the doctor; we both took that for granted.

Once settled in his big blue limousine, slouch hat pulled far down over his eyes, Doctor Bentiron asked a single question.

"What makes you think your mistress was murdered, Mary?"

The woman started. "Murdered, sir? I never. Why, it's the sight, sir." Her voice was hushed, awed. "I had it from my mother; she was a wise woman. Twicet before it's come on me, and now this time, as clear as clear."

"Umphf," said the chief, and lapsed into silence, while I muttered scorn- fully. Only my deep respect for the doctor prevented me from expressing a pungently free opinion of this wild-goose chase,

In silence we reached Mott Haven, and silently we entered the waiting electric train. Nor did the chief speak until we had disbarked at the station nearest the Canaan farms.

"That will be our man," he remarked, tucking his chin deeper into his coat collar against a sleety wind.

Beside the platform stood a huge imported car; a limousine. Its motor hummed quietly; behind the wheel sat a man, formless and unrecognizable in a shaggy fur coat. The doctor approached him, Mary Monohan and I trailing after.

"Are you from Canaan?"

The stranger emerged from his high fur collar. His face was old-young; plump, yet haggard; pasty white, in spite of the wind which whipped my own color high; and it bore those flat red blotches of the young alcoholic. So much I saw by the light of the station electrics.

"I am Vincent Prescott," he answered. "I suppose you were to be one of Miss Sevier's house guests; Doctor Bentiron, isn't it? But it's all off; my aunt died to-night, quite suddenly. I tried to explain over the phone, but the woman who gave your message was awfully stupid; I couldn't make her understand.'' Then he saw Mary Monohan, standing modestly back, and scowled.

"What's that old creature doing here?" he demanded pettishly. "A fine, loyal servant! Sneaked 'off before her mistress was even cold— with her jewelry, no doubt."

"Umphf," replied Doctor Bentiron. "We'll go to the house now. Get in, Mary."

And, such was the authority of his dull, listless manner, the young man made no protest, but reached obediently to open the door. His eyes glinted restlessly; he gnawed at a loose lip.

The tapestry upholstery of the limousine was lighted cozily by a ceiling lamp. The chief opened his coat as the slamming door shut out a sleety gale.

"Umphf. Nice and warm in here. Must have one of those heaters."

We drove off, cutout wide, motor barking. Mary Monohan stared somberly down at the floor.

"Right there," she announced suddenly, pointing downward. "Right there on the floor she lay— dead!'

I shivered involuntarily.

We rolled on for perhaps ten minutes, slipping and skidding over an icy roadway, then pulled up beneath a wide porte cochere. Groaning, Doctor Bentiron clambered out, and we after him.

The black bulk of a house loomed before us, unlighted save for the dim radiance which shone through a fan-light over its door and was extin- guished at ovce by the dark without. Leaving his car where it stood, our driver followed us up the steps and ushered us into a big reception hall whose dusk was scarcely relieved by one feeble lamp. Here he peeled off his shaggy coat and stood before us in a dark lounge suit, faultlessly cut; a black-haired young man, scarcely more than a youth, stout and short-breathed, whose heavy-lidded eyes were uncertain. His round face bore plain marks of dissipation.

"My aunt lies dead upstairs," he said huskily, as though in apology for his abruptness. "You won't stay, of course. My chauffeur is away, but I'll drive you back to the station; or, there's a passable hotel half a mile away."

I expected some apology or explanation; but the chief was imperturbable.

"All in good time," he answered dully. His indifferent eyes explored the ceiling with an appearance of utter boredom. "First, I will look at Miss Sevier."

I thought our host started.

"Ah, yes— of course," he stammered. "You were her physician, weren't you? But it's quite unnecessary, doctor; our local man, Yost, has seen her, and I expect him back at any minute, to make out the death certificate."

He fumbled in a pocket and extracted an ornate jeweled cigarette case with an attempt at nonchalance; but his clumsy, shaking fingers tore the little paper tube while drawing it out. Young Prescott was palpably overcome by his aunt's death.

His roving glance lit upon Mary Monohan, standing respectfully back.

"You!" he muttered angrily. "Get back to the servants' quarters where you belong!"

Then a sedate rap sounded on the door behind him. His whole body jerked convulsively; he emitted a faint exclamation.

Mechanically the old servant responded to this call. Circling about us, she went to the door and opened it, to admit a slim, mustached young man whose coat and cap were streaked with wet snow.

"I've brought the blanks, Mr. Prescott," began this visitor deferentially. "Will you give me the information now?" Then he saw us, and stopped short.

"Well, Yost," said Doctor Bentiron casually. "I thought you were still up at Medfarm Hospital?"

"I left in September," answered the other, flushing. "I— I thought I could work into a practice out here."

His light overcoat was shabby; as he unbuttoned it, I saw a cheap ready- made suit beneath. I knew well enough why he had left the hospital; he couldn't afford to stay. And, from his almost obsequious attitude toward young Prescott, I judged that what patients he had were scarcely of this social level. And now, at last, he had been called to one of the big houses, if only to make out a death certificate; and he had made his lack of blanks an excuse for a second call— to be charged for, no doubt, at regular rates. And here was Doctor Bentiron, who it appeared would have his trouble for nothing. I could read the fear in his weak, pleasant face.

"Are— are you in charge, sir?" he asked uncertainly.

"Umphf," said the chief, quite understanding the young fellow's uneasiness. "Oh, no, doctor. Certainly not. I'm here unofficially; but with your permission, I'd like to look at the body."

"Oh, of course, professor— Of course! Awfully glad to have you," answered Doctor Yost, vastly relieved.

Prescott stretched out an unsteady hand as though to stop us, then thought better of it and turned away, fumbling for another cigarette. "I'll be in the library, Yost, when you're ready to make out that certificate," he called.

Mary Monohan had disappeared; the chief and I mounted the wide, soft-carpeted stairs after our guide.

He led us into a big, many-windowed bedroom and snapped on its lights. The place was incongruously gay with pillowed, chintz-hung divans; Dresden shepherdesses led impossibly woolly sheep along its walls.

On the damask-spread bed lay Miss Alicia Sevier, still in her traveling clothes. She seemed asleep; beneath a crown of soft white hair her high-bred face was calm, startlingly lifelike. Her lips were vivid; her soft, faded cheeks were rose pink. Instinctively, I walked on tiptoe, lest she wake.

"Heart failure," said Yost. His voice was unconsciously lowered. "Mr. Prescott tells me she's had endocarditis for years."

"Umphf," said Doctor Bentiron, glancing queerly at the younger man. His observation seemed to satisfy him. He began to roll a cigarette.

"I remember, my son," he drawled, his voice perfectly expressionless, "that when I lectured to you I found you too impressionable. You must learn to look behind a front; you're too likely to allow environment to cloud your judgment. Suppose, now, you were back on the ambulance; suppose you'd just come into a furnished room on 199th Street and this body, dressed in gingham, lay on the bed. What would you do then?"

The young man flushed at the implied rebuke. Then he looked down at the body with new eyes; and I stepped mentally back into my own days on the Bellevue bus and strove to envisage the picture which the chief's dry words called up.

Instinctively, I began to sniff; at the sound, Yost started violently. "Gas!" he cried. "Illuminating gas!"

"Umphf," drawled Doctor Bentiron. "You are not wholly imbecile. Do you know anything but carbon monoxide that will leave an old woman, dead this three or four hours, with that bright coloring? But let's make sure. Got a pocket surgical case?"

Yost produced a flat leather case; the chief chose from it a small scalpel and bared the dead woman's arm. Deftly he made a small cut in the median vein, just at the bend of the elbow, and massaged the arm until a drop or two of blood oozed slowly out.

It was not dark, as venous blood should be; it was a brilliant cherry red.

"Umphf," said the doctor. "You see. Carbon monoxide, as you will remember, unites with hemoglobin, forming a stable compound with a very long name which I have forgotten. Death results from tissue asphyxiation; the blood corpuscles are no longer able to absorb oxygen from the air. Umphf, Yes. Exactly."

"But— but," stammered Yost, wide- eyed, "it can't be! Why, she was all right when she got off the train, at five o'clock— and she was dead when they got to the house!"

"Nevertheless," replied the doctor phlegmatically, "it is. Yost, my infant, I wouldn't sign that death certificate, if I were you."

The boy— he was little more— gaped at him. "Wh— why not? How could [ explain it to Mr. Prescott?" He had built high hopes upon this call, I could see. It was not easy for him to relinquish the prospect of a lucrative acquaintance. And it occurred to me that— if a crime had really been committed— this pleasant, impecunious, impressionable young physician would have been an ideal instrument for its concealment.

"Surely you don't think— Why, the undertaker'll be here any minute now!"

"I don't think anything— yet," Doctor Bentiron replied musingly. "But you hold that undertaker up, Yost, my son. Send for the medical examiner, instead."

Ignoring the other's perturbation, he slouched over to the mantelpiece and tugged at an old-fashioned bell cord.

Presently old Mary Monohan rapped and entered, sedate and expressionless. The instinct of service had triumphed over her emotion.

"Yes, sir, doctor?"

"Sit down, Mary." The chief subsided into the embrace of a huge, padded divan, his lean legs out-thrust. "Sit down, you boys. We are about to cogitate."

He dropped ashes on the rug.

"Now, Mary. Tell us all about ride up from the station."

"Why, sir, we got off of the train, and Mr. Vincent was there with the big car. He put Miss Alicia's bags inside, and helped her in. It was real warm inside; and she asked me to ride in there with her. She had to shout, the motor made so much noise. But my head ached, so I asked if I couldn't ride outside."

"The motor made a great noise?  The cutout was open, I suppose. Did

Mr. Prescott talk to you?"

"No, sir. When we started off, he did something with his foot, and all the noise stopped; but he didn't say anything. He was never one to talk to servants, only ugly-like. And he acted queer, too— I c'd see devilment in the bad, rollin' eye of him!" The old woman's repressed antagonism blazed out; she gritted the words vindictively, then swallowed hard and went on in a low, colorless fashion.

"He did say one thing, just as we come to the hill out here. He reached back and opened the window behind him. 'Must be close in there,' he says, kind of shaky. And then the motor began that dreadful racket again, and I couldn't hear nothing more. And then we stopped, and I got out and found my mistress laying there, dead!"

"Umphf," said the doctor. "How long did it take you to get out here?"

"Why, seemed like he was driving awful slow. It was slippery, I s'pose. Half an hour, maybe."

"Exactly. And that's that. All right, Mary. Come, my children." He heaved himself up. "Yost, you talk with young Prescott. Tell him you're not satisfied. Let him argue with you; keep him busy for half an hour or so. I have a thing to do."

"All right, professor," and the young physician sighed. "Just as you say— but I hate to do it!"

We filed out, and descended the wide stairway. The chief, in advance, drifted down ghost-silent, as always; and the thick rug muffled the sound of our clumsier feet. Halfway down, our leader stopped abruptly. He gestured for caution.

A chilly wind blew up the stair well. Leaning over the banister, I saw Pres- cott at the open door; he was talking with some unseen visitor.

His voice was a formless mumble; but presently the other spoke, loud and insistent.

"Cut it out! I'm sick of your promises. You've been coming into money this last six months. It won't go, Prescott; I've got to be paid— right now!"

"Hush!" reprimanded our host, in a shrill whisper. "It's all right; I'll keep my promises. My aunt died to-night!"

"Oh-h!" came that other louder voice. "Lucky for you, wasn't it?" Then a harsh laugh followed.

"Will you be quiet?" cried Prescott, suppressed anxiety in his voice. "There's an interfering doctor here now!" His voice broke; I think he scarcely knew what he was saying.

"What of it?" demanded his visitor; there was a new note in his rough voice. "You've nothing to be scared of— have you?"

"Oh, come in here, for God's sake!"

Clutching the other's arm, Prescott dragged him in and through a curtained doorway out of our sight.

Unmoved, Doctor Bentiron descended the last steps. He made no comment; but Yost was white and scared.

"I'll wait out here till back," he whispered.

The chief nodded, opening the great front door; and I followed him out into the night.

The big limousine still stood beneath the porte cochere; the wind howled about it, driving sleet against its polished body. A fur rug covered its radiator; this the doctor stripped off.

Then he slipped in behind its wheel and started the motor with a practiced hand. The powerful engine hummed sweetly; I could scarcely hear its song above the shriek of the wind, and it must have been inaudiable ten feet away.

Doctor Bentiron opened the throttle a little more; then, beckoning to me, he clambered into the body of the car. I followed, shutting the door.

As such high-priced machines are, nowadays, the car was heated by its motor's exhaust. In its closed body we were comfortably warm.

We sat there in silence for perhaps twenty minutes, while the motor purred on. The chief did not smoke; but he sniffed at intervals, felt his own pulse, seemed to be concentrating upon his own physical reactions.

At last he stirred and yawned. "Umphf," he said. "And that's that. Come along in, Blakely. You've been an experimental animal, my son; you and me both. And as a result of this test, I infer that Miss Sevier's unfortunate death was not accidental."

Unlike most of our American cars, the big machine had a full sized window in its rear. This the chief examined briefly; then he clambered out, switched off the motor and fumbled about the driver's seat until he found a small lever set in the car-edge, just behind the front door. He pulled it; and I heard a distinct click, followed by a sliding sound,

"Very clever," commented Doctor Bentiron. He had walked to the back of the limousine, and stood contemplating its wide window, now fully open. His thumbs were hooked in his belt; his head was cocked a little to one side; he rocked on his heels, humming raucously, ignoring the bitter, sleety wind— whereby I knew that his investigation had satisfied him. I was still mystified; but I had learned to await the chief's whim.

"Very clever. He must have fixed it up himself; used to do some motor racing, you know. He's a fair amateur mechanic, they say."

He turned back into the house, and I followed, glad enough to get out of the cold. I was eaten up with curiosity.

Prescott stood in the big hall. His mysterious visitor had evidently gone out another way. He towered above Yost, arguing angrily, dominating the smaller, slenderer man by sheer bulk and noise. The young doctor turned toward us relievedly; I fancied that he had been upon the point of yielding. His was not a very forceful personality.

"Doctor Bentiron can explain," he evaded,

Prescott glowered at the unmoved alienist.

"What's all this foolishness, anyhow?" he blustered; yet his voice carried a frightened, whining undertone. "Here's this cheap quack refusing to sign a death certificate— says my aunt's death wasn't natural; calls it an 'accident'! And after saying it was heart failure himself, too. What does he mean, 'accident'? And what are you doing, poking round here, you Bentiron? What is this your business? I— I'll—"

The chief had been blinking absently down the hall, thumbs in belt, leaning forward from the waist. Now he turned his head, his bearded chin drooping a trifle, and stared straight at our host from beneath heavy, overhanging brows. Under the force of that cold gray stare the stout young man lost the thread of his diatribe, stammered and became silent, his restless eyes looking everywhere but at Doctor Bentiron.

"Umphf,"— that gentleman said placidly. "Not an accident. No. Murder." He yawned. "Yes. Exactly. Yost, have you notified the medical examiner? Do so at once. We'll be going now, Prescott. Drive us to the police station, will you? I'll have to lodge an information; and they'll want to question you, no doubt."

He turned away, ignoring the other's expression.

Prescott crouched, his hands clawed as though for attack; and my muscles tensed involuntarily at sight of his paper-white, snarling face. It was for a breath only; then he weakened, standing irresolute.

"Oh, all right," he muttered, "anything to oblige! I haven't any rights here, of course." But his black eyes held a vicious, cunning gleam; I resolved to watch him closely. Doctor Bentiron was already clambering into the big car, whose rear window he had reclosed. I followed, leaving Doctor Yost bewildered and uneasy in the hall.

Prescott came out, muffled in his fur coat, fumbled beneath the driver's seat, then went to the back of the car.

"Tail light's gone out," he mumbled, and crouched beneath the spare tires for a moment. As he came back past the open door, the chief reached out and tapped his shoulder.

"Drive straight," he warned, "or I'll drill you."

I grinned to myself in the dark, for the doctor never carried a gun; none the less, I knew that he would contrive some means to punish disobedience.

I closed the door as Prescott slid in behind the wheel. The motor purred, then roared defiantly as he opened the cut-out ; and we were off.

Dr. Bentiron switched off the ceiling lamp and peered out into the night.

"He's going right," he drawled. "The young gentleman knows when he's beaten—or else he still believes he can get away with it." And the doctor relaxed, thrusting out his lean shanks, and fumbled for his cigarette papers.

"Suppose you explain now," I urged. "You surely don't mean that this fellow managed to give his aunt illuminating gas, here in this car?"

"I never said he did." He licked his cigarette, lighted it, and inhaled deeply. Then he began to talk.

"Young Prescott is emphatically no good. He ran through all his own money, years ago. Lately, he's cashed his expectations, and used the proceeds to buck the cotton market. He couldn't lose fast enough on the stock exchange, you see. And he's a hundred thousand or so in the hole."

I wondered how the chief knew all this. He never read the newspapers; he scorned the ordinary sources of information. Yet, in some way, he managed to know everything worth knowing. His grasp of the news was encyclopedic; I think he soaked information in through his skin. I did not question his accuracy; I only strove to follow him— and with difficulty, for my head was unaccountably heavy. My wits thickened; there was a roaring in my ears, though our progress was almost noiseless. Prescott had closed his cut-out ten minutes ago.

"And he's Miss Sevier's sole heir," the chief went on. Was it my fancy, or did his dry voice drag more than usual? "There we have a motive; and, if murder was done, he alone had the opportunity. One would hardly sus- pect Mary. But— the question is—"

The slow drawl died away; or the roaring in my ears obscured it. My head dropped forward; far off in space a tiny flame seemed to dance. It grew and blazed, approaching at incredible speed; it filled the car, enveloped me. I sank into its embrace.

"Umphf," came the doctor's voice, very faint, very distant. I smiled to myself dreamily, that his tones should still be so weary and indifferent when the end of the world was upon us.

"Umphf. The man must be crazy!"

Then a crash, and the tinkling of falling glass, as he drove an elbow through the car windows, one after another. A great gust of cold, clear air swept in; I drank it thirstily, and it blew the fog from my brain. Suddenly I knew that my nostrils were full of the fumes of burnt gasoline.

"Stop!" Doctor ordered Bentiron briskly.

He reached a lean hand through the broken window behind our driver; his lean forefinger bored into Prescoott's back.

That young man flinched, as from a pistol muzzle, and swung obediently to the side of the road. In the distance, with a vast clattering roar, a huge furniture truck was approaching; some landlord's victim had planned a night flitting, I thought vaguely.

The chief leaned forward, finger still in his captive's back. "It's all up now, son," he said not unkindly. "You poor infant! Did you think you could asphyxiate me as you did your aunt? You're not to be trusted. Get down; Blakely will drive, and you and I will hold hands back here until I turn you over to the police."

Prescott gave a little, frightened moan, and began to climb slowly down. The huge truck rumbled closer; it loomed imminently above us.

Wordlessly, with incredible agility, Vincent Prescott cast himself full in its path, like a Hindoo devotee before the wheels of Juggernaut.

A startled, profane shout; the scream of brakes! Skidding perilously upon the slippery road, the great truck lurched on, rolling remorsely over that prone figure, then plunged to a stand-still— too late!

"Umphf," said Doctor Bentiron. "No doubt that was the best solution."

Leaving me to settle with a frantic, sobbing truck driver, he clambered out and set about examining the limousine, Prescott was quite dead. By the time I had explained matters— as best I could— taken the driver's name and number and his promise to report to the police, the chief was leaning idly against the hood, a wad of cotton waste in his hand.

"This was wedged in the exhaust," he explained, "just tight enough to hold back part of the fumes without being blown out. The car is heated; the exhaust runs through a coil under the seat. And about a dozen little holes have been drilled in the pipes. Very pretty indeed!

"You see, with the cut-out open, everything was all right. Shut that, and this waste held back the exhaust enough so it leaked out into the car body. With the windows shut, it wouldn't take long to asphyxiate any one inside— as you and I came near proving. When he'd finished us, our gallant host would have opened his cut-out again, opened the front window and jiggled his little lever, opening the rear window, too. And in five minutes the fumes would have blown out. Another mysterious death or two— and he counted on bulldozing Yost into making out that death certificate after all. I think he might have done it, too— but he'd have hard work explaining it. No doubt he'd have chucked our two corpses out onto the railroad tracks somewhere. Pretty risky, of course; but he was desperate."

"But," I protested, still confused, "where does the illuminating gas come in? And we sat in this car with the motor muffled for twenty minutes, and didn't get overcome."

"Umphf," muttered Doctor Bentiron scornfully. "Before we got there, he'd taken out his plug of cotton waste, of course. And those tiny holes wouldn't leak much gas when the exhaust was wide open. He tucked his plug back into place when he was fooling with his tail light, just before we started out; it was then he decided to murder us, too. And as for gas, "I never mentioned illuminating gas. That was your contribution. I said carbon monoxide; and you should know that the fumes of burned gasoline are heavy with carbon monoxide."

"Why didn't I smell the gas?" asked. I was still muddled.

"The exhaust of a good motor— where combustion of gasoline is practically complete— has very little odor; and is very deadly. Besides, I did smell the gas. Otherwise, you and I would be mooning about in the Elysian fields, picking bunches of asphodels, by now. Umphf. Yes. Exactly. Pick up Prescott's feet, Blakely; we'll put him inside and drive back. I'll ride outside this time, I think. And we'll report the unfortunately accidental death of Mr. Vincent Prescott, and tell Yost to make out that death certificate 'heart failure' after all— if it's not too late. I detest unnecessary publicity."

_______________

8: An Unlocked Window

Ethel Lina White

1876–1944

Pearson’s Magazine, March 1926

Filmed for the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" TV show

“HAVE YOU locked up, Nurse Cherry?”

“Yes, Nurse Silver.”

“Every door? Every window?”

“Yes, yes.”

Yet even as she shot home the last bolt of the front door, at the back of Nurse Cherry’s mind was a vague misgiving.

She had forgotten— something.

She was young and pretty, but her expression was anxious. While she had most of the qualities to ensure professional success, she was always on guard against a serious handicap.

She had a bad memory.

Hitherto, it had betrayed her only in burnt Benger and an occasional overflow in the bathroom. But yesterday’s lapse was little short of a calamity.

Late that afternoon she had discovered the oxygen-cylinder, which she had been last to use, empty— its cap carelessly unscrewed.

The disaster called for immediate remedy, for the patient, Professor Glendower Baker, was suffering from the effects of gas-poisoning. Although dark was falling, the man, Iles, had to harness the pony for the long drive over the mountains, in order to get a fresh supply.

Nurse Cherry had sped his parting with a feeling of loss. Iles was a cheery soul and a tower of strength.

It was dirty weather with a spitting rain blanketing the elephant-grey mounds of the surrounding hills. The valley road wound like a muddy coil between soaked bracken and dwarf oaks.

Iles shook his head as he regarded the savage isolation of the landscape.

“I don’t half like leaving you— a pack of women— with him about. Put up the shutters on every door and window, Nurse, and don’t let no one come in till I get back.”

He drove off—his lamps glow-worms in the gloom.

Darkness and rain. And the sodden undergrowth seemed to quiver and blur, so that stunted trees took on the shapes of crouching men advancing towards the house.

Nurse Cherry hurried through her round of fastening the windows. As she carried her candle from room to room of the upper floors, she had the uneasy feeling that she was visible to any watcher.

Her mind kept wandering back to the bad business of the forgotten cylinder. It had plunged her in depths of self-distrust and shame. She was overtired, having nursed the patient single-handed, until the arrival, three days ago, of the second nurse. But that fact did not absolve her from blame.

“I’m not fit to be a nurse,” she told herself in bitter self-reproach.

She was still in a dream when she locked the front door. Nurse Silver’s questions brought her back to earth with a furtive sense of guilt.

Nurse Silver’s appearance inspired confidence, for she was of solid build, with strong features and a black shingle. Yet, for all her stout looks, her nature seemed that of Job.

“Has he gone?” she asked in her harsh voice.

“Iles? Yes.”

Nurse Cherry repeated his caution.

“He’ll get back as soon as he can,” she added, “but it probably won’t be until dawn.”

“Then,” said Nurse Silver gloomily, “we are alone.”

Nurse Cherry laughed.

“Alone? Three hefty women, all of us able to give a good account of ourselves.”

“I’m not afraid.” Nurse Silver gave her rather a peculiar look. “I’m safe enough.”

“Why?”

“Because of you. He won’t touch me with you here.”

Nurse Cherry tried to belittle her own attractive appearance with a laugh.

“For that matter,” she said, “we are all safe.”

“Do you think so? A lonely house. No man. And two of us.”

Nurse Cherry glanced at her starched nurse’s apron. Nurse Silver’s words made her feel like special bait— a goat tethered in a jungle, to attract a tiger.

“Don’t talk nonsense,” she said sharply.

The countryside, of late, had been chilled by a series of murders. In each case, the victim had been a trained nurse. The police were searching for a medical student— Sylvester Leek. It was supposed that his mind had become unhinged, consequent on being jilted by a pretty probationer. He had disappeared from the hospital after a violent breakdown during an operation.

Next morning, a night-nurse had been discovered in the laundry— strangled. Four days later, a second nurse had been horribly done to death in the garden of a villa on the outskirts of the small agricultural town. After the lapse of a fortnight, one of the nurses in attendance on Sir Thomas Jones had been discovered in her bedroom— throttled.

