Past Masters Eighty Nine
Author: Various
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: The Eighty-Ninth anthology of short stories collected for the most part from magazines and newspapers, some by well-known authors, but mostly by relative unknowns, and all in the Life + 70 Public Domain. 1: The Weird of the Walfords / Louisa Baldwin 2: The Devil of the Marsh / H. B. Marriott-Watson 3: Beautiful Decoy / Anonymous 4: The Diamond Bracelet / Sandy Sharp 5: Ambitious Man / A. St. John Adcock 6: Gunfire at Scarlani's / Atwater Culpepper 7: White Cap / Ethel Lina White 8: Hotel Evidence / Helen Simpson 9: Poker / Achmed Abdullah 10: A Dog-House Detective / Herbert MacAlpine 11: Bogus

PAST MASTERS

EIGHTY-NINE

Produced by Terry Walker

("Pulpmeister")

4 August 2022

Contents

1: The Weird of the Walfords / Louisa Baldwin

2: The Devil of the Marsh / H. B. Marriott-Watson

3: Beautiful Decoy / Anonymous

4: The Diamond Bracelet / Sandy Sharp

5: Ambitious Man / A. St. John Adcock

6: Gunfire at Scarlani's / Atwater Culpepper

7: White Cap / Ethel Lina White

8: Hotel Evidence / Helen Simpson

9: Poker / Achmed Abdullah

10: A Dog-House Detective / Herbert MacAlpine

11: Bogus Gems / Gordon Young

12: The Baturu Mandarin / Georges Surdez

13: On the Dodge / Raymond S. Spears

14: The Horse Thief Rendezvous / Raymond S. Spears

15: Murder Magic / Cary Moran

16: The Great Beast of Kafue / Clotilde Graves

17: Terror! / A. Kuprin

18: The Man from Nowhere / Georges Surdez

19: Other People's Money / Christopher B. Booth

20: Our New House / Bram Stoker

21: The Conqueror / W. J. Locke

22: No Living Witness / Emile C. Tepperman

23:  The Pink Envelope / Russ W. Carter

Cumulative Index #61-89

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1: The Weird of the Walfords

Louisa Baldwin

1845-1925

Longman's Magazine Nov 1889

Louisa Baldwin was a Victorian novelist, and an aunt of Rudyard Kipling

ON A SUMMER'S DAY in the year 1860, I, Humphrey Walford, did a deed for which I should have been disinherited by my father and disowned by my ancestors. I laid sacrilegious hands on the old carved oak four-post family bedstead and destroyed it.

Alone I could not have accomplished the work of destruction. The massive posts, canopy, and panels would have resisted my single efforts; but I compelled two reluctant men to lend me their aid, and by the help of saws and hatchets we reduced the whole structure to billets of wood such as one might kindle a cheerful flame with in the parlour grate on a damp summer evening.

It was a bed with a history to me so unspeakably melancholy that I had resolved when I was my own master I would destroy the gloomy structure, and rid me of the nightmare-like feeling with which the sight of it never failed to inspire me.

The bed itself was upwards of three hundred years old, carved in oak grown on our land, while the heavy dark-green hangings, faded and musty-smelling, dated only from the time of my great-grandfather Walford. I have the dimensions of the huge hearse-like thing by heart. It was ten feet long by eight feet wide, and ten feet high; and when as a small child I was brought to see my young mother die in the recesses of the vast bed, I looked up at its tall posts with something of the awe with which I should now regard the loftiest tree.

For three centuries this bed had been the cradle and grave of our family. Its heavy drapery had deadened the sound of the first cry and the last groan of the generations of Walfords who had been born or died in Walford Grange. In its solemn depths the newly-wedded brides of the family lay the first few nights in their new home, till the wedding festivities were ended, and the squire and his wife began their every-day married life by occupying a less stately but more comfortable bed. I knew the history of the gloomy old piece of furniture as family tradition had preserved it for three centuries. Ten Squire Walfords had either died in that bed or had lain on it after death awaiting their burial. I was the eleventh squire dating from the epoch of the bed, and I would neither die in it nor be laid upon it after my death. And to make sure of this there was no way but now, in my youth and strength, to fall upon it with hatchet and saw and utterly destroy it.

I did not fear death more than my forefathers, but I resented being bidden by family tradition and custom to die in a given spot. I rebelled at having a definite place assigned to me to lie down in and die— a place so fraught with dismal associations as the ancient, hearse-like bed. I could not endure to think that, wander wide as I would, I must return to this bed of death at last, and here, among stifling pillows and heavy curtains, end my life precisely where it began.

Must this ghastly horror of my childhood be the goal towards which I tend? When I am sailing on mid-ocean, the ship ploughing her way through the furrows of the sea, shall I only be speeding, sooner or later, towards this dismal bed? When I climb mountains and breathe the keen air of the heights, is it but to end in the exclusion of light and air? must every step I take, every journey I make, be but a stage on the road that ends in the stifling pillows of this bed of death? No, a thousand times no, and I brought my axe down on the footboard with a crash.

How vividly both the dead and living who had occupied this ancient bed rose before my mind's eye! Here had lain Ralph Walford, killed in the Civil Wars, fighting for the king, and his wounded body was brought home and stretched on what had been his bridal bed to await his burial. And here died Squire Ralph's young widow, who, a short time after her husband's sad home-coming, gave birth to his posthumous child, and never again left this ill-omened bed till they carried her out feet foremost. Ralph Walford's brother Heneage, the next Squire, thought to make the old bed festive with gold and crimson hangings, to forget that his brother's corpse had lain on it, his orphan child been born in it, and his widow died in it, and by the upholsterer's wit to convert a hearse into a bridal bower.

Brighter times came to our family with the Restoration. We had spent our blood and treasure in the king's cause, for which he did not suffer us to go unhonoured; for shortly after his joyful restoration his gracious majesty was travelling within ten miles of Walford Grange, and, the weather proving stormy, and there being no other Royalist house of consideration near, he made shift to pass a night under the roof of his faithful servant Heneage Walford.

My father often told me the history of that memorable visit, as it had been handed down from generation to generation. How gracious and witty was the king's majesty, how merry and light-hearted, as little troubled by the murder of his royal father and the heavy misfortunes of his house as by the brave lives lost and families impoverished in his cause!

Squire Heneage was as loyal a man as ever drew sword for the king, yet he was heard to say that it was a cursed day for him when his gracious majesty honoured him by being his guest, for it turned his wife Mistress Johanna's head, and she was never again the woman she had been. She grumbled and bemoaned herself that the king had not knighted her husband, so that she might have ruffled it a step above the squirearchy. But one abiding comfort remained with her from the royal visit. And this was that both at coming and going the king had saluted her, and she ever after prettily described the royal manner of kissing, which she affirmed to differ from that practised by ordinary men. Mistress Johanna's serving woman, Anne Grimshaw, said that the king had saluted her too; but this her mistress would not hear of, and when she appealed to Squire Heneage he set the vexed question at rest by giving his opinion that, judging it as a matter of probability, it was more likely that a vain woman should lie, than that his sacred majesty should kiss Anne Grimshaw, who had a foul face of her own.

If I have somewhat enlarged on the fact of the king's visit to Walford Grange, it is not so much on account of any tokens of his royal favour that he was pleased to bestow on my ancestors, as because he lay in the best chamber, in the great oak bed with its brave new hangings. But the king was tormented by terrible dreams, and woke in the morning haggard and weary, as though he had been ridden by witches. And that I attributed to a malign influence in the hearse-like bed itself, and with that I crashed into it afresh.

I had long promised myself this fierce destructive joy, when I in my turn should be master of Walford Grange. My father had died in this bed three years ago, and I had been travelling in the south of Europe ever since, urged partly by the restless curiosity of youth, and partly by the belief that no Squire Walford had ever crossed the seas before. Some younger sons and thriftless members of our family, in pursuit of the fortune denied them at home, had ventured into foreign lands, but the head of the house never. My father met any wishes or arguments I advanced on the subject of travel by a statement that seemed to him conclusive— that a man sees enough in his own country that he can't understand, without going abroad to complete his confusion. But now on my return home I hastened to carry out my design on the hated ancestral bed.

What consternation prevailed in the house when it was understood what I was about, and when I and Gillam the carpenter and his man, having stripped the great bed of its drapery, proceeded to take to pieces the panels of the carved oak canopy! Mrs Barrett, the old housekeeper, stood wiping her honest eyes and bewailing my impiety.

'Don't 'ee do it, squire, don't 'ee do it! You may come to know the want of a good feather bed to die in yet! Such a bed as it's been for lyings in and layings out, and I'd hoped to ha' seen you laid in it, like your poor father before you.'

What Mrs Barrett's expectation of life may have been I know not, but she was sixty-five, and I twenty-four years of age.

'My good Barrett, I have determined that this bed shall utterly perish. We will not contribute one more corpse to its greedy maw. But if it be its feathers that you bewail, you are welcome to its pillows to line your nest with, but the bed itself must perish.'

'What, squire, the bed that your great uncle Geoffrey was found dead in, when he'd gone upstairs over-night as well and as hearty as ever man was, and making his ungodly jokes, the Lord forgive him! The very bed as your grandfather lay in two whole years before he died, and all the house heard his groans; and where your Aunt Hester was laid with the water drip, drip, from every limb, just as they brought her in drowned from the brook!'

'Yes, my good Barrett, because of these very things the bed must perish.'

Then Gillam began, as he took off his paper cap⁷ and wiped his brow:

'If it's as the bed don't seem nateral like to sleep in after so many o' your kin has laid stiff and stark in it, won't you sell it, squire, to them as knows nothing of its ways? That there panel with the berried ivy on it is a deal too pretty a bit of carving to make firewood on.'

'No, Gillam, I shall not sell it. The man who would take money for the bed his ancestors died in, would sell their bones to make knife-handles⁸ of. Besides, the bed has existed long enough; it has served my family to die in for ten generations. It's my own property, Gillam; mayn't I do what I will with my own?'

'Ay, surely, squire; there's no law to hinder a man making any fool of hisself as he pleases wi' what's his own. But I sides with the chap as made the bedstead, and I shouldn't like to think as in a matter o' two or three hundred years a bit o' my work 'ud be chopped up for firing.'

'Be under no uneasiness, Gillam; you and I do not live in an age that produces lasting work. Our glue-and-tintack carpentry is not done with a view to posterity.'

'Well, squire,' continued Gillam, returning to his first idea, 'if you won't sell the bedstead whole nor piecemeal, you might give me them panels with the carved ivy on 'em. I could find you some bits o' wood as 'ud burn brighter and better.'

'I don't mind giving you the old ivy carving, Gillam,' I said, 'but only on condition that I shall never see anything more of it, in any shape or form.'

'That's easy promised, sir, and thank you kindly. I'll make it up into something as'll surprise itself.'

Having weakly consented to his request, I saw him lay aside two or three beautiful panels, richly carved with branches of berried ivy, as salvage from the general wreck. If the gloomy horrors of the old bed had not eaten into my very heart, I could never have lent a hand at such a work of destruction. I should at least have saved the footboard with its carving in high relief of Adam and Eve under the tree, a man-headed serpent twining round the trunk, and the branches bending beneath their load of fruit. But I could not look at it without thinking of the dying eyes that had fixed their fading gaze on it, so my axe and saw made havoc of a work of art. When the floor was littered over with billets of wood, and the men were wiping their hot faces, I felt a strange lightness of heart, a comfortable sense of work postponed at length happily accomplished.

'Gillam,' I said, 'there was timber enough in that huge thing to build a man-of-war, drapery to make her sails, and rope enough for all her rigging.'

'Ay, there was a'most;' and, hastily throwing his tools into his basket, he added, sarcastically I thought, 'there'll be nothing else I can help you to pull down or to smash up, squire?'

I soon found that my destructive toil had benefited me in more ways than one. Not only had it freed me from an intolerable oppression of spirit, but it had established for me in the neighbourhood a reputation for eccentricity, which I maintained afterwards at the smallest cost, and found of great service. The carrying out of my long-cherished purpose was regarded as evidence of a wild and lawless disposition, bordering on mental derangement. Night after night at the alehouse Gillam recounted to a breathless audience the story of the scene of destruction at which he had assisted professionally. And it grew in the telling till, without the slightest intention of lying, he added that the squire's rage against the old place was such, that he had been obliged to menace him with the screwdriver to keep him from tearing down the mantelshelf and wainscot.

I was evidently a man whom it was not wise to thwart or contradict. My servants flew at my least word with an alacrity I had not before observed. My bidding was promptly done, my orders were not disputed, and whatever I said was agreed to with servility. While enjoying the sweets of mental health, as my neighbours voted me on such insufficient grounds on the borderland of insanity, I availed myself of the liberty it gave me to speak and act as I chose. Their hasty judgment had made me free of the wide domain of conduct. There was nothing I could do, however extravagant, but was clearly shadowed forth in the destruction of the ancestral oak bed.

I began to grow lonely in Walford Grange. My good Barrett died suddenly, and in my solitude I wanted someone to sit and talk with me in the long evenings, for even the bright wood fire flickering on the hearth could not satisfy all my desires for cheerful companionship. I should not have wished to marry if I had had a brother to live with me, to share my thoughts and occupations, and who would himself marry and preserve the name. But I was the last of the family, and I did not mean to let an ancient race die out.

I began seriously to think of marrying, though whom, I had not an idea, for so far I had not seen the woman I should care to marry, nor could I suppose that anyone looked with an eye of favour upon me. But when a man makes up his mind to marry, and sets out on his travels by land and sea, resolved never to return to his home till he brings a wife with him, it would be hard if he could not effect his purpose.

It happened that I met with my wife unexpectedly, and where I should have thought I was least likely to meet her— in a log house in the far west of America. Her name was Grace Calvert, and she was only eighteen years old, fair and fresh as an unfolding flower, and full of the high spirits and delight of life suited to her age and her free and simple bringing up. I fell in love with her at first sight, and we were married after a short courtship, for I had obtained the object of my travel, and my little wife was wild with curiosity and impatience to see England. She had a most romantic conception of the land of her forefathers, and delighted me by her belief that every village in England contained a church, vast and venerable as Westminster Abbey, and was engirt with hills crowned by frowning fortresses.

Grace had never seen houses built either of brick or stone, and had I not been able to show her a photograph of Walford Grange, it would have been impossible to give her any idea of an object so strange that there was nothing within the narrow limits of her experience with which to compare it. Her imagination was greatly stirred by the picture of the old house. Not a detail escaped her, from the fluted chimneys to the stone seats in the wide porch. The oriel windows, with their diamond panes, pleased my young wife more than anything, and especially she admired the broad windows of the best bed-chamber, in which some two years before I had wrought my destructive will on the ancestral bed. The room was now bare and stripped of furniture, and since Mrs Barrett's death I had kept it constantly locked.

Grace was fascinated with the position of the room, with its large window over the porch, looking down the avenue of limes by which the house was approached, to the open country, and the line of low hills that bounded the horizon.

'That room must be lighter than those on the ground floor,' she said, 'see how the upper story projects and throws a shadow over the lower rooms. We will make it our sitting-room, will we not?'

The request gave me a strange sinking of heart, and I felt that not even the society of my young wife could induce me to live in the room that had so long contained the hearse-like bed. I temporised with her in a vague manner, neither granting nor denying her request. I begged her to wait till she could see for herself how much better adapted to the comfort of daily life were the rooms on the ground-floor than those on the upper story.

In all her short life, Grace had not been further than twenty miles from the spot where she was born, and I feared lest taking her away from all she loved, and from everything with which she was familiar, might prove too keen a pain.

There was a brief tempest of tears at parting with the dear ones she was never to meet again, but it was an April shower succeeded by smiles. Each outburst of weeping was of shorter duration, and the sunny intervals between them were longer, till in a few days Grace was her bright self again. The excitement of the journey was so overwhelming as to swallow up every other feeling.

We reached our home one November afternoon, as the setting sun looked out through a rift in the clouds, and his level beams lighted up every casement with a red glow. As we drove up the leafless avenue, heavy drops fell from the bare boughs overhead, and Grace, clinging to my arm, said in a frightened whisper—

'O Humphrey, that light in the window is not like sunshine! It looks as if your old house was on fire!' and raising my eyes I caught for one moment the full effect of the illusion. But, the sun sinking into his bed of cloud, the red glow faded from the windows and left them dark and dim. 'Welcome, my darling, to your English home!' I said, and I took my little wife by the hand and led her up the wide oak staircase; and before we sat down to our evening meal I had taken her over the house from garret to basement, preceding her, candle in hand, through the darkening rooms.

She expressed unbounded admiration for the house and its furniture, but the old family portraits and pictures excited her utmost enthusiasm, for Grace had never seen anything more venerable or older than her grandparents and the log house in which she was born. When her raptures had toned down sufficiently to allow her to eat a little, and we were seated at supper in the oak parlour, my little wife suddenly said:—

'Humphrey, there ought to be a ghost in a house like this.'

'Why should there be?' I asked, while I smiled at her extreme gravity.

'Because so many generations of men and women cannot have been born and died in this house without leaving some trace of themselves for us who come after,' and I saw that works of fiction had penetrated into the far west, for Grace had certainly been reading romances.

'I object to talking about ghosts at supper,' I said; 'breakfast is the best time for such conversation, and not a word should be uttered on the subject later than twelve o'clock at noon,' and I rose, and taking one of the candles with me, and holding it so as to throw the light on a dark painting over the mantelshelf, I asked—

'Do you know who that is?'

My little wife looked earnestly at the portrait, with her head inclined dubiously, and with a puzzled expression of face.

'I am not surprised that you do not know who that dark sinister-looking man is, for the backwoods of America are not hung with portraits of Charles the Second. Yes, that is King Charles; and the melancholy cast of his features must be merely an inherited expression— certainly nothing in his nature answered to it— for he passed through grief and tragedy with a light heart. He once spent a night in this very house; we have the tradition of his visit, with many quaint details, preserved to this day.'

'Oh how wonderful to think of it!' said Grace eagerly; 'and would the king sup in this very room where you and I are now?'

'Yes, in this very room, and would you like to know what he had for supper?'

'No, that is not the kind of thing that makes me curious. I want to know how the king looked, how he was dressed, and in which of those solemn-looking old bedrooms upstairs he slept. No doubt you still have the bed the king slept in?'

'No,' I replied with decision, 'that I am sure we have not.'

'Then to-morrow, Humphrey, you will shew me the room the king slept in, and the bed I can imagine for myself.'

The bed she could imagine for herself! My little wife did not know what she was talking about. The next day the event occurred which might have been expected. I was walking in the garden, when Grace came to me, and slipping her hand through my arm, drew me towards the porch.

'You see that large window,' she said, pointing towards it as she spoke; 'that is the one I admired so much in the picture of the house. I have looked out of every window but that, and I fancy the room must be locked, for I cannot open it, so I have fetched you to unlock it for me.'

I walked in silence by her side while she led me into the house and upstairs to the door of the hated room, talking with so much animation herself that she did not notice that I had not spoken a word.

'This is the room,' she said gaily, and she turned the latch of the door to and fro, saying as she did so, 'You see it is locked.'

'I know it is,' I said sullenly.

'Then fetch the key and open it,' and Grace gave the door handle a little impetuous shake.

'My dearest, don't ask me again to open that door, for I shall not do it.'

'Not do what I ask you to do? How cruel of you!' and her eyes filled with tears.

I knew that my young wife thought me brutal, but I could only say 'Anything else in my power I will do for you, only this one thing, this one little thing, I beg you will not ask me to do.'

'If you admit that it is such a very small thing, there can be no reason why you should refuse to grant me such a trivial request,' persisted Grace; 'when I ask you simply to unlock a door in your own house, and you refuse to do it, I can only think that you do not love me, or else that there is some horrid mystery about the room that you wish to keep hidden from me;' and she wiped away a hasty tear, that proceeded rather from indignation than from grief.

'My dear Grace, do not let us be tragic about nothing. There is no secret connected with this room that I have ever heard of, and I love you so much that I cannot bear to see you troubling yourself with absurd imaginations. The fact is this. I have a feeling— call it superstition, what you will— but I have a feeling that would make it very painful to me to open this door and take you into the room. And what pleasure could there be in seeing a bare, unfurnished room, precisely like any other empty room?'

'But I should set about furnishing it at once.'

'Let us come away,' I said, gently removing her dear obstinate hand from the lock. 'I repeat, I have a feeling about that room that would prevent my ever being happy in it,' and, I added lightly, 'Don't let my Eve spoil our paradise by longing after the forbidden fruit.'

But Grace said quickly, 'It was not Adam who forbade Eve to eat of the fruit. If it had been, I can't see that there would have been any great harm in disobeying him.' And we said no more about the locked door, but a cloud had come between us, and the unalloyed sweetness of our first happiness was lost.

One day, a few weeks after this folly, when I was beginning to hope that my little wife had forgotten her curiosity, I saw from her constrained and uneasy manner that something had happened to disturb her.

'My dear Grace, you certainly are not happy this morning— will you not tell me what ails you?' I asked.

Her voice trembled and her face flushed as she replied. 'Humphrey, I did not think you could tell me an untruth.'

'My child, what do you mean? We are playing at cross purposes. Be so good as to explain your meaning, that we may not misunderstand each other for a moment.'

'You told me that the big bed-room you keep locked was empty.'

'So it is,' I said, growing impatient at this childish scene, 'but what is the untruth I have told you?'

'Why, the room is not empty. I can prove what I say.'

'The room not empty! Nonsense! I keep the key, and none but myself has entered it these two years.'

'How can you persist in such an untruth, Humphrey? I am not ashamed to confess that I looked through the keyhole— I wonder I did not do it before— and I saw in the middle of the room, between the door and the window, an enormous old bed. I could only see the two foot-posts, but they went up to the ceiling, and the footboard was high and richly carved, and the curtains a gloomy, dark green. So you have deceived me about the room, and I am afraid there is some secret connected with it that you dare not tell me. What ails you, Humphrey?' and my wife rose with a terrified exclamation, for I thought I was fainting, and all the life seemed to have gone out of the air.

'Grace,' I said, when I had shaken off the sense of oppression, 'let us go at once to that unlucky room, and settle this preposterous dispute. You say that the room has furniture in it— I say that it is empty. We will see which of us is right, and then we will never mention the subject again,' and I asked my wife to come with me and assure herself that the room was, as I said, absolutely bare and unfurnished. My hand shook as I turned the key, and, flinging the door open till it strained on its hinges, we entered the room together.

Grace shrank back with a low cry, and covered her face with her hands.

'Where is it gone to, the great bed that I saw standing on this very spot? I cannot have been deceived. O Humphrey! why do you play me such cruel tricks? You terrify me.'

'My little wife,' I said, assuming an air of cheerfulness I was far from feeling, 'this comes of what I must call your overweening curiosity. If my dear girl had been content to let me keep this door locked, she would not have grown so curious that her little brain is almost turned, and she has taken to seeing housewifely spectral illusions of domestic furniture. Depend upon it, what you think you saw was nothing but the creature of your own imagination, that has dwelt so long on the idea of furnishing the room that you have only to peep through the keyhole, and, hey, presto! the thing is done, and beds and tables start forward at your bidding. But henceforward you can enter the room as often as you like, only we will not live in it, and I will not have it furnished.'

This appeared to satisfy Grace, and though I could not fully persuade her that the great bed she had seen when she peeped through the keyhole was an illusion begotten of curiosity and a lively imagination, yet with the door of the room unlocked, she felt that she had some control over any tricks I might play her in the future.

I was deeply disturbed by what she had told me. I had not breathed a word to my wife about the destruction of the ancestral bed. Mrs Barrett was dead before we were married, and I had changed my servants since her death, and, as we saw nothing of our neighbours, Grace could not have heard from anyone of the ghastly old bed, which nevertheless she had accurately described to me.

I could never tell her the truth now. It would shake her nerves, and impress her with the idea that there was something weird about the house. I wished I had not destroyed the old bed. Better far that she should have known the gloomy reality than behold a presentment of it that was neither an embodiment of memory nor a vivid picturing of it from imagination. I tried if I could summon up a like hallucination, but in vain. Though my memory of the ancient bed was perfect, and every detail stamped on my mind, never could I call it up before my external vision, however earnestly I tried to do so.

Grace completely regained her accustomed cheerfulness, and in the spring was busy making a thousand little preparations for the expected arrival of an infant, which was to surpass any yet born into this world. I could hardly believe the gentle obstinacy of my wife, when, after all I had said about the empty room, she asked one day if she might not make it into a nursery.

'Do you not remember, dear, that I said we would not furnish that room?' I said.

'Oh, of course, not furnish it; a nursery needs no furniture; but it is much the most cheerful and sunny room in the house.'

And again I had to appear inhuman and refuse my little wife a trivial request.

One morning as I sat in my room busy with my accounts, Grace came to tell me that she was going to drive to the county town, some eight miles distant, for a round of shopping, such as her soul loved. I said that if she would wait till the next day I should be able to take her myself, but she tapped the barometer on the wall, that had stood for some time at 'set fair', and assured me it would rain to-morrow, and that she must avail herself of the fine weather to-day. So away drove my self-willed darling, nodding a gay farewell as the carriage drove away from the house.

Grace returned late in the afternoon in the best of spirits, bringing with her an enormous package, such as none but a country woman, or one, like my little wife from the far west, would dream of bringing with her in an open carriage¹². It must have broken the coachman's heart to drive with it through the streets of the county town.

'What in the name of wonder have you brought home with you?' I asked.

'Ah!' she said, laughing, 'it is a trial for your curiosity now! Anything else you may ask me I will tell you, only I cannot let you know anything about this mysterious package.'

'Then have it put out of sight,' I said, 'or depend upon it I shall find some hole in the wrapper to peep through. You ought to know what a devouring passion curiosity is.'

As the unwieldy bundle was carried upstairs, its cover slipped aside and revealed a pair of black oak rockers. But I said nothing; Grace should tell me her little secret in her own way, and at her own time.

We thought ourselves the happiest creatures in the world when our little son Heneage was born. The gloom that brooded over the house from the death of many generations was lessened by the joy of birth, and my young son's life was like the sprouting acorn that sends up its vigorous shoot through the earth, fed by the fallen leaves of a hundred autumns. On the third day of our happiness my wife sent for me, and told me she had a very pretty surprise for me.

'I can tell you all about the big mysterious package now. It was a beautiful old-fashioned cradle that I bought in Carlyon from a man called Gillam, who keeps an old furniture shop here. I fell in love with it at once, for I knew how well it would suit this house with its old oak. Gillam said he could swear it was old work; in fact, he said it was originally part of a fine old bedstead a poor mad gentleman in the neighbourhood actually destroyed in a fit of frenzy, but he was lucky enough to secure a portion of the wreck, and made it up into that cradle, and baby looks lovely in it. I'm afraid I gave a great deal of money for it, but one does not meet with such a beautiful thing every day,' and the nurse removed a screen from before the cradle, that its beauties might burst upon me suddenly and with the more effect.

Cold drops stood on my brow as I recognised, in the high sides and head of the cradle, the carving of ivy branches and berries I had so madly given Gillam when I destroyed the old bed.

'I thought you would have been so pleased,' said Grace, disappointed by my silence as I stood spell-bound, my eyes following every line of the hated carving. 'I thought you would have been so pleased to see baby in a cradle really worthy of him.'

But I could not speak; I was oppressed by a sense of coming doom.

'It is very unkind of you,' said Grace. 'I had prepared a pretty surprise for you, and instead of being pleased, you stand and sigh and look as if you saw a ghost. Nurse, take baby out of his lovely cradle; we must get him a common wicker thing to lie in instead!' And the nurse did as her mistress bade her, and lifted little Heneage from his cradle of death, for while we talked the child had slept his feeble life away.

I have no memory of what happened day by day during the few weeks following. It was one consuming fear lest my wife too should die. Six weeks after our child's death I carried her downstairs, and this was the only progress made towards recovery. She remained at the same stage of convalescence, made wayward by grief, with shattered nerves, and so weak in mind and body that I dared not thwart her in anything. As the dim, sunless days of autumn drew on, my little wife said to me as though we had never spoken on the subject before—

'I want the big empty room furnished for my sitting-room, Humphrey. I shall have a little sunshine there sometimes to cheer me in your dismal English winter, and it will amuse me to furnish it.'

As I looked at her white wishful face, I felt that nothing mattered to me now, and I said, 'Do exactly as you like, dear, in everything,' and she was too listless to thank me.

But the work of transforming the sombre room into a bright boudoir proceeded rapidly, for Grace said with a shudder, 'I will have no more old oak furniture.'

My little wife always went to extremes, and now, in her antipathy to old oak, she filled the room with tawdry chips of furniture, chairs made of gilded match-sticks tied together with ribbons, that must sink into feeble ruins if a cat so much as jumped on them.

I entered into all her little fancies, and feigned excessive admiration of each fresh idea she had on the subject of decoration. I did her bidding, even to placing her couch on the very spot where the hated bed had stood. Thus was my resistance broken down, and I, who three years ago had tried by sheer physical force to thwart destiny, was now unconsciously working to bring about its fulfilment. It did not tarry long.

One gloomy November afternoon, Grace lay on her couch covered with soft shawls, and the window curtains were drawn back to give as much light as possible. The glow of the setting sun illuminated the room, and lent a more living hue to the grey pallor of her face.

'How like the day when I first came to Walford Grange!' she said; 'the sun is setting with the same fiery light. Do go into the garden, Humphrey, and see if the windows are aglow with red light as they were then.' And I left her to do as she asked me.

Seen from the garden, the house looked precisely as it had done on the day of our homecoming. From garret to basement every window glowed red in the light of the setting sun, as though from fire within. Everything that my eyes rested on was as it had been a year ago. Grace and I only were changed— changed in ourselves and changed to each other. I felt impatient of the changeless aspect of nature and of inanimate things around me, and I entered the house, now dark in contrast with the twilight without, and returned to my wife's room with a heavy heart.

'The house looks as it did when you first saw it,' I said. 'Till the sun sank behind the hill, the windows were lighted up with the same strange effect of fire that you noticed a year ago,' and I threw a fresh log on the embers as I spoke, sending a bright train of sparks up the wide chimney. 'Shall I light the candles?' I asked, turning towards my wife's couch; 'the room is growing dark.' But there was no reply. I was speaking to the dead.

In vain I had baulked the old bed of its prey, for there on the very spot where it had stood for three centuries and generations of my ancestors had died, the wife of the last of the Walfords lay dead.

I buried my sweet Grace by our little son, and on the night of the funeral, alone in my desolate home, I conceived the idea of freeing myself for ever from the horror of darkness that had fallen on Walford Grange. I sent every servant away. I would have the house and my sorrow to myself.

When I was assured that I was alone in the house, I went rapidly from room to room in a strange exultation, speaking aloud and flinging open doors and windows till the cold night air rushed through chambers and passages, and curtains and hangings flapped in the wind.

'When I destroyed the old bed of death,' I said, 'I thought to restore joy and brightness to Walford Grange. But I should have destroyed not it alone, but the room in which it stood, and the very house of which it formed a part. Never more shall man dwell in this house glutted with death. Never more shall the voice of the bride and bridegroom be heard in its chambers, or footsteps of children be heard on its stairs. Never more shall fire, subdued to harmless household use be kindled on its hearth, but fire untamed in its ferocity shall devour the accursed pile.' And I seized the burning log from the hearth and threw it on the couch where Grace had died.

Carrying a lighted brand, I sped from room to room of the doomed house, leaving in each a fiery token of my presence, and then, descending the wide staircase, where flickering shadows were cast from every open door, and the silence was broken by the crackling sound of flames, I let myself out into the darkness, closing the heavy door behind me with a crash.

On through the cold damp air I ran, the moon through a rift in the clouds guiding me by her fitful light, till, drawing her shroud around her, she left me again in darkness. Not once did I turn to right or left or look behind me till I had gained the summit of the hills that bounded the valley. Then I stood and turned to take a last look at the home of my fathers. Just then the moon, issuing forth in cold splendour from her bed of cloud, shed a solemn lustre far and wide. And I saw for the last time the house of my birth, the cradle and grave of my race, and every window from basement to garret glowed with fire, no mere reflected glare, but red from the raging fire within, and keen flames darted from the casement of the room above the porch.

I stood long to watch the fire of my own kindling, till when a sudden burst of light and leaping splendour of flame showed me that the gabled roof had fallen in, I shouted, took off my hat, and waved a last farewell to Walford Grange.

____________________

2: The Devil of the Marsh

H. B. Marriott-Watson

Henry Brereton Mariott Watson, 1863-1921

Diogenes of London, Methuen, 1893

IT WAS nigh upon dusk when I drew close to the Great Marsh, and already the white vapours were about, riding across the sunken levels like ghosts in a churchyard. Though I had set forth in a mood of wild delight, I had sobered in the lonely ride across the moor and was now uneasily alert. As my horse jerked down the grassy slopes that fell away to the jaws of the swamp I could see thin streams of mist rise slowly, hover like wraiths above the long rushes, and then, turning gradually more material, go blowing heavily away across the flat. The appearance of the place at this desolate hour, so remote from human society and so darkly significant of evil presences, struck me with a certain wonder that she should have chosen this spot for our meeting. She was a familiar of the moors, where I had invariably encountered her; but it was like her arrogant caprice to test my devotion by some such dreary assignation. The wide and horrid prospect depressed me beyond reason, but the fact of her neighbourhood drew me on, and my spirits mounted at the thought that at last she was to put me in possession of herself Tethering my horse upon the verge of the swamp, I soon discovered the path that crossed it, and entering struck out boldly for the heart. The track could have been little used, for the reeds, which stood high above the level of my eyes upon either side, straggled everywhere across in low arches, through which I dodged, and broke my way with some inconvenience and much impatience. A full half-hour I was solitary in that wilderness, and when at last a sound other than my own footsteps broke the silence the dusk had fallen.

I was moving very slowly at the time, with a mind half disposed to turn from the melancholy expedition, which it seemed to me now must surely be a cruel jest she had played upon me. While some such reluctance held me, I was suddenly arrested by a hoarse croaking which broke out upon my left, sounding somewhere from the reeds in the black mire. A little further it came again from close at hand, and when I had passed on a few more steps in wonder and perplexity, I heard it for the third time. I stopped and listened, but the marsh was as a grave, and so taking the noise for the signal of some raucous frog, I resumed my way. But in a little the croaking was repeated, and coming quickly to a stand I pushed the reeds aside and peered into the darkness. I could see nothing, but at the immediate moment of my pause I thought I detected the sound of some body trailing through the rushes. My distaste for the adventure grew with this suspicion, and had it not been for my delirious infatuation I had assuredly turned back and ridden home. The ghastly sound pursued me at intervals along the track, until at last, irritated beyond endurance by the sense of this persistent and invisible company, I broke into a sort of run. This, it seemed, the creature (whatever it was) could not achieve, for I heard no more of it, and continued my way in peace. My path at length ran out from among the reeds upon the smooth flat of which she had spoken, and here my heart quickened, and the gloom of the dreadful place lifted. The flat lay in the very centre of the marsh, and here and there in it a gaunt bush or withered tree rose like a spectre against the white mists. At the further end I fancied some kind of building loomed up; but the fog which had been gathering ever since my entrance upon the passage sailed down upon me at that moment and the prospect went out with suddenness. As I stood waiting for the clouds to pass, a voice cried to me out of its centre, and I saw her next second with bands of mist swirling about her body, come rushing to me from the darkness. She put her long arms about me, and, drawing her close, I looked into her deep eyes. Far down in them, it seemed to me, I could discern a mystic laughter dancing in the wells of light, and I had that ecstatic sense of nearness to some spirit of fire which was wont to possess me at her contact.

'At last,' she said, 'at last, my beloved!' I caressed her.

'Why,' said I, tingling at the nerves, 'why have you put this dolorous journey between us? And what mad freak is your presence in this swamp?' She uttered her silver laugh, and nestled to me again.

'I am the creature of this place,' she answered. 'This is my home. I have sworn you should behold me in my native sin ere you ravished me away.'

'Come, then,' said I; 'I have seen; let there be an end of this. I know you, what you are. This marsh chokes up my heart. God forbid you should spend more of your days here. Come.'

'You are in haste,' she cried. 'There is yet much to learn. Look, my friend,' she said, 'you who know me, what I am. This is my prison, and I have inherited its properties. Have you no fear?'

For answer I pulled her to me, and her warm lips drove out the horrid humours of the night; but the swift passage of a flickering mockery over her eyes struck me as a flash of lightning, and I grew chill again.

'I have the marsh in my blood,' she whispered: 'the marsh and the fog of it. Think ere you vow to me, for I am the cloud in a starry night.'

A lithe and lovely creature, palpable of warm flesh, she lifted her magic face to mine and besought me plaintively with these words. The dews of the nightfall hung on her lashes, and seemed to plead with me for her forlorn and solitary plight.

'Behold!' I cried, 'witch or devil of the marsh, you shall come with me! I have known you on the moors, a roving apparition of beauty; nothing more I know, nothing more I ask. I care not what this dismal haunt means; not what these strange and mystic eyes. You have powers and senses above me; your sphere and habits are as mysterious and incomprehensible as your beauty. But that', I said, 'is mine, and the world that is mine shall be yours also.'

She moved her head nearer to me with an antic gesture, and her gleaming eyes glanced up at me with a sudden flash, the similitude (great heavens!) of a hooded snake. Starting, I fell away, but at that moment she turned her face and set it fast towards the fog that came rolling in thick volumes over the flat. Noiselessly the great cloud crept down upon us, and all dazed and troubled I watched her watching it in silence. It was as if she awaited some omen of horror, and I too trembled in the fear of its coming.

Then suddenly out of the night issued the hoarse and hideous croaking I had heard upon my passage. I reached out my arm to take her hand, but in an instant the mists broke over us, and I was groping in the vacancy. Something like panic took hold of me, and, beating through the blind obscurity, I rushed over the flat, calling upon her. In a little the swirl went by, and I perceived her upon the margin of the swamp, her arm raised as in imperious command. I ran to her, but stopped, amazed and shaken by a fearful sight. Low by the dripping reeds crouched a small squat thing, in the likeness of a monstrous frog, coughing and choking in its throat. As I stared, the creature rose upon its legs and disclosed a horrid human resemblance. Its face was white and thin, with long black hair; its body gnarled and twisted as with the ague of a thousand years. Shaking, it whined in a breathless voice, pointing a skeleton finger at the woman by my side.

'Your eyes were my guide,' it quavered. 'Do you think that after all these years I have no knowledge of your eyes? Lo, is there aught of evil in you I am not instructed in? This is the Hell you designed for me, and now you would leave me to a greater.'

The wretch paused, and panting leaned upon a bush, while she stood silent, mocking him with her eyes, and soothing my terror with her soft touch.

'Hear!' he cried, turning to me, hear the tale of this woman that you may know her as she is. She is the Presence of the marshes. Woman or Devil I know not, but only that the accursed marsh has crept into her soul and she herself is become its Evil Spirit; she herself, that lives and grows young and beautiful by it, has its full power to blight and chill and slay. I, who was once as you are, have this knowledge. What bones lie deep in this black swamp who can say but she? She has drained of health, she has drained of mind and of soul; what is between her and her desire that she should not drain also of life? She has made me a devil in her Hell, and now she would leave me to my solitary pain, and go search for another victim. But she shall not!' he screamed through his chattering teeth; 'she shall not! My Hell is also hers! She shall not!'

Her smiling untroubled eyes left his face and turned to me: she put out her arms, swaying towards me, and so fervid and so great a light glowed in her face that, as one distraught of superhuman means, I took her into my embrace. And then the madness seized me.

'Woman or devil,' I said, 'I will go with you! Of what account this pitiful past? Blight me even as that wretch, so be only you are with me.'

She laughed, and, disengaging herself, leaned, half-clinging to me, towards the coughing creature by the mire.

'Come,' I cried, catching her by the waist. 'Come!' She laughed again a silver-ringing laugh. She moved with me slowly across the flat to where the track started for the portals of the marsh. She laughed and clung to me.

But at the edge of the track I was startled by a shrill, hoarse screaming, and behold, from my very feet, that loathsome creature rose up and wound his long black arms about her shrieking and crying in his pain. Stooping I pushed him from her skirts, and with one sweep of my arm drew her across the pathway; as her face passed mine her eyes were wide and smiling. Then of a sudden the still mist enveloped us once more; but ere it descended I had a glimpse of that contorted figure trembling on the margin, the white face drawn and full of desolate pain. At the sight an icy shiver ran through me. And then through the yellow gloom the shadow of her darted past me, to the further side. I heard the hoarse cough, the dim noise of a struggle, a swishing sound, a thin cry, and then the sucking of the slime over something in the rushes. I leapt forward: and once again the fog thinned, and I beheld her, woman or devil, standing upon the verge, and peering with smiling eyes into the foul and sickly bog. With a sharp cry wrung from my nerveless soul, I turned and fled down the narrow way from that accursed spot; and as I ran the thickening fog closed round me, and I heard far off and lessening still the silver sound of her mocking laughter.

_______________

3: Beautiful Decoy

Anonymous

Albury Banner and Wodonga Express, 29 April 1938

"PUNCH," said Gerald Hansom, setting down an empty glass on the small round table, "I want you to do me a favor. "

"A favor or a fiver?" inquired Rupert Tressider Paris lazily, beckoning to a waiter. His companion remained silent until the man had taken the order and returned with fresh supplies. Then...

"Money!" he said, contemptuously. "It's something more serious than that."

"Well," said Paris, who was known to his friends as Punch, "unburden yourself and tell me the trouble."

"The trouble," Hansom informed him, "is this."

From his breast inside pocket he produced a flat, oblong case of very worn leather, which he pressed open. On a bed of velvet that had faded to the color of old ivory lay a rope of pearls which Punch recognised at a glance to be worth several thousand pounds.

"Great Jupiter!" exclaimed Punch. "What the deuce have you got there? Been doing a job of burgling as a side line, or is it smash and grab?"

"That," exclaimed his friend, "is known as the Hansom pearls: been in the family for generations; you've probably heard of them."

"I have," agreed Punch, seriously. "And I've, a pretty shrewd idea what they are worth. I suppose you realise you are carting a small fortune around with you. D'you think it is wise? Because it strikes me that you are simply begging for all sorts of trouble flashing them about in public like this. For the love of Mike, man, put them back in your pocket right away. And then, if you'll take my advice, hop off to your bank like a bee heading for its hive, and park them in the innermost recesses of the strongroom."

"But that is just what I won't do," protested Gerald, returning them to his pocket. "Those infernal pearls have got to reach the jolly old homestead at Maplesford to-night, so that they can be on show tomorrow. You see, it may sound silly, but they are always handed over to the eldest son's betrothed when tho engagement is announced. Sort of old Spanish custom― been done in the family for generations. And if that little ceremony were omitted tomorrow Molly would probably have a fit."

"Well," said Punch, a shade wearily, "why not hop into your car right now and beetle off home like a scalded rat?"

"Because I've got a date," came the answer. "Oh, you needn't look at me like that. I'm not trifling with anyone's affections. An old pal of mine whom. I haven't seen for years is returning to the West Coast of Africa tonight. I bumped into him this morning in Regent Street, and he explained that this was the last day of his leave, and insisted on my meeting him directly after lunch and carrying on until he sails from Tilbury somewhere about midnight. I couldn't get out of it, and I've a notion it will be a pretty hectic party. More than likely I shan't be in a fit state to look after myself, let alone the pearls, before we are through with it. That's one reason why I don't want to lug them about with me. But there's another. I've a suspicion that I'm being followed!"

"What?" Punch's tone was incredulous. "You've been seeing too many gangster films, my lad."

"I'm not fooling," insisted Gerald. "There was a bloke sitting over there— he left a couple of minutes ago— whose face seemed vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn't place it. He was hanging about outside my bank when I left it. this morning after collecting the pearls."

Punch tapped the table top lightly with the tips of his fingers. "Looks a bit sinister,' he admitted, thoughtfully.  "On the other hand, you may be mistaken, or it might be a perfectly innocent coincidence. I've known queerer things happen than that."

"That is possible," his friend agreed, "but I don't think I'm mistaken. Which brings me to the favor I want to ask you. Will you take charge of the blessed things for me? You're motoring down this afternoon, aren't you? I thought so. Well, nobody could posibly suspect you of having them. If you say 'no' I'm absolutely ditched. So be a sport, Punch."

Punch stared at him, on the verge of caustic comment. Then, suddenly, he grinned broadly. "You're incorrigible," he announced. "I suppose they are properly insured? All right: I'll do it. But don't hand them over to me here in 'coram populo'; wait till we're having a wash before lunch."

BARELY a minute after the two friends had left the cloak-room there entered a tall, dark, smartly-dressed man who proceeded to wash his hands. There was no one else in the room except the attendant, who handed him a towel. "I am having lunch here with a couple of friends," announced the newcomer suddenly. "I wonder if you have seen them."

He proceeded to give a remarkably detailed description of Punch and Gerald, and long before he had finished recognition dawned in the attendant's face.

"Why, the gentlemen went out only just before you came in sir," he said, eagerly.

"Ah!" commented the other, carelessly tossing away the soiled towel. "It's rather queer. They were to have waited for me in the cocktail bar. I've a nasty feeling they're up to something— arranging a leg-pull for my benefit. I suppose neither of them produced a parcel and showed it to the other?"

"Just what happened!" exclaimed the attendant, astonishment and admiration nicely blended in his expression. "Fancy you guessing that, sir! At least, it wasn't exactly a parcel; so far as I could see it was a large, flat box."

The stranger nodded. "I thought as much," he said, with quiet satisfaction. "And then what?"

"The one I took to be the younger of the two handed it over to the other, who put it in his inside breast pocket," the man told him.

"Good," was the tall man's verdict. "Now I know what I'm up against and I'll turn the tables on them. That's worth ten bob if you keep your mouth shut. Catch!"

Tossing the man a crumpled note, he walked out of the room.

IT WAS A quarter to four when Punch ensconced himself behind the wheel of his Rolls and started on his journey. After lunch he had gone to an exhibition in Bond Street, where two of his water-colors were on display, and had. then looked in at one of his clubs. As he nosed the car along Piccadilly, he smiled at the thought of his parting with Gerald Hansom.

"Well, so long, old chap," Gerald had said, heartily, on the pavement outside the restaurant. "You've taken a load off my mind. Don't lose the baubles, will you?"

So much, reflected Punch, for all the secrecy of the transfer effected in the cloak-room. Gerald was the sort of congenital idiot who just couldn't help being an ass.

Once he had left the outskirts of London behind and was fairly on the Great West Road, Punch gave the car its head, thoroughly enjoying the rush of fresh air against his face.

Shortly before five o'clock he realised with a sense of surprise that he would welcome tea and buttered toast, and so he stopped at the next hotel he came to, driving the car into the yard as a precaution against a possible fine for parking. It was while he was having tea in the lounge that he noticed two men come in and sit down at a table at theother end of the room. Presently they were joined by a third, who, in response to a look of inquiry from one of the former, made a gesture clearly betokening assent and satisfaction. In a few minutes the three of them had gulped down their tea, settled the score, and departed from sight but not from mind.

Something about them was worrying at Punch's memory, but he could not place them and presently gave up the attempt. He had left the main road to the West some miles back, and on resuming his journey travelled along a hardly frequented way leading south-west.

For about fifteen minutes the car sailed easily' along, and then, with an apologetic little cough, slowed down and finally slid silently to a stop. That the trouble was lack of petrol, Punch divined on the instant; worse, there had been none of the gusty, spluttering noise attendant upon a choked pipe or the presence of water in the spirit. This meant that his tank was empty. Yet, to make assurance doubly sure, he got out of the car, lifted up the bonnet, and tried to flood the carburetter— without any success. Then he inspected the tank. Whereafter he hitched up his immaculately creased trousers, sat down on the running-board, selected a cigarette from a gold case, lit it, and spoke aloud words he would never have uttered in a drawing room. It is, admittedly, irritating— to say the least, of it— to find oneself stranded many miles short of one's destination by a by-road which one has used as a short cut and along which very little traffic passes. The knowledge that this predicament is due, in the first case, to an empty petrol tank, and, in the second, to the fact that some person unknown has bored a neat little hole in the said tank— probably at that quaint little pub where one stopped for tea— would assuredly call forth comment from even an archangel.

Punch was a very nice fellow, but he wore a brown felt hat— not a halo. Then, most unexpectedly, he heard a low purr and a moment later an open four-seater of a very popular make, driven by a young woman of undeniable physical charm, swept round the bend behind him, slowed down, and drew up to a Standstill a little ahead of the Rolls. The driver of the four-seater flung open a door and clambered out, displaying two very pleasing silk-clad ankles and shapely calves in doing so. Punch, approaching hat in hand, was human enough to notice these things.

"What's the trouble?" inquired the young woman— she looked little more than a girl— before Punch could open his mouth. "Can I help? If you've run out of juice I can't, because I haven't a spare tin." She had a very nice voice.

Punch bowed. "That," he agreed, "is partly the trouble. The other half is that some kind person has made a hole in my tank."

"Oh, surely not," exclaimed, the young woman who was dressed all in grey— a color that suited her ashblondeness admirably. "I mean to say, who on earth would do such a thing?"

"Precisely how I felt when I first made the discovery," admitted Punch. "But I assure you it is the case. Have a look for yourself. I only wish I was the victim of an optical illusion."

His companion strolled round to the back of the Rolls, bent down and examined the tank.

"You're quite right," she said, as she straightened up. 'What a scandalous thing! She's such a beauty." Her glance roved over the car, taking in the power and grace of her lines, the expensive fittings and the costly-looking leather suitcase on the seat on the left of the steering wheel. She was certainly a peach, thought Punch, as he studied her.

"A bit awkward for you," she said, thoughtfully, at length. "I'd offer you a tow, but? I 'm afraid my poor old bus would fall to bits if we tried it and, in any case, I haven't a rope and I don't suppose you have. No? I thought not. Look here: would it do if I gave you a lift to the nearest garage? There you could make what arrangements suited you best. Is that any use?'

"You are an angel of light," Punch told her with a grin, "for in half an hour's time I should have been here in the dark."

She smiled back at him.

"As we are going to be fellow travellers for a while— and I hope that garage is a couple of hundred miles away— don't you think we might as well introduce ourselves," Punch continued. "Here is my car, Miss— -" From a bulging wallet, in which a close observer might have distinguished the edges of several pieces of paper of a kind exclusively supplied to the Bank of England, Punch drew a visiting card and handed it to his good Samaritan.

"Paris," she read, aloud. "My hat, are you the man whose horse ran second in the Derby last year? Because if so you must be worth a packet!"

"Well,' said Punch, ratjer awkwardly, "there are a few pennies saved up in the bank. But don't blame me for that. It is mostly my late father's fault."

"A few pennies!" echoed the young woman, mockingly. "That's rather rich: rich as Croesus! I say, if you've got any of those pennies or the family heirlooms in that suitcase I shouldn't leave it there if I were you."

"Oh, there's nothing of value in that— only clothes, a toothbrush and that sort of thing," laughed Punch. "Funny that you should mention the baubles, though, because, as a matter of fact, I've got the Hansom pearls on me. They were yielded up by the bank this morning." He tapped his rather bulging breast pocket. His companion eyed him enviously, a queer expression of conflicting emotions on her attractive face. Eventually contempt won.

"You're a fool!" she exclaimed, disgustedly. "In these days, when one can hardly open a newspaper without reading of a hold-up on the open road, it is nothing short of madness to carry a fortune around in your pocket. You want someone to look after you. I'll be glad when we reach that garage and you're off my hands. I don't like the responsibility; and the sooner it's over the better I'll be pleased! Come along."

Punch grinned disarmingly. "I dare say you're right," he said, easily. "I am a bit casual, I suppose. Just to show that I'm having a lesson I'll see if that suitcase is locked. Dashed if I can remember whether it is or not."

He strolled lazily round the Rolls, tried the locks of the suitcase, found them unfastened, searched his trouser pickets for keys and drew blank. With a rueful grin he returned to the girl.

"Unlocked," he told her, "and I seem to have left my keys behind. Silly of me! Still, it doesn't much matter. I don't suppose anyone will come along this way before I get back with a car to give me a tow. Let's get going, shall we?''

As he got into the car beside the girl he slid his arm over the back of the seat.

"You needn't think I want you to put your arm round me, Mr. Paris," his companion said, coldly. "I have always heard that millionaires are unpleasant that way, but you're the first I've met. It seems you are not the exception that proves the rule."

Punch chuckled. "My dear young woman, I'm not a millionaire and, in any case, nothing was farther from my thoughts," he reassured her. 'I always sit that way when I'm being driven, and if you could see my chauffeur's face you would immediately absolve me of entertaining any particular affection for him. However, to please you, I'll sit straight like a good little boy in the family pew. And may I remind you that although I have made you a present of my identity you have not seen fit to retaliate— rather like talking to a wrong number on the telephone. "

"My name," she told him after a slight hesitation, "is Grey; Joan Grey."

"Is it?" said Punch as the car started off. "Joan Grey, eh?"

His appreciative gaze roved, over her smartly-tailored grey costume and her hat, shoes, stockings, and gloves to match.

"It suits you— Miss Grey,' he murmured slyly. His companion bit her lip to repress a smile, but was unable to disguise the fact that she possessed a bewitching dimple.

"You know,' ho. continued, his expression quizzically bantering, "I'm not surprised you're a bit suspicious of me. I should think most men you meet want to flirt with you, don't they?"

Miss Grey looked straight ahead.

"Do you?" she inquired demurely. Before Punch could reply they rounded a bend and Miss Grey applied her brakes sharply, both hand and foot. They pulled up only just in time to avoid crashing head-on into a large saloon car that was slewed half across the road.

"Another breakdown!" exclaimed Miss Grey. "I wonder what it's due to this time?"

"Sit still and— stick up your hands! No fooling, now, or you'll get hurt. At the first sign of any funny stuff l'll pull the trigger and I don't usually miss at a range of one-sixteenth of an inch."

The voice, which was menacing, came from behind them. Punch stiffened involuntarily, and the movement brought the back of his neck into contact with a cold ring of steel. Quite obviously the threat was no bluff. Reluctantly he elevated his hands as requested, and Miss Grey, after a hunted look round, followed his example. Two men suddenly appeared, one on each side of the four-seater.

"Get on with it, you two," snapped the harsh voice behind Punch. The man on the near side leaned over Punch and plunged a hand into his breast pocket. Punch's view of the other bandit was momentarily obscured, but he heard the bonnet lifted and a soft click.

"I've got his wallet and the jewel case," exulted the man who was attending to Punch.

Punch made mental note of the fact that he had said 'the jewel case.' It was significant.

"Right," snapped the leader, "Jake: Grab the girl's bag and anything else worth while that you can see. But be slippy about it. We don't want to hang about here much longer."

"She's got a rope of pearls!' announced Jake gleefully. He proceeded to unclasp the necklace and then roughly pulled off Joan Grey's gloves.

"And rings," he sang out, wrenching at them.

"If I was a man," panted Miss Grey, "you wouldn't get away with this, you beasts!" She flashed Punch a contemptuous glance.

"I feel sure," said Punch mildly,  "that this is one of those special occasions when discretion is the better part of valour."

Miss Grey made a curious noise which, in anyone less charming, would almost certainly have been labelled a snort.

"Hurry up!" urged the bandit leader. "Finished? Right, get the car going."

His two accomplices ran to the saloon car and clambered hurriedly into her. The engine was started and the car swung round to face straight along the road. Then the leader spoke again.

"Turn round and kneel on your seat, facing this way," he commanded.

Punch and Miss Grey obeyed. Immediately Punch recognised in the leader of the bandits one of the men who had had tea at the same place where he himself had stopped for refreshment. Moreover, he knew in a flash now what he had been unable to recall then, that the fellow had been present in the bar when Gerald had shown him the pearls, and passed them as they parted after lunch, and must have heard Gerald's ill-timed remark.

The man climbed down from the runningboard and started to . back away, keeping them covered.

"If you're wise," he called out, "you won't turn round until we're well away. You'll be asking for trouble if you do, and— you'll get it."

Presently they heard the sound of a gear being let in and the crunch of tyres. At once Miss Grey swung round. Punch followed suit more leisurely. Miss Grey stamped a neatly-shod foot, only just missing the brake pedal, in her excess of emotion.

"Oh!" she cried. "If only I'd got a pistol.

"If I'd known that,' said Punch, 'I'd have lent you mine."

From a side pocket of his jacket he produced something that gleamed blueblack. Then he slipped it back again. Miss Grey stared at him in amazement.

"And you never attempted to use it?" she1 said scornfully, accusingly.

"Well, you see," defended Punch, "I hardly thought it would be safe."

"You don't look like a coward," said his companion, coldly, "but, of course, appearances are deceptive."

"Aren't they?" agreed Punch quietly. He was smiling. "Well," he continued, suddenly, "I think it is about time we let the police I know about this shemozzle. "

"You'll have a nice walk," said Miss Grey, bitingly. "The nearest cottage is over two miles away, and it is not on the telephone."

"You know this part of the country pretty well, then?" commented Punch.  "Funny we've never met before because I often stay not far away— just I the other side of Maplesford, as a matter, of fact."

Miss Grey said nothing; nor did she deign to look at him.

"Well, I shan't have to walk, anyway," said Punch. "If you will be so I kind as to drive me to Maplesford police-station there should be a good chance of catching those blighters."

"But I can't," came the withering I reply. "They've disabled the car."

"I think not," said Punch, quietly. By way of answer Miss Grey pressed the self-starter with no result.

"There you are," she said.

"Oh, quite," agreed Punch, getting out. "But I fancy all they did was to I turn off the petrol. Yes, I'm right. Now try her. There you are."

He got into his seat again, having I fastened down the bonnet. "Now for the police," he said. "Yoicks, and likewise, tally-ho!"

Miss Grey proceeded to light a cigarette.  " 'No,' she said calmly, firmly; and again, 'No.' "

"Will you explain?"

"I don't want to be involved in the case."

"But, Great Scott, you've been robbed! Don't you want to recover your property, let alone get your own back on those bandits?"

"Of course," she said, thoughtfully, "it is a blow losing all that; the money in my bag doesn't matter so much— there were only a few pounds, as it happens— but I don't want to lose my pearls and my rings. Still— I'd sooner do that than be drawn into the inevitable publicity that will attach to the case."

"Why?" asked Punch, curiously.

"Well, you see," she told him, "I'm not 'Miss'; I'm a 'Mrs.' When you  jumped to the conclusion that I was unattached I didn't correct you because―  Oh, well, because I was rather flattered, I suppose. I'm not as young as I look, you know. And when one has been married five years it's rather nice to find a man taking one for a girl not yet out of her 'teens."

"Ye-es, I can understand that," said Punch. 'But where's the snag? Your husband— whoever he is— can't take exception to your having given me a lift out of pity. Dash it— though I don't want to belittle your kindness— it was an act of ordinary courtesy— the chivalry of the road, so to speak."

"Can't he?" she said bleakly. "You don't know my husband. No, I'm sorry, but it can't be done."

"No words of mine will persuade you?"

"No."

"Then perhaps this will."

She found that squat little pistol pressed to her side.

"You'd draw a gun on a woman?" she exclaimed, incredulously.

"On you, certainly," said Punch, and his voice was grim, his eyes stony. "Drive away or I'll knock you on the head and drive myself."

For a long moment his companion looked him in the eyes. Then without a word she obeyed.

"VERY NEAT piece of work, sir,' congratulated the inspector, glanejng from, a sheet of paper in his hand to the man at his side. 'I've seen some of your pictures at the art galleries, but I never guessed you'd be drawing for a rogues' gallery, if I may put it that way. With these sketches of the men and the number of the car we're bound to catch 'em. This one— whom you say was the leader— I recognise at once. Only quite recently we had a circular with his photograph on it sent us by the Yard, with a warning to look out for him. Now if you'll just let me have a list of the articles that were stolen I shan't have to trouble you any more for the present."

"Suppose you start with the lady first," suggested Punch. 'Miss Grey, will you tell the inspector what you've lost?"

She looked at him strangely and then turned to the inspector.

"There was my bag," she began. "It had live or six pounds in notes in it; a purse containing a few shillings and coppers; a lipstick; a compactum vanity case; a comb; and an enamelled cigarette case. I don't think there was anything else. Oh, yes, there was; I remember now. A gold cigarette lighter. Nothing else in my bag that I can think of. Next, there was my pearl necklace."

"Imitation," chipped in Punch suddenly.

She glared at him.

"Best to be truthful, my dear," he said, lightly. "I know women are touchy about these things, but this is a serious matter, y'know."

"Imitation," she agreed softly, after a pause. "Then they took two rings— "

"Neither a wedding ring," interrupted Punch, addressing the inspector, but winking at the girl. She stared at him and now there was a definite hint of fear in her eyes.

"That is so," she said at length, huskily.

The inspector asked one or two questions regarding the color of her bag, the stones set in the rings and so on.

"And now for you, Mr. Paris," he said, when he had finished with her. "What have you lost, sir?"

"Precious little,' replied Punch, coolly. "A wallet full of nothing more valuable than some letters, and a morocco-leather case which had contained a valuable necklace but at the time of the robbery was actually empty."

The girl stared, stared at him, lowered her gaze quickly and trembled.

Outside the police station Punch took his companion firmly by the arm and led her to the car.

"Just have a look in the back of the car and tell me if you see anything unusual in it," he ordered.

She obeyed.

"The only thing I can see," she said, wonderingly, "is something that looks like a ball of paper?"

"Exactly," said Punch. "I was engaged in dropping it over the back of the front seat when you accused me of trying to flirt with you. Look at it."

He reached into the car, retrieved the bundle and smoothed it put. In a bed of crumpled ten and five-pound notes lay a gorgeous pearl necklace. Presently he refolded it and coolly stuffed the package into his pocket.

"Now," he said, 'I want you to drive me to that hotel up the street, I'm going to stand you a cocktail and— give you a lecture."

Five minutes later they were seated in a corner of a hotel lounge, alone in the room.

"Astonishing fortune," toasted Punch as he raised his glass.

"How," said his guest, "did you tumble to it?"

Punch gave her a cigarette, helped himself, lit both and blew smoke rings luxuriously.

"Well," he said, reflectively, "of, course that hole in my tank was what made me faintly suspicious in the first place. Then you arrived so very opportunely and yet so few people use that road. You made a slip when you asked right off if I was out of juice, another when you gave away your knowledge of that part of the district, and a far worse one when you put up that yarn about an angry husband. You see, when your accomplice pinched your rings I spotted that you were not wearing a wedding ring.

"But I think your biggest blunders were the looks in your eyes when you saw the notes in my wallet and when I told you I had the pearl necklace in my breast pocket. I knew then roughly what to expect. So when I went to see if my suitcase was locked I dodged round the back of the car and while I was out of your sight I took the money out of my wallet, bunged some letters in it to make it feel bulky, wrapped the pearls in the bank notes, stuck the empty case in my pocket and, as I said a little while ago, eventually dropped my little bundle of valuables in the back of your car.

"It seemed to me the safest place for them if any search was made, but I banked on the thieves not stopping to examine their plunder on the spot and, as luck would have it, I was right."

She nodded.

"And I took you for a fool!" she murmured. "But tell me! There's one thing I can't understand. Why didn't you use your pistol? I don't really believe you are a coward."

Punch grinned. "Have a look at it," he said. Whipping it out of his pocket, he pointed it straight at her face and pressed the trigger.

A beam of light shot forth!

"Clever toy, isn't it?" smiled Punch. "Just an electric torch, but it does look like a genuine pistol, doesn't it?"

There was a dead silence. Then Miss Grey giggled. All at once her laughter ceased.

"What are you going to do with me?" she asked. "Take me back and hand me over to the police now that you've preened your feathers and humbled my pride?"

"No, I think not," Punch told her. "You see you were only a sort of decoy duck employed by the men. They'll catch it hot and strong and that satisfies my lust for revenge. I'm going to let you off scot free. But for your own sake I suggest you try to go straight; crime is a mug's game, believe me. If you want help in getting a job, write to me; you have my card, don't forget. Now good-bye and good luck."

He rose and gripped her hand.

Miss Grey's eyes were bright with unshed tears.

"Why are you being so decent to me?" she asked, tremulously.

Punch smiled at her almost tenderly.

"Because," he said, softly, "though you were a decoy, you are rather a duck!"

_______________________

4: The Diamond Bracelet

Sandy Sharp

Weekly Times, 11 March 1899

Clearly a pseudonym, but untraceable now

"MY GOOD MAN, can you direct me to the residence of Mr. Sharp, the detective— Sandy Sharp, I believe he is styled? I have been given to understand that he resides somewhere about here."

"That is so, my lord. I am Sandy Sharp, and I live round the next corner," I replied with a smile.

"Ah! You know me, it seems, Mr. Sharp?" and the Earl seemed a little astonished. "It is part of my business, my lord, to make myself acquainted with the personality of as many of the aristocracy as possible. And when your Lordship returned from your prolonged absence in foreign countries about a year ago I chanced to secure a photo at a shop in Princes street, Edinburgh. This is my house, my lord."

"Can you spare me half an hour? I have come specially from Oban to consult you, Mr. Sharp."

"Certainly, my lord; please to walk in."

"You may possibly have heard of a notable family heirloom of ours— the Romanoff bracelet given by the Czar Nicholas I to my grandfather?"

"Yes, my lord; I have heard of it as being of immense value."

"Just so, Mr. Sharp; it has either been lost or stolen."

"And your lordship has come to me in the hope that I may recover it? Would it not have been wiser to have communicated with the police?"

"Not in this case. The fact is, Mr. Sharp, the bracelet belongs to my mother, the Dowager-Countess, who believes it to be in the family safe at the castle. I was foolish enough to allow the Countess to wear it when she was presented at the drawing-room last month, and it has been in my wife's possession since then. Yesterday morning she discovered that it was missing."

"Where was it kept?" I asked.

"In the Countess's jewel case, and that was inside the dressing-case, which was kept in a locked wardrobe."

"You are staying at the Great Western Hotel, I presume, in Oban?"

"No, at the Queen's. The Countess wished to he as quiet as possible."

"You will pardon me, my lord, if you think my questions in any way offensive, but it is absolutely necessary that I be made thoroughly acquainted with the servants in attendance upon the Countess and yourself. I believe there was some little romance attached to your marriage."

"Yes; we were married secretly four years ago, when the Countess was only seventeen, and a ward in Chancery. That course was adopted in order to frustrate the designs of the— ah— Countess's guardian. who wished to secure his wealthy ward for his own son. After the ceremony we separated at the church door, and I did not see her again until the day she became of age."

"I believe she had lived in seclusion?" I ventured to ask.

"Yes; in complete seclusion, at Kilmichael House, in Bute. Once a year her guardian took her to London for "two or three weeks; the rest of her time was spent at his country seat. He died six months before his ward became of age, and then she asserted her right to see a little more of the world."

"Where did you meet when you returned home from your travels, my lord?"

"In London, but we went off to Paris and Italy immediately."

"And the Countess's maid— has she been with her ladyship long?"

"I believe she was engaged soon after my wife left Kilmichael."

"Do you keep a valet, my lord?"

"Certainly."

"How long has he been with you?"

"Nearly nine years! I could trust him with my life; in fact, he risked his own twice for me— once in India when we were suddenly menaced by a ferocious tiger, and our native servants ran away; and again when I was having an early morning bath in a Siamese river, and was attacked by an alligator. In both instances my valet saved me from certain death."

"Has the Countess worn the bracelet at all since your arrival at Oban?"

"No; and so far as we know, no one in Oban besides ourselves knew of its existence."

"A clever thief, one who is at the head of his profession, would think nothing of tracking you for months in the hope of securing such a prize. Did the papers, or any one of them, refer to the bracelet as worn by the Countess at the drawing-room?"

"Not one, so far as we know. I took special care that the reporters who called at my town residence should have no information concerning the bracelet, for I did not wish my mother to know that I had taken it from the safe for my wife to wear."

"Could you arrange with your valet to take a brief holiday, and allow me to become his substitute?" I asked, after a few moments' thought.

"Oh, yes; I am glad you appear to agree with me that my valet knows nothing of the bracelet. When would you come?"

"The sooner the better; to-morrow, if you like. You will find me an efficient servant, my lord; it will not be the first time for me to act in such a capacity. I will present myself at the Queen's Hotel to-morrow on the arrival of the steamer."

"Thank you, Mr. Sharp. Allow me to hand you something by way of a preliminary fee," and he gave me a cheque for ten pounds.

I HAD not long left the city police force, and, so far, had not made much headway in my profession of private detective. But if I could recover the magnificent specimen of diamond jewellery known as the Romanoff bracelet, I felt that it would be the making of me. When I told my wife where I was going she wished to accompany me. She would like a month at Oban, and could take a lodging. But I knew that such an arrangement would effectually baulk all my plans, and to Mary's openly-expressed anger, I would not be cajoled into yielding to her wishes.

"If I am successful in what I am about to undertake you shall have your month at Oban, but it will not be just yet," I said, as I bade her good-bye, after giving her strict injunctions not to make any attempt to communicate with or see me until she heard from me by letter.

When I arrived at the Queen's Hotel I found that the earl's valet was going to Glasgow next morning by the steamer I had just left. I saw him for a few moments, and was favorably impressed. I felt like his master— that I could stake my life on his innocence.

Three theories thus presented themselves— 1. The bracelet had been stolen by the Countess's maid. 2. It had been cleverly abstracted by a London thief who had followed the Earl and Countess from place to place until he got his chance. 3. It had been appropriated by the Countess herself.

Strange as it may seem, for I had not a vestige of evidence to justify me in arriving at such a startling conclusion, before I had been three days acting as the Earl's valet I felt sure in my own mind that the Countess could, if she pleased, solve the mystery surrounding the disappearance of the diamond bracelet. I did not often see her ladyship, but I felt intuitively the first time I saw her that she was not a happy woman. There was a look in her eyes that betokened trouble of some kind, and at the first opportunity I had I ventured to ask his lordship a few more searching questions.

"Is the Countess an English lady?"

"No; she is an American— at least, she was born in America, of Scottish parents."

"At what age did she come to Scotland?"

"Fourteen. She had been residing with her father's cousin at Kilmichael nearly three years when I first saw her."

"Where was that?"

"Near her home. I was staying with a friend at a house about a mile distant, and we met accidentally one afternoon when I was wandering in the woods."

"Has she any other relatives beside that cousin and his son?"

"I am not aware of any. Stay— I remember now that the old housekeeper at Kilmichael told me of an orphan cousin, some two or three years old, whom my wife's parents adopted, just before they left Scotland for America."

"What became of that adopted daughter?"

"She married in New York. But surely she can have had no hand in this bracelet affair?"

"I cannot say yet, my lord. But. I have arrived at one important conclusion; her ladyship's maid knows nothing of it."

"Then your theory of a clever travelling thief— "

"Will your lordship agree to go to Kilmichael?"

"What? Quit Oban without having obtained the slightest clue? Surely you do not mean it, Mr. Sharp?"

"I will ask you another question in return, my lord. Do you intend to pursue tins investigation regardless of all consequences to the guilty party, whoever that may be?"

"Decidedly, sir. If my mother were to discover that the bracelet is not in the safe, I could never look her in the face again, for I could not deny having borrowed it."

"Is the Dowager-Countess at Kilmichael?"

"No, fortunately; she is staying at Strathpeffer, and will not return to Kilmichael. The two ladies do not agree very well, you see."

"I shall be glad if you will either return to Kilmichael, or, if that is inexpedient, give me a day's leave, with a letter of introduction to the old housekeeper there. By the way, can your lordship loud me a photograph of the Countess?"

"No; I, have not got one. For some absurd reason the Countess declines to be photographed until after a certain little event, which I believe we may expect in about three months."

"Have you been at Kilmichael since your marriage?"

"No; her Ladyship has a horror of the place, and that is not surprising, seeing that she was like a prisoner there for so many long years. She does not care to speak of it even."

"Then, of course, she would not like to go there. Probably I can manage by going myself."

"What do you expect to accomplish by the visit, Mr Sharp?"

"I must ask you not to press that question, my Lord."

"Oh, very well; when do you wish to go?"

"I will go to Rothesay by the steamer to-morrow."

"And what do you wish me to say to Mrs Ramsay, the housekeeper?"

"Only that I am your Lordship's valet, and have come there to seek for something belonging to her Ladyship."

"I wish I knew what you are driving at, Mr Sharp."

"Sorry I cannot gratify your curiosity, my Lord; I should thereby spoil my scheme."

I WENT to Rothesay next day, and thence walked to Kilmichael. I found Mrs Ramsay a talkative old lady, who bewailed strongly what she termed the ingratitude of the Countess. "If it hadn't been for me, the young leddy would have been married to my young master. His father would have had me starve the lassie into submission, but I wadna hear o't. Hoo is she keeping, and when will they come here?"

"She is quite well, but I cannot say when they will pay you a visit. Will you show me the rooms she occupied?"

The old woman led the way upstairs, and unlocked the door of a bedroom with a dressing-room leading out of it.

"I'll not trouble you to wait, Mrs Ramsay," I said testily, for the housekeeper had sat down and seemed intent upon watching my movements. She stood up, glared at me for a moment, and then went out with a muttered exclamation I did not catch. I locked the door on the inside, and commenced a strict search, for what I could not tell exactly, but, having formed a startling theory, I thought it possible I might light upon some confirmation or refutation of it. In one of the drawers of the dressing-table I found a packet of papers, and from almost the first envelope I examined I took the marriage certificate of Archibald M , Earl of B , and Christina Macdonald. How had it happened that the young wife, when departing from the house, knowing that her husband would return when she became of age, left this important document behind? It was a fact that went to support my theory, and with renewed zest I went on with my search. An envelope with an American stamp next roused my curiosity. It was a black-bordered envelope, and contained a very long letter, in a neat, ladylike handwriting. As I read it, I knew that my theory would prove to be founded on facts. The letter was from the cousin of Christina, the one whom her parents had adopted, and was an appeal to the heiress to give an asylum to the writer, her husband having been sent to the New York State Prison for fraud. It was sighed "Lucretia Sykes."

Presently I found another letter in the same handwriting, full of expressions of gratitude for the money Christina had sent, and intimating that the writer would set sail for Liverpool on the 24th in the Germanic. She would be very grateful if Cousin Christina would meet her at Liverpool. I had another search among the letters, but found no others having any bearing on my quest, and, carefully depositing the two letters and the marriage certificate in my pocket-book, I went downstairs.

Mrs Ramsay was not in the best of humor, but I ignored her curt replies, and she gradually thawed.

"Can you tell me exactly how long it is since your young lady left you?"

"Ay, I mind it weel; it was on Term Day in May last year."

"Did she say she was not coming back?"

"No; she said she would bring back her cousin Lucretia frae New York,"

"But she never returned?"

"No, nor wrote me a line frae that day to this," and the old woman's voice faltered.

"Would you like to see her? Suppose you go with me to Oban, and ask her why she has not been to see you since her marriage?"

"Na, na; I dinna want to lose my place. She has been aye guid to me."

"She need not know you have seen her. You can return in the same steamer next morning. I will pay your fare."

Possibly the offer of a free trip may have influenced her; at all events, after many shakings of the head and much consideration, she said she would go with me if I would see her on board the steamer again at Oban.

As I had anticipated, the Earl and Countess were seated at the open window of their sitting-room on the first floor of the hotel when Mrs Ramsay and I passed. The Earl noticed me, but the Countess, though she stared quizzically at us, and seemed amused by the old woman's costume, evidently did not recognise one whom she ought to have known anywhere. I was satisfied, and did not wish the two to meet. The unscrupulous and daring woman who had usurped the place of her cousin must not know that she was under suspicion until I had satisfied myself as to the fate of the real Countess. So I took Mrs Ramsay other hotel, the Imperial, and ordered dinner for her, telling her that I would be with her in a few minutes.

I found the Earl impatiently awaiting "Well, Mr Sharp, what have you m. covered?"

"Can your Lordship bear a sever shock?"

"Yes— go on. Speak, man."

"One question, my Lord. Have you gone a second time through the ceremony of marriage? Did— ah— the Countess make such a request to you when you met her in London?"

"She did, but I declined. She— she had lost the certificate, and I— I got a copy."

"The lady known to you as your wife has then no right to the name, she is not Christina Macdonald, but her cousin Lucretia Sykes!"

"Mr. Sharp!"

"I have made a statement that I could prove in five minutes, if it were expedient to do so, but it is not at present. The old woman you saw with me in the street is the housekeeper from Kilmichael, and the Countess, or rather the lady seated at the window with you did not know Mrs Ramsay. I have here the certificate of your marriage, and also two letters from Lucretia Sykes to your wife asking for a home. I have also ascertained that the Countess left Kilmichael on the 28th May last year, her cousin having sailed from New York on the 24th. You were met in London by Lucretia, but what became of your bride I have yet to discover."

"Oh, God! If I could only believe that it— is not true. But I know it is. There is a wonderful resemblance between the cousins, or I should not have been deceived; but when we met after the lapse of four years since the marriage, I thought my wife seemed older than twenty-one. What am I to do?" and the strong man groaned in agony.

"That question cannot be answered, until we know what has become of the Countess, my Lord. Until then you cannot, must not, take any steps whatever. I am inclined to think that, if I can trace the two cousins from the arrival of Lucretia at Liverpool, it will lead to the recovery of the diamond bracelet. If I may hazard a guess, I suspect that her husband, Sykes, has tracked her to this country, and that money has been raised on the bracelet or some of the stones of which it is composed, to keep the fellow quiet."

"And you think I can go on playing the devoted husband to such a woman? It is simply impossible."

"Pardon me, my Lord, but it is imperatively necessary in the interests of justice. I cannot, although no longer in the force, shut my eyes to the possibility that a foul crime has been committed."

"No! no! Do not say that my Christina met such a fate. You will drive me mad."

"Far be it from me to say so, my Lord; but it is at least possible. I trust you will allow me to go on with my investigations."

"Yes, yes; there is no other alternative. What do you propose next?"

"I must endeavor to trace the cousins in Liverpool."

"A difficult task after the lapse of such a period— fifteen mouths."

"Probably not so difficult as yon fancy, especially if they stayed in Liverpool a few days, its I think highly probable."

"Very well, Mr Sharp. Go forward with your mission of justice, and heaven pity that woman"— he pointed towards the next room— "if Christina, suffered aught at her hands."

After "sleeping on" my plans, I decided to change them. If the scheming woman, who had by audacious fraud and hypocrisy made herself a Countess. was being blackmailed, a strict surveillance over herself and her correspondence must have some results. I, therefore, told the Earl that I had decided to postpone my journey to Liverpool for a few days, and that in the meantime I wished to see all the letters sent and received by the woman known as the Countess.

"I don't see how that is to be managed, Mr. Sharp. Will it not rouse her suspicions?"

"She must not know it. Leave it to me, my Lord; I think I can manage it. By the way, will you take her for a few days' drive or sail somewhere? I will get the maid out of the way. I wish to overhaul the contents of the trunks, etc., in the bedroom and dressing-room."

"Yes; I think I can do that. If it remains fine we will go to-morrow."

MRS RAMSAY was greatly disappointed when I told her that the Earl and Countess had suddenly left Oban for London. But she had been delighted with  her little trip, and we were the best or friends when I sow her on board the steamer.

They went to Staffa and Iona, and before noon, as I had hoped would be the case, the maid started off for a pleasure in her own way. I was thus left alone in possession of the suite of rooms, and made the most of the opportunity thus afforded me. But the most diligent search failed in the discovery of the slightest scrap of incriminating evidence of any description. Lucretia was not to be caught napping.

That she had stolen the diamond bracelet I felt certain. Had she parted with it? Was she afraid of exposure, and determined to take a away with her what would maintain her for the rest of her life?

ABOUT one a.m. during that night, when the hotel was as quiet as the grave, I crept stealthily out of my bedroom, along the landing to the door of the  dressing-room of Lucretia Sykes.

The door was locked on the inside, but that presented no obstacle to me. I had provided myself with a pair of the peculiar pliers used by burglars in such cases, and easily turned the key. I knew that the woman took an extra strong dose of whisky in the form of a "night-cap," for I had seen the maid bringing it upstairs, so I was not afraid of being overheard. There was a full moon shining though the slits of the venetian blind, and I could see all I wanted. The woman's clothes were scattered about the room, and picking up the corsets from a chair I examined them carefully.

"Ha ha, my lady, here are the diamonds."

They had been neatly stitched into the in lower edge of the corsets, and only one of the ten composing the bracelet was missing.

Five minutes afterwards I was in my own room again, and could not sleep much that night. When I went in to shave the Earl in the morning I took the gems from my vest pocket, and quietly said, "Do you recognise these, my lord?"

"You're a wonderful fellow, Sharp, and fully deserve all the praises bestowed upon you by your old chief in Glasgow, who recommended me to come to you. Where did you find them?"

In the woman's corsets. I did not feel disposed to give her a title to which site had no claim."

"Thank heaven that she has not. She will miss them in the morning."

"She dare not mention the loss. She will not even accuse her maid of taking them. It will render her more suspicious, and keep her on the alert, but I do not anticipate that she will do aught we need trouble about. She will not suspect that we know her to be Lucretia Sykes."

"I shall be glad when the terrible business is over, Sharp, and oh, if my wife be found alive and well how rejoiced I shall be! But it is too much to hope for."

EARLY that evening I noticed a fellow walking up and down opposite the hotel, and fell to wondering if he were Sykes, the husband of the fair Lucretia. If she had discovered the loss of the diamonds she had made no sign. The more I saw of her self possession, cleverness, and resolution the more I felt convinced that she would stop at nothing to gain her ends, and having done that would fight a tough battle to maintain the position she had obtained.

Presently the maid came along toward the door, and seeing me hesitated. Was she an accomplice? I asked myself, if so, I had been woefully deceived. I went to the hotel bar, leaving her free to signal to the man. That was sufficient to guide me in my course of action. A moment afterwards the maid came in with a note in her hand, which I snatched before she could prevent it.

"I like reading love letters," I said with a laugh.

"That is not a love letter. Oh, Mr Ritchie"— my valet name— "the man I had that note from is her ladyship's brother, who has been unfortunate, and is much to he pitied. The countess sends him out small sums of money sometimes, and I daresay that is another request."

The envelope was a poor one, and very badly fastened. In a moment I had it open, and read the contents, startling enough, in all conscience.

"That sparkler you gave me is a sham. Either send me out fifty to-night or you will rue it.— Hiram."

Fastening up the envelope again, I gave it to the maid.

"Sorry I doubted your word, Miss Merton."

I felt sure she would not mention to her mistress that I had opened the note, and awaited the result of the peremptory demand, after asking the earl to let the woman have £50 if she asked for the money. But to my surprise she made no request of the nature indicated. When the dinner bell rang her maid came down to say that her mistress had a severe headache, and could not come down to dinner that evening. I was at the front door of the hotel on the lookout for Hiram Sykes, but he did not come again. Nor did I see either the maid or her mistress leave by a side door, as they must have done, for when I went to seek the maid two hours afterwards to ask if her mistress were better there were signs enough of flight, and I was instinctively vexed that I had been hoodwinked by the demure Miss Merton.

There was neither train nor steamer by which they could escape, I said to myself, as went to the earl with my news.

"Let her go. I am saved the trouble of annoyance of having to tell her what you have discovered."

"But the Countess, my Lord, and the diamonds? Surely those gems I found were not Paste?"

"It is possible my mother has played me a trick. The real bracelet may be at her bankers. I believe they will try to blackmail me now in return for Christina's  address, for I feel sure she is alive."

THE morning post brought a strange letter addressed to the Countess of B―, and marked "Private."

On opening it, his lordship found it to be a letter from a Liverpool solicitor, informing "her Ladyship" that at a visit to Lancaster Asylum the Lunacy Commissioners had expressed the belief that the young lady confined there in the names of Lucretia Sykes was quite sane, and that steps would be undertaken to obtain her discharge

The steamer for Glasgow had gone, but the earl chartered a special train, and that evening the husband and wife met again. The Medical Superintendent offered no objection to the Countess's discharge, and I had the honor of dining with them at the King's Arms.

The Countess's story was a most extraordinary one. She had met her cousin at Liverpool, and while in the train between Preston and Lancaster had either fallen or been pushed out of the train. When she recovered consciousness five weeks had elapsed after the affair and she was in a lunatic asylum.

Of Hiram Sykes and his wife nothing was ever heard so far as I know. They must have made the discovery that the plot had fallen through. The diamond bracelet, as the Earl had surmised, had been safely reposing in the bankers' strong room, and when the Earl presented Christina to his mother the old lady twitted him anent the fact that a Countess of B—  had gone to a Drawing-room in paste diamonds.

__________________

5: Ambitious Man

A. St. John Adcock

1864-1930

World's News, (Sydney), 6 Oct 1917

EVERYBODY wants something he hasn't got, but Sam Watts hasn't got anything that he wants. He is our policeman; he was born to be than and can't get away from it. His grandfather was the first policeman we ever had in the village, then his father had a turn at it; and they do say that one reason why Sam Watts was appointed without opposition was that a new uniform had just been made for his lamented father, and Sam happened to be exactly the same size.

But no policeman gets much encouragement in our village; there is hardly ever anything for him to do there. Three times a year, at most, Sam manages to pick up a case and have his name in the papers, but that is not enough for him. He is a very ambitious man; he is one of those men who pine to go where glory waits them, and grow discontented be- cause they can't find out where it is waiting.

He was suspected of writing poetry, and, anyhow, he once won an eighty-second prize in a Limerick competition, and for several weeks all the village talked about that, and quoted his winning line to each other, but after a while they lost interest in it and began to discuss other things; and Sam was like  a lion who had tasted blood—he couldn't be happy till he had had some more.

It was at this juncture that a circus came among us, and Sam took advantage of his official position to be a deadhead and stand looking in at the flap of the tent without paying. He witnessed the performance from start
to finish, and went away determined to qualify for the actor's life himself. He was observed in dramatic attitudes on lonely parts of his beat, reciting passages from Shakespeare to imaginary audiences; he told Mr. Snoop, who keeps the Crooked Billet, that Beerbohm Tree was overrated, and that he didn't think much of Martin Harvey. But a day or two after the circus was gone his enthusiasm for the drama was suddenly extinguished, and he appeared in public in a damaged condition; he could hardly fit his helmet on over the bandage he was wearing round his head. He was reticent as to the cause of this, and gained a certain amount of notoriety with a dark tale of a fierce struggle with poachers who had over-powered him and escaped; but it leaked out presently, through his mother telling old friends in strict confidence, that in the course of his theatrical studies he had been carrying out a rehearsal one night in the back yard, and either the prop had not proved suitable for balancing purposes or else the clothes line was not strong enough.

After that he took things pretty quietly for a bit. Then there was all that excitement over the big fight up in London; the news-papers were full of it; everybody was discussing it; and this unsettled him again, and by-and-by half the village would sit up late, and sneak out secretly to watch him, armed with boxing gloves, sparring by moonlight alone at the finger-post down at the cross-roads, flooring invisible champions with the most astonishing pluck and dexterity. He even went so far as to purchase a nice new sideboard on the hire system in order that he might have something ready to stand his cups on when he began to win them, but, as he explained to his mother, it would be necessary for him to undergo a course of scientific training before he abandoned the law and devoted himself exclusively to this nobler and more glorious profession.

And to this end, next time he went to town to give evidence at the Assizes, he took counsel with a man who was locally reputed to know all about it, and on his suggestion he entered into correspondence with an eminent gentleman in London, who was popularly known as the Holy Terror. It seems that this celebrity had once been a boxer himself, and was spending the evening of his days in training up other boxers in the way they should go. There was a difficulty on the subject of terms— so Sam's mother confided to Mrs. Chitters, who does our charring— but when he realised that Sam was our policeman and universally respected for miles round, the Holy Terror generously agreed to come down and teach him everything he ought to know in return for board and lodging and the pleasure of Sam's society. He did hint that he would like to have a small commission on Sam's earnings after he had entered the ring, but said that he would leave this entirely to Sam's own sense of justice.

Which all leaked out through Sam's mother, and created a strong impression in the Holy Terror's favor. But when he arrived the village did not take to him. He was a squat, thick man, with a very broken nose, and only one eye, and that one had a dangerous look in it. He had a husky voice, and his manners were not what we call manners in our part of the country. Sam gave up his bed to him, and slept on the sofa, and, except when he was on duty, he and the Terror used to spend all their time fighting each other in the front parlor with the blind down on account of the crowd outside. All we knew about how they were getting on was that, from time to time during the first week, the glass shade with wax flowers, two chairs, a stuffed owl under another glass shade, and a large pink vase with blue roses on it were sent out on the quiet to be mended.

But when also in the first week Sam emerged on to his beat with a black eye, nobody believed he had caught it on the end of the banisters in the dark; they pretended to when he told them, but they didn't. The very next day he came out with both of them black, and though, in the distance, it looked no worse than if he were wearing motor goggles, when you were near there was no mistake about them, and it brought such discredit on the village that he was reported and warned. So one way and another he felt he had had enough for the present, and would consider whether he would do any more later on. But the Terror would not listen to reason; he said the arrangements were for three weeks, and he wasn't going to be made a fool of, and Sam, thinking it best not to over-excite him, consented to continue the lessons on a clear understanding that the Terror didn't hit him so hard any more.

"But how do you reckon," the Terror protested, "as any cove's goin' to teach you this game if he don't 'it yer?"

"I don't say don't 'it me," Sam argued.

"What I say is don't 'it me so 'ard. It 'urts."

" 'Urts!" sneered the Terror. "If that's
what you're afraid of, you'd better stick to marbles or kiss-in-the-ring. If you expect to be fondled and kissed that's the ring for you— you won't get it in the prize-ring. 'Urts! Blimey, dunno what you'd be sayin' if I was really to 'it yer!"

"But you know what I mean," said Sam. "I wouldn't mind if it didn't show. Naturally, they don't like to see me—a policeman— goin' about with a black eye. It looks—"

"Oh, well, 'ave it yer own way," interrupted the Terror. "I'll 'it yer sorft or where it won't show, if that's the notion, but don't blame me if it takes longer to learn, thought yer wanted yer money's worth, but 'ave it yer own way. Don't make no difference to me."

One unsatisfactory feature of the arrangement was that whilst Sam was on duty the Terror used to sit in the Crooked Billet, steadily keeping his strength up, until, as often as not, at closing time he was not prepared to walk home, and more than one night, for the sake of appearances, Sam had to go past and affect not to notice him curled up asleep against the horse-trough; then he would dodge back, when he thought everybody else was gone, to take him away; and you couldn't have told, from the amount of road they occupied and the way they went, whether he was helping Sam to walk or Sam was helping him; which, again, was not a sight that ought to have been seen in a respectable village.

Meanwhile the lessons were continuing, and the Terror was restraining himself from hitting hard, according to contract; but one morning Sam seemed to have warmed to his work, and in a thoughtless moment he put in an unexpected smasher, and the Terror dropped down all of a heap on the fender, and said he believed his spine was broken. Anyhow, Sam and his mother had to almost carry him up to bed, and day after day he lay there, because all the use had gone out of his legs, and he said he couldn't stand.

"Doctors are no good to me," he said bitterly; "I'm done. I wouldn't have minded a black eye— that doesn't do no man any harm— but you've as good as done me in. Always 'ad a livin' in my hands till now, but a bloke's hands are no good to 'im in my line when he can't get on his feet, an' I 'ope you won't forget it, guvner."

Sam said he didn't suppose he should ever be able to.

"But if you won't let me fetch a doctor," he added, "I can't do no more."

"Well, I won't, then," shouted the Terror obstinately. "I don't want you to do no more You've done enough for me, haven't yer? If I've got to snuff it I'm not goin' to 'ave no sawbones to 'elp me. I can do that much on me own."

"Yes," said Sam, "and what would the Coroner's jury say to me about it? I've got my reputation to consider."

"And what about my reputation?" demanded the Terror. "You just keep quiet about it all. Don't you tell anyone or let it get around that I've been doubled up like this by one o' my pupils— it'd ruin me. You keep you doctors an' everybody else out of it, see? I've never 'ad 'em, and never will."

It came out that he was a Christian Scientist; that's why he wouldn't have a doctor; and Mrs. Watts and Sam fairly wore themselves out waiting on him; His appetite did not go off; he smoked in bed all day; there was nothing the matter except that, owing to the injury to his spine, his limbs were no good to him. You couldn't turn him out of doors; it would have been inhuman; so when he suggested that they should send their railway fare up to his wife and daughter, because they were Christian Scientists, too, and would know how to pray for him and make him better, it seemed the only thing to be done.

"He's got to be cured somehow or other," as Sam pointed out to his mother, "else we'll have him here all the rest of his life."

The Terror's son, George, was so upset about his father that he paid his own fare, and came along with his mother and sister, and Sam had to sleep on two chairs in the scullery and let him have the sofa. A trim, nasty-looking young man was George; he as good as said that Sam ought to be ashamed of himself for hitting an old man, and Sam was glad to soothe him at intervals with small loans, and encourage him to go to the Crooked Billet and keep out of the way. At the Billet nobody liked him, but he struck up a sort of friendship with Squire's footman, and gave the footman valuable inside information concerning horses that ought to be backed in the forthcoming races, and seemed agreeably impressed by what he was told about the Squire's wealth, and the manners and customs of the people who lived with him at the Manor House.

All this was such a strain on Sam's salary that his butcher and baker took to sending their bills in every day with unpleasant notes in red ink at the foot of them. But luckily, just when there wasn't so much as a cabbage left in the kitchen garden, and he was deciding to get his mother into the almshouse and enlist, the Holy Terror took a sudden turn very early one morning, and got up and went off with his family, and caught the first train to London.

"That's the best of this Christian Science," he explained. "I dunno 'ow it happened, but all of a minute something seemed to break and my legs began to move like clockwork. I got up at once, and I'm off home, in case they should go wrong agen."

And, of course, Sam agreed that he couldn't do better, and didn't attempt to stop him.

It was an hour after they were gone before Sam missed the presentation gold watch that had belonged to his grandfather; and whilst he was blaming his mother for it the footman called from the Manor House to say that burglars had been in during the night, and when the butler went to get the plate out for breakfast there wasn't, any.

Naturally the whole incident wore an air of suspicion, and though Sam declared that George had been on the sofa all night, the Squire made a fuss and set detectives to look for him and his father. They haven't done looking for them yet; and the fact that Sam had lost their London address, and could not find the man who had given it to him, gave rise to a good deal of scandal.

It depressed Sam very much, and knocked all ambition out of him, and we quite thought he meant to settle down as the proper, harmless sort of policeman that is required in such a village as ours; but a month ago he started to grow a moustache, and only yesterday his mother confessed to Mrs. Chitters that he goes to bed with it in curl papers to make the ends of it grow upwards, so I'm afraid he isn't satisfied even now.

__________________

6: Gunfire At Scarlani's

Atwater Culpepper

Spicy Detective Stories, Dec 1935

A specialist in "spicy" stories in the 1920s and 1930s, Culpepper wrote for Spicy Detective, Pep, Silk Stocking Stories, Bedtime Stories and the like. The name is most likely a pseudonym, and nothing is known of his (or her) life.

OUT FROM the lightless void that was Ludlow Court a girl came running. Her heels clicked unsteadily over the gouged pavement as she gathered her skirts high above her knees and lunged forward, head down.

Denver Street was but little better lit than the black alley that led into a rampart of warerooms, manufacturing lofts, and storehouses. Save for faint street lights economically spaced, the only spot that relieved the gloom was the winking neon sign over the entrance to the Golden Dragon, Luigi Scarlani's third-rate night-club.

It was a quarter past one. Dan Randolph had just ascertained that, dubious about pulling out his watch in so unsavory a neighborhood.

He noted that the girl's black dress had been ripped to the waist, and all but wrenched off her shoulders. A fragment of torn pink silk hung drunkenly out beneath the black garment, and the light revealed two undulating pink-tipped hemispheres, altogether unconfined now, as the girl stumbled around the corner.

Randolph stepped in front of the fleeing figure and blocked her way.

"What's the matter, sister? What's chasing you?"

The girl nearly crashed into him. "Get out of my way, sap!" she panted. "For God's sake—" She darted to one side, and slid into a deserted doorway, where she flattened herself against the wall.

Randolph followed. The girl caught at his arm and dragged him into the concealing blackness. "Keep your trap shut!" she hissed fiercely. Her fingers gripped his wrist till it hurt.

From the lightless alley whence she had just emerged came the almost noiseless sound of creeping footsteps. Steps that sounded as if rubber-soled feet were being lifted and put down catlike. A black shape crept around the corner of the building, hugging the wall—

From the black alley came a coughing report, a spat of orange flame. The crouching figure lurched headlong, then fell heavily across the narrow sidewalk, arms flung outward.

Even as they watched the limp figure, it was scraped over the asphalt. Someone in the alley was dragging the victim back by the feet. All to be seen was a hat lying on the curbing, and a little pool of something wet that looked darker and more glistening than the sidewalk.

"I told you to keep out of this!" the girl whispered fiercely. "See what you just missed getting!"

Randolph licked his lips nervously. Death, even sudden and violent, was nothing new to him. But this sudden bumping off from the darkness tautened every nerve and muscle in his body, and he felt cold sweat moistening his armpits.

The street once more took on the hush of a morgue. The only sound was the throbbing whine of violins high up where the light shone under the tightly drawn curtains of the Golden Dragon, the faint pulse of drums, the moan of a saxophone played slightly out of tune. Jazz that sounded faintly out into the night, while below in the darkness a man lay dead.

The girl freed his wrist abruptly, and crept toward the sidewalk. "Better scram out of this!" she hissed. She caught up her skirts and ran, keeping in the shadows, darting once into a vestibule, peering from side to side.

With dogged persistence Randolph kept on her trail. In the shadow of another black alley she turned and faced him.

"Will you keep out of this?" she snapped. "Haven't you seen enough? Do you wanta get yours— like that guy back there in the alley?"

Dan blocked her way. "Listen, sister. I'm a newspaper man— and I've been places before this. There ought to be a story in this."

"No story that you'd better print! Monkeyin' with Scarlani's crowd ain't healthy, wise guy! Forget it— and let me scram!"

"I'm a rarin' fool about unhealthiness. I eat that stuff for breakfast and lunch. Not leaving till I get the low-down, baby. Not when things like that happen."

"You stick like a burdock, big boy." Something in his face seemed to reassure her. She shrugged her white shoulders, half out of the torn dress. "Seems I can't get rid of you. Well, let's go. I don't want to be found around here."

He stopped her just short of a main traffic artery. The red and green lights had changed to a constant winking yellow. "I'll look for a taxi. You can't walk down the street like that."

She tried vainly to huddle the torn dress about her. "All right." He wondered if she would bolt, as he hailed a lone night-cruising taxi. She didn't. He helped her in beside him, and leaned back against the cushions.

"Got an apartment somewhere, I suppose?"

He could feel her shiver. "Yeah. But I'm not going back there— not tonight. I'd like to hang on to life a little longer, if it's all the same to you."

"Okay, sister. I see." He gave the driver his own address. When they pulled up in front of his apartment, he threw open the door. "Come on in. Let's talk this over."

She faced him defiantly as the taxi rolled away. "If you know what's good for you—"

"I'm a glutton for punishment," he grinned. "And you interest me strangely, baby. Come on up."

"Oh, well—"

IN HIS APARTMENT, with the shades drawn tightly, and the girl sitting tensely in the only comfortable chair in the room, he proffered her a cigarette. She puffed on it nervously.

Randolph grinned coaxingly. "Feel like loosening up, sister?"

She looked down at her torn dress, the silk ripped jaggedly to the waist, and at the gorgeous breasts that persisted in emerging from the ruined garment.

"Looks like I was pretty well loosened up already, doesn't it? But of course if you insist—" She wrenched at the line of snaps that gathered it in about her waist, until vestiges of pink showed below the black. "That's what you meant, big boy?" She slipped an arm out of one sleeve. "Just so that you can get all hot and bothered?"

Randolph's face reddened. "Don't be a sap!"

"Oh-h! My mistake. But most of the men that hang around Scarlani's—"

"Well, I don't hang around spots like that— except on business. You know I meant for you to spill the story— give me the low-down on why you were coming out of that alley, hellbent-for-leather— with a rodman gum-shoeing after you—"

The girl expelled a mouthful of smoke. "One guy that won't gum-shoe any more. You had him right— 'Gumshoe Miller'— not a bad egg, either. You saw what happened to him."

"I did." Randolph leaned forward, his eyes involuntarily drawn to the smooth white flesh, the pink underthings plainly revealed under the torn and sagging gown. "So this 'Gumshoe' got his? But just why?"

"They wanted me— both of them— Gumshoe and the— the big fellow—"

"Scarlani himself, eh?"

"Uh-huh."

"Then you were— were—"

"Gumshoe's moll? Yes, I guess that's about what they'd call it. And Luigi had him on a spot. Wanted to get rid of him, anyway. So I made a good excuse."

"And Scarlani— did that?" He pointed to her torn dress.

"Uh-huh. Had me in a jam. I wasn't— willing. And when he started to tear the clothes off me, I— I took it on the lam. Ran out of the back room— down into the court— and Luigi sent Gumshoe after me."

"I see— and followed Gumshoe himself? And when he got outlined against the light—"

"Pretty handy with a rod himself, Scarlani. If I'd gotten into his hands— probably I'd been wiped out myself— after he'd gotten through with me. I know too much about Scarlani's mob." She shivered.

He crushed out his cigarette.

"Yes, a whale of a story, all right. But dynamite to handle." His eyes were fixed on the girl's dark hair, on the face, bloodless under the makeup, on her great dark eyes.

"Well, you would drag me here. Now what are you going to do with me?"

"Do?" He came out of his reverie. "Hell, that is a problem. How about taking you to a hotel for the night?"

"At two o'clock in the morning? And like this?" She indicated the ruined dress.

He acquiesced reluctantly. "That's out. Well—"

"I suppose you didn't think of my staying here?"

"Well, why not! You'll be safe here, anyway. They won't ever know that you came here." He crossed to the telephone, and picked up the receiver.

"Here, what are you going to do?"

"You forget, sweetheart, I'm a newspaper man. And there are such unnecessary birds as city editors. If I let the paper fall down on a yarn like this one—"

He dialed a number. "Planet office? Let me talk with Collins. That you, chief? Listen—"

He hung up the receiver at last. "That's that. There won't be more than a paragraph, telling that Gumshoe Miller was shot this morning in a gang fight near the Golden Dragon. Now, baby— say, what's your moniker? 'Listen' and 'girlie' get kind of stale after a while."

"They called me Annie Kelly back at the Golden Dragon. That's good enough, isn't it?"

"Swell. Good old Spanish name. Well, help yourself to that bed. Lumpy, and not much for looks, but better than hiking around back alleys— or getting rubbed out."

"Thanks so much. Sorry I didn't bring a nightie or a toothbrush, but I left in such a hurry that I forgot my week-end bag."

"Maybe I could rustle up a pair of clean pajamas. You don't seem to have much to spare."

When he straightened up from the bureau drawer, the girl was sitting on the edge of his bed, her skirt pulled up around her hips, calmly unhooking her stockings. She peeled the thin silk down and wriggled her bare toes.

Her eyes suddenly narrowed. "What are you doing?"

Randolph shoved his arms into his topcoat. "Going down to the office a while, Annie. Make sure there isn't a late assignment, have a mug of java and a dog with the graveyard gang— and perhaps I'll bunk in with one of the mob. After all this excitement, a little shut-eye seems to be in order."

She caught at his arm. "No! No! You're not going off— leave me alone here?"

"Such was my intention, sweetheart. What's wrong with that?" The last tinge of coquetry had left her. Stark terror was in her eyes.

"I'm scared to death!" she whispered fiercely. "I didn't like the way that taxi driver looked at us. For— for God's sake, don't leave me alone!"

Randolph looked searchingly into her frightened eyes. He took off the topcoat and hung it up. From a table drawer he took out a business-like blue automatic and shoved it into his hip pocket. He turned the key in the lock so that it could not be easily dislodged, and then wedged a chair under the doorknob. He remembered with some uneasiness that he had given the taxi-driver his number— he had not thought it necessary to cover his trail.

The shadow of fear faded out of Annie Kelly's eyes. She slipped the torn dress from her shoulders, along with the wreck of the brassiere. Randolph stared hungrily at her superbly rounded figure, the smooth rippling back, the soft curves of her stomach, the full, quivering breasts, now completely exposed to his gaze.

She slid off the torn dress, her only remaining garment a wispy pair of absurdly short pink panties, below which the rounded white columns of her thighs gleamed alluringly. She reached out for the pajama coat which Randolph had thrown on the bed, then looked up, and her eyes met his.

"You're a— white guy," she murmured. "And I'm— just a gangster's moll. Sort of— funny, isn't it?"

Dan Randolph sat her down on the bed. He picked up the pajama coat and slipped it over her shoulders, resolutely buttoning it over the rounded hillocks that it never was designed to cover. He held out the pants, whistled off key, and strolled over to the window. When he turned, the girl was under the covers, only her piquant head on the pillow.

Randolph removed his coat, vest, and shoes, and sprawled out lazily in the morris-chair. For some moments she lay without comment.

"You— you aren't going to stay there— all night?" she ventured at last.

"Probably not. I'll keep my eyes open for a while— in case anybody does come. And then— well, I can roll up in a blanket somewhere. It won't be long till daylight, anyway."

"I— I feel like a rat, driving you out of your bed." She flicked the covers suggestively.

Randolph shook his head decisively at the implied invitation.

"No, thanks, sister. Too tempting— and if we do have visitors—"

He got up and switched out the lights. The girl heard a creak in the darkness as he settled back in the morris-chair again.

His eyes swam. He stretched his legs— his muscles tautened, every rasped nerve aquiver. Steps, shuffling ones, uncertain— down the corridor.

He crept over softly to the bed, rod in hand. He reached out in the darkness. A hand caught at his arm, clung to it tightly, reassured by his nearness. Annie Kelly was sitting up in bed, staring fearfully into the gloom. He felt a soft breast brush his shoulder.

The steps shuffled closer. His fingers tightened about the gun. Unsteady steps lurched by the door, grew fainter, disappeared down the corridor. Randolph thrust the gun back into his trousers.

"Only some lit-up guy, trying to find his room," he grinned. He patted the girl's shoulders reassuringly, let his arm slide about her back a moment, leaned back comfortably against the pillow.

"Stay here— a little while," she whispered. "I feel better— to have you near."

"Okay," he murmured drowsily. He was dead tired— that morris-chair was far from comfortable— he would lie there a little while— after she went to sleep—

Dan Randolph snored when he slept. Not uproariously, but with a gentle bandsaw effect that left no doubt of his temporary detachment from gangster shootings, assignments, and city editors. With a faint smile the girl detached herself from his arm. Gently, an inch at a time, she edged the covers from under him, and as gently spread them over his sleeping figure.

For a moment she lay contentedly snuggled up against his back, stroked his shoulder gently. Then she slid over to the other side of the bed, and sleep claimed her.

DAN RANDOLPH rubbed his eyes. A girl in misfit pajamas was sitting in his morris-chair, looking ruefully at a torn black silk dress. He crawled out awkwardly from under the blankets.

"Now— how in the devil did I get here?"

"Three guesses. Listen, big boy, do you have such a thing as a needle and thread around here?"

"I might dig up something like that— but listen, good-looking, why don't you give me your key and let me go up to your diggings— bring you back something to wear?"

"Does sound sensible. Maybe I was a scare-cat, after all."

Randolph grinned at the girl in the misfit pajamas. "Not becoming to your style of beauty," he commented, as he brushed his hair. "I'd say your type was— well, blue silk nightgowns, and that sort of stuff."

She smiled back at him. "I have one. If I'd known I was to be a guest— in a strange man's apartment— I'd have brought it."

"Expect me to believe that, Annie?"

"Aren't you privileged to believe anything about a night-club hostess— Gumshoe Miller's moll?"

"I can't see you as anything like that— not the type at all."

"Thanks, big boy. If it will make you feel any better— you've had more privileges already than Gumshoe ever had." She bent over her sewing.

THERE WAS a strange lightness in Dan Randolph's heart as he fitted her key into a third-floor uptown apartment. This was not the sort of place that would house a gangster's moll. She was far from the tawdry broad that she would have him believe her.