The last murder had taken place in a large mansion in the very heart of the country. Every isolated cottage and farm became infected with panic. Women barred their doors and no girl lingered late in the lane, without her lover.

Nurse Cherry wished she could forget the details she had read in the newspapers. The ingenuity with which the poor victims had been lured to their doom and the ferocity of the attacks all proved a diseased brain driven by malignant motive.

It was a disquieting thought that she and Nurse Silver were localized. Professor Baker had succumbed to gas-poisoning while engaged in work of national importance and his illness had been reported in the Press.

“In any case,” she argued, “how could— he— know that we’re left tonight?”

Nurse Silver shook her head.

“They always know.”

“Rubbish! And he’s probably committed suicide by now. There hasn’t been a murder for over a month.”

“Exactly. There’s bound to be another, soon.”

Nurse Cherry thought of the undergrowth creeping nearer to the house. Her nerve snapped.

“Are you trying to make me afraid?”

“Yes,” said Nurse Silver, “I am. I don’t trust you. You forget.”

Nurse Cherry coloured angrily.

“You might let me forget that wretched cylinder.”

“But you might forget again.”

“Not likely.”

As she uttered the words— like oil spreading over water— her mind was smeared with doubt.

Something forgotten.

She shivered as she looked up the well of the circular staircase, which was dimly lit by an oil-lamp suspended to a cross-bar. Shadows rode the walls and wiped out the ceiling like a flock of sooty bats.

An eerie place. Hiding-holes on every landing.

The house was tall and narrow, with two or three rooms on every floor. It was rather like a tower or a pepper-pot. The semi-basement was occupied by the kitchen and domestic offices. On the ground-floor were a sitting-room, the dining-room and the Professor’s study. The first floor was devoted to the patient. On the second floor were the bedrooms of the nurses and of the Iles couple. The upper floors were given up to the Professor’s laboratorial work.

Nurse Cherry remembered the stout shutters and the secure hasps. There had been satisfaction in turning the house into a fortress. But now, instead of a sense of security, she had a feeling of being caged.

She moved to the staircase.

“While we’re bickering,” she said, “we’re neglecting the patient.”

Nurse Silver called her back.

“I’m on duty now.”

Professional etiquette forbade any protest. But Nurse Cherry looked after her colleague with sharp envy.

She thought of the Professor’s fine brow, his wasted clear-cut features and visionary slate-grey eyes, with yearning. For after three years of nursing children, with an occasional mother or aunt, romance had entered her life.

From the first, she had been interested in her patient. She had scarcely eaten or slept until the crisis had passed. She noticed too, how his eyes followed her around the room and how he could hardly bear her out of his sight.

Yesterday he had held her hand in his thin fingers.

“Marry me, Stella,” he whispered.

“Not unless you get well,” she answered foolishly.

Since then, he had called her “Stella.” Her name was music in her ears until her rapture was dashed by the fatal episode of the cylinder. She had to face the knowledge that, in case of another relapse, Glendower’s life hung upon a thread.

She was too wise to think further, so she began to speculate on Nurse Silver’s character. Hitherto, they had met only at meals, when she had been taciturn and moody.

To-night she had revealed a personal animus against herself, and Nurse Cherry believed she guessed its cause.

The situation was a hot-bed for jealousy. Two women were thrown into close contact with a patient and a doctor, both of whom were bachelors. Although Nurse Silver was the ill-favoured one, it was plain that she possessed her share of personal vanity. Nurse Cherry noticed, from her painful walk, that she wore shoes which were too small. More than that, she had caught her in the act of scrutinizing her face in the mirror.

These rather pitiful glimpses into the dark heart of the warped woman made Nurse Cherry uneasy.

The house was very still; she missed Nature’s sounds of rain or wind against the window-pane and the cheerful voices of the Iles couple. The silence might be a background for sounds she did not wish to hear.

She spoke aloud, for the sake of hearing her own voice.

“Cheery if Silver plays up to-night. Well, well! I’ll hurry up Mrs. Iles with the supper.”

Her spirits rose as she opened the door leading to the basement. The warm spicy odour of the kitchen floated up the short staircase and she could see a bar of yellow light from the half-opened door.

When she entered, she saw no sign of supper. Mrs. Iles— a strapping blonde with strawberry cheeks— sat at the kitchen-table, her head buried in her huge arms.

As Nurse Cherry shook her gently, she raised her head.

“Eh?” she said stupidly.

“Gracious, Mrs. Iles. Are you ill?”

“Eh? Feel as if I’d one over the eight.”

“What on earth d’you mean?”

“What you call ‘tight.’ Love-a-duck, my head’s that swimmy—”

Nurse Cherry looked suspiciously at an empty glass upon the dresser, as Mrs. Iles’s head dropped like a bleached sunflower.

Nurse Silver heard her hurrying footsteps on the stairs. She met her upon the landing.

“Anything wrong?”

“Mrs. Iles. I think she’s drunk. Do come and see.”

When Nurse Silver reached the kitchen, she hoisted Mrs. Iles under the armpits and set her on unsteady feet.

“Obvious,” she said. “Help get her upstairs.”

It was no easy task to drag twelve stone of protesting Mrs. Iles up three flights of stairs.

“She feels like a centipede, with every pair of feet going in a different direction,” Nurse Cherry panted, as they reached the door of the Ileses’ bedroom. “I can manage her now, thank you.”

She wished Nurse Silver would go back to the patient, instead of looking at her with that fixed expression.

“What are you staring at?” she asked sharply.

“Has nothing struck you as strange?”

“What?”

In the dim light, Nurse Silver’s eyes looked like empty black pits.

“To-day,” she said, “there were four of us. First, Iles goes. Now, Mrs. Iles. That leaves only two. If anything happens to you or me, there’ll only be one.”

AS NURSE CHERRY put Mrs. Iles to bed, she reflected that Nurse Silver was decidedly not a cheerful companion. She made a natural sequence of events appear in the light of a sinister conspiracy.

Nurse Cherry reminded herself sharply that Iles’s absence was due to her own carelessness, while his wife was addicted to her glass.

Still, some unpleasant suggestion remained, like the sediment from a splash of muddy water. She found herself thinking with horror of some calamity befalling Nurse Silver. If she were left by herself she felt she would lose her senses with fright.

It was an unpleasant picture. The empty house— a dark shell for lurking shadows. No one on whom to depend. Her patient— a beloved burden and responsibility.

It was better not to think of that. But she kept on thinking. The outside darkness seemed to be pressing against the walls, bending them in. As her fears multiplied, the medical student changed from a human being with a distraught brain, to a Force, cunning and insatiable— a ravening blood-monster.

Nurse Silver’s words recurred to her.

“They always know.” Even so. Doors might be locked, but they would find a way inside.

Her nerves tingled at the sound of the telephone-bell, ringing far below in the hall.

She kept looking over her shoulder as she ran downstairs. She took off the receiver in positive panic, lest she should be greeted with a maniac scream of laughter.

It was a great relief to hear the homely Welsh accent of Dr. Jones.

He had serious news for her. As she listened, her heart began to thump violently.

“Thank you, doctor, for letting me know,” she said. “Please ring up directly you hear more.”

“Hear more of what?”

Nurse Cherry started at Nurse Silver’s harsh voice. She had come downstairs noiselessly in her soft nursing-slippers.

“It’s only the doctor,” she said, trying to speak lightly. “He’s thinking of changing the medicine.”

“Then why are you so white? You are shaking.”

Nurse Cherry decided that the truth would serve her best.

“To be honest,” she said, “I’ve just had bad news. Something ghastly. I didn’t want you to know, for there’s no sense in two of us being frightened. But now I come to think of it, you ought to feel reassured.”

She forced a smile.

“You said there’d have to be another murder soon. Well— there has been one.”

“Where? Who? Quick.”

Nurse Cherry understood what is meant by the infection of fear as Nurse Silver gripped her arm.

In spite of her effort at self-mastery, there was a quiver in her own voice.

“It’s a— a hospital nurse. Strangled. They’ve just found the body in a quarry and they sent for Dr. Jones to make the examination. The police are trying to establish her identity.”

Nurse Silver’s eyes were wide and staring.

“Another hospital nurse? That makes four.”

She turned on the younger woman in sudden suspicion.

“Why did he ring you up?”

Nurse Cherry did not want that question.

“To tell us to be specially on guard,” she replied.

“You mean— he’s near?”

“Of course not. The doctor said the woman had been dead three or four days. By now, he’ll be far away.”

“Or he may be even nearer than you think.”

Nurse Cherry glanced involuntarily at the barred front door. Her head felt as if it were bursting. It was impossible to think connectedly. But—somewhere— beating its wings like a caged bird, was the incessant reminder.

Something forgotten.

The sight of the elder woman’s twitching lips reminded her that she had to be calm for two.

“Go back to the patient,” she said, “while I get the supper. We’ll both feel better after something to eat.”

In spite of her new-born courage, it needed an effort of will to descend into the basement. So many doors, leading to scullery, larder and coal-cellar, all smelling of mice. So many hiding-places.

The kitchen proved a cheerful antidote to depression. The caked fire in the open range threw a red glow upon the Welsh dresser and the canisters labelled ‘Sugar’ and ‘Tea.’ A sandy cat slept upon the rag mat. Everything looked safe and homely.

Quickly collecting bread, cheese, a round of beef, a cold white shape, and stewed prunes, she piled them on a tray. She added stout for Nurse Silver and made cocoa for herself. As she watched the milk froth up through the dark mixture and inhaled the steaming odour, she felt that her fears were baseless and absurd.

She sang as she carried her tray upstairs. She was going to marry Glendower.

The nurses used the bedroom which connected with the sick chamber for their meals, in order to be near the patient. As the night-nurse entered, Nurse Cherry strained her ears for the sound of Glendower’s voice. She longed for one glimpse of him. Even a smile would help.

“How’s the patient?” she asked.

“All right.”

“Could I have a peep?”

“No. You’re off duty.”

As the women sat down, Nurse Cherry was amused to notice that Nurse Silver kicked off her tight shoes.

“You seem very interested in the patient, Nurse Cherry,” she remarked sourly.

“I have a right to feel rather interested.” Nurse Cherry smiled as she cut bread. “The doctor gives me the credit for his being alive.”

“Ah! But the doctor thinks the world of you.”

Nurse Cherry was not conceited, but she was human enough to know that she had made a conquest of the big Welshman.

The green glow of jealousy in Nurse Silver’s eyes made her reply guardedly.

“Dr. Jones is decent to every one.”

But she was of too friendly and impulsive a nature to keep her secret bottled up. She reminded herself that they were two women sharing an ordeal and she tried to establish some link of friendship.

“I feel you despise me,” she said. “You think me lacking in self-control. And you can’t forget that cylinder. But really, I’ve gone through such an awful strain. For four nights, I never took off my clothes.”

“Why didn’t you have a second nurse?”

“There was the expense. The Professor gives his whole life to enrich the nation and he’s poor. Then, later, I felt I must do everything for him myself. I didn’t want you, only Dr. Jones said I was heading for a break-down.”

She looked at her left hand, seeing there the shadowy outline of a wedding-ring.

“Don’t think me sloppy, but I must tell some one. The Professor and I are going to get married.”

“If he lives.”

“But he’s turned the corner now.”

“Don’t count your chickens.”

Nurse Cherry felt a stab of fear.

“Are you hiding something from me? Is he— worse?”

“No. He’s the same. I was thinking that Dr. Jones might interfere. You’ve led him on, haven’t you? I’ve seen you smile at him. It’s light women like you that make the trouble in the world.”

Nurse Cherry was staggered by the injustice of the attack. But as she looked at the elder woman’s working face, she saw that she was consumed by jealousy. One life lay in the shadow, the other in the sun. The contrast was too sharp.

“We won’t quarrel to-night,” she said gently. “We’re going through rather a bad time together and we have only each other to depend on. I’m just clinging to you. If anything were to happen to you, like Mrs. Iles, I should jump out of my skin with fright.”

Nurse Silver was silent for a minute.

“I never thought of that,” she said presently. “Only us two. And all these empty rooms, above and below. What’s that?”

From the hall, came the sound of muffled knocking.

Nurse Cherry sprang to her feet.

“Some one’s at the front door.”

Nurse Silver’s fingers closed round her arm, like iron hoops.

“Sit down. It’s him.”

The two women stared at each other as the knocking continued. It was loud and insistent. To Nurse Cherry’s ears, it carried a message of urgency.

“I’m going down,” she said. “It may be Dr. Jones.”

“How could you tell?”

“By his voice.”

“You fool. Any one could imitate his accent.”

Nurse Cherry saw the beads break out round Nurse Silver’s mouth. Her fear had the effect of steadying her own nerves.

“I’m going down, to find out who it is,” she said. “It may be important news about the murder.”

Nurse Silver dragged her away from the door.

“What did I say? You are the danger. You’ve forgotten already.”

“Forgotten— what?”

“Didn’t Iles tell you to open to no one? No one?”

Nurse Cherry hung her head. She sat down in shamed silence.

The knocking ceased. Presently they heard it again at the back door.

Nurse Silver wiped her face.

“He means to get in.” She laid her hand on Nurse Cherry’s arm. “You’re not even trembling. Are you never afraid?”

“Only of ghosts.”

In spite of her brave front, Nurse Cherry was inwardly quaking at her own desperate resolution. Nurse Silver had justly accused her of endangering the household. Therefore it was her plain duty to make once more the round of the house, either to see what she had forgotten, or to lay the doubt.

“I’m going upstairs,” she said. “I want to look out.”

“Unbar a window?” Nurse Silver’s agitation rose in a gale. “You shall not. It’s murdering folly. Think! That last nurse was found dead inside her bedroom.”

“All right. I won’t.”

“You’d best be careful. You’ve been trying to spare me, but perhaps I’ve been trying to spare you. I’ll only say this. There is something strange happening in this house.”

Nurse Cherry felt a chill at her heart. Only, since she was a nurse, she knew that it was really the pit of her stomach. Something wrong? If through her wretched memory, she again were the culprit, she must expiate her crime by shielding the others, at any risk to herself.

She had to force herself to mount the stairs. Her candle, flickering in the draught, peopled the walls with distorted shapes. When she reached the top landing, without stopping to think, she walked resolutely into the laboratory and the adjoining room.

Both were securely barred and empty. Gaining courage, she entered the attic. Under its window was a precipitous slope of roof without gutter or water-pipe, to give finger-hold. Knowing that it would be impossible for any one to gain an entry, she opened the shutter and unfastened the window.

The cold air on her face refreshed her and restored her to calm. She realized that she had been suffering to a certain extent from claustrophobia.

The rain had ceased and a wind arisen. She could see a young harried moon flying through the clouds. The dark humps of the hills were visible against the darkness, but nothing more.

She remained at the window for some time, thinking of Glendower. It was a solace to remember the happiness which awaited her once this night of terror was over.

Presently the urge to see him grew too strong to be resisted. Nurse Silver’s words had made her uneasy on his behalf. Even though she offended the laws of professional etiquette, she determined to see for herself that all was well.

Leaving the window open so that some air might percolate into the house, she slipped stealthily downstairs. She stopped on the second floor to visit her own room and that of Nurse Silver. All was quiet and secure. In her own quarters, Mrs. Iles still snored in the sleep of the unjust.

There were two doors to the patient’s room. The one led to the nurses’ room where Nurse Silver was still at her meal. The other led to the landing.

Directly Nurse Cherry entered, she knew that her fear had been the premonition of love. Something was seriously amiss. Glendower’s head tossed uneasily on the pillow. His face was deeply flushed. When she called him by name, he stared at her, his luminous grey eyes ablaze.

He did not recognize her, for instead of “Stella,” he called her “Nurse.”

“Nurse, Nurse.” He mumbled something that sounded like “man” and then slipped back in her arms, unconscious.

Nurse Silver entered the room at her cry. As she felt his pulse, she spoke with dry significance.

“We could do with oxygen now.”

Nurse Cherry could only look at her with piteous eyes.

“Shall I telephone for Dr. Jones?” she asked humbly.

“Yes.”

It seemed like the continuation of an evil dream when she could get no answer to her ring. Again and again she tried desperately to galvanize the dead instrument.

Presently Nurse Silver appeared on the landing.

“Is the doctor coming?”

“I— I can’t get any answer.” Nurse Cherry forced back her tears. “Oh, whatever can be wrong?”

“Probably a wet creeper twisted round the wire. But it doesn’t matter now. The patient is sleeping.”

Nurse Cherry’s face registered no comfort. As though the shocks of the last few minutes had set in motion the arrested machinery of her brain, she remembered suddenly what she had forgotten.

The larder window.

She recollected now what had happened. When she entered the larder on her round of locking up, a mouse had run over her feet. She ran to fetch the cat which chased it into a hole in the kitchen. In the excitement of the incident, she had forgotten to return to close the window.

Her heart leapt violently at the realization that, all these hours, the house had been open to any marauder. Even while she and Nurse Silver had listened, shivering, to the knocking at the door, she had already betrayed the fortress.

“What’s the matter?” asked Nurse Silver.

“Nothing. Nothing.”

She dared not tell the older woman. Even now it was not too late to remedy her omission.

In her haste she no longer feared the descent into the basement. She could hardly get down the stairs with sufficient speed. As she entered the larder the wire-covered window flapped in the breeze. She secured it and was just entering the kitchen, when her eye fell on a dark patch on the passage.

It was the footprint of a man.

Nurse Cherry remembered that Iles had been in the act of getting fresh coal into the cellar when he had been called away to make his journey. He had no time to clean up and the floor was still sooty with rain-soaked dust.

As she raised her candle, the footprint gleamed faintly. Stooping hastily, she touched it.

It was still damp.

At first she stood as if petrified, staring at it stupidly. Then as she realized that in front of her lay a freshly-made imprint, her nerve snapped completely. With a scream, she dropped her candle and tore up the stairs, calling on Nurse Silver.

She was answered by a strange voice. It was thick, heavy, indistinct. A voice she had never heard before.

Knowing not what awaited her on the other side of the door, yet driven on by the courage of ultimate fear, she rushed into the nurses’ sitting-room.

No one was there save Nurse Silver. She sagged back in her chair, her eyes half-closed, her mouth open.

From her lips issued a second uncouth cry.

Nurse Cherry put her arm around her.

“What is it? Try to tell me.”

It was plain that Nurse Silver was trying to warn her of some peril. She pointed to her glass and fought for articulation.

“Drugs. Listen. When you lock out, you lock in.” Even as she spoke her eyes turned up horribly, exposing the balls in a blind white stare.

Almost mad with terror, Nurse Cherry tried to revive her. Mysteriously, through some unknown agency, what she had dreaded had come to pass.

She was alone.

And somewhere— within the walls of the house— lurked a being, cruel and cunning, who— one after another— had removed each obstacle between himself and his objective.

He had marked down his victim. Herself.

In that moment she went clean over the edge of fear. She felt that it was not herself— Stella Cherry— but a stranger in the blue print uniform of a hospital nurse, who calmly speculated on her course of action.

It was impossible to lock herself in the patient’s room, for the key was stiff from disuse. And she had not the strength to move furniture which was sufficiently heavy to barricade the door.

The idea of flight was immediately dismissed. In order to get help, she would have to run miles. She could not leave Glendower and two helpless women at the mercy of the baffled maniac.

There was nothing to be done. Her place was by Glendower. She sat down by his bed and took his hand in hers.

The time seemed endless. Her watch seemed sometimes to leap whole hours and then to crawl, as she waited— listening to the myriad sounds in a house at nightfall. There were faint rustlings, the cracking of wood-work, the scamper of mice.

And a hundred times, some one seemed to steal up the stairs and linger just outside her door.

It was nearly three o’clock when suddenly a gong began to beat inside her temples. In the adjoining room was the unmistakable tramp of a man’s footsteps.

It was no imagination on her part. They circled the room and then advanced deliberately towards the connecting door.

She saw the handle begin to turn slowly.

In one bound, she reached the door and rushed on to the landing and up the stairs. For a second, she paused before her own room. But its windows were barred and its door had no key. She could not be done to death there in the dark.

As she paused, she heard the footsteps on the stairs. They advanced slowly, driving her on before them. Demented with terror, she fled up to the top storey, instinctively seeking the open window.

She could go no higher. At the attic door, she waited.

Something black appeared on the staircase wall. It was the shadow of her pursuer— a grotesque and distorted herald of crime.

Nurse Cherry gripped the balustrade to keep herself from falling. Everything was growing dark. She knew that she was on the point of fainting, when she was revived by sheer astonishment and joy.

Above the balustrade appeared the head of Nurse Silver.

Nurse Cherry called out to her in warning.

“Come quickly. There’s a man in the house.”

She saw Nurse Silver start and fling back her head, as though in alarm. Then occurred the culminating horror of a night of dread.

A mouse ran across the passage. Raising her heavy shoe, Nurse Silver stamped upon it, grinding her heel upon the tiny creature’s head.

In that moment, Nurse Cherry knew the truth. Nurse Silver was a man.

Her brain raced with lightning velocity. It was like a searchlight, piercing the shadows and making the mystery clear.

She knew that the real Nurse Silver had been murdered by Sylvester Leek, on her way to the case. It was her strangled body which had just been found in the quarry. And the murderer had taken her place. The police description was that of a slightly-built youth, with refined features. It would be easy for him to assume the disguise of a woman. He had the necessary medical knowledge to pose as nurse. Moreover, as he had the night-shift, no one in the house had come into close contact with him, save the patient.

But the patient had guessed the truth.

To silence his tongue, the killer had drugged him, even as he had disposed of the obstructing presence of Mrs. Iles. It was he, too, who had emptied the oxygen-cylinder, to get Iles out of the way.

Yet, although he had been alone with his prey for hours, he had held his hand.

Nurse Cherry, with her new mental lucidity, knew the reason. There is a fable that the serpent slavers its victim before swallowing it. In like manner, the maniac— before her final destruction— had wished to coat her with the foul saliva of fear.

All the evening he had been trying to terrorize her— plucking at each jangled nerve up to the climax of his feigned unconsciousness.

Yet she knew that he in turn was fearful lest he should be frustrated in the commission of his crime. Since his victim’s body had been discovered in the quarry, the establishment of her identity would mark his hiding-place. While Nurse Cherry was at the attic window, he had cut the telephone-wire and donned his own shoes for purposes of flight.

She remembered his emotion during the knocking at the door. It was probable that it was Dr. Jones who stood without, come to assure himself that she was not alarmed. Had it been the police, they would have effected an entry. The incident proved that nothing had been discovered and that it was useless to count on outside help.

She had to face it— alone.

In the dim light from the young moon, she saw the murderer enter the attic. The grotesque travesty of his nursing disguise added to the terror of the moment.

His eyes were fixed on the open window. It was plain that he was pretending to connect it with the supposed intruder. She in her turn had unconsciously deceived him. He probably knew nothing of the revealing footprint he had left in the basement passage.

“Shut the window, you damned fool,” he shouted.

As he leaned over the low ledge to reach the swinging casement window, Nurse Cherry rushed at him in the instinctive madness of self-defence— thrusting him forward, over the sill.

She had one glimpse of dark distorted features blotting out the moon and of arms sawing the air, like a star-fish, in a desperate attempt to balance.

The next moment, nothing was there.

She sank to the ground, covering her ears with her hands to deaden the sound of the sickening slide over the tiled roof.

It was a long time before she was able to creep down to her patient’s room. Directly she entered, its peace healed her like balm. Glendower slept quietly— a half-smile playing round his lips as though he dreamed of her.

Thankfully she went from room to room, unbarring each window and unlocking each door— letting in the dawn.

_________________

9: The Price of Perfidy

Scott Campbell

(Frederick W. Davis) 1858-1933

Detective Story Magazine, 23 July 1921

NO cry came from her. No frantic scream for help broke the stillness of the starry night, no piercing shriek that might perhaps have relieved the awful fear and horror depicted in her girlish, ghastly white face. Only one in a frenzy of utterly ungovernable terror could have looked as she did or have fled as she was fleeing.

Martin Gaffney, a night patrolman in the Fens district, saw her pass near an are light and then run at top speed into the silent and deserted park. Here she quickly vanished in the gloom amid the trees and shrubbery. It was after mid- night. The stillness in the secluded avenues of the park was broken only by the sighing wind of the November night, the occasional quick tread of some late pedestrian, or the swift passing of a speeding motor car.

Gaffney gazed after the girl for a moment, then hurriedly followed her, sensing something wrong. He sought her vainly for several minutes. Then he found her back of some shrubbery, crouching low on the damp ground, her head bowed, her face hidden in her hands.

"What's the trouble, my girl?" he asked kindly, bending near her. "What are you doing here?"

She shuddered and looked up at him with a dazed, affrighted stare. She was a slender, brown-eyed girl of eighteen, and her pretty face appeared almost deathlike amid the folds of a dark worsted shawl draped around her head and shoulders. It was her only outside garment, and she was very simply clad in a dark woolen dress.

"Don't touch me!" she said in a gasp, "I'm hiding! Don't tell! Please don't tell!" she entreated in strained, agitated whispers. "I must hide! I must—"

"Hide from what?" Gaffney asked. He never had seen such a look of fear on a girl's face.