He stepped within the room, toward the closet.

A sudden intuition, a vague feeling of danger gripped him. He whirled about.

A crushing weight thudded on his head. A roaring in his ears, the flash of coruscating stars, the world an intense black. Dan Randolph sank in a limp heap on the rug and lay very still.

He regained consciousness slowly and painfully. His ringing head throbbed as if a gigantic motor idled to the limit of the accelerator. He tried to lift his fingers to the welt on his head— discovered that his hands were bound tightly behind him, that his feet were tied together, that he lay in the corner like a trussed fowl. And sitting opposite him, a malicious leer on his dark face, sat Luigi Scarlani.

"I wasn't expecting you," Scarlani purred. "I felt sure Annie would come back here— and eef I wait long enough—"

Randolph realized that there was altogether too much truth in that statement. Scarlani smoked innumerable cigarettes. "All in good time," he drawled silkily. "We will see that you go for li'l ride— nice long one. And you won't come back." He blew a slowly expanding ring. "It ees not healthy to— what you call it, butt in."

A light step sounded in the hallway. Scarlani leaped from his chair. He caught his prisoner by the collar and dragged him roughly across the floor to the bathroom.

Annie Kelly stood for a moment with her hand on the knob. She hesitated, turned it cautiously, entered the room.

A tiny metallic circle was pressed against her stomach. The leer on Scarlani's face was one of gloating triumph.

"I thought, eef I waited long enough, you would come back to the nest." He surveyed the girl's torn dress, hastily stitched together with Randolph's makeshift sewing kit. With a lightning-like movement he reached out with his free hand and tore the garment from neck to hem.

"I do not like that reeg. It might cause comment— where I am going to take you. Put on another, plees— an' no treecks." He jabbed the muzzle of the revolver suggestively into the white flesh of her stomach.

There was nothing to do but obey. With the relentless captor keeping close at her side, gun held in readiness, she picked a dress from a hook. Scarlani licked his lips at sight of her alluring loveliness as she flung off the black gown and slipped another over her shoulders.

"That ees better. At least for now. I will take you— where we will not be disturbed— an' maybe that come off, too. Afterward—" He flung open the bathroom door and pointed dramatically to Randolph's bound figure. "Sorry I have to leave you." He patted the girl's hip intimately. "But I am alone— and I could not take you in my car— without attracting attention. But you will not be left alone long. Friends will come for you soon— very soon. Until then, arrivederci!"

He slipped the gun into his pocket. "Now, my dear, if you will go ahead of me— an' plees remember the gun in my pocket— it might spik queeckly, if you tried anything." The door closed. Randolph surged impotently at the cords. Scarlani had done a good job. The fastenings only bit deeper into his wrists. He looked around hopelessly. There was no time to lose. It would not be long before Scarlani's hoods would come for him.

The glass shelf over the washbowl— one end was splintered. He edged over the floor, doubled up with the cord that ran from wrists to elbows. He could not reach it— again he inched across the floor, pushed a chair over near the shelf, tried half a dozen times till he swarmed up on it so that the jagged edge reached the cords on his wrists.

He worried the cord back and forth against the splintered glass till it frayed. His wrists were lacerated and bled profusely, but that was nothing. Freed at last, he jammed his hat upon his welted head, and darted out of the apartment.

Still cramped and dizzy, he reeled down on the street. There was a drugstore at the corner. Even as he stumbled into the telephone booth, a long black sedan drew up at the curb in front of the apartment he had just left.

The voice on the other end of the wire was not that of his crony, Inspector Tom Dolan. He had hoped that big Irishman would be on duty.

"Lieutenant Matthews talking. No, Dolan won't be in for an hour— maybe two or three. You what— want us to raid Luigi Scarlani's place?"

The voice became curt. "Got a warrant? You say a girl's being kept a prisoner there? Hell, how do you get those pipe-dreams? You're mixing with big stuff, fellow, when you tangle with that mob. Scarlani just about runs this man's town."

"Scarlani runs the police department, too, does he? Listen, this is Randolph— leg man on the Planet—"

"Oh-h!" The lieutenant's voice was ice. "Say, I wouldn't turn my hand over for that lousy scandal-sheet of yours— wouldn't believe a man on it on oath!" The receiver clicked abruptly in Randolph's ear.

Dan swore luridly as he jiggled the phone. No help there. He jerked out his watch. Anything that was to be done had to be done in a hurry. And alone. He gritted his teeth as he thought of the evil gleam in Scarlani's eyes, the look of stark terror on Annie Kelly's face—

He caught a taxi and got out on Denver Street a block above Ludlow Court. There was nobody in the alley. A back entrance to Scarlani's place was locked— a Yale lock that none of his keys would fit. Up on the third floor a window was open.

He looked at the deserted warehouse across the narrow alley. No one in sight. He crossed over, hastily thrust one key after another into the rusty lock. It gave way slightly, bound— the tumblers turned enough so that he could crowd the door open.

He stumbled up scarred stairs, past dusty bundles, the steps creaking in alarming fashion. Once he thought he heard echoing steps, and crouched momentarily behind a heap of dirty machinery.

He gained the third floor, and shoved up a dirty window, directly opposite the open one in Scarlani's. He had noted a long plank beside a heap of dust-covered hales. His bleeding wrists ached painfully. He dragged the plank across the floor, shoved it out the window, and braced himself, fearful lest its weight be too much for him, get away and go crashing to the court below. Fearful lest it be too short to reach across the narrow alley.

With one last desperate shove he edged the plank outward. Great drops of sweat broke out on his forehead as he fought the weight of the timber. Its end sank, dropped— caught on the window-ledge opposite, and rested there with less than a foot to spare.

He crept out upon the teetering plank. Thirty feet below him the hard concrete of the alley. Halfway across giddy nausea seized him. The narrow plank sprung under his weight, canted sideways.

Reeking with clammy sweat, Randolph edged himself across and caught at the bottom of the open sash. The far end of the plank slipped. It slapped at his legs and nearly knocked him from his unsteady hold as it went crashing to the court. He flung his numbed legs over the windowsill and dropped reeling to the floor.

He was in a storeroom, surrounded by bottles, bundles, and cases. He opened the door cautiously. It gave upon the clubroom, the tables unset and deserted at this hour. The only sign of life was a grimy thug who languidly mopped the floor and whistled tunelessly.

Randolph crouched lower. The busman's cry died into a faint squawk as Dan's hands clamped about his throat. Dan swung back one arm, landed at the point of the man's jaw, with all he had behind it. Randolph eased the limp body to the floor. Swiftly he knotted a twisted tablecloth about his wrists and ankles, stuffed a napkin into his mouth, and dragged him under a table.

Voices were sounding from behind a door that was evidently Scarlani's office. He tried to turn the knob. The door was locked.

"Yell your head off, sweetheart. Nobody will be around thees time of day. We are— very safe here."

Randolph crept upon the orchestra platform, followed the wall, slipped through a half-open door, and found himself in a cloakroom off the stage. A side door led to the proprietor's office. The knob turned in his hands. Scarlani had not thought it worthwhile to lock this.

He turned it gently, froze, as he heard voices out in the main room. Hands were rattling the door he had just left.

"You in there, boss'? Listen, the mug wasn't there! He musta got away!"

"Hell! Got away? Why, you—! Well, you hoods stay out there till I call you! Ten minutes— then—"

"Okay, boss." Feet shuffled across the floor.

Dan Randolph turned the knob.

Luigi Scarlani licked his sensuous lips, and stared into the dark eyes of the frightened girl like a snake with a helpless bird. He caught at the neck of her dress, ripped at the thin fabric viciously. With a leering chuckle he wrenched the garment from her shoulders and crowded her backward to a couch against the wall. His eyes glittered with bestial light as they stared hungrily at the naked flesh, her quivering breasts, her taut stomach. His pudgy hands crowded her down upon the couch—

Dan Randolph charged hard and low. At the sudden attack Scarlani released his grip on the girl and whirled about sharply. His hand flashed to a shoulder-holster. Randolph's tackle was too fast. The flame of the gun seared his shoulder, just as his hand clamped about Scarlani's wrist. The two figures wrestled grimly about the room, upsetting a table, sending a chair crashing into a corner.

Scarlani was no weakling. Randolph bent his arm back, but the fingers squeezed the trigger again. Dan grunted with sharp pain as a bullet furrowed his ankle, and a trickle of blood dripped along his sock. He gritted his teeth and twisted the Italian's wrist back till he could hear the bones crack. With a maddened howl Scarlani's fingers relaxed, and the gun dropped to the floor.

Scarlani writhed like an eel. A sudden twist— his teeth caught Randolph's tortured wrist. He bent swiftly for the weapon. Dan kicked out instinctively, and sent the weapon clattering toward the baseboard. He leaped for the revolver, caught it up, and pointed it.

Quick as lightning Scarlani had caught the half-naked girl and held her in front of him. His white teeth bared.

"Shoot, damn you! Joe! Patsy! Come in here!"

Two powerful figures crashed against the door. Randolph fired impotently as the lock gave way, snapped the trigger again, and swore as the hammer clicked on an empty cylinder.

Two guns were jammed into his stomach. He was backed against the wall, and stood in powerless rage. The gangsters grinned.

"Do we bump him off, boss?" Joe Perelli fingered the trigger eagerly.

Scarlani shook his head. "Not-a yet. Too much bother— getting rid of what left. Besides"— his face smirked evilly—"it might geeve my place bad name. Tie him up. By and by— take him for ride."

He watched with malevolent satisfaction while his two hoods wound cords expertly about Randolph's tortured ankles and bleeding wrists.

"Now you two boys go outside. Wait till I call."

Joe grinned suggestively at sight of the all but naked girl who stood backed into a corner, her hands gripped tightly. "Do we take-a him out with us, boss?"

"No. Leeve him here. I have leetle fun first— an' he watch it. Afterward—"

The door closed. Scarlani's face A grew cruel as a cat's, intent upon the writhing of a helpless mouse. He took off his coat and vest.

With catlike steps he crept upon the helpless girl. His arm flashed out swiftly, seized her, and wrenched at the last wispy garment. He dragged her toward the couch—

Maddened by the sight, Randolph, tightly hound as he was, leaped at the Italian. It was a magnificent but futile gesture. Scarlani's revolver hanged down again and again upon his head, beating him cruelly, cutting the flesh. Streams of blood ran down his face, got into his eyes, choked and blinded him. At last the Italian wearied of his sport. His face was coldly bestial. He slipped a cartridge into his revolver, backed away, and lifted the weapon.

"You damn' nuisance!" he hissed. "You asked for it— you get it— here— now!"

His finger tightened on the trigger. Randolph crouched, every muscle tightened, waiting for the coughing report, the crash of the bullet that would be "thirty" on his final news story.

Annie Kelly leaped in front of him, a lovely figure, arms outspread, covering him from Scarlani's fire. "Don't— you shan't kill him!"

Scarlani seized her by the shoulder, spun her around, struck her brutally across the face. "Damn you!" he snarled. "I teenk you aren't worth it, you cheap broad!" His vicious blow sent her sprawling into the corner.

Once more Scarlani raised his gun. The muzzle descended, pointed squarely at Randolph's heart. The trigger finger tightened.

Crack! Crack-crack! Spat-spat! Spat! A coughing fusillade rattled from the dance-hall. The door crashed open. Joe Perelli staggered backward into the room, firing as he lurched against the door; he fell convulsively across the threshold, his rod dropped from his fingers.

Scarlani whirled, fired once at the open door, let out a high-pitched scream like an animal in agony. Three reports sounded almost as one with his own. Scarlani's arms flew wildly, he let out a maddened scream and pitched heavily to the rug.

Three uniformed figures crowded into the doorway. Inspector Tom Dolan lowered his own smoking gun. Behind him Terry Malloy and Tony Ciardella, the two best marksmen on the force, flipped the cartridges from their rods, and stood looking grimly at the wrecked office and the shambles on the floor. From Luigi Scarlani's shirt-front, from his fat throat, oozed a welling stream which spread in a sticky pool upon the heavy Oriental rug. They hadn't missed, any of those three crack shots.

Dan Randolph looked up from where he lay on Scarlani's couch, while a lovely, half-naked figure, heedless of her lack of clothing, bandaged his lacerated wrists and his bloody ankle.

"Hell, Tom, I never was so glad to see a cop in my life before." He grinned above the agonizing twinges. "How did you know where to come?"

Dolan grinned in turn. "That fat-head, Matthews, beefed about some newspaper guy who had the crust to want Scarlani's place raided. Thought it was a hell of a joke. Scarlani's! Whaddyaknow about that!"

"Yeah, I know Scarlani pays for plenty protection," I told him. "But I had a hunch— and I grabbed a squad and a cruiser-car, and came here on my own. Left that dumb copper chewing the rag fit to tear his hair. And it looks, son, as if we got here just about in time."

"You'll never know how close to the split-second you timed it," Randolph grunted. "The Planet will never come any closer to losing one of its bright young reporters." The three policemen thoughtfully withdrew to the deserted clubroom. Randolph awkwardly extended his bandaged arm, and slipped it about Annie Kelly's waist. It hurt— but it was a delicious hurt, as he drew her soft pliant body close to him.

"You'd better get some clothes on," he grinned.

Her eyes danced. "How can I, if you hold me like that? Besides— you should worry, if I don't."

"Was it worth all this?" she demanded. "A gangster's moll—" He drew her fiercely into his embrace.

"Who cares? Girls don't come any better than you— ever." Mischief danced in her eyes. "After all, I'm not Annie Kelly— any longer. And if it makes you feel any better, I'm not a real gangster's moll. If you'd gone to the Carlton last winter— you might have seen Anne Kildare—"

His eyes opened wide. "I thought your face— you played the lead in 'God's Good to the Irish'!"

"Uh-huh. But you see, the show folded up. And a girl has to eat. For the last six months I've been dumb enough to think I could get by working for a private detective agency—"

"A private dick!" He drew a long breath. "You— you little imp!"

"Not so bad, was I? Passed myself off as a night-club hostess— trying to get something on this gang. Even let myself be looked on as Gumshoe Miller's moll. But it was getting pretty hard— I couldn't have kept it up much longer. Gumshoe was asking too much— and I couldn't have stalled him off much more. And when Scarlani—" She shivered at the remembrance.

Randolph's arm tightened about her till the breath almost left her lungs. "Say, I hope I work with you again. I want to see some more of you."

"I thought you'd seen quite a lot of me already."

"In those misfit pajamas of mine— listen, Anne, didn't you say something about having a nice blue nightie— how about letting me see you in that sometime?"

"Would you really like to see me— in a nightie?"

"Ask me something sensible, will you?"

“It’s a date,” she grinned happily.

______________

7: White Cap

Ethel Lina White

1876-1944

Akron Beacon Journal 31 Jan 1942

WHEN TESS LEIGH washed her hair, one June evening, she involved the issue of life or death… On the surface it seemed merely a matter of a trivial change of habit. Instead of going bare-headed to work, she had to wear a cap.

The reason was that her thick wavy hair became unruly if she exposed it to the open air too soon after a shampoo.

The turban was made from a white Angora scarf and was ornamented with a lucky brooch of green-and-white enamel in the shape of a sprig of white heather. Inside the band was stitched a laundry-tape marked with her name in red thread.

It was a glorious morning when— disdaining the trams— she set out to walk to the Peninsular Dye-Stuffs Corporation, where she was employed as a stenographer. The industrial town was built upon rolling moorland whose natural beauty had been destroyed; but the Council had acquired a range of hills— the Steepes— as its lungs and playground. About 1,000 feet in height, they were dominated by the mountain-peak— the Spike— which rose another 3,000 feet into the air.

Tess walked with the rapid ease of youth, swinging the suitcase which held her holiday-kit. From time to time she looked up at the Spike— sharply outlined against a cloudless blue sky. It helped her forget the smoking chimneys of the factories and also to calm her spirit— for all was not well either with her work or her love.

She had only herself to blame for her heart-trouble. No one at the Peninsular could understand why she had been taken in by the cheap glamour of Clement Dodd. She was attractive, athletic and possessed of a sweet yet strong character. Fearlessly outspoken, she had deep sympathy with the underdog and always rushed in to champion any victim of injustice.

As she approached the majestic pillared entrance to the factory, she felt a reluctance to enter which was becoming a familiar sensation.

She knew that she was not the only employee to feel that suddenly sinking heart and lagging foot, in spite of the fact that old John Aspinall— who founded the Peninsular Works— had striven to make it a model factory. He had arranged for the health, comfort and recreation of his workers. There were extensive grounds, a swimming pool, an excellent canteen and various athletic clubs.

These good things remained after his death when his son— Young John— went to the USA to study American methods, leaving his brother to direct the corporation. Brother Eustace was a lazy inefficient man who was content to sink to the status of a puppet government after Miss Ratcliffe had bought a controlling interest in the Peninsular.

She was a wealthy, keen-witted woman with a lust for power. Soured by lack of social sovereignty through her failure to marry a titled husband, she strove to become a Power in commerce. Part of her policy was to use the brains and experience of the men employed by the Peninsular. While she was professing interest in them, her keen brain was mincing up their suggestions and theories until they emerged as facts— for which she took all the credit.

Unfortunately the process was accompanied by corresponding human wastage, when gradually the atmosphere became poisoned because employees feared for their jobs. Most of the small-fry were too insignificant to be vulnerable, but Tess stood out from the bulk of the stenographer-staff, because of an unlucky incident.

The Peninsular ran a rifle club in connection with the municipal shooting-range. One day, Miss Ratcliffe visited them and gave what practically amounted to a demonstration in marksmanship. Tess, who was also expert, welcomed her only as a worthy opponent and challenged her to a match which she won by a narrow margin.

'Bad show,' commented her friends. 'After this, she will have her knife in you.'

In addition to anxiety for her job, Tess was beginning to fear that Miss Ratcliffe was developing her specialized interest in Clement Dodd. As chief accountant of the Finance Department, he frequently visited her office although he denied any personal element to Tess.

Tess's frown deepened as she passed through the gates and entered the grounds— gay with lilac and laburnum. Although it was the half-holiday, the model factory repelled her like a prison. As she gazed wistfully up at the soaring Spike, she suddenly saw a bird circling over its rocky summit.

'Don,' she called to a tall stooping man with grey hair and a classical profile, 'Don, do you see what I see?'

He shaded his eyes with a shaking white hand.

'It must be an unusually large bird to be visible at this distance,' he remarked. 'Can it be an eagle?'

'Of course it's an eagle,' cried Tess exultantly. 'Oh, isn't he a real king of birds? So free and splendid. I've a passion for eagles. The sight of one in captivity makes me see red.'

The old man did not respond to her interest for he was gazing eagerly at an impressive black saloon-car which had just driven up to the main entrance. As a majestic blonde ascended the steps, he glanced at the clock tower.

'Miss Ratcliffe sets us an example in punctuality,' he remarked. 'In confidence, I have an appointment with her. My poor wife has resented the overtime I have given to the corporation. The fact is I was staying late to work out a system of reorganisation for several of the departments, to submit to Miss Ratcliffe … Now I believe I am going to reap my reward. My letter states that the subject of the interview is "important clerical changes".'

As she looked at his flushed triumphant face, Tess had a sudden pang of misgiving. Originally a schoolmaster, Don was a man of superior education. For the sake of a delicate wife and daughter, he had commercialised his scientific knowledge in the Peninsular Laboratory. He was intensely proud of his intellectual family and his cultured surroundings, where every book and picture was the result of selective taste.

'Don't count on it,' she warned him. 'Everyone knows that Ratcliffe is a rat.'

A short girl with a dark fringe and an important air looked at her sharply as she hurried past. She had chosen an unfortunate moment for her remark, since the energetic damsel was Miss Ratcliffe's secretary. Donovan, too, was visibly distressed by her imprudence.

But Tess smiled at him and entered the great hall to clock in.

A young man came forward to meet Tess as though he had been watching for her arrival. Ted Lockwood made no secret of his feeling for her. It was one of Nature's mysteries why she had rejected him for Clement, since he was so suited to be her opposite number. She had a mechanical mind so could appreciate the fact that he was a clever engineer. Like her, he was a fine athlete while he seasoned his sound qualities with a sense of humour.

'Will madame lunch with me?'

'Sorry, Ted,' replied Tess. 'I'm eating with Clem. Have you seen him around?'

'In the sick-bay. He's got a hangover and Matron's fussing over him. If a woman wants to be maternal, it beats me why she doesn't marry and set up her own outfit.'

'Meaning me?' asked Tess with customary bluntness.

'Yes, Tess.' Lockwood's face was grim with resolution. 'Why won't you face the facts? The most successful marriages are founded on mutual interest— and you and I have the same tastes. How will you make out with an artistic bloke like Dodd?'

'Oh, not again, Ted,' pleaded Tess wearily.

She had no further chance to brood for she always worked at high pressure. As the subject of the dictation was technical matter which exacted her entire attention, she welcomed a break, in order to freshen herself with a wash. The men's and women's cloakrooms were built off a central domed hall with a white marble drinking-fountain, which was a popular meeting place.

When she entered it, a group of employees were talking in excited undertones as they gathered around Clement Dodd. He was a tall slim-waisted youth who would have made a pretty girl, but for thin mobile lips. He spoke with a stressed Oxford accent while his manner to women of all ages was that of a courtier.

'Heard the latest casualty?' he asked Tess. 'Poor old Don's got the K.O.'

As Tess stared at him in dismay, he lit a cigarette.

'Afraid he asked for it,' he said casually. 'Too big for his boots. That line does not appeal to our lady-boss.'

'It's a real tragedy,' exclaimed a woman who dyed her grey hairs. 'He was nearly due to retire. Now he'll lose his pension. What will become of him?'

'Hush,' whispered a typist. 'He's coming in.'

His head held high, the old scientist approached the group. He cleared his throat before he made an announcement after the fashion of a Headmaster addressing his school.

'I have just resigned my position. I have never been happy in a non-scholastic atmosphere. Now I shall hope to resume my academic career. I wish to take this opportunity to thank you for your loyal support and cooperation.'

Although his lips quivered. he managed to make a grand exit.

As she watched him, Tess grew suddenly hot and giddy.

'It's cruel— hateful— abominable—' she stormed. 'That horrible woman has thrown him out just to save his pension.'

'Cool off, you young volcano.'

Tess felt herself pushed down on a chair. Although she recognised Lockwood's voice, she barely saw him through a shifting mist. She gulped down the glass of water which he drew for her and then gave him a grateful grin.

'O.K.?' he asked. 'What was the matter? You went first red and then white.'

'Temper,' she replied frankly. 'Only it's a bit more than that. Just before I left Canada, I was in an air crash. Since then, if I get too steamed up, I have a blackout. The doctor told me I'd grow out of it very soon, but he warned me not to get excited.'

'What's it like?'

'Foul— and frightening. Everything turns black and I drop into a sort of sleep. The doctor explained that sleep was my salvation, but it scares me because when I wake up, I can remember nothing. I go right out.'

The rest of the morning dragged itself out. Worried about Don, she forgot to concentrate on her work with the result that she had the greatest difficulty in reading back her outlines. As she was typing her notes, she noticed that Miss James— Ratcliffe's secretary— had entered the room and was whispering to the supervisor.

Although she vaguely expected it, her heart knocked at the summons.

'Miss Leigh. Please report at once to Miss Ratcliffe.' …

Seated at her desk, Miss Ratcliffe looked a model of impersonal Administration— correct to form and polished in every detail. Her dark suit was perfectly built and her silver-blonde wave faultless.

'Miss Leigh?' Her voice was languid. 'Ah yes. I am sorry that your services will not be required after today. You will receive a week's wages in lieu of notice. This is no reflection on your work— but we have to reduce the staff.'

'But Miss Ratcliffe,' gasped Tess, 'there must be some mistake. My speeds are the highest in the office and—'

'This is not a personal matter.'

'But it is personal.' With characteristic courage, Tess dared to interrupt the tyrant. 'If it were not, I should be expected to work out my notice. I have a right to know the reason.'

'The reason is this,' she said. 'You have been disloyal.'

With a guilty recollection of unguarded remarks, Tess could not deny the charge. Instead she sank her pride to make an appeal.

'I don't want to inflict a sob-story on you, but I really need this work. I came over here from Canada when my parents died and I have no friends in England. Jobs are so scarce at present. Will you give me a second chance? I promise you I'll do better in future.'

Miss Ratcliffe looked at her with cold impersonal eyes as she touched her bell.

'My decision is final,' she said.

As Miss James bustled into the office and opened the door pointedly, Tess had a sudden vision of the eagle beating his great wings over the mountain top. The memory flooded over her, filling her with a wave of power.

She realized that she too was free and able to meet Ratcliffe on equal ground.

'You are a cruel, petty woman,' she said. 'The most junior typist has more right in the Peninsular than you have. You've bought your power— not earned it. And instead of using it, you abuse it. When worthwhile people are dying every day, it is a crime for you to be alive.'

She was conscious of passers-by in the corridor who paused to look into the office before Miss James pushed her outside and shut the door.

On her way to the cashier's office, she met Don in the corridor— stooping like a defeated man.

'The Gestapo's got me too, Don. I'm sacked.'

'I'm deeply grieved,' he told her. 'But your conscience is clear, while I have something to regret … When I first had news of my— my resignation, I was so stunned that— in trying to save myself— I threw someone to the lions. That hurts most.' He added regretfully with a lapse of his grand manner, 'Besides, it did me no good.'

As the admission sank in, fitting the circumstances of her own dismissal, Tess felt that she had been struck by the hand of a friend.

'You,' she muttered as she turned away.

The second shock made her feel numbed to reality. After she was paid off, she went to the cloakroom and mechanically changed into white slacks and a rose-red pullover. Her hair was beginning to get bushy, as she drew her white cap over it, in an instinctive desire to look her best when she met Clement.

She waited for Clement for a long time in the canteen, but he did not appear. Presently she accepted the disappointment with dreary fatalism. Too overwrought to eat, she went out of the Peninsular grounds. All she wanted was to escape to the Steepes and climb the rough ascent to the Spike— to stand on the mountain-top and meet the healing friction of the wind.

Owing to its precipitous quarried sides, the Steepes were accessible from the town by a small funicular which carried patrons up the face of the cliff. The girl at the turnstile who collected the tickets was a local character. Abnormally sharp, although she looked a child, her mop of red hair had gained her the obvious title of 'Ginger'.

'Does it bring you luck?' she asked as her quick eyes noticed the white heather brooch on Tess's cap.

'You may have the lot at bargain-price,' Tess told her bitterly.

On the summit of the Steepes stretched a wide level expanse of threadbare turf where a cafeteria as well as chairs and tables were provided for the community. The bulk of the holiday-makers used to congregate there, eating, drinking, reading and playing games; but it was deserted that afternoon owing to a circus performance in the town.

Tess struck off along a narrow path which wound, like a pale green ribbon, amid clumps of whinberry and stems of uncurled bracken. Farther off, on the left, the ground sloped down to the Rifle-Range.

She threw herself down on the heather. She wanted the consolation of contact with primeval things. With a springy cushion of twigs supporting her head, she gazed up into the clear blue sky, when she noticed the flicker of wings.

Again the eagle was circling around the summit of the Spike, reminding her of her impulse to climb to the mountain-top. It was a long rough walk, for the steep track zigzagged continually across natural obstacles of bog and rock. Even the optimistic guide-book stated that two-and-one-half hours were required for the ascent.

Swinging to her feet, she had a clear view of the path leading to the Rifle-Range. Two figures— pressed closely together— stood upon the slope. Even at that distance, it was impossible to mistake the sunlit shimmer of the woman's silvery-blonde hair or the slack grace of her companion.

As she watched them, Dodd threw his arm around Miss Ratcliffe and bent his head, as though seeking her lips … At the sight, the blood rushed to Tess's head. Again she felt the blast of furnace heat while a wheel seemed to spin remorselessly inside her brain.

Recognizing the terrifying symptoms which heralded a temporary extinction, she fought with all her strength to resist them, but while she was struggling, a rush of darkness swept over her like a black rocket. As she fell— face downward— on the heather in her last moment of consciousness, she noticed the watch on her outstretched wrist.

It was 3 o'clock.

It was 4 o'clock. Tess stared at her watch with frightened eyes. Only an instant before it was 3 o'clock. A whole hour had been rubbed out of her life …

She pressed her fingers to her eyes as the memory of Clem's treachery overwhelmed her. The knowledge made her feel not only miserable, but cheap and ashamed, so that her dominant instinct was to hide. Soon the holiday-makers would be spreading fanwise over the lower slopes of the Steepes.

Shrinking from the ordeal of meeting someone from the Peninsular Factory, she rose stiffly and looked around for her cap. To her annoyance, she could not see it and, after pulling apart the nearest clumps of heather, she had to give up the search. Stampeded by the sound of distant voices, she ran over the rough until she reached a slippery bank of turf which dropped sheer to a narrow ledge above a worked-out quarry.

A perilous climb along the rocky rim brought her to a shallow depression in the hillside which offered her sanctuary. When she leaned back in the hollow, she seemed perched upon a lip of some bottomless abyss. For a long time she lay there— watching the pageant of clouds which rolled past like a stormy sea.

When she forced herself to look at her watch, she grimaced.

'Gosh, it's late. Well— I've got to face people again.'

In spite of this resolution, she made a circle to avoid passing the crowd around the cafeteria. She could not understand the force of the instinct which warned her to remain hidden.

As she clicked through the 'OUT' turnstile, she noticed that Ginger was staring at her. The scrutiny alarmed her vaguely for it revived her dormant dread of her lost hour.

'Where did I go?' she questioned. 'What have I done? Do I show the marks of it in my face? Why does that girl stare at me? Oh, dear heart, I wish Ted was with me.'

Now that her infatuation for Clement had been shrivelled by the knowledge of his treachery, her heart turned instinctively towards Lockwood. On the homeward journey, while she sat upon the hard wooden seats of the tram and watched long lines of mean houses slide past, the lines of Kipling's poem swam into her mind.

'The Thousandth Man will stand by your side

To the gallows-foot— and after!'

She lodged in a comfortable house which belonged to a florist. It welcomed her like a haven, that evening. The flowers had never looked so beautiful in the sunset glow when she walked through the garden. The shabby dark green sitting room was cool and a meal was spread on the table, so that she had only to make her tea from the electric-kettle.

She was feeling refreshed and stimulated when her landlady entered the room to remove her tray.

'What news?' she clicked. 'Is it really true she's been murdered?'

'Who?' asked Tess, with a pang of foreboding.

'Your Miss Ratcliffe, of course. It's all over the town that she's been shot dead.'

As Tess stared blindly at her landlady, the scrape of the gate made the woman glance through the window.

'It's Mr Lockwood,' the announced. 'I'll go let him in.'

'I knew he'd come. I knew he'd come,' Tess told herself.

As he entered, she turned away and stood with clenched fists and locked jaws, fighting for self-control. She heard his step beside her but he did not speak until they were alone.

'Tess… Darling.'

The new tenderness of his tone broke down her defences. Clinging to him, she pressed her face against his shoulder.

'We mustn't waste time,' he said. 'A copper will soon be here to question you. First of all, remember I'm with you, whatever you've done … Did you kill her?'

Her face grew suddenly white as she repeated his question with stiff lips.

'Did I kill her? I don't know… Tell me, has my cap been found?'

'Why?'

'Because it's gone. I had a blackout. I can't remember anything… But my cap might tell me where I went.'

Lockwood's face grew grim as he heard her incoherent story.

'I know you are innocent,' he told her. 'But this is not exactly a water-tight yarn. Keep off it as much as you can. Don't lie, but let the police fish for themselves.'

'But why are they coming to me?'

In her turn, Tess listened to his account of the tragedy. A member of the Rifle-Club had found Ratcliffe's body lying in the rough beyond the targets, about 4.30. She had been shot through the heart at close range. The doctor estimated the time of death as between 3 and 4— but probably about 3.30. As Tess's rifle was found lying near, the police had made inquiries about her at the Peninsular Works, when they had learned about her dismissal and her subsequent threats.

He had just finished his story when the garden gate scraped again.

'It's the detective-bloke,' Lockwood warned Tess. 'Don't forget I'm standing by.'

Inspector Pont reminded Tess of an uncle who grew prize dahlias. He was big and dark, with sleepy brown eyes which revealed nothing of his mental process.

Tess met him with the desperate courage of one mounting the scaffold.

'I am Tess Leigh. I am prepared to sign a statement.'

'Not so fast,' said the inspector. 'You'll be warned when I'm ready for that. I want to know if you remember making any of these remarks about the deceased?'

As Tess read the typewritten paper he handed her, her face flamed.

'Only one person could have told you these things,' she said. 'That's Clement Dodd… Yes, I did say them. All of them— and more. They are true. She was a cowardly tyrant for she hit people who could not hit back. Cruelty or injustice always make me see red.'

'The turnstile girl at the Steepes has told me you were up there from between 2 and 6,' Pont said. 'What were you doing during that time?'

'Walking,' replied Tess.

'Where?'

'I don't know… It's no good asking me. I've been in an air crash which has affected my memory. I was terribly upset… But I walked.'

'Did you lose your cap during your walk? The turnstile girl tells me you were wearing one when you clicked-in, but that you were bareheaded when you returned.'

'That's right. But I don't know where I lost it. I tell you— I don't know.'

'I'd like a description of it.'

After the inspector had entered the particulars in his notebook he turned towards the door. Lockwood noticed the glint in his eyes when he spoke to Tess.

'That cap's got to be found. I'll have bills out tomorrow. Meantime, a notice goes up on the Station-board. I don't expect any results tonight, but hold yourself ready to come and identify it.'

Directly the door closed, Lockwood held Tess tightly in his arms.

'I'm standing by you,' he said. 'We'll wait together.'

She was not comforted because she knew that he too was feeling the same strain of suspense. She felt his start when the telephone bell began to ring in the hall.

'I'll take it,' he said quickly.

When he returned, his smile was unnaturally broad.

'We're going for a joy-ride,' he told her. 'My bus is parked outside.'

The journey to the Police Station had a nightmare quality. The lines of smoke-grimed houses seemed to flash by so that Tess— who was dreading the end of the ride— caught her lip when the car stopped under the blue lamp. Still in an evil dream, she stumbled into a tiled hall, when an open door gave her a clear view into a room.

Standing under the glare of an unshaded electric bulb, Clement Dodd was smoking a cigarette. He appeared entirely at his ease until he saw Tess. His face grew red and he turned his back to avoid meeting her eyes.

'This way,' said a constable.

Supported by the pressure of Lockwood's arm, Tess followed the man into another office where Inspector Pont was seated before a table littered with official papers.

'Yours?' he asked, holding out a white Angora cap for her inspection. She glanced mechanically at her name printed inside the band and nodded assent, before she realised that he was smiling at her.

'My congratulations,' he said. 'This cap was brought in by two hikers— strangers to the district— who chanced to see the notice on the board. They say they picked it up among the rocks on the top of the Spike, soon after 4 this afternoon. As the official time for the ascent is two-and-one-half hours and the deceased was alive at 3, according to medical evidence, it stands to reason that you could not have committed the murder and afterwards climbed the mountain, all within an hour.'

As she listened, Tess's head reeled, for she realized that the story was full of holes. Before she could protest, Lockwood grabbed her arm.

'Miss Leigh's our champion athlete,' he told the Inspector. 'Thanks very much. I'll run her home now.'

'I may ring you later,' remarked the Inspector. 'I am going to chat with another party. If you're interested, you could take your time going out.'

Tess understood the reason for his wink when they reached the hall, for after the detective entered the room where Clement Dodd was waiting, he left the door slightly ajar.

'There's just one point I want cleared up, Dodd,' he said in a loud, cheerful voice. 'It's common knowledge that two articles were found on the scene of the crime. One— a rifle— has been identified as the property of a stenographer— Tess Leigh. The other article has still to be identified.'

'But her name's inside the band.' Clement spoke quickly and confidently. 'Besides, everyone knows her white-heather brooch.'

'I was referring to a pencil stamped with "PENINSULAR",' remarked the Inspector. 'The cap you describe was picked up at the top of the Spike at 4 o'clock this afternoon.'

'That's a damned lie. I saw it—'

'You saw it?' prompted the Inspector as Dodd broke off abruptly. 'Go on. Now that Miss Leigh has a perfect alibi, I must go further into your own movements.'

He shut the door and Lockwood dragged Tess outside to the car.

As they reached the front door of Tess's lodging, they heard the telephone bell ringing in the hall, when, once again, he rushed to receive the call.

When he rang off, his face was beaming.

'Dodd's confessed to the crime,' he said. 'The Inspector said he was in such a state of nerves after he made that slip that he cracked directly they got to work on him. It appears that old Donovan— when he was ratting for Ratcliffe— found out that Dodd had been embezzling money from the accounts. He told Ratcliffe and she taxed Dodd.

'As usual, she pretended that she alone had been so clever as to discover the fraud, so he reasoned that if he bumped her off, no one would know. I am assuming old Don blew the gaff from something he said to me. Dodd admitted that he got Ratcliffe to come with him to the Range, to talk it over, so it was a cold-blooded crime.'

As she listened. Tess felt almost light-headed with relief.

'Oh, it's wonderful to know I never killed her. And I'm glad Don didn't give me away. It was Clem he "threw to the lions" … I was feeling that I could trust no one. And then— you walked with me to the gallows-foot. And after—'

Lockwood began to laugh as he interrupted her.

'I've some good news for you. It didn't matter before. Nothing mattered then but you… But Eustace has asked Daddy to carry on until young John returns from America. Looks as if the good times are coming back to the Peninsular… But what's the girl frowning about now?'

'My cap,' replied Tess. 'If it had been found near the body, I should be convinced that I had killed her. I should have confessed to it— and Clem would not have been brought into it. I should have cleared him… But how did that cap get on the top of the Spike? I passed out between 3 and 4. Besides, no one on earth could have made the climb in that time.'

'No one on earth,' said Lockwood. 'But what about someone in the air! There's a simple and natural explanation. My hunch is that Dodd saw you asleep after he shot Ratcliffe— in that white rig you'd be conspicuous on the heather— so he stole your cap and placed it beside the rifle, to frame you. That's why he crashed so badly. Nothing rattles a liar so much as to be disbelieved when he is telling the truth— and he knew it was inside the range. There was no wind, but probably it stirred a bit in the breeze.

'Enter Mr Eagle. He sees something white and fleecy moving on the heather. He swoops down on it, soars up again, realises he's been fooled and drops it again in disgust… By the luck of the air currents, it fell on the top of the mountain instead of the lower slopes. You owe your perfect alibi to your friend— the eagle.'

_________________

8: Hotel Evidence

Helen Simpson

Helen de Guerry Simpson, 1897-1940

Woman's Journal  May 1934

HENRY BRODRIBB was engaged in an argument with his wife; or, rather, he was pacing the room, wordless, trying to take in the sense of her final proposal. His wife, calmly stitching an undergarment, watching him, was aware of his throes, and allowed time to elapse before she continued:

'It's no good our going on living together when there's no reason for it and we don't suit each other.'

'Don't we?' interjected Mr Brodribb ironically.

'No,' said his wife, disregarding the irony, 'we don't. Now, Arthur and I do. We like the same sort of plays, and there's bridge, and he's ever so good-looking. But, as I said to him, I won't have anything underhand.'

'Nothing underhand,' Mr Brodribb repeated, 'only a pack of lies for me to tell in court. Only perjury and collusion. What about the King's Proctor?'

'People can't be expected to tell the truth,' said his wife comfortably, 'with the silly way the law is. I'm sure if there was any other reason they'd let you have, I'd have no objection to your divorcing me. But there's only infidelity for a woman. As I said, there's never been anything of that between me and Arthur. Besides, it wouldn't be good for him in his business.'

'And what about my business?' Mr Brodribb inquired, sarcastically.

'You'll be all right,' his wife replied, disregarding the sarcasm. 'Nobody'd ever dream of your doing anything wrong. It 'ud be a change for both of us.'

To this Mr Brodribb's imagination gave involuntary assent. He pictured home without Cissie, a life free from comment, in charge of a good cook-housekeeper. It was alluring. Also, he could move from the country into the town. But he sounded a protest, as was right.

'I never heard of such a thing. I won't listen to another word about it.'

And he sat down in the chair opposite hers and shook out his evening paper. Mrs Brodribb, biting off a length of yellow silk. resumed:

'Nobody thinks anything of it, nowadays. Look at these countesses, and Lady This and Lady That; always in and out of the divorce courts.'

Mr Brodribb beat the paper into more convenient folds and replied severely:

'We're not countesses.'

It was a shot fired in flight, at random, which could not give pause for an instant to the victorious advance of his wife. She had made up her mind.

Mr Brodribb realised this, and was appalled. Only once before had he known her to make up her mind. She had not argued with him then, but she had used other methods without scruple, and he had turned up at the church on the day she named. Having secured him by this display of resolution she had laid decision aside until now, when all the slow force of her will was once more arrayed to be rid of him. Cowering behind his paper, Mr Brodribb sank deeper into his chair and prepared to offer such resistance as pride demanded.

'I was afraid,' said Mrs Brodribb calmly, 'that it might be expensive. But it's not so very, Arthur says, if the case isn't defended. Arthur's been finding out about it. Of course, he'd share expenses. Arthur— '

'How dare you mention that fellow's name to me?' Mr Brodribb inquired. 'It's bare-faced. You don't seem to have any sense of what's right and proper.'

'I've told you,' Mrs Brodribb answered with dignity, 'there's nothing wrong at all between me and Arthur. And won't be.'

Mr Brodribb dashed down his paper, rose, and retired to the only refuge that owned him for master, the tool shed. Mrs Brodribb showed no emotion at his exit, did not lift her eyes from her sewing; but some minutes later she smiled.

This was the first of a series of encounters whereby, at the end of a fortnight, Mr Brodribb was finally brought to reason. Towards the result his wife's arguments contributed in some degree; but in the main she owed her victory to that unknown ally, Mr Brodribb's imagination, which displayed him to himself a free man. Only that wicked preliminary, the necessary infidelity, alarmed him. He made guarded inquiries, confirmed Arthur's estimate of the expense, and admitted one evening that he might think it over. His wife kissed him, and telephoned to Arthur to come round at once.

The meeting passed off without awkwardness, owing to Arthur's tactful praise of Mr Brodribb's generosity. Indeed, the evening ended with a kind of impromptu supper, during which healths were drunk in whisky and water. After all, as Mrs Brodribb pointed out, it was not as if they had any of them anything to be ashamed of. It was she who steered the men towards action, with:

'All very fine, but what do we do first? You can't sit with your hands folded and expect a judge to come to you.'

Mr Brodribb involuntarily consulted Arthur with his eyes.

'Restitution of conjugal rights,' said Arthur, responding. 'That's the first step.' Mr Brodribb cleared his throat.

'No question of that, old man. Restitution, I mean. She's never been deprived.'

'Well, you've got to deprive her,' said Arthur.

Mr Brodribb looked helplessly about the comfortable room; at the ferns he had tended all the winter long; at the black marble clock, shaped like a tomb, that the firm had given him on his marriage; finally, at his wife.

'You don't have to do it for long. You go to some nice boarding-house— there's a little place in north London I could give you the address of, a private hotel— well, you go off, and you write Cissie a letter, saying you're gone for good. Then off she goes to a solicitor and shows him the letter, and he sues you.'

'What for?'

'Restitution. You don't answer him. He sues you two or three times more—'

'Who's going to pay for all this?'

Arthur waved the question from him.

'And that's all, as far as that goes.' He coughed, and went on delicately: 'There's one or two other things. But you'd better get a solicitor to put you up to all the dodges.'

Mrs Brodribb, with healthy feminine contempt of delicacy, said:

'Yes, the infidelity; what about that? I don't know that I like the idea of Henry going off with goodness knows who.'

'I think you'll find,' Mr Brodribb ventured at last, 'that it's only a form.'

'That's it,' Arthur agreed, relieved; 'that's all. A form.'

Mrs Brodribb, with feminine bad taste, laughed.

'Fancy, Henry!' said she.

They separated, and Mr Brodribb, making his way to the spare bedroom, felt that he had taken that night another step towards freedom. Next morning, at breakfast, it was arranged that he should leave home on the following Monday.

'It's always nicer,' said Mrs Brodribb, 'to start the week clear.'

The intervening days went smoothly by. Mr Brodribb secured a room in the little place in north London at a reasonable figure. During the Friday lunch hour he was measured for a new suit. At home Mrs Brodribb passed his underclothing in review, darned, packed, and began to look younger. With the near prospect of escape, home became tolerable to both. They were considerate and friendly.

On Sunday night, as he knelt by his suitcase, affixing the label, Mrs Brodribb entered the spare room. In her right hand was a brown paper parcel. She held it out timidly and said:

'Got any room in your case?'

'Plenty,' said Mr Brodribb. 'Hello, what's this?'

'Hot water bottle,' his wife answered. 'Extra strong, guaranteed. You know what your feet are, and I thought, perhaps now—'

Mr Brodribb unwrapped the parcel, revealing the gift, whose outer cover appeared to be made of tiger skin. His wife went on, justifying her display of sentiment:

'If it leaks any time in the next six months, Prosser's'll give you a new one. Only don't let them fill it with boiling, whatever you do. If you fill it with boiling, they won't guarantee.'

'Right,' said Mr Brodribb. 'I'll tell them. Thanks, Cis.'

He was touched, and uneasy. Still on his knees, he wrapped the bottle again in its paper and stowed it with care in a corner of the suitcase. When he lifted his head his wife was at the door.

'All aboard,' said Mr Brodribb, to lighten the tension. 'You be off.'

He made a threatening gesture, in play. His wife lingered.

'Is that place comfortable you're going to?' she asked.

'Seems all right,' said Mr Brodribb, 'there's a nice bit of garden at the back.'

'Oh,' said his wife. 'Well, good-night.'

'Good-night, Cis,' Mr Brodribb responded. 'I won't forget about that hot bottle.'

Nor did he. On Monday evening in the boarding-house bedroom, his belongings strewn about him ready to be absorbed into drawers and cupboards as yet uncharted, Mr Brodribb paused to hand on his wife's instructions to the housemaid, who, regarding the disorder with that sympathetic mockery which is the everyday attitude of woman to man, replied:

'I know all about that. You leave it to me. I was filling bottles before you were born.'

Mr Brodribb, who had guessed her age at about twenty-five, was flattered. He handed over the bottle, and felt in his pocket for a coin which should ensure her continued interest in him. He found two, and bestowed them. Instantly the housemaid informed him that her name was Ivy and that she never could bear to see a gentleman trying to do things for himself. On this Mr Brodribb thankfully abandoned the struggle with his belongings and went for a stroll with a cigar; retiring, he found order, and the temperature of the bottle judged to perfection.

In the kitchen Ivy sketched his portrait for the benefit of Queenie and the cook.

'That's a nice little feller in number four,' said Ivy. 'Good clothes, and not pernickety, I should say. No scent or brilliantine.'

'Married?' Gladys inquired.

'Ought to be,' Ivy responded. 'A bit shy, though. And no photographs. No, single, I should say. But a nice little feller. The sort you can soon learn their ways.'

This prophecy was fulfilled. In a week such ways as Mr Brodribb had were learned, and the routine of 'Melrose' began to fit him like his waistcoat. His life appeared to the other boarders to be entirely uneventful.

They could not know, nor could the servants know, the significance of certain letters in blue envelopes which arrived for him from time to time and were immediately destroyed. These letters, which denounced Mr Brodribb as a vagabond and wife-betrayer, called upon him to return without delay to his duty, and stated in clear type what steps, in the event of non-compliance, would be taken. Each letter troubled him, not by its black and white accusations of guilt but by its wordless reminder that these were, as yet, unfounded. He knew that the step must be taken. He knew that Cissie, and Arthur, and two impeccable forms of solicitors expected it of him, and he was resigned; but, also he was afraid. He procrastinated. Time went by.

It was a chance word from Ivy that in the end, strangely, gave him courage. She appeared one evening unusually early to turn down his bed, announcing that she had the evening off.

'Oh,' said Mr Brodribb, 'what'll you do? Pictures?'

'Pictures!' Ivy repeated with scorn. 'Why, last time a feller started trying to flip my suspender elastic. I had the attendant on to him, quick. No, it's dancing I'm mad over.'

And she described the joys of the Alexandra Palais de Danse, with its twin bands, its delectable sixpenny partners.

'You ought to go,' said Ivy, summing up.

'I might, some time,' Mr Brodribb replied. 'Good-night. Have a good time.'

'Watch me,' Ivy responded, and withdrew.

The next evening Mr Brodribb slipped out and took a taxi to the Palais de Danse. The exterior alarmed him; it was garish with light. But indoors, the large room into which he blundered was dim, save for a moving radiant circle in which two figures shifted to hushed music. This, he knew, must be an exhibition dance; it looked easy, artless; nevertheless Mr Brodribb's neighbours bent forward to observe with the rapt stillness of trees and mountain tops attentive to Orpheus' lute.

It was ended; the band, long spent, burst into a frenzy of syncopation, and Mr Brodribb, looking about him in the restored light, began to feel lonely. Couples formed the assembly, sitting, dancing, dallying: nowhere could he see a woman unattached. The couples were respectable, they danced with decorum, as a social rite, unsmiling, while above their heads the music raved and pranced, kicked high, and came slithering down on a wail from the saxophone.

At last a woman appeared in the doorway alone. She was fair, small, not so very young, not so very pretty. Her nice average face was masked with paint, and her dress was showy. Mr Brodribb wondered at her presence in that place, for he had no illusions as to her calling. Neither, it seemed, had the attendants, who watched her, questioned each other with glances, and then, nodding to each other, bore down. Calmly, civilly, they edged her towards the door. The group was almost out of sight when Mr Brodribb, stepping forward and craning to see the last of the episode, caught the woman's eye over an attendant's shoulder. Without hesitation she pushed the man aside and came towards him, widely smiling. Dimly he heard her greeting:

'Well, George, wherever have you been hiding? Keeping me standing about— '

'This lady with you, sir?' the attendant asked, doubtfully.

'Can't you see I am?' she interrupted, and took Mr Brodribb's arm, which he did not withhold. Reassured, the attendant moved away.

'Well,' said Mr Brodribb to his companion, 'since you're here and I'm here, suppose we have a dance?'

'I don't mind,' the lady replied, surveying her face by the swift circular motion of a mirror two inches square; and without further reference to his chivalry disposed herself for him to clasp. She had a snub nose, which he liked. Her hair's metallic refinement matched that of her voice. If her scent was pervasive, her feet kept their distance. Not a bad little woman at all, he decided. Silently they shuffled, while the music raved.

'Often come here?' Mr Brodribb asked.

'Not so often,' she replied, and was instantly in full conversational sail. 'They don't like a girl to come here without a gentleman. Of course I saw at once you were what I call a real gentleman, or I wouldn't have spoken.'

'Very glad you did,' said Mr Brodribb, 'I was wondering what to do for a partner.'

'Come on your own?' she asked.

He explained that he lived quite near.

'Lucky!' said she. 'It's a nice part.'

'And where do you live?' Mr Brodribb asked, with no ulterior motive; but her answering glance dismayed him, reminded him. Through the hurry of his own thoughts he heard her say:

'Not so far. Like to come along? I'll make you a cup of tea.'

Mr Brodribb rose.

'That's right,' said his partner, 'and there's a nice pot of salmon paste I haven't opened.'

During the drive she told him that her name was Edna, and asked for his. He gave it, with some reluctance; unnecessarily, since she disliked it and elected to call him George as before.

But the room into which she led the way surprised Mr Brodribb from his brooding. It was small and tidy.

Mr Brodribb watched her preparations for tea through a cloud of thought. Where, he asked himself, could he find a correspondent more suitable in every way? Impulse overcame him; and as she handed him the cup he made his suggestion.

Edna doubted, mocked, required assurance, read the ultimate letter from the solicitor, and was convinced.

'It would have to be some hotel,' said Mr Brodribb, 'so as to get the servants' evidence. I dare say you know of some place.'

'Well, I do,' she responded without enthusiasm, 'but they're not what I'd call very nice. What's this place like you're in?'

Mr Brodribb described 'Melrose' at some length. She pondered.

'Sounds the sort of place I'd like,' she said at last. 'I'm sick of these flash hotels. Everybody knows what you're there for. Now, what I'd liked be some nice quiet boarding-house, or somewhere like that, just for once in a way.'

Mr Brodribb, too, had been pondering. What, after all, was 'Melrose' to him? No final refuge, since he would have to leave as soon as the case came on. There was a vacant room next to his own.

'But it would have to be as my wife,' said he, thinking aloud.

'Well, rings are cheap,' she answered, unperturbed.

A week later Mr Brodribb introduced a small mouse-coloured woman to 'Melrose' as his wife; he let it be understood that they had been married some months ago, but that Mrs Brodribb had been nursing a sick mother in the country.

The good time ended by reason of financial pressure. Mr Brodribb, assessing his expenses for the half-year, which included two homes, a retaining fee for Edna, and a month of junketing for two, decided that the experiment could no longer continue. Edna approved.

Mr Brodribb gave notice to the proprietress that they would leave in a week's time, and sent a letter with the same information to the solicitors. At the prospect of losing them, upper 'Melrose' showed tepid surprise; nether 'Melrose' lamented, prophesying wrath to come, boarders in their stead who would be neither tidy, civil nor generous. For the guilty couple, grateful to the establishment which had sheltered their idyll, had no way save one of showing gratitude. On the night before their departure Ivy and Queenie were summoned. Each received garments from Edna, and from Mr Brodribb largesse. Queenie and Ivy, dismissed, descended to the kitchen almost in tears, declaring to the cook that never again would 'Melrose' see the like of the Brodribbs, and vowing eternal regard. Upstairs, Mr Brodribb, on his knees beside his suitcase, looked up to find Edna standing by him, a parcel in her hand.

'What's this?'

'It's just a little thing I got for you,' Edna replied, 'to look nice on your mantelpiece.'

He unwrapped the gift, revealing a brown plaster monkey six inches high, dressed in striped bathing drawers and playing the fiddle left-handed. The pedestal on which it stood was pierced with holes.

'For pipes,' Edna explained. 'Cute, isn't it? How ever they think of these things I don't know.'

Mr Brodribb, overcome, acknowledged her thought for him and the genius of the inventor.