"Those men— those dreadful men!" she said. "They'll find me. I must hide."

"Wait. Steady yourself. Let me help you."

Gaffney now saw there was somes thing wrong with the girl. She shiv- ered as if with ague when he touched her. She did not resist, however, and he gently raised her to her feet and drew the shawl closer around her.

"You're trembling. Are you cold?" he asked. "What frightened you? What dreadful men do you mean?"

"I— I don't know!" she faltered.

"What about them? Where did you see them?"

"I don't know. I don't remember."

"Nonsense! You must know where you saw them and what occurred, of you wouldn't be frightened," Gaffney told her. "What alarmed you?"

"The dead man! The body— the man on the floor." The girl swayed nearer to the puzzled officer and clung to him as if again in abject terror, "He was dead— dead! Oh, oh, it was horrible! The man with a knife— don't let them find me!" she pleaded, shivering from head to foot. "They would kill me. They would kill me as they killed him. Don't let them! Please don't let them! I must hide."

"Hush! Don't be frightened. No one will harm you," Gaffney assured her. He put his arm around her and drew her toward the avenue, now con- vinced that she either had witnessed a murder or that a sudden shock had caused her condition. "'I'll protect you. You can rely on a policeman," he kindly encouraged her, "I'll take you home or to some safe place. Where do you live?" he inquired as they came into the brighter light in the avenue. "What is your name?"

The girl did not reply. She gazed vacantly at him and seemed to be try- ing vainly to calm her distracted mind.

"What is your name?" Gaffney re- peated.

"I— I don't know," she faltered, voice trembling.

"Don't know your own name?" Gaffney eyed her incredulously.

"I've forgotten it. I can't recall it."

"Tell me where you live."

"I— I don't know," she repeated. There was something very pathetic in her vain effort to comply and in the dazed, lingering look of fear in her large brown eyes. "I can't remember where I live."

"Try again," Gaffney said kindly. "Try hard."

"I am trying. I cannot remember."

"Can you tell me just what occurred? You saw a dead man, you said, and a man with a knife," Gaffney reminded her. "Were you in your own home? Can you take me to it? Look around and try to recall."

He stopped when the dazed girl, suddenly shrinking instinctively, drew nearer to him. A man who had been sharply watching them from behind a tree was crossing the avenue to join them. He was an erect, well-built man of thirty-five, with a strong, clean-cut face, keen dark eyes, and a very firm mouth and chin, His hands were remarkably white and well formed, as slender and supple as those of a magician, a professional pianist, or a pick-pocket. "What's the trouble, Gaffney?" The man had a peculiarly incisive voice and his bearing was haughtily aristocratic. "Anything for the press?"

"Oh, it's you, Mr. Ludwig," Gaffney said respectfully. The policeman recognized Mr. Lester Lawton Ludwig, a bachelor residing in that locality, a writer of society notes for the local press and a special correspondent for New York and Washington newspapers. "I didn't know you, sir, at first."

"I was on my way home when I happened to see you." Ludwig emphasized it perceptibly. "What's the trouble?" he repeated.

"I'm not sure, sir, though it may be a murder case from what this girl has said. But she seems to be wrong in the head," Gaffney quickly added. "It's aphasia maybe, or the like of that. She cannot tell me her name or where she lives. She has forgotten."

"This girl!" Ludwig gazed sharply at her. There was a subtle, searching gleam in his narrowed eyes. "A murder where lives— nonsense!" he said positively. "I know her, Gaffney. She's a French girl, employed as a maid by a dear old friend of mine, Mrs. Alden Beebe, one of the richest and most fashionable women in Boston."

"Sure, sir, that's right. I recall her now," Gaffney replied. "I've seen her before. She lives only around the bend in the avenue."

"A murder in that house— nonsense!" Ludwig again asserted. "This girl's name is Edna Deland."

"That's it! That's it— Edna Deland." The girl uttered a cry of relief. It seemed as if this reminder, the mere mention of her name, had suddenly restored her to a normal condition and released her from a spell like that of a terrible nightmare. Her eyes lighted quickly, and a tinge of red came into her pale cheeks.

"That's it— Edna Deland," she repeated, gazing at the florid, kindly face of the policeman. "I remember it now. It's strange I couldn't recall it. I remember—" She stopped, suddenly pressing both hands to her head, ghastly white again when she also recalled the tragic cause of her singular mental disorder.

"What was the matter?" Gaffney demanded. "If you can remember a

"Wait! I can tell you." Edna then steadied herself with an effort. "My mistress has been robbed. A man was killed in the library. I saw his body on the floor. It frightened me— oh, oh, how it frightened me!" she said. "I ran out as fast as I could. I ran—"

"Wait a bit!" Ludwig interrupted. "A murder and robbery in Mrs. Beebe's home! That's incredible. Where were you all the while?"

"I was out with a— with a friend," Edna faltered, and shrank with sudden confusion from his sharp and searching scrutiny. "I was out all the evening."

"Out where?' Ludwig curtly questioned.

"Not far. Out with a friend." The girl seemed to evade him. "There was a light in the library when I came in, and I thought madame had returned. I went there and saw—oh, oh, it was horrible!" she said with renewed agitation. "That dead man on the floor! I saw his white distorted face in the glare of light. There was a man with a knife and another with madame's

jewels. They saw me and— oh, how it frightened me! I feared that they would kill me. I ran out and—"

"You could have called the police," Ludwig again interrupted. "Why haven't you told this officer about it?" he demanded suspiciously.

"I— I don't know," Edna faltered, pale and trembling. "I cannot explain. I was afraid. I feared a

"You had nothing to fear after meeting this policeman," Ludwig curtly told her. "You better say nothing, my girl, unless you can tell a plausible story. This may be used against you if there is any truth in your story. I very much doubt it, Gaffney." He turned abruptly to the policeman. "She either is lying, or, as you said, is wrong in the head. I'll take her home and find out."

"I'll go with you." Gaffney spoke gruffly.

"That's not necessary," Ludwig quickly objected. "Her story is wholly incredible. You better remain on your beat. If there is anything wrong I will telephone to headquarters."

"If there's anything wrong, Mr. Ludwig, I'll do the telephoning," Gaffney informed him with grim dryness. "Get a move on at once. I'm going with you."

There was a look of disapproval on the ruddy face of the kind-hearted policeman. He did not like the way in which Ludwig had questioned the agitated girl, nor his immediate distrust and insinuations. He recalled her white, terrified face when he found her cowering under the shrubbery, and he did not believe she was feigning or guilty of any duplicity. Nevertheless he noted that her eyes were filled with fear and that her pale features had hardened ominously while they hastened around the broad bend in the avenue and came in view of the spacious grounds and stately home of Mrs, Alden Beebe.

"By Jove, there seems to be something wrong, Gaffney, after all," Ludwig exclaimed. "There's a motor car at the door, and most of the house is lighted."

"That's Detective Cruger's car," Gaffney said more gravely as they hastened up the driveway. "He's the deputy chief at headquarters."

"Some one, then, has notified the police." Ludwig's voice went strangely keen and cold again. "There's an inconsistency here. Who could have informed them, Gaffney, if this girl is telling the truth? That's the point."

"That's not the point at all," Gaffney returned. He glanced at Edna's pale, pathetic face and drew her nearer to him. "Cruger doesn't go out at night on any ordinary case. That's the real point. Take it from me, Mr. Ludwig, the girl is right. It's a case of robbery and murder."

ii

ONLY FIVE MINUTES had passed since Owen Cruger, deputy chief at head- quarters, entered the stately residence

of Mrs, Alden Beebe. She met him at the door of her library, the scene of a robbery astounding both because of its magnitude and the evident brutal murder of one of the thieves by his two confederates.

Mrs. Alden Beebe, nevertheless, though very pale and still in elaborate evening dress, was meeting the calamity with stoical composure, quite consistent in a direct descendant of the Puritans and a middle-aged widow of great wealth and social distinction. Not even the loss of half a million in superb jewels, including her famous spectrum diamond pendant, so termed because of its rare prismatic radiance, could seriously disturb her dignified poise and aristocratic urbanity.

"I have met with a terrible loss, Detective Cruger," she said after greeting him. "I had Jacobs, my butler, telephone to you immediately after he released me. You can see for yourself what occurred here."

Detective Cruger glanced into the library at a broken safe in one of the walls, at the displaced furniture, the disordered rugs, and at the drawn, dis- torted features of a lifeless man on the floor. His own austere, impressive face, however, which seemed rather to mask than reveal the nature of his observations and deductions underwent no change.

"I'll look into it presently," he replied, restraining a policeman who had accompanied him. "What were the circumstances? State them briefly, Mrs. Beebe, as far as you know."

"That may be quickly told," she rejoined "I went to the opera this eve- ning with a party of friends. My door-bell rang about nine o'clock, and when Jacobs answered it he was seized and quickly overcome by three masked men in the vestibule, who then bound and gagged the other servants and locked all of them in a basement storeroom."

"In order to rob you of your jewels when you returned," said Cruger.

"Precisely. A sudden, severe headache precluded my taking supper with my friends after the opera, and I returned alone in a taxicab. I had told Jacobs he need not wait up for me, and, not finding my maid awaiting me, I inferred that she had dropped asleep in my room. I went alone to the library, therefore, to put my jewels in the safe."

"Are you in the habit of doing so before going to your room?"

"Invariably. The robbers, who then were concealed in the library, must have known I was not wearing all of my jewels. For they did not attack me until after I had opened the safe."

"Why, in that case, did they break the inner door?" Cruger glanced at it again.

"Because the moment I heard them I closed it before they could preventme," Mrs, Beebe explained. "It locks automatically, and it is the door of the compartment in which I keep my jewels. It then contained among others my costly diamond necklace and pen- dant. You have heard, perhaps, of my magnificent spectrum diamond. My attempt to prevent the theft proved futile," she ruefully added. "The robbers bound me and confined me in the dining-room closet."

"Do you know what followed?" Cruger inquired.

"I do not, except that I heard them breaking into the jewel compartment."

"Or why this man was killed?"

"I do not," Mrs. Beebe repeated. "None of us could hear what occurred, I know he was one of the thieves, however, though all were masked. The one evidently their leader wore a soft black hat and a long raincoat which completely hid his other garments."

"About his voice?' said Cruger. "Did he speak to you?"

"Only once when he first seized and threatened me," said Mrs. Beebe. "His voice sounded husky, though deep and strong; he was quite a large and powerful man. Jacobs contrived to free himself and get out of the storeroom soon after the two confederates fled, and he hastened to find and liberate me. That is all I can tell you, Detective Cruger, except that my maid, Edna Deland, is mysteriously missing," she added. "Jacobs states that she—"

"I'll hear it from Jacobs, if you please," Cruger checked her abruptly and turned to the elderly butler and a group of awed servants near the stairs. "What can you add, Jacobs, to what Mrs. Beebe has told me?"

"Only about her maid, sir," Jacobs said gravely, coming forward.

"What about her?"

"She asked permission to go out this evening, sir, which I refused, and I supposed she then went to her room and remained there. But the robbers, who seemed to know how many servants we have, could not find her, and the man in a raincoat asked me where she was, I then inferred that she went out in spite of my refusal, and, hoping she would return and be able to prevent the robbery, I lied and stated that she was spending the night with a sick friend."

"So that the crooks would have no fear because of her absence?"

"That was my idea, sir," said Jacobs. "But I since have learned that the cook saw her at the pantry window, which she hurriedly closed when discovered, and I now suspect that she was in league with the crooks and was secretly talking with them."

"Was that after you refused to let her go out?"

"It was, sir, and only a short time before the doorbell rang. I now think she told them who was in the house and gave them what other information they needed."

"You overlook a point," said Cruger, "If your suspicions are correct, Jacobs, why did they search for the girl after entering, and why did they question you about her?"

"Merely as a blind, sir, to avert suspicion from her," Jacobs pointedly argued,

"Possibly. Maybe I'm the one who is blind." The steely gleam in Cruger's searching eyes turned quizzical for a moment. "You reason quite keenly, Jacobs."

"Well, sir, Edna been very friendly for some time with a young Frenchman named Charles Dupont," Jacobs informed him. "He is employed as a waiter in the Hotel Royal, sir, where he has a room. I don't quite like his looks. I'm not so sure—"

"What you're not sure of is immaterial," Cruger said bluntly. He turned to the waiting policeman. "Examine that pantry window, Farley, and the stane sill outside. Look for finger marks in the dust, if there is any on it, and for footprints in the ground be- low. Report at once if you find any," he commanded. "They may show whether the missing girl was talking with a man outside: She may, as Jacobs suspects, be in league with the crooks. If she is "i

Detective Cruger stopped. He heard a door closed in the side hall, Edna Deland had admitted Patrolman Gaffney and Mr. Lester Lawton Ludwig with her key. They heard the last remarks of the detective as they came into the main hall. The girl drew back, shrinking and shuddering, apparently with returning fear of the shocking scene in the library, or from the pend- ing accusation suggested by what she had heard. Gaffney took her arm again and drew her forward.

"The butler is right, Cruger," Ludwig asserted familiarly as they approached. "I heard what you were saying. Gaffney found this girl hiding in the Fens. She told him an absurd story and pretended—"

"I'll judge for myself, Mr. Ludwig." Cruger's voice hardened ominously. It was not in his nature to brook interference. 'Where did you find her, Gaffney?" he demanded with a frown that silenced all other observers. "What can you tell me?"

"To begin with, sir, I don't figure that she had a hand in the job," Martin Gaffney said bluntly. Edna Deland had one friend at least in the kind-hearted policeman.

"You state the facts, Gaffney, and I'll do the figuring," Cruger told him curtly.

Gaffney obeyed. He stated very pre- cisely what had occurred and dwelt with genuine feeling upon the girl's piteous fear and strangely dazed condition, but it brought no sign of compassion to Detective Cruger's stern, inscrutable face. Cruger had the reputation of being quick to detect significant trifles, and he was known to keep things up his sleeve.

"Well, what have you to say?" he asked, gazing more sharply at the girl. "You better tell the truth."

"I told this policeman the truth," said Edna. She drew up a little, resenting with a frown his searching scrutiny and the manifest distrust of the others. A look of defiance and sudden determination settled on her drawn white face. "T can tell you nothing more," she quickly added.

"You can tell what you know about this crime," Cruger said sternly.

"I know nothing about it," Edna retorted.

"Do you mean to say—"

"Only what I have said," the girl sharply insisted. "I know nothing about the crime. I will say no more about it," she declared as if driven to desperation.

"Now she is showing her hand, Cruger, all right," Ludwig declared. He had been quietly talking with Mrs. Beebe, "There's nothing now in feigned fear forgetfulness," he said derisively, "You'll find that Jacobs is right."

"I'll first find out what that evidence denotes," Cruger curtly told him, pointing to the library. "I've deferred it only to learn the superficial facts. Look after the girl, while— well, Farley, what did you discover?" He digressed abruptly and hastened to intercept the returning policeman.

"I found them," said Farley, voice lowered. "A man's footprints near the window and marks of his hands on the sill, as if he drew himself up a little to talk quietly with the girl. She's one of the gang, Cruger, as sure as the Lord made little apples."

"We'll try to clinch it." Cruger's narrowed eyes had a singular, sinister gleam. "Go to the Hotel Royal and arrest Charles Dupont, if you can find him," he commanded. "Take the motor car and lose no time. Search his room and then bring him here. Detain him in the rear hall till I'm ready for him."

"Ready for him?" queried Farley.

"Till I have dug into that evidence to the bottom," Cruger explained with a jerk of his thumb toward the library. "I know the dead man. I knew him the moment I saw him. It's the body of Leo Carvalli, a Pitt Street Italian."

"Carvalli!" Farley's eyes opened wider,

"As foul and treacherous a crook as could be found in the North End," Cruger grimly added. "But he was not the crook who planned this robbery, Farley, by a long chalk. That was done by a much more capable knave, possibly Dupont, if this girl really is lying. Go and get him. I'll soon be ready for him."

Detective Cruger did not wait for an answer. He turned quickly and entered the library, apparently blind to the anxiety and suspense of his observers, none of whom had heard his brief talk with the departing policeman. His inquiries as a whole had been brief, in fact, for only ten minutes had passed since he arrived on the scene of the crime.

Martin Gaffney wore a frown of disapproval. He did not believe Edna Deland was guilty. He saw no way to refute the accumulating evidence against her, however, and he did not venture to oppose the deputy chief from head- quarters.

Mr. Lester Lawton Ludwig was a man not so easily daunted. He ignored the detective's ominous frown and followed him into the library.

iii

DETECTIVE CRUGER was gazing at the upturned face of the dead man. It was that of a swarthy man of thirty, sinister even in death. His brow was bruised and cut, his chin and neck badly scratched. His convulsed features showed that he had died in agony and after a desperate struggle.

That he was one of the crooks, that he had been murdered by his two confederates, that they had fled with half a million in superb jewels, including a diamond pendant worth fifty thousand dollars— all that appeared obvious,

But why was he killed? What cause for such treachery? Who were his two confederates? Was Dupont one of them, and Edna Deland a liar? If not, who were they, and how could they be identified and how could the stolen jewels be recovered? These very im- portant questions, rather than the bare facts, were uppermost in the mind of Detective Cruger.

"Shocking!" Ludwig muttered as he joined him. "I marvel, Cruger, that Mrs. Beebe can bear it so bravely."

"I agree with you." The detective glanced at him and nodded. "I wonder who except her servants knew that she was going to the opera this evening."

"Why so?" Ludwig' eyed him keenly. "Is that material?"

"Very," said Cruger tersely. "The robbery could have been planned only by some one who knew in advance of her intention. He may have been one of her own set," he bluntly added.

"Nonsense!" Ludwig quickly protested. "That's absurd. She moves in the very best circle of society. There are no criminals, Cruger, in her set. I know what I'm talking about."

"You ought to," Cruger dryly allowed. "You're to the manner born."

"I don't base my opinion on my own birth and breeding," Ludwig told him haughtily. "Your supposition that any man in high society would commit such a crime is ridiculous. Her maid, Edna Deland, undoubtedly is the one who gave the crooks the necessary information. Her flight from the house, her vain attempt to hide, her crafty con duct and absurd story when Gaffney cornered her, and her defiant attitude when you began to question her, all point plainly to her guilt. They admit of no other interpretation."

"You may be right,' Cruger said thoughtfully while he crouched to make a closer inspection of the dead man.

"I'll wager I'm right," Ludwig declared confidently. 'Furthermore, contrary to the absurd suspicion you expressed, this fellow's face and clothing plainly reveal the low type of her confederates," he forcibly argued, pointing to the sinister features of the lifeless man. "He's a ruffian of the lowest class. There is no denying it, Cruger."

"Maybe not." Cruger glanced at his extended hand. He noticed how slen- der and well formed it was, very suggestive of gentility and aristocracy, and he also observed, around one of the tapering fingers, a band of pallid skin, as if a ring usually worn had been discarded. "As far as that goes, Ludwig, I have identified this fellow," he added. "He's a bad egg and has a criminal record. His name is Leo Carvalli."

"Carvalli." Ludwig's keen dark eyes narrowed for an instant. "I never heard of him."

"He has served two terms in prison."

"That confirms what I have said about the low class of the criminals."

"Oh, I admit that he is one of the crooks, as Mrs. Beebe asserted," Cruger allowed. "But there is one point I cannot fathom."

"What is that?" queried Ludwig.

"Why was he killed by his two confederates?" Cruger asked perplexedly.

"Pshaw!" Ludwig smiled derisively. "I wonder at that, Cruger, from a man of your insight and acumen. It may be easily guessed."

"What is your opinion?" The detective looked up at him.

"They wanted his share of the plunder. They wanted to split it between two instead of three," Ludwig said with assurance.

"That's like crooks of his class."

"You may be right," Cruger again agreed with him.  "That may explain it."

"Surely! Notice the bruise on his head, also the scratches on his chin and neck," Ludwig pointed out. "One of his pals struck him and dazed him, no doubt, and then the rascals strangled him. There really is no denying it, Cruger, no getting around such evidence as this. They killed him to get his share of the plunder."

Detective Cruger did not argue the point. He examined the cut on Carvalli's head. It was more like a deep, ragged scratch. He then examined the wounds on his chin and neck, feeling the rough skin for a moment and noting also that two of his fingers were injured and discolored near the nails.

Ludwig watched him intently all the while. There was a subtle gleam at times in the depths of his keen eyes. He could detect no change in Cruger's stern, grimly determined face, however, reflecting what he had in mind.

"What do you find?" he asked at length bluntly.

"I guess you're right," Cruger replied, still frowning. "It seems to be the only reasonable explanation. Besides, that indicates that he was searched by one of his pals." He pointed to one of Carvalli's pockets, which was partly turned and protruding several inches. "He evidently was killed after the jewels were secured, and presumably to get those in his possession.

"Exactly!" Ludwig's thin, clean-cut lips relaxed perceptibly. "I thought you would agree with me," he remarked. "It's the only tenable theory. If this fellow—"

"Stop a moment," Cruger interrupted, rising from his crouching attitude near the body. A scintillating gleam, several feet away, had caught his eye. He arose quickly and picked up from the floor, a few feet from the broken safe, an unset diamond weighing about two carats. Until now it had been unobserved among the open jewel cases and the fragments of the broken safe which strewed the floor.

"The rascals did not get away with quite all of them." Cruger displayed the glittering stone. "It must have been broken from one of the jewels during a struggle to get possession of it."

"Most likely." Ludwig eyed it indifferently.

"More likely, at least, than that they will return to get it," Cruger said with singular dryness. "I'll hand it to Mrs. Beebe presently. She will probably recognize it."

"Nonsense!" Ludwig said quickly. "Do you suppose she can identify that single unset stone from among her numerous jewels? Impossible!" He emphasized it derisively.

"Well, that doesn't matter much, Ludwig, as long as she has recovered it," Cruger told him.

"True," Ludwig admitted. "But I'll wager that her spectrum diamond is the only gem she could positively identify."

Detective Cruger did not reply. He took a lens from his pocket and began to inspect the safe in search of finger prints. He could find none, however, and he replaced the lens in his pocket.

"The crooks knew their business," he said. "They may have worn gloves. In any case, they made it a point to wipe all finger prints from the safe. If my suspicion of the maid is correct—"

"How can you question it?' Ludwig asked pointedly. "Why did she want to go out, and what was she doing till after midnight, when Gafffiey saw her?"

"Wait! You'll soon know what I question." Cruger spoke with stern determination. "Wait till I get rid of this bauble and have a look at the pantry window." He turned quickly and rejoined Mrs. Alden Beebe in the hall.

Ludwig watched him till he strode toward the butler's pantry. There was a sneer of haughty contempt on his thin lips. He gazed again at Carvalli, his brows knitting until a scowl of repugnance had settled on his fine, aristocratic face. His brain was seething with thoughts no man could guess. But he turned suddenly away and went to speak to Mrs. Beebe.

"Let me congratulate you," he said smilingly, pointing to the diamond in her hand. "That certainly is very encouraging, my dear Mrs. Beebe, I'm sure. Detective Cruger has made, at least, a very promising beginning."

Several minutes had passed when Detective Cruger returned. He had seen the lamps of his motor car in the driveway and the two men who occupied it. He was frowning darkly when he waved Patrolman Gaffney aside and confronted the suspected maid.

"Now, my girl, I want the truth from you," he said sternly. "No lies or evasions. You can't get by with them. What do you know about this crime?"

"I have told you." Edna Deland gazed at him defiantly. Her pretty face was as white as chalk, her lips gray and drawn, but now there was no look of fear in her glittering eyes. "I know nothing about it."

"That's not true," Cruger said severely. "You disobeyed the butler and went out this evening after talking with some one at the pantry window. Where did you go? What were you doing ?"

"Nothing that I'm Edna curtly told him.

"You did not return till midnight. You told Gaffney you saw the dead man and a man with a knife. You then must know something about the murder," Cruger sternly insisted.

"That's all I know about it," said Edna firmly, "I had my key to the side door, and I stole in quietly so that the butler would not hear me. The library was lighted, and I thought madame had returned."

"You knew you ought to be here when she arrived. Why did you stay out so late?" Cruger pointedly demanded.

"She had said she would not return till after midnight," Edna retorted. "When I came to the library door I saw the two men, one with madame's jewels, the other with a knife. He was bending over the man on the floor."

"Were they masked?" Cruger asked sharply.

"No, sir. The one with a knife was a dark man with a beard. He sprang up when he saw me, and I was frightened. I ran out again as fast as I could, and I heard him follow me. That's all I know about it."

"That's not all you know," Cruger sternly accused her. "With whom did you talk at the pantry window ?"

The girl hesitated, shrinking his sharp and searching scrutiny. She fell to trembling again, both hands pressed over her heart, a look of increasing anguish in her dilated eyes. "I talked with no one," she said after a moment.

"That is a falsehood," said Cruger with threatening severity. "Your face shows it, and there is ample evidence of it." He glanced around, observing Farley in the rear of the hall, and he nodded to him significantly. "Who is the friend you went out to meet?" he harshly demanded, grasping the girl's arm.

"I— I won't tell you," she falteringly replied.

"Oh, yes, you will!' Cruger threatened. "Out with it! Who was your friend?"

"It was a girl who works near by," said Edna desperately. "It was a girl who—"

"No, it wasn't! Look there!" said Cruger, quickly turning her around. "That's who it was!"