'It hasn't been such a bad old time, has it?' he asked wistfully.

'I believe you,' Edna replied. 'As good as a trip to the sea. You tell your wife from me she doesn't know a gentleman when she sees one.'

They left next morning, some two hours before the arrival of a young man who made inquiries. This young man, having told his errand, and assured the proprietress, anxious for the good name of 'Melrose', that only servants' evidence would be required, sent for Ivy and Queenie, whom he interviewed in her presence. He questioned them, took notes, made clear their duty, and within twenty-five minutes departed. He was a brisk young man, who now and then sacrificed other things to promptness, and he did not on this occasion take time to observe the demeanour of the witnesses, which was, to say the least, reluctant. But three months later, when the case of Brodribb v. Brodribb and Another was called, he and his employers had cause to regret this economy of time.

For plaintiff's counsel, seeking to establish the facts of Mr Brodribb's desertion and adultery, met with a check when he called upon Ivy Blout to prove that Mr Brodribb had for weeks lived in an intimacy unsanctioned by law. Having ascertained her name, age and calling, he suavely inquired:

'You were housemaid at this address from October 5th last until December 10th?'

'Yes, sir,' Ivy replied.

'During that time was the defendant a paying guest in the house?'

'I don't know.'

Counsel halted, staring.

Ivy, contemplating Mr Brodribb, repeated without hesitation or haste:

'I don't know that gentleman.'

'You lived in the same house, in constant attendance on this man for weeks, and you say you don't recognise him?'

'No, sir.'

Counsel took another tack.

'You understand that you are on your oath?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Do you quite understand what is meant by perjury?'

'Telling lies.'

'Telling lies on oath, yes. A serious offence, punishable by imprisonment. Do you still insist, on your oath, that you don't know the defendant?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Why do you suppose you were brought here into court at all?'

Ivy, for the first time, permitted herself a smile.

'I really couldn't say.'

He fared no better at the hands of Queenie; words, questions and threats alike broke in spume against her unshaken gratitude. At last, on a note from his instructors, he sat down. There was a chill pause, into which the ironic comments of the judge fell softly as snowflakes. The case was dismissed.

On their way home, in the 'bus, Queenie said to Ivy:

'That was 'is wife, her in the blue hat. Think of it; sitting there with a face like that, and trying to get rid of that nice little feller.'

'Cheek!' Ivy agreed. 'She ought to be thankful for a husband like him. Whatever Mr Brodribb's done,' said Ivy, 'he's a real gentleman, and they don't get their dirty evidence out of Ivy Blout.'

In the restaurant off Fleet Street where they had met as arranged Mrs Brodribb lamented to Arthur:

'Now what? Do I have to take him back?'

'Not him,' said Arthur. 'We'll get more evidence, other witnesses. Prosecute these witnesses. Whatever can have happened I don't know, but it's not his fault, I'll bet. He's been having no end of a time on his own.'

'Yes; well, if that's how he's been going on,' said Mrs Brodribb with decision, 'he'd better come home. I'm not going to be made a laughing-stock again. Going over it all again, and the same thing happening, most likely. Like trying to get a number on the telephone.'

'That's your look-out,' Arthur answered, hurt, but jaunty. 'If you like to take him back slightly soiled, you're welcome.'

'Oh, Arthur,' said Mrs Brodribb, suddenly overcome, 'and we'd even chosen the bedroom suite.'

Lunching alone in a chop-house in the city, and waiting for his cheese, Mr Brodribb thought with affection of a brown plaster monkey in bathing drawers, playing the fiddle left-handed; then, suddenly recollecting, of a hot-water bottle, dressed in tiger skin, which, after only five months' use, had begun to leak at the seams, and which Prosser's, according to their guarantee, were obliged to replace without charge. He made a note on his cuff there and then.

_________________

9: Poker

Achmed Abdullah

Alexander Nicholayevitch Romanoff, 1881-1945

All-Story Weekly,  5 Feb 1916

JIMMY WAS tall and strong. He looked like a paperback edition of a Twentieth-Century Magog, and at a distance he seemed to show breed from head to foot. He radiated it. Girls just out of boarding school who saw him swing down the main street of the little Northwestern town where he had been born and bred spoke of his fascinating virility.

But when he came nearer, and chiefly when he raised his olive-green velvet hat with the twisted, many-colored pugaree band, you changed your first impression. For he pompadoured his hair in the manner of the statuesque child-men in the streetcar ads, who picture the latest extravaganzas in five-ply, guaranteed-linen, long-point collars; he was suspected of using a Rachel shade of face powder; and it took him years of hardy effort to graduate from peg-tops and padded shoulders to chaste, Manhattan-cut trousers and coat.

His character was half drizzle and half sleet; his was the gift of mean and useless things charmingly done, the sort of mind which tries to fill an empty well with dew drops and to attach handles to an egg.

But he could split a pair of aces and draw to a flush, and never change a muscle.

When Jimmy arrived in Europe he was of course crude and uncooked.

Paris took him to her bosom; for she is a reasonable town, a cocotte of a town, which likes the uncooked as long as it is rich. And Paris and the Parisian's ate the liberal remittances which Jimmy's father sent.

So he went the rounds. The boulevards acclaimed him. The Place Pigalle knew him. The Bois respected him. And Henri's bar honored him: for Monsieur Jean McCafferty, the imported Coney Island barkeeper, named a cocktail after him.

Then one day he discovered that Paris was not all silk-hose and alcohol. He discovered that there was a Paris which worked and made money and did remarkably well. And, at the American Consulate, he was introduced to two pushing young New Yorkers who were thinking of building there a miniature edition of famed Luna Park.

Now be it understood that Jimmy's father was one of those Northwestern pioneers who had drifted West in the days of the prairie-schooner and who had acquired a bankroll of noble proportions by squatting on somebody else's land, and by selling Germantown wool and printed calico and red liquor to the guileless Siwash. And so, when Jimmy heard the plans of the two young New Yorkers, the prairie-schooning, Siwash-impoverishing instinct rose screaming in his heart; he cabled to his father, and his father thought he would give the boy a chance. So he sent him a neat little sum of money, and Jimmy became the leading stockholder and managing director of the Paris Luna Park.

Now it is worth remembering that a stomach which surprises its proprietor by feeding ravenously on strong coffee, ice-cream and pies and Welsh rabbits can stand anything, even to be tossed about in a mad circle at fifty miles an hour, and to slide one-steppingly around a greased and rapidly rotating dance floor; while, on the other hand, a logical, artistic, Latin stomach which gives a happy and exclusive home to hearty Burgundy, honest beef a la mode, scintillating lemon soufflés, and sterling-minded Camembert, can never relish the sensations of a whirling super-Dervish in a tantrum.

And so the Paris Luna Park enterprise was not a success. Decidedly not.

Frequently did Jimmy Webb cable home for money, and frequently did Dad remit, until one day a crude and unfeeling message flashed from the little Northwestern town to Paris.

It was in the nature of an ultimatum. For it told Jimmy to take the next ship home. The Paris agent of the International Mercantile Steamship Line would give him through transportation straight back to his home town, and enough ready cash for tips and meals and baggage. At home a hearty job was waiting for him. If he preferred Europe he could remain there. But he would have to shift for himself; and no cables, not even the most urgent, emotional and expensive, would be answered. He should also write regularly to Mother, who was worrying.

Strange to relate, Jimmy did not worry a bit.

He counted his ready cash and made the pleasant discovery that there were still over five hundred francs remaining. So he promptly rejected his father's unsympathetic and brutal offer, and adjourned to his chop and beer— metaphorical chop and very metaphorical beer. For the chop developed into gray-grained, unsalted molossol caviar, venison steak à la Pueckler-Muskau, and crêpes Suzette, while the beer metempsychosized into a bottle of Saint Emilion and a neat series of little glasses— some golden-yellow, some pink, and some violet. Which goes to show that Jimmy was crude and uncooked no more.

Fate had a hand in this dinner and appointed the headwaiter Deputy-Providence.

For when Laurette de Roza, nee Malloy (the one and only Laurette, whose meteoric rise from the Barbary Coast to Pantages's Circuit, from Pantages's to Broadway, and from Broadway to the Alhambra, the Berlin Wintergarten, and the Casino de Paris, had been the talk of half the Knickerbocker Building and all the Sunday supplements), when Laurette sauntered into the restaurant for a leisurely dinner, she found every table occupied. The diplomatic Swiss Prince who was disguised as headwaiter looked at Laurette's tight-fitting toque, at her short-vamp pumps and supra-Paris frock; and then, looking for a likely place, his eye caught sight of Jimmy's tweed Norfolk, his broad-ribboned shoes and his trousers innocent of suspenders. And he decided that, by secret sign of dress and square chin, the two belonged to the same lodge of race and prejudice.

So he asked Jimmy if he minded, and Jimmy said that he did not. And two seconds later Laurette sat facing Jimmy.

She looked at her vis-à-vis from underneath her slow-drooping eyelids. Perhaps she liked the appearance of her young countryman; perhaps she felt just the least little bit homesick; at all events she hurdled suavely over all the usual Anglo-Saxon preliminaries and broke the ice with a hammer of considerable weight.

"Say, Mister Man, shoot me over the sweetener, will you?"

Jimmy was startled. Jimmy was pleased. Jimmy was touched and affected. For, in the soft rolling of the R's, in the rich diction and the bold grammar, he read the high-sign of the Pacific homeland.

He passed the sugar as bid, lit a cigarette, and inquired politely if the lady hailed from the noble State of Washington.

California rose in its mighty wrath.

"Not so's you'd notice it. San Francisco is my middle name— and it's good enough for me, believe me!"

Jimmy countered gracefully.

"Great little town, Miss—?"

"Laurette— Laurette de Roza,"

"Glad to meet you, Miss de Roza. My name's Jimmy Webb. Shake!"

They shook. They shook warmly. And thus began a friendship which was destined to make history both in the French and in the Inland Empire Capitals.

That same night he accompanied her to the Casino de Paris, and from a seat in back of the stage, nonchalantly tilted back against a pile of scenery, he watched his fair countrywoman as she fascinated the sporting males and a few sporting females of Paris with the latest wrinkles in the cracking of finger joints and the wriggling of shoulders. And there was just the least little bit of jealousy in his heart as he heard remarks of sprightly Latin appreciation floating up from the stalls and the orchestra-loges.

"Elle est charmante, la petite Américaine… oh là là, qu'elle est rigolo… mais elle est bien…"

After the first night, they would meet nearly every afternoon in one of cafés on the Champs Elysées or the Bois; and there, fortified by slushy French pastry and syrupy drinks of a passionate shade of cerise, the boy would listen to the girl's quaint, homemade philosophy and to her uncalled for insults about the facial and bodily characteristics of the Parisian ladies.

And gradually the old Jimmy sickened and died. A new heart, a new Self grew up in the body of Jimmy Webb. And this new heart was filled to overflowing with blind, pathetic, puppyish love for the glittering little butterfly who had danced and sung her way from the Barbary Coast to the star dressing room of Continental music halls.

Of course it would have been decidedly more proper and moral if he had returned to his home town in the Inland Empire, had accepted the hearty job which awaited him there, had married the daughter of Larry Purcell as his parents wished him to, and had lived a decent and constructive life henceforth, divided between the eight-room bungalow on Cannon Hill, the golf links, and his office chair in the Old National Bank Building.

But once in a while Fate, perhaps to vary the monotony, decides to cheat muslin-frocked, pink-and-white primness; and so Jimmy loved, and gloried in his love.

And steadily his financial resources grew more anemic.

The girl noticed it. She also noticed that there was a soft, white, weak lovableness about him, that there was the making of a man beneath his pompadour and his regrettable olive-green velvet hat, and that there was the far-off chance that the leer of lust which curled and lurked in the corners of his fleshy lips might change in time to the clean smile of real love.

But she was a very practical little girl, and when Jimmy popped the eternal question shortly afterward, she laughed and replied.

"Forget it, kid. You're flighty and I'm flighty. There ain't no ballast to such a team— to keep 'em steady,"

But presently the mothering instinct which is one-half of the love of woman rose in her soul, and she spoke to Jim seriously and naggingly.

"You gotta cut out that bunch of the Café Ritz. You gotta keep away from them hell-roaring bums— or it's Good Night for you."

Jimmy's teeth tightened the string of the little red tobacco bag which was a priceless relic from the Pacific slope, and he remonstrated mildly.

"Say, what's eatin' you? That hunch is all right. And they're all Americans. Why, last night when I lent Tommy Slater that five-spot he'd asked me for, he promised me he would—"

She interrupted savagely.

"Ah, you talk like a clam-chowder. You're the original easy-mark. Here you are with a few measly, pockmarked kopeks in your jeans, and you let that bunch sponge on you. Why, Jim, I'm surprised at you. Any itinerant con-guy who flouts the little old flag over the Congtinong can hand you a spring onion, and you think it's a tuberose."

Jimmy thought for a while in his slow way. Then he grinned good-humoredly.

"Spring onion— tuberose— Gee whiz, but it fits me like a blister."

And he lit his cigarette with an air of unconcern and looked out into the garden where the birds were nipping the tips from the peeping tulip leaves.

"This ain't no laughing matter," Laurette continued sternly. "I mean what I say. Why don't you make something of yourself? Six foot two, as healthy as a baby bull that's been vaccinated and didn't catch— and you can't even earn a living. All you do is to play sucker to that bunch at the Ritz. Why can't you make good, same as your father done?"

He looked at her, and then, reading between the lines of her temperamental outburst, he walked up close to her and took both her hands in his.

"I guess you do care for me just the least little bit, honey-bugs."

And he attempted to kiss her, but found himself rewarded by a resounding and painful left-hander.

He rubbed his cheek and grinned sheepishly.

But he knew that there was some sense in Laurette's lecture, and so he left her and walked down the Boulevard des Italiens, head held high, arms swinging easily, determination in every feature, and jaw stuck out defiantly. Once more the Siwash-impoverishing spirit of his pioneer ancestors rose screaming in his soul; and as he strode along he was taking an inventory of his money-getting qualities.

And a retired Parisian banker, resplendent in white spats and a square-cut Assyrian beard, pointed at him and said to his plump wife:

"Regardez, Marie. There's a typical young American for you— there's energy for you and intelligence and determination. Ah, cherie, by the ten thousand little blue devils, but they are a great nation!"

Laurette was hurt when Jimmy did not show up for several days. She was lonely and unhappy, and she missed her afternoon walks with him in the golden Paris air when summer days cried them out to garden and wood. And every night she confided to her pillow that the boy was dearer to her than the dwellings of kings. But every morning she got a fresh hold on her common sense, and decided that it was no use to spill perfectly good milk.

Finally, one rainy Sunday afternoon, Jimmy came to her and with his first words he asked her again to marry him.

But she shook her head.

"No, no, Jimmy." By this time he was sitting close to her, his right arm firmly encircling her waist. "I guess love is all fine and dandy. But you can't discount it for a second-hand sandwich. It ain't got no market value. Nobody could sell it— not even a Los Angeles real estate agent. And I do need eats and drinks and heaps and heaps of clothes; yes, and a few sparklers, too. I guess I'll stay single and keep on tangoing for a living. Now don't sit there and look as solemn as the last trump. You know I'm right, don't you?"

Jimmy grinned.

"Listen here, honey. Just suppose I blow in here one of these days with a great big wad of those sympathetic yellow-backs?"

She laughed.

"Ah, tell it to the marines— to the French marines at that! You and a wad. You haven't been hitting the coke, have you? Take my tip and return to the Old Man back in the Northwest and eat humble pie. It's darned wholesome pie, and easy money ain't your line. Be a good boy, go home, and I'll stake you to your ticket."

Jimmy answered never a word. He got up and kissed her square on the mouth, and this time she was too surprised to give him a left-hander in exchange.

Then he strode out of the room whistling "Casey Jones."

Laurette walked over to the window and looked after him. It was still raining, and suddenly she felt very lonely; and there was sobbing in the wind, and the sound of homesickness in the sweep of the warm rain.

She dabbed at her eyes with a tiny square of lace-edged grass-linen which did duty for handkerchief, and whispered:

"Oh, Jimmy, it's too bad your feet are so big, I'd like it swell to have you for a dancing partner— 'Mr. and Mrs. James Webb in their latest society dances'— wouldn't it be great? But it can't be done— not with those brogans of yours." She looked in the mirror. "Gosh, but I'm a silly goose. Here I am crying and looking like a dying Welsh rabbit, and I gotta hurry over to the Casino de Paris and do my stunt and smile. This sure is a hard life."

But all the sobbing sorrow of the world could not interfere with the charm and skill of her little dancing feet. The Casino de Paris was packed night after night with crowds of enthusiastic Frenchmen, and Monsieur Henri Deschamps, the manager, after much cabling to New York, renewed her contract for another two months.

Meanwhile Jimmy called on her as before, and his first question dealt always with papa and wedding ring.

She knew that his roll must have nearly dwindled to the size of a lone, emaciated toothpick, and she offered him money, first indirectly and delicately, and then directly and indelicately. But Jimmy refused with a laugh which made her wild.

"Don't laugh like a fool, Jim. No, no, don't laugh— don't even smile. That ain't a smile. It's a railroad track."

Jimmy bent down and kissed her pouting mouth (it had lately become a habit with him), picked up stick and hat, and left, pleading a business engagement.

She opened the door and shouted after the disappearing figure:

"A business engagement? A business engagement? Say, Jimmy, you got cobwebs in your brilliantined belfry, haven't you?"

But he repeated his portentous statement, and hurried downstairs two steps at a time. He swung himself aboard a westbound motorbus and was off in the direction of his business premises.

Back in the little parlor, Laurette discovered a small package which Jim had left behind. It was tied with pink satin ribbon, and Jimmy's card was stuck in it with the penciled words "For Laurette." She opened it eagerly, and a second later she slipped a tremendous canary diamond on her second finger.

And she said to herself wonderingly:

"Lord, whatever his business, it sure seems to pay big."

And she was right. Jimmy was really in business for himself (very much for himself), and was making money rapidly— big, juicy money.

Now I warned the reader several pages back that, in the course of this simple narrative, straight-front, well-laundered, muslin-frocked Morality was liable to get a black eye, and that, contrary to all "uplift" magazine stories, the looseness of moral fiber which a futurist poet (probably drunk) has been heard to describe as purple with a dash of cerise, was going to march forth to victory triumphantly.

For behold:

Jimmy's business was exclusively connected with the dealing of cards and the fingering of chips.

His business career and consequent financial rehabilitation had started that night when Laurette had warned him against some of his compatriots who made the Café Ritz their headquarters. He had gone there that very night to pay a farewell call, and moved by a spirit of gratitude for past favors, Tommy Slater had introduced him to some young Parisians, well-to-do men about town, who had a mistaken notion that they could play the Great American game, and who were willing to back their opinion with hard coin and soft paper of the realm.

And again the ancestral spirit rose in Jimmy's soul. He thought inarticulately, subconsciously of his sires who had traded with the Indians, and so he sat down and played, in spite of the fact that he had less than twenty francs in his pocket, that his board bill was sadly in arrears, and that he simply could not afford to lose. That was it exactly, as he explained to Laurette some time later: He had to win, since he could not afford to lose.

And he did win.

That had happened several weeks ago, and Jimmy had been playing poker all the time. He met other people, Frenchmen and a few Englishmen, and all eager to show the young American how his national game should be played, and Jimmy was always willing to learn. Finally he was introduced at the Cercle Richelieu, a swagger club the members of which were French aristocrats, wealthy brokers, gambling Gascon millionaires, with a sprinkling of Russian and British nobility. Jimmy mentioned casually to the secretary of the club that he was the son of Andrew Webb, the well-known Western millionaire, and, answering an equally casual inquiry, the American consul confirmed it.

Now it is said by people who know that the highest poker in the world is played in the hallowed halls of this particular club. It is also said, and truthfully said, that the members settle promptly. Which was good; for Jimmy won steadily.

It would be doing him an injustice to say that it was luck. It was simply that Jimmy could play the game. I believe that there exists a distinct genius for poker, not registered by Lombroso, as there exists genius for music and writing and polo and lovemaking. And Jimmy had the poker genius to an amazing degree.

His face, when he picked up his cards, showed less emotion than a Chinese cemetery on a rainy day; and his voice, when he asked for cards, was as void of human emotion as an ossified bagpipe. His strategy was never twice alike; and when once, in a while the others abandoned a pot to him without calling his hand and then, with the spirit and voices of martyrs, inquired what he had had, he could lie like a Greek with an Armenian mother and a Bulgarian stepfather. His way of splitting tall pairs was as dangerous as a forgotten, deserted mining camp, studded with unprotected shafts of disused pits. He played a straight, square, hard game, and every once in a while he let one or another of the Frenchmen bluff him on purpose and walk away with the pot. And then, the very next deal, the man who had bluffed him successfully would rise to the bait with the alacrity of folly and greed. He would even rise to the naked hook, and Jimmy would be there with the goods, playing for blood, merciless, iron-visaged, like a god of destruction. At other times he would play a slow, waiting game, for a long time, half asleep, sipping his drink and puffing at his cigarette, until the other men would have a conception of him as a man who was tired and sick of the bad luck that was dogging him. And then, suddenly, magnificently, Jimmy would shatter these conceptions of his opponents with a fact of thumping force: a big full, or four of a kind, or some such trifle. Again he would run amuck for a few rounds and bet crazily, carelessly on twos and threes, all his boyish imagination bound up in the whirling, smashing chances of the game, and every ounce of this imagination running off in a wild bound to meet the unknown: the hands of his opponents. Also he would smile eagerly at times when he picked up a bad hand, for there is in well-played poker the triumphant practice of perfect hypocrisy.

Finally there came a soft summer night when Laurette and Jimmy, after the show, were enjoying a leisurely supper in an open-air restaurant of the Bois. The French band was trying hard to bring Latin logic into a syncopated American rag. The waiter was trying hard to speak English. And Laurette was looking very small and tired and homesick and pathetic.

Jimmy pushed a little package across the table, and when she opened it she found in it a big wad of money, two steamer tickets for New York, and a large-sized draft on the Old National Bank of the Northwestern town which was Jimmy's home. Also a wedding ring.

When Laurette heard how he had earned his money, she was not a bit shocked. On the contrary, when they left the American church she kissed Jimmy and said with conviction:

"Gosh, Jimmy, I'm tickled to death that you trimmed them foreigners."

THREE WEEKS later Jimmy's father was sitting in the small poker room of the club of his hometown. Dick Miller was stacking chips in even piles, and there was time for polite conversation.

And Old Man Webb turned to Frank Graves and said:

"I tell you, Frank, I am proud of that boy of mine, that Jim. First I thought he was no good, and so I cut off supplies. And he goes to work all by himself, in Europe, in a strange country, and comes back here with a bunch of coin. And wait till you see his wife— belongs to a swell Californian family— but not a bit stuck-up— just nice and kiddish and breezy as anything. And I tell you what tickles me most of all, Frank: Those two kids got the nicest, real old-fashioned ideas. Jimmy won't touch a card, and Laurette won't dance anything but a good old, slow waltz— once in a while a polka— but no tango for her, she says."

And Frank Graves, about to deal the first hand, rejoined:

"Yes, Andy. We built up this great Northwest. We worked hard. And I'm darned glad our sons are following in our footsteps."

And then they all said in chorus:

"You bet!"

________________

10: A Dog-House Detective

Herbert MacAlpine

Railroad Man's Magazine, March 1912

Just two stories can be found by this otherwise unknown writer, both railway stories.

THE night operator at the tower was very thankful that the first crash awakened him so that no one could catch him sleeping on duty, but Pat Drugan, the section boss across the way, found no cause for thankfulness, if one might judge from the remarks he made to his good woman who sat up in bed trying to direct him while he clawed into everything except the matchbox:

"Did ye hear that now? There's another switch smashed an' me up all last night with the wan that blockhead, Jones, ran through. Nary a cent extra pay do I get for it, an' my men gettin' time an' a half.

"The matches— on the corner, are they? 'Tis siven corners I've felt over already an' how many has the washstand? Right in the middle they are now, an' if I'd not listened to ye, there's where I'd reached first. Do I want a bite to eat? What's the good of eating, woman, if I can't get time to sleep?"

Outside the house he ran against the conductor coming to call him.

"Callin' me, are ye? Do you think I'm needin' callin' after a noise like the roof of the universe comin' off? What switches have ye ripped up now, an' is any wan hurted?"

" 'Tis a small mix-up for the big noise it made," said O'Halloran, the conductor. "Two cars of sheetiron and our caboose come together down by the old warehouse and they was so busy mixin' things they'd no time to waste on your track.

"No one's hurt much. A sheet of iron started to scalp old Jake, but finding him bald-headed it skipped him, so barring a few scratches on his pate, he's all right. While you're gettin' out your men I'll go down to the office and rack me brain tryin' to make a report of how this happened to agree with what the old man'll see when he gets here with the wreck-train."

It was a raw, chilly night with a heavy fog drifting in. When O'Halloran, coming from the office, reported that the wreckers would not arrive for a couple of hours, all hands carried wood from the broken cars to the open space between the yard and the main track and started a rousing fire.

They gathered around it and were swapping yarns when the fast freight passed. It was a double-header— two big engines, sixty cars, and a pusher behind the caboose Out of the fog, with a rhythmic clangity-clang, it came, the trucks pounding over the low joints as each car flashed into the yellow gleam for a moment and then was lost in the darkness beyond. First, a long line of refrigerators, the aristocrats of the freight service whose rattle and roar says to every railroad man:

"We must not be held! We must not be held!"

Then a beer car, the big, foaming glass on its side, a fleeting aggravation to the thirsty souls by the fire. Following this came an iron bridge— long, red spans, two flats to the span— a rush order for some district where the floods had been at work. Then "Bananas. Do not delay. Bananas. Do not delay." A sharp squeal from the stock-car following told that one pig in it had an ill-natured neighbor. All kinds and colors, they rushed by, chased by the caboose and its snorting pusher.

"That's the way to wheel 'em," said Nolan, the flagman. "Did you get the glimpse of old Gus Menkle sitting at the desk making up his reports? Now I'm wondering where he'd go if the head-end stopped sudden."

"I couldn't say that," answered O'Halloran, "but I'd be wondering what would become of the big family he's supporting. A wife and about a dozen of his own, and the sister-in-law, and her four, and the two old ladies—I'm thinking 'tis some stretching his paycheck has to stand.

" 'Twas in the warehouse over there that his brother Tom murdered Old Man Baker, and I've heard, Jake, 'twas your testimony convicted him. If you'll tell us about it maybe the old man's ghost'll appear at one of them windows. Let Nolan inside the circle first; the boy's scared already."

"Aw, I'm not worrying about your ghosts," said Nolan. "It's chilly out here."

"I wish his spirit could appear and tell the truth and get Tom Menkle out of the penitentiary," said Jake. " 'Twas not me got Tom in there— 'twas circumstantial evidence, and if it hadn't been for the clothes the corpse wore, when they found it in the river with its face all gone, they never could have proved it was the old miser, anyway. I never thought it was him. I couldn't tell just why, but somehow it did not seem like him.

"Tom and I came out on the local freight that day for a little fishing trip. They was to pick up a car of junk at the warehouse on the home run and we came over early in the afternoon to go back with them. Tom was mighty sore at Baker, an' he'd a right to be.

"He'd nearly paid for a nice little property when the old skinflint got a lien against it somehow, and beat him out of everything. We'd been carousing a bit, and that always made Tom ugly, and when the local, backing down from the station after the junk car, brought the old man along, Tom started for him. I held him back an' tried to get him into the caboose, but he wouldn't have it, so I jumped on and left the two of them quarreling as we pulled out.

"He must have walked in, for it was late that night when he called at my house just outside of town and asked for a wash-basin and soap so he could clean up before going home. I got a lantern and went out to the well with him. His hands were all red. He claimed it was paint that old Baker was using to mark bales of rags.

"He said he followed the old man into the warehouse and hit him one on the nose for luck and when he straightened him up, the can of paint upset over his hands. They had me on oath at the trial and I had to tell the truth, but I never thought Tom killed him. He stuck to it that he left him sitting on a bale of rags nursing a bloody nose and bragging how he'd get satisfaction through the law.

"Everything was against him at the trial. The experts proved that there was blood mixed with the paint on the floor, and it rained hard the next morning, so there was an excuse for not finding any blood or marks showing where the body was dragged to the river. He was known to be a quick-tempered Dutchman and had made threats against old Baker. They shoved him through a-flying and most people thought he was mighty lucky to escape hanging."

"Well, he can keep warm in jail, while we're freezing here on account of Pat's bad track," said O'Halloran.

"That'll do, now," replied Drugan. "I don't know what's the cause of this wreck ye have an' I don't want to know, but 'tis not the track'll be responsible for it. Ye mind that, now—all of ye!"

"I'll take it back, Pat. I was just for stirring you up a bit. Listen. The freight has stopped on the hill. I thought I smelled a hot-box when they passed here. How old Gus must be cussing just about now. They've none too much time ahead of the night line. I bet a quarter they have to back in here."

"They're backing in now," said young Nolan— and as the rumble from the west increased— "they're comin' in fast. 'Tis a good thing our little pile-up in number two didn't block the long switch. They'll have to go by it to clear all them cars. Say! Where are they? Why, they're in number two!"

A grinding crash followed. It sounded as if the bottom of the universe had fallen out. As the pusher, backing out of the black fog, shot into the firelight, her crew saw where they were, and jumped clear just before she struck and went rolling and scrambling to get farther away.

Head-on, with the two engines and the weight of the whole train shoving her, she might have plowed the tangled mass of sheet-iron and cars, but coming backward, the high trucks of the tender ran up on the wreckage, doubling it over onto the engine. The big drivers, unable to climb under the weight upon them, turned aside, throwing the engine out at right angles to the track. The caboose, as if proud to do a stunt where an engine had failed, went on up, and up. It hung a moment at the top and plunged over, a car of grapes taking its place. The next car, forcing the grape-car on end, split open across the middle, and a generous supply of bananas was strewn over the wreck. Then a car of household goods— "released to a valuation of five dollars per hundred pounds in case of loss or damage"— was completely telescoped by the heavy refrigerator following it; a case of hard luck for some citizen who would vote ag'in' the railroads all the rest of his life.

More and more slowly but, with seemingly inexhaustible power, other cars kept pushing into the wreck until the whole mass toppled over against the old warehouse, crushing in its entire front and racking the rotten old structure to its foundations.

They had seen the conductor leaning out from the caboose, holding to the rail with one hand and swinging his lantern in a wide circle to stop with the other. Nolan swore that he could hear him above the din, shouting to the head-end, but that must have been his imagination.

When, with a final bump everything stopped, they hurried to get him out, although they had but little hope of finding him alive. It was O'Halloran who located him and climbed up over the wreck calling to the others to bring bars and levers.

"Is he dead?" they asked.

"Wait a minute now till that steam holds up a bit. There, listen— does that sound like a dead man? An' ye'd not be wantin' to think the man that's using that language was a goin' to die very soon. "He's caught by the leg like a weasel in a trap. He thinks he's not hurt much, but grape juice, 'tis fairly drowned in it he is. The caboose has gone right through into the old cellar an' the grape car hangs just over him."

"The cellar?" cried old Jake. "I've been around this old shack ever since I can remember anything, but I never heard tell of any cellar."

"Well, this wreck's just dug one then," said O'Halloran, "for there's where he is. Hear him! If that wasn't Dutch cussing it would set the building on fire. We can't get down where he's gone through, but there's a hole over there where this bin has tipped over. Why, it's an old stairway an' 'tis rotten as sin. Hold that torch an' I'll climb down the wall.

"This must 'a' been an old root cellar years ago an' everybody's forgot— Mother of Moses! Let me out!" He scrambled up the stairway, and it fell with a crash, sending up a cloud of dry dust, but he clung to the wall, calling to those above to pull him out. He was shaking like a man with the ague when they got him back on the platform.

"It's— it's a skeleton! He's turned into a skeleton. It's a judgment on him for his swearing. I tell you, I seen him, all white bones— bones an' ribs an' his skull a grinning when he cursed me. Go down yourselves if you want to, but no more of it for me. Hark! There it goes again."

"Hey, there! You cursed mutts! You slobs! Throw the big lobster down here again so I can hit him mit a brick. I am not der skeleton. Hurry and get me loose before this car settles some more an' mashes mine leg off."

They thought it no wonder that O'Halloran had beat a hasty retreat, for the flame from the engine torch revealed a gruesome sight. Reclining against a bank of dirt was a skeleton from the limbs of which hung shreds of light-colored clothing. The right arm was bent under the body, and near the right hand was a rusty revolver.

"What are you idiots standing there gaping for? Come around an' get this timber off mine leg an' don't you move anything else. I think I got some interests in that skeleton. Maybe my brudder Tom don't have to stay in jail no more now."

Old Gus was right. Scratched on a piece of pine board that lay beside it, they found this note:

I am losing all my property and fast going to the poorhouse. The brokers telegraphed this morning that my investment in the mining stocks is a total loss. They are trying to beat me out of it. Everyone is cheating me and I can't stand it to see all my money go. They will get it all, even the gold I've hidden. They'll get its hiding place out of me if I live, so I am going to kill myself.

When the old man arrived with the wreck-train, his first act was to start an inquiry about the switch into number two being left open. No one seemed to know anything about it. It was another mystery of the old warehouse yard. O'Halloran said that Baker's ghost must have thrown it, but he did not suggest this to the old man. That gentleman, being mad all the way through, was in no condition to be trifled with, and it was after passing an exceedingly uncomfortable ten minutes with him that old Jake ran across Menkle nursing his game leg by one of the fires.

"I hear the old man says Tom can have his old job if he comes back on the road. I'm glad of that, but I guess I'm done. I might as well quit now as to wait and be kicked out. What with our hitting that sheet-iron and the fog and everything, I forgot to close that switch.

"The old man had me all to pieces just now, and I believe he knows I done it. He come near giving me my time when the work-train went into Moore's swamp last year, although it was the towerman's fault, instead of mine, an' he'll sure do it now."

"So it vas you did it? That's bad. I thought it vas that big Irishman. Vell, it is time enough for a man to quit when he gets fired. You keep quiet yourself and say nothing. This is a queer night around here; there's no telling what may happen yet."

Throughout the balance of the night, the shrill call of the wreckmaster's whistle was followed by the clatter of the derrick-engine, the straining of cables, and the sound of rending iron and wood. The men piled wreckage upon the fires until the whole yard was brilliantly illuminated.

"A fine spectacle it is now in honor of the resurrection of old Baker's bones," said O'Halloran.  "If Tom Menkle was only here to enjoy his good luck, the celebration would be complete in every way."

The old man, coming around a pile of salvaged goods, overheard him.

"What is needed to complete this celebration is the name of the man who left that switch open, and the sooner I get it the better it will be for the rest of you," he growled.

Conductor Menkle stepped forward, carefully wiping the blood from his forehead.

"I vill not lie about it; it was me did it. When we stop for that hot-box, mine flagman went back, and when I see we have to back in for der night line, I go back myself and throw the switch from the main track; then I keep on going back to see if everything is clear in it. Because of this fog, I stub mine foot and bump mine head mit der rail.

"When I get up I must have a twist in it, for I forget and think I am coming down the main track and I throw that switch into number two. Then they come back pretty lively, and I jump on that caboose, and when I see where we are, I try to stop them, and it's a wonder I'm not dead already."

"It will take a month's layoff to get that twist out of your head," was the autocrat's grim comment.

Some time later, O'Halloran, after much maneuvering, managed to get Menkle to one side, and said: "I'm not going to stand for any man's serving time when he's not to blame. That bump you got must have balled you all up. 'Twas old Jake left that switch open."

"Do you think I wass a fool?" said Gus. "Jake has a big family and a plenty of sickness, and he has had bad luck on the road before. I have worked many years, and until this bump on mine head mit that rail there has never been any trouble. They would clean Jake for good, but I get only thirty days, and what is that? When it is passed by, it is all gone. You keep quiet and say nothing. It is all right."

It was well into the forenoon and the fog was beginning to clear before Drugan got a chance to take his friend Sullivan, the foreman from the adjoining section, over to the house for breakfast.

"Menkle's all right," said his friend as they climbed the path leading by the outbuildings. "Did ye hear how he took the blame to save old Jake? I'd not thought it of him."

"I did that," replied Drugan. "Sure, ivery wan is tellin' ivery wan else to kape it quiet. 'Tis a fine little martyr he is, an' him tellin' me only the last week how he's been after tryin' to get a month's vacation to go see his marrit daughter in Florida, an' they'd not lave him account of the heavy traffic.

"Why, look here, Pat! You only had two pigs, an' here's four, an' two of thim's black an' white like the ones we caught an' put back in the stockcar that had the loose door."

"Well, now! Did ye iver see the likes of that?" said Pat. "Thim two must 'a' heard my pigs squealin' an' they've come here, an' feelin' that lonesome in the strange place, what have they done but climbed up on the roof of that chicken-shed there an' tumbled down in here. How'd they iver do it, now, without hurtin' theirselves? Will ye teel me that, now?"

" 'Tis hardly believable, an' we'd best say nothing about it. They'd think maybe I did something to entice thim there. 'Tis not much they are anyway.

"Here's Gus Menkle will be enjoying life in Florida eating oranges offen the trees, an' back here they'll be praising him all over the line for sacrificing hisself to save the job for the man with the big family, bless the tinder heart of him; an' I'll be wadin' through slush an' snow, clanin' up wrecks, with these pigs placing me in a compromising position with the company through no fault of my own at all.

"I tell ye right now, Sullivan, whin you an' I wint into the track department instead o' going into the train service, we should have hired some wan havin' big boots to kick us an' kept him on the job ever since."

_________________

11: Bogus Gems

Gordon Young

1886-1948

Adventure, mid-Dec 1919

One of a series of stories featuring Don Everhard

I HEARD a noise at the door and sat quietly. I recognized it as the faint sound of sensitive fingers trying a skeleton key.

The room was dark and it was one of the so-called wee sma' hours when even those with uneasy consciences are supposed to be asleep and when, as if to establish a compensating ratio, even the faintest of noises, the little creaks and rustles that are scarcely audible in daylight, are as noticeable to a listener as the clatter of bronze.

Not having much humor, I did not call out an invitation to come in. Besides, the person in the hall seemed already determined on that. As I was not in bed, but had dozingly remained on the chaise-longue when I turned out the reading lamp by my side, I saw no reason at all for disturbing my visitor's entrance.

I was not surprised that someone, uninvited and at such an hour, should try to come. Not that I had been waiting for such a one. Not at all. It would have taken more to keep me awake than the fear that somebody might steal the black jewel-casket from off my table. Sleep does not come easily to me, nor remain long. I was in pajamas, with a blanket thrown over my legs, and I had, with a great show of patience, been offering myself to what the poets call Morpheus. I do not want anybody to think that worry or anything of the sort kept the bewitching kindness of sleep from my eyes, nor am I a sufferer from insomnia. I don't sleep much; that is all. I am not a sufferer from anything, unless it be the meddlesomeness of people who misjudge me. One of those who were misjudging me seemed to be at the door then, trying the unresisting lock.

ii

PERHAPS I would do well to pause and say a word about the casket. It did not belong to me. But I had as good right to it as the man I took it from. His name was Blackstone. He was a newcomer to San Francisco, but the police of very few if any cities knew about him. Not that he was clever. No. He was handsome, or not handsome exactly, but he had much about him that fascinated women. He was skillful at compromising women, then heartless in making them pay. So he had a good income, money in the bank, and posed as a gentleman.

It was very foolish of him to come to me, though he did not know that I knew all about how he had tried to get me into trouble a year before in New York. He was two-faced and treacherous, as men who fascinate women usually are. Among the things he had said was that the man who killed me would never be brought to trial— which may possibly be true. When one has the undeservedly notorious reputation of gambler and gunman, such as mine, the law is not likely to be very excited over the way he meets death. Blackstone had gone so far as to say that someday he was going to "get" me. The man who has lived as I have lived is likely to be made a target at any time, and without being so very fearless he may get more or less used to the danger, as soldiers in a way get used to snipers.

I did not like Blackstone and he was aware of it, so he took that comparatively safe means of getting a little revenge and was comfortable in the belief that I knew nothing of how he sometimes talked. To my face he was always friendly. I waited patiently. There is nothing quarrelsome about me. If he wanted to seem to be friendly when an icicle would have been more attentive to him, I could afford to watch him and wait.

I came back to San Francisco and would have forgotten him had he not, about a year afterward, dropped in on me with a casket full of gems.

I shall make the incident brief: He wanted me to give him several thousand dollars for the lot. I was not interested. His offer dropped and dropped until it came down to a price I really could have afforded to pay. But I do not buy stolen gems— or any other kind. I never bought a piece of ornamental jewelry in my life. He said that he was a stranger and did not know how to go about disposing of the gems, and all that sort of thing, but I was a friend and he would give me a good bargain.

The casket was slightly larger than an ordinary cigar-box, very heavily made, solid, peculiarly so, but a rather plain-looking box—that is, not ornamented in any way beyond a monogram of letters that I made out to be M.C. I knew nothing of jewel-caskets, but this one seemed to me thick enough to have served for a kind of strongbox, except that it had the flimsiest of locks.

I suppose that I would at once have sent Blackstone coldly on his way, but it happened that a friend of mine dropped in. He was a little nervous dope fiend who knew a great deal about gems, as every successful pickpocket must. He took a glance at the glittering trinkets and cheerfully called them a fine assortment of "glass"; upon being pressed for further information he declared that the stones were really very good paste.

At once it became clear that Blackstone had tried to fleece me. Perhaps it had appealed to his sense of vanity to think that he could put something over on me. He knew gems, though if in a hurry he might snatch up a false one by mistake.

I was entirely polite, but Mr. Blackstone departed without his casket—or anything to console him for its loss.

I thought the incident closed, but a day or so later he telephoned demanding the casket. The conversation was brief: I said "good-by" and hung up.

He ventured to come to see me and offered a lot of money for the casket. I told him to go to the devil. My room was burglarized, but the burglar neglected to look behind the bathtub.

He wrote me a threatening letter and I began to be interested. Then he telephoned to say that I was a tinhorn, a coward and many other things and that I had hid the casket for fear somebody would take it away from me. Before hanging up I assured him that the casket and the gems would be on my table every night from the time I came into the room and I suggested that he call.

I never expected to see him. But somebody was at the door, coming in.

iii

SOME sense, neither sight nor hearing perhaps, but something such as warns a person when somebody stands noiselessly behind him, told me when the door was opened.

The person was using extreme caution. That was wise. True, it might be a random burglar stumbling, so to speak, against my door and hoping to carry off something besides a bullet or two in his legs, but anyone who came knowingly into my room would expect the bullet to reach a more fatal place than legs.

A soft, almost noiseless footstep crept on to the carpet. Then another and another. I could hear the faint, nervous breathing of the form almost within hand's touch of me. A pause in movement. I waited. I was not excited. I had no reason to be: the cards were all in my favor. True enough, some people do grow agitated when four aces fall to them. I am not one of those people.

I waited with my fingers motionless against the little brass chain of the light on the stand beside my chair.

In those days, and sometimes in these, I would about as soon have my five fingers, my hand, cut off and mislaid as to have a gun beyond reach. As it was, I was fully satisfied with the situation. The only trouble about shooting is that it makes a noise and people come to ask questions.

A sheaf of spreading light thrust itself out from the electric torch my visitor carried and fell on the empty bed; simultaneously I pulled the lamp's cord and with some effort to be calmly polite said— "Won't you sit down?"

A smothered, futilely strangled little cry of fright— and the woman, a masked woman, with hands that gripped the torch and a small gun pressed in sudden alarm against her bosom, stepped stumblingly back. The eyes shot gleamingly through the mask-slits at me.

"Push the door to, please," I said pleasantly, trying to speak as naturally as one might under normal conditions to a not unwelcome stranger. I was not going to let her know that I was as much surprised as herself.

She stepped slightly to one side and closed the door without taking her eyes off me.

"I very nearly grew tired of waiting for you. Please sit down." I courteously indicated a chair near me.

She approached the chair with slow, trance-like movements, her eyes fixed on my face as if hypnotized. She was momentarily bewildered. That was all that was the matter with her. Surprise can deliver a blow scarcely less numbing than a club.

She recovered rapidly, however, if not from the surprise, at least from the appearance of it.

She sat down with a certain feline care, a suggestion of— I don't know just how to word the impression I got, but I will say that she sat down with a suggestion of daintiness. She tried to convey, and nearly succeeded, that she was not at all uneasy; yet she did not assume any boldness or even nonchalance.

I could not see much of her face, for she wore a mask, a domino, a black piece of silk that hid her forehead and eyes. Her mouth seemed just a trifle large— she was a small woman— but, as that impression eventually disappeared, I may have had it because at first her mouth gaped a little. She was not at all the type one would suspect of being a female bandit. There was a shade of delicacy about her half-hidden face that the mask did not conceal.

I am not inclined to be romantic over any woman, not even a pretty strange one who comes picturesquely and unbidden into my rooms at such indiscreet hours. I had an idea that she knew she was amazingly pretty. Neither her knowledge of it nor her beauty would serve her so well as she might reasonably expect, for I happen not to be very susceptible to the fair, soft charms of women. That is, I have always been very determined not to be. If women are watched closely, suspected constantly and not trusted in the least, one can sometimes keep out of their fingers.

This little intruder had bobbed, wavy hair— light-brown hair that fairly tumbled off her head and clustered about her neck. There was a suggestion of gold about it, merely a flickering glint at times something like sunlight on deep water. I am not being romantic. I am merely describing her hair accurately.

She had on a rather short, black, pleated dress of what appeared to be some kind of serge, and a blouse of the same material. It was a loose blouse with a scroll of black silk braid running about the breasts. The belt was a wide black piece of unpolished leather, caught together by a heavy wide black buckle. She wore shimmering black silk stockings and her small feet, very small feet, were fitted with a sort of heel-less slippers of black soft leather. Her marauding costume seemed to have been designed with an eye toward invisibility. She would have been very inconspicuous in a dim light unless one was attracted by her white hands and the unconcealed part of her face.

I looked at her carefully, deliberately, almost critically. I wanted to know as much about her as my eyes could tell me. Then, too, I have found that it disturbs people in an awkward situation to be stared at. She did not seem to care. She was a woman— and so touched her hair appraisingly, adjusted with a fleeting gesture her mask, pushed a fold out of her skirt— and quick as a flash turned her little toy-like gun on me, saying sternly—

"Hands up!"

The situation was not nearly so perilous as I may have made it appear in telling. For one thing, I have found that women seldom shoot a man they have never loved. For another thing, I slowly— very slowly— drew back a corner of the blanket and exposed a gun that could have swallowed the one that she held. My gun nestled in my hand, the muzzle straight at her. If she knew anything of me at all, she knew that I could not miss. She may have known that with anything like a fair shot I never did miss.

A half-minute of motionless tenseness followed. Then she gradually straightened up and sat back in her chair, leaving the little gun in her lap as she slowly half-raised her hands. I leaned over and took the torch and gun from her.

I glanced at the gun and tossed it back on to her lap and felt irresistibly a flash of admiration for her. The gun was not loaded. I was not proud of having bluffed out a woman who held a thing worthless as a toy— not even as effective as a toy gun, which will at least make a noise when the cap is fired and perhaps scare somebody.

"And what can I do for you?" I asked.

Breathlessly, eagerly, she answered. Her voice was wonderfully flexible. It had a trained, pleasing tone that sensitively ran the gamut of inflections. Hers was a truly amazing air of spontaneity, both in manner and voice— amazingly so because after the first little bewildered cry she did not seem frightened. I knew that she was. Anybody would have to be, in her situation.

She begged me, please, to give her that casket and let her go. The casket belonged to her, she said.

I suggested that we grow confidential and that she begin by telling me about herself. I wondered very much that a woman like this should be the confederate of Blackstone. I knew that he fascinated women, but she did not seem to me to be the sort of woman that he would fascinate. He usually caught empty-headed women, rather vapid, characterless creatures. She was not like that.

"I've made a mistake," she said simply, as if it explained what I wanted to know.

"Undoubtedly," I replied, bowing slightly. "I was not asleep."

"You should have been— this time o' night!" she flashed, with a good pretense of petulant reproachfulness. She was clever. I began to admire her considerably, though she was desperately trying to play the coquette. She was artful and it took more daring to seem to be a coquette at that moment than it had taken to pick the lock of my room and enter. She crossed her knees and sat back with an air of sulkiness, her eyes on the casket.

"Why," I asked, "all this excitement over bogus gems— glass— paste?"

She looked at me quickly, with a glimmering of alarm in her eyes. And thereby she confirmed certain suspicions that I had. I guessed that among the collection of paste there was a stone or two of real value which could easily enough have been overlooked, I thought, by my friend the pickpocket, who had given the casket little more than a casual glance and almost idly had fingered the trinkets.

"You have examined it carefully— the box?" she demanded.

I assured her with a rather knowing air that there wasn't a thing of value in it. She gave a decided start at that and a hand went out toward the casket as if to seize and inspect it. But I checked her. I told her that the box had been left in my custody.

"But it is mine!" she exclaimed. "I must have it. I will have it. Oh, please, give it to me!"

That was not the sort of appeal to move me. Women— or men— strike the wrong chord if they think to move me by begging. I forgive audacity; I admire bold strokes; I may even be satisfied if some ingenious bit of daring gets the better of me, provided the circumstances are not too serious; but I have no use for beggars, not even when the beggars are pretty women. And I have no gallantry.

"Where's Blackstone?" I said abruptly.

It took her a few seconds too long to answer and she replied at first by staring wide-eyed at me and shaking her head slightly. Then, with an air of innocent mystification that was far from deceiving me, asked—

"Who is he?"

"The man who sent you— because he was afraid to come himself," I told her roughly.

Though I did not move, did not turn my head, I was sure that I heard a muffled sound at my door. I guessed that Mr. Blackstone might be listening. I hoped so. He would hear something interesting of himself before I had finished.

"Oh," she said. "Mr. Blackstone?"

"Yes. The gentleman who permits the women he has kissed to pay his expenses."

"Oh!" Involuntarily her eyes went toward the door. I did not seem to notice. A pause followed. She seemed to be studying me closely, hesitantly trying to decide something. At last, low-voiced, she said:

"I have heard of you— I wonder"—her eyes went furtively toward the door and came back to my face as she went on— "I wonder if— you— are a gentleman."

I told her bluntly that I was not, that I was a gambler, a professional gambler. When a woman begins to appeal to a man to be a gentleman it is high time to throw up breastworks.

"Blackstone's a gentleman," I added. "He has hidden behind your skirts. I would rather be a crook."

Something very near to a smile came to her lips but went away. She seemed really agitated without showing much nervousness, or, more accurately, I had the impression that she was highly keyed, as if about to venture something desperate. Rather than that there should be protracted silence, I went into some detail regarding Blackstone. I told some of the things that I knew; that he was a venomous cad and cheat, liar and rascal, without a thing in the way of personal courage to make even Satan's imps respect him.

"You say that behind his back," she remarked, but I could not tell precisely what she meant. It was not exactly as if suggesting a reproach, nor quite like doubt if what I said was true, but she rather conveyed the idea of wonder as to what I would say to his face or do if confronted by him.

"True," I answered. "His back is all that he presents these days. And that, only at a distance, a safe distance."

She said that it was not like what she had heard of me— that I should boast.

But I am suspicious of women when they pay compliments, though she did it exceedingly well. I told her that I did not understand.

She hesitated and again her eyes went a little anxiously toward the door. And I thought that I understood what was the matter. She seemed to be wanting to say something to me, yet was also aware that a listener was at the door. However, it might be that she was outguessing me, playing a deeper game than she thought I would imagine. It is hard to tell about women. Their simplicity and their subtlety is often so bewilderingly alike; that is what makes them so hard to understand.

"Please listen," she said. "That casket was stolen from me. I must have it! I will pay— anything. It is money you want, isn't it?"

"Usually, yes. Money. But why this sudden interest in the casket?"

"It hasn't been sudden with me, Mr. Everhard. I was frantic when— when my sister missed the casket. But I didn't know who had taken it." "I see. You didn't suspect Blackstone."

"I didn't know who had taken it," she repeated, seemingly a little anxious not to offend Mr. Blackstone's eavesdropping ears. "Then I learned that you had it. You have refused every offer. I simply must have it. My— my sister's future is at stake."

"You think a great deal of your sister, don't you? Why didn't you come to me at once?"

She almost whispered— "I didn't dare!"

"Dare? Dare?" I repeated and significantly gestured my surprise that anyone dared not meet me in daylight, yet come at such an hour and in such a manner.

"Oh, I can't explain," she said quickly, feverishly. I watched her closely. If that was acting it was good acting. But one is always at a disadvantage with women unless they are distrusted and even then one doesn't have much security.

"Would you prefer to explain to me— or to the police?" I asked coolly. If she had known as much about me as she thought she did, she would have known that I never called on the police. They sometimes called on me; but I shall say this for them: they were always polite. She did not know of my aversion to signaling a policeman: she did not know that I never go to them. She shuddered and sat upright with a jerk.

"Oh, please, no! Can't you be generous? Please. I must have that casket. I must have it! I can't pay an enormous sum, but I'll pay everything I have!"

I scowled and slowly shook my head. It irritates me to be begged.

"Why," I asked coldly, "are you afraid of Blackstone? He is a poisonous, cowardly little snake."

"I know it," she whispered almost inaudibly. "He is my husband!"

I nodded slowly as if I believed her. I did not wholly disbelieve her. No. I simply didn't trust her. She had brains, that woman, and I could not imagine such a woman as she being taken in by a fellow like that. My hearing is sensitive, exceptionally acute, and I thought that I heard a sound not unlike a restless, impatient slip of hand or foot outside of my door. My ears listened; my eyes watched her.

"Everything is there?" she asked, indicating the casket.

"Yes, everything is on that table," I replied, glancing toward it.

On the table were papers, a bulbous vase from which half a dozen fragrant carnations raised their ragged blossoms, a book or two and the casket, bulking black and solidly against the vase. I then said that she should tell me why she was so anxious to have that casket and its bogus gems. I said it in such a way as to imply the threat that she would perhaps regret her silence if she refused, but I did not hold out any kind of promise.