Edna Deland stared for a moment as if dumfounded, then uttered a heart- rending cry of dismay. Her gaze had fallen upon Farley and his companion— a tall, handsome young man, looking strangely white and perplexed and whose wrists were secured with handcuffs.

"Wait a bit!" Gaffney exclaimed. "Oh, I say, Detective Cruger, this girl isn't—"

"Stop!" Cruger turned as if pricked with a knife. "Don't you dare to inter- fere with me, Gaffney, or I'll have your buttons!" he declared with terrible severity. "The girl is under arrest, also her confederate. I don't believe a word she has said. As for you, Dupont, take a word of advice and keep your mouth closed. What you say will be used against you," he sternly warned him. "Look after them, Farley, and take them to headquarters. I'll question them later. Get away with them at once. I'll wait to call the coroner and have that body removed. Remain here, Gaffney; I may need you."

Ludwig glanced at Mrs. Alden Beebe.

"It's very evident now what Detective Cruger thinks," he remarked. It then was one o'clock.

SOME HOURS later the body of Leo Carvalli lay in the back room of a Harrison Avenue undertaker. The police wagon and the undertaker had departed. The place was closed and in darkness. But two men who had come there very stealthily were seated in the gloom of the back room, Detective Cruger and Martin Gaffney. They were waiting, watching, and whispering, but not because they were in the presence of death.

"Bah! Things aren't always what they seem," Cruger said. "If not proved by absolutely authentic cases, Martin, no one would believe how strangely great terror may affect a timid and sensitive person. I know of two. Hermann Meister, a German medical student, while dissecting a human body, suddenly compressed the chest and caused an exhalation which sounded to the horrified youth exactly like a hoarse command to run. He did so. He rushed out in abnormal terror, a sort of temporary acute mania, and ran nine miles at top speed. Then he fell in complete physical exhaustion. When restored he remembered nothing about it."

Martin Gaffney said nothing.

"Another is that of George Grochantzy, who deserted from the Prussian army. He was caught by soldiers while dancing in an inn... He thought of the death penalty and uttered a shriek of terror and fell insensible. When revived he could remember nothing, not even his own name, and he died an idiot a month later. I recalled both cases, Martin, when you told me about Edna Deland," said Cruger.

"Then you don't really suspect her?" Gaffney questioned.

"Suspect her— nothing!" Cruger exclaimed. "Why didn't she flee with the crooks? Why did they ring? Why didn't she admit them? Why did they ask about her and search for her after entering? No, Martin, I do not suspect her. I suspect only Lester Ludwig."

"Why did you arrest her then?"

"Only to hide my suspicions," Cruger interrupted. "It was very significant that he turned up just as you found the girl, that he objected to your going with him to take her home, that he is an old friend of Mrs. Beebe. He might easily have learned of her opera party. Obviously he was trying to convince me of the girl's guilt. I happen to know, too, that he lives extravagantly and is always short of money."

"I see those points," Gaffney returned.

"I found, when I examined Carvalli, that the cut on his head was much more like a ragged scratch caused by a ring on the hand of his assailant," Cruger continued. "I saw, too, that Ludwig had removed his ring, and I presently discovered the diamond, evidently broken from it when he dealt the blow. I pretended to think it belonged to Mrs. Beebe. He probably did not miss it until after Edna Deland entered, when both crooks followed her from the house."

"Thinking she was after a police-man?" Gaffney asked.

"Surely!" said Cruger. "They did not overtake her, however, but evidently traced her. Ludwig then gave his disguise and the stolen jewels to his confederate, I think, and later returned with the girl to find his diamond, if possible, and perhaps to do something more. But, in the meantime, I had arrived at the house, and he then took advantage of the maid's strange conduct and her apparent inability to incriminate him in any way."

"Have you questioned her about that?" Gaffney asked.

"At headquarters," Cruger replied. "She was overjoyed upon finding that she and Dupont are not really under arrest. It appears that his father in France is very ill, and Dupont is sailing this morning. He came to tell the girl about it and whistled for her to come out. She talked with him from the pantry window, then went out and joined him. When accused of the crime she was afraid that Dupont would be arrested and prevented from sailing. This was her only reason for hiding the truth. I suspected something of the kind, and I had Dupont arrested only to convince Ludwig that I had no other suspicions and designs."

"But why was Carvalli murdered ?"

"He wasn't," said Cruger. "I detected it, although Ludwig tried hard to convince me. I think you'll presently see why. Particles of skin on the edge of Carvalli's nails showed me that the scratches on his chin and neck were caused by his own fingers. I then guessed the truth, I think, and took my one best chance to secure the crooks and the stolen jewels. I stealthily felt of Carvalli's throat while inspecting it, hoping to find one of them, but it evi- dently had slipped down."

"What do you mean, slipped down?" Gaffney stared perplexedly.

"You don't get me, eh?" Cruger laughed grimly. "I'll tell you how I size it up. Ludwig evidently hired two crooks to aid him. Carvalli proved to be a treacherous dog. He tried to steal the spectrum pendant, breaking it from the necklace, and he put it in his mouth to hide it."

"And swallowed it?" Gaffney asked.

"Exactly," said Cruger. "Ludwig detected him or suspected it, I think, and struck him when he denied it. That may have caused the thing to lodge in Carvalli's throat. He could not dislodge it, and it must have slipped down when the convulsed muscles relaxed after his death. Ludwig knew that the pendant is worth a fortune, He wanted to get it. That's why he was bending with a knife over a dead man, and that's why I had the body brought here."

"You mean—"

"That was my one best chance to get both of the crooks and all of the jewels. I made it a point to tell him an autopsy will be held to-morrow. The rascals may attempt to recover the pendant. In that case, Martin, it must be done to-night. Ludwig knows it, and I think his game was to get it. If I am right— wait! Not a sound!"

Cruger peered through the closed blinds of a window at which he was seated. He had seen a momentary gleam of light in a dark alley back of the building. Presently it came again, only for an instant, but long enough to reveal two crouching men stealing toward the window. The detective grasped Gaffney's arm and drew him through an open door to an adjoining room. Here they waited and listened.

They heard the blind quietly opened, the snap of the lock when the window was forced, the cautious movements of both men when they climbed over the sill and entered the room, and then the keen, incisive voice of one, subdued and threatening.

"Take your time, Morley, and don't be a cur," he said. "The job may be done in five minutes. We can easily get it. It's worth the work and risk. But there really is no danger. The cop suspected nothing, and I completely blinded the detective. Go to it at once, Morley, and—"

Then came a glare of light, a threatening command, and two men were staring helplessly at leveled pistols. One dropped in a faint on the floor— Mr. Lester Lawton Ludwig.

DETECTIVE Cruger was perfectly right. It was five o'clock when he arrived at headquarters with Patrolman Gaffney and joined Dupont and Edna Deland in his private office. Martin Gaffney's ruddy face was beaming with delight.

"It's all over," Detective Cruger told the couple, smiling and placing his hand on Edna's shoulder. "I'm sorry I had to be so severe with you, my girl, and detain both of you here so long."

"Oh, that's nothing at all," said Edna, eyes glowing. "That is, sir, if—"

"There aren't any ifs!" Cruger interjected. "I must telephone to Mrs. Beebe. We have secured the crooks and recovered her stolen jewels— all except the spectrum pendant. Leo Carvalli has that, but he'll give it up to-morrow!" he dryly predicted.

Edna did not understand the last. Besides, she was busy telling Patrolman Gaffney what she thought of him.

_______________

10: The Witching of Elspie

Duncan Campbell Scott

1862-1947

First published in The Witching of Elspie: A Book of Stories, 1923

IT was my father who spoke first; and he spoke to the Cure, Monsieur de Gonzague, who sat with his hand on a church book, and beside him on the table an aspirator for the holy water. "Look at her now," said my father. The Cure looked up at Elspie McGibbon who had been plying her knitting needles. She had let them drop into her lap and was gazing straight at one of the candles with never a movement of her eyelids.

Gradually a curious fey expression crept over her face, her mouth grew long and wan and her beauty all drawn awry; the pupils of her eyes began to dilate and flutter. No one breathed and the wind, striking the shutter a moment before, quieted, and nothing moved without or within. Pere de Gonzague rose to his height and made the sign of the cross over her and spoke a few words in the Latin and sprinkled her with holy water. But the maid never heeded; the distrait look still hung upon her face; her hands were laid useless in her lap.

"He must be near," said my father under his breath, and I wondered how he dared to speak, for the flesh was moving cold upon my bones. Suddenly a sound came from without and I felt as if some one had struck my head with a mallet. The sound was like a footstep outside the window upon the gallery which ran all around the house. First a soft padded stroke, then a clump, clump, like a footstep if the foot were half flesh and half bone.

It came slow and powerful and we all rose to our feet except my mother who was overcome, and could only put her hands before her face, and Elspie McGibbon who still gazed woefully at the candle without seeing anything. There we stood as if waiting for the judgment. Pere de Gonzague, my father, my uncle Bartholemie, strong Jacques Boudin the farmer, and the housekeeper Annette Valois.

The sound came nearer and nearer, then it ceased and began as suddenly on the other side of the house. We drew closer together. "Here, your honour," said Jacques, "I will go out and face it." He spoke to my father. He took up one of the candles and went towards the door. Pere de Gonzague followed him and I came after. When Jacques reached the door and opened it I saw through the moonlight over his shoulder dark shadows in the elms and in a moment "paff " came a stroke of wind like a breath, and blew out the candle.

As we stood, scarcely breathing, the noise sprang up before us so that we all started back, and as suddenly it seemed to walk beyond the windows of the parlour where the light shone through chinks in the close wooden shutters.

A great dread got hold upon me and I longed for my heart to beat. I heard Jacques saying under his breath, "It is gone," and a long crying came up from the banks of the river.

It was just then, my mother said, that Elspie gave a great deep sigh and shut her eyes. When she opened them she picked up her knitting and began clicking the needles as if she had been asleep. "Were you dreaming, Elspie dear?" asked my mother. The girl smiled, "Yes, I was dreaming." "And did you see the tall man again?" She nodded her head and smiled like a maid who has a sweet secret.

Annette came running to us to say she had waked. "Down to his cabin I go," said Jacques, who was a resolute fellow. "I go with you," I said. I stepped before the Cure and as I went on, clutching Jacques, I felt the holy water drop on me.

We went through the lilac bushes heavy with scent, out into the white road under the elms. Soon we saw the moonlight flooding the Becancour and heard the rushing of the stream over the shallows. Even at some distance we could discern the regular outline of the house with its low walls and heavy overtopping roof. When we came to it there was no light and no sound. We walked around it slowly and Jacques laid his ear to the door. Joubert was not within.

When we returned the women had retired, my father had gone home with the Cure, and my Uncle Bartholemie was sitting with all the candles still lighted.

When my father came back we counselled together. We were on our Seigniory in the County of Nicolet, just two days from Quebec, when this thing happened.

Joubert had come up to the house and cast the evil eye on Elspie McGibbon. Annette found her leaning at the buttery door in a trance with all the blood gone from her face, and Joubert gazing at her with a horrid smile. She screamed and flew out at him, and when the maid came back to her senses she said that a tall handsome man, who had beautiful eyes and a voice like a flute, had spoken to her.

It was Joubert who had spoken to her, Joubert with his harelip and his terrible whine. Jacques Boudin, the farmer, when he heard it, laid his hand on his head and swore by the saints to tear Joubert's heart out of his body. Every year we had come to the Seigniory with Elspie his love had grown stronger, and now it was fairly arranged that he should marry her.

The year before she was a slip of a girl romping at her work, now she was a young beauty, the masses of red brown hair piled upon her shapely head, her dark blue eye vivid with light, and above everything the charm of her movement, her grace, which is to a woman what cadence is to music; and Joubert had cast upon her his evil eye.

We counselled together upon what should be done but our plans did not go any farther than that night. My father would not look any further, saying that Pere de Gonzague was to rummage in some old books he had and might find an ancient cure for the evil eye. So it was decided that Jacques should sit up all night in the dining room out of which opened the large room where Elspie and Annette slept; and I would hear of nothing else than that I was to watch with him.

My father went to bed and Jacques and I sat facing one another; the broad oak table between us. The house was quiet, very quiet; again and again we trimmed the candles and I found myself thinking what a pleasant thing it was to watch all night when I woke up in broad day and found Annette placing the dishes for the morning meal.

Elspie during the forenoon seemed herself again, helping Annette as her duty was, but moving about with more languor than usual, and sometimes stand- ing as if a vision had risen in her mind and charmed her. Every one watched her and it seemed impossible for Joubert to come near the house without our knowledge. But just after dinner we missed her suddenly; she seemed to disappear as we looked at her.

We each ran in a different direction to look for her and down I went to the bee-hives which stood in a circle behind some cedars at the foot of the garden. There she was, standing before Joubert, not near him, with her head slightly on one side, her arms hanging limply from her shoulders, her hands open and relaxed.

When Joubert saw me he dropped one shoulder and began to cringe and fawn like a dog afraid of a beating. His loose mouth tightened at one corner and his grey teeth shone in the folds of his lips. I seized Elspie by the arm, turned her about and led her to the house as easily as if she were blind. Looking over my shoulder at the door I glimpsed Joubert's head and shoulders sliding along behind the hedge.

So soon as Elspie came to herself we had a scene, for Annette broke into a fit of weeping that seemed more violent than ordinary, for she was a thick, well-governed person, and no one had ever before seen a tear in her eye. When she got quieted in my mother's room, with salts of lavender, she told, between sobs, what she had been keeping back, that in Beauce, when she was a young girl, she had known of just such another witching of a maid by an old devil, and nothing could be done about it; they even burned him out of his hole, and carried the girl to the convent, and cut off her hair, and the nuns said a myriad of prayers daily in her behalf; so many were the prayers that you could fairly see them flying out of the window like pigeons.

But all of no use, the old "loup-garou" got her at last and they lived together and had children, nine of them, all idiots, each one more terrible than the last. After this recital Annette relapsed into tears.

My mother, after a while, called Elspie into her room where it was cool and dusky, and when she got her employed in turning the linen in the presses, she asked her whom she was talking with by the bee-hives.

"The man I was telling you of; the tall, dark, strong looking fellow." My mother said she had not seen him and asked who he was.

"Oh!" said Elspie, with a peculiar shy smile, "I do not know his name; that I must not ask. But he came a long, long journey to see me here. He is a rich man; he has a domain in Portneuf where he digs silver and gold out of holes in the earth."

My father had come in and was listening by the door and my mother wrung her hands toward him, so distraught was she by the pity of it all. My father spoke quickly from where he stood and asked Elspie if she did not know well that it was old Joubert to whom she was talking. She laughed under her breath, a thing she would not have dared to do if she had been herself, she was so careful in respect for my father.

"No, your honour," she replied, "it was not Joubert, I know Joubert; this man is fine and handsome, has the look of the rich in his eye. Joubert is the fellow with a mouth like an old hound, his hair is full of mould and he has forgotten the feel of a sou between his fingers. I will tell your honour," she added, standing up, blushing like a pink peony, and with a little movement of grace and deference, "that this gentleman has asked me to marry him and live on his domain in Portneuf."

"And what about Jacques Boudin, honest strong Jacques Boudin?" said my father in his deepest voice.

"Jacques Boudin," said Elspie as if striving with her memory; "Yes, yes, yes"; she repeated these words slowly with a sigh between each. You could see her mind struggling like a little storm-beaten boat trying to land on a familiar shore.

They told me this at once and I went and told Jacques Boudin. He sat down and bent his great stubborn looking back, and let his head hang down to his knees. He was mighty enough to have broken Joubert with his own hands, but he knew that would not break the spell. All at once an idea came into my mind.

"Jacques," I said, "we will save her from him. I have an idea; only do you wait, I will see the Cure and then I will tell you, you must help me." Help! He drew up to his full six feet, and two tears, as hard as white marble, stood in the corners of his eyes. He held my hand so fast that I had to pull one foot off the ground.

If my plan was to be carried out that night I must lose no time, so off I went to see Monsieur de Gonzague. He had turned over all his books but never a cure for the evil eye could be found.

When I told him my idea, he put his head on one side and pondered. "Well," he said at length, "carry it out, I will do my part." Hardly waiting to thank him I hastened down to the forge and had a talk with Hector, the blacksmith, and before I left him he was working with a will.

Then I went on to Joubert's den which stood about four hundred yards from the river, in a thicket of trees and undergrowth. As I came down the path I saw him seated on his door-step, but he did not see me until I stood before him, so intent was he on the work that he was doing. He had a small piece of dried skin laid upon his knees and was working at it with his fingers. He wore only a pair of breeches and a shirt. The former was well patched with clouts of buckskin, the latter was whole but open at the throat, showing a fell of coarse hair at his breast.

His hands were enormous; each joint seemed as long as an ordinary human finger. His nose jutted like a promontory. Tufts of hair grew in the whorls and on the lobes of his ears. His head was sunken in at the temples, his eyes were wild and light. His skin was flushed unnaturally as if a fire was burning underneath; and drops of sweat as large as beans stood out on his brow. His hair was black as pitch and hung in points on his shoulders, so matted was it with dirt that showed grey upon it. His feet were bare.

"Oh, Master Philemon," he said, sniffing the words out, "you are here at Joubert's little house?" He never raised his head, his eyes jumped one look at me and then fell back. His fingers kept clawing at the piece of skin.

"Yes," I said. "What are you working at?"

"Oh, nothing at all, just a little fancy of my own."

"You were up at the house to-day?" I said. He was perfectly motionless in a twinkle and held himself together just as I have seen a rat stop dead still to listen when alarmed.

"Yes, yes, Master Philemon," he replied, relaxing his muscles.

"You're a sly old wolf," I said. "Our Elspie is crazed after you, and is all for marrying you."

"Ah!" he said, and moistened his lips with his bright tongue.

"You'll have to spruce your place up a bit before you bring her here to live." I could see a foul table and a broken pot on the hard sand floor.

"Not a bad place," he whined, "a sound roof from the rain."

"Bah! a girl of her quality needs more than a shelter. Look you, Joubert, before you come up to see her again you must wash your shirt; it's heavy with grease, man; you'd better go down to the river and pin it down in the current for half a day." He looked down at the loathesome garment and fingered it.

"You're friend to me, Master Philemon, you're friend to me."

"I'd do far more than that for you," I said; "that's a bit of good advice." With that I left him and went back to Hector who had forged me an iron cross about six inches in the standard and three inches in the cross piece, and where they were joined he had fitted an iron handle a good two feet in length; and he had for me one of those braziers, which roofers use, filled with charcoal for Hector was a Jack of all the metal trades.

I hid the brazier in the bushes by the path to Joubert's, and carried the cross to the Cure who blessed it for me through and through. Then back I went to the manoir, carrying my well fashioned consecrated bit of iron, and found Jacques.

I was late for supper, and I had to hear that my mother had gone to bed with a terrible pain in her head. Every one was wrought far beyond the usual anxiety, for affairs gone wrong, save Elspie, and she was a-dreaming. They had been attentive of her and Annette reported with a shiver that she had taken the crucifix off the wall of her room, a sure sign that she had been bewitched, and was looking into her clothes-chest as if preparing for a journey.

My father walked heavily up and down the room with his hands behind him. He thought well of Elspie who had been reared in our family since she was taken a little orphan from the foundling hospital. Her parents were Scotch people. She was a great aid and help to my mother. My father had planned her marriage with Jacques Boudin, and now everything was marred and in confusion by reason of an old villain whom he had suffered to live on his land and occupy one of his houses. The neighbours' gossip about him, that he was a were-wolf, a loup garou, he had never heeded, and to requite him this power had struck into his own family.

Pere de Gonzague came in after an hour. My father heard with a sigh that no help could be got from his old folios, but I left them certain that the Cure would win over my father to the second part of my plan, which was contingent upon the success of the first. I knew that they would all watch Elspie and prevent her from slipping away, and I went out to join Jacques Boudin.

When it was dark, before moonrise, we found the brazier and struck off the path into a dense growth of hazel which covered two arpents or more to the river bank. Our plan was to work back to Joubert's from the river, but when I broke through the bushes upon the bank I saw a figure below me on a sand bar.

The moon was floating up and long points of silver light shone upon the water. We listened; we could hear the swishing of something in the water, and a gaunt figure rose once and again on the sand bar. Then I knew that Joubert had taken my advice!

Back we went till we had struck the path which the old fellow had worn from his den to the water-side. Then we took to the bushes. Jacques placed himself about twenty feet nearer the water than my station. Soon I had the brazier alight and glowing, and before long when I took the iron out of the fire I could see the cross all red against the dark hazel leaves.

We must have been there an hour when Jacques whistled. Joubert was coming up the path, in his hands he carried his shirt, wringing it and snapping the water out of it as he came. Just as he passed Jacques stepped out and pinioned him from behind. He called out to me, "Loup-garou, loup-garou," and as they advanced I met them with the iron white hot.

Joubert was forced on and half carried by Jacques. I put the brand of the cross on his breast as nearly over his heart as I could, and Jacques spun him round like a top and I burnt him on the back a trifle deeper.

Whatever the creature was made of I cannot tell, for he never uttered a sound; and when Jacques let go he loped up the path like a wolf and was out of sight in a turn behind the bushes. We made a detour and went back to the manoir.

Then to carry out my plan there was a great bustling and hurrying, and disputing, and harnessing of horses, and some demurring on the part of Elspie McGibbon. Around came the calash and the quatre-roux and away we went to the St. Lawrence landing; my father, Annette, Elspie, Jacques and myself, and two drivers.

Before midnight I had the satisfaction of seeing our sloop slide away in the moonlight, beginning her first tack for Trois Rivieres. The drivers and myself jogged slowly homeward to Becancour. They are separated at least, whatever else comes of it, I thought.

In the morning Joubert had disappeared and he was never again seen in these parishes. Not even by rumour did he visit the haunt of his evil spirit.

And not many weeks after strong Jacques Boudin sailed over to Trois Rivieres with all our family, for we thought well of him, and there was a wedding in the Cathedral.

AS YEARS went by I forgot Joubert and his deviltry. Many years after I was visiting the monastery of La Trappe in the hills above Oka. My companion was a notary from St. Basil who was well acquainted with the monks and their institution.

"There is one monk here who flagellates himself, Father Philemon; come, it is his hour, let us have a look at him!"

We went from one cool hall into another: soon a door opened and there came a procession of monks. They stopped; one in the midst of them threw back his cowl and bared his body to the waist. There was something curiously familiar to me in his countenance. Taking a leather thong while his brethren chanted, he began to beat himself over the shoulders and the breast. By and by my companion nudged me.

"Look," he said, "it is considered a miracle." On his back and breast came out in a deeper red the sign of the Cross. In a moment I had recognised him.

It was Joubert.

_________________

11: Armistice

Anonymous

Braidwood Dispatch 31 March and 7 May 1939

There are numerous short stories with this title

MORRIS LEVIN sprawled in a steamer chair on the promenade deck with his hands clasped behind his head, a cigar in the corner of his mouth, his eyes focussed upon a faint line where the Atlantic Ocean melted into the sky— where there was really nothing to be seen— his mind intent upon a problem.

About every five minutes— or whatever time it took a pair of healthy legs to make the circuit of the ship's deck— his problem walked past, between his eyes and the horizon. Her name was Miriam Levin, and she was twenty. About every third lap she turned her head to bestow a smile upon her father. For the most part, however, her attention was concentrated upon a tall, straight man with fair hair and blue eyes who walked by her side, witn an empty sleeve tucked into his coat pocket.

Levin was not even aware when his daughter smiled upon him. Nor was he aware that other passengers were promenading the deck before his eyes. He was too intent upon his thoughts, which seemed to find a setting in some vision that his eyes beheld upon the horizon— even though he beheld it through the bodies of the promenaders. A gloomy vision it was, of gloomy years.

As the war receded farther and farther into the past, the vision had grown dimmer and dimmer; and Levin hoped that, some day, it would fade completely and leave his mind at peace. But now, lo and behold! here on the wide ocean it had arisen again, clear and more dismaying than ever. His daughter interested in a soldier— a soldier whose empty sleeve would ever keep this memory before his eyes.

Levin shuddered. When the war broke out Morris Levin had a clothing factory, a growing son and a baby daughter. Now only the daughter remained to him. Money, oh, yes; but money did not interest him. The war developed a tremendous demand for clothing for soldiers. Levin tried to supply the demand. When he found that the demand was greater than his meagre supply, be put his son in charge of his factory and went about the country buying up other factories.

The thought of profiteering never entered his head. To him it was purely a matter of business. His government wanted clothes— other countries also— and he was in the clothing business. So he worked eighteen hours a day to produce clothes. And he grew richer and richer by leaps and bounds for each month that the war lasted. The war seemed foolish and inexsibly brutal to him.

Having found asylum in the United States from the oppression and persecution of his native land, he had a great affection for his adopted country and he prided himself upon being one hundred per cent. American. But he could see no sense in the war. Still, as long as uniforms were in demand, here was the opportunity of his life. He continued to make uniforms.

He had put his son in charge of his original factory while he went about buying and organising others. Reuben Levin, who was not yet seventeen, but could be trusted to see that the workmen did not shirk.