"He made me come," she whispered excitedly. "He said you wouldn't shoot a woman. Honestly!"

I knew Blackstone would not hesitate to do a thing of the kind but I could not imagine him making a woman such as she was do anything she did not care to do— particularly turn robber to steal paste.

IT was a peculiar situation, indeed. The husband, or alleged husband, listening at the door wherein his wife had entered as a burglar; I fully aware that he was at the door, yet pressing his wife on threat of arrest to tell me things which might infuriate him.

It was not only a peculiar situation but also one that did not displease me. She was afraid of him, or seemed to be, and she did not quite trust me. The distrust was mutual. I simply listened to what she said. I did not believe her and yet scarcely disbelieved her. She seemed trying to make up her mind to be frank— or to appear frank. It usually amounts to the same thing in a woman.

There is one great disadvantage in distrusting women: when they are truthful, one is sure not to believe them, and a woman is never so dangerous as when she is truthful.

She made several beginnings, said a word, paused, started again, hesitated, then removed her mask and fingered the elastic with which it had been fastened about her head.

My ears were very intent on the door and, without appearing to move so as to be in a better position to glance at it, I edged around a little. I had the strong feeling that something was about to happen.

At last she threw down the mask as if indicative of her decision to throw her story to me, but whether or not she had decided to tell a true story or had simply decided on what lie would suit was rather difficult to decide. If it were a false story, I could not compliment her imagination. It was commonplace enough to be true.

She spoke in a low voice and leaned forward confidentially as if not to be overheard. But, I said to myself, that may be only an artifice. Women like to appear confidential. It is one of their favorite attitudes.

She said that she had met Blackstone when she was young and foolish. She had married him. He left her. She heard that he was dead. She believed it. She went on the stage. She took another name. She thought Blackstone was clear out of her life.

A few months before, she had met a young man, a wealthy young man, who loved her, whom she loved. He had gone to China on business. He was returning and she had come to San Francisco to meet him. His ship was due tomorrow.

She had been in San Francisco about three weeks. She had taken an apartment and was living very quietly, waiting for the man she loved. Then one night Blackstone walked into her rooms. Her husband! He had seen her on the street, recognized her, followed her.

He had gone through everything she had, taken some jewelry, sneered at the casket and its contents, made her give him money; then one day she missed the casket itself. He denied knowing anything about it— and at last she told him it was worth money and that she had to have it. Then he told her he had sold it to me— that I was a fellow he didn't like and he had enjoyed selling me paste.

She had told him that they were not all paste, that it was worth thirty thousand dollars— that she must have it. She wanted it, she said to me, to return to the man she loved, who had given her the casket and its contents as an engagement present, but of course Blackstone was only agitated by the eager desire to get his hands on so much wealth.

"I can never explain to him— but I must return his gifts!" she cried. Of course she told me all that much more expressively and even more rapidly than I have related it. She spoke fast, with disconnected phrases that were as enlightening as sentences would have been, and as she talked she leaned nearer and nearer to me and her voice rose until at last, as if careless of who heard her, she cried out that she would return those jewels— she must return them.

I did not believe her. Thirty thousand dollars was too much money. Neither Blackstone nor my pickpocket could have overlooked gems of that extreme value. But I did not have much time to think. She was leaning very close to me and one of her hands was laid on my arm and the fingers pressed tightly as if to hold my attention by physical force; the fingers of her other hand ran up along my arm with a kind of beseeching tenderness.

"Please, please, please!" she begged, but I flung her backward and shot and the man died just as he stood tiptoe facing me through eight inches of open door.

A revolver was in his hand and it exploded from the spasmodic twitch of his fingers as he went down on his face sprawlingly, shot through his forehead. His bullet hit the floor by my chair. It was all over in three ticks of a clock, for he had made the fatal mistake of hissing—

"You and my wife!"

And I killed him.

"You lose," I said frigidly to her, adding that as a trap she and her man had made a pretty flimsy thing of it.

"So help me God, I have told you the truth!" she said tensely, breathless, staring down at the body. She stood with hand to throat, half-shrinking, as from a thing of horror, yet fascinated. I told her that she had better not say a word more until she had heard me lie; that then she could tell her story any way that she pleased.

I did not know what kind of a mess I might be in for, with police investigation and a strange woman for witness; but I thought that I had her at a disadvantage. Anyway, I would give her a fighting chance to get out. As for Blackstone: I snatched up the mask she had dropped, rammed a pencil through it to serve for a bullet-hole and quickly placed it on his forehead; then, tossing the little toy gun out of sight, I went to the door, where soon were gathered people in bathrobes and without them, men and women, some of whom chattered in nervous excitement though they tried to hold their teeth set. I treated the curious mob in a fashion friendly enough.

I seemed to do my best to answer a dozen questions at once, but I told nobody anything. I seemed trying to explain in the midst of interruptions and, though I kept everybody out of the room, I let them jostle me at the door and peer through morbidly, some of them perhaps sympathetically, at the pretty young woman in my room who, huddled forward, was weeping with hands to face.

But, of course, no one could come into the room or touch the body of the dead man until the police arrived. Everyone was tense with nervous curiosity; though the man lay on his face, all could see that he was masked. It seemed mysterious and thrilling.

The police came, the police-patrol. It came rattling down the street through one of San Francisco's heavy fogs and the policemen bustled with an air of directness and business through the crowd about my door.

They knew me at a glance and, though their eyes were a little suspicious, they were respectful. My record was not above suspicion, but it was unindictable.

I told my story. I had not been able to sleep. I had sat up, trying to read. I had heard a noise in the hall, then a sort of scuffling, not loud, but strange enough to arouse curiosity. I had gone to the door and listened, barely opening it. Almost at once a woman had flung herself against it. She could hardly talk. She was out of breath and frightened. She staggered into the room, gasping for me to save her. I had been surprised and did not know quite what to do and had just turned around when a shot was fired— and, having a gun on the arm of my chair, I had snatched it up and shot.

I mentioned to the policemen, just to remind them, that at times I could shoot rapidly. I had whirled and shot, I did not know the woman. I had never seen her before. The man was masked.

THAT was my story. Not truthful perhaps, but honest. The woman could get from the net as well as she could. I had no great sympathy for her, for I was more than half inclined to believe that she had leaned so close to me, had gripped my arm so hard and let her fingers run up my arm so pleadingly, to distract my attention from the door and give Blackstone a chance to come in and cover me with his gun— and perhaps shoot. She may have been sincere and he may have merely jumped at the chance of seeking an excuse to kill me by pretending to find his wife and me together.

Neither the truth as she might tell it nor what lies she could imagine would very well discredit my story. I had told it first. I had told it plausibly. Besides, the dead man wore a mask and the police are never inclined to side with masked men, living or dead. She might say I had poked a pencil through the black silk, but then she would have to explain how the mask came to be in the room, and so implicate herself; whereas I had given her a loophole if she had the ingenuity to take it.

When the police came into the room, other people tried to follow. They tried to crowd close to hear what the woman would say, but everyone was pushed back into the hall and a big policeman put his arm, like a bar, across the door.

When I had finished with my story, the woman flashed a look at me that I did not understand: just a flash from the corner of her eye when I approached and cut off other people's view from her face. The look appeared more full of astonishment than anything else, but there also seemed to be a little something of gratitude.

She sobbed convincingly and in a broken voice and with nodding head said that I had told just what had happened. The police had looked into the dead man's face but none of them recognized him. She told his name. She said that he had hounded her; that she could not escape him and that she was afraid of him. He had threatened to kill her because she would not be his wife.

She sobbed a great deal at this point, in order, I think, to get time to decide how best to go on. One big policeman laid a hand gently on her shoulder and spoke encouragingly.

She went on. She lived at the apartment next door. He must have learned in some way that she was planning to move so as to hide from him. Shortly before midnight he had telephoned that he would kill her if she tried to run away from him. Later he telephoned again that he was coming out and that he was going to wear a mask so that he could kill her without anyone recognizing him.

He must have been drunk, she said. He was often drunk. She snatched a handful of things together and fled, but he had met her right at the entrance. She broke away from him and ran. He followed. She darted through the entrance next door and ran up the stairs. He had caught her by the skirt and put the gun to her head but she had tripped him and fled down the hall— and burst into my room. After that everything had happened as I said.

As a preliminary story, the police were ready to accept it. Things more strange than she told happened daily under their noses and nothing remained except to confirm her story by going to the apartment next door. I wondered if she had thought of that when she gave an address so near at hand.

She had said that her name was Marjorie Cline and before she left the room I had no reason to question her ingenuity and resourcefulness. She stood up to go with the officers. Without a flaw she kept the role I had thrust upon her.

She looked pathetic and appealing. She was pretty and she did appear helpless, thoroughly distressed; so much so that the policemen, who are rather cynical and not easily made sympathetic toward people who tell strange stories, were gentle, even kind, with her. She spoke to me weakly, without offering a handclasp or thanks, which would not have looked well, and said that she was sorry that she had brought such trouble upon me. I bowed remotely and did not return any polite phrases.

Then she did a daring thing. She picked up the black casket from the table, picked it up swiftly and handed it with a sort of explanatory gesture toward the biggest policeman, saying that it contained a few little trinkets with which she had fled her room.

The policeman looked at me, but before I could say anything— I don't know that I would have said much anyway— she explained further: "Oh, yes, it's mine. See the monogram: 'M.C.' "

He took it into his hand, scrutinized it and handed it back to her; together they went out, leaving me staring through the doorway. The policeman who kept watch over the dead sat down, lighted a cigar, flicked ashes on the carpet and began to talk of other dead men and the various ways in which they had found their deaths.

I bent over and put my nose to the carnations. I had of late been showing a rather unusual interest in flowers. Suddenly a heavy, uniformed man burst into the room.

"She's got away!" he cried. "The little devil— slipped right around the corner. Wasn't watching her. Never suspected a thing. They never heard of her at the apartment next door— and she's gone. Right into the fog!"

The big fellow smashed his fist into an open palm and swore feelingly. Then questions came rapidly at me, but I stood pat. I knew nothing more of her than I had told. Nothing was to be got out of me— not at that late hour.

Then the ambulance came and the policeman and the dead man went away. When they were gone I made sure that the blinds were down, hung a cap on the doorknob and emptied the large bulbous vase into the water bowl. Then I fished out rings, bracelets, earrings and such, and dried them on a bath towel and tumbled the collection on the bed.

I went over them carefully, but as I knew nothing of gems anyway it was not surprising that I found none I could pronounce genuine.

The next day I received a note. It was a short note, but it came from the woman whose name I never knew, for she said that it was not Marjorie Cline— "but something like that."

She assured me that her story, as she had told it to me, was true, literally true, and that I was welcome to the paste gems as mementos from her, because the casket had a false bottom where the real jewels were hidden. The lock was flimsy, so a robber might break it open easily and then, finding the paste duplicates, fill his pockets and go with nothing of value. The note ended:

Oh, I hope it isn't a terrible thing to say, but I believe my prayers to be freed from that beastly man were heard in heaven— for my ship came in today, and I can be happy now. M.C

__________________

12: The Baturu Mandarin

Georges Surdez

1900-1949

Adventure Feb 1934

Georges Arthur Surdez was born in Bienne, Switzerland, to a family of French descent, and went to school in New York. He invented the expression "Russian roulette" in a story of that title in Colliers magazine. He wrote more than 100 short stories for adventure magazines, mostly of the French Foreign Legion.

THE Tonkinese soldiers slid silently through bamboos and thorny brush, handling the long Lebel rifle, further extended by the twenty-two inch steel of the bayonet, with deftness and skill. These yellow men were born for the jungle, the same breed as the elusive enemy; in motion, their short stature and the feminine grace of their bodies assumed a certain virility.

The light of the sun seeping down through the thick foliage became an uncertain, greenish fog; for mist shrouded the forest like the vapory breath of the undergrowth. From right and left shrilled whistle signals, while from the north, in the direction of the Chinese frontier, sounded the muffled notes of a bugle. There were five hundred men carrying guns in this chaos of vegetation, scouring the hills in search of De-Kai-Kinh, notorious border chieftain, and his band of Asiatic pirates. Signals were needed to prevent nervous soldiers from firing into unidentified groups. It was unfortunate that they also served to inform the foes of the location of patrols.

Lieutenant Larcher, in charge of one of the prongs of the human rake scraping the region for raiders, lifted the metal whistle to his lips and blew two strident notes. Behind him halted four Europeans— a corporal and three privates of the French Foreign Legion— who formed his personal guard, and the score of Tirailleurs Tonkinois, the native infantrymep, short, dapper, well muscled chaps, wearing neat khaki and wide, brass-tipped conical hats.

Larcher removed his sun helmet, wiped the cork band with a handkerchief and mopped his dripping forehead. The heat was intense, the air stifling, smelling of rotting wood and grass, of moist earth and decayed leaves.

“Fool’s errand,” he murmured.

He was new to the land, but felt that any one should have understood that this search was vain. An entire army corps sent in to comb this region could not obtain results. De-Kai-Kinh’s followers, veteran jungle prowlers, could slip at will between the regular detachments without being discovered. It was obvious that this undertaking was a futile gesture, a mere show of activity to placate officials at Hanoi.

Larcher, tall and athletic, was evidently young— twenty-two at the most. His fresh complexion, blond hair and sensitive eyes and mouth made him appear almost a child in contrast with the mature Legionnaires flanking him— hard, experienced fighters whom Captain Colbert had chosen with extraordinary care because he did not trust the youthful, untested lieutenant.

The corporal was swarthy, long-limbed and taciturn; the others were stolid, massive Germans. Years of campaigning in Africa and Asia had wrung all fat from their bodies, all fear from their souls.

When their officer took a step forward, when he hoisted himcelf over a fallen tree trunk, the four followed him as if actuated by some mechanism, never taking their eyes from him. Their task was less to protect him from death than to prevent the capture and mutilation of his body should he fall. They did not know him. As an individual he was nothing to them; but the gold braid on his sleeves made him a Legion chief, and therefore a sacred charge.

Larcher had not expected a warm greeting in the company, for he had been told that Legionnaires were clannish. And he had been aware that his full name, Raoul Jules Larcher de Fremond, was known. He had the misfortune to be the son of an important politician, and nephew of one of the large

European fortunes— both excellent reasons to be placed on probation. But his reception had been almost rude; he had seen at once that Colbert considered him lightly.

“Heard of you,” the captain had greeted him when he had reported at the Post of Nam-Phu three days before. “Didn’t expect you so soon. Your place is not here. We don’t like amateurs for the sort of work we have to do.”

The word amateur rankled. Larcher had gone through the Military Academy and had been graduated with excellent rating. But as his name and wealth had singled him out while at school, so they seemed to brand him even in Indo- China. Officers dependent on their pay were inclined to think that he was not sincere in his desire to serve— that soldiering was an amusement, an affectation, with him.

“Amateur,” Larcher grumbled.

He turned to find the expectant glances of the Legionnaires and expressionless stares of the Tonkinese waiting for his next move. And he grew nervous. He was their chief, and he was on trial. To the white men he was an untried lieutenant— to the natives a minor military mandarin of unknown worth. He shook himself and pulled at the seams of the khaki tunic glued to his back by sweat.

“All right; let’s go on.”

PROGRESS was resumed. Larcher and the Legionnaires crashed noisily through the brush. The Tonkinese marched without a rustle. They were not so brave as Legionnaires, Larcher had heard. But he saw that they possessed a different courage— an obscure type of nerve which allowed them to reach out to part underbrush, to crawl or stoop in the masses of rotten reeds without hesitation or reluctance.

Their sergeant was old Xu-Hon, who had been born in a jungle camp, the son of a Chinese soldier in the Black Flag cohorts (which had fought the French invasion) and of a captured woman. Fifteen years of service with Europeans had not dug deeply into his Oriental placidity.

“We find De-Kai-Kinh?” Larcher asked him suddenly.

“We look good.” Xu-Hon appeared somewhat shocked by the question. He was a sergeant, a native; Larcher a white mandarin, supposed to know more than he. “Maybe we find him.”

The detachment had reached a sort of shallow earthen trough, an old trail slashing through the heart of the jungle. It had apparently been unused for many days, for there were many obstructions. Branches had grown across it as had creepers and lianas. Once Larcher forgot his instructions and tried to part the leaves with his hand.

“Natives first, Lieutenant,” the corporal said instantly.

Larcher nodded and made way for one of the Tonkinese, who hacked a path with short, skilled blows of a machete. But he addressed the corporal in a smooth voice—

“Thanks a lot, Parrel.”

“Don’t mention it. Lieutenant,” the corporal answered. He did not lower his eyes when Larcher flushed at the ironic acknowledgment, but explained, “My orders.”

“I know.” Larcher tried to smile.

These men were kind enough, but burdened by the unusual responsibility placed upon them. Whereas every French chief was thus escorted, Colbert had made it plain that he, Larcher, would be watched with special care. The young man recalled the captain’s truculent personality, the small, bronzed, mustached face propped on the big shoulders, with those hard jaws that appeared about to snap.

“Larcher, you are a novice here. So I’ll pass over your questions and criticisms of the operation ahead of us. Whether the search of the hills with the forces available seems logical to you doesn’t greatly matter. However, you shall have behind you twenty natives, to whom you represent France. The temptation for a man of your years, in your position, with the doubts you have just expressed to me, will be to rush ahead recklessly. Recklessness has no place in the jungle. On the other hand, you might lose your head in an emergency. I yield to your request to be taken along, but I shall place experienced men near you. Consult them and take their advice.”

All this had been said because Larcher, uncomprehending, had asked for explanations. He knew, as well as the next man, the strict interpretation of passive obedience. But he had felt that this random foraging in the bush would be so much wasted energy. And he realized now that Corporal Parrel had instructions to act as his guardian.

His sense of irritation grew. Then the whistles sounded again, at a greater distance. Part of the instructions given to detachment chiefs had been to keep in contact with other patrols. Consequently Larcher replied to the signal and was about to bear right, toward the nearest group. But Parrel spoke and suggested that very course.

Larcher shook his head, deliberately left the trail and kept striking straight into the thick of the bush, away from the whistles. Parrel remained silent for a few hundred yards, then protested.

“Better keep in touch, Lieutenant.”

“Halt!” Larcher ordered.

He was resolved to settle the question at once. He lighted a cigaret, hooked a thumb in his belt and inquired, holding out his right sleeve:

“You’ve seen rank stripes before, Corporal? I’m an officer and I command the detachment.”

“The captain told me—”

"I tell you that you have two days' punishment for arguing. More to come if needed. You can complain to the captain if you like.”

Parrel presented arms. The detachment moved on.

Larcher was not wholly at ease. He had reacted to impulse, punished a man who was trying to extricate himself from conflicting orders— from a position he should never have been asked to handle. Diplomacy would have been wiser. This was a bad start.

SOON it occurred to him that during this brief talk with the Legion corporal he had engaged his personal responsibility to the limit. Had anything happened to his detachment, or any member of it, a minute before he would have been carrying out orders, hence blameless. Now any mishap, the loss of a single man, might be imputed to his decision. The sweat oozing down his cheeks suddenly felt cold.

He felt the weight of full responsibility for the first time in his life, and the burden was heavy. Things were altered. The jungle, which he had been certain was empty of hostile men, now teemed with imaginary beings. This was the first time that Larcher faced the enemy, and he had been presumptuous enough to enforce his own judgment against the instructions of a superior.

A treetrunk with a shadow at its base became a pirate armed with a carbine; a twisted root emerging from the reeds turned into a creeping raider; a shiny pebble became the polished muzzle of a rifle. The young officer imagined his detachment decimated by unseen snipers.

Minutes passed. The jungle grew tensely silent. Larcher strained his ears for the whistles, for human voices, and heard nothing. Nothing save the heavy rustling of a large bird flying through the treetops and the occasional startling crash of an invisible animal fleeing from the unaccustomed activity created by the armed detachment.

The mist had lifted when he ran against an obstacle he had not expected. It seemed at first like an ordinary copse— a natural hedge of bushes— but as he lifted his machete to swing and slash the first branch he stopped short. He noticed that the. twigs on that branch had been deftly interwoven with those of another shrub, that he was facing a barrier arranged by human hands.

At the same moment, right and left of him, the native soldiers came to a stop before the bushes. They glanced at the interlaced foliage, testing it gingerly with their hands and examining the knots. Then they stood waiting, without lifting their blades to cut through.

And Larcher knew they had read the signs as he had.

The lieutenant had heard and read of such flexible obstructions.created in the jungle from the jungle itself. He recalled that at school a captain returned from Indo-China had lectured on bush fighting and stressed the importance of such things. They could not be discerned from a distance and attracted no attention, yet formed ideal natural fortifications which delayed the approach of the enemy just long enough for the riflemen concealed somewhere behind them to aim at leisure and to be sure of a decisive advantage.

Larcher’s duty was plain. This was an indication that De-Kai-Kinh was somewhere near. Having discovered the hiding place of the raiders, orders were for a detachment commander to attack immediately and hinder flight, while the half thousand men available would race toward the detonations from all sides.

But he felt that another swing of his blade, another step forward, would start the engagement. De-Kai-Kinh, according to reports, had between thirty and fifty men with him— enough to slaughter his detachment before help could arrive.

For an intolerable second Larcher envisioned what was coming, heard the crash of carbines, the'screams of pain and terror. No one would blame him now; his disobedience had led to success. But it would cost lives— many lives— entrusted to his keeping.

Then, slowly, there crept into his brain the knowledge that he was deceiving himself; that what he dreaded was not the harm that would befall others, but the hurt to his own body. He was in the lead, a chief, therefore singled out for the first shots. Between his eyes he could feel the glance of a hidden marksman, burning him like a hot iron.

An order, a gesture, a twitching of the hand, and his skull would be pierced.

Death— and it would not be death in action, but an execution. For he did not have a chance to live. The chief would be slain first. He was very young, very young; and while he had known always that he might be called upon to sacrifice himself for his profession, the opportunity, the need, had come too soon!

He seemed to have lost control of his body. His tongue felt hard and thick in his dry mouth; his throat was contracted. He was discovering fear, which he had known only as a word. Sheer, unreasoning, animal terror, that robbed him of will power and courage. The taste of it was on his palate. His nerves were wrenched and twisted by fear.

He was conscious of nothing beyond that burning sensation on his forehead where the bullet would strike; he believed nothing save that his body soon would be stretched out, inert and mangled, on the grass, with the patchwork of sun rays filtering from the rifts in the canopy of leaves overhead to play upon his corpse.

Yet, at the same time, his eyes and ears registered every movement, every sound, every light and every shadow, each tiny rustling of the bush. Xu-Hon’s eyes, with pupils dilated, a mingled expression of curiosity and uneasiness drifting to the surface from somewhere in his strange soul, caught his glance. He could see Parrel also, standing near, very calm, unaware that anything was wrong. The corporal could not know, for he had not felt that queer, ominous resistance of the twigs to his weight, and the knots could not be distinguished until sought for.

In the silence, one of the Legionnaires coughed. The noise crashed in the Lieutenant’s head like a roar of thunder. Another white man shifted his grip on his rifle, and Larcher heard very clearly the almost imperceptible rasping of the calloused palm on the smooth steel.

Perhaps he felt so alive, his senses were so keen, because this was the last scene his eyes would ever behold, because these were tb be the last sounds perceived by his ears. He stood petrified for several seconds longer.

He knew that he was a coward to hesitate. Parrel, a mercenary, would have attacked without delay.

He wondered how long he had stood there, mute, motionless. Not very long, for Parrel exhibited neither impatience nor worry. His mind was at peace. If Larcher fell, he would catch the slumping body and bear it away without attempting to fight, until dropped himself. Larcher envied him and his comrades, men who had accepted servitude, who went through existence acting on the wills of others, as mechanical pianos pound out the notes released by the perforations of a roll.

He made a last effort. He wanted to shout the order to go on. Instead, he found himself turning away slowly, with a prayer that the man across the way, behind the barrier, would understand and accept this tacit surrender.

“All right,” he said, “let’s go back.”

He walked through the detachment to take the lead again. He felt an unbearable sensation of shame as man after man closed behind him, covering his own flesh from harm— a shame that mingled with a savage, primitive elation, a joy that flooded him from feet to skull.

No shot came.

The natives slid through the jungle as before; the Legionnaires panted and swore under their breath. Larcher was not concerned over the white men. But the natives knew that he had failed.

“Feeling sick. Lieutenant?” the corporal asked.

“Why— I— no, no.”

“You look sick. Maybe it’s jungle fever. Gets some people right away. Feeling kind of cold all over, Lieutenant?”

Larcher looked at him, at the Legionnares, at the native soldiers. White and yellow, he had failed their code. He didn’t belong here.

“Kind of cold,” he admitted slowly.

LARCHER had recovered his composure when he reached the Post of Nam-Phu with the returning troops at one o’clock in the afternoon. As a man may know he has been stabbed with a very sharp instrument yet not feel the pain immediately, Larcher realized he had a problem before him, but seemed numbed, unaware of its gravity.

He ate lunch in the mess-room with Colbert and the other officers. All were silent, sullen. The captain had been harsh and impatient before the start of the expedition that morning, had offered no explanations. Now he seemed depressed and gloomy. Possibly because he thought that the novice was amused at the vain display of forces in the hills, possibly because he might be blamed by his superiors at the capital. He asked no questions and cut short the vague reports of his subordinates.

“Made a monkey out of himself,” one of the younger men whispered to Larcher as they left for their own quarters. “He’s stubborn when he has an idea— you’ll find that out.”

Larcher knew who was to blame. Colbert was not mistaken. One of his men had failed him. At one time, he, Larcher, had had success in his grasp and had relinquished it through fear.

The lieutenant sprawled on his cot. The heat closed in damply. He had failed as completely as any man could, shown pride at the wrong moment, likewise conceit and disobedience; and he had capped it all by proving himself an utter coward. He wondered how much of the prejudice and hostility he had encountered in the army had been due to envy, as he had thought, and how much to flaws in his character sensed by veteran soldiers.

Larcher had cracked under a strain
the first time he had been tested. It was a catastrophe, the end of all. There could be no thought of remaining at Nam-Phu. Xu-Hon knew; the native soldiers knew. Perhaps they would not report him to Colbert; but whispering would start, for they would have no faith in him.

A white chief had faced De-Kai-Kinh and had retired without daring to attack. In those brief minutes of hesitation and cowardice Larcher had not merely frustrated the efforts of five hundred men, but he had lowered the prestige of the Legion, of the French— and proportionately increased that of the pirate chieftain.

Even if Colbert and his colleagues never learned, he did not have the right to carry on as if nothing had occurred. He must resign; he must confess his weakness.

And after that was done, leave. Go— where?

He could not pick up life with that admission of failure behind him. He would need to lie too often, to give too many hypocritical explanations for abandoning the service. It had been a custom at the academy to joke about military faults, to crook one’s finger near the temple when scolded by a professor for making a wrong answer.

Now, within eighteen months of those carefree days, Larcher in all seriousness took an automatic from its holster. He laid it on the table before him, then wrote his resignation, giving all details. When it was completed he contemplated it, then reread it with astonishment. He had been unable to prevent a certain note of pathos from creeping into his lines.

Others would not understand. He burned the confession, penned a brief note of resignation. Again he was not satisfied. It was not decent to inflict this on Colbert, without letting him know. Courage was needed for this— another type of courage.

“I’ll tell him and put it up to him,” he decided.

HE LEFT his quarters and walked along the veranda to Colbert’s room. To his surprise, the captain was not taking the customary siesta. Larcher saw him seated before the big work-table in his office, consulting papers. He appeared aged, worried, sucking mechanically at an unlighted pipe.

“I need a few words with you, Captain,” Larcher said.

“Later, tonight— after dinner,” Colbert said, looking up with obvious impatience. Then his gray eyes swept Larcher’s face. “Sorry, my lad, come in. It’s serious, eh?”

Larcher sank into a chair. He told his story in a low voice.

Colbert heard him out without interruption, nodding from time to time. Then he rose and crossed to the northern window of the room. His feet trod lightly on the tiger skins spread over the bamboo floor.

“Come here, Larcher.”

The lieutenant rose and joined him.

As the buildings of the post were constructed on the flank of a tall hill in a series of terraces, the eye could sweep the panorama for miles. Against the dull, overcast sky of midafternoon, which dripped heat like a warmed pewter dome, he distinguished the bulk of an ancient, dilapidated Chinese fortress facing the French fortification— a mass of brownish earthen walls three miles across the border on a knoll dominating the blue-green of the jungle-filled valleys and ravines.

“Our real enemies— the bush and the mandarins in there,” he said. “Forget what happened to you this morning and allow me to give you an explanation.”

“I can’t forget. Captain. Something must be done.”

“I’m forty years old,” Colbert said slowly. “I’ve been a soldier twenty years. In your place, nevertheless, I would have felt fear as you did. But experience would have permitted me to beat down the protesting beast within. That’s what I meant, in a way, when I called you an amateur. You have not learned that in war rifles miss oftener than they hit. You had as good a chance of being shot between the shoulder blades when you turned as you would have had to be killed rushing forward.”

“The fact remains I proved myself a coward. The native soldiers know it.” Larcher shrugged miserably. “I was ready to shoot myself awhile ago. Do you advise my resignation?”

“I?” Colbert smiled faintly. “Dumping your problem on me isn’t very brave, either.”

“True,” Larcher admitted.

Instead of exhibiting scorn or pity as Larcher had expected, Colbert was calm and unconcerned. He offered a cigaret to the young man and lighted one himself.

“You alone know what you will do on the next occasion. You fled from death once. You may do it every time— or never do it again. Only the future will tell.”

Colbert lifted his shoulders in a movement of disgust.

“You are not the only one who is at a loss. You know something of De-Kai-Kinh, of course? He was a coolie like any other to start with. His village chief designated him for service in the Tirailleurs. He was poor, without influence. Taught how to use a rifle, he got fed up with drilling and deserted. At the start he was a small caliber bandit, such as we have by the dozen on the frontier.

“The government itself built him up into a famous leader, offering that enormous reward for him— ten thousand silver piasters! That swelled his band swiftly— any number of jungle tramps, deserters from our forces and from the various Chinese armies. And he has been growing increasingly bold.

“Those telegrams on the table chide me for neglect of duty. For carelessness, because he comes and goes as he pleases. What can we do? When we press him, he gets over the border into China. The mandarins over there back him secretly, receiving a percentage on his loot for their trouble. Once over on their side, he is safe; his men go to the towns to carouse a bit. And he usually stays about, within hand’s reach, as it were.

“I can’t go after him. It would be a violation of neutrality, you understand. China is being watched jealously by the world. We’d have all the nations on our back if some of our troops went over. I had thought of a good scheme. I’ve an acquaintance here, not a worthy character according to strict standards of behavior, but a man, a bold man— an ex-sergeant of the Legion— who was willing to go across to get him if I provided arms for his men.

“That’s what I should explain. You are new, and you asked questions, called attention to certain evident flaws in my plans. Not your fault, but I was sore. Get that?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“That search was to put De-Kai-Kinh off his guard, to force him over the border to his usual hiding place— where my fellow, who knows his business, would have plucked him like a daisy. Of course, with a beginner’s luck, you ran into his den on this side. But had I known you would, I would have ordered you to act as you did, so sure was I that by tonight he would be where we could get him without loss of life. However, there’s been a leak. Read this.”

He handed Larcher a dispatch from Hanoi, instructing the military commander at Nam-Phu to call in all rifles issued to militia and village partisans for inspection by an ordnance officer due very soon.

“Those were the guns I counted on distributing to the independent raiders for tonight’s job. That’s merely a delicate fashion of making me know that my plan has been guessed and is disapproved. The officer left in charge here received a visit from the civil administrator while we were gone and probably told him of your objections, which made the chap think. He’s scared to death of responsibility and so felt he had to inform Hanoi.”

A servant stepped in to announce a visitor, and Larcher rose to leave. But Colbert motioned for him to keep his seat.

“That’s the man who was to do the trick. He’ll be disappointed. But better wait and meet him. He’s a most curious fellow.”

VALESKO, a pensioned sergeant of Legion, appeared at the heels of the servant. He was very tall and rangy. He wore wrinkled khaki garments, and a battered sun helmet on which a light spot indicated the removal of a military badge. His graying mustache was long, drooping over a hard mouth. His cheeks were sunken and grooved. He was nearly fifty, but appeared over sixty. His eyes were peculiar— a greenish blue— and the dilated pupils appeared to float in the bilious whites.

He acknowledged the introduction to Larcher with a casual nod.

“Heard of you—”

He sprawled in the nearest easy chair and leisurely filled an old pipe. The fingernails of his wiry hands were broken and dirty. His throat protruded above a knotted black kerchief. There was something in him of the soldier, the adventurer, the tramp and the apache.

“The whole thing’s off, Valesko,” Colbert announced.

He offered the telegram. The other scanned it and shrugged.

“Too bad. But for all they know, those chaps at Hanoi may have saved my hide. De-Kai-Kinh is a pirate and all that, but he isn’t a bad fellow. Last time I tried to get him, I found nothing when I reached the appointed place except the body of my informer— and a note telling me that on the next occa- tion I meddled with his business, he’d catch me and treat me in the same way.”

Valesko smiled grimly.

“Ever see a man skinned alive, young fellow?”

“No,” Larcher admitted.

“I have,” the ex-Legionnaire stated. “Quite a sight, even when you’re seasoned by ten years of Tonkin. You slit the skin from forehead to neck over the skull, grab the hair on either side and pull. The hide strips off like a banana peel. It’s a good man who remains conscious until it’s pulled down as far as his ears.”

Valesko gestured helplessly, and Larcher believed him filled with reminiscent horror until his next words showed that his thoughts had changed utterly.

“That’s the trouble with the French government— can’t employ competent men for given jobs. Here am I, a private citizen, willing to raid into China at my own risk and peril, supplying my own men; and I can’t even get hold of a couple of dozen old Gras rifles and a few hundred cartridges.”

“Afraid of complications,” Colbert said.

“Sure— although the authorities across the way are doing that very thing. Believe me, the military mandarins see to it that De-Kai-Kinh and his lads are properly equipped!”

Larcher stared at Valesko with a sensation of wonder. He had known such characters existed, but it was the first time he had met one of them in the flesh. Here was a man who would actually have sought out De-Kai-Kinh on alien territory, with a mere handful of poorly armed irregulars, on sketchy, uncertain information! Larcher’s admiration was intense.

“Yes,” he exclaimed, “they might help a man willing to go into it for the sport of the stunt!”

His enthusiasm brought an unexpected result. Colbert and Valesko looked at each other, both laughing gently. His expression of surprise was so genuine that it was some time before the captain could explain.

“There’s a ten thousand piaster reward on De-Kai-Kinh,” he then reminded Larcher. “That’s what Valesko’s after. It is all business with him— his trade. That and hunting tigers—” Colbert winked at the old chap— “and a number of other undertakings of which I am presumed to know nothing.”

“I wouldn’t contradict you, Captain,” Valesko agreed. He puffed at his pipe, took a long swallow of brandy. “Of course, the main obstacle is that I am short of money. With a few thousand francs I could raise armed men myself. I could show a profit at the end, after paying off my partisans.”

“Couldn’t the men chance cutting in on the profits?” Larcher suggested.

“In that case—” Valesko shrugged— “if they wished to speculate, they’d take to the jungle and be raiders themselves. But although rifled weapons are forbidden private individuals around herer, there are plenty of resolute guys with modern carbines hidden somewhere in their huts, willing to chance one expedition if payment is guaranteed in advance. For their families, you understand— or rather for the sons who will go through the required ritual after their death.”

“Suppose you had the money,” Larcher insisted, “how long would it take to gather the men for the job?”

“I could get a solid crew together in four hours.”

“Then go ahead,” Larcher said impulsively. He brought out his wallet and produced a sheaf of banknotes. “I’ll finance the undertaking. Is there enough here? I can cable Hanoi for more.”

Valesko had counted quickly.

“More than enough. I’ll have to change it into metal money at the Chinese trader’s in the village. Those jungle fellows don’t like bills. Aside from a refund, what share do you want?”

“No refund, no cut,” Larcher said quickly. “I’m backing you on one condition—”

“What?”

“That you take me along.”

“Impossible,” Colbert and Valesko said at the same time.

The captain explained:

“You are an officer, remember. You couldn’t expect official help from the consuls if you were caught as an independent raider. It would lead to investigation— trouble—”

“You know I have an excellent reason to chance it,” Larcher declared to his chief. “I’ll write my resignation, seal it— and, in case something goes wrong, the government will be covered and can disavow me.”

The captain frowned.

“Do you understand what capture would mean, Larcher?”

“Torture.” The lieutenant nodded. “Valesko has told me enough for me to realize it might not be pleasant for awhile.”

“We may run headlong into a trap, into De-Kai-Kinh’s whole band,” Valesko pointed out. “There’s been a leak to the government; there may have been one to him.”

Larcher gestured excitedly and pointed out:

“That makes our chances all the better. If he was tipped off to your plans, he also was tipped off that they have met official refusal, and he will be at ease. If you work fast, there may be no time for his spies to warn him of this new development.”

“You’re pretty young to die,” Valesko said soberly.

“I thought so myself awhile ago,” Larcher admitted with a faint smile. “But I have reasons to go into a thing like this. It’s worth the money to me. This morning, I—”

“Lieutenant Larcher has reasons, as he says,” Colbert interrupted with a warning glance.

Valesko looked slowly from one officer to the other, saw they were in earnest. He nodded and rose.

“Agreed. Change into civilian clothes. Meet me down at the village two hours after dark.”

He hesitated a moment, then said—

“It may not be healthy in China; you know that?”

Larcher smiled.

“I’m not planning to go there for my health.”

THE night was silent. Far off the barking roar of a prowling tiger resounded at intervals. Long since the moon had slipped below the tree crests. Dawn was but an hour away.

“We’re almost there,” Valesko said in a natural voice.

From the start Larcher had been surprised at the absence of caution. When he had reached the village, Valesko had had his men assembled, had declared that each one possessed an excellent gun and sufficient ammunition. The majority of his recruits came from neighboring villages, with a sprinkling of wanderers who had joined through a liking for adventure as well as a chance of profit.

Almost without exception they were of the Thos race— sturdy, stocky little fellows, garbed in blue turbans and garments of the same color. The march through the jungle, the crossing of the frontier, had not been furtive.

“Not afraid some one will hear you?” Larcher wondered.

“No. De-Kai-Kinh, being on good terms with the Chinese officials, feels safe where he is. It’s an old village, abandoned long ago by those who built it. He knows that there are several tiger hunting parties about, with Europeans, two of them with special permission of the mandarin nearest here. Either he’ll mistake us for one of them and won’t pay any attention to our noise, or he knows we are coming in advance. So that, either way, silence and caution would be useless until the very end.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Larcher granted.

“On the other side of the border, where he is always watching for our patrols, we’ll have to be careful. But he’s not suspicious here.” Valesko looked up at the stars glittering between the thick foliage of the branches overhead. “We stay right here until dawn. If he gets out of his hut and into the jungle, we’ll need light to locate him.”

He lighted a match for their cigarets and, in the brief glow, Larcher saw his confident grin, discerned the steady eyes, the flat, yellow faces and muscular necks of his followers. There was the gleam of steel. The sense of danger, of freedom and power, was incomparably stronger, more exhilarating than when he had led a military detachment.

He took stock of his impressions. Vague fear stirred in him, and he shared the speculation that agitated them all. Had De-Kai-Kinh been warned? Would they be greeted by a salvo of carbines when they rushed his hiding place? Lar- cher lived in imagination, as he had the preceding morning, the short minute of contact. What would happen? The capture of the raider, or the wiping out of the detachment seeking him?

The stakes were well defined: victory or death in torture.

But this time he knew that he had found himself, that he could meet any emergency. He had no responsibility, no prestige to uphold. He was an irregular, a free man.

“Ever see De-Kai-Kinh?” he asked.

“No. But Nong-Toh, my second, used to belong to his band. Several of the others have encountered him in the forest and can identify him.”

“Well known, yet hard to catch, eh?”

“That’s not extraordinary. De-Kai-Kinh doesn’t have to guess, but the French have to. He is a native and has spies everywhere. Any time pursuers close in, he comes into China. Captain Colbert nearly went mad until he thought of me. He didn’t like the idea too much, for he is a soldier and likes things done regular. But this was the only sure method.”

“I know Colbert likes you.”

“He does. But he doesn’t approve of me.” Valesko laughed. “According to him, I should get an honest position, supervisor in a timber cutting or at the mines of the delta. Instead, when the government turned down my application for a job with the Department of Streams and Forests, I struck out on my own. Odd tasks— some opium smuggling, taking bunches of women into

China on the return trips. Plenty of money in'that. But I drink and gamble, as there’s no use saving for an old age I’m not likely to enjoy. After the first time most of it gets to be dull routine. This kind of thing is the cream.”

Valesko went on talking, relating anecdotes, for a long time; then he sniffed the air.

“Dawn’s near. We’d better start. You go with Nong-Toh when he tells you. I go ahead now.”

He vanished. Larcher heard crackling in the bushes, then all was still. He stood in the darkness, his heart pounding, for several minutes. Then he dimly distinguished the outlines of the branches against the lightening sky.

A hand touched his arm.

“Come. Touch my back always—”

Larcher obeyed. He knew that Valesko had taken but half the troop, that there must be ten men within a few feet of him, encumbered with rifles, knives and cartridge pouches. But he could hear no footfalls save his own.

From time to time his extended hand would miss the muscular shoulder of his guide, but sure fingers would reach out of the night to guide him to the right path again. After some minutes silhouettes emerged from the darkness— uncertain, distorted figures moving as in a thick fog— the Thos.

DAWN had come. The earth exhaled a strong odor; the bushes were damp. Larcher’s boot soles sank in the muddy trail. In the new light, Nong-Toh, five feet two inches, with an enormous chest and superbly developed arms, grinned at him.

“Soon.” He lifted his hand and pointed ahead.

Larcher saw nothing save the thick jungle; but he knew that his eyes were blind, his ears deaf, compared to those of this amazing fellow. His excitement had died down, leaving him with a sort of chilly resolution.

It was hard to believe he was Larcher, on an unauthorized raid into a neutral country. Three months before he had been in France; a month ago on the way from Saigon to Haiphong by sea, surrounded by passengers in evening dress, with music playing. Somewhere, somehow, Larcher had become separated from that pale phantom which had been himself. Whatever occurred, he felt, he would behave like a white man.

Nong-Toh touched his arm and hissed for him to be still. Then he plunged into the bush, to return within three minutes, wiping his blade with a fistful of grass.

“They no know; everything go good. Come on.”

Larcher fought down a feeling of weakness at his middle. While he had waited, a killing had taken place within a few yards from where he stood. He could picture the event: the quick, silent crawling of Nong-Toh upon another yellow man just like himself, a former comrade; the lightning leap, the sweep of the blade.

Yes, he had been a different man, living in another world. Imitating the others, he crouched low. Without being aware that he had reached for it, he felt the butt of the automatic pistol in his right hand. He cast a glance at the barrel, gleaming, comforting. His thumb released the safety-catch. His temples felt as if compressed in a ring of steel. His mouth was dry.

The trail ended suddenly, opening on a clearing overgrown with tall reeds. On the edge of the forest opposite him he saw a half dozen low dwellings, small shacks, native canhas similar to those he had seen everywhere since entering the Upper Tonkin. Perhaps these were more dilapidated than others. But some one lived in them. Blue smoke lifted straight from the roof of one of them, slowly merging with the cloudy gray sky. De-Kai-Kinh’s morning rice was on the fire.

Nong-Toh peered back at him a last time, his teeth bared. Then he gathered himself, unleashing his bunched body like a spring, and sped across the clearing. Larcher raced behind him. The others followed. The light bamboo door was broken down immediately. But, even as it yielded, the fire which had cast a red glow over the interior vanished, extinguished with startling speed at the first hint of peril.

The hut was dark. Figures leaped about, collided, milled. At first there were no shouts— nothing but the panting breaths and grunts of struggling men. Then the Thos brought by Valesko called out to identify each other.

A reek of burning cloth and of steaming rice filled the place. One of the Thos lifted the moist blanket thrown on the coals. The wood burned brightly.

Larcher swept the room with a glance and noted the faces he had seen the preceding evening when the counter- raiders had gathered. There was no stranger standing; but two huddled shapes were on the floor, inert bundles of dark blue clothing. Hands grasped them, turning the faces upward. Nong- Toh came nearer, scanned the features.

“De-Kai-Kinh not here,” he said.

“Escaped?”

“Maybe no. M’sieu V’lesko outside.”

The native was unhurried, matter-of- fact. He had done all he could; his pay was guaranteed. He refused to waste emotion on regrets that might prove premature. One of his men righted the kettle, and the Thos were soon piling rice into the bowls left by the enemy.

“I stood by the door,” Larcher said, having sought for a window in vain. “How did they get out?”

Nong-Toh went to a row of crudely manufactured cots along the rear wall, mere platforms of bamboo propped a few inches from the floor. He indicated the space beneath, and Larcher, having knelt, reached out with his rifle to prod the wall. A light bamboo partition swung outward, revealing a narrow vent in the mud-bricks.

“Ready all time,” he explained. "Boss knows.”

Scattered detonations very soon cracked outside. The Thos looked up, their eyes shining. With unerring instinct Valesko had foreseen the pirate’s line of retreat. Larcher grinned and strolled out, leaving the Thos at their meal.

In the grass grown clearing, in the sunlight, Larcher grew uneasy. Something caused him to look up at the roof of one of the huts. And he saw the head of a man over the peak of that roof, sighting along the glittering barrel of a carbine. He knew at once that this was De-Kai-Kinh, who had suspected that his hiding place was surrounded and had climbed up instead of rushing headlong into the forest.

As he had not fired upon discovery, Larcher understood the silent bargain: If the white man did not shout for the Thos, if he turned and reentered the hut to inform his men, De-Kai-Kinh would have time to slip into the brush and take another chance. And the lieutenant knew that the pirate had good reason to believe he would do this. It would not be the first time!

According to legend, De-Kai-Kinh never missed. But Colbert had said that, even when afraid, it was best to take the braver course, safer. And Larcher remembered taking his own gun, being ready to shoot himself. Fate, perhaps, had brought him here to atone. It does not take long for superstition to gain hold in the jungle.

Erect, calm, Larcher swung up his pistol. The shots rang out. The sun helmet was knocked from his head, but De-Kai-Kinh had slid out of sight. Larcher ran around the corner of the hut, joined by the Thos.

THEY found a very short, very slight yellow man, garbed in khaki, probably the uniform of a slain militiaman. Larcher stared at him. There was nothing fierce, nothing of the leader, in De-Kai-Kinh’s appearance. Yet here was the man who had kept the entire military forces of the Nam-Phu district on edge for over six years. The lieutenant noted that one of his arms hung limply, that the sleeve was wringing wet with blood.

“I better dress that for him,” he suggested.

“What’s the use?” Valesko had appeared.

He paid no compliments and seemed in a great hurry. He indicated Nong- Toh, honing a broad blade whose back was almost as thick as that of an ax. Another man was plaiting something out of tough grass.

“No need to make him suffer unnecessarily.”

“You mean to execute him without trial?”

“If we keep him alive his men will try to rescue him before we get to the border. Or the Chinese may claim him.” Valesko showed impatience for the first time. “Don’t make me laugh, young man. What trial would he have given us? He understands. Don’t you, mon vieux!”

“It is proper,” the raider replied.

He looked about him with a show of fear, at the knife, at the rapidly woven crate that would hold his head. He called Nong-Toh, whom he recognized among his captors, and spoke to him in dialect.

“Promising him a reward if he will inform his people, his sons, as to where to find his body, where to claim his head.” Valesko shrugged. “He knows that it was Nong-Toh who betrayed him. But, time being short, he wastes no time in cursing him for something that can’t be mended. They know a lot, these people. Maoullen!” he snapped. “Be quick!”

De-Kai-Kinh murmured an apology for the delay and unwound his turban. Then one of the bystanders fastened his hands behind his back with a rope, not that the prisoner would try to flee, but the slightest gesture might cause a bad blow. The raider knelt. Evidently ne had foreseen this finish, for he went through every movement as if he had rehearsed, without unseemly emotion, without loss of dignity.

Nong-Toh tested the edge of his blade on his thumb. Then he adjusted De-Kai-Kinh’s head to his liking, lifting the hair up from the nape of the neck with great care. Satisfied, he stepped back and lifted the knife. His whole body tensed. His legs were propped solidly, wide apart. There was a bright whirling of steel against the gray light, a perceptible rush of air— and a thud.

And while Nong-Toh’s assistant took charge of the precious head, worth ten thousand piasters in the open market, the others searched the huts for concealed loot, unburied chests and cloth-covered baskets.

THE end of De-Kai-Kinh could not escape attention, and was reported in the Indo-Chinese newspapers. There were indications that something out of the ordinary had taken place. Explanations were sought. The French authorities stated that the reward had been paid to Valesko, a private citizen settled near Nam-Phu.

Very soon an accredited version was assembled from bits of information gleaned here and there by the curious. It was said that Lieutenant Larcher had organized a large hunting party to kill his first tiger and had hired Valesko as his guide. By chance, this expedition had encountered the De-Kai-Kinh, almost alone, within a few hundred meters of the border. Recognized by a native beater, Nong-Toh, the raider had refused to surrender, upon which the hunters had fired and slain him.

“The natives know the truth,” Larcher said. “But does a stroke of luck make up for—”

Colbert laughed.

“One of the papers attributes the success of the trip to your presence, evoking amateur’s luck. There must be something in it. Because, being naturally somewhat worried about what the native soldiers thought of you, I questioned the old sergeant, Xu-Hon, as discreetly as I could. I was amazed, after what you had told me, to hear him say that you were not only a real mandarin, but a baturu mandarin, which means a very wise one.”

“How did he come to that conclusion?” Larcher broke in.

“Because of the incident at the barrier,” Colbert said. “Xu-Hon states that although you are a young man and a novice out here, you took the time to examine the knots and twigs to see that they had been made months ago— that no one could have passed that way in half a year. A clumsy chief, he said, would have neglected such signs and ordered his men to hack through— but you understood, it seems!”

___________________

13: On the Dodge

Raymond S. Spears

1876-1950

Adventure, March 1934

A SMALL man with a slight limp, and one shoulder considerably lower than the other, came into the Cumberland Cafe on the Gap Road over the Blue Ridge. The lunch counter spread across the back of the room, and there were four tables along the edge of the large hardwood floor, which was roomy enough for four sets in a square dance. The tables served for dinner or cards, according to the hour.

Quite a crowd of hill-billies sat on benches around the walls. Two games were going at the tables, for it was late suppertime. The newcomer, glancing around, saw that he was instantly under the scrutiny of the players and others. All strangers who came to the Cumberland Cafe were under suspicion, for no one knew when a spy, reward-seeker or detective would appear.

"I'm hungry," the man said to the waitress, his voice gentle. " 'Most any- thing'll do if it's strong and filling."

"We're here to feed folks," the young woman said. "We c'n feed you plenty— baby beef, roast pork, chicken potpie, all hot and ready. I can start you off on a soup."

"A bowl of soup, roast pork and pot-pie," the man said.

Two of the loungers came to sit at the end of the counter. The stranger glanced at them. At a scuffle at one of the tables, he looked over his shoulder, gave a slight shiver and moved around to a seat at the end of the counter with his back to the corner.

The soup, made from mountain beef, was good, and the man ate with gusto. He ate a full plate each of pork and potpie, drank his coffee black and topped off with wild-apple pie. The proprietor entered from the kitchen and came along behind the counter, looking at the new- comer.

"Can I get a place to sleep?" the stranger asked.

"I reckon— a room upstairs," the cafe man said with hesitation. "Six bits, with breakfast in the morning."

"I'm glad," the man said. "I sure need it."

One of the poker players had to go to play for dancing with the mountain orchestra, of which he was the fiddler.

"Mebbe you'd like to sit in that game," the cafe man suggested to the stranger, whose face lighted up eagerly.

"Sure would," he declared. "I like cards to settle my supper."

Accordingly he went to the table. He sat with his back to the wall and bought ten dollars' worth of chips, stacking them before him. The game looked friendly, with a twenty-five cent limit. The stranger had been invited at the suggestion of one of the players, a broad- backed, silk-shirted, well clothed Latin type of man. The other three players were a lank, pale-eyed, long-necked mountain man; a white-collared store-keeper; and a wide-hatted, thin-faced youngster who exaggerated his motions and whistled through his teeth.

The newcomer mentioned his name as Tom Jones. Then the young smarty said he was Hot Springs Colby. The merchant was Rumsey; the hill-billy Shotgun Gillam; the silk-shirted one was Mulando. Hot Springs was shuffling. He slapped the cards at Jones, his manner cocky.

"Cut?" he inquired.

Jones gave the cards a quick double flip with long, supple hands. On the first play Jones took in three dollars' worth of chips, and he kept on taking in the chips, but always glancing around first to see whether it was all right ac- cording to the showdowns.

The other players grew restive. The limit was presently raised, for the local players wanted a chance to recoup their losses. Whether it was a quarter ante or five dollars, it seemed to make no difference to Jones. His only peculiarity in playing was the fact that when he pressed his betting it was on the deals of his antagonists. He merely broke even on his own.

Jones was weary. After an hour or two he was nodding, as if partly asleep. In one interval he actually slumped. Then the silk-shirted Mulando, who had invited Jones to play, suddenly snarled:

"Mebbe you'd like to quit, eh? No, you don't work us so."

Jones gave no sign that he had heard, and Hot Springs Colby gave him a quick punch in the arm. Jones sprang half out of his chair, startled as he glanced around and shook the cobwebs out of his eyes. He looked at his hand, leaned back to survey his stacks of poker chips and the even more significant paper currency for which the chips served as weights against the drafts caused by the swirling of the couples in the square dance figures.

"You're damned lucky, fellow!" the Italian remarked.

"Not always." Jones shook his head. "I've had my hard luck too. I got to get some sleep. Three more hands and I'm through."

"We don't quit playing winners before midnight in this country," Hot Springs declared tartly.

"You don't draw out on us. Play your lucky string through," the hill-billy insisted coldly. "We want a whack back at that stack."