And then, one day, while he was in California, he received a telegram from his foreman in New York announcing that Reuben had deserted the factory, and had enlisted and sailed for Europe. The lad had lied about his age, had cast all responsibility to the winds, and had plunged headlong in to the flood of youthful enthusiasm.

His father, distracted, had rushed batik and had exerted all his influence to have his son sent home. Had he had more time he would probably have succeeded, because the high officials of the War Department had a great liking for Levin. They considered him a fair man.

But Fate does not wait upon human endeavours. In the harbour of Brest a heavy bale of clothing slipped from its fastenings, and two lads who were helping with the unloading were pinned underneath. It was not until years afterwards that it occurred to Levin to wonder who the other lad was and whether the bale might not have contained his own goods.

Reuben Levin, who had not yet reached his seventeenth year and whose death in the vast panorama of the war had been so inglorious, was laid to rest beside his mother.

His father carried on. The mainspring had snapped. He worked mechanically, often in a daze. Not only the work, but also the disposal of his rapidly growing wealth, kept him busy. His son had been his pride and his hope. He now had neither pride nor hope. He had little interest in his work or his money, but they, at least, kept him from thinking. He hated thought.

Then, slowly, there kindled, then smouldered, and then, finally, blazed within him an overwhelming hatred and horror of all things and all men connected with the war. The feeling grew and persisted. He sold his factories; planned his daughter's education in private school and at college, and began to travel.

There is hardly a more doleful spectacle on earth than that of a man travelling and travelling in order to get away from himself. He takes nothing but himself with him. Levin maintained a constant correspondence with his daughter, and he saw her three or four times a year. Sometimes it was but a brief visit. At other times they went off on trips together. They were tremendously fond of each other, but their relationship lacked that intangible element which is born of home life and daily contact.

Miriam had a vague sense of her father's unhapplness, but wae, ot course, too young to be able to analyse its cause. What she did realise, however, was that she was the sole individual on earth in whom he now had the slightest interest, and that her welfare was his only concern— a feeling which developed in her a strong sense of responsibility, if not affection.

THE TRIP to Europe was her last vacation before graduating from college. On this trip she had met the the English soldier, a man nearly fifteen years older than she. A tall, straight man with fair hair and blue eyes. An extraordinarily quiet man, too; and he had lost his left arm in the war.

To save her soul Miriam could not not have told what there was about him that made such a powerful appeal to her. It might have been his laughter when he was merry. Or it might have been a certain wistfulness in his eyes during moments ot abstraction, such as come to men who have searched in vain for complete happiness. At any rate, they quickly became chummy, and on a trans-Atlantic voyage, with glorious starry nights— really, there's hardly any need to go into details.

Levin noticed things, and his soul sickened within him. The thought of losing his daughter, now that he was becoming accustomed to her and growing dependent upon her companionship, would in itself have depressed him. But being a business man by instinct, he made inquiries, and the result of his inquiries created turmoil within him.

"You're spending a lot of time with that English fellow, Miriam," he said. "I don't even know his right name. I'd be careful, if I were you. A lot of cats on board, and you know how they talk."

Just the faintest bit of colour showed in his daughter's cheeks.

"His name is Jimmy," she said. "James Walton. And, Daddy, he's wonderful. You see?"

Levin did not fail to notice the slight tightening of his daughter's pretty lips. Nor did he fail to realise how little he really knew of his daughter's temper and temperament.

"Go easy!" his guiding spirit whispered to him.

"Well, y'know," he said, "someone was saying to-day that he's a married man. Or he was a married man, only his wife died. I didn't pay much attention to it."

Which was a lie. He had asked his cabin steward to make inquiries. His daughter smiled.

"Yes, that's true," she said. "He married five years ago, and his wife left him. Some sort of an actress. He heard she was sick and suffering, and he came to New York to help her.

"Now, Daddy, what's next?"

Levin looked into his daughter"s eyes. They seemed aglow with a light that he had never beheld before.

"Her mother never looked at me like that," was the thought that came to his mind.

"Oh, nothing," he replied, as airily as he could. "But I got great plans for you. I'll bet you could get a duke or a peer, maybe, stuck on you. They ain't so hot these days."

He snapped his fingers.

"You're a dear, Daddy," his daughter said, as she opened her bag and surveyed her face in a tiny mirror, "only you're coo-coo. Only I'd never dream of marrying— oh, Daddy! Don't look at me like that or I'll scream. Anyway, I'm your dutiful daughter, and if you want to know anything more about Jimmy, ask me or ask him. Don't ask the cabin steward. Jimmy's going to talk to you tonight. In a way, Daddy, I think he's just as silly as you are. I guess all men are."

The ship was nearing the French coast. This conversation had taken place the day before. And on the evening of that same day Jimmy had found Morris Levin in a corner ot the smoking-room.

"I'd like very much, Mr. Levin," he said, "to marry your daughter. I"m terribly in love with her, and I wouldn't be surprised if she were a bit fond of me."

Levin sat speechless. He looked up at the tall, straight figure, with the empty sleeve tucked into a coat-pocket. He looked into smiling, blue eyes. He noted tiny wrinkles at the corner of those eyes which, if he had not felt so outraged at that moment, he would have recognised at the stigmata of humour.

But Levin felt outraged.

What a way to begin a conversation! What an overture to a painful discussion! What a disrespectful way of talking, to a rich old man!

"Sit down, Mister— what's your name?" he said.

"My name is James Walton. I am a writer. In fact, I am a good writer. Thus far many publishers have failed to agree with me. But I am full of, what in your country you call 'pep.' And I shall keep on writing."

He drew out a chair and seated himself opposite Levin. "Let's have a drink," he said. "I always talk better when I have a whisky-and-soda before me. Now, Mr. Levin, may I repeat my first remark? I'd like very much to marry your

daughter. Scotch and soda twice, please."

Levin turned to the steward. "The drinks are on me," he said. Then he turned to Jimmy.

"You're all right," he added, nodding. "I'm a business man, and I always appreciate when a guy comes straight to the point. So I"ll do the same. My answer is NO! Get it? NO!

"I won't beat about the bush. I don't want my daughter to marry you. Is that clear? I'm against it. Why? First, place, you're an Englishman and she's an American. One hundred per cent. Me, too. Then, you've been married before, although I ain't got any business to hold that against you. But you was in the war. And it you married her I'd have the damned war on my mind all my life. And I"m sick and tired of war. I don't want my own family to keep reminding me of the goddam war. D'ye get me? And I don't think much of the writing business. It's too crazy. My daughter is a young girl, and she don"t know her own mind, and I"m sure you're too much of a gentleman to take advantage of her— er— lack of experience. You"re older than she is. And— and—"

His voice trailed into a diminuendo, but Jimmy caught his glance at the empty sleeve. And he grinned.

"And I've only got one arm," he said cheerfully. "I just adore your frankness, Mr. Levin, as the young things say nowadays. I'm sure we will get on splendidly. But, for the present, I take it that you're opposed to my marrying Miriam?"

Levin nodded and poured the fizzy water into his glass. "I have other plans for Miss Levin," he said with great dignity.

"Well," said Jimmy, raising his glass, "here's to your very good health."

"Now, look here,' said Levin, as he put down his glass, "I don't mind telling you that you're a mighty decent sort of a fellow. If there's anything I can do for you—"

Jimmy rose. He was still smiling, But there was a dignity in his bearing that checked Levin's flow of words.

"If you don't mind going to hell—" he began. And he turned and strode from the room.

"BUT tell me," said the young guide to Levin, "what's your particular grouch against the war?"

Levin drew a long breath. Here, at last, was an opportunity to vent his pent-up thoughts upon a patient listener. He handed the guide an-other cigar.

"I'll tell you," he began quietly, but with that ferocious eagerness of a man whose mind is filled with convictions. "In the first place it was all a rotten piece of business. What is the sense of it? People die soon enough, don't they? In the second place, what was gained by it all? Is the world any better off? I'm better off because I made a lot of money out of the war. But what did you get? You lost your arm. Look at those crosses out there. I suppose there's a dead soldier lying under every one of them. What did they get, out of the war? Who enjoyed the war? Who made anything out of it excepting people like me who didn't go into it? Look at the world to-day. Look at business. Look at people's happiness. Who's better out on account of it?" He looked at the guide. The young man was gazing upon the field of crosses with a wrapt expression on his face, but his head was nodding in assent. Instinctively Levin handed him another cigar.

"You're right," said the guide, "a hundred per cent right. Everything you say is true. It was the rottenest piece of business in the world's history. But there's only one thing you overlook. My name's Jimmy."

"All right," said Levin. "Go ahead, Jimmy, and tell me what I've overlooked."

"You overlook the feelings we boys had when we went into the war."

"Oh, I do, do I?" said Levin, with feeling. "And what was that feeling?"

The young man shrugged his shoulders. "Damned if I know," he said. "It's like a dog with a bone. You try to take the bone away from the dog and he fights for it. Why? I don't know. Explain that and you explain the war. It's youth. It's the instinct to fight. Especially in a great cause. Youth can't help it. And if youth doesn't fight, who will? Old people like you won't fight. You hate to disturb your comfort. You're satisfied to make money. Who in hell wants to make money when there's a good fight going?"

"We all had our ideas about the war. Everything seemed wrong. But why in hell didn't you old guys straighten things out Why did you call on us to fight? Don't you know that it's dangerous to appeal to youth and then try to regulate and suppress youth? It can't be done. Youth is strength. When there's a call to fight youth answers. It can't help itself. The worst part of it is that when the fight's over peo-ple like you sit back and say, 'It's too bad.' It wasn't the young people who started the war. It was you old people. Why in hell didn't you do the fighting yourself? If you had, you'd be sitting here looking out at all those crosses and snivelling be cause some of your cronies were buried under them. Why don't you snivel over the youngsters who lie buried there, who couldn't resist the call? Don't you know anyone who fought in the war?"

"I had a son," Levin said timidly.

"What regiment was he in?" asked the guide eagerly.

Levin shook his head. "He wasn't in any regiment," he replied. "He ran away from the factory. He was too young. Only seventeen. He lied about his age. And he got killed. On a dock in France. They were unloading bales of clothing. One fell—"

The guide sprang to his feet and stretched out his arm.

"My God!" he cried. "And he did not have a chance to fight! But he was a hero just the same."

"Maybe," said Levin. He hadn't looked at it this way before. "Have another cigar," he added feebly, oh! very feebly. Something queer was happening within him. He could not define it. Perhaps his attitude to life— and suffering, which is part of life— was being changed. His son— a hero! Perhaps it was so.

"Have another cigar?" he said again.

"Thanks, old man, but I never smoke cigars," said a clear voice.

Levin looked up, blinking. Could it be possible? The guide's features seemed to have formed themselves into the countenance of Jimmy Walton, who stood before him, erect, lighting a cigarette with one hand while the empty sleeve dangled at his side. The sunshine was dazzling; the heat was oppressive. Levin was in a daze.

"DADDY! Daddy! Wake up!"

Levin rubbed his eyes. There was Miriam, standing close behind the one-armed soldier whom he had met on the ship. There, also, was his own car, and close beside it another car. Again he rubbed his eyes and, quickly, the living world came back to him.

"I know that car," he said, pointing to it. "It's Lord Hathway's, ain't it?"

"That's right," said the one-armed soldier, "but how in the devil you guessed it beats me. He's my uncle."

"Oh!" said Levin. He rose, slowly and stiffly. "I'll betcha," he said, "I fell asleep. Come on, Jimmy. Let's get outa here. You an' me are gonna have a talk. Fine car that!"

Jimmy insisted upon their riding back to Verdun in his uncle's car. Before Levin entered he looked around him. In the shade, beside the ossuary, he recognised the recumbent figure of the guide, fast asleep. He searched the pocket of his waistcoat. There were the three cigars he had brought with him.

"I betcha I was asleep," he murmured.

_________________

12: Lured To His Doom

E. Randolph

Swan Express (Midland Junction, W Aust) 22 April 1910

Nothing is known of "E. Randolph".

'ROBERT,' said Mr. Vyse slowly, gazing fixedly at the young clerk, 'I have no doub that it is you who have robbed me.'

The hot blood flooded Robert Acland's neck and face as he took in the meaning of the words.

'I swear to you, sir, he cried passionately, 'that you wrong me— I swear it by my soul.'

'I wish I could believe you, Robert,' Mr. Vyse replied, 'for I like you; but unfortunately appearances are too much against you.  What, may I ask, were you doing at five o'clock yesterday evening in my private room? You had no right or business to be there.'

'Nor was I,' returned the young fellow proudly, drawing himself up to his full height. '' I have never been in this room in my life except when you have sent me. Has anyone told, you that I was here last evening, sir?'

'Yes, Robert, your comrade, Richard Starkie, assured me of it not ten minutes ago.'

'Richard Starkie!' exclaimed Acland, in great wonderment. 'Why, he must be mad. What can have possessed hiim to tell so wicked a falsehood? We have always been good friends, he and I. Why should he thus try to ruin me?'

The words, the tone, were those of an innocent man. Mr. Vyse began to waver in his opinion as to Acland's guilt.

'Robert,' he said, more kindly, 'will you swear to me before God that you are innocent?'

Raising aloft his right hand, 'I call the God before whose Judgment Throne we both shall one day stand to witness that I am guiltless,' he declared solemnly. 'Surely, sir, you will believe me now?'

Mr. Vyse held out his hand.

'Yes, Robert, I believe you,' he said, 'and I beg your pardon for having doubted you; but what Starkie's motive in traducing you has been I am at a loss to understand.'

'So am I, sir,' answered Acland. 'His conduct is quite incomprehensible.'

'Well, Robert,' wound up the old gentleman, as he dismissed his clerk,' you must promise me one thing— that you will treat Starkie just the same as if nothing unusual had occurred. It is. try wish.'

'I will try, sir, but it will be a hard task,' Acland replied, as he quitted the room.

LEFT ALONE, Mr. Vyse, a hale, active man of sixty-five, lay back in his chair and gave himself up to thought. But the more he puzzled over the disappearance of his cashbox, the further he seemed from a solution of the mystery. It was gone, but by whose hand it was difficult to say.

Of course, the news that their employer had been robbed ran like wildfire through the small community. It was Richard Starkie who first made the ill news— for, no official intimation of it was given— but to his fellow-workers he dare not try to incriminate young Acland, for Acland was a favourite with his colleagues, and Starkie knew well that any remarks suggestive of his guilt would be received in stony silence— the silence of sheer disbelief.

That evening Bob Acland wont to see Elsie Venner, the girl of his heart. There was no actual engagement between them, but Elsie understood quite well that Bob was only waiting for a rise of salary before asking her to be his wife. He had intended to tell her nothing about what had occurred at the office during the day, but the quickwitted girl soon saw that something was amiss, and taxed him with it.

And after a little hesitation on his part and a little pressing on hers, the whole story came out.

'I cannot think, darling,' finished Bob, 'what has induced Starkie to do it.'

'Shall I tell you?' asked Elsie demurely.

'You?'

'Yes, I.  I can, you know.'

And then she proceeded to relate how Richard Starkie had a few days before asked her to marry him, and, on her refusal, flown into a violent rage, not only heaping anathemas on her head, but also on Bob, whom be bad designated 'a white-livered cur.'

'And you believe he has attempted to lay the theft at my door to blacken my character in your eyes? What a scoundrel the fellow must be!'

'If you had seen the look on his face when be left me,' replied the girl, 'you wonld think, as I do, that he is capable of anything.'

Next day Bob Adand repeated to Mr. Vyse the conversation he had held with Elsie Venner.

MEANWHILE Richard Starkie was in a very unhappy frame of mind. He had just sufficient manhood left to be able to appreciate the unutterable currishness of his own conduct. But that did not tend to make him sorry for what he had done. No, it rather embittered him still more against his rival.

A mania for gambling, inherited from his father, who had betted away a large estate during his life, dying only just in time to save himself from actual starvation, had in the first instance made him short of money. In order to retrieve his position, he betted still more heavily, and again lost.

Ill-luck pursued him from day to day, till at last, unable to meet the demands made on him, exposure stared him in the face. And exposure, he knew, meant prompt dismissal from Mr. Vyse's service. In this dilemma he stole the cash-box, and it was only when gloating over its contents that the idea of saddling Acland with the theft occurred to him. Irresolute in this as in everything else, he wavered some time before finally deciding to commit this last piece of villainy, but his evil genius, as always, prevailed.

'Curse the fellow!' he ground out between his clenched teeth. 'If only I can ruin him! If only I can make Elsie despise and loathe him! What is he that he should steal her from me? I'll win her yet in spite of him.'

IT WAS Mr. Vyse's custom to go for a walk, unless the day was very wet, between the hours of twelve and one. He usually went down the high road straight out of the town for a mile, returning home over the fields and through a small plantation. A few days after the loss of the cash-box, he took the accustomed path. Dot, his favourite dog, half-pointer, half-retriever, accompanied him. In the middle of the plantation Dot suddenly sniffed the air, then bounded in among the brushwood', and pointed.

'Dot! Dot!' called his master. ' Here, good dog, comeback.* But Dot Had evidently found something, and refused to be shouted off.

Mr. Vyse made his way to where the dog was standing. Up sprang a fine rabbit and dashed away, Dot in hot pursuit. But Mr. Vyee heeded neither rabbit nor dog. His gaze was rivetted on the place from which the rabbit had jumped.

Thus, for a moment or two, he stood; then, with a peculiar smile on his fane, he wheeled round and walked briskly home.

SOME THREE DAYS later Richard Starkie was summoned to his chief's presence. He went, trembling, fearing he knew not what.

'Starkie,' said Mr. Vyse,' you have been in my employ longer than any other of my clerks, therefore I think it only right to make you my spokesman to them. I wish you, then, to tell them on my behalf that I attribute the disappearance of my cash-box to none of them, that I am quite convinced of their innocence.'

Richard Starkie paled slightly. Had his scheme to ruin young Acland failed miserably after all? It seemed so. But he replied, with apparent frankness, 'I am very pleased to hear that Robert Acland has cleared himself, sir.'

'He has done so most completely,' rejoined Mr. Vyse. 'I have a very high opinion of Acland, Starkie.'

'So have I, sir,' he returned glibly, while he inwardly cursed the man of whom he spoke thus fawningly. 'It has caused me great pain to think that be could possibly be a thief.'

'Is it possible that this man is innocent after all?' wondered Mr. Vyse. 'If not, his hypocrisy is simply astounding; but I shall soon know the truth.'

And a grim smile passed over his face.

'Just one thing more,' continued Mr. Vyse, looking straightly into his clerk's eyes, which met his own unflinchingly, 'and this is for your ear alone, Starkie; in the theft of my cash-box I have sustained a far greater loss than any one but myself is aware of. It is a box of peculiar construction —in fact, it had a false bottom, and in that false bottom, Starkie, there were notes to the value of £700. I had placed them there only two days before I was robbed.'

'Of course, you have the numbers, sir.'

'Why, yes, I have the numbers, Starkie; but an expert thief— and I imagine from the coolness and audacity of the robbery, that I have been the victim of one— finds no difficulty in changing stolen paper. He knows where to take it, and obtain a good price.'

When Richard Starkie went back to his colleagues to give them their employer's message, his breast was torn by two emotions— baffled spite and greed of further gold.

'I will destroy him yet.' He thought of Bob Acland. 'He's escaped me for a while, but it shall not be for long. Elsie Venner shall never be his wife. I am a good plotter, friend Bob, and though you wriggle out of my clutches a hundred times, I will have you the hundred and first.

'Poor old buffer!'— his mind reverting to the man whose presence he had just left, 'you little guessed that in making a confidant of me, you were telling the thief how to further enrich himself.  (How incorrect this idea was we already know.)  Well, 700 quids will come in very handy just now— and, I suppose, the commission would not be more than £200. Markby's getting very restive for his money, and I could pay him and still have a nice little balance in hand. You're in luck's way, Dick, my boy; fortune favours you.'

If to be standing in the dark on the brink of a precipice without knowing it is to be in luck's way, then Richard Starkie was indeed, in an enviable position.

BENDING down amidst the bramble and brushwood which formed the undergrowth of a small plantation, groping among the briars and grasses, Richard Starkie was searching for the cash-box.

'I know I flung it somewhere here,' he muttered fiercely. 'Where can the thing be? Ah!' as his hand at last alighted on some metal, 'here you are! I was just beginning to think that jadish fortune had-served me a scurvy trick. Well,' clasping the box to his bosom, 'you've been a good friend to me, and I'll treat you as lightly as possible. Come, let's away— merciful powers! what's that?'

Four stalwart arms had seized him from behind, and were holding him with a vice-like grip; and before he knew what was really taking place, he felt the cold steel on his wrists and realised that he was a prisoner— a detected thief who had blindly fallen into a skillfully-laid trap.

THE ARREST of Richard Starkie had not become generally known when Mr. Vyse called together his clerks on the following morning, and communicated to them the startling news that his confidential servant was in gaol.

Great was the wonderment manifested.

'And I wish to say, gentlemen,' he wound up, 'that in consideration of his past services to me, I should not have prosecuted Starkie, had be not endeavoured by every means in his power, from motives of personal spite, to fix the theft on one of yourselves.'

Who that one was soon became public property,—as also the motive power of Starkie's animosity.

At the ensuing assizes Starkie was sent into penal servitude for five years, regretted by none of his fellow-workers, for owing to his insolent, overbearing manners he had never been a favourite.

What thoughts filled the poor wretch's mind as he beard his doom from the Judge's lips? Who can tell?

But if I am any reader of human character the bitterest pang he suffered was in knowing that the rival he hated had stepped into the place rendered vacant by his arrest, and that Elsie Venner would ere long be that rival's wife.

______________

13:  Haunted

Anonymous

Arrow (Sydney) 13 April 1912

'I'VE GOT something to tell you.' Winter drew his chair cIose to the fire, and motioned us to do likewise.

'You look Iike a death's head,' said Lawton.

'I feel like one,' said Winter, in a gloomy voice, as he shivered slightly, and glanced uneasily at the door; 'It's November 20, the anniversary of the death of poor Clive Fleming.'

'I had forgotten that,' said Lawton quietly. 'Of course it is. Poor old chap!'

'You remember the occasion of his— his— death, don't you?' continued Winter after a moment's pause. 'We were all out shooting at Parkington's place, and— and—' he hesitated nervously.

'And,' said Spilsbury, taking up the story, 'he mysteriously disappeared, and was never heard of again.'

'Exactly. He disappeared, and was never heard of again. It's ten years ago to-day, and on the tenth anniversary of the curious affair I want to tell you something, something that's been on my mind, something that's eaten into my very soul during all that time.'

We all looked af Winter He was ghastly pale, and he shivered despite the warmth of the blazing fire.

'To begin at the beginning,' he went, on calmly, puffing his cigar between whiles, 'Clive and I were both in love with Kitty Spencer. Closer pals could not have been until she came between us. She altered everything. You remember her, of course, a slim little thing with blue eyes and fair hair, who danced like an angel and sang like— well, no matter. I don't know what his feelings were. I only know my own. I loved her desperately, furiously, blindly, madly. Perhaps he did the same. Anyhow, my feelings got the better of me, and the mere idea that she should love him the better bo worked on me that I became half-demented.

'Then came the shooting at Parkington's. Clive and I became separated from the rest and we found ourselves on the edge of that stagnant, dismal pool which lies on the edge of Marfleet Woods. I persuaded Clive to crops the little bridge which spans the water, and when In tho centre, I— I— well, I pushed him over.'

Winter stopped suddenly and asked, 'Was that a knock?'

We were all too much horrified to answer.

'I suppose it was fancy,' he went on with a dry laugh. 'Anyhow, to get. back to the yarn, that is what happened. I shoved him in the water— it's awfully deep, you know— saw him struggle a moment and sink, and then rejoined the rest of the party just as cool as you are now. You remember what a hue-and-cry there was after the missing man, how the police searched high and low, night and day, and the London papers sent down special representatives who wrote thrrlling accounts of the incident. You may remember, too,' he added  softly, 'how Kitty went off her head and was packed off to a nursing home, and how I went abroad to shoot big game.'

'How was it Clive's body wasn't found?' Lawton asked. 'The lake was dragged, you know, and the water was run off, and nothing was discovered. How do you explain that?'

Winter looked round slyly.

'That's what I'm coming to,' he said slowlr, 'that's what I wanted to tell your' Clive wasn't drowned. I thought he was, but I was fooled. Directly my back was turned, he managed to crawl out, and to make his way to a neighboring village, where he dried his clothes, and went to bed at a local inn. The ducking didn't do him any physical harm, but the curlous thing was. it turned his brain and he became possessed of the idea that he was really dead, and ought not to show himself to his relations and friends. Mind you, there was a lot of method in his madness, for he was head over heels in debt, and it was a simple way of wiping the slate clean to remain a corpse. During these past ten years he is supposed to have been In his grave, but all the while he has been alive; yes, alive and fit and well as a man could be.'

'Alive?' said Spilsbury, awestruck. 'How do you know?'

'For the best of reasons,' said Winter, 'because for ten years Clive Fleming has haunted me clay and night. He has followed me about like a shadow wherever I went. Of course I could have given him away a thousand, times, but if I had done so, he would have given me away, and it doesn't require any particular acuteness to see that I should have got the worst of it. You see I did try to kill him. There's no getting away from that! I tell you Clive Fleming is alive and well, and out of revenge for what I did he has sworn to dog my footsteps until I pass Into the grave.'

We stared at each other.

'He may come here to-night,' said Winter, his eyes glued on the door. 'I don't think he has ever missed the Anniversary. If he comes,' he cried, starting from his chair and trembling, 'I won't see him. I don't want to see him. I'm sick to death of him. For ten years he has plagued me, sleeping and waking, and I won't stand it longer.'

At that moment we heard a step on the stairs leading to Winter's chambers, a heavy step as of one walking slowly and laboriously.

'That's his step,' Winter screamed, 'there can be no mistake. I know It only too well.'

The footsteps came closer...

Then someone rapped at the door impatiently. We all stood still. Were we about, to gaze upon a ghost, a thing of shadow, or Clive Fleming, solid flesh and blood?

Lawton opened the door. It was only the postman. He handed Lawton a letter and vanished into the darkness of the corridor.

'A letter for you, Winter,' he said, turning round, 'that's all.'

Instinctively Winter tore open the letter. It was from a doctor at a town in the Midlands, announcing that Clive Fleming had died the night before, and with his dying breath had wished to be remembered to his old friends.

'Look at Winter,' cried Lawton, 'I always said he had heart disease.'

_______________________

14: Making the Grade

George Ade

1866-1944

Cosmopolitan, March 1928

American Broadway playwright, novelist, columnist, and humourist.

DODSWORTH, designated by his own small world as "Herbie" Dodsworth, was a full-blown specimen of what American opportunities, parentage, higher education and real estate can do for the grandson of a grandfather. He had a family tree nearly six feet tall and wore the same weight the year round and always shaved himself, but he had one or two faults.

If he had been as godlike as he pictured himself to be when he closed his eyes and saw Herbert Littell Dodsworth looming, like a Washington Monument in a huddle of hitching-posts— if his superiority had lapped over or even connected with the degree of excellence which he awarded himself, there would have been no beginning to this story and, therefore, no story.

He had a right to swank, but how many members of the Opoochee Country Club had allowed that sometimes he abused the privilege? Practically eighty percent.

"Opoochee" is an old Pottawatomie word meaning "high grass," but the city of Kingsville had outgrown the original libel fastened on the camping-grounds by the Indians, for it had a population of ninety thousand, a Little Theater movement and had given a reception in honor of Dean Inge.

The first Dodsworth came out into the wilderness and traded with the Indians. Shortly after that the Indians departed to the westward in an impoverished condition, while Grandfather Dodsworth and succeeding Dodsworths remained to collect the unearned increment. The family had improved and improved until Herbie was totally unlike his grandfather.

He had attended a university whose football games are discussed wherever the sporting page is read. He had been measured by London tailors who breathe through the nose and seldom consent to do up clothes for Americans. He had tossed gold coins on the tables of the Riviera and then looked the other way while the ball was spinning. He had taken tea on the terrace at Shepheard's, in Cairo. In fact, he had lingered at most of the famous hotels congested with personages of charming immorality and had been secretly elated to discover that he was not awed when completely surrounded by titled celebrities who spoke so many languages that they could do as they pleased.

He had approved of the Taj Mahal and confessed to a disappointment regarding Fujiyama. Merely as a matter of record, and not because it has anything to do with anything, he had admitted that the surf-riding at Waikiki was ''not bad."

You can see for yourself that he had carefully trained himself into a condition almost European and that is why Kingsville, when he came back to it, looked like a crack in the road.

He found himself back at the old starting-place with four jobs to fill and no work to do. As a director and official of the First National, inheriting all of his father's importance, he learned that there was a chair reserved for him whenever he chose to sit in it, but he could seldom think of any good reason for sitting in it. From all that can be learned, the details of the banking business are quite irksome.

He had a definite office site, with gold letters on the window, advertising the fact that while the souls of Grandfather Dodsworth and Father Dodsworth were marching on, the rents were still being collected. His ignorance of the rent-roll was appalling and his sensitive ego would have flinched if he had known of the methods employed by Mr. Silas Cooper and his assistant blood-hounds in wringing tribute from hundreds of unimportant people habitually broke because of their devotion to movies, silk shirts and snake-skin shoes.

He was an official of the B. and D. (Bludsoe and Dodsworth) Furniture and Kitchen Cabinet Company and had a right to go out and give orders to the help, but the factory was beyond the tracks, at the discouraged termination of a badly paved street, so he attended the annual meeting of the stockholders.

He was the nominal head of the Pleasant Vale Cemetery Company. For a long time the Dodsworths of Kingsville had been getting them after they were dead. Anyone who thinks that dividing land worth sixty dollars an acre into plats twenty-five feet square and selling the plats at one hundred dollars each isn't high finance is mentally unbalanced. Herbie shivered at the thought of owning a graveyard but he continued to cash in on the local grief.

WITH all of his large holdings and several titles he had no office hours, and that is why he found so much time to brood over the fact that this world and the creeping things thereon were not being properly stage-managed. He was a smiling personality whe could not keep his nose from sniffing. That is why there had been several shower-bath meetings at the Opoochee Country Club at which more than one speaker had said, "You furnish the rope and I'll find the tree."

About the only things to be said in Herbie's favor were that he was not a type, he was calmly unconscious of being a rasp to the nerves of his fellow-directors, fellow-bridgers and fellow-golfers, and he was abjectly devoted to Letitia Ewing.

In order to condense this narrative it may be said that Letitia or "Lettie' Ewing was to Kingsville what St. Paul's Cathedral, Buckingham Palace and plover's eggs are to Merrie England; what the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe and the centime are to France; what Mussolini, ravioli and Asti Spumante are to Italy; what Al Smith, orchids and ten-dollar caviar are to New York City.

Possibly Otis Hornbrook of the Hornbrook Saw and File Company put the whole thing into a nutshell when he said, speaking of Lettie's performance of Yum-Yum in "The Mikado" for the benefit of the ever-starving St. Thomas Episcopal Church: "She is in a class by herself."

Now that you know all about Letitia it may be added that she intended to marry Herbert Littell Dodsworth— but not until he had been deflated. He was living all alone in the big house, with an English he-menial and several pallid women servitors, and she wanted to save him before it was too late. She figured that he was worth saving even if those who golfed with him often walked far behind and watched him prayerfully, hoping that he would fall into one of the deep Donald Ross traps.

If Herbie had any one habit which, more than the others, caused onlookers and bystanders to lay secret curses on him, it was his penchant for sitting very low in his chair and then looking at the universe from heights above. The lower he sat, the higher he got. When he was resting comfortably on both shoulder-blades, he was riding far above the laws of nature and had a contempt for all limitations of time and space. Yes, it was as bad as that.

It so befell that Lettie Ewing had not been hitting them clean and true, when, late one afternoon of a golden September day, she flounced wearily into a chair on the veranda of the country club and gazed resentfully at Herbie Dodsworth drinking Asia Minor tea, which he had imported himself. Possibly it came over on a special ship. If so, he had not corrected the rumor.

"I suppose I shouldn't blame George Milford," she explained.

"I know I was better than Helen, but when you play best and aggregate and try to carry a man partner whose slice is a birthright, and the other girl is saved at every hole by Bobby Jones fifteen years from now, I will politely inform the world that the afternoon is a total loss. I'm so down that I'll even take some of your Soviet tea."

"I didn't catch the name of Helen's parter," said Herbie, lifting himself until part of his spine was clear and anxiously surveying the tea things.

"Egbert Williamson."

"He isn't much."

"He isn't, to anyone sitting in the shade, drinking hot drinks on a hot day, but to anyone who is out on the fairway watching him put them over there and then over here and then stony dead and then into the cup, he looks to be about eight feet tall."

"What did he shoot?"

"An eighty, with one out, of bounds, missing the usual number of short putts."

"Anyone can shoot an eighty on this course."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I say that anyone who goes in for slavish practise and keeps trying all summer should easily do an eighty— or better."

"All right, Herbie, I heard you the first time. Egbert, to begin with, is handicapped by the name of Egbert, and he is past thirty-five and can play only twice a week, so anyone who says he isn't somebody when he shoots an eighty would probably say that Lindbergh doesn't know how to handle a plane."

The semi-recumbent scion of the illustrious Dodsworths looked at the object of his affections in a somewhat puzzled and resentful manner.

"All right," said he. "Let it go at that. He's a hero."

"He is not a hero," said Lettie, with calm emphasis, "but he is a credit to the club and stands out in a somewhat more favorable light than those who remain at the club-house to complain of the service. How d'you do, Mr. Hooper."

Mr. Leon Hooper, attorney at law, spoke pleasantly enough as he passed by on his way to join, at the far end of the sheltered shelf, a group of nice married people who were secretively showing their contempt for Mr. Volstead.

"I'm glad he didn't see me," said Herbie. 'He is one of the many reasons why I put in so 'much time reading all those travel ads in the magazines—trying to find out how I can get away from Kingsville and remain away a long time."

"He worked his way through college, has taken over all of Colonel Wilson's practise and they say that his address to the high-school graduates was wonderful."

"Do you mean to say that Mr. Hooper has acquired distinction in this dreadful town merely by making a speech at a high-school commencement?"

"They say it was an unusual speech— brilliant."

"Anyone devoid of shame can make a speech of that kind. Oratory has become a discredited art but even when it flourished, the speech to the graduating class was the lowest form of bunk."

"I'm sorry that our citizens don't please you. I suppose you will say that Frank Dinwiddie, now putting out on the eighteenth, is one hundred percent false alarm."

"What's he ever done?"

"He is on the Waterways Commission, worked for the Red Cross in France and only two weeks ago took luncheon with President and Mrs. Coolidge."

"Do people become celebrities here in Kingsville merely by taking luncheon with somebody else?"

"When a man in our town becomes so big that the President of the whole United States sends for him to come and be his guest, we think that it signifies something. How many times have I heard you brag about sitting at the very next table to the King of Spain— there at the Meurice in Paris? Well, Frank didn't sit at the next table. He sat at the same table."

"Anybody can take luncheon with the Coolidges. What's so wonderful about that?"

"Well, maybe 'anybody' can, but the only ones I've heard of, up to date, are Queen Marie, Will Rogers and Frank Dinwiddie. Hello, Fill!"

Filmore Tilton was standing a few feet away, in conference with the club steward, trying to decide upon a site for his big dinner-party—six people.

Mr. Tilton waved at Lettie and permitted a slight inclination of the head toward Herbie. As he walked.away, wearing twice As  much knickerbocker material as seemed essential, Herbie watched him with placid scorn and asked Lettie, "Can you think of any good reason why he is permitted to remain at large?"

"I saw his picture in a magazine the other day."

"What was it— yeast-cakes, four out of five, or acquiring personality by mail?"

"It was a picture of Filmore and a large fish. He fought a tarpon for over three hours and finally landed it, using only light ackle."'

"I get you. If they had given him heavy tackle, he couldn't have lifted it."

"He was given a gold medal."

"Do you, by any chance, happen to know whether or not he is having the fish stuffed?"

"The fish has been stuffed and is now here— in Kingsville."

"You mean he has brought the thing into his own home?"

"Certainly."

"In what part of the house is it being exhibited?"

"In the dining-room."'

"That being the case, I'm like our colored friend on the talking-machine—'I'd rather not hear any more about it.' "

"You can't get away from the fact that he did catch a huge tarpon."

"Listen, Lettie. Anyone— I repeat it— anyone who has the patience to sit in a boat long enough and let a spoon drag in the water can catch one of those large brutal fishes."'

"I suppose even you could?"

"What is the idea in using that word 'even'?"

"Well, I rather resent your sneering at our local Hall of Fame. I suppose you'll say that Arthur Burdette, sitting over there, has no real social standing in this town."

"To paraphrase an old saying— in a colony of golf tees the ant-hill becomes a mountain. I once knew a teacher in a blind asylum who told the pupils she was beautiful and got away with it for years."

"When Mrs. Warren Frothingham started to make out a list of the matrons for the Charity Ball she had to send for Arthur to help her. Don't you think that's something?"

"Yes, I think it's something awful. Anyone who cares to flatter the old dowager duchess can get that kind of a job— a compromise between a secretary and a messenger boy, and no salary.''

"Mrs. Frothingham never sent for you to check over any lists, did she?"

"No, ma'am, and she never will, if I can help it. Mrs. Frothingham is an estimable old lady who should now be stitching on her shroud instead of promoting jazz. I might be interested to hear her recollections of the Civil War but I will never become excited regarding her social activities. So that's that!"

Lettie studied him, evidently more in sorrow than in anger.

"I'm sorry," she said, "that we haven't one man in Kingsville who has won the royal favor. I suppose you can tell me what is wrong with Forest Claybourne."

"He attends luncheons wearing a badge. I claim that no one can fall any lower than that."

"Twenty years ago he was a bundle-boy at Rosenfield's. He never went to school, but he has the best library in town. He is absolutely self-made. Everyone knows what he has done for Kingsville since he became president of the chamber of commerce."

"I would rather be almost anything than that."

"Do you think you could be president of the chamber of commerce if you had any ambition in that direction?"

"Anyone who chooses to badge himself and attend luncheons and shake hands and tell stories about Pat and Mike can be elected president of Kiwanis, Rotary, the chamber of commerce, or anything else. Of course, when an ex-bundle-boy gets up in the world and begins to lay corner-stones and welcome the visiting Elks, he becomes an interesting proof of the fact that we live in the land of opportunity, but when one is asked to take him seriously, that becomes, as you might say, another matter. Am I being interviewed?"

Lettie still carried the score-card which was the record of a futile afternoon and also a dwarf lead-pencil, of the kind given away by generous Scotch pros. During the verbal tilt with Herbie she had been making marks on the back of the scorecard, thereby mutilating a perfectly set of ground rules. Hence the abrupt question by Herbie.

"I am merely jotting down here some things I want you to do," explained Lettie. "You say, without any if's, and's or but's, that anyone can shoot an eighty on this course, deliver the high-school commencement address, take junch with the Coolidges, catch a tarpon, assist Mrs. Frothingham in making out her lists, and be president of the chamber of commerce. I can't be mistaken in assuming that you have a contempt for these silly little stunts. You insist that anyone could do all of these things, if he set himself to it. Well, if anyone could do them they should be very easy for a Bachelor of Arts who has traveled around the world, is in perfect physical condition and doesn't know what to do with his time and money."

"You don't expect me—"

"I certainly do. You have honored me with some thirty or forty proposals of marriage. I have hung back, as coyly as possible, as I didn't wish to be rushed to the altar— a mere snip, only twenty-two years old. You have daly suggested, on several occasions, that you would do anything for me if I would consent to climb the stairs and sit on the throne with you. I now have some trifling but very definite suggestions as to what I want you to do.

"Today is September the eighteenth. We will meet on this spot one year from today and then you will report to me that you have shot your eighty, addressed the high-school graduates, lunched with Calvin and Mrs. Coolidge, landed a tarpon, helped Mrs. Frothingham on the Charity Ball list and, incidentally, have been elected president of the chamber of commerce."

"You have been attending the movies. The college girl says to the substitute half-back, 'Win the final game for dear old Atwater and as for you in front of the sorority

"Exactly so. You have the plot. And you may remember that in the seventh reel the manly young fellow does run sixty yards for a touch-down. But I doubt if you recall any spoken title in which the hero, before the game, tells the beautiful girl that anybody can run sixty yards for a touch-down. He does the impossible thing. I am simply asking you to do what any normal person can do by getting on the job and exercising a second-rate cleverness and a certain degree of patience.

"You have put yourself on record. You have pooh-hooed our brightest boys and boasted that anyone could step out and duplicate their star performances. All right, Herbie, you do it. I'm giving you one whole year."

"This is all tommy-rot. Surely you're not serious?"

"I will give you some reminders, to guide you. The card is merely a memorandum of what I suppose one might as well call our pact. Pact is a very good word."

She handed him the score-card and he read the following brief but dismal notations:

Shoot an 80.

Deliver high-school address.

Lunch with Coolidges.

Catch tarpon.

Help Mrs. Frothingham.

President of the chamber of commerce.

He gave her the look which had cowed many a head waiter, but it never touched her. Don't you see, Herbie?" she explained. "I want to be proud of you. I want to stop all talk about you being lazy and lacking ambition and depending on your money to carry you through. I want to meet you here  one year from today, and lift you out of your chair and fold you in my arms and say, 'He did all these things for me— for me.' "

"If I remember, Hercules had twelve labors assigned to him," said Herbie, very grimly, "and one was to clean the Augean stables. Also, he had to kill a bull. I thank you for not asking me to do anything messy."

"Why mention Hercules? He was an old-fashioned ancient and you are a snappy modern. Did Hercules say that anybody could tidy up the stables?"

"That peculiar emphasis on the word 'any| body' is beginning to get on my nerves."

"You started it, my dear."

"Of course, I accept the challenge."

AT THIS point we flash the subtitle, ONE YEAR LATER, and discover Herbie and Lettie once more seated on the roomy veranda of the Opoochee Country Club. The man has aged. There are new lines on his face. He is sitting upright at the tea-table with the fatal score-card clutched in his left hand. The woman is in the sloping chair, with a cushion behind her. She seems younger and more desirable than ever before.

"This will be a verbal and not a written report," said Herbie, in a voice which was trying not to be hollow and sepulchral. "I have a feeling that you are familiar with the subject-matter about to be presented."

"Just the same, I want to hear it. From where I have been sitting in the bleachers, I may have missed some of the details."

"All right— here goes. I still insist that any player of moderate ability can shoot this course in eighty, if he gets the breaks. I have made eighty-one four times. Only yesterday I came up to the final tee with a total of seventy-four. On my spoon shot I hit a bird."

"What kind of a bird?"

"That has nothing to do with the fact that I took a seven. The traps had not been raked and I got into a heel mark. I could not use the club which Hagen told me would always get fair distance out of a bunker."

"So you consulted Hagen, did you?"

"Hagen and Sarazen and Espinosa."

"Egbert got a seventy-eight last week and he never met any of the parties you mention."

"Well, I have not shot an eighty and I suppose that settles the whole matter."

"Not at all. I want the entire report. After hitting a bird and getting into a heel track, I think eighty-one was marvelous. You will find me sympathetic. I did one hundred and eighteen last Friday."

Herbie consulted his card.

"In regard to the address to the high-school graduates. I had no difficulty in being selected as speaker. I told the superintendent that the school was named in honor of my father and I thought I had a message for the young people. I shall never forget the look he gave me. course, I am not used to public speaking."

"You said that anybody—"

"We will proceed with the report. What I had written down to read to those keen-eyed ruffians and white-faced flappers—"

"You didn't read it, did you?"

"Who do you think I am— Dudley Field Malone?"

"You said that anybody—"

"My remarks were all right, if I do say it myself. Of course, I had a feeling all of the time that I was telling them something they had known for years, but I'd have got through all right if that microphone hadn't been hanging in front of me. When I realized that possibly hundreds of people were sitting in their front rooms waiting for my voice to come out of a box, I choked up. I supplied my own static. That was a bright idea— broadcasting a speech to a graduating class."

"I arranged it. You see, I was afraid that if you saw me out in front you might be flustered, but I did want to share in your triumph. There's no reason why you should have been nervous. The station carries only about eight miles and that evening everybody, except me, was getting a New York program."

"Well, anyway, I did make a speech at the commencement exercises, didn't I?"

"I'm very broad-minded and if you say it was a speech we'll let it go at that. Proceed."

"The next marking on the card, as I read it in front of me, has to do with taking luncheon with President and Mrs. Coolidge, at the White House, Washington, D. C.. Before I  begin telling you, I will admit saying that anybody can fix it to get into the dining-room at the White House."

"I understand Mrs. Coolidge is charming."

"I have never seen her, but she has a husband who is the world's greatest listener. It was easy enough— getting in to see him. My congressman talked to the private secretary and said I was keenly interested in tax reduction, flood control and agricultural relief and that I had traveled a long distance just to see Mr. Coolidge. As a matter of fact, I was on my way to New York to buy my light tackle. You may recall that I was supposed to catch a tarpon."

"I'm just wondering. Had Mr. Coolidge ever heard of you?"

"I don't know. He didn't say."

"What led you to believe that he might become infatuated with you and invite you to luncheon?"

"Well, I told him I had a lot of— I wanted to talk over with him but I didn't to take up his time during business hours."

"Very subtle. What was his reply?"

"He didn't reply at all. He just kept looking out of the window. I'll say this for him— he's very courteous! He never interrupted me once. When I had absolutely run down he said he'd be glad to see me any time I was in Washington."

"Didn't you make another attempt?"

"What could I do? One is not expected to crawl through the window while our First Family is partaking of food and say 'Here I am!' "

"It has been done— in Washington."

"While I was in New York, buying the tackle and getting some presents for Mrs. Frothingham, a college friend of mine took me over to the Lambs' Club and I met Will Rogers. I told him I was going back to Washington in a few days and I hoped to have a chance to take luncheon with the Coolidges. By this time I had no shame whatever. I was hoping that Rogers would volunteer to wire the White House and fix it for me. All he said was, 'They're awful nice folks, but you'll get just as good a meal over at the Mayflower Hotel.' I don't think he caught what I was driving at."

"Maybe he did— who knows?"

"We will put a zero mark after the Coolidges and take up the subject of tarpons. Did you know that the tarpon can be captured only in certain months, at the remote end of Florida?"

"I have never seen any in the local market."

"It is not a food fish. It is caught merely to provide a topic for conversation. Catching tarpon does not require skill, intelligence or moral stamina. I went all the way to Star and I had the right tackle and was actuated by a sincere desire to comply with your wishes, however unreasonable they might seem, Would you consider a forty-pound amber-jack and a silver medal as a fair substitute for a  tarpon?"

"As I remember it, our pact had nothing to do with amber-jacks."

"To illustrate what I mean about fool luck— I met at Star Key a very nice young man. He had promised his uncle, or someone, that before settling down he would get at least one of each of the standard trophies, to be shown in the main hall of the manor-house or ancestral castle or whatever you call it. He had bagged a tiger in India, an elephant and a lion in Africa, and a moose and a Rocky Mountain goat in Canada. All he needed to round out his life-work, was a tarpon.

"When I arrived he had been on the job for about a month. He had been trolling day night with the best fishermen on the and he hadn't had a strike. When he found out that I, too, had promised to catch a tarpon, we became friendly and went out together in very restless motor-boat called 'Ida' that cost us twenty-five dollars a day.

"After we had. been working like dogs for about three weeks, a bunch of Chicago fellows stopped over on their way to Cuba. They went out and fished one afternoon. A man named Wallie Feron, who didn't want to go fishing at all and was dragged into the boat, threw out a line long before they came to the regular fishing grounds and brought in the largest tarpon of the season. He landed him without any help, although he didn't pretend to know anything about fishing. The Englishman and I stayed until the hotel closed. My record was one amber-jack which I am having stuffed and sent to you as proof that I did catch something."

"I don't know the difference between a tarpon and an amber-jack, so you had better go on with the report."

"I am very proud of my headway with Mrs. Frothingham," said Herbie. "I inquired as to the movements in which she was interested and went right up to her house and had several long talks with her, before signing any checks. On my third call I asked her about the Charity Ball and suggested that I would be glad to have the Night Hawks come on from Chicago and play for it and I hoped it would be a great success, but I knew the success would depend largely on the kind of matrons selected to manage the affair. She said she wanted me to help supervise the list, and there you are!"

"I congratulate you," said Lettie, without any rampant enthusiasm.

"We are great friends now. I like her very much. She is a remarkable old woman— and clever."

"Any woman who can manage a troupe of trained cats for as many years as she has handled all of the fussy females in this town has to be clever. What else was it you promised to do?"

"I told you that I could be elected president of the chamber of commerce— and I put it over."

There was a ring in his voice and he was inning to bristle.

"Just how did you manage Mr. Claybourne?"

"Why, I went to him and told him I had not been doing enough for the old home town. I told him I thought my father was looking down on me and hoping that I would be a useful citizen, here in Kingsville. He told me of some of their plans for the Coliseum and the new park, and I said I would be glad to donate liberally if I could direct the expenditures. Then he said to me, 'Why don't you take the presidency of the chamber?' And I said, 'Fine!'— and it was all settled. So, you see, I did some of the things that I promised to do, although I admit that I have what the baseball players would call a batting average of about five hundred."

Lettie looked at him with compassion and then opened up.

"You have done very well here at home, where you could bribe people with your money and browbeat them because your name is Dodsworth. The methods you employed in dealing with the superintendent of schools and Mrs. Frothingham and the chamber of commerce were not so sure-fire, it appears, when you went East and tried them on Mr. Coolidge. I take it, also, that the tarpon off the coast of Florida had never heard about your grandfather owning so much real estate. What is more, when you tried to shoot that eighty you probably learned that the university degree didn't change the score. The report is interesting but I wouldn't say that you have made a sensational success."

"Well, I thought I'd be game and come and tell you everything, even if you do refuse to marry me. As I remember, you said you would marry me if I did all these crazy things."

"I said nothing of the kind. you, so that I wouldn't commit myself. What I didn't say was that you had to do all these stunts or else I would scorn you forever. You had told me that you would do anything for me, and I asked you to do certain things."

"I'm sorry I didn't make good," said Herbie. "I did my best."