The stranger made no comment on that. The cards were dealt around quickly, bids came fast and the long minute hand crossed the midnight figures on the wall clock. The hour hand lagged behind, and presently it was five minutes after midnight— but in the middle of a jackpot. The stranger raised. He shoved money into the heap with abandon, but the Italian met his challenge and lost with three jacks to three aces— and this was on the loser's own deal.

"Cash these chips," the stranger said, a wistful tone covering his abrupt request.

"No." The Italian, who had the bank, shook his head. "You don't run out with that money."

"I'll match cards even for the whole damned pile then," the winner said. "That be all right?"

The bet stumped the objector. He sat glowering, puzzled for an evasion.

"No, we play for sport." Mulando shook his head. "We play poker."

The stranger squinted his eyes, which were bloodshot, swollen and heavy with weariness.

"I'll play you tomorrow," he offered. "Hell, men, I'm dead tired! I need the sleep, get me?"

The four glanced at one another. They had lost something more than a thou- sand dollars among them. More than money, however, was involved. They turned cold eyes on the winner. All of them were much larger men and they were pictures of health, the rambunctious, overbearing, competent health of the Appalachian mountains— full- blooded, well fed, self-satisfied.

SHRINKING in his chair, the winner huddled lower as he worked the paper money into a thick, orderly brick. He counted his chips. They came to four hundred and sixty dollars. With what seemed to be a pleading gesture he shoved his stacks toward Mulando, who glowered at the stuff to be exchanged for good money, of which he had already paid out only too much.

"All right, we play tomorrow then." Mulando snarled and in cashing up tried to gyp the winner out of twenty dollars.

When Jones started past young Hot Springs, the lad shoved his foot between the older man's feet, so that he pitched forward and tripped; but in squirming around Jones somehow caught the trickster as if to save himself and threw him violently to the floor. The fall was so heavy that for several minutes Hot Springs Colby lay stunned. Jones backed against the wall and stood watchful while three or four of the girls, with loud cries, brought cold water to revive the victim.

Jones edged along the wall to the rear. The proprietor glowered at him, but led the way upstairs to the room. There he demanded the price in advance, which was, considering the circumstances, an insult.

"How'd you get here?" he added when the money was in his hand.

"Ridin' a horse," the patron answered. "It's in the stable."

Sitting in the bedroom, Jones heard the voices downstairs. The stovepipe came up through his room, and around it through the ventilator holes the talk about Jones was clearly audible.

"A sneak, that's what he is," some one said.

"How come he win on my deal?" Mulando demanded hotly.

"You boys leave him alone," a young woman's voice said. "He's a little fellow; shame on you for nagging him!"

"Tomorrow he loses back or it wasn't play for keeps," the young smart aleck jeered as if in fun, but the listener recognized in the voice a determination that was not mockery.

Jones knew what to expect.

Quickly he spread his clothes down, everything exactly ready at the head of his bed, including two saddle-pokes connected by a loop to go over a horn. He tried the doorknob, balanced on it the tin cover of a salad dressing jar he took from his locker. If any one turned that knob the tin would drop into the wash bowl placed on the floor beneath and awaken him.

Under his shirt was a double shoulder holster carrying two guns, one under each arm. Loops in the leather held a hundred bright shells, and around his waist was a money-belt into which with other money he negligently tucked his night's winnings. After a quick glance around the room he blew out the light in the lamp and raised the window sash to look into the road out front where the yellow light from the cafe windows lay pale upon the smooth pike and revealed the woods just across the way. The side window of the room looked out on a sloping balcony roof toward the stable thirty yards distant where he had hung his own saddle. He had noted the front and rear entrances, and the downgrade slope of the clearing behind the livery barn.

When he went to bed Jones knew details of the place which perhaps few regular patrons had ever noticed. He was tired, a stranger and anxious not to attract attention. But he had gained more than money from the men who had taken him into their game not only to try for his money, but to size him up, prying into his affairs, and try to take advantage of the odds in their favor. Understanding their game, it made him chuckle inside. They were nothing but petty larceny scamps. They couldn't even play poker without squealing when they blistered their own fingers.

So, sleeping like a cat, he knew what was going on, hardly missing a tune as the fiddle, banjo, French harp and accordion ran through the repertoire for a Blue Ridge dance. They were serving liquor now that he was out of the way. He was thirsty, but he wasn't running risks asking for any of the stuff. The crowd was suspicious enough of his identity without his giving them any ideas that he wasn't minding his own business.

Even in his dreams Jones laughed at being mistaken for a Federal, suspected of being a Pinkerton man or of seeking reward money. Probably in five counties around all those "rewarded" would have been worth less to a captor than he himself.

The Cumberland Cafe was all right with him. The Blue Ridge and Big Smokies were all according to his needs. He couldn't say he liked the hardwood, the frequent rains, or the living conditions, but a stranger on horseback did not seem too conspicuous — and it was two thousand miles from where people didn't make the mistake of thinking Tom Jones was a revenuer.

TOWARD noon somebody rapped on the bedroom door.

Jones said— "O.K."

In two minutes he was washed, and in a few seconds more he was buckled and buttoned up. His feet didn't look it, with his trousers outside, but he wore high laced boots that cost forty dollars, light and thick-soled and good for walk- ing— or running, if need be.

Dinner was ready. It was good. Hot bread, a big bowl of gravy, a roast wild turkey, sage dressing. Sage? Jones whiffed that odor with a shudder of homesickness, seeing in his thoughts ten thousand square miles of sage with alkali in the Big Horn Basin, and sage down in east Utah and other places, in all of which Tom Jones was at home; and if and when at home in greater danger than these hill-billies ever could know or imagine. He realized that they were welchers, that they'd shoot a man in the back if necessary to recover what they'd lost in a game wherein poker sense and recklessness beat their petty cheating.

Tom Jones sat at the end of the counter where he could see all the room. He ate heartily, his glance casually, as it seemed, watching every one. The girl with the fine voice, who had told the gang to leave him alone, was waiting on him; she was tall, dark and pretty. She gazed at him from under lowered lids, and each time she passed he met her eyes squarely. When he had finished eating he slipped a twenty-dollar gold piece under his coffee cup, undetected by the closely watching rascals along the counter. The girl gave no sign.

Jones looked around for the welchers at cards, but none of the four was in sight. At the stable he looked over his horse, gave the stable boy a dollar for extra corn and a rub-down for the handsome horse that wore no brand but obviously had been bred in old Kentucky. Somewhere over in the Blue Grass pasture a day's journey back there was bewilderment over the disappearance of that horse and the appearance, in its stead, of a tall man-mule that only Jones knew about.

"You ain't ridin' out, mister?" the boy asked shrewdly.

"Not now," was the answer. But when the boy was back in the stable shadows the stranger studied the woods across the road and went out the rear doorway into the back door of the cafe.

The afternoon waned. Two men in turn sat all the hours in the cafe watching Jones. No one would mistake them for detectives, not in a thousand years. The cheap skates had put them there for fear Tom Jones would run out on them, escape with their thousand-odd dollars, and so make them the laughing-stock in a land where their dignity was all they had to live on— dignity, venom and bushwhacking nerve.

Finally Jones realized that the other four poker players were waiting for dark, that then they would have more than cards up their sleeves. All Tom Jones wanted was half a chance; he never asked more than that. He moved about restlessly, walking along the cafe walls as other patrons came and went.

In the rear of the hallway one door led to the cellar and another opened into the kitchen, and there Jones at last met the tall, handsome waitress.

"They've got your number on a bullet," she whispered. "They think you're a detector, mister."

Tom Jones slipped her five double-eagles, and tears came to her eyes.

"You're good, stranger," she said, "but that's too much."

"Not for me." He shook his head. "Nobody else would have told me, and I'm cheap, giving so little. Say, what's your name?"

"Mary."

"Listen, Mary— that boy in the stable?"

"He likes me," she said simply.

"Here's his bit," Jones said abruptly. "I'm leaving. Have that horse— where'd it be best?"

"Across the brook along the path through the woods back of the stable yard," she answered. "Soon's it's dark I'll tend to that, sir."

AFTER supper an hour later the card game was resumed, and it was plain that the four squealers were just killing time, getting up their nerve. They had tried with obvious insistence and despicable intention to have Jones sit with his back to the dancing floor, where a stepper could stick a knife into his back. He laughed as he claimed his old seat with his back to the wall. The smart aleck, Hot Springs, however, traded with Mulando, who was left-handed, and that gave two men to one, each in a seat where he'd have the gun-swing on Jones. They showed their satisfaction at their advantage— as if Jones would overlook it.

In an hour the reckless playing of the four had given Tom Jones another thousand dollars of their money, and they were squandering their plays. They gave themselves away, over and over again, indicating that they were going to get it back. This, as if even the man they thought Jones to be would have overlooked their play.

Then Hot Springs, watching Jones shuffle, suddenly said—

"Damn you, gimme that deck."

Without a word Tom Jones slapped it before the smart aleck, who was astonished and at a loss at that cheerful compliance. Jones was straight-backed, smiling through his black mustache and gentler than ever.

"Go through it," Jones suggested. "Do your stuff, boy."

Hot Springs, thus called, picked up the cards and spread them out, face up. Mulando had stacked them and handed them to Jones. And, sure enough, the four aces had been crimped so that they stood arched on the table.

"Look!" The Smart Alec indicated the cards, bent for recognition by look or feel.

On the instant Tom Jones flashed his hands across his chest, and when he flung his arms apart two guns, each of which weighed nearly three pounds, struck against the defenceless faces of Mulando and the youth. The two went over backward, limp from those terrible blows across their eyes.

Jones swept all the cash in sight into his pocket, having holstered one of the guns— took not only his own winnings but those of the four rascals too. Across the floor behind the counter was a red-haired little man who started to throw up a shotgun where it had been planted, but Jones slapped a shot that way as the double-barrel cleared the counter; and the would-be killer, hit in the brisket, dropped out of sight.

The spectators surged back, raising their hands as Tom Jones, not even obliged to speak, drove everybody to the walls. When he glanced at the hillbilly and Rumsey he said:

"I said I'd play tonight. Satisfied?"

"Oh, yes— yes, sir-r!" Rumsey gasped.

A quid of tobacco rolled out of Gillam's cavernous open jaws and rolled down his shirt bosom. At that Tom Jones laughed a loud, deep, genuine guffaw that nobody ever forgot.

Jones slithered to the front door and stood beside it an instant, surveying the crowd.

"Don't anybody move for ten minutes," he said, nodding toward the clock. "Watch them hands good."

He stepped outside. Two minutes later the lank hill-billy sprang on the run toward the counter after the shotgun. At his third jump a shot came from the dark outside, and the impatient mountain man pitched forward and slid along the waxed dancing floor. No one moved for half an hour, all staring at the inert figure and listening to the groans of the man lying behind the counter.

Tom Jones reached the brook, and as he came to his horse a low voice hailed him from beside the road. It was the girl.

"Can you give me a lift?" she said. "I heard the shots and I think I'd better leave now. I live outside, at Whitewater Ford, if you'll carry me."

"Sure will, and that's on my way," he said, swinging her up behind him and racing off along the roadway, the hoof- beats echoing in the night.

She told him of short-cuts and where to circle, bedeviling pursuit, if any, and at the false dawn they came to Whitewater. He stopped his horse at the stepping block beside a fence at a little cabin clearing.

"I could take you with me," he suggested, "only you — "

"No, suh." She shook her head. "I couldn't go. Those fellers at the Cumberland ain't no good. They're mean, trifling, no 'count. An' 'course you're bad too. I noticed your picture on the post office blackboard. I'd neveh traitor you'uns for blood money, suh. I always look at those pictures on the reward notices, for men, stray mules and stolen horses. I had one already, telling about a mule impounded and a thoroughbred hunter missin' from the same pasture. I reckon you'd be int'rested."

She handed him the folded slips and, stepping over the fence, hurried toward the cabin in the gray, drizzling dawn.

"Thank you kindly," he called after her, but she shrugged her shoulders as he rode on his way, not seeing her face again.

ALONG the fence he came to the open timber, where he rode for a time slowly, reading the reward notices: $16,500 for himself, and $50 for information about the horse he was riding. That made him laugh, for it was a good joke to tell the boys when they met again at their rendezvous.

Leaning forward, he started the horse running down the ridge slope. Suddenly he heard a gun being cocked. With a glance over his shoulder he saw a man, not much more than a boy, rising from behind a fallen tree trunk up the mountain slope.

"Halt— halt or I'll shoot!" the youngster shouted.

Tom Jones leaned forward and slapped the horse into a gallop.

Good to his word, the boy shot. The bullet hit Jones in his shoulder, which was already much too low, and the blow and shock threw him clear of the saddle. He fell, rolling to the ground, and darted to his feet down into the laurel brush, nerved against other bullets which he expected would follow. Instead of shots, though, he heard a shrill, quick whistle and saw the horse swerve and circle back, answering that summons.

Stumbling, staggering, stooping low, Tom Jones kept on his way. He was presently in the thickets. He stopped to plug the holes in and out of his shoulder— a sore wound, but not so bad as the .45-90 that had lowered that side in the past. Just a .82-20, he judged.

As he sat, catching his breath and nursing his bandaged shoulder, he read the reward notices again. On the back of the one for the horse he found written:

Dear Mary:

Somebody swapped my horse; you know, the one I come to see you riding. Maybe this feller will ride your way on Skip, which is worth six mules like he left behind. It's the direct road— telephone if he comes.

Jim.

_________________

14: The Horse Thief Rendezvous

Raymond S. Spears

Adventure, 15 Nov 1927

ABOUT sixteen miles west of Buckshot the Oregon Road dipped into a dry wash. Up this gully was a water-hole which overflowed in time of rains but never went empty, even in the long dry spells prevailing thereabouts most of the year, because it was fed by a small boiling spring. A trapper by the name of Bender had discovered the good water and had built a stone cabin and a lodge pole fence corral there, establishing a ranch. Then he was killed while trading his fur catch at Fort Benton, his squaw wife went elsewhere, and the place became neglected, its history summarized in its name, Bender's Drink.

A wild, desolate loneliness stung those who at rare intervals came to a stop for the night there. One time two men were found frozen to death just over the ridge from the cabin. Then a lunatic made the cabin his den, prowling around in shaggy, howling, feral madness, like a bear or like a cougar, rarely resembling a man in his varying moods— now and again shot at by a frightened homeseeker. Then a renegade killed him and an air of evil ghastliness was left about the scene.

Presently a Down Easter arrived, a shuffling, shambling, ne'er-do-well who came West expecting to find opportunities to seize wealth without knowing a main chance when he saw one. He was tickled to find a house ready built, so he squatted at Bender's Drink. He was really doing well, till a band of wandering Blackfeet mistook his slouchy gait for cowardice. He whipped a dozen, killing nine, but died of his wounds. The others, having captured his wife and daughter, carried them away, but a prospector saw them and rode into Buckshot giving the alarm. A posse was organized and overtook the warriors ninety miles away, by another waterhole, where they were making merry, unaware of the vengeance crowding them. None survived. The mother was killed by a tomahawk and the daughter just drifted on, her family name forgotten. She was Tillie; that's all.

Then Buckshot robbers needed a rendezvous. Hank Yacupe, sometimes known as "Dutch," took over Bender's Drink, and thus accepted the responsibility of the horses and mules which the Nighthawks brought to him. The trails into Buckshot, and the wagon roads southward, westward and eastward carried a great variety of traffic. Home-seekers went through in wagons. Adventurers came by on foot or on horse-back. Stage coaches made their way roaring by, the Concord stages proving the workmanship by their endurance on the roughest roads traversed at top speed.

Lone horsemen went by, watchful, heavily armed, unknown. Small bands of men camped on their way along, some riding light, some driving bands of extra mounts and loaded horses and mules. Strangers were the rule— men who came and went giving no name, spoken of as riding a black horse with a star on the forehead, or a bay, or a gray; described by a hole in the hat or a scar on the cheek, and perhaps afterward heard of as some great scoundrel or a hero of wards or a lost soul of civilization.

A handful of desperate scoundrels recognized one another. They shook hands, agreeing to stand together through forest fire and high water. They ranged and roamed, catching lonely men unawares, or inveigling themselves into the companionship of small parties whose horseflesh was especially good, or whose pack animals promised valuable loot.

Strangers disappeared toward the horizon. Their affairs were no one's concern. Who cared if the man on Star Face arrived in Walla Walla or Salt Lake City? The horse, itself, turned up in Hank Yacupe's corral. How come? It did not matter. Nice horse, though. The same with a big bay horse, and some fine man mules from Missouri, able to carry a good pack over a rough road. Yacupe was doing a lively business in carrying-stock.

"You need a fast horse? Try Yacupe; he's a trader," the word was passed in Buckshot.

Terry Deerbon arrived in Buckshot with footsore animals. He was a good fellow, drinking too much, spending money openly. He represented Eastern investors. The word was that good mines could be had cheap out from Buckshot, which money could develop and bring in ten thousand per cent, profit. Deerbon represented a lot of capital. He was hard on horses and, having foundered or sore-footed his mounts, he demanded more animals, in good condition.

"You'll find the best there is out at Hank Yacupe's," he was told by some one, and hiring a horse at the Buckshot livery he took his direction on the West Road toward faraway Oregon.

He did not return, but one day the liveryman found the horse behind his own corral, with the saddle on its back and the bridle tied to the horn.

"Must have left Deerbon out for a walk," Briesh said to his hostler, and the hostler laughed at the joke.

The Eastern capitalist had been left out so far he never came in.

SIX months later two men arrived in Buckshot— good men. They were Ream and Burvid, and they were looking for a mining engineer by the name of Terry Deerbon, about thirty-four years of age, nice, genial fellow, about so high and blue eyed, likely to take a drink and quite a talker, frank and open.

They went to Landers and Deck, general store proprietors and agents of the express company. Both remembered Deerbon very well. They had received letters inquiring about him, had written in reply all they could learn and still had one thousand five hundred dollars in gold which had been sent to his credit. Ream, Burvid, Deck and Landers talked the matter over in the store office.

"You'd know— you'd be able to identify any of Deerbon's property? His revolvers, belt, hat— anything like that?" Deck inquired.

"Oh, yes!" one of the two men exclaimed. "That's why we came. We'd know his teeth, for that matter. And he broke his left leg when he was our man in a logging speculation in the White Mountains. We're back of him. If just a natural accident happened to him, same as may befall any man, all right. But if any meanness, any dirty deal has been given him, we're here to find out who is responsible. He performed his duties faithfully in our behalf. We paid him wages. But we owe him our assistance if he's in trouble, and if he's in his grave, we'll put a marker on it."

"All right, gentlemen," Deck said. "Of course, we know you. The general manager of the express company saw to that. You know us. Frankly, we have been hearing quite a little from a ranch known as Bender's Drink. Out west of town, about sixteen miles, you'll come to a dry wash. You go up that wash a mile, and around the second turn is a stone cabin, corral, two or three brush shacks and a log front, sod roof, a dugout in the side hill. A hard Dutchman, burly, Hat faced and a broken talker, runs kind of a horse and mule market there, sells liquor— don't drink any of it— and keeps travelers. Don't sleep there; that is, both at the same time. Suppose you ride out. Your horses are travel worn and you can trade them in for the rest of your journey. Tell any one but us you're looking for Terry Deerbon?"

"Not a word. Saw you first."

"Good! We'll mind our own business. Look things over. Perhaps you can buy a revolver you've seen before. Or a hat. What size was his head?"

"Same as mine, exactly. I'll leave my hat here. No! I'll lose it where I can find it again. Much obliged. Deck! We'll find out. Then what?"

"Come back and tell us— if you're sure. One way or the other. Understand, you can't make any mistakes. It'll be serious."

"We understand perfectly," Ream said. "We'll spend the night here. Go around to see the sights. We'll mention we need horses— good ones, reasonable say. That the way?"

"Fine. Red shirted fellows are plumb sure to suggest Yacupe's. Two are safer than one. But don't arouse suspicion— to make it look to be worth while— uh— to mob you."

"Certainly. We're very short of money— want good horses, cheap."

"Fine!"

"Hang Eye" Fritter of The Flower Bush said he understood Hank Yacupe had some good horses. This was confirmed from in front of the bar by "Ambling Pete" Covell, a red shirt and a bully, who told the inquirers how to find Yacupe's. In the morning, Covell joined them for the ride out to the ranch, just happening to be on his way in that direction and having in mind to buy some mules himself.

HANK YACUPE welcomed them. He had horses to sell, sure, but maybe not what such fine gentlemen would want; anyhow, they could look in the corral, after dinner, which wasn't so much, but was all ready.

A long table was set for fifteen around. Here sat men and women, two squaws, an Indian and a dandy, who ate with dainty gestures and of selected tidbits of birds, venison and cornbread.

"I say, Crease; huccome you killed that Yellow Vest Dorvis in Carson City!" some one inquired.

"A false, unjustified accusation of cheating, to tell the truth," the dandy replied judicially. "He insulted my honor."

"Knife?"

"Oh, no! Derringer," the dandy replied. "I almost never do use the flashing blade. A knife's messy, you know!"

"Yeh, drips all over, for a fact," one of the boys remarked, "but it comes off with a brush, for it dries fast in this country."

The visitors wondered if this wasn't talk to impress them. They made no comments. Certainly, the group was made up of hard customers, swaggering but watchful. Ream sat across the table from Burvid, so that between them both could see in all directions. After eating, they went out to look over the corral of horses. Some of the animals were the finest they had seen. They traded, paying a remarkably small price to boot.

"I'd like a good revolver, if I could find one," Ream suggested to Burvid in Yacupe's hearing.

"I haf some goot ones, pistols and new-fangled shell guns," the rancher said.

Yacupe brought out forty or fifty pounds of short guns, revolvers, pistols, belts, holsters and sheath knives among them. Burvid reached and dragged a beautifully sewed belt with scabbard and revolver, a relatively, new single action heavy model, cartridge cylinder weapon.

"This one," Ream said. "How much?"

"Vell, forty dollar."

Without a word Burvid paid the price. They two mounted their new horses and rode away at once. They came back to Buckshot, hitched their mounts in front of the Deck and Landers store and found the proprietors alone and unpacking a wagonload of cases.

"Well?" Deck inquired.

"Here is the revolver we gave Deerbon for luck!" Burvid choked.

"All right," Deck nodded grimly. "We'll do something about it."

Deck put on his hat and left the store, sauntering around, here and there to drink with certain quiet, self-contained men.

THAT night, two miles south of town, fourteen men met by a big rock, conspicuously white in the starlight.

"All here, all set!" some one remarked, and they rode westward.

At dawn they arrived at Bender's Drink. They swarmed into the main and outlying cabins.

"Yacupe!" Deck inquired, "where did you get this revolver and belt?"

"Mein Gott! Mein Gott!" Yacupe wailed. "A committee!"

Of the nine men who were captured, five were allowed to go, as only half bad, or strangers. The women were herded in a corner of the room as the grim posse barked their questions. One of the four broke down. The killing had been with a blow on the head. The body was dragged up the ravine and hidden under a bank.

"All right, boys!" some one said. "It's a hanging!"

"My idee 'zactly!" another assented.

"Aye!" the others voted.

Without ceremony, two who fought were subdued with violence; Yacupe, whose legs refused to function, was dragged and the fourth man walked with head up, swaggering, his gray eyes taking a last look around that vast, bare, bleak land.

The corral gate had two uprights with a long arch pole over their forked tops, Yacupe having made the improvement with methodical skill. Four ropes were lashed over the beam, and nooses swung eight feet from the ground. Two wagons were backed up under the nooses; the four men lifted to the rear ends and the two who had been whimpering checked their sobs, taking a brace.

"Vell, boys, all right," Yacupe said. "I get vat's to be my end."

"This comes of bad company!" another young fellow said, choking. "Don't tell my mother what come to me! I drank and gambled."

"Oh, I don't want to die! I don't want to die!" the third sobbed.

"Go to hell," the fourth shouted, snarling his opinion of the committee. "Here goes nothing!"

The horses, at whose heads stood six men, were rearing to go. The men leaped aside. Long lashes fell upon the flanks of the four beasts, which sprang away. The defiant man who had struck the blow that killed Deerbon leaped in the air.

The committee stood around, smoking, chewing, taking a drink now and then.

Presently they mounted their horses to ride away. The women took the wagons and drove westward, and thereafter for a long time the chance passerby would see at the corral gate of Bender's Drink the stark, withering reminders that sometimes it wasn't healthy to kill a stranger from away back East.

___________________

15: Murder Magic

Cary Moran

Edwin Truett Long, 1904-1945

Spicy Detective, Oct, 1936

Spicy Detective was one of a stable of pulp magazines with "spicy" in the title— Spicy Detective, Spicy Adventure, etc.— produced by Culture Publications in the late 30s. They were a little more lurid in cover and content than the regular competitors, and were eventually renamed Speed Detective, etc.

JOHNNY HARDING, ace columnist of the Daily Telegraph, glared at the girl beside him, pulled his leg away. She had pressed it warmly with her own round knee. Her fingers were caressing his arm. In the dim light of the luxurious room her face was close to his as she chattered in his ear. Johnny said, “Quit playing and try to keep still! Did I ever show you the picture of the dame that talked herself to death?”

Across the room Thalia Fitzhugh sat on a deep divan beside Carl Amherst, her husband’s business partner. The girl beside Harding was Thalia’s stepdaughter. The house itself, knee deep in luxury, speaking of wealth and opulence in every nook and cranny, belonged to Marshall Fitzhugh who stood against the mantel glass in hand.

Outside rain beat against the windows. The wind droned steadily. The steady beat of waves slapped the rocky shore. Paradise Arms was situated on Paradise Island, nearly a mile out in the bay.

At one end of the room were velvet curtains, partitioning off some twenty feet of the enormous salon. Every guest in the room was eyeing these curtains with a certain amount of expectancy in his or her eye. The girl beside Johnny said, “But I’m not kidding! This friend of mine is going to back me in a revue. If you’ll give me a little break and plug me in your column for a buildup— you know, society girl goes gaga about stage, and—”

Again her knee against his. She leaned so close that one firm breast throbbed against his skinny shoulder. His uneasy eyes saw the deep cleft between her arrogant breasts as the negligible dinner gown gaped. Again he pulled away impatiently.

“Nuts. You better marry this angel instead of taking a flyer at the stage.”

“Why?” she persisted. “I can sing. I can dance a little, and I’ve got the build for it.”

She thrust a leg out before her, pulled at the hem of her skirt. Fascinated, Johnny watched. Sheer chiffon, well filled, rounded, sleek. The dim light eventually revealed a five inch strip of dusky white flesh topping the chiffon.

“Plenty there,” she said softly, “and plenty here!” She preened herself, breasts jutting forth impudently, taut curves plainly seen through the thin material of her dress.

Johnny saw Thalia Fitzhugh’s sardonic gaze across the room and groaned “Put your dress down, simple mind! Legs and breasts are a dime a dozen on Theatre Row! If—”

HE paused. During the last half of her conversation weird music had filled the room. Now a faint spotlight illuminated the velvet curtains at the end of the room. The assembled guests tensed. Now the curtains parted a little and a grotesque statue slid by unseen hands took the center of the improvised stage. A voice intoned from behind the curtain.

“Siva! Siva! Siva! To whom we pray. Grant us the power, the ability to see into the future, to gaze into the past, to suspend all time.”

The music droned on. The voice ceased. The statue grinned balefully in the amber light.

A slender figure slid from between the curtains, postured for a moment against the dark background, then made a genuflection before the gilded image. The audience gasped. The music swirled tonelessly but rhythmatically.

The dancer turned. Bare feet made no sound on the smooth floor. Her eyes seemed glazed, peered straight ahead lifelessly, but it was her body that held the watchers spellbound. The amber spotlight gave it a yellowish, a deep cream tinge. A thin, sheathlike loin cloth was of the same color. Tiny cups that shielded generous breasts matched perfectly. It was as if she stood nude before the watchers, the only spot of color being the red, passionate slash of heavily rouged lips.

A cream cloth obscured her hair and, directly in the center of her forehead, was a gleaming sapphire or rhinestone. At the apex of each breast cup was another, and a fourth and larger was embedded in the center of her tumultuous waist.

For a moment she swayed in rhythm to the music, then the melody seemed to sweep across her body. Muscles quivered, soft flesh vibrated, the gleaming stones danced and twinkled in scintillating orbits and parabolas.

Johnny said, “Now if you had what that baby has—”

“I’ve got everything she has,” said the girl beside him, “only more so.” Her hand was laid caressingly on Johnny’s. Johnny snorted, pulled away, noted that the skirt of her dress was still drawn above her stocking top.

FOR perhaps three minutes the dancer at the end of the room postured, pranced, wove, and vibrated before the leering statue. As the music sank to a sobbing finale, she knelt before Siva, touched the floor with her forehead once, twice, thrice. Then, respectfully she pushed the ugly thing far to one side of the curtains, returned to grasp a hanging golden cord. Her voice was dead, emotionless, her glazed eyes peering straight ahead. She was like a carven statue, the only thing that denoted life being the rapid rise and fall of her half exposed breasts, gleaming creamily in the amber light.

"Make way, make way, he comes, he comes! Rapinee, the man who knows, the favored of Siva, the master of illusion.”

Slowly she drew on the cord. The curtains parted noiselessly. She moved them, stepping silently in her bare feet so that the scene of the improvised stage was revealed in its entirety. Some one of the guests gasped.

In the very center of the stage was a small table. Atop the table a gleaming crystal. Behind the table a huge throne-like chair. A man sat in the chair, a white robe covering his wide shoulders. Johnny’s eyes widened.

The girl beside him whispered, “God!” softly.

Rapinee, master of illusion! Several of the guests applauded half heartedly. Suddenly Thalia Fitzhugh screamed fearfully, lurched toward the improvised stage, staggered and fainted. During the melee that followed, the girl who had pulled the cord stood stiffly, woodenly in one spot, staring straight ahead over the heads of the milling guests. Johnny Harding was the first man to reach the side of the master of illusion.

Rapinee’s last trick had been no illusion! His robed body sat stiffly erect in the massive chair; but his turbaned head was a full foot above the body, twisting from side to side gruesomely, white teeth flashing in the swarthiness of his face, lips pulled back in a leering snarl, eyes distended, gleaming white, glazed and stricken.

It was only after arriving at his side that Harding saw the severed head was tied by a black cord from a beam overhead. Blood dripped steadily from the head to fall on the once white robe. It welled in a spouting stream from the cut arteries in the decapitated body, trickled like great red serpents down across the once white chest and splashed softly on the hardwood floor.

Carl Amherst was the second person beside the body. His own eyes were wide with horror, his nostrils white and quivering at sight of the blood. Fitzhugh and several of the other guests bent over Thalia. The half nude woman, Rapinee’s assistant, still stood woodenly at one side with the cord in her hand, staring straight ahead.

Beside the decapitated man on the floor lay a curved scimitar. Without touching it Johnny examined the death weapon. In spite of the gruesome blood, he saw that it had been lately sharpened, that the steel was bright and shiny far back from the razor sharp edge. With a single stride he reached the scimitar’s mate where it hung on the wall. Its edge was blunt, dulled with age. The curtain flapped at the window which was up for a space of two inches.

Had the killer done this gruesome work and departed by that window? As he turned, he saw the white faced Carl Amherst withdraw a hand from the corpse’s robe. The hand slid immediately into the side pocket of Amherst’s tuxedo.

Johnny said, “Don’t touch that body, Amherst! Has anyone called the police?”

AS if in answer to his question, Marshall Fitzhugh burst into the room again, his face white.

“The telephone is out!” he said. “Either the storm has washed out the line or the killer has cut it!”

Harding said, “Get everyone in the place into this room, Marshall, and get them here at once. We’ll have to send someone to the mainland.”

He turned, made his way through the swirling group of horror stricken guests, approached the half nude girl who still stared stonily ahead at one side of the improvised stage.

“Snap out of it! Come on now!” He slapped her face sharply. She did not move. He put a hand behind her neck, pressed her jaw sharply with the palm of his other hand.

“This is a hell of a time to play,” giggled Rita Fitzhugh beside him.

“Shut up! She’s hypnotized. Rapinee hypnotized her at the start of his performance. I’ve seen the act before. Stay with her a minute.”

He turned as if to work his way through the crowd. Carl Amherst stood almost behind him. Johnny stumbled fell against the man, caught him in both arms and finally fought his way erect. Amherst said, “Clumsy ass,” and Johnny hurried from the room with muttered apologies.

Once outside the door he looked at the object he had lifted from Amherst’s pocket. It was a packet of letters, tied with red cord. The top one was addressed to “Rapinee, 147 East Plymouth, City.” He thrust them behind the cushion of a heavy chair and hurried back to the room.

Marshall Fitzhugh had herded the wide-eyed servants into the room with the guests. Johnny surveyed them coldly. A butler, a cook, a scullion, a cook’s helper, two maids, a negro man of all work. All servile, cringing, dismayed.

“Someone will have to go for the police,” snapped Johnny and, glaring about, “but damned if I want any of you to leave.”

Amherst spoke stiffly. “Don’t cast any of your aspersions at us, Harding. Remember we were all in this room, on this side of the curtain. Maybe the girl there, his helper, can throw a little light on the subject. Personally I think she’s stalling.”

Marshall Fitzhugh broke in, spoke to the ashen negro. “Go down to the boat-house and get Bulotti up. It’s a bad night, but he’ll have to go to the mainland for the police.”

The negro hesitated, departed on unwilling feet.

Johnny said, “Who’s Bulotti?”

“He takes care of the boat and the grounds. Lives on the other side of the island in a cottage. He’ll be here presently."

Johnny walked to the rigid woman was Rapinee’s assistant. He picked her up in his arms. To Rita Fitzhugh he said. “Take me to the nearest bathroom.”

AS they left the room, he saw Thalia Fitzhugh still sitting on the divan. She was staring straight ahead. Tears had ruined her makeup. Streaks of mascara ran across the rouge of Her checks. Her eyes were wide with horror, bleak with hopelessness, her mouth twisted in a grimace of fear.

Johnny followed the girl, Rita, up the steps, his eyes on the muscles of her liquid, swinging hips, sliding beneath the snug dress.

“Thalia,” he said aloud, “is taking it pretty hard.”

The girl opened the door of a bathroom, said, “Why not? Rapinee was her boy friend. Everybody knew it but poor dad, and he was beginning to suspect! Do you want help?”

“Turn on the cold water.” The tub was half full of water when he put the nearly nude woman in it. Her flesh quivered warmly, but the set expression of her eyes did not change. Johnny set her down, began to splash water in her face, saying, “You’re all right now, you’re all right now,” over and over.

Presently he tired, jerked her to her feet.

“Try the shower, Rita. Maybe hot water will do it.”

The loin cloth, the breast cups, evidently had been affixed with a glue like preparation. As he stood her erect, one breast cup loosened, almost tumbled into the water. The clinging loin cloth released its grip. Johnny grabbed for a towel, wrapped it about flaring hips. The hot water sprayed onto the smooth slopes of her breasts. The gleaming stone at her waist broke loose, splashed into the water. Rita picked it up, tossed it contemptuously aside.

“Paste,” she snorted. “I thought they were real! The sapphire Rapinee used in his turban was real. I know—”

She stopped, looked at Johnny with wide eyes. They were thinking of the same thing.

“Gone!” snapped Johnny. “Rapinee’s sapphire is gone!”

The hypnotized girl stirred.

“You’re all right, you’re all right,” intoned Johnny and massaged soft flesh. Her breasts were nubile, firm yet resilient. Rita leaned to help him. Gradually the brown eyes awakened, took on a glimmer of intelligence. She moved her head, tried to shake water from her eyes seemed to realize a man was watching her nakedness and covered her breasts with the palms of her hands.

“Where—?” she began.

“What’s your name?” snapped Johnny.

“Sheila, but my clothes! Where—?”

Rita departed, giggling, for a negligee. Gently Johnny tried to explain as best he could. “So you’ve got to try and help me,” he concluded. “Try and remember all that happened while you were behind the curtain.”

“Dead! Dead!” she repeated over and over. “Rapinee is dead.”

Miserably she turned to Johnny. “I can’t help you. He hypnotized me before every performance. That’s the last I remember.”

RITA reappeared. They threw the negligee about the girl’s quivering shoulders, went back down the steps to the assembled guests.

Sheila dropped on a davenport beside Thalia. Fitzhugh was talking to an Italian near the door. The Italian was shaking his head.

“I know it’s rough, I know it’s storming,” snapped Fitzhugh. “But we’ve got to have the police. There’s been murder, man! So get going.”

Johnny looked at Bulotti curiously. The Italian was staring past him at the divan. Johnny turned. Sheila sat there dumb in her grief, the negligee gaping open. The curves of her provocative breasts rose and fell. One creamy thigh was revealed almost hip high. Johnny glanced back at the Italian. His black eyes were distended, utterly afire. A red tongue flicked out to lick at spittle that drooled from the corner of his mouth.

Fitzhugh pushed him.

“Aw right, aw right, boss. I go.”

Unwillingly he left the room. Johnny went over and sat down beside the dead assistant. Fitzhugh spoke slowly.

“The police will be here in an hour. I think it would be best if we all stayed close together.” He nodded at the servants. “You will please prepare coffee for the group and also bring liquor. Until the police arrive there may be danger. After all we don’t know—”

The assembled guests looked at one another suspiciously. Thalia glared at her husband. Fitzhugh glared back. Johnny began to wonder. He remembered that scimitar that had beheaded the man. Someone had sharpened it. It was premeditated murder. There was something fantastic about the suspended head. He wondered just where Carl Amherst fitted. Why had he removed a packet of letters from the dead man’s clothing? How had he known that packet of letters was there? He caught Amherst’s eyes fixed on him glaringly, accusingly. Johnny grinned faintly and the man looked away.

Johnny had known Amherst for years, not as a friend, but as a bright lights playboy. He knew that lately Amherst had been drinking more than usual, had been cutting an even gayer swath along the primrose path. Now where did it all fit? He remembered what Rita had said concerning an affair between Rapinee and Thalia Fitzhugh. Plenty of motive for murder there, but both Thalia and her husband had been on the right side of the curtain! Their alibis were perfect. But what of the missing sapphire?

He took the Scotch and soda offered by the servant, sipped it thoughtfully. Amherst moved closer to the divan where Harding sat. To the girl Sheila, beside him, Johnny said, “Listen, I’ve got to talk to you privately.” He kept his voice low but not too low. “There’s a summerhouse at the end of that gravel walk that leads from the conservatory. I’ll leave in a minute, then you leave. I’ll meet you there.”

Presently he arose, lit a cigarette and sauntered out. For several moments he smoked thoughtfully in the darkened hallway, listened to the subdued conversation from the salon. Presently he saw the shadow of the girl on the far wall as she moved slowly toward the conservatory. He waited, ground the cigarette out in the ash tray, and tiptoed toward the French doors that led toward the summerhouse. He stepped out into the storm.

Lightning flashed. He saw a dark figure with upraised hand behind the adjacent shrubbery. He tried to dodge but the descending arm was too quick. A sharp blow cracked against the side of his head. He crumpled, fell with his face in the gravel.

NEVER was he totally unconscious. He felt hands pawing through his pockets, hurling his belongings aside, a thick voice cursing with every movement. He tried to fight back the cobwebs, but his head was ringing, roaring too greatly. The dark figure cursed again, straightened and kicked him viciously in the ribs. Then it trotted away down the path toward the bay.

Rain in his face finally revived Harding. He struggled erect, gulped in the cool air and staggered down the pathway in the direction his assailant had taken. He passed the summerhouse, peered in. Empty. Evidently the girl had not as yet come down. He trotted on unsteadily. In the distance he saw the dark bulk of the boathouse. Lightning revealed the pier reaching out into the breakers.

Almost there he stumbled over something, sprawled at full length on the gravel again. Cursing, he scrambled up. Again lightning. He had stumbled over a body. He peered down at the face of the inert man. It was swarthy in the flickering light cast by his cigarette lighter. Bulotti, the caretaker! Blood ran down the side of his face from a two inch scalp wound. Johnny turned him over, let the rain revive him. The man groaned. His little eyes opened. He saw Johnny, spoke faintly.

“The boat— she is gone! Somebody steal the boat! I come back to tell Mister Fitzhugh and someone, somebody hit me on head!”

Johnny got him on his feet. So the boat was gone! The telephone out! No chance to get aid and a killer, a murderer loose on the island!

“Go back to the house and tell Fitzhugh to come down here,” he said grimly. “Give me that flashlight you’ve got there.”

The man handed him the light, started for the house with staggering steps. Johnny headed for the boathouse. The waves beat against the sturdy pier but no launch was to be seen. He cast the rays of the light about in all directions, even over the water. The light penetrated for a few feet and he saw something white beneath the surface. He ran into the boathouse, returned with an oar and jabbed at the shimmering white thing. When he arose, his lips were grim. The launch hadn’t disappeared; it had been scuttled! It lay in six feet of water at the end of the pier.

The light flashed again over the wet boards. At the very edge of the pier he saw gleaming metal.

It was an axe. It had not been there long, for Johnny saw with a thrill of horror that the blade and handle was bloodstained. Someone had been killed or assaulted with that axe!

Where was Fitzhugh? Damn it, this thing was getting thicker and thicker. He went back toward the house at a half run. As far as the attack on he himself was concerned he almost had it figured out. Probably Amherst in search of the letters! If Amherst’s clothes were damp, he’d beat the truth out of him. But the sinking of the boat, the blood on the axe!

AS he passed the summerhouse, he paused, flashed the light inside and caught his breath. Spread eagled on a stone bench was the body of Sheila, Rapinee’s assistant. Horrified Johnny kept the light on her. The scanty negligee had been torn from her body. Her breasts were criss-crossed with scars, the wake of clawing nails. Even her milky thighs were splotched and bruised. Surely the marks of a fiend! And the head! Ah, God, the head, literally split from pate to chin, by a gruesome weapon.

The axe! The bloody axe!

“Harding! Where are you, Harding?” A voice from the house. Amherst and Fitzhugh were standing just outside the open doorway.

“What is it?” panted Harding. Amherst’s clothes were wet, but he was standing in the rain! Johnny’s heart sank.

“Bulotti,” said Fitzhugh in a thin voice. “We found him unconscious outside the door. There’s a killer loose on this island!”

Johnny grunted. “And he just killed Sheila, Rapinee’s girl in the summerhouse. I found the body!”

Amherst said, “My God!” His eyes glowed strangely. “What’s the matter with you? There’s blood all over your face?” Johnny felt their hostile gazes on him, wheeled and trotted into the house without answering.

TEN minutes later the group stood in the salon, nervous and distraught. Most of the men were armed from Fitzhugh’s gunroom. All listening to Harding.

“All we can do is wait until daylight and signal for help,” he said shortly. “In the meantime you can comb the island for the killer if you like. Personally, I’m going to bed and get some rest.”

Fitzhugh snorted. “I don’t get you, Harding. You claim to have been assaulted. Bulotti was knocked out and Rapinee and the woman were killed. How can you rest when all of our lives are in danger?”

“Maybe,” Johnny’s voice was soft, “I don’t think the killer is hiding on the island! Maybe I know who it is and I’m just waiting for the police.”

Silence. At least a dozen pair of eyes glared at Johnny. He lit a cigarette, sat down between Rita and her stepmother, Thalia, and watched sardonically while the men filed from the room. Talk lagged. Thalia said, “For God’s sake, let’s get out of this room. It gives me the creeps.”

Presently in the library Johnny yawned, asked for a bed. Thalia directed him to the upper floor in a weary voice.

Harding went to the designated room, turned on the light. From his pocket he withdrew the packet of letters he had hid in the upholstering of the hall chair. As he read them, his face was a study. They were passionate, inflamed, a woman’s soul laid bare. Addressed to Rapinee, they were written by Thalia Fitzhugh.

He tiptoed to the head of the stairs, listened to the babble of voices below. He reentered room after room lit a match in each and departed the way he came. The last room on the east was the one he sought, Thalia’s bedroom.

He moved pictures, looked behind bookcases, but nowhere was a safe concealed. He searched the bureau, the vanity, all the furniture. At the bedside he rose with a grunt of satisfaction. In his hand was an immense stack of stiff green bills. He thrust them in his pocket, tiptoed from the room.

A French door let him onto the portico. He clambered down the trellis and headed for the boathouse and the cottage where Bulotti lived. He spent at least half an hour prying carefully into nooks and crannies, another half hour in the man’s workshop.

He returned to the house the way he had come, barely missing the returning search party. At the head of the steps he listened, heard Fitzhugh’s booming voice.

“We’ve searched every nook and cranny of the island with no result: It’s my notion that the killer had a boat and escaped, after killing the woman. But we’ll stand guard tonight and we’re certain to get relief by morning!”

MIDNIGHT. Johnny lay on the bed and, waked: Johnny was nervous, for Johnny was murder bait: He knew in his beast that one of the assembled guests had committed the murders. By hinting, that he had found a clue, he placed his own name at the top of the prospective list of victims.

A clock struck one. He heard the click of the door, heard it open softly. He reached his left hand to the cord of the bedlamp, his right grasped a heavy candlestick. Padding footsteps— the approach of the killer. His nerves were tense, torturous. He could stand it no longer. He pulled the chain of the bed-lamp and leaped to his feet. The wide eyes of Rita Fitzhugh stared down at him. She said, “Sssssh!” and came toward him on bare feet. She wore a gauzy nightdress, more revealing than concealing.

Her pointed breasts surged against the thin material, the deep cleft between them was scarcely obscured. The odor of Scotch whiskey was heavy on her breath.

Johnny grinned, dropped the candlestick, and sat down on the bed weakly. She sat down beside him, put an arm about his shoulder, pressed a breast against his arm. The heat of her round thigh burned into him. She said, “I wasn’t kidding about going in a musical, Johnny. You going to help me out?”

He reached over and flipped off the bedlamp. He said, “Sure!” She sighed and nestled close to him with a little shiver.

Once, nearly an hour later he thought he heard the click of the door catch again. He leaned over her, kissed her hard on the soft flesh of a shoulder. She groaned ecstatically. Johnny listened again— heard the door click closed.

HE was up early walking about the exterior of the house. The telephone wire had been cut near the house itself and, with Bulotti’s help, he soon had it spliced. Bulotti looked like the aftermath of a hard night. To all of Johnny’s questions he answered nothing at all, merely grunted, rolling his eyes and doing his work with trembling hands. Before the others were fully awakened, Johnny was using the phone.

His first call was to Pete Jackson, financial editor of the Telegraph. His second to Bill Nobles, head of the homicide squad.

Presently Jackson called him back, talked at some length. Johnny hung up the phone, went into the library where the others had gathered, and announced that the line had been repaired, that the police were on their way.

Instead of a noticeable air of relief appearing, tension seemed to set in. Amherst looked worried. Fitzhugh glared at Thalia; she glared back. Rita pressed close to Johnny, an adoring smile on her face and, across the room, Amherst glared viciously at the pair of them.

At nine-fifteen a police launch arrived bearing Bill Nobles and various other members of the homicide squad, including photographers, fingerprint men, and a doctor. The bodies were examined and photographed, carried out in wicker baskets. The doctor reported that Sheila, the girl in the summerhouse, had been assaulted as well as murdered.

Johnny Harding took Bill Nobles aside, spoke shortly. Nobles looked puzzled, but sent a man to bring in everyone on the place, including the servants. Once assembled, Johnny took the dull scimitar from the wall.

“Mr. Nobles has asked me to show him how this murder was committed,” he spoke softly, “so if you folks will step back into the places you had last night, I’ll show you how I’d reconstruct the crime. Bulotti will you sit here in the chair where Rapinee sat?”

A step at a time, slowly, slowly Bulotti came forward. He sat down gingerly. The others were arranged exactly as they had been the night before.

“The killer,” said Johnny, “had the mate to this scimitar all sharpened and prepared. It had been ground to a razor edge.

“He came in through this window while Rapinee was engrossed in his preparations. One blow of the scimitar severed the victim’s head. Like this.”

He drew back the dulled blade as if to swing it. Beneath his breath he said, “Should I swing it, Bulotti? The chair is a terrible death! Imagine frying there, Bulotti, burning and smoking!"

The Italian’s face did not change. Only the irises of his eyes expanded, his nostrils quivered.

“The black cord,” went on Johnny, “was to be used in one of Rapinee’s illusions. The killer is a mad man!” Sotto voce, “You’re mad, aren’t you, Bulotti? You’re insane, aren’t you? But that won’t save you! And you murdered the girl— attacked her, too! They’ll burn you for that!”

“He liked the sight of the blood. He wanted to do something spectacular so while the girl danced he hung the head, suspended it above the still quivering body!” Softly, “Didn’t you, Bulotti? It looked fine, didn’t it? Dripping gore, running blood!”

NOBLES broke in. “Very pretty, Johnny. You say you have this on your hip. What motive did the killer have?”

“Money,” said Johnny softly. “The killer himself was only a tool. Another man paid him to commit the murder, Rapinee had a jewel worth much money. Find it and you find the killer.”

“Where did you put it, Bulotti,” sotto voce again. The Italian rolled his eyes, licked at his lips.

“And Rapinee had something else worth much money. Rapinee had been blackmailing a party in this household. That party was to pay him last night for the return of eleven letters. Rapinee had them. The person had the money. The man that hired the killer wanted one or both. He was desperately in need of money himself. He paid the murderer to do the killing but the insane killer forgot to search for the letters or the money!”

His voice sank to a whisper. “Didn’t you, Bulotti? The blood was so red, so pretty! You forgot everything else!”

“That’s enough,” Marshall Fitzhugh said warily. “I killed him, Nobles. He was blackmailing my wife just as Harding says. She came to me, told me and I killed him. Harding is mistaken about everything but the blackmail angle. I came in through the window—”

“Tell him he lies, Bulotti. Tell him it was you!” Johnny roared the words. Bulotti leaped to his feet, spittle trickling down his mouth. The pupils of his eyes expanded until they seemed etched on the white eyeballs themselves. He swung a hard fist against Johnny’s jaw, staggering him. He dove for the window, but Bill Noble’s slug tore into his shoulder, dropped him to the floor.

HARDING said, “He killed Rapinee. The only place on the island that has a grindstone is his tool shop. He sharpened the death scimitar, came in through the window, and cut off the mystic’s head. After Fitzhugh sent him for help, he sank the boat, committed another murder then hit himself in the head to divert suspicion. He killed Sheila because he or the man behind him was afraid she wasn’t fully under the influence of hypnotism. Bulotti assaulted her because the sight of warm red blood excited him. He’s insane. You can read it in his eyes.”

Dead silence. Johnny cleared his throat. He laid a package of letters and a sheaf of bills on the table.

“The murder was committed for these, Bill. I learned last night that a certain guest here has promised to back Rita Fitzhugh in a musical comedy. I happen to know that guest is broke, that he’s run through a sizeable fortune and has spent part of his business partner’s money. I checked on that this morning.”

Only the sound of strident breathing filled the room. Johnny grinned cheerfully at Rita.

“Through little Miss Dimwit there, this guest learned that Thalia was being blackmailed for about thirty grand for some love letters she wrote in a moment of weakness. The payoff was to be last night. This gentleman determined to get the letters or the money. He hired Bulotti to do the job for him. But he didn’t know Bulotti was a blood killer! Either Bulotti or the master mind got the jewel Rapinee always wore in his turban. I—”

A new voice broke in. Over near the mantel Carl Amherst glared at Rita and said, “You damned dumb little fool! So it was you that spent the night with Harding! And I thought it was Thalia!”

Every eye was on the paunchy little man. His eyes glowed with strange fires, his teeth were bared in a snarl of hate. “That’s what I get for playing around with a nitwit! You’re right, Harding, if it gives you any satisfaction. But you’re lucky, you stumble on things. I had Bulotti do it all, even crack you on the head. I wish he’d have killed you! But, oh well—”

He shrugged. A small gun whipped up in his hand. Nobles and a uniformed policeman dove for him but the muzzle disappeared into his mouth, his finger tightened and a muffled sound rang out. As he fell, smoke poured from his mouth.

Presently Rita Fitzhugh touched Johnny on the shoulder. As he turned, she slapped him, hard. There was no sorrow in her eyes, only anger.

“Damn you,” she said, “now who’s going to back my show?”

___________________

16: The Great Beast of Kafue

Clotilde Graves
as by "Richard Dehan" 1863–1932

Under the Hermés, and Other Stories, by Richard Dehan, 1917

Set a few years after the end of the Boer War, in the region then called Kafue but now Zambia. Clotile Graves was born in Ireland, became a very successful playwright in the West End and on Broadway.

IT HAPPENED at our homestead on the border of South-eastern Rhodesia, seventy miles from the Tuli Concession, some three years after the War.

A September storm raged, the green, broad-leaved tobacco-plants tossed like the waves of the ocean I had crossed and re-crossed, journeying to and coming back from my dead mother's wet, sad country of Ireland to this land of my father and his father's father.

The acacias and kameel thorns and the huge cactus-like euphorbia that fringed the water-courses and the irrigation channels had wrung their hands all day without ceasing, like Makalaka women at a native funeral. Night closed in: the wooden shutters were barred, the small-paned windows fastened, yet they shook and rattled as though human beings without were trying to force a way in. Whitewash fell in scales from the big tie-beams and cross-rafters of the farm kitchen, and lay in little powdery drifts of whiteness on the solid table of brown locust-tree wood, and my father's Dutch Bible that lay open there. Upon my father's great black head that was bent over the Book, were many streaks and patches of white that might not be shaken or brushed away.

It had fallen at the beginning of the War, that snow of sorrow streaking the heavy curling locks of coarse black hair. My pretty young mother— an Irishwoman of the North, had been killed in the Women's Laager at Gueldersdorp during the Siege. My father served as Staats gunner during the Investment— and now you know the dreadful doubt that heaped upon those mighty shoulders a bending load, and sprinkled the black hair with white.

You are to see me in my blue drill roundabout and little homespun breeches sitting on a cricket in the shadow of the table-ledge, over against the grim sterk figure in the big, thong-seated armchair.

There would be no going to bed that night. The dam was over-full already, and the next spate from the hill sluits might crack the great wall of mud-cemented saw-squared boulders, or overflow it, and lick away the work of years. The farm-house roof had been rebuilt since the shell from the English naval gun had wrecked it, but the work of men to-day is not like that of the men of old. My father shook his head, contemplating the new masonry, and the whitewash fell as though in confirmation of his expressed doubts.

I had begged to stay up rather than lie alone in the big bed in my father's room. Nodding with sleepiness I should have denied, I carved with my two-bladed American knife at a little canoe I meant to swim in the shallower river-pools. And as I shaped the prow I dreamed of something I had heard on the previous night.

A traveller of the better middle-class, overseer of a coal-mine working "up Buluwayo" way, who had stayed with us the previous night and gone on to Tuli that morning, had told the story. What he had failed to tell I had haltingly spelled out of the three-weeks-old English newspaper he had left behind.

So I wrought, and remembered, and my little canoe swelled and grew in my hands. I was carrying it on my back through a forest of tall reeds and high grasses, forcing a painful way between the tough wrist-thick stems, with the salt sweat running down into my eyes... Then I was in the canoe, wielding the single paddle, working my frail crank craft through sluggish pools of black water, overgrown with broad spiny leaves of water-plants cradling dowers of marvellous hue. In the canoe bows leaned my grandfather's elephant-gun, the inlaid, browned-steel-barrelled weapon with the diamond-patterned stock and breech that had always seemed to my childish eyes the most utterly desirable, absolutely magnificent possession a grown-up man might call his own.

A paauw (bustard) made a great commotion getting up amongst the reeds; but does a hunter go after paauw with his grandfather's elephant-gun? Duck were feeding in the open spaces of sluggish black water. I heard what seemed to be the plop! of a jumping fish, on the other side of a twenty-foot high barrier of reeds and grasses. I looked up then, and saw, glaring down upon me from inconceivable heights of sheer horror, the Thing of which I had heard and read.

At this juncture I dropped the little canoe and clutched my father round the leg.

"What is it, mijn jongen?"

He, too, seemed to rouse out of a waking dream. You are to see the wide, burnt-out-looking grey eyes that were staring sorrowfully out of their shadowy caves under the shaggy eyebrows, lighten out of their deep abstraction and drop to the level of my childish face.

"You were thinking of the great beast of Kafue Valley, and you want to ask me if I will lend you my father's elephant-rifle when you are big enough to carry it that you may go and hunt for the beast and kill it; is that so?"

My father grasped his great black beard in one huge knotted brown hand, and made a rope of it, as was his way. He looked from my chubby face to the old-fashioned black-powder 8-bore that hung upon the wall against a leopard kaross, and back again, and something like a smile curved the grim mouth under the shaggy black and white moustache.

"The gun you shall have, boy, when you are of age to use it, or a 450-Mannlicher or a 600-Mauser, the best that may be bought north of the Transvaal, to shoot explosive or conical bullets from cordite cartridges. But not unless you give me your promise never to kill that beast, shall money of mine go to the buying of such a gun for you. Come now, let me have your word!"

Even to my childish vanity the notion of my solemnly entering into a compact binding my hand against the slaying of the semi-fabulous beast-marvel of the Upper Rhodesian swamps, smacked of the fantastic if not of the absurd. But my father's eyes had no twinkle in them, and I faltered out the promise they commanded.

"Nooit— nooit will I kill that beast! It should kill me, rather!"

"Your mother's son will not be valsch to a vow. For so would you, son of my body, make of me, your father, a traitor to an oath that I have sworn!"

The great voice boomed in the rafters of the farm kitchen, vying with the baffled roaring of the wind that was trying to get in, as I had told myself, and lie down, folding wide quivering wings and panting still, upon the sheepskin that was spread before the hearth.

"But— but why did you swear?"

I faltered out the question, staring at the great bearded figure in homespun jacket and tan-cord breeches and veldschoens, and thought again that it had the hairy skin of Esau and the haunted face of Saul.

Said my father, grimly—

"Had I questioned my father so at twice your age, he would have skinned my back and I should have deserved it. But I cannot beat your mother's son, though the Lord punish me for my weakness.... And you have the spirit of the jager in you, even as I. What I saw you may one day see. What I might have killed, that shall you spare, because of me and my oath. Why did I take it upon me, do you ask? Even though I told you, how should a child understand? What is it you are saying? Did I really, really see the beast? Ay, by the Lord!" said my father thoughtfully, "I saw him. And never can a man who has seen, forget that sight. What are you saying?"

The words tumbled over one another as I stammered in my hurry—

"But— but the English traveller said only one white man besides the Mashona hunter has seen the beast, and the newspaper says so too."

"Natuurlijk. And the white man is me," thundered the deep voice.

I hesitated.

"But since the planting of the tobacco you have not left the plaats. And the newspaper is of only three weeks back."

"Dat spreekt, but the story is older than that, mijn jongen. It is the third time it has been dished up in the Buluwayo Courant sauced up with lies to change the taste as belly-lovers have their meat. But I am the man who saw the beast of Kafue, and the story that is told is my story, nevertheless!"

I felt my cheeks beginning to burn. Wonderful as were the things I knew to be true of the man, my father, this promised to be the most wonderful of all.

"It was when I was hunting in the Zambezi Country," said my father, "three months after the Commandaants of the Forces of the United Republics met at Klerksdorp to arrange conditions of peace—"

"With the English Generals," I put in.

"With the English, as I have said. You had been sent to your— to her people in Ireland. I had not then thought of rebuilding the farm. For more than a house of stones had been thrown down for me, and more than so many thousand acres of land laid waste...

"Where did I go? Ik wiet niet. I wandered op en neer like the evil spirit in the Scriptures," the great corded hand shut the Book and reached over and snuffed the tallow-dip that hung over at the top, smoking and smelling, and pitched the black wick-end angrily on the red hearth-embers. "I sought rest and found none, either for the sole of my foot or the soul in my body. There is bitterness in my mouth as though I have eaten the spotted lily-root of the swamps. I cannot taste the food I swallow, and when I lie down at night something lies down with me, and when I rise up, it rises too and goes by my side all day."

I clung to the leg of the table, not daring to clutch my father's. For his eyes did not seem to see me anymore, and a blob of foam quivered on his beard that hung over his great breast in a shadowy cascade dappled with patches of white. He went on, I scarcely daring to breathe—

"For, after all, do I know it is not I who killed her? That accursed day, was I not on duty as ever since the beginning of the investment, and is it not a splinter from a Maxim Nordenfeld fired from an eastern gun-position, that—" Great drops stood on my father's forehead. His huge frame shook. The clenched hand resting on the solid table of locust-beam, shook that also, shaking me, clinging to the table-leg with my heart thumping violently, and a cold, crawling sensation among the roots of my curls.

"At first, I seem to remember there was a man hunting with me. He had many Kaffir servants and four Mashona hunters and wagons drawn by salted tailless spans, fine guns and costly tents, plenty of stores and medicine in little sugar-pills, in bottles with silver tops. But he sickened in spite of all his quinine, and the salted oxen died, just like beasts with tails; and besides, he was afraid of the Makwakwa and the Mashengwa with their slender poisoned spears of reeds. He turned back at last. I pushed on."

There was a pause. The strange, iron-grey, burnt-out eyes looked through me and beyond me, then the deep, trembling voice repeated, once more changing the past into the present tense—

"I push on west. My life is of value to none. The boy— is he not with her people? Shall I live to have him back under my roof and see in his face one day the knowledge that I have killed his mother? Nay, nay, I will push on!"

There was so long a silence after this that I ventured to move. Then my father looked at me, and spoke to me, not as though I were a child, but as if I had been another man.

"I pushed on, crossing the rivers on a blown-up goatskin and some calabashes, keeping my father's elephant-gun and my cartridges dry by holding them above my head. Food! For food there were thorny orange cucumbers with green pulp, and the native women at the kraals gave me cakes of maize and milk. I hunted and killed rhino and elephant and hippo and lion until the head-men of the Mashengwa said the beast was a god of theirs and the slaying of it would bring a pestilence upon their tribe, and so I killed no more. And one day I shot a cow hippo with her calf, and she stood to suckle the ugly little thing while her life was bleeding out of her, and after that I ceased to kill. I needed little, and there were yet the green-fleshed cucumbers, and ground-nuts, and things like those."

He made a rope of his great beard, twisting it with a rasping sound.

"Thus I reached the Upper Kafue Valley where the great grass swamps are. No railway then, running like an iron snake up from Buluwayo to bring the ore down from the silver-mines that are there.

"Six days' trek from the mines— I went on foot always, you will understand!— six days' journey from the mines, above where L'uengwe River is wedded to Kafue, as the Badanga say is a big water.

"It is a lake, or rather, two lakes, not round, but shaped like the bowls of two wooden spoons. A shore of black, stone-like baked mud round them, and a bridge of the same stone is between them, so that they make the figure that is for 8."

The big, hairy forefinger of my father's right hand traced the numeral in the powdered whitewash that lay in drifts upon the table.

"That is the shape of the lakes, and the Badanga say that they have no bottom, and that fish taken from their waters remain raw and alive, even on the red-hot embers of their cooking stove. They are a lazy, dirty people who live on snakes and frogs and grubs— tortoise and fish. And they gave me to eat and told me, partly in words of my own moder Taal they had picked up somehow, partly in sign language, about the Great Beast that lives in the double lake that is haunted by the spirits of their dead."

I waited, my heart pumping at the bottom of my throat, my blood running horribly, delightfully chill, to hear the rest.

"The hunting spirit revives in a man, even at death's door, to hear of an animal the like of which no living hunter has ever brought down. The Badanga tell me of this one, tales, tales, tales! They draw it for me with a pointed stick on a broad green leaf, or in the ashes of their cooking-fires. And I have seen many a great beast, but, voor den donder! never a beast such as that!"

I held on to my stool with both hands.

"I ask the Badanga to guide me to the lair of the beast for all the money I have upon me. They care not for gold, but for the old silver hunting-watch I carry they will risk offending the spirits of their dead. The old man who has drawn the creature for me, he will take me. And it is January, the time of year in which he has been before known to rise and bellow— Maar!— bellow like twenty buffalo bulls in spring-time, for his mate to rise from those bottomless deeps below and drink the air and sun."

So there are two great beasts! Neither the traveller nor the newspaper nor my father, until this moment, had hinted at that!

"The she-beast is much the smaller and has no horns. This my old man makes clear to me, drawing her with the point of his fish-spear on smooth mud. She is very sick the last time my old man has seen her. Her great moon-eyes are dim, and the stinking spume dribbles from her jaws. She can only float in the trough of the wave that her mate makes with his wallowings, her long scaly neck lying like a dead python on the oily black water. My old man thinks she was then near death. I ask him how long ago that is? Twenty times have the blue lake-lilies blossomed, the lilies with the sweet seeds that the Badanga make bread of— since. And the great bull has twice been heard bellowing, but never has he been seen of man since then."

My father folded his great arms upon the black-and-white cascade of beard that swept down over his shirt of homespun and went on—

"Twenty years. Perhaps, think I, my old man has lied to me! But we are at the end of the last day's journey. The sun has set and night has come. My old man makes me signs we are near the lakes and I climb a high mahogo, holding by the limbs of the wild fig that is hugging the tree to death."

My father spat into the heart of the glowing wood ashes, and said—

"I see the twin lakes lying in the midst of the high grass-swamps, barely a mile away. The black, shining waters cradle the new moon of January in their bosom, and the blue star that hangs beneath her horn, and there is no ripple on the surface, or sign of a beast, big or little. And I despise myself, I, the son of honest Booren, who have been duped by the lies of a black man-ape. I am coming down the tree, when through the night comes a long, hollow, booming, bellowing roar that is not the cry of any beast I know. Thrice it comes, and my old man of the Badanga, squatting among the roots of the mahogo, nods his wrinkled bald skull, and says, squinting up at me, 'Now you have heard, Baas, will you go back or go on?'

"I answer, 'Al recht uit!'

"For something of the hunting spirit has wakened in me. And I see to the cleaning of the elephant-gun and load it carefully before I sleep that night."

I would have liked to ask a question but the words stuck in my throat.

"By dawn of day we have reached the lakes," went on my father. "The high grass and the tall reeds march out into the black water as far as they may, then the black stone beach shelves off into depths unknown.

"He who has written up the story for the Buluwayo newspaper says that the lake was once a volcano and that the crumbly black stone is lava. It may be so. But volcanoes are holes in the tops of mountains, while the lakes lie in a valley-bottom, and he who wrote cannot have been there, or he would know there are two, and not one.

"All the next night we, camping on the belt of stony shore that divides lake from lake, heard nothing. We ate the parched grain and baked grubs that my old man carried in a little bag. We lighted no fire because of the spirits of the dead Badanga that would come crowding about it to warm themselves, and poison us with their breath. My old man said so, and I humoured him. My dead needed no fire to bring her to me. She was there always...

"All the day and the night through we heard and saw nothing. But at windstill dawn of the next day I saw a great curving ripple cross the upper lake that may be a mile and a half wide; and the reeds upon the nearer shore were wetted to the knees as by the wave that is left in the wake of a steamer, and oily patches of scum, each as big as a barn floor, befouled the calm water, and there was a cold, strange smell upon the breeze, but nothing more.

"Until at sunset of the next day, when I stood upon the mid-most belt of shore between lake and lake, with my back to the blood-red wonder of the west and my eyes sheltered by my hand as I looked out to where I had seen the waters divided as a man furrows earth with the plough-share, and felt a shadow fall over me from behind, and turned... and saw... Alamachtig!"

I could not breathe. At last, at last, it was coming!

"I am no coward," said my father, in his deep resounding bass, "but that was a sight of terror. My old man of the Badanga had bolted like a rock-rabbit. I could hear the dry reeds crashing as he broke through. And the horned head of the beast, that was as big as a wagon-trunk shaking about on the top of a python-neck that topped the tallest of the teak-trees or mahogos that grow in the grass-swamps, seemed as if it were looking for the little human creature that was trying to run away.

"Voor den donder! how the water rises up in columns of smoke-spray as the great beast lashes it with his crocodile-tail! His head is crocodile also, with horns of rhino, his body has the bulk of six hippo bulls together. He is covered with armour of scales, yellow-white as the scales of leprosy, he has paddles like a tortoise. God of my fathers, what a beast to see! I forget the gun I hold against my hip— I can only stand and look, while the cold, thick puffs of stinking musk are brought to my nostrils and my ear-drums are well-nigh split with the bellowing of the beast. Ay! and the wave of his wallowings that wets one to the neck is foul with clammy ooze and oily scum.

"Why did the thing not see me? I did not try to hide from those scaly-lidded great eyes, yellow with half-moon-shaped pupils, I stood like an idol of stone. Perhaps that saved me, or I was too little a thing to vent a wrath so great upon. He Who in the beginning made herds of beasts like that to move upon the face of the waters, and let this one live to show the pigmy world of to-day what creatures were of old, knows. I do not. I was dazed with the noise of its roarings and the thundering blows of its huge tail upon the water; I was drenched with the spume of its snortings and sickened with the stench it gave forth. But I never took my eyes from it, as it spent its fury, and little by little I came to understand.

"Het is jammer to see anything suffer as that beast was suffering. Another man in my place would have thought as much, and when it lay still at last on the frothing black water, a bullet from the elephant-rifle would have lodged in the little stupid brain behind the great moon-eye, and there would have been an end...

"But I did not shoot!"

It seemed an age before my father spoke again, though the cuckoo-clock had only ticked eight times.

"No! I would not shoot and spare the beast, dinosaurus or brontosaurus, or whatever the wiseacres who have not seen him may name him, the anguish that none had spared me. 'Let him go on!' said I. 'Let him go on seeking her in the abysses that no lead-line may ever fathom, without consolation, without hope! Let him rise to the sun and the breeze of spring through miles of the cold black water, and find her not, year after year until the ending of the world. Let him call her through the mateless nights until Day and Night rush together at the sound of the Trumpet of the Judgment, and Time shall be no more!' "

Crash!

The great hand came down upon the solid locust-wood table, breaking the spell that had bound my tongue.

"I— do not understand," I heard my own child-voice saying. "Why was the Great Beast so sorry? What was he looking for?"

"His mate who died. Ay, at the lower end of the second lake, where the water shallows, her bones were sticking up like the bleached timbers of a wrecked ship. And He and She being the last of their kind upon the earth, therefore he knows desolation ... and shall know it till death brings forgetfulness and rest. Boy, the wind is fallen, the rain has spent itself, it is time that you go to bed."

___________________

17: Terror!

A. Kuprin

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin, 1870-1938

Telegraph (Brisbane) 13 June 1934

Kuprin was an important figure in pre-Revolutionry Russian literature. After the Revolution he lived in exile in France until povery and ill-health saw him apply to return to communist Russia in 1937. He died in Leningrad.  I have not been able to identify the translator, nor the first publication of this story.

ALL four of us fellow-passengers were strangers to each other, and we indulged in conversation in the incidental manner that is natural in a railway carriage on a long December evening.

We told each other stories which we had read or heard, tales of mysterious phenomena which could only be explained by the intervention of supernatural forces.

One man, in all probability a merchant, wearing a bearskin fur coat of such gigantic proportions that it seemed to be too large for the biggest bear, was rather inclined to tales of a semi-religious nature. Some dealt with sacrilege; about, men who planned to strip a corpse that lay in a church; about a monk murdered by brigands, whose ghost would come at nights and demand his body should be interred.

Another passenger— a medical student in his first year— appalled us with cases which occurred in the dissecting room, and I myself modified one of Edgar Poe's unusual stories, carefully rehashing it and telling it as having occurred to someone of my acquaintance.

THE fourth passenger— a man in a long-eared fur cap and with a plaid travelling rug over his knees— said little, and when he broke the silence offered the briefest monosyllabic remarks.

The snow outside the window seemed to become a narrow, muddy strip of grey, that constantly ran backward, dimly visible in the light of the train. Now and again melancholy black silhouettes of denuded shrubbery and trees stood out in this ever-receding strip, while farther beyond it the eye sank into cold, eerie darkness.

"Of course, gentlemen, everything which you have just told us is very unusual and tragic," suddenly declared the man with the plaid travelling rug, "but authenticity is very doubtful. Who would like to guarantee that those occurrences actually took place, and are not the result of pure invention?

"Now, I can tell you, If you wish, about an occurrence which happened to me personally. and for the space of at least a few minutes gripped my whole consciousness in the 'terror of the supernatural.' "

The words excited our curiosity, and he went on:

"About 10 years ago I served in the Customs as inspector of the transit station in the small frontier town of Berezno.

"The station was situated on a dam intersecting the River Zbroutch. At six in the evening the guards would lock the turnpike in my presence, and from that moment my duties would be over for the day. The remainder of the day I could use as I pleased, and I formed the habit of betaking myself nightly to the railway station to wait the arrival of the evening express.

"In those days the railway station was the usual meeting-place for Custom officials. frontier officers, and sometimes the neighbouring small landowners.  About 11 o'clock two trains would arrive almost simultaneously; ours and the Austrian one. The station would immediately fill with a crowd comprised of many races— fussy, noisy, and preoccupied.

"It would also happen that nearly every day a lot of contraband would be slopped in examination, or that some elegant lady would be taken to the dressing-room to be searched.

"Contraband was often found in large quantities, for that was a Golden Age, regretted with a sigh by officials grown grey in the service of the Custom-houses and bonded stores; for in those days every employee had his own specially reserved circle of clients among the smugglers.

"Nine times he allowed the prohibited goods to pass without action, but at the tenth he would have them dealt with ! with all the rigour of tho law, and receive the recognised reward.

"THE arrangement suited everyone, and in such easy circumstances did Custom officials live in those days that they could give luxurious bachelor suppers and receive music-hall chorus girls from Lemberg and even from Vienna Itself as visitors.

"The little town was situated about four versts distance from the railway station. It boasted of no society whatsoever, unless one were to count the village policeman and four dm; old post-office officials. It was not surprising, that the four versts were no barrier between us and the station.

"One evening, at the end of November, having locked the turnpike as usual, I changed my clothes, put my papers straight, and left home to walk to the station. There were two roads. One, the longest, circled round from the little town through the adjacent village of Frederickovka.

"Another, very much shorter and strictly much more of a footpath than a road, crossed a huge empty field diagonally and led to a railway embankment quite close to the station. Naturally, I always used the short pathway through the field, and this time went the same way.

"It was about eight o'clock, or a little after, and wns so dark that one could see nothing beyond eight or 10 paces. I made my way half-gropingly, along the line of the footpath where the snow, because it lay more condensed than in the open, emitted a faint sound under my feet.

"Presently a snowstorm broke, hall-blinding me as the fine prickly snow was whirled around me and dashed into my face. Suddenly I was seized by one of those unpleasant, complex sensations to which I am strangely liable whenever I cross wide spaces such as open fields, city squares, and even targe halls.

"The sensation, accompanied, as usual by a restless throbbing of the heart, made me imagine myself shrinking away to insignificance while the field around me expanded into terrible immensity, so that I felt I could never cross it.

"Presently I felt that the whole field was beginning to whirl around me. I looked back and found that I was now able to see the lights of the little town faintly flickering in the distance. This a relief and kept my spirits up for a little while, but the lights disappeared as soon as I descended into the long, flat plain, where I was surrounded by a turbid whitish mist.

"I HAD always feared this place instinctively. Why, I never knew, but the fact remains that every time I passed through this valley I felt as If an unaccountable fear, to use the Homeric expression, 'seized me by the hair.'

"Suddenly, straight in front of me, I noticed a dark, motionless blur.... I halted with slightly bated breath, listening for any unusual sound, but everything was still, except the snowflakes faintly rustling against my face, and the thumping of my heart.

"The dark object did not stir. I stepped forward a few paces and saw that the blur was in reality a man who was sitting motionless on the snow, leaning his back against a telegraph pole.

"He was wearing n fur coat, entirely unbuttoned and wide open at the chest, he wore no cap and sat upright with his legs stretched out before him, his arms at the sides of the body so that his hands were deep in the snow. His head was slightly thrown back.

" 'Who are you?' I asked.

"He made no reply.

" 'Who are you?' I repeated.

"Still silence.

" 'Evidently he has died of the cold, or ho has been murdered,' I thought, and, strange as It may seem, the thought actually reassured me and made me feel less tense and strained.

"I approached the stranger and examined him carefully. He had a long, narrow face with thin lips, crooked nose, and a goatlike little beard. Eyebrows arched in sharp angles, put a finishing touch to this strangely cynical face and made it seem that of a cultured satyr.

"I KNEW that he was alive, because his eyes were watching me. As I felt his gaze upon me, fear suddenly gripped at me again... fear, impossible to describe, that made my teeth chatter beyond any power of mine to control.

"My nerves suddenly felt a stiffer train of tension as my eyes abruptly signalled a new fact to my consciousness: that there was lot even a sign of any footmarks in the snow around him.

"Silently he looked at me, and my eyes were held by his in spite of all my efforts to tear my glance away. Terror— incredible. Inexpressible, superhuman terror— froze my body, nerves, and will. The very fingers on my hands and the toes of my feet contracted .convulsively....

"Time passed, I know not how long— if it was measured in seconds, minutes, or hours... time itself seemed to stand still.

"Suddenly there came an expression on the man's face such as I had never seen before, a deformed grimace, a frantic combination of laughter and horror, human yet fiendish!

"And worse— I felt indescribably as if the face had become, in expression at all events, a mirror of my own, as if it was I who was smiling that grim satanic leer.

" 'You are the Devil himself!' I screamed In a frenzy of fury and terror, and with all my strength I struck out at that dreadful face.

"He fell, as fall the dead— heavily, and without bending, and I darted away for my life. But my limbs would not obey me; my steps became leaden and aimless as those of a drunken man. Again and again I stumbled, fell, and staggered to my feet again.

"All this time, as I was told by others later, I was shouting without ceasing: " 'The Devil! The Devil! The Devi!'

"Then I lost consciousness. I came to myself in my own home and in my own bed. after a severe and dangerous Illness."

THE narrator became silent, as if the story had ended.

"Who was it, then, you found in the snow?" asked the student.

"It was all made clear afterwards," was the reply. "He was an Austrian merchant who had been walking, just as I had been doing, from the town to the railway station, but on the way he had been seized with paralysis. Somehow he managed to crawl to a telegraph pole and lean against it. He had been there about an hour, and became so frozen that he could not stir hand or foot. He was found not many paces from me. We were both unconscious.

"That, gentlemen" —the narrator concluded— "was a real experience of terror, of which I am unable to describe even a hundredth part, for no words in human speech would make it possible to do so. Yet I may convey something of It in another way— evidence— proof— demonstration, what you will."

He removed his cap. His hair was as white as snow.

"My hair was raven-black when I started to walk along that pathway," he said with a melancholy smile. "It was as you now see it when my neighbours found me."

__________________

18: The Man from Nowhere

Georges Surdez

Adventure 15 Oct 1932

MATHIAS VYANOR was one of  the handful of men which compels the French Foreign Legion to include on its statistical records the classification, "Miscellaneous nationalities."

At Bou Mighalt, a military post of the High Plateau, the region lifting like a gigantic wall to separate the fertile zone of Algeria from the arid immensity of the Sahara, no one could ascertain his place of birth, his origin or his race. The Chinese Legionnaire in the Second Section, who came from Canton and had seen much of his country; the Tonkinese private brought down by the captain to cook his favorite rice dishes; sundry Siberians, Turks and Balkanese scattered in the company— all disclaimed kinship with him or knowledge of his language. The regimental files yielded scanty information. Vyanor, Mathias, was "presumably Asiatic, about thirty years old," and had enlisted at Nantes in France. He was not an impressive soldier, standing less than five foot three, with a sturdy, round torso, shaped somewhat like a rum keg, propped on stumpy legs. His face was a fleshy, yellowish disk, on which brows, nose, lips and chin were dwarfed by protruding cheekbones.

One of the scribes in the company's office, who read police publications of the more serious type, noted odd callouses and scars on Vyanor's hands, which he described in a letter to an expert in Europe. In reply, he received the information that Vyanor, Mathias, probably had been a sailor, or a fisherman, or in several other suggested trades.

Despite his unfailing readiness to obey when he understood what was expected of him, his good humor and his con- tagious, quick grin, it was difficult to understand how Vyanor had contrived to pass through the various training bases— Sidi bel Abbes, Saida, Ain-el-Hadjar, Geryville. However, Sergeant- Chief Schlager gave an explanation clear to all, when he stated that had it been in his power, Vyanor would have passed through Bou Mighalt and gone else- where without delay.

The queer little chap understood per- haps fifty words of French, aside from military orders; and those he often mis- interpreted, pivoting right instead of left, stepping briskly forward instead of back.

"Can't teach him anything," Schlager reported wearily. Then he added, with a touch of admiration, "But he does drink like a true Legionnaire."

This was not exaggerated. Vyanor would drink anything and everything— wine, brandy, anisette, cordials, Pernod, perfumes, olive oil, vinegar, beer, syrups. When drunk, he liked to fight, and he attacked friends and strangers; but as he was considered by his comrades to be not wholly responsible, they saw that he came to no harm.

The captain commanding the company, old man Fourgues, was annoyed by the presence of this puzzling individual in his well organized outfit. In all his career in the Legion— he had been a private in the battalion stationed in Siam— he had never come across such a. case. He suggested to the medical officer who came from Geryville that Vyanor be discharged as insane. The four- Striped medico, who had a conscience, pointed out that he could not sign the man off as mad, when his real trouble was complete bewilderment at his surroundings and absolute ignorance of French.

"You understand my position. Captain? Nobody knows where to ship him, and should I declare him insane, he would be placed in an asylum somewhere and become a public charge. He has more than normal intelligence, you know. One may be quite impossible as a soldier and still be perfectly sane."

"Probably, probably," Fourgues grumbled. "How did he get in? What will they send us next?"

Time after time he had Vyanor brought into his office, to be confronted with all the men in the company who knew outlandish tongues and dialects. Once a Danish private thought he understood a few words in a long speech, but soon admitted himself as helpless as the others. Fourgues rid himself of the problem by shifting the burden to Sergeant Schlager, a tall, muscular, blond Luxemburger.

"I want him turned into a Legionnaire. How? Do I have to teach you your job as a sergeant? Either I see results within two weeks, or you'll hear from me."

There was no need to teach Vyanor how to take care of his arms. He was very proud of rifle and bayonet, and no man in the company spent a longer time cleaning them. But he was slack in the matter of dress, would forget to cover his head or to roll his puttees. He could not be taught to shoot, for he insisted on firing with both eyes open, handling the military rifle like a shot- gun. What was surprising, he could hit almost anything up to a hundred and fifty yards. Beyond that, it was obvious that targets did not interest him.

SCHLAGER punished him with prison at first. But being sent to the lockup meant nothing to Vyanor, who would labor all day with the fatigue parties from the jail, sweat profusely, grin when he chanced to meet any one's glance, and go to his cell to sleep with- out appearing to feel anger, shame or humiliation.

"He just doesn't realize what is going on, Captain," Schlager protested. "The best thing is to keep him out of sight when the inspector is due and—"

"Enough! Make a Legionnaire of him. I don't want him puttering about rigged out like a clown. This is a company of Legion, not a circus. I hold you responsible."

"Captain, I'd have to—"

"Don't tell me, Sergeant. Act."

Therefore Schlager took Vyanor into a room for private instruction. He dressed him according to regulations. Then, standing a few steps away, beamed upon him, expressed extravagant satisfaction, clapped his hands.

"Good, Legionnaire, very good; nice!"

Vyanor's grin almost reached his ears. But the sergeant bent, removed his puttees, indicated the door. And when Vyanor tried to leave, the sergeant pointed at his nude shins, frowned.

"Bad! Very bad!"

And he slapped him smartly across the face. Vyanor laughed, but struck back at the second blow. Schlager's ears rang with the impact of his cuffs; but he was aware that Vyanor considered the whole thing a game, and that striking a superior was a sin beyond his comprehension. Suddenly the private understood the reason for the punishment, rolled his puttees, adjusted his uniform, assured himself that all his buttons were fastened. Again Schlager smiled, patted his head. And from that day on Vyanor was meticulous in point of dress.

"Looks better," Fourgues admitted. "Now, introduce him to Legion snap— spirit. How? You keep asking how? Are you a sergeant or am I?"

Fortunately for Schlager, it was difficult to judge the results of this new undertaking. Was Vyanor conscious that Legionnaires were apart and above members of other units? Or did he deem all men who wore a uniform equals? This was doubtful; for even months later he would salute mounted policemen, mistaking them for officers, something few Legionnaires saw without deep shame. A member of the company saluting a cop!

He received no mail; no one ever inquired about him. But he was by no means dependent upon his pay for his comforts and pleasure. His comrades liked him, and dragged him to the narrow streets behind the native village. They reported that Vyanor, with a bottle of alcohol under his belt, was more fun than a show. In his own awkward way he could fight, and the civilian customers learned to avoid the small, yellow faced man on pay days, fifteenth and last days of the month. Not only could he handle men much larger and heavier than himself, but his comrades hovered near, ready to interfere and keep him from serious harm. Vyanor was popular and had become a sort of unofficial mascot.

Schlager made but few attempts to teach him how to throw a grenade. Vyanor could not understand the difference between a live missile and a dummy, held the first too long for comfort, tossed the other away clumsily, as if it burned his fingers. His rifle work did not improve; but the automatic rifle remained for him a kind of fire-spouting idol of metal, which he worshiped from a safe distance.

But in small tasks, such as the mak- ing of beds, polishing of boots and belt buckles, cleaning of weapons, he showed remarkable talent. Soon the men in his room would not have surrendered him without a fight, for he did menial jobs for the entire squad. He much preferred furbishing steel or softening leather to joining the men in the yard for the evening chorus.

There were other reasons to esteem him. His resistance to fatigue and pain were astounding. He literally melted during his first march under the African sun, reached the goal with his boots oozing blood. But he was grinning, nod- ding, laughing and ready to start again, although his feet must have felt like pincushions.

His progress was at a standstill when the company received the order to march out, locate and disperse a strong band of Berber raiders, driven north from the frequented caravan lanes by the Camel Corps and reported not far from Bou Mighalt by the scouting planes. Schlager doubled to the cap- tain's office before the bugles stopped sounding.

"Legionnaire Vyanor, Mathias, should be left here, Captain. He's willing, but he may cause confusion. Nobody knows what he is going to be like under fire."

"Vyanor comes with the rest," Captain Fourgues snapped. "My company starts out complete. Legionnaires must fight. Otherwise no purpose in having them. Perhaps the whistling of bullets will clear his head. Schlager, I hold you responsible. You had months to train him properly."

"I can't achieve miracles," Schlager grumbled— out of hearing.

BY A stroke of luck rare in that region, the company found the enemy where reported— and found him willing to make a stand at the crest of a long hill. There were about two hundred warriors, burning with rancor and shame because they had been driven off from the south without booty. They hoped that a well fought combat against the Foreign Legion would prevent the population of their desert camps from laughing scornfully when they returned.

The khaki sections deployed and ascended the slope in leaps, halting at intervals to shake resistance with intense fire.

Schlager had taken care to leave Vyanor behind, with the reserve section and the mules of the ammunition train. But when automatic No. 3 signaled for cartridges and there was no one else available, Vyanor was given a case to take up the slope. He delivered it as instructed, for he understood elementary gestures. Then, instead of trotting back as he was presumed to do, he loitered near Schlager.

The crackling of rifle fire, the smell of powder, the sight of the automatics jerking with the ripping sounds of the bursts, like metal animals straining at a chain, faseinated him as always. Vyanor hopped from one foot to the other, too thrilled to think of his own danger. He could not be unaware of it, for he had been on the rifle range and had seen guns fired for over a year.

"Beat it, Vyanor— go away," Schlager pleaded.

"No, no! Here good, Sergeant, very good. Nice!"

"All right. Lie down, monkey-face."

Schlager indicated the spot, and Vyanor leaped to crouch between two Legionnaires on the firing line. He fired his rifle with both eyes open, shouting defiance at the top of his lungs, mingling recently acquired French and German epithets with his own mysterious tongue. As there was no panic in his tone, Schlager did not interfere. But he made the firm resolution that Vyanor would be tied and left with the baggage during the next engagement.

Within a few minutes the corporal near Vyanor was struck in the small of the back, flipped about like a cat with a broken spine. The little Legionnaire ran to him, picked him up, struggling and howling, and took him down the hill to the ambulance, just as he had seen several other men carried.

Schlager was relieved, believed himself rid of the chap; but Vyanor returned at the gallop, peered eagerly into the sergeant's face for approval.

"Me good? Nice? Good?"

"Good, great big good!" Schlager was forced to admit.

Vyanor laughed like a small boy. He loaded and fired. It was obvious, even from Schlager's position, that he was doing no harm to the enemy, for the muzzle of his rifle was pointed fifteen feet above the rim of the hill. The sergeant feared now that the fool's stentorian shouts would draw fire in his own direction.

A private was hit some distance down the line, his throat slit by a ricochet. Reason told him that he was mortally wounded and instinct drove him to flee from his unavoidable fate. Springing to his feet, both hands clutching at his neck, he sped madly, like a chicken fleeing the chopping block. Blood spurted between his fingers. As he passed by, men reached out, tried to bring him down and out of the way. His crazy lurchings were throwing the whole section into confusion.

At last he stumbled over the thick barrel of the automatic rifle nearest Vyanor. He fell headlong, writhed, clawing and kicking. His palms gripped the searing hot metal tube; his blood smoked, flaked and stank. The gunner, struck in the belly by a flying boot, collapsed. Feeder No. 1, hit in the face, fell back. A mad scene followed, men and gun whirling in a rising cloud of steam and sand dust.

"Bon sang! Get that automatic into action, there," Fourgues clamored.

Schlager leaped to obey, but some one was before him— Vyanor. There was something fanatical in his rush, in the expression on his usually placid face. The automatic was interfered with; that small god of metal had been touched by a stranger! For Vyanor had noticed that the men in charge of automatics resented other Legionnaires' handling their guns.

His hands closed on the wounded man's harness-straps; he hauled him away, fell with him. Then he held him long enough for the gun to be cleared. The man died in his arms, after a last struggle. And Vyanor, seeing the enemy coming down on the Legion line, calmly fixed bayonet.

But the automatic had resumed firing. The natives realized that the con- fusion in the Europeans' line, which had appeared an opportunity, was over. They broke and fled, and while two sections occupied the crest of the hill to hasten their flight with regular bursts, the wounded were taken to the ambu- lance.

Vyanor was treated for burns received from the automatic and for a long flesh wound in his thigh. He was as excited, as voluble, as if he had drunk a whole quart of his favorite raki. Patently, regardless of other shortcomings, he belonged in the Legion; for if any man had ever enjoyed fighting Vyanor was that man.

Captain Fourgues cited him. But Vyanor was given his bronze cross privately, every one fearing that if he were allowed to participate in an official ceremony he would have a lapse of behavior which would make the company the laughing-stock of the Corps. As it happened, the decorating of Vyanor threw another burden on Sergeant Schlager. The Legionnaire did not connect what he had done on the day of combat with a cross received several weeks later, and merely thought that he had acquired the right to adorn his breast as others did.

His comrades discovered this very soon, supplied him with badges and ribbons, sought more for him. It was not rare to behold Vyanor wearing the Tunisian Nicham on one side of his cross and the Academic Palms or Agricultural Merit on the other.

"Laughing-stock for civilians," Captain Fourgues told Schlager. "Hold you responsible next time it happens."

THE sergeant took the only possible measure, and transferred the guardianship of Vyanor to his orderly, a taciturn, powerful Pole, who kept him nearby as instructed or saw that he was deprived of fancy badges when he went for a stroll in town. As a consequence Vyanor was about the sergeant's quarters constantly, and the two grew very fond of each other.

At odd moments, Schlager taught the private to read cards, which appeared much easier than teaching French. Vyanor rapidly became a player to be reckoned with; but when the type of game was shifted, it was very hard for him to admit a change in the relative values of the pasteboards. It took several weeks and much argument to convince him that at belote, for instance, a nine spot could beat an ace.

Vyanor was spared test marches and many duties, for he seemed more affected by the Summer's heat than others. During his leisure he acquired sidelines; he learned to repair boots and harness, to sew buttons, to cook. He was counted among the picturesque characters in the company, and came to mind when an inspection or a parade was due.

"Does Vyanor march by with us, or do we stick him on the sick list?"

The sick list invariably was selected, for Captain Fourgues lived in dread that a general would pick Vyanor out for some of the kindly questions asked Legionnaires.

By Fall he had mastered all of three hundred words of French, and could tell haltingly of certain of his activities in the past. But he could not name the country he came from, and an important word was obviously lacking in his vocabulary to describe something he attempted to explain by piling sand, then throwing it into the air in handfuls, after pointing at the sky and next at his shirt.

Captain Fourgues, witnessing one of these demonstrations, had a ready solution:

"The story of creation: Man made from dust by a Power in the sky Who provides nourishment and clothing. The poor chap probably wishes us to understand that he is not a heathen."

Schlager was skeptical, and became particularly so when he noticed that his chief, seeing Vyanor gesturing to indicate his own wanderings on ships and ashore, insisted that the signs represented the flight of Cain or the construction of the Ark. Meanwhile, the scribe who aspired to become a criminologist noted the sounds uttered by Vyanor phonetically and sent copies to various institutions of learning in Europe. He received voluminous reports in return, and could have selected whatever he desired, from purest North American Dakota to dialects of Tartary.

LATE in the Autumn the company received orders to leave Bou Mighalt, to proceed to Mekmin-el-Arish, where a new post had been erected by the engineers. Captain Fourgues weed ed out the unwanted, preparing to ask for a replacement draft.

"Here's our chance to get rid of Vyanor," he told Schlager.

"He's well liked in the company, Captain." The sergeant hesitated; then con- fessed. "I like him myself. I hate to think of what would happen to him in a new company. In another six months, in a year at the most, he'll be as good as anybody, save for marksmanship."

"You're soft as a woman, Schlager," Fourgues said severely. "All right, I won't let common sense interfere with sentimentality. He comes with us. But you're responsible."

"Surely, Captain. I'll bear that in mind."

Vyanor took intense interest in the preparations for departure. The cooks gave him a number of remnants, and he scraped the bottoms of lard tubs and jam buckets with equal relish. On the eve of the march he went to the native village with the others, got copiously drunk and fought two Arabs at once. For he was growing aware of his standing as a Legionnaire, scorned odds against him and tackled what offered.

He took his place in formation the next morning with one eye blackened, his lips swollen, but completely sobered. He stepped forward left foot first when the bugles blared after the preliminary brassy flourishes. And he made the familiar sounds of mock farewell to the Arab girls who had crowded by the gate to bid their friends a safe journey.

The dusty trail across the flat plain opened for him as for the rest, and the company headed for Mekmin-el-Arish, fifty kilometers away. The march was scheduled to be covered in two laps, with a grande halte and camping in the open on the first night.

The weather was very clear, the sky a limpid blue. The air was cool, crisp.

There were many Legionnaires in the company who hailed from mountainous countries— Swiss, Bavarians, Austrians— and they seemed intoxicated by the keen atmosphere. They sang at the top of their lungs, stopping only to curse the country and its debilitating, torrid Summer. Vyanor shared the excite- ment, darted from the ranks, threw handfuls of sand high in the air, pointing at the sky, blowing out his cheeks with a hissing sound.

"Sergeant— good, very good, too good— soon!"

"Wait until you have thirty kilometers in those bandy legs of yours, monkey-mug," Schlager warned him, "then come and tell me just how good you feel."

His tone was gruff, bantering, but his glance followed Vyanor with almost paternal solicitude. He knew that throughout the march the strange little man would clown about like a gnome, caper, steal hair from the mules' tails to tress into bracelets, cram his canvas bags with cast off, empty tins until some one forced him to lighten cargo.

When Bou Mighalt was a few hours behind, Schlager noticed that Captain Fourgues appeared uneasy. He reined his horse to talk with the lieutenant and sub-lieutenant, both rather young men and new to the country. Then all three would consult pocket instruments and peer at the sky. Before long gossip wafted the subject of the conferences to the last man in the last row.

"Fourgues is afraid of a snowstorm."

Schlager did not smile. He had seen storms on the High Plateau before. The region rises over four thousand feet in altitude, offers a flat, unbroken surface to the wind. Years before, a company of the Foreign Legion had been caught in the open by a formidable blizzard and, after the blow had abated, the bodies of the men had been found, scattered for miles. Somehow, the proximity of the Sahara, less than six hours away by rail, made men forget this.

The captain was tempted to turn back, but he was afraid of appearing ridiculous if the snowstorm failed to materialize.

Schlager recalled Vyanor's broken words, his odd behavior, and knew the truth in a flash. The man needed no pocket instruments to foretell the weather. A storm was coming up, bringing snow, and the little Legionnaire felt it. The sergeant doubled to join the captain and give him the informa- tion.

"So— your pet feels snow?" Fourgues lifted his brows. He did not hold a high opinion of Vyanor. "That's interesting, of course. But what makes you think his hunch is any better than yours or mine, not to be too modest?"

"Well, Captain, he tosses sand, points at the sky, then at his shirt, the way he used to do. I get his meaning now. Shirt stands for white. Something white dropping from the sky— snow. Probably comes from someplace where they get a lot of snow and knows how to tell when it's coming by looking at the sky."

"I thought I had told you what he meant by such gestures," the officer replied. "I understand the primitive mind and its expressions rather well. Five years among the Muongs and four among the Sakalaves, remember! If a snowstorm comes—" he hesitated, and Schlager felt that the captain was seeking some one or something to bear responsibility. But Fourgues ended quickly, "Let it come. We'll see soon enough."

YET he cut the noon halt short to enable the company fm to reach a sheltered spot, selected on the map, by twilight. The march had not been resumed thirty minutes when the sun vanished.

The entire sky had turned to a dull, gunmetal hue. The layers of atmosphere nearer the earth seemed to turn into a visible, blue-gray haze, while a cold wind whistled flush with the ground, lashing harshly at exposed skin. The whole plateau was alive with the fierce, icy blast of air; the earth seemed to scream; and a sensation of approaching doom was aroused in the boldest.

Captain Fourgues lifted his hand, and the other officers ran toward him. Then, after listening to his words, they trotted down the files, passing the word that should the wind increase in violence, if rain or snow started to fall, the men were to hold on to each other and that no one was permitted to leave the ranks for any purpose.

Schlager looked at the sky, and saw nothing but the immense bellies of dense, black clouds. Something of the concern agitating the officers gripped him. The men, softened by the long, broiling Summer, would be susceptible, sensitive to cold, utterly unprepared to cope with the emergency. No storm had been expected so early in the season, and the heavy garments had gone with the supplies to Mekmin-el-Arish.

At three o'clock the company tramped in semi-darkness, while invisible, minute sleety fragments swept from the leaden sky, biting into faces and hands. Many among the Legionnaires hailed this first snow with yells of joy.

"We'll have a white Christmas, fellows!"

"Eh, I'll take photos and send them home! My folks think we're living in the tropics."

"Doesn't this air taste good?"

The captain's whistle slashed through the shouts, and the men became silent, formed a square. Fourgues addressed the massed sections from the saddle.

"Legionnaires, a snowstorm is upon us. I don't know how severe it will be. But the danger is real. A company of our regiment was annihilated in just such a storm, not fifty kilometers from here. I was with those who picked up the corpses. The men had scattered. I want discipline to prevail. Let there be no panic, no dashes for individual safety. Your officers and noncoms have orders! We shall try to reach the spot selected for the evening halt, where we can camp in a ravine. Sergeants, I hold you responsible for the behavior of your men. Forward— march!"

A few minutes later it seemed to Schlager that the air had become unbearably thick and warm, and he found breathing difficult. Then white flakes drifted down slowly, until the whole horizon was a moving white screen.

The men swiftly turned into vague, white silhouettes. Collars were turned up, buttoned snugly. No one showed concern as yet. All knew that Captain Fourgues never lost an opportunity to make a dramatic speech, and in their pleasure at seeing snow again, they had forgotten the numbing effect of treacherous cold, and the fact that the company might lose its way. The majority, even those from cold climates, had little conception of how violent a storm could become on this nude stretch, bereft of shelters, freely swept by the winds.

The blast increased brutally. The snow spun and whirled in a blinding cloud. Progress was difficult very soon, for the smaller stones were masked and the whitened shrubs merged with the white soil so completely that men's boots caught in them unexpectedly. Men stumbled, fell headlong, rose cursing and sore, nursing bruised heads and palms.

Often an officer would grope his way down the files, grasping a moist sleeve here and there, shouting —

"Keep together, keep together!"

There were moments when the snow struck horizontally, like a million icy arrows, cutting into eyes and mouths. Schlager's uneasiness increased. The danger which had seemed improbable but an hour ago was impending. He thought of that other company, com- posed of men just as hardy, as brave, and which had scattered before the blast. He understood why now. A few hours of this, and the men would lose moral strength with the coming of fatigue.

"Keep together, keep together!"

"All right. Lieutenant."

Twice the whistles blew for the hourly halt of ten minutes. The first time the men rolled snowballs, engaged in mock battle. But at the second pause the novelty had worn off and they were content to huddle quietly. They were be- ginning to think: The supplies, which had left on motor trucks two days before, were awaiting them at Mekmin-el- Arish. No firewood had been brought along, and it was out of the question to gather it on the way now, as was the ordinary routine. They could look forward, at best, to a cold supper and an uncomfortable night.

At the third halt the officers met. The lieutenant was of the opinion that the company should turn about and re- turn to Bou Mighalt. Captain Fourgues said that a fresh effort must be made to reach the camping place, which could not be far away. Many caught his words, torn from his lips by the wind.

"Find shelter— sufficient food— night's rest— Can't last— extraordinary event— responsibility not involved—"

The sky cleared awhile, late in the afternoon; but the wind grew colder. Men shivered, suffering already from chapped faces and swelling hands. They turned their reddened eyes, their moist, shining noses, toward Captain Fourgues, as if trying to discern whether the officer knew his whereabouts better than they did. The immense white blanket over the countryside had covered all landmarks. Small trees had been blown down by the violent gusts, and the outlines of boulders familiar to all had been altered by drifts of snow. The plateau they remembered, glistening in a burning, tawny spread, resembled a Siberian steppe.

THE sub-lieutenant had brought out his pocket compass, and the three officers were bending over it, peering at the map which Schlager held flat against the flank of the captain's horse.

"Where are we?"

"How long have we been walking?"

They argued at length. The lieutenant climbed to the saddle, stood upon it, scanning the horizon with glasses. He claimed to identify the Zaid Boulders on his right, when they should have been on the left. Schlager was impatient at their bickerings, until he realized with a start that he, who had gone over every mile of the region for over a year, could not be sure of what he saw, so much had the snow altered the aspect of things.

"Let's be frank," Fourgues said. "We're lost. Of course, it can't be helped. No one expected a severe storm this early in the season. But we must make a decision, however."

"Yes," the lieutenant agreed. "It's starting to snow again."

Tiny flakes drifted down lazily.

In contrast with the brilliant sun of the morning, the sinister, opaque sky was awe inspiring. Once more the isolated flakes increased, became streaks of white, slanting more and more as the wind resumed its mournful shrieking.

In a well settled country, with villages at intervals of a few miles, with roadside inns and isolated farms, the danger would have been small. But here a false lead might send the com- pany in a direction where no human dwelling could be found for two to three hundred miles.

The sub-lieutenant, perhaps more sensible than his seniors, suggested throwing all vain pride aside and marching due east, until they reached the railroad tracks of the Oran-Kenadza line.

"Fifty kilometers at least," Captain Fourgues objected, "then probably fifty more to the nearest station. I don't want to seem an absolute ass, either. The next time the sky clears, we'll probably find out where we are by some landmark or other. And we may stumble into a native encampment where we can get guides."

"Arab guides? Not used to snow any more than we are."

"Right. Do we march on?"

"We march! Southwest," Fourgues insisted.

He blew his whistle; the sections moved on again. They plunged end- lessly into the whirling snow. Night came, and they were kept marching. And when the sky cleared there was no moon. The stars glittered for a few minutes and vanished.

"Keep together, keep together—"

The Legionnaires shuffled monotonously in the thick, cold, moist darkness. Schlager, who had a good idea of the distances separating various points of the vicinity, knew that they had missed the intended shelter for the night. According to compass and stars, they were marching in the general direction of Mekmin-el-Arish, but it was quite probable that they had swung many miles north or south.

The snow fell constantly after that. By nine o'clock several men had suffered leg injuries from slips or falls, and were riding on the ammunition train's mules. At ten, during the hourly halt, two red rockets were fired, in the hope that Mekmin-el-Arish might see them and send up an answering signal.

Even allowing for time lost because of poor footing, it was estimated that between thirty-five and forty kilometers had been covered. Unless the company was altogether lost, Mekmin-el-Arish could not be far off. Again the lieutenant stood on the saddle and scanned the sky with his glasses.

"Nothing," he announced, sliding to the ground.

The men were ordered to eat bread, cheese and sardines, which were carried in the bags. Wine and alcohol were distributed.

"Better wait here until morning," the sub-lieutenant suggested.

Schlager saw Fourgues shrug. Immobility meant mental surrender, while movement cheered up the men with an illusion that they were on the way to safety and comfort. The captain tried to hide his thought by saying in a glib, unconcerned tone:

"Keep going until we reach some sort of shelter. Exposure would be severe. Lead to pneumonia, bronchitis, lung troubles. March!"

And the aimless, monotonous shuffling was resumed. The cold had reached many of the men, whose teeth chattered audibly. A few of the bolder spirits tried to jest, sang "Under The Burning African Sun," the hit ballad of the Riff War. But the bulk remained apathetic, depressed.

"We're circling. That's where we halted at five o'clock!"

Schlager never knew who uttered those words first. But all understood they were true. A sort of dumb panic swept the company. For a few minutes the sergeants had to shove their men about, in some cases to strike them to keep them in the ranks. Those Legionnaires were undergoing something new, passing through a situation in which cohesion and discipline availed nothing. And each one was certain that if left to pick his own trail he knew where warmth and shelter could be found.

The excitement died out with surprising rapidity. The soldiers were mute. Schlager himself suffered from cold; his legs felt numb from the knees down. Some of the men marched with their eyes closed, half asleep, burdened by invincible fatigue. One fell, had to be shaken awake, prodded with fists to drive him on again. All the mules bore additional burdens, for twisted ankles, wrenched knees were more and more frequent. The march was turning into a debacle. Before long, some one would be left behind; and with this break in morale, others would yield to fate, drop by the wayside. That was probably what had happened in that other company, years ago.

Shortly after midnight Captain Fourgues called a halt. The men dropped in their tracks, waited under the snow.

"No use going on," the chief admitted grudgingly. "We'd be there by now, had we gone in the right direction. We're lost. We have to make the best of it. See that the men have all the comforts that can be arranged for them."

LANTERNS were lighted.

The officers circulated, trying to cheer their men with vague explanations. Sergeants shook those who had fallen asleep; orders were given to clear the ground of snow with the entrenching tools carried on the packs. But the falling snow gave them no respite. The soil was hard, wet, cold. Schlager knew that this would be the beginning of the end. But what else was there to do? If kept on the march without definite hope for a few hours longer, the men would break. Already one could sense the solid sections disintegrating. This was not a human danger; there was no foe to combat save that soft, oozing snow, falling relentlessly.

Vyanor, who had been tramping with the others, appeared to help Schlager's orderly set up the small tent. When the little Legionnaire understood that the company was about to camp for the night, he grunted his disapproval.

"Bad, bad—" he declared. "Sergeant, sleep here, no good. Too much—" he groped in vain for the word "cold", which he had never heard in all probability, and expressed himself by chat- tering his teeth loudly. "Brrr-brrr! No good sleep here. Go house. Sleep here— men sick— dead!"

"Shut up, monkey-mug," Schlager retorted.

He did not need to be told the danger of the night in the open, with the sharp cold that would come in the morning. He pictured the numbed, discouraged men staggering on and on, circling, until all had dropped.

"No good. No sleep here— house— house!" Vyanor insisted, pulling the sergeant's sleeve. Schlager tried to push him away, but the Legionnaire clung, and spoke rapidly in broken French. "Men dead! No good, go house, soon."

"We're lost," Schlager explained. He swept his arms widely, peered about, lifted his brows in puzzlement. "Where? Get it? Lost? We know nothing Bou Mighalt! Here? No know. Mekmin-el-Arish? No know. Know nowhere. Sleep here. Find in morning. Get that?"