"Of course you did, and I'm delighted to learn that you are not another Hercules. If you had put over all of those performances I'm quite sure you would have overshadowed the whole Middle West. I couldn't imagine anything more terrible than living in the same house with a man who could play golf in the seventies, and spout oratory, and who was on friendly terms with the truly great, had conquered the largest fish that swim the sea, and was the Ward McAllister of the smart set, and the ringmaster of all local enterprises. Such a man would be a superman and his poor wife would be among those present."

"Well, if that's the way you feel about it, why did you ask me to devote one year to chasing after rainbows?"

"I think it was because you kept using that 'anybody.' You said anybody could do this and anybody could do that, and you jeered at all of our little tin gods and I became intensely annoyed. You have had an interesting experience for about a year, haven't you?"

"Yes, the only trouble is, I am now embarrassed by my popularity here at home. Since I talked to the school children and whooped it up for the Coliseum and shelled out for everything insight, I have acquired a sudden reputation as a booster. When I walk along the street, people want to give three cheers for me."

"It may interest you to know that just a year ago you were the most unpopular man in this whole town."

"Was it as bad as that?"

"Worse. And now you are not only a hero to the public but also you have won the favor of Kingsville's fairest daughter. A year ago today I couldn't bear the sight of you and now when I see you there, chastened and humble and almost human, I simply can't resist you."

The veranda of the Opoochee Country Club is one of the most open and exposed spots in the known world, so they moved through the club-house and out to an open area and climbed into a roadster.

__________________

15: The Red Hand

Howard Fitzalan

(George Bronson Howard)  1884-1922

Popular Magazine,  28 April 1928

One of a series of stories featuring "Leguerre of the Lost Division". This American author wrote both as George Bronson Howard and Howard Fitzalan. It is puzzling that the series was published posthumously. There doesn't seem to be any earlier publication.

IN the last half hour a blue haze had been thickening in the musty little Washington back office, whose door purported, with its legend paradoxically suggestive of inner spaciousness and consequence, to open on: "The Central Divisional Headquarters— Intelligence Control."

What the door of magnificent promise really hid was one man alone, at a solitary desk walled around by rows of dust-covered filing cases. He was smoking a black and violent cheroot; but the blue haze, if there be true affinity between brimstone and strong language, might equally well have arisen out of his impromptu and impolite remarks to his cabinets between attempts to raise New York by long distance. Either way, there was a tang of sulphur to the blue.

A dozen times he had lifted the receiver to demand urgently: "Please, can't you rush it? Must I tell you again it's a life-or-death matter, getting this call through in time?"

Yet when finally the phone vented a tinkle of its own volition he stopped to consult his watch before picking it up.

"New York?" he asked. "Grand View seven one nine? Put Mr. Nugent Leguerre on the wire—quickly! No, just tell him it's a long-distance call. He'll understand." Then, after a pause punctuated by hollow clickings: "Leguerre? Hello, hello! This is Gunther. You hear me clearly? Are you in a booth, Leguerre?"

Leguerre wasn't.

"Not in much of anything— but my room, and a puddle. Had a late night of it. Matter of fact, you've pulled me out of my tub. What's the row, chief?"

At the Washington end of the connection Judge Gamaliel Gunther, director of the Intelligence Control both in its war-time heyday and the later period of poverty and political obscurity, looked at his watch again and emitted a sigh that had much of the substance of a moan.

"You're not even dressed? Then you can't possibly make it. The Century's pulling out in just twenty-four minutes, and I wanted you aboard— had gambled on getting you in time."

Leguerre, as tanned of back as of face, had listened with a shoulder hunched to hold the receiver to his ear while he bowed to convention by knotting his bath towel about his waist.

"You've no idea," he said reproachfully, "how fast I can get into my clothes— and through traffic. Pledge you my word, judge, I can make Grand Central in twenty minutes flat from where I stand! You want me aboard the Twentieth Century Limited, what? Very well, then; consider me aboard it. Is it the idea I go the whole way to Chicago with the Century? And after that?"

Gunther's voice was still glum as it came to him.

"You can't do it— can't possibly. But my plan was to have you go directly to the Earlshire Hotel on your arrival in Chicago."

"Earlshire?" questioned Leguerre. "Must be one of the new ones. Never heard of it."

"No; it's not a new hotel. I fancy I remember it from years ago. But no matter; the Earlshire it is. And gad! I was so sure of getting fast action on this call that I sent off a wire making a reservation for you there. But with the Century missed, the whole thing will—"

"It isn't missed yet," interjected Leguerre; "but we'll have to spare words if it's not to be. So I jump to Chicago out of the bath, and find accommodations ready for me at the Earlshire Hotel? Then?"

"Not in your name," corrected Judge Gunther. "I made the reservation in the name of J. B. Jedder—J for Judith, E for Edward, D for Daniel—"

"I've got it, chief! Jedder! Right-o! I'm J. B. Jedder when I get to Chicago. But—who's J. B. Jedder?"

"About as thoroughly frightened a man, just now," said Gunther soberly, "as it's ever been my fortune to see. At least, he was a couple of hours ago, when Holloway brought him over to me from the Industrial Surplus Bureau. He was in such a funk I couldn't get him to talk intelligibly. Sent him home, finally, to try to get his nerves into some kind of shape."

Leguerre's tone lost a shade of its earlier enthusiasm.

"Another mess in the Surplus Bureau? I can't see how it's any business of the I. C. D."

"It isn't," Gunther said, "—isn't any new trouble in the bureau—and isn't exactly our affair. But it struck me after Jedder'd gone that you were doing nothing particular but the town, up there in New York; and also that it might be interesting to have you keep the Chicago appointment that Mr. Jedder finds so extraordinarily upsetting."

With an apprehensive glance over his shoulder at the window behind him, Leguerre clutched at his slipping towel.

"Too bad we haven't got longer to talk," he lamented. "This sounds— choice. But I say, if there is a Jedder, and he's made an appointment with somebody, how the deuce am I—"

"Couldn't tell you a great deal more if there was an hour to tell it in," said Gunther. "But I gather that the people whom Jedder was to meet in Chicago have never seen him— and you and he are close enough to an age, and would both answer so well to the same casual general description, that I had a mind to chance it."

"And I'm surely willing, chief," averred Leguerre. "But maybe if—"

A very faint and far-away click sounded over the wire. In Washington, Judge Gunther once more had consulted his watch.

"It's twenty-one minutes to, exactly," he said. "If you think you can catch the Century, go ahead and try. Notify me if you fail. Otherwise I'll get further instructions to you through the usual Chicago channel after I've had another talk with J. B. Jedder. For now, good luck and good—"

A louder click signaled the abrupt breaking of the connection; and Leguerre jumped at and into the fresh linens laid out on his bed with a celerity that implied a youth in some large measure misspent in the neighborhood of a fire house.

TWENTY minutes afterward, within the approximation of a very few seconds, he sank into a corner in a Pullman smoking compartment and applied a linen handkerchief to his slightly reddened cheeks.

"Do you know," he said, amiably addressing a stout stranger of definitely mercantile aura, already established with his cigar at the train window opposite; "do you know, I fancy I could have won a hat on this? But, rushing and all, you see, I lacked presence of mind— what?— to suggest the wager!"

The taxi driver at the head of the line as Leguerre stepped out of the Illinois Central Station on Chicago's windswept lakefront, next morning, made a painful effort of memory.

"Hotel Earlshire?" he repeated. "Le's see, now. Way up on the North Side, ain't it—out Rogers Park section, by the lake? You couldn't say, captain? Well, climb in, anyhow, and I'll find out."

He left the cab for a moment, and was dubiously scratching his head when he came back.

"Guess maybe you don't know Chicago so well, cap," he hazarded, his uncertainty rising as his gaze traveled back and forth between the sartorial elegance clothing his fare and the smart russet kit bag now reposing alongside the wheel. "What I mean, the Earlshire ain't hardly the house you'd want to put up at. Not that it ain't all right, understand; but the West Side ain't what it used to be, and the old horse-cabby down the line says that Lincoln was splittin' rails last time the Earlshire got a play from the up-to-daters."

Leguerre nodded affably.

"Many thanks for the tip," said he. "Quiet, old-fashioned hotels are the sort I prefer. So glad you've learned the way to the Earlshire."

But a deal of his airiness had deserted him when, after a slow passage through traffic-jammed and banner-hung Madison Street, and a long wait for a bridge to swing behind a freighter crawling in the shadow of canyon walls of brick through a turbid river, he was set down at his destination.

Back in the Loop, he had found Chicago in gala dress. Flags everywhere, flags flying and flags draped, had all but hidden the smoky façades he remembered from other visits. But with the crossing of the river, the holiday atmosphere— he was sure he ought to know, but couldn't quite remember, what holiday it was— had vanished as utterly as if the stream had been a frontier.

The Earlshire Hotel, a venerable and wide-spreading building of dun-colored brick, fronting on a boulevard of once-proud mansions now long past the stage of shuddering at the "Furnished Room" signs they universally wore, made no concession to the spirit of carnival. Flagless and morose, it stared gloomily out over the boulevard's dying trees.

A somnolent negro bellman, inhabiting an ancient threadbare shell of tarnished brass and faded blue, shuffled up from a bench at the rear of the Earlshire's lobby— a stately one in another day, but only fussy now— as Leguerre came in. With something like the taxi driver's surprise, he eyed the gorgeous kit bag.

"A long way f'om ca'pet, sah!" he chuckled, fondling the suave leather. "Sho the yeahs do roll!"

But Leguerre had gone on to the desk and was there addressing himself to a gray and flustered clerk.

"You should have had a wire from Washington, reserving for me. The name's—"

"Jedder!" It came with a promptness suggesting to Leguerre that telegrams of reservation must be matters of high moment nowadays to the Earlshire Hotel. "J. B. Jedder, I think. Yes; lucky enough, Mr. Jedder. We happened to have exactly the sort of room you asked for, and it's been held for you."

Although the white-wooled bellman was coming up now with the arrival's bag, the clerk brought his palm hard down upon the bell on the counter, and impressively thundered:

"Front!"

"Seven thirty-six, Mose, after Mr. Jedder's registered," he directed, clanging down on the furrowed marble a long-shanked key attached to a brass tag fashioned like a seal. "And, oh, Mr. Jedder! There's— ah— I believe there's something in your box. A gentleman was in earlier, asking for you, but said he couldn't wait."

It was a sealed envelope of the house stationery which he handed over, bearing on its upper surface an engraving of the Earlshire made upon a day when the now' empty pavement outside the hotel was thickly and fashionably peopled with ladies in barouches and gentlemen passing, with dignity and courage, on high-framed "safety" bicycles.

Leguerre, grateful for the forethought of the messenger who had thus masked the import of what must be Judge Gunther's promised further instructions, did not open the envelope until he had traveled interminably upward on a doddering cable-pull lift and was alone in his room— a red-plush, commodious apartment which, he was both surprised and pained to discover, had no connecting bath.

The discovery he made on the heels of this, ripping out his message, carried no pain whatsoever, but a very much vaster surprise. It was not the Division's familiar code that confronted him on the sheet from the envelope, but a note from one who was by all odds a stranger to him—and a stranger, at that, w-ho signed himself with a number rather than with a name. The writing was in pencil— the chirography of a crampy and peaked character which gave to each separate line the silhouette semblance of some fancied cathedral city— a chirography of pointed dome and stabbing steeple.

So alien was this writing to any other of Leguerre's experience that he was obliged to study through it a second and a third time before he was sure he had read correctly.

And then he was no less puzzled than at the first reading; for the text, as finally he worked it out and checked it over carefully, most amazingly was

this :

My Signally Honored Brother:

Owing to uncertainty of arrangements, I must go now without seeing you.

Appointment is postponed until some time late to-night. He will explain when you go to him.

Do not leave room until I return. To expose yourself would, I think, be foolhardy in extreme. When you are hungry, use telephone, and food will be sent up.

With high felicitation,

416.

There was something in the handwriting that suggested to Leguerre an abnormality in the writer. Out of what slender acquaintance he had scraped with the art of reading character from pen strokes, that impression arose clear on later and closer examination of the mystery note.

It occurred to him, too, that the number signature was far more revealing in the circumstances than an unfamiliar name could have been. The 416 implied, surely, a connection between the real Jedder and some sort of organized rnurnbo-jumbo in which, to enhance the appealing savor of secrecy, each member had his number. And the fraternal salutation of 416 stood as corroboration of the thought. There could not be much doubt of it.

In this light his own situation, Gunther's urgency, and the trepidation of Mr. J. B. Jedder, seemed to Leguerre more than a little amusing. In all observation of secret orders he had discovered an inevitable underlying strain of the juvenile; and he grinned in contemplation of the ironically solemn report he would presently be turning in to Gunther—something headed: "Details, Chicago Conclave, Sirs of the Mystic Turban."

Of course, unless Gunther came through with further revelations from Mr. Jedder before 416 returned to the hotel, there must be considered the very likely chance that his unfamiliarity with the ritual would lead to embarrassment. But the prospect of being challenged, exposed, and sternly turned away by an indignant sergeant-at-arms held small terror. On that incident, alone, a rare and rich report could be built that Gunther would take no comfort in reading.

Leguerre had breakfasted early on the train. A new mystery novel he had flung into his bag in the wild packing claimed his attention after he had restudied and reflected upon 416's engaging message; and he had come to the last chapters of solution—and, as usual, disappointment—before appetite made itself apparent.

Ceremoniously he washed at the huge marble lavatory which had lent the final note of elegance to Room 736 in the original planning. He was at the door, headed for the elevator and the dining room before he bethought himself of that sober admonition to keep to his apartment.

He grinned again, decided it might not only be more sporting but more amusing to play out the game according to the rules, and went instead to the telephone.

Luncheon was slow in coming; but when it did come it redeemed many faults of the Earlshire Hotel in departments outside the cuisine. The cooking— surprising in Chicago— was in what Leguerre recognized as the best Southern style; and he could imagine the kitchen still under command of some talented contemporary of the old bellman whose memory ran back to carpet-bag days.

It was after two when the spry negro waiter returned for the tray. He had been called upon, it appeared, to spare the elevator by disposing of two errands on the one trip.

"Gen'leman jus' left this for you, sah," he said, and handed over a long, thin envelope bearing the typed superscription: "J. B. Jedder, Esq., Earlshire Hotel."

It was, Leguerre felt certain, the long-awaited dispatch from Judge Gunther, relayed through the big Chicago wholesale house which by private arrangement frequently assisted the I. C. D. in swift and innocent transmission of messages between field and headquarters.

He made no mistake there, for the tissue sheet under the plain cover bore symbols in the familiar code. But, rather than the more ample information Leguerre had expected, there were only a few lines. Deciphering these, he had:

Full instructions delayed. Jedder failed to appear. Sit tight for further word. G.

Frowning, Leguerre fired up a cigarette and held the tissue sheet in the flame of his pocket lighter.

For the first time he began to feel himself in a box. Trying to bluff his way through as proxy for a person whom he knew to be in Washington would have been more or less a lark. But now the elements of true dilemma loomed.

Suppose Jedder, getting a better grip on himself, had suffered a change of heart— had come on to Chicago himself? That would make a difference. There were possibilities in such a situation of one Nugent Leguerre being made to look, and to feel, a not-inconsiderable ass.

He became aware, and acutely, of a temptation to do his waiting elsewhere than in the Hotel Earlshire. The arrival of a second J. B. Jedder, and the resulting inquest, was no pleasant contingency to contemplate.

Almost at the point of flight, Leguerre conquered the impulse. Tragic or farcical, taking things as they came along must be always part of the game. He called on the telephone for more cigarettes; and in a degree cheered by the discovery that the hotel stocked his favorite brand of Egyptians, settled down to wait it out.

The afternoon dragged away and faded into twilight, with no sign of 416 and no word from Washington. At seven thirty, when the lights along the boulevard had come on, he stirred himself from his coign by the broad window to order dinner. He had no hunger then. Ordering the meal, as on a long

train journey, was merely a device to escape utter ennui. Eating, at least, was something to do.

At ten o'clock, long after the dinner tray had been taken out, he yielded to an urge to call down to the hotel office and inquire for a message; and then he cursed himself that he had not asked before.

"Why, yes," came the answering voice. "There is something in your box, Mr. Jedder. Important? Sorry, sir! I'll send it right up."

It was again a long envelope, but a thicker one now; and, as Leguerre saw from the time stamp, it must have been lying below for two hours and more.

There were two closely written sheets of code in this second message, and it was a half hour before he had worked out the full text. Characteristically, Gunther had saved his major revelation for the last.

He had written :

Circumstances compel cancellation of Chicago assignment. Return to New York at once, notifying me on arrival.

Further effort in Jedder affair involves almost certain discovery of imposture and risk I will not ask you to assume. Best possible evidence to hand that Jedder's fear in connecion with Chicago trip not unfounded.

Other facts available only what I had yesterday.

Jedder, employed five years as minor clerk, Industrial Surplus Bureau; went yesterday morning to Holloway, his chief, for advice. Said he joined some secret order in spirit of adventure two years ago and regularly attended meetings.

Began after first year to fear society had criminal tendency, but lacked courage to withdraw. Continued weekly attendance, postponing resignation. At last meeting was notified of selection to visit society head known as '"Red Hand" in Chicago. Directed wire Earlshire for reservation and go there on arrival. Apparently no further instruction, but money for expenses handed to him at meeting.

Afraid to go, afraid to refuse, Jedder, after sleepless nights, consulted Holloway. As friend of years, Holloway unable to get full details owing Jedder's very nervous condition, brought him to me. I could get no more, but curiosity spurred.

Asked Jedder rest and come back to me yesterday afternoon or this morning, ten o'clock. He did not come. At noon got address from Holloway and assigned Kennerly. K. reported Jedder not home. Hadn't spent night in room.

Police enlisted reported late this afternoon Jedder possibly located. Investigating tip personally, I identified man in morgue. Body, knife in heart, had been found in field on outskirts Washington.

Believe entire investigation best left to police, therefore. As you suggested, not our affair. Don't be rash. Positive order.

G.

Leguerre had pored long over his transcription of the cipher before he applied the flame of the cigarette lighter both to it and to the tissue original. He was soberly watching the last of the ashes float off from the window ledge when, on the door behind him, three light and measured raps sounded,

"Hullo!'' he called, startled the more by the realization that he had heard no steps outside. "Who is it?"

A soft voice floated over the transom.

"Open quickly! It is 416!"

The abnormality of the man who called himself by the number "416," first vaguely sensed by Leguerre in the peculiarities of his handwriting, was of such character as to claim the eye at first glance.

It was a physical abnormality— apparent the instant the door had swung open; and apparent no less in his long off-center face and his beady, deep-sunk eyes than in the hump of twisted spine that rode his wide shoulders or the hands that hung, apelike, at his knees.

He lifted one of the hands, bony and misshapen like the whole of him, and made a sign which Leguerre found curiously reminiscent of the Moslem greeting: "The eyes, the lips, the heart."

"Jedder!" he whispered. "I bring to you the honor of a number. From this moment you are No. 800. No. 800— a round number, Jedder! And the name is forever gone! He is waiting. Are you ready?"

And there, most neatly presented, was a larger dilemma, even, than Leguerre had contemplated at any time in the course of the whole uncomfortable afternoon and night.

He drew a deep breath, and in the interval thought of two things. Uppermost in his mind floated those closing words of Gunther's second message recalling him; "Don't be rash. Positive order."

But would following the play through be ratable as rashness— following it through when the lead came from the other side, and all danger of eventual confrontment by the true Jedder was thus definitely cast out? Certainly— he could take oath upon that— the hunchbacked 416 had no suspicion he was addressing an impostor.

Within the same instant he thought of Jedder, dead in the field with the knife stuck into him—Jedder, now in the morgue, his tremblings at end. If that were not coincidence these Sirs of the Mystic Turban, or whatever they might be, went in for far more sinister activities than torchlight parades, and nocturnal goat-ridings, and drills of the uniformed rank. Quite truly, as poor Jedder fathomed too late, they did have a bit of a trend to the criminal.

The twisted 416 seemed, from the gleam of his little eyes, both to appreciate a reason for and to enjoy the hesitation.

"Time is short, 800," he suggested presently. "The Red Hand waits."

Leguerre cast a fleeting and regretful glance toward the kit bag under the window. His automatic pistol, it occurred to him, would be perhaps a deal more comfort in his pocket than left here in the bag. But he shrugged that thought away, and squared his shoulders.

"I am ready," he said quietly, "if 416 will lead!"

The hunchback smiled., and the smile was twisted, too.

"Then let us go at once," he said. "No, not that way! Not by the elevator ! No use to let them see too much, so we'll go as I came to you."

The private way of 416 involved, it appeared, the use of a rear staircase. At its bottom it led to a door evidently intended for the use of the hotel servants. Outside, bulking dark at the curb, stood a closed automobile.

Leguerre's guide opened the door.

"I defer," he said, and now Leguerre was sure there was a bite of acidity in his voice, "to you who are so richly honored."

The hunchback himself climbed behind the wheel. Under his foot the starter whirred.

"We meet for the first time, 800, and it well may be the last," he said. "But I must tell you this: I love you for the immortality you have won— and I hate you for your luck!"

Then, with a jerk, the car jumped forward.

The course, Leguerre observed, led back toward the Loop district; but, coming toward a bridge, the malformed driver did not cross. He veered instead to the right and trundled south.

Now they were passing through a warehouse district, deserted at this hour and dimly lighted. Leguerre surmised that the blank and shuttered buildings on his left hand must back up on that captive, tightly walled river.

It was in front of one of these buildings— one identified from its neighbors on either hand only by a vast sign informing the passer it was both for rent and for sale— that the hunchback drew up.

"This," he said, already fumbling for keys as he climbed from the car, "is where he waits. But you will find it more pleasant inside than you think."

Leguerre had caught the name of the street from a sign on the corner-post below, and he took mental note of the number faintly discernible over the door while 416 was fitting his key to the lock.

With even so much information, he reflected, he could draw back now and return later to plumb the mystery of Mr. Jedder's affiliations and sudden death with police at his back. But he had been caught up by the spirit of adventure, as had happened in his life before; and when the door stood opened he stepped quickly through it.

It was a narrow and chilly corridor in which he found himself, with stairs rising steeply out of it. Leguerre saw them briefly in the light of a street lamp before the door had been closed at his back.

The hunchback came groping after him; found and clasped his hand in a steely grip.

"Now— up," he whispered. "I have given the signal. Mind the steps!"

In utter darkness they ascended.

Leguerre counted thirty-four steps, and then found himself on a landing. Another door opened at once, and in the light that streamed from behind it he saw that this was a massive barrier of steel.

A bulky man with a round, red face stood beside it, and to him the hunchback said:

"It is I, Henry— with fortune's child!"

Leguerre, following the strangely ironic 416 into a heavily carpeted and tapestry-hung corridor, fdt the curious eyes of the big man fastened upon his back.'

The hunchback, after advancing a few paces, turned off the hallway and into a great room whose walls also were tapestried and whose floor was strewn with deep-piled rugs.

Another door at the rear of the room was 416's objective. He rapped at it, and without waiting for an answer threw it open.

"Enter, 800!" he whispered. "He sits before you!"

It was a smaller room, but one most luxuriously furnished, in which Leguerre now found himself. A lighting fixture, swung low from the ceiling and hidden within an infolding shade of silk, imprinted a filtered circle of radiance on a rug that registered on Leguerre's startled eyes as the rarest of Kurdestans. Elsewhere shadows hung thick.

Beyond the circular glow, stood a long carved table. The area of its surface was empty, and Leguerre did not see the man who sat facing them across it until 416 had pushed him forward.

No, not exactly facing him! The term, Leguerre discovered at closer hand, didn't quite fit, for the face of this man behind the table was hidden by a mask. A square black cloth of silk, dropping from the front of a tight black skullcap to his chest, lent him the uncanny appearance of one not only lacking a face but veritably without a head.

Leguerre waited for the masked enigma to speak, but no word came from behind the black cloth. Through the slits in it, catlike eyes that gave off twin flares in the gloom were appraising him.

When "he" did move, after a full minute of that steady, unwinking inspection, there was explanation of his silence in his actions. He must have touched a switch, for suddenly a soft shaft of light from the near wall flooded his table— a shaft that left his body still in shadow.

Onto the table, into the light, came a pair of hands incased in blood-red gauntlets. The right hand held a pencil; the left had plucked from a drawer in the table a stack, perhaps a half inch thick, of blank white cards.

The pencil moved swiftly over the face of the uppermost card, and a red finger flipped the card across the table. The hunchback picked it up, bowed and moved back across the room. Leguerre heard the door open and close. For him the pantomime had been eloquent enough: the man called the Red Hand was a mute!

Yet that had been, it seemed, an over-hasty conclusion.

After a moment— and the effect was ventriloquial, startling— a voice fell upon his ears. It was a voice at once low-pitched and grating, and Leguerre had cast a swift glance into the surrounding shadows before he knew it had come from behind the mask. It had been, though the tone commanded, an invitation.

"Sit down!"

Leguerre's astonished stare induced a chuckle.

"You have heard it about me, Jedder— that I have ears, but no tongue?"

Even at the peak of his amazement, Leguerre congratulated himself that this first question carried its own answer. He nodded as he dropped into the chair drawn opposite the Red Hand's.

"I have heard."

A red glove lightly touched the cards.

"It is— convenient. One is sparing with the written word. But there come times when to talk is better. Times such as— this."

Leguerre confined his comment to another nod. The steady eyes were again taking stock of him, and now he sensed a new quality in their regard. His heart jumped at the Red Hand's next words:

"You are not the man I expected to see!"

Although the voice was still quiet and colorless, Leguerre could fancy himself at the beginning of the end of his blindfold imposture. He sat tense. But for all the ominous ring, the Red Hand's speech had not been a denunciation.

"Not at all the man, Jedder," he went on. "I had another picture of you, I will confess. Slave that you have been, you— you hold up your head. I like your eyes. You have resolution. What is rarer in our ranks, you have balance. But for a trick of fate, you must have gone to the other camp. It is surprising to find one like you among us."

He paused, tentatively.

"It's a long story," said Leguerre. And that was tentative, too.

A gloved hand waved in the yellow light flooding the table.

"Yes; we all have long stories. Some day I hope to hear yours. Hope all goes well with you, that I may. Yes; I know I would find you useful, Jedder; for you have intelligence as well as courage. But— the wheel has turned. Do you know why you are here?"

"I am listening," very truthfully replied Leguerre.

The crimson fingers interlaced on the table top, and the shrouded head leaned forward above them.

"Only laws can unmake laws," said the Red Hand. "So among us there must be stern laws until all laws are dead. They have showed us the way to the draft, and by the wheel you have been drafted— for the common good. You remember your oath?"

Happily, Leguerre didn't have to remember, for the crackling voice continued :

"You have sworn by your blood and bone, by your life, to give obedience to the death when the Red Hand commands. So all our thousands have sworn, through the world. Now the time for the test has come— the time to strike!

"There are many close to me who would gladly have had the honor. Poor Fornoff— 416— pleaded for it. Yes; on his knees, begged for it.

"But that was not to be my way, Jedder. Why have the thousands been brought together in the blood bond? Have they 'been trained only to an empty ritual, or to obedience—to take active part in the remaking of life? I denied Fornoff. Numbering all names that had not come to numbers in the bond, I employed the wheel. And it was your number, 800, that destiny selected. Yours is the honor!"

Leguerre nodded.

"I have come," he said.

A watch lay now in one of the crimson hands.

"And the hour is near, Jedder. Does your heart weaken?"

"It hasn't— yet."

The hidden eyes glinted through their shroud.

"Somehow, I do not think you will falter. Had you been another sort I would have told you, instead, that you— dare not!"

Leguerre shrugged.

"I am happy," he said, "you do not deem me—that sort." Then, after an interval, he ventured a question: "And you have summoned me to—"

A sharp and insistent buzzing intruded upon the sentence.

"The phone!" murmured the Red Hand. "You shall see how men without tongues contrive to use it."

From a small table at his elbow he lifted a telephone. Taking the receiver from its hook he delivered four sharp raps upon the diaphragm case with his pencil, then listened.

He spoke no word. By accepted code, evidently, the pencil spoke for him, asked his questions.

For another moment he stared silently at Leguerre after he had put away the telephone.

"So— you don't know why you are here?" he asked then softly.

"Except that the summons reached me."

"You have not guessed?"

"I wait to hear."

The Red Hand's eyes bored through the mask, their flares returning.

"I believe you," he said. "You have not guessed. And that is well. So I will show you something— something, I am sure, that will interest you." He had pulled open a drawer as he spoke, and one of the crimson gloves delved into it. "It is this!" he cried; and Leguerre found himself looking into the muzzle of a pistol.

"I say!" he protested.

"You have much to say!" mocked the grating voice. "Now tell me quickly who you are, and how you come here!"

"You ask!" exclaimed Leguerre. "You wanted Jedder, and—"

"And Jedder is dead! I have just had the news. He would have betrayed the bond— and he died. I should have been informed long since. Yes, Jedder has paid, and you are here! Hurry! Speak for yourself!"

Leguerre's eyes were as level as those which sparkled in the mask.

"Can there be two Jedders?" he asked evenly. "Or could you consider that the death report is— you remember Mark Twain?— exaggerated?"

A rusty laugh sounded behind the mask.

"No need to tell me who you are!" said the Red Hand. "What difference? What you are, I know now. You do belong to the enemy. You are a spy, sent by those to whom Jedder went with his running tongue!"

"You take my breath away," asserted Leguerre, and roused the rusty laugh again.

"Perhaps that is prophecy. But I shall take interest first in talking with you. What is written to be, though, you cannot prevent. Jedder himself did not know that— nor dream. Simply, another way shall be found."

He shifted the pistol, and holding if as steadily in his left hand proceeded to write rapidly on first one card and then a second. The writing finished, he touched a button located back of the table.

Despite the thick rugs in the big room outside, Leguerre's ears were alert to the jingle of the distant bell and the padding of footsteps. The door opened behind him, and in another instant 416 was at his side, staring at the pistol.

"What is it?" he cried.

Then he saw the cards and read their message. A new shrillness came into his voice.

"My prayers are answered! Immortality!"

Stumbling in his haste, he wheeled and ran out, slamming the heavy door as he went.

The pistol had gone back now into the right hand of the man in the mask.

"Other hands will do my bidding," he said. "And you," he added to that, in an icy voice of judgment, "you will pay the one part of your penalty by living to know that you have failed!"

He waved the gun.

"Get up!"

Obeying, perforce, Leguerre heard a far-away metallic clang— the steel door at the stairhead, he knew.

"If I may say so," he observed, "this is all very astonishing to me."

"I could say the same," said the Red Hand grimly, "if life left any astonishments remaining to my lot." He reached once more into the drawer, and arose clutching a tubular electric flash lamp. "For the time being, I have a place where you may rest—while I think. Please precede me."

He waved a hand toward a comer of the room where the shadows lay thickest.

There was a second door in the shadows; and this, like the steel entrance gate, opened on a steep stairway. The flash light, stabbing from behind him, showed Leguerre that these steps and the walls between which they descended were of rough stone.

It was as he slowly climbed down them, with the Red Hand's pistol pressing into his back, that the significance of all those flags that the Loop district had flaunted dawned suddenly upon him. A holiday! No; it wasn't a holiday they would be celebrating here in Chicago at this time. Not a holiday in the accepted sense.

It was for quite another reason that the lake-shore city was doing herself proud, decking out in her best— and, with an inward groan, he saw that reason as an explanation of his own present predicament, the answer to the whole mystery of J. B. Jedder and 416 and the Red Hand and their infernal "bond."

Automatically, he was again counting the steps. Thirty-two, then a landing and a turn. Another eighteen, and at the bottom of them a damp-floored cellar filled with the noises of scurrying rats.

The beam of tihe flash lamp circled and came to rest on an iron door.

"My accommodations are not of the best," said the Red Hand. "But then, I do not think you would be comfortable anywhere during these next few hours. Later I shall bring you a newspaper— one that will carry bigger news, I think, than the editors now anticipate. In the meantime, I escort you to your chamber!"

Pushed on by the pistol, Leguerre crossed to the iron door. A huge rusty key stood in the lock, and the crimson glove that held the light dropped upon it.

For an instant, as the Red Hand strained at the key, the pistol wavered— and in that instant Leguerre snatched desperately at the wrist which held it.

There was a crash. Flame seared his cheek and an acrid smoke filled his nostrils and blinded his eyes. Somewhere in the darkness there was an echoing crash of falling plaster.

While he forced back the pistol arm, Leguerre's free hand had fallen on the flash lamp. He wrestled it from the gloved grip, lifted it high, brought it smashing down upon the shrouded head again and again until the wrist of the gun went limp within his clasp.

Then, with the Red Hand fallen, he was in utter darkness, for at the first blow the filament in the torch's tiny bulb had snapped.

He felt for the key, found it, put all his strength into a sharp twist. The lock grated. Jerking open the iron door he dragged the Red Hand, legs first, into the blackness beyond it.

In another second he was swearing under his breath. His cigarette lighter had been left in the room at the Earlshire, and he was without matches. Not yet was he to see the face behind the mask.

But when he turned the key again, he had stripped his late jailer of his chief trappings of mystery. On the way up the stairs he adjusted the cap and its shroud to his own hand, and drew on the crimson gloves.

His right hand was in his pocket, clutching the grip of the captured pistol, as he stepped again into the room of shadows. Beyond the door he had heard a clamor of excited voices. A half dozen men had collected about the carved table, and the round-faced guardian of the portal was shouting:

"Yes, a shot! Back here! And they have gone!"

Another voice cried:

"He is here!"

A finger was pointing.

Leguerre waved, and nodded, and calmly walked to the Red Hand's chair.

A challenge lay before him on the table— the pencil and the cards. The round-faced man was staring at them— plainly expected some communication to be imparted now by means of them.

Leguerre, looking about the group, saw several pistols parading. He was still in the woods— and all but lost in them now. Trying to simulate a voice would have been a doubtful enough effort at best, but the problem confronting him here was far less simple than that.

At any moment the prisoner below might come to his senses and begin pounding on the iron door; and to forestall investigation of the racket, to pave the way for his own exit, a person named Leguerre would have very shortly to contrive a way of duplicating a handwriting he had never even seen!

Common sense told him instantly that the thing couldn't be done. Then something higher than common sense whispered to him. He picked up the pencil in his left hand, drew the cards to him and arduously but quickly scrawled:

Have locked up man below after struggle. Hurt hand. Plans changed. Must go at once to 416.

The round-faced man was still puzzling over the note as Leguerre walked around the table, and out through the big room and the tapestried corridor to the gate of steel.

He drew the bolt, closed the door gently behind him, and tore off the mask as he bolted down the stairs.

Two blocks below, toward Madison Street, he encountered a straying taxi. Hatless and breathless, he jumped into it.

"Where are the big doings to-night— Gold Coast Ball, or whatever it is? You know, where the— Oh, the Athenaeum? Then that's where I want to go. And step on it!"

A crowd that might have numbered thousands was milling about the entrance to the vast, vault-roofed Chicago Athenaeum, home of conventions and larger-scale social and civic affairs, when Leguerre came to the end of his dash across the Loop and out Michigan Boulevard...

He plunged into the throng, finding holes or elbowing them, like a gifted half back making the best of a broken field.

If lacked only two minutes of midnight, and somewhere a band had crashed into the opening chords of "Hail to the Chief."

The music had the effect of putting spurs on Leguerre's elbows. Deaf to the remarks that his ruthless passage evoked, he wormed wildly on. At last only the broad blue back of a policeman stood between him and the aisle held open between the Athenaeum door and the big motor that had drawn to the curb.

From the motor, a pleasant-faced youth in evening clothes was just then descending. A cheer arose, and he acknowledged it with a wave of his light walking stick as, followed by others from the limousine, he came briskly forward.

Leguerre recognized the youth— and in the same instant espied and recognized some one else. Across the cleared aisle, standing in the front rank and closer to the magnificent motor, was the hunchback, 416.

His right hand, Leguerre saw, was hidden under his coat.

"Let me through!" he cried.

The blue arm had shot out to restrain him, but he dodged under it. Half stunned by a blow from a flailing night-stick, he flung himself across the open space and onto the glaring-eyed 416.

The hunchback had seen him coming. His hand had flashed from his breast, and there was a revolver in it. Leguerre, faint now from the club blow, had snatched' it away as they both went down.

Two faces were dose to Leguerre's when, a few seconds later, he opened his eyes. One was that of the youth from the limousine, who was saying:

"Why, I'm sure I know the chap, inspector! He's one of your people who played such ripping tennis at Wimbledon last year. Le— Le— yes, Leguerre. I say, never in the world expected I'd— owe him my life. Oh, you're coming out of it? Look here! Leguerre!"

But Leguerre was looking at the policeman in the gold-braided dress-helmet, whispering an address.

"Hurry!" he begged. "Take everybody in the place. Man in the cellar's— the big chief. My responsibility. Hurry!"

Then his eyes closed again.

He was in bed when next they opened, in what appeared to be a room in a hotel far more modern than the Earlshire. His head was swathed in a bandage, and a person who had a profoundly medical look was bending over him.

At the moment, too, the door was opening. Leguerre identified the newcomer as that police inspector of a while ago.

"His Royal Highness wants to know—" he began, apparently addressing the doctor.

Leguerre raised himself on an elbow and cut in:

"Let's wait for that. Did I only dream of seeing you before, inspector— and giving you an address?"

"Last night! We've got five men for you to look at, and tell us about. About four of 'em, that is. We had tabs already on one as a wild-eyed anarchist. Him and the hunchback, too!"

"I'd met the hunchback before, myself," said Leguerre. "And the other one's the man you dug out of the cellar?"

"Wasn't anybody in the cellar."

"In a little corner room, behind an iron door?"

"Yes; I heard about that. But the door was open and the room was empty. Who— who did you suppose would be in it?"

Leguerre sighed.

"Wish I could tell you," he said. "Wish I could tell you a lot of things. But I'll have to get Washington on the telephone before I do; which is very much between ourselves."

He sighed again, and somewhat more deeply.

"So one of your policemen bashes my head, and the Red Hand fellow walks clear, and— I say, it's the devil of a mess all 'round."

But in an instant, as his eyes wandered, he brightened.

"Silver lining, what?" he jubilated. "You know, last time somebody got a room for me in this town, he forgot to include a bath. I say, doctor, it's all right to crawl in the tub while the inspector puts through a long distance for me?"

_______________

Index to Past Masters Nos 61-78

The "Author Index" to Issues 1-60 has been uploaded separately.

Achmed Abdullah

The Mystery of the Talking Idols 63

George Ade

Making the Grade 78

"A. E. P."

The End of Sherlock Holmes  67

Achmed Abdullah

Framed at the Benefactors' Club 73

W. L. Alden

After the Comet 67

Foote's Catorium 70

How the Fat Woman Eloped 68

The St. Bernard Myth 68

A Scientific Balloon 72

Silver Plated   67

The Wild Man of Borneo 67

Mark Allerton

A Christmas Mix-Up 70

The Stanhope Scandal 70

Anonymous

Armistice  78

A Barrack Ghost Story 76

Beauty in Flight 76

The Diamond Necklace 62

The Great Auk's Egg Affair 61

Fool Proof  75

The Hat Trick 71

Haunted  78

Jacobs and Gale, Tobacconists 70

Local Color 75

An Old Norman-French Story 76

A Railway Murder 70

Remorse 76

Retribution 74

Revenge 74

The Ruins of the Abbey of Fitz-Martin 64

The Skipper's Scheme 73

The Stamp Thief 71

The Thriller 71

A Solicitor's Story 75 (as by "S.S.")

F. Anstey

Taken By Surprise  66

Francis Henry Atkins

The Lay Figure  63

Edouard A. Aujard

The Flood 75

The Swing of Sentiment  75

Stacy Aumonier

A Source of Irritation 73

Straight Griggs 78

Irving Bacheller

Holy Poker 71

The Prodigal Village 71

Robert Barr

The Last Straw 72

J. M. Barrie

The Adventure of the Two Collaborators 75

My Brother Henry 72

John Arthur Barry

Baleston's Secret Reef 72

The Mystery of the "Mountain Maid"  64

Frederick R. Bechdolt

Before Michael Came  63

The Lie-Detector 73

L. Adams Beck

The Interpreter (novelette) 62

H. Bedford-Jones

The Artificial Honeymoon 66

Death Gave Him His Chance  63

J. J. Bell

The Lovely Little Dinner 70

The Price of a House  63

"Sir William"  61

E. F. Benson

Negotium Perambulans  64

The Terrace 69

J. D. Beresford

The Hidden Beast 75

Harold Bindloss

Trooper Jenkins 68

Ottwell Binns

The Britisher 73

Dixon's Romance 75

Algernon Blackwood

The Kit-Bag 76

Christopher B. Booth

"Doc" Meets the Train (as by John Jay Chichester)  72

Mr Clackworthy Collects 63

Mr Clackworthy Gets His Tonic 64

Mr Clackworthy Sells Short  63

Mr Clackworthy Stakes a Friend 70

Solly's Last Forgery 64

When Mr. Clackworthy Needed a Bracer 64

Guy Boothby

By Right Of Conquest 72

B. M. Bower

The Ghost in the Red Shirt  63

Jack Boyle

The Beauty-Fountain 70

A Woman Without Fear 70

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Good Lady Ducayne  71

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

Coutts Brisbane

Without Fear 76

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

Just Like a Cat 71

Mr. Wellaway's Host 77

The Ninety And Nine  69

Something for the Kid 77

Sir Gilbert Campbell

The Mystery of the Essex Stairs 62

Scott Campbell

The Point of Contact 70

The Price of Perfidy 78

A Study in Green 73

Under the Crown 70

Without Air 73

Agnes and Egerton Castle

The Great Todescan's Secret Thrust 70

Mark Channing

Intrigue 74

Anna Alice Chapin

Through the Dragon's Valley  63

The Scales of Time 63

G.K. Chesterton

The Sword of Wood 65

Peter Cheyney

Christmas With a Punch 75

Cocktail For Cupid 65

Dance Without Music  64

Irvin S. Cobb

The Eminent Dr. Deeves 72

Faith, Hope And Charity 71

The Thirteenth Degree 72

Sylvanus Cobb, Jun.

The Bottomless Jug  64

J. J. Connington

After Death the Doctor 63

Dorothea Conyers

Meave's Ride  69

Norbert Davis

You Bet Your Life 77

E. M. Delafield

The Luggage in the Hall  66

Charles Caldwell Dobie

The Open Window 71

Sir Geo. Douglas, Bart.

Unconscious Interloper 69

L C Douthwaite

The London Guillotine 66

Prospector 75

Richard Dowling

The Going Out of Alessandro Pozzone 62

Edward Dyson

A Golden Shanty 65

The Third Chair 65

Fred Engelhardt

Heritage of Osiris 75

George Allan England

Drops of Death  68

Howard Fitzalan

The Red Hand 78

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Three Hours Between Planes 65

Francis Flagg

The Superman of Dr Jukes  72

Mrs. May Agnes Fleming

How The Lone Star Went Down  68

J. S. Fletcher

Ex-Officio 76

Homer Eon Flint

The Planeteer  77

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

Ltnt Edgar Gardiner

Up Irrawaddy Way 74

Arthur Gask

Rejuvenation 66

Strychnine for Village Dogs 62

Theophile Gautier

The Mummy's Foot 62

George Gilbert

In Maulmain Fever-Ward  63

Lady Gilbert

Aurora's Treasure  75

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Yellow Wallpaper  64

Why I wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper" 64

Guy Gilpatric

The Artful Mr. Glencannon 70

Crocodile Tears 68

The Glasgow Phantom 66

The Homestretch 61

The Masked Monster 72

Where Early Fa's the Dew 65

Susan Glaspell

A Jury of Her Peers 67

F. A. J. Godfrey

Not Proven 76

Frederick Graves

White Flame  62

Fred V Green

Markham's New Partner 65

A. S. Gregory

The Death Window 68

Valentine Gregory

Third Time Unlucky 71

While on Remand 71

James Norman Hall

Death on an Atoll 72

Fame For Mr. Beatty 75

Uncle Ned's Teeth 76

Julian Hawthorne

Calbot's Rival 67

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Great Stone Face 66

Miles Henslow

Mystery Flight 75

Kenneth Herford

An Echo of the Quarter 73

Smiley's Scoop 73

Beatrice Heron-Maxwell

The Act of God 74

The Outcast 65

Headon Hill

The "Artemis" Mystery 65

The Bank Clerk's Love Story 65

The Dining-Car Clue 65

Limping Justice 65

S. B. H. Hurst

The Ball of Fire  74

The Receipt 74

W. W. Jacobs

Captain Rogers 71

A Love Knot 70

Malcolm Jameson

The Anarch  69

Val Jameson

"Burglin' ain't the game it was" 61

Jerome K. Jerome

The Dancing Partner 74

Rudyard Kipling

The Phantom Rickshaw 73

Otis Adelbert Kline

The Dragoman's Secret 74

Stolen Centuries 65

Thomas H. Knight

The Man Who Was Dead 61

Edmund Leamy

My First Case 74

Henry Leverage

Black Light 66

The Crimp 66

Crooked Charity 67

R. C. Lehmann

The Umbrosa Burglary 67

Henry Leverage

Over the Wall   76

Sinclair Lewis

The Cat of the Stars 68

Seven Million Dollars 68

The Willow Walk 61

H.P. Lovecraft

Obit: Henry St. Clair Whitehead 71

Marie Belloc Lowndes

An Unrecorded Instance 61

Richard Mace

The Emerald Beetle  62

Arthur Machen

The Shining Pyramid 71

Fred MacIsaac

The Abominable Test 76

William J. Makin

The Death Barge 73

The Planes that Never Returned 73

Julia Magruder

The Secret of the White Castle 65

Don Marquis

Accursed Hat! 70

Richard Marsh

A Silent Witness  77

Huan Mee

The Russian Cipher 65

J. J. Meehan

The Squirrel Motor 69

Abraham Merritt

The Woman of the Wood 72

William Henry Moberley

The Great Valdez Sapphire 63

C. S. Montanye

Old King's Coal   72

F. Frankfort Moore

Joan Dark 65

Ainsworth Morgan

Lady in Lower 11   72

Talbot Mundy

Bengal Rebellion 69

Edith M Nesbit

In the Dark 64

Man-Size in Marble  65

Number 17    61

Douglas Newton

Straight Enough 73

David Wright O'Brien

Hokum Hotel  68

Fitz-James O'Brien

The Wondersmith  64

Owen Oliver

The Awakening  74

Vincent O'Sullivan

The Business of Madame Jahn  64

Thomas Nelson Page

What was the Lady's Choice? 62

Miles  Overholt

Wrong Number 75

Sir Gilbert Parker

At the Sign of the Eagle  70

Max Pemberton

The Devil To Pay 63

The Dumb Avenger 75

G. G. Pendarves

The Black Camel  65

The Sin-Eater 74

The Withered Heart  74

Hugh Pendexter

Lyacus Whittle— Globetrotter 70

Ernest M Poate

A Person from the Police 63

To Professional Services— $100,000   70

Doctor Grimes Awaits Probate (as by Arthur Mallory)  73

Expert Testimony 74

Inside the Limousine 78

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

Edith Rickert

The Chair That Smiled 74

Walter Ripperger

The Cardboard Clue 62

School For Murder 69

Morley Roberts

The Egregious Goat 73

Arthur Somers Roche (novelette)

In the Money 67

Michael Romain

Genesis   76

Anthony M Rud

The Invisible "Blinker" 73

Duncan Campbell Scott

The Witching of Elspie 78

J. Johnston Smith

Queen Of Diamonds  75

Thorne Smith

Birthday Present 66

Andrew Soutar

Bluebeard 63

D. H. Souter

Conroy 74

Charles B. Stilson

Dr. Martone's Microscope 72

The Sky Woman 67

The Soul Trap 72

Halliwell Sutcliffe

Handsome Jack  67

Miss Phyllis Brown 67

Murgatroyd's Wife  67

Georges Surdez

Charles the Bold 76

Spite Corner 76

Emile C Tepperman

Coffin Cache 63

E. Temple Thurston

A Cameo 69

Roger Torrey

Black Murder 78

Dice and No Dice 77

Murder By Accident 77

Ticket to Death (as by John Ryan)  77

Edward W Townsend

A Deal in Mines and Morals 77

E Charles Vivian

How the Girl Came to Bentley's 62

Cyril G. Wates

The Visitation 76

Edgar Wallace

The New Doctor  76

R. A. J. Walling

A Chat With William Le Queux 68

Mrs. Rooth's "Murder" 61

The Spook of Cornelius 61

"Wanderer"

Waif of the Bush 74

Stanley G Weinbaum

The Red Peri  69

Albert Richard Wetjen

The Chief of the Loch McCree 61

Raid on Jigger's Reef 76

Harvey Wickham

The Man With the Painted Nose 75

Ethel Lina White

An Unlocked Window  78

Fred Merrick White

Early Closing Day  64

Gentlemen of the Jury  65

The Missing Blade 75

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

Henry S. Whitehead

Bothon 78

The Chadbourne Episode 75

The Door 71

Passing of a God 75

The People of Pan 77

Sea-Tiger  78

The Shut Room 75

Sweet Grass 76

The Wonderful Thing  70

Raoul Whitfield

The Great Black 65

H. C. Witwer

Money to Burns 71

Mary E Wilkins

The Shadows on the Wall  64

Edward Woodward

Clarence 75

Arthur Leo Zagat

Coward's Kill (novelette)  69

E. F. Ziska

Man of Ages 78

___________________

Table of Contents

1: Black Murder / Roger Torrey (novelette)

2: Man of Ages / E. F. Ziska

3: Sea-Tiger / Henry S. Whitehead

4: The St. Bernard Myth / W. L. Alden

5: Straight Griggs / Stacy Aumonier

Unnamed

7: Inside the Limousine / Ernest M Poate

8: An Unlocked Window / Ethel Lina White

9: The Price of Perfidy / Scott Campbell

10: The Witching of Elspie / Duncan Campbell Scott

11: Armistice / Anonymous

12: Lured to His Doom / E Randolph

13:  Haunted / Anonymous

14: Making the Grade / George Ade

15: The Red Hand / Howard Fitzalan

Cumulative Index # 61-78