"No sleep. Walk."

"Walk where?"

In the light of the nearby lantern, the sergeant saw Vyanor's eyes gleam with understanding. The little man grinned.

"Walk to house."

"You know where house is?"

"Bou Mighalt there—" Vyanor lifted his arm without hesitation, indicated the northeast. Then he indicated a spot due west. "We go house get bad water— plenty tree?" Schlager understood that the Legionnaire was trying to identify their goal in his own mind, and nodded. Mekmin-el-Arish was near a grove of trees, and the water in the wells tasted badly from the presence of niter in the soil. Vyanor grinned cheerfully.

"There. House we go find."

"How far?" Schlager asked. "Walk much? Walk a little?"

"Walk a little much— one soup, one snack. Not two soup."

The sergeant decoded this by guessing that Vyanor measured time by meals. The space between a meal, or "soup" as it is called in the Legion, and a light repast, a snack, meant three to four hours. An unreasoning trust filled him. He grasped Vyanor's arm and led him before the captain.

"This man knows where we are, Captain. He says it's about three hours' march to Mekmin-el-Arish."

"What makes him think so?"

"I don't quite know. But when he manages to say anything, he's usually right. Remember, he said the snow was coming before any one else knew."

The officers, after a discussion, shrugged.

"Three hours?" Fourgues was ready to clutch at any hope by this time. He mused awhile, decided suddenly. "All right! Get the men ready, we're going on. But he's responsible, I'm telling you. He'll find out that he can't joke with me!"

The men were so discouraged that they had to be urged to pack again. The bizarre torpor brought about by cold gripped them, and they were unwilling to make an effort to save themselves. The sergeants screamed their orders, ap- plied cuffs and boots when needed, shoved the files into some sort of order.

"Come on, forward — march! Come on, we're getting there now. Come on, the Legion!"

Schlager was worried. After all, Vyanor might be mistaken, for how could any one feel sure of the way in this storm? Should the improvised guide fail, all would blame the sergeant. Popularity is a delicate thing in the army, and the noncom was gambling a great deal on his blind, instinctive faith in the yellow lad. A great deal? He smiled grimly. If Vyanor was right, he won. If he was wrong, Schlager would be beyond blame, and no one would be left to blame him!

"Go Mekmin-el-Arish, Vyanor, house with bad water."

"Good, Sergeant. Good — little walk now."

The small Legionnaire took the lead, and the whole company followed, men groaning, cursing sleepily, miserable with cold and fatigue. Captain Fourgues was on foot, having surrendered his horse to two new casualties. The march seemed to last interminably. Shouts of the noncoms grew hoarser, the sound of slaps came more and more frequently, spaced by the rattle of mess kits and bayonet scabbards when men dropped out.

"Pick him up! Shake him— rub snow in his face. He's all right. Steady there, we're getting home—"

After three and a half hours Vyanor stopped.

"Look— house. Good, nice?"

Through the thick flakes Schlager discerned a weak, yellowish glow — a lantern!

"A light— a light," he called out.

A dozen men distinguished the light at the same time. The whole company was galvanized, strode faster, while a joyous clamor and bursts of song rose from the harassed ranks.

"It's Mekmin-el-Arish!" the captain decided.

He ordered a red rocket fired, and an answering flare curved high into the stormy sky. And at 4:30 the wearied sections passed through the gateway. The men broke ranks and rushed to the kitchens, where soup was ladled from enormous, simmering caldrons. Loaves of bread were tossed into outstretched hands. The canteen, reopened, was crowded to the door with steaming, merry, thirsting men.

Vyanor ate ravenously, was treated by the captain, the officers, Schlager and a dozen others. Finally he fell asleep on a table in a corner of the canteen. Kind hands unlaced his boots. Blankets were piled on the floor, and the man who had saved the company was laid carefully upon them. For the time being, Vyanor had become a king. Later he was considered a sort of hero who could do no wrong.

The lost company had been reported wandering in the storm. Many Algerian newspapers had featured the story, and this odd item of a detachment of soldiers risking death from cold a few hundred kilometers from the Sahara had caught the attention of the French press. Legionnaire Vyanor received letters of congratulation, gifts, money and the medal for life saving!

Captain Fourgues was as proud of him as if he had discovered him, reared him carefully for the very purpose he had achieved. In an expansive mood he declared:

"We have everything needed, in the Legion. There is no emergency that finds us unprepared!"

He exempted Vyanor of all patrols, all marches, assigned him as a sort of orderly for the noncoms' mess, which enabled the Legionnaire to live most of his existence in or near the kitchens. By Spring Vyanor was as fat as a quail, and his uniforms had to be let out. As Mekmin-el-Arish was far from supervised towns, no one interfered with Vyanor's love for wearing fancy badges and ribbons; and his peculiar passion for collecting various metal objects was encouraged.

A FEW days after he had been awarded the stripe of first class Legionnaire, a staff automobile rolled into the yard, slid to a stop before the low building of the company's office. An orderly came on the run to order Schlager to find and bring in Vyanor. This was easy, needing only a visit to the supply sheds. And the sergeant ushered his protege into the office.

There was a strange scene. The small, khaki clad man literally leaped into the arms of a tall, rangy, black bearded Frenchman, who wore a monocle and was obviously a man of consider- able importance, judging from the red rosette on his coat. Vyanor was almost in tears, and the tall gentleman seemed but little less moved.

By evening everybody knew the newcomer's name— Valenor, the famous explorer! And the truth about Vyanor came out. The Legionnaire known as Vyanor had been born in the wastes of Greenland. Dr. Valenor, during one of his trips undertaken for the Geographical Society of France, had employed him as a hunter and guide. He had taken him to France for a visit, as a partial reward for his splendid service, his extraordinary good humor under adverse circumstances.

The rest of the poor chap's adventures were easily surmised. He had wandered from his protector's home, located near Nantes, and had gone into the city. There he had bought drink until befuddled or broke. After roaming the streets, unable to find his way back through the town, he had entered military headquarters. Seeing this odd man, who knew no French yet manifestly sought something, the clerks had sent him into the recruiting office.

Unable to explain, ready to obey any suggestion, he had made his mark on the paper offered him without protest. When he had tried to speak of his chief, Monsieur Valenor, some bored scribe had written down "Mathias Vyanor." Warned in advance never to resist men wearing uniforms while in France, he had allowed himself to be shunted this way and that until he had reached Algeria. Unable to read or write, not knowing even the name of the city in which he had been lost, there had been nothing for him to do but board trains and steamers as instructed. Meanwhile, Valenor had sought for him in vain, never thinking to inquire at the recruit- ing office.

Returning from an expedition, Valenor had picked up a newspaper, read of the company's long march through the storm, and had been haunted by the similarity of names. Inquiries at Sidi bel Abbes had revealed date and city of enlistment, and he had come immediately to retrieve his guide.

When asked to explain Vyanor's marvelous sense of direction, Valenor smiled. There was no scientific explanation to be given. An Eskimo found his way across the waste, in any weather, by the identical instinct guiding migrating birds, geese, ducks, swallows.

Valenor desired to send his friend home, for Vyanor had a family. Arrangements were made with Sidi bel Abbes to release Legionnaire Vyanor, Mathias, on leave of absence from the Corps, pending investigation of his case.

On the day scheduled for his departure, the whole company turned out to escort him; and the jazz orchestra, organized by a German corporal, played him to the waiting automobile outside the walls. And it was then that the little fellow understood that he was parting from his friends forever.

He embraced Sergeant Schlager, who was not wholly undisturbed himself, rubbed his cheeks against those of his tutor in the Legion. And— a bewildering phenomenon— the cheerful chap shed large tears.

"You go visit your folks," Schlager tried to console him. "Then you come back and finish your enlistment. Get that? Legion? Enlistment?"

"Good, good!" Vyanor sobbed.

"Goodby, old man!"

"Goodby—" Vyanor shook hands with all present. The captain, in an impulsive gesture, presented him with the badge of the Dragon of Annam, long coveted. Valenor pulled his friend down into the seat, gave the signal to start. The car slid away.

But Vyanor rose a last time, waved his arms, and all heard him shout:

"Good Legion! Good Legionnaire!"

___________________

19: Other People's Money

Christopher B. Booth

1889-1950

The Live Wire, Aug 1908

THE mercury hovered near zero, and the biting, searching wind which met you at every corner and threw clouds of snow spitefully in your face made those outside hunt for the warmth of a saloon stove. With its dingy bar rooms and empty warehouses, it was a disreputable part of town, this, where only the criminal could walk in safety.

Through the street trudged a man, plunging through the white drifts, bound for the fireless, almost barren, room over O'Hare's saloon. His numb hands were shoved into the pockets of his frayed overcoat, his chin thrust into its high collar.

This man was William Summers. For perhaps ten years, however, no one had called him by that name. Indeed, he might not have answered to it now. He was known as "Billy, the steerer"; "Billy, the fox," and a dozen other such appellations of the sort apt to be bestowed upon men of his stamp. But although ten years of his life had been spent alternately in luxury and the cell, the brand of crime was not on his face.

As his nicknames indicated, Summers's specialty was swindling.

He enjoyed the reputation of being the most famous bunco-steerer in the East. Until recently he had plied his wiles with wonderful success. He had worked new schemes, modernized old ones, and had cashed his originality for good American coin.

But now Dame Fortune seemed to frown upon him. His continual run of bad luck had placed him in the membership list of that unpopular organization, the Down and Out Club. In his necessity his stylish clothes went to the second-hand store and were replaced by garments which made no pretense whatsoever to fashion.

Now, without even the price of a warming drink, he sought the poor comfort of O'Hare's dollar-a-week lodging.

Wading through a high drift, he turned into the squalid side street. Just off the corner were the steps which led to his room. As he placed his foot on the first step, he saw a dark something which broke the whiteness beneath him. Pushing the thing with his foot, he perceived that it was the huddled body of a man.

"Poor devil!" muttered Summers, bending over the stiff form. Not sure that life was extinct, he picked up the body and half carried, half dragged, it upstairs.

In his room Summers dropped the frozen man on his own cot and fumbled awkwardly for a match. He stamped his feet and stretched his numb hands over the flame of the smoky, odorous lamp to encourage circulation.

When the dull ache of his fingers was somewhat relieved, he turned to the unlucky mortal on the cot. One glance was sufficient to prove that no spark of life remained.

Then Summers fell to noting the dead man's appearance. He was tall, slight of build, and a mass of reddish-brown hair marred what would have otherwise been a handsome face. He was well dressed, and this fact made his death in this locality savor of foul play.

Summers decided to search the body in the hope of discovering the man's identity. From the inside coat-pocket came a wallet. The first evidence that the pocketbook revealed was a number of cards, bearing the name, "Leonard P. Anthony." And in the corner, "Cashier, Knoxville Mechanics' Bank."

"A banker— and here!" ejaculated Summers, his brows arching upward with surprise. There floated to his nostrils the aroma of strong spirits.

"He paid high for it this time," said the swindler, noticing the odor.

The remainder of the purse's contents was money— nothing but money! In amazement, Summers counted the bills. They were all of large denominations. Altogether they amounted to a trifle over three thousand dollars.

"What luck!" rejoiced the professional swindler. "What glorious luck!" He shoved the wallet and bills into the pocket of his ancient overcoat and continued his search. There was little more— merely the banker's business diary, a few press clippings, a check-book, and a photograph of the dead man.

The press clippings were from the two Knoxville weeklies, and stated that Leonard P. Anthony, Knoxville's rich bachelor, would depart soon for South America to look after his mining interests. He would be gone, they stated, about seven weeks.

This ended Summers's examination. But regardless of the cold, he sat, his eyes transfixed on the lifeless face before him. An idea, at first wild and unreasonable, had taken root in his brain.

The nucleus of the quickly developing plan was the marked likeness of the colorless features to his own. The same long, thin face and the aquiline nose which distinguished himself, Summers saw mirrored before him. The eyes, too, were of the same shade, the ears placed at the same angle on the head.

"It can be done!" he chuckled.

In another instant he had pulled from under the cot his indispensable make-up box, the one possession he had saved from the wreck of his fortunes. Looking now at the face of the lifeless banker, then at his own reflected in the make-up mirror, he worked rapidly. A touch here and a line there, and it was done. For a moment Summers searched the box for a wig of the exactly proper shade. With the red wig over his own brown hair, he stared critically into the mirror. Next he studied carefully the banker's face. The likeness was perfect!

"What an artist I am!" exulted Summers under his breath. If his thoughts could have been registered, they would have read something like this:

"First, Mr. Anthony, deceased, must be got rid of. That's easy— a weight and the sewer. Then the tailor's. That means good clothes. Next on the program is a week's visit to Knoxville to discover Anthony's habits and friends.

"After that, back to New York, where I will practise Anthony's signature and brush up my South American geography. When the chap here is due back, I become Mr. Anthony and resume my duties as cashier— as cashier of a bank! After forty-eight hours as banker, I will disappear with the bank's funds and be myself again, with twenty thousand or more to the good.

"I certainly hold a full hand. If I lose, it's my fault."

Whereupon Summers made preparations to rid himself of the dead banker's gruesome presence— no difficult task with a sewer close by and the streets deserted.

IN THE stooped, venerable gentleman whom the Knoxville hotel-register proclaimed to be Thomas Wilkes, of New York, even the best detective would have failed to recognize William Summers. Wilkes, otherwise Summers, said that he was in ill health, and would his pale cheeks and listless eyes did not belie his statement. As Mr. Wilkes, he displayed a remarkable propensity for making friends.

At the end of four days he was offering fatherly advice to James Griffin, the young assistant cashier of the Mechanics' Bank, and was incidentally drawing upon that young man's supply of knowledge.

After his fifth day in Knoxville, Mr. Wilkes paid his hotel-bill, remarking casually that the illness of his daughter recalled him to the horrible, nerve-racking bustle of the city.

For the next six weeks time rested heavily on Summers's hands. There was nothing to do except practise his new signature; and so often had he dashed off that "L. P, Anthony," with the curious little tail to the "y," that the forgery was, like everything Summers did, already perfect.

The hardest problem that Summers found to solve was his voice.

Leonard P. Anthony, he learned, had lost the volume of his voice when young, and when he spoke it was merely a childlike screech. But here Summers's ready imagination came to the rescue. He formulated a story of how the change in climate and the ocean breeze had worked wonders with his throat.

When the seventh week had slipped away, Leonard Anthony, bank cashier, sat in the parlor-car of the west-bound express, on his way to Knoxville. He was a very impressive person in his well-cut clothes and immaculate linen, far more impressive than the swindler who had hovered near O'Hare's saloon seven weeks before.

When the train drew up before Knoxville's small brick station at 4.14 p.m. the only passenger to alight was Summers. The porter placed his bag and gun-cases on the platform, and the express steamed away.

A few bystanders eyed Summers curiously; and the new arrival was nonplused. Judging from Anthony's reported popularity, he had expected violent manifestations of affection from the townsmen. There was nothing of the kind.

Disappointed, Summers picked up his baggage and alked townward. Before reaching the business section, he saw Colonel Tydings, president of the Mechanics' Bank, walking briskly toward him. Dropping his cases, Summers paused, with outstretched hand. The colonel regarded him coldly and passed on.

"Heavens!" breathed Summers. "The president of the bank cuts the cashier! I wonder what is wrong."

Once more picking up his traps, he pursued his way. In front of the Mechanics' Bank he chuckled his self-appreciation. He let himself in the side door. Griffin, the young assistant, turned from the letter-files over which he was working.

"Hello, Jimmie, old chap!" cried Summers joyously, rushing forward.

The young man drew back, startled.

"Why— why, sir," he stammered. Summers's arm dropped to his side.

"Jimmie," he said reproachfully, "don't you remember me?"

The assistant cashier frowned meditatively.

"No," he responded slowly, "I don't believe I do."

Instantly Summers was filled with awful fear. Was his disguise in any way lacking? A glance into the mirror on the wall told him that it was perfect. He knew that something was woefully wrong. In vain he searched his usually active brain for something to say.

At this moment a tall, gray-haired man entered. He was thin, and his shoulders had the droop that told of countless hours of desk-work. He looked inquiringly at Summers. For a moment his piercing eyes rested on that person's face, then his own paled— why, Summers did not know and could not guess.

"You here?" demanded the newcomer in a very squeaky voice.

Speechless, Summers could only stare at the man.

"Perhaps you have come to return my money," suggested the elderly man.

"I— I am at a loss—" began Summers uncomfortably. ;

"So am I," interrupted the other. "James," he continued to the assistant, "when I started for South America, I took a cab in New York for my hotel. This ruffian here was the driver. He drove me into a deserted, quiet side street, knocked me on the head, and relieved me of something like three thousand dollars and a few papers of considerable value.

"I never said anything about it before, because I do not believe in crying over spilt milk. Call a policeman."

When James had scurried out the door, Summers ventured a question:

"You are Leonard P. Anthony?" he asked.

"Of course. Didn't the papers you stole tell you that?"

"And you returned home— when?"

"Three days ago," answered-the bank cashier shortly.

Summers walked over to a mirror and looked earnestly at his reflection there. Suddenly he remembered that he had seen a picture of the dead man in whose likeness he had disguised himself. Then more light broke on his brain. He was posing as "Leary Pete" Kohn, wanted in Chicago for murder on a dozen counts.

Then Summers chose the lesser of two dangers. He confessed.

____________________

20: Our New House

Bram Stoker

1847-1912

The Theatre Annual 1886, 1885

WE SPOKE of it as our New House simply because we thought of it as such and not from any claim to the title, for it was just about as old and as ricketty as a house supposed to be habitable could well be. It was only new to us. Indeed with the exception of the house there was nothing new about us. Neither my wife nor myself was, in any sense of the word, old, and we were still, comparatively speaking, new to each other.

It had been my habit, for the few years I had been in Somerset House, to take my holidays at Littlehampton, partly because I liked the place, and partly— and chiefly, because it was cheap. I used to have lodgings in the house of a widow, Mrs. Compton, in a quiet street off the sea frontage. I had this year, on my summer holiday, met there my fate in the person of Mrs. Compton's daughter Mary, just home from school. I returned to London engaged. There was no reason why we should wait, for I had few friends and no near relatives living, and Mary had the consent of her mother. I was told that her father, who was a merchant captain, had gone to sea shortly after her birth, but had never been heard of since, and had consequently been long ago reckoned as "with the majority." I never met any of my new relatives; indeed, there was not the family opportunity afforded by marriage under conventional social conditions. We were married in the early morning at the church at Littlehampton, and, without any formal wedding breakfast, came straight away in the train. As I had to attend to my duties at Somerset House, the preliminaries were all arranged by Mrs. Compton at Littlehampton, and Mary gave the required notice of residency. We were all in a hurry to be off, as we feared missing the train; indeed, whilst Mary was signing the registry I was settling the fees and tipping the verger.

When we began to look about for a house, we settled on one which was vacant in a small street near Sloane Square. There was absolutely nothing to recommend the place except the smallness of the rent— but this was everything to us. The landlord, Mr. Gradder, was the very hardest man I ever came across. He did not even go through the form of civility in his dealing.

"There is the house," he said, "and you can either take it or leave it. I have painted the outside, and you must paint the inside. Or, if you like it as it is, you can have it so; only you must paint and paper it before you give it up to me again— be it in one year or more."

I was pretty much of a handy man, and felt equal to doing the work myself; so, having looked over the place carefully, we determined to take it. It was, however, in such a terribly neglected condition that I could not help asking my ironclad lessor as to who had been the former tenant, and what kind of person he had been to have been content with such a dwelling.

His answer was vague. "Who he was I don't know. I never knew more than his name. He was a regular oddity. Had this house and another of mine near here, and used to live in them both, and all by himself. Think he was afraid of being murdered or robbed. Never knew which he was in. Dead lately. Had to bury him— worse luck. Expenses swallowed up value of all he'd got."

We signed an agreement to take out a lease, and when, in a few days, I had put in order two rooms and a kitchen, my wife and I moved in. I worked hard every morning before I went to my office, and every evening after I got home, so I got the place in a couple of weeks in a state of comparative order. We had, in fact, arrived so far on our way to perfection that we had seriously begun to consider dispensing with the services of our charwoman and getting a regular servant.

One evening my landlord called on me. It was about nine o'clock, and, as our temporary servant had gone home, I opened the door myself. I was somewhat astonished at recognising my visitor, and not a little alarmed, for he was so brutally simple in dealing with me that I rather dreaded any kind of interview. To my astonishment he began to speak in what he evidently meant for a hearty manner.

"Well, how are you getting on with your touching up?"

"Pretty well," I answered, "but 'touching up' is rather a queer name for it. Why, the place was like an old ash heap. The very walls seemed pulled about."

"Indeed!" he said quickly.

I went on, "It is getting into something like order, however. There is only one more room to do, and then we shall be all right."

"Do you know," he said, "that I have been thinking it is hardly fair that you should have to do all this yourself."

I must say that I was astonished as well as pleased, and found myself forming a resolution not to condemn ever again anyone for hardness until I had come to know something about his real nature. I felt somewhat guilty as I answered, "You are very kind, Mr. Gradder. I shall let you know what it all costs me, and then you can repay me a part as you think fair."

"Oh, I don't mean that at all." This was said very quickly.

"Then what do you mean," I asked.

"That I should do some of it in my own way, at my own cost."

I did not feel at all inclined to have either Mr. Gradder or strange workmen in the house. Moreover, my pride rebelled at the thought that I should be seen by real workmen doing labourers' work— I suppose there is something of the spirit of snobbery in all of us. So I told him I could not think of such a thing; that all was going on very well; and more to the same effect. He seemed more irritated than the occasion warranted. Indeed, it struck me as odd that a man should be annoyed at his generous impulse being thwarted. He tried, with a struggle for calmness, to persuade me, but I did not like the controversy, and stood to my refusal of assistance. He went away in a positive fury of suppressed rage.

The next evening he called in to see me. Mary had, after he had gone, asked me not to allow him to assist, as she did not like him; so when he came in I refused again with what urbanity I could. Mary kept nudging me to be firm, and he could not help noticing it. He said: "Of course, if your wife objects"— and stopped. He spoke the words very rudely, and Mary spoke out:

"She does object, Mr. Gradder. We are all right, thank you, and do not want help from any one."

For reply Mr. Gradder put on his hat, knocked it down on his head firmly and viciously, and walked out, banging the door behind him.

"There is a nice specimen of a philanthropist," said Mary, and we both laughed.

The next day, while I was in my office, Mr. Gradder called to see me. He was in a very amiable mood, and commenced by apologising for what he called "his unruly exit." "I am afraid you must have thought me rude," he said.

As the nearest approach to mendacity I could allow myself, was the suppressio veri, I was silent.

"You see," he went on, "your wife dislikes me, and that annoys me; so I just called to see you alone, and try if we could arrange this matter— we men alone."

"What matter?" I asked.

"You know— about the doing up those rooms."

I began to get annoyed myself, for there was evidently some underlying motive of advantage to himself in his persistence. Any shadowy belief I had ever entertained as to a benevolent idea had long ago vanished and left not a wrack behind. I told him promptly and briefly that I would not do as he desired, and that I did not care to enter any further upon the matter. He again made an "unruly exit." This time he nearly swept away in his violence a young man who was entering through the swing door, to get some papers stamped. The youth remonstrated with that satirical force which is characteristic of the lawyer's clerk. Mr. Gradder was too enraged to stop to listen, and the young man entered the room grumbling and looking back at him.

"Old brute!" he said. "I know him. Next time I see him I'll advise him to buy some manners with his new fortune."

"His new fortune?" I asked, naturally interested about him. "Howdo you mean, Wigley?"

"Lucky old brute! I wish I had a share of it. I heard all about it at Doctors Commons yesterday."

"Why, is it anything strange?"

"Strange! Why, it's no name for it. What do you think of an old flint like that having a miser for a tenant who goes and dies and leaves him all he's got— £40,000 or £50,000— in a will, providing a child of his own doesn't turn up to claim it.

"He died recently, then?"

"About three or four weeks ago. Old Gradder only found the will a few days since. He had been finding pots of gold and bundles of notes all over the house, and it was like drawing a tooth from him to make an inventory, as he had to do under a clause of the will. The old thief would have pocketed all the coin without a word, only for the will, and he was afraid he'd risk everything if he did not do it legally.

"You know all about it," I remarked, wishing to hear more.

"I should think I did. I asked Cripps, of Bogg and Snagleys, about it this morning. They're working for him, and Cripps says that if they had not threatened him with the Public Prosecutor, he would not have given even a list of the money he found."

I began now to understand the motive of Mr. Gradder's anxiety to aid in working at my house. I said to Wigley:

"This is very interesting. Do you know that he is my landlord?"

"Your landlord! Well, I wish you joy of him. I must be off now. I have to go down to Doctors Commons before one o'clock. Would you mind getting these stamped for me, and keeping them till I come back?"

"With pleasure," I said, "and look here! Would you mind looking out that will of Gradder's, and make a mem. of it for me, if it isn't too long? I'll go a shilling on it." And I handed him the coin.

Later in the day he came hack and handed me a paper.

"It isn't long," he said. "We might put up the shutters if men made wills like that. That is an exact copy. It is duly witnessed, and all regular."

I took the paper and put it in my pocket, for I was very busy at the time.

After supper that evening I got a note from Gradder, saying that he had got an offer from another person who had been in treaty with him before I had taken the, house, wanting to have it, and offering to pay a premium. "He is an old friend," wrote Gradder, "and I would like to oblige him; so if you choose I will take back the lease and hand you over what he offers to pay." This was £25, altered from £20.

I then told Mary of his having called on me at the office, and of the subsequent revelation of the will. She was much impressed.

"Oh, Bob," she said, "it is a real romance."

With a woman's quickness of perception, she guessed at once our landlord's reason for wishing to help us.

"Why, he thinks the old miser has hidden money here, and wants to look for it. Bob," this excitedly, "this house may be full of money; the walls round us may hold a fortune. Let us begin to look at once!"

I was as much excited as she was, but I felt that someone must keep cool, so I said:

"Mary, dear, there maybe nothing; but even if there is, it does not belong to us."

"Why not?" she asked.

"Because it is all arranged in the will," I answered; "and, by the bye, I have a mem. of it here," and I took from my pocket the paper which Wigley had given me.

With intense interest we read it together, Mary holding me tightly by the arm. It certainly was short. It ran as follows:

7, Little Butler Street, S.W., London.—

I hereby leave to my child or children, if I have any living, all I own, and in default of such everything is to go to John Gradder, my landlord, who is to make an inventory of all he can find in the two houses occupied by me, this house and 2, Lampeter Street, S.W. London, and to lodge all money and securities in Coutts's Bank. If my children or any of them do not claim in writing by an application before a Justice of the Peace within one calendar month from my decease, they are to forfeit all rights. Ignorance of my death or their relationship to be no reason for noncompliance. Lest there be any doubt of my intentions, I hereby declare that I wish in such default of my natural heirs John Gradder aforesaid to have my property, because he is the hardest-hearted man I ever knew, and will not fool it away in charities or otherwise, but keep it together. If any fooling is to be done, it will be by my own.

(Signed) Giles Armer,

Master Mariner, Formerly of Whitby.

When I came near the end, Mary, who had been looking down the paper in advance of my reading, cried out; "Giles Armer! Why, that was my father!"

"Good God!" I cried out, as I jumped to my feet.

"Yes," she said, excitedly; "didn't you see me sign Mary Armer at the registry? We never spoke of the name because he had a quarrel with mother and deserted her, and after seven years she married my step-father, and I was always called by his name."

"And was he from Whitby?" I asked. I was nearly wild with excitement.

"Yes," said Mary. "Mother was married there, and I was born there."

I was reading over the will again. My hands were trembling so that I could hardly read. An awful thought struck me. What day did he die? Perhaps it was too late— it was now the thirtieth of October. However, we were determined to be on the safe side, and then and there Mary and I put on our hats and wraps and went to the nearest police-station.

There we learned the address of a magistrate, after we had explained to the inspector the urgency of the case.

We went to the address given, and after some delay were admitted to an interview.

The Magistrate was at first somewhat crusty at being disturbed at such an hour, for by this time it was pretty late in the evening. However, when we had explained matters to him he was greatly interested, and we went through the necessary formalities. When it was done he ordered in cake and wine, and wished us both luck. "But remember," he said to Mary, "that as yet your possible fortune is a long way off. There may be more Giles Armers than one, and moreover there may be some difficulty in proving legally that the dead man was the same person as your father. Then you will also have to prove, in a formal way, your mother's marriage and your own birth. This will probably involve heavy expenses, for lawyers fight hard when they are well paid. However, I do not wish to discourage you, but only to prevent false hopes; at any rate, you have done well in making your Declaration at once. So far you are on the high road to success." So he sent us away filled with hopes as well as fears.

When we got home we set to work to look for hidden treasures in the unfinished room. I knew too well that there was nothing hidden in the rooms which were finished, for I had done the work myself, and had even stripped the walls and uncovered the floors.

It took us a couple of hours to make an accurate search, but there was absolutely no result. The late Master Mariner had made his treasury in the other house.

Next morning I went to find out from the parish registry the date of the death of Giles Armer, and to my intense relief and joy learned that it had occurred on the 30th of September, so that by our prompt action in going at once to the magistrate's, we had, if not secured a fortune, at least, not forfeited our rights or allowed them to lapse.

The incident was a sort of good omen, and cheered us up; and we needed a little cheering, for, despite the possible good fortune, we feared we might have to contest a lawsuit, a luxury which we could not afford.

We determined to keep our own counsel for a little, and did not mention the matter to a soul.

That evening Mr. Gradder called again, and renewed his offer of taking the house off my hands. I still refused, for I did not wish him to see any difference in my demeanour. He evidently came determined to effect a surrender of the lease, and kept bidding higher and higher, till at last I thought it best to let him have his way; and so we agreed for no less a sum than a hundred pounds that I should give him immediate possession and cancel the agreement. I told him we would clear out within one hour after the money was handed to me.

Next morning at half-past nine o'clock he came with the money. I had all our effects— they were not many— packed up and taken to a new lodging, and before ten o'clock Mr. Gradder was in possession of the premises.

Whilst he was tearing down my new wall papers, and pulling out the grates, and sticking his head up the chimneys and down the water tanks in the search for more treasures, Mary and I were consulting the eminent solicitor, Mr. George, as to our method of procedure. He said he would not lose an hour, but go by the first train to Littlehampton himself to examine Mrs. Compton as to dates and places.

Mary and I went with him. In the course of the next twenty-four hours he had, by various documents and the recollections of my mother-in-law, made out a clear case, the details of which only wanted formal verification.

We all came back to London jubilant, and were engaged on a high tea when there came a loud knocking at the door. There was a noise and scuffle in the passage, and into the room rushed Mr. Gradder, covered with soot and lime dust, with hair dishevelled and eyes wild with anger, and haggard with want of sleep. He burst out at me in a torrent of invective.

"Give me back my money, you thief! You ransacked the house yourself, and have taken it all away! My money, do you hear? my money!" He grew positively speechless with rage, and almost foamed at the mouth.

I took Mary by the hand and led her up to him.

"Mr. Gradder," I said, "let us both thank you. Only for your hurry and persistency we might have let the time lapse, and have omitted the declaration which, on the evening before last, we, or rather, she, made."

He started as though struck.

"What declaration? What do you mean?"

"The declaration made by my wife, only daughter of Giles Armer, Master Mariner, late of Whitby."

__________________

21: The Conqueror

W. J. Locke

1863-1930

The Famous Story Magazine Aug 1926

[The Windsor Magazine, Dec 1912]

MISS WINIFRED GOODE sat in her garden in the shade of a clipped yew, an unopened novel on her lap, and looked at the gabled front of the Tudor house that was hers, and had been her family's for many generations. In that house, Duns Hall, in that room beneath the southermost gable, she had been born. From that house, save for casual absences rarely exceeding a month in duration, she had never stirred. All the drama, such as it was, of her life had been played in that house, in that garden. Up and down the parapeted stone terrace walked the ghosts of all those who had been dear to her— her father, a vague but cherished memory ; a brother and a sister who had died during her childhood; her mother, dead three years since, to whose invalid and somewhat selfish needs she had devoted all her full young womanhood. Another ghost walked there, too ; but that was the ghost of the living— a young man who had kissed and ridden away, twenty years ago. He had kissed her over there, under the old wistaria arbour at the end of the terrace. What particular meaning he had put into the kiss, loverly, brotherly, cousinly, friendly— for they had played together all their young lives, and were distantly connected— she had never been able to determine. In spite of his joy at leaving the lethargic country' town of Dunsfield for America, their parting had been sad and sentimental. The kiss, at any rate, had been, on his side, one of sincere affection— an affection proven afterwards by a correspondence of twenty years. To her the kiss had been— well, the one and only kiss of her life, and she had treasured it in a neat little sacred casket in her heart. Since that far-off day no man had ever showed an inclination to kiss her, which, in one way, was strange, as she had been pretty and gentle and laughter-loving, qualities attractive to youths in search of a mate. But in another way it was not strange, as mateseeking youths are rare as angels in Dunsfield, beyond whose limits Miss Goode had seldom strayed. Her romance had been one kiss, the girlish dreams of one man. At first, when he had gone fortune-hunting in America, she had fancied herself broken-hearted; but time had soon touched her with healing fingers. Of late, freed from the slavery of a querulous bedside, she had grown in love with her unruffled and delicately ordered existence, in which the only irregular things were her herbaceous borders, between which she walked like a prim school-mistress among a crowd of bright but unruly children. She had asked nothing more from life than what she had— her little duties in the parish, her little pleasures in the neighborhood, her good health, her old house, her trim lawns, her old-fashioned garden, her black cocker spaniels. As it was at forty, she thought, so should it be till the day of her death.

But a month ago had come turmoil. Roger Orme announced his return. Fortune-making in America had tired him. He was coming home to settle down for good in Dunsfield, in the house of his fathers. This was Duns Lodge, whose forty acres marched with the two hundred acres of Duns Hall. The two places were known in the district as "The Lodge" and "The Hall." About a century since, a younger son of The Hall had married a daughter of The Lodge, whence the remote tie of consanguinity between Winifred Goode and Roger Orme. The Lodge had been let on lease for many years, but now the lease had fallen in and the tenants gone. Roger had arrived in England yesterday. A telegram had bidden her expect him that afternoon. She sat in the garden expecting him, and stared wistfully at the old grey house, a curious fear in her eyes. , Perhaps, if freakish chance had not brought Mrs. Donovan to Dunsfield on a visit to the Rector, a day or two after Roger's letter, fear— foolish, shameful, sickening fear— might not have had so .dominant a place in her anticipation of his homecoming. Mrs. Donovan was a contemporary, a Dunsfield girl, who had married at nineteen and gone out with her husband to India. Winifred Goode remembered a gipsy beauty riotous in the bloom of youth. In the Rector's drawing-room she met a grey-haired, yellowskinned, shrivelled caricature, and she looked in the woman's face as in a mirror of awful truth in which she herself was reflected. From that moment she had known no peace. Gone was her placid acceptance of the footprints of the years, gone her old-maidish pride in dainty, old-maidish dress. She had mixed little with the modern world, and held to old-fashioned prejudices which prescribed the outward demeanor appropriate to each decade. One of her earliest memories was a homely saying of her father's— which had puzzled her childish mind considerably— as to the absurdity of sheep being dressed lamb fashion. Later she understood and cordially agreed with the dictum. The Countess of Ingleswood, the personage of those latitudes, at the age of fifty showed the flufify golden hair and peach-bloom cheeks and supple figure of twenty; she wore bright colors and dashing hats, and danced and flirted and kept a tame-cattery of adoring young men. Winifred visited with Lady Ingleswood because she believed that, in these democratic days, it was the duty of county famiHes to outmatch the proletariat in solidarity; but, with every protest of her gentlewoman's soul, she disapproved of La'dy Ingleswood. Yet now, to her appalling dismay, she saw that, with the aid of paint, powder, and peroxide, Lady Ingleswood had managed to keep young. For thirty years, to Winifred's certain knowledge, she had not altered. The blasting hand that had swept over Madge Donovan's face had passed her by.

Winifred envied the woman's power of attraction. She read, with a curious interest, hitherto disregarded advertisements. They were so alluring, they seemed so convincing. Such a cosmetic used by queens of song and beauty restored the roses of girlhood ; under such a treatment, wrinkles disappeared within a week— there were the photographs to prove it. All over London bubbled fountains of youth, at a mere guinea or so a dip. She sent for a little battery of washes and powders, and, when it arrived, she locked herself in her bedroom. But the sight of the first unaccustomed— and unskillfuUy applied— dab of rouge on her cheek terrified her. She realized what she was doing. No ! Ten thousand times no ! Her old-maidishness, her puritanism revolted. She flew to her handbasin and vigorously washed the offending bloom away with soap and water. She would appear before the man she loved just as she was— if need be, in the withered truth of a Madge Donovan.... And, after all, had her beauty faded so utterly? Her glass said "No." But her glass mocked her, for how could she conjure up the young face of twenty which Roger Orme carried in his mind, and compare it with the present image?

SHE sat in the garden, this blazing July afternoon, waiting for him, her heart beating with the love of years ago, and the shrinking fear in her eyes. Presently she heard the sound of wheels, and she saw the open fly of "The Red Lion"— Dunsfield's chief hotel— crawling up the drive, and in it was a man wearing a straw hat. She fluttered a timid handkerchief, but the man, not looking in her direction, did not respond. She crossed the lawn to the terrace, feeling hurt, and entered the drawing-room by the open French window and stood there, her back to the light. Soon he was announced. She went forward to meet him. "My dear Roger, welcome home." He laughed and shook her hand in a hearty grip.

"It's you, Winifred ? How good ! Are you glad to see me back?"

"Very glad."

"And I."

"Do you find things changed?"

"Nothing," he declared with a smile; "The house is just the same." He ran his fingers over the corner of a Louis XVI table near which he was standing. "I remember this table, in this exact spot, twenty years ago."

"And you have scarcely altered. I should have known you anywhere."

"I should just hope so," said he.

She realized, with a queer little pang, that time had improved the appearance of the man of forty-five. He was tall, strong, erect; few accusing lines marked his clean-shaven, florid, clear-cut face; in his curly brown hair she could not detect a touch of grey. He had a new air of mastery and success which expressed itself in the corners of his firm lips and the steady, humorous gleam of his eyes

"You must be tired after your hot train journey," she said.

He laughed again. "Tired? After a couple of hours? Now, if it had been a couple of days, as we are accustomed to on the other side— But go on talking, just to let me keep on hearing your voice. It's yours— I could have recognized it over a long-distance telephone— and it's English. You've no idea how delicious it is. And the smell of the room"— he drew in a deep breath— "is you and the English country. I tell you, it's good to be back!"

She flushed, his pleasure was so sincere, and she smiled.

"But why should we stand? Let me take your hat and stick."

"Why shouldn't we sit in the garden— after my hot and tiring journey?" They both laughed. "Is the old wistaria still there, at the end of the terrace?"

She turned her face away. "Yes, still there. Do you remember it?" she asked in a low voice.

"Do you think I could forget it? I remember every turn of the house."

"Let us go outside, then."

She led the way, and he followed, to the trellis arbor, a few steps from the drawing-room door. The long lilac blooms had gone with the spring, but the luxuriant summer leafage cast a grateful shade. Roger Orme sat in a wicker chair and fanned himself .with his straw hat.

"Delightful!" he said. "And I smell stocks! It does carry me back. I wonder if I have been away at all."

"I'm afraid you have," said Winifred— "for twenty years."

"Well, I'm not going away again. I've had my share of work. And what's the good of work just to make money? I've made enough. I sold out before I left."

"But in your letters you always said you liked America."

"So I did. It's the only country in the world for the young and eager. If I had been born there, I should have no use for Dunsfield. But a man born and bred among old, sleepy things has the nostalgia of old, sleepy things in his blood. Now tell me about the sleepy old things. I want to hear."

"I think I have written to you about everything that ever happened in Dunsfield," she said.

But still there were gaps to be bridged in the tale of births and marriages and deaths, the main chronicles of the neighborhood. He had a surprising memory, and plucked obscure creatures from the past whom even Winifred had forgotten.

"It's almost miraculous how you remember."

"It's a faculty I've had to cultivate," said he.

They talked about his immediate plans. He was going to put The Lodge into thorough repair, bring everything up-to-date, lay in electric light and a central heating installation, fix bathrooms wherever bathrooms would go, and find a place somewhere for a billiard-room. His surveyor had already made his report, and was to meet him at the house the following morning. As for decorations, curtaining, carpeting, and such-like aesthetic aspects, he was counting on Winifred's assistance. He thought that blues and browns would harmonize with the oak paneling in the dining-room. Until the house was ready, his headquarters would be "The Red Lion." ^

"You see, I'm going to begin right now," said he.

She admired his vitality, his certainty of accomplishment. The Hall was still lit by lamps and candles; and although, on her return from a visit, she had often deplored the absence of electric light, she had shrunk from the strain and worry of an innovation. And here was Roger turning the whole house inside out more cheerfully than she would turn out a drawer. "You'll help me, won't you ?" he asked. "I want a home with a touch of the woman in it; I've lived so long in masculine stiffness."

"You know what I should love to do anything I could, Roger," she replied happily.

HE remarked again that it was good to be back. No more letters— they were unsatisfactory, after all. He hoped she had not resented his business man's habit of typewriting. This was in the year of grace, eighteen hundred and ninety-two, and, save for Roger's letters, typewritten documents came as seldom as judgment summonses to Duns Hall.

"We go ahead in America," said he.

" 'The old order changeth, yielding place to new.' I accept it," she said with a smile.

"What I've longed for in Dunsfield," he said, "is the old order that doesn't change. I don't believe anything has changed."

She plucked up her courage. Now she would challenge him— get it over at once. She would watch his lips as he answered.

"I'm afraid I must have changed, Roger."

"In what way?"

"I am no longer twenty."

"Your voice is just the same."

Shocked, she put up her delicate hands. "Don't— it hurts!"

"What?"

"You needn't have put it that way— you might have told a polite lie."

He rose, turned aside, holding the back of the wicker chair.

"I've got something to tell you," he said abruptly. "You would have to find out soon, so you may as well know now. But don't be alarmed or concerned. I can't see your face."

"What do you mean?"

"I've been stone blind for fifteen years."

"Blind?"

She sat for some moments paralyzed. It was inconceivable. This man was so strong, so alive, so masterful, with the bright face and keen, humorous eyes— and blind! A trivial undercurrent of thought ran subconsciously beneath her horror. She had wondered why he had insisted on sounds and scents, why he had kept his stick in his hand, why he had touched things— tables, window jambs, chairs— now she knew. Roger went on talking, and she heard him in a dream. He had not informed her when he was stricken, because he had wished to spare

Her unnecessary anxiety. Also, he was proud, perhaps hard, and resented sympathy. He had made up his mind to win through in spite of his affliction. For some years it had been the absorbing passion of his life. He had won through like many another, and, as the irreparable detachment of the retina had not disfigured his eyes, it was his joy to go through the world Hke a seeing man, hiding his blindness from the casual observer. By dictated letter he could never have made her understand how trifling a matter it was.

"And I've deceived you!" he laughed.

Tears had been rolling down her cheeks. At his laugh she gave way. An answering choke, hysterical, filled her throat, and she burst into a fit of sobbing. He laid his hand tenderly on her head.

"My dear, don't. I am the happiest man alive. And, as for eyes, I'm rich enough to buy a hundred pairs. I'm a perfect Argus!"

But Winifred Goode wept uncontrolably. There was deep pity for him in her heart, but— never to be revealed to mortal— there was also horrible, terrifying joy. She gripped her hands and sobbed frantically to keep herself from laughter. A women's sense of humor is often cruel, only to be awakened by tragic incongruities. She had passed through her month's agony and shame for a blind man.

At last she mastered herself. "Forgive me, dear Roger. It was a dreadful shock. Blindness has always been to me too awful for thought— like being buried alive."

"Not a bit of it," he said cheerily. "I've run a successful business in the dark— real estate— buying and selling and developing land, you know— a thing which requires a man to keep a sharp look-out, and which he couldn't do if he were buried alive. It's a confounded nuisance, I admit, but so is gout. Not half as irritating as the position of a man I once knew who had both hands cut off."

She shivered. "That's horrible."

"It is," said he, "but blindness isn't."

The maid appeared with the tea-tray, which she put on a rustic table. It was then that Winifred noticed the little proud awkwardness of the blind man. There was pathos in his insistent disregard of his affliction. The imperfectly cut lower half of a watercress sandwich fell on his coat and stayed there. She longed to pick it off, but did not dare for fear of hurting him. He began to talk again of the house— the scheme of decoration.

"Oh, it all seems so sad!" she cried.

"What?"

"You'll not be able to see the beautiful things."

"Good Heavens," he retorted, "do you think I am quite devoid of imagination? And do you suppose no one will enter the house but myself?"

"I never thought of that," she admitted.

"As for the interior, I've got the plan in my head, and could walk about it now bHndfold, only that's unnecessary; and when it's all fixed up, I'll have a ground model made of every room, showing every piece of furniture, so that, when I get in, I'll know the size, shape, color, quality of every blessed thing in the house. You see if I don't."

"These gifts are a merciful dispensation of Providence."

"Maybe," said he dryly. "Only they were about the size of bacteria when I started, and it took me years of incessant toil to develop them."

He asked to be shown around the garden. She took him up the gravelled walks beside her gay borders and her roses, telling him the names and varieties of the flowers. Once he stopped and frowned.

"I've lost my bearings. We ought to be passing under the shade of the old walnut tree."

"You are quite right," she said, marveling at his accuracy. "It stood a few steps back, but it was blown clean down three years ago. It had been dead for a long time."

HE chuckled as he strolled on. "There's nothing makes me so mad as to be mistaken."

Some time later, on their return to the terrace, he held out his hand.

"But you'll stay for dinner, Roger," she exclaimed. "I can't bear to think of you spending your first evening at home in that awful 'Red Lion'."

"That's very dear of you, Winnie," he said, evidently touched by the softness in her voice. "I'll dine with pleasure, but I must get off some letters first. I'll come back. You've no objection to my bringing my man with me?"

"Why, of course not." She laid her
hand lightly on his arm. "Oh, Roger, dear, I wish I could tell you how sorry I am^f how my heart aches for you!"

"Don't worry," he said— "don't worry a little bit, and, if you really want to help me, never let me feel that you notice I'm blind. Forget it, as I do."

"I'll try," she said.

"That's right." He held her hand for a second or two, kissed it, and dropped it, abruptly. "God bless you !" said he. "It's good to be with you again."

When he was gone, Winifred Goode returned to her seat by the clipped yew and cried a little, after the manner of women. And, after the manner of women, she dreamed dreams oblivious of the flight of time till her maid came out and hurried her indoors.

She dressed with elaborate care, in her best and costliest, and wore more jewels than she would have done had her guest been of normal sight, feeling oddly shaken by the thought of his intense imaginative vision. In trying to fasten the diamond clasp of a velvet band round her neck, her fingers trembled so much that the maid came to her assistance. Her mind was in a whirl. Roger had left her a headstrong, dissatisfied boy. He had returned, the romantic figure of a conqueror, all the more romantic and conquering by reason of his triumph over the powers of darkness. In his deep affection she knew her place was secure. The few hours she had passed with him had shown her that he was a man trained in the significance not only of words, but also of his attitude toward individual men and women. He would not have said "God bless you !" unless he meant it. She appreciated to the full his masculine strength; she took to her heart his masculine tenderness ; she had a woman's pity for his affliction; she felt unregenerate exultancy at the undetected crime of lost beauty, and yet she feared him on account of the vanished sense. She loved him with a passionate recrudescence of girlish sentiment ; but the very thing that might have, that ought to have, that she felt it indecent not to have, inflamed all her woman's soul and thrown her reckless into his arms, raised between them an impalpable barrier against which she dreaded lest she might be dashed and bruised.

At dinner this feeling was intensified. Roger made little or no allusion to his blindness; he talked with the ease of the cultivated man of the world. He had humor, gaiety, charm. As a mere companion, she had rarely met, during her long seclusion, a man so instinctive in sympathy, so quick in diverting talk into a channel of interest. In a few flashing yet subtle questions, he learned what she wore. The diamond clasp to the black velvet band he recognized as having been her mother's. He complimented her delicately on her appearance, as though he saw her clearly, in the adorable twilight beauty that was really hers. There were moments when it seemed impossible that he should be blind. But behind his chair, silent, impassive, arresting, freezing, hovered his Chinese body-servant, capped, pig-tailed, loosely clad in white, a creature as unreal in Dunsfield as gnome or merman, who, with the unobtrusiveness of a shadow from another world, served, in the mechanics of the meal, as an accepted, disregarded, and unnoticed pair of eyes for his master. The noble Tudor diningroom, with its great carved oak chimneypiece, its stately gilt-framed portraits, its Jacobean sideboards and presses, all in the gloom of the spent illumination of the candles on the daintily-set table, familiar to her from her earliest childhood, part of her conception of the cosmos, part of her very self, seemed metamorphosed into the unnreal, the phantasmagoric, by the presence of this white-clad, exotic figure— not a man, but an eerie embodiment of the sense of sight.

Her reason told her that the Chinese servant was but an ordinary serving-man, performing minutely specified duties for a generous wage. But the duties were performed magically, like conjuror's tricks. It was practically impossible to say who cut up Roger's meat, who helped him to salt or to vegetables, who guided his hand unerringly to the wine glass. So abnormally exquisite was the co-ordination between the two, that Roger seemed to have the man under mesmeric control. The idea bordered on the monstrous. Winifred shivered through the dinner, in spite of Roger's bright talk, and gratefully welcomed the change of the drawing-room, whither the white-vestured automaton did not follow.

"Will you do me a favor, Winnie?" he asked during the evening. "Meet me at fThe Lodge tomorrow at eleven, and help ine interview these building people. Then you can have a finger in the pie from the very start."

She said somewhat tremulously: "Why do you want me to have a finger in the pie?"

"Good Heavens," he cried, "aren't you the only human creature in this country I care a straw about?"

"Is that true, Roger?"

"Sure," said he. After a little span of silence he laughed. "People on this side don't say 'sure.' That's sheer American."

"I like it," said Winifred.

When he parted from her, he again kissed her hand and again said: "God bless you!" She accompanied him to the hall, where the Chinaman, ghostly in the dimness, was awaiting him with hat and coat. Suddenly she felt that she abhorred the Chinaman.

THAT night she slept but little, striving to analyze her feelings. Of one fact only did the dawn bring certainty— that, for all her love of him, for all his charm, for all his tenderness toward her, during dinner she had feared him horribly.

She saw him the next morning in a new and yet oddly familiar phase. He was attended by his secretary, a pallid man with a pencil, note-book, and documents, forever at his elbow, ghostly, automatic, during their wanderings with the surveyor through the bare and desolate old house.

She saw the master of men at work, accurate in every detail of a comprehensive scheme, abrupt, imperious, denying difficulties with harsh impatience. He leaned over his secretary and pointed to portions of the report just as, though he could read them, and ordered their modification.

"Mr. Withers," he said once to the surveyor, who was raising objections, "I always get what I want because I make dead sure that what I want is attainable. I'm not an idealist. If I say a thing is to be done, it has got to be done, and it's up to you or to someone else to do it."

They went through the house from furnace to garret, the pallid secretary ever at Roger's elbow, ever rendering him imperceptible services, ever identifying himself with the sightless man, mysteriously following his thoughts, co-ordinating his individuality with that of his master. He was less a man than a trained faculty, like the Chinese servant. And again Winifred shivered and felt afraid.

More and more during the weeks that followed, did she realize the iron will and irresistible force of the man she loved. He seemed to lay a relentless grip on all those with whom he came in contact and compel them to the expression of himself. Only toward her was he gentle and considerate. Many times she accompanied him to London to the great shops, the self-effacing secretary shadow-like at his elbow, and discussed with him colors and materials, and he Hstened to her with affectionate deference. She often noticed that the secretary translated into other terms her description of things. This irritated her, and once she suggested leaving the secretary behind. Surely, she urged, she could do all that was necessary. He shook his head.

"No, my dear," he said very kindly. "Jukes sees for me. I shouldn't Hke you to see for me in the way Jukes does."

She was the only person from whom he would take advice or suggestion, and she rendered him great service in the tasteful equipment of the house and in the engagement of a staff of servants. So free a hand did he allow her in certain directions, so obviously and deliberately did he withdraw from her sphere of operations, that she was puzzled. It was not until later, when she knew him better, that the picture vaguely occurred to her of him caressing her tenderly with one hand, and holding the rest of the world by the throat with the other.

On the day when he took up his residence in the new home, they walked together through the rooms. In high spirits, boyishly elated, he gave her an exhibition of his marvelous gifts of memory, minutely describing each bit of furniture and its position in every room, the color scheme, the texture of curtains, the pictures on the walls, the knick-knacks on mantlepieces' and tables. And when he had done, he put his arm round her.

"But for you, Winnie," said he, "this would be the dreariest possible kind of place; but the spirit of you pervades it and makes it a fragrant paradise."

The words and tone were lover-like, and so was his clasp. She felt very near him, very happy, and her heart throbbed quickly. She was ready to give her life to him.

"You are making me a proud woman," she murmured.

He patted her shoulder and laughed as he released her.

"I only say what's true, my dear," he replied, and then abruptly skipped from sentiment to practical talk.

Winifred had a touch of dismay and disappointment. Tears started, which she wiped away furtively. She had made up her mind to accept him, in spite of Wang Fu and Mr. Jukes, if he should make her a proposal of marriage. She had been certain that the moment had come. But he made no proposal.

She waited. She waited a long time. In the meanwhile, she continued to be Roger's intimate friend and eagerlysought companion. One day his highly paid and efficient housekeeper came to consult her. The woman desired to give notice. Her place was too difficult. She could scarcely believe the master was blind. He saw too much, he demanded too much. She could say nothing explicit, save that she was frightened. She wept, after the nature of upset housekeepers. Winifred soothed her and advised her not to throw up so lucrative a post, and, as soon as she had an opportunity, she spoke to Roger. He laughed his usual careless laugh.

"They all begin that way with me, but after a while they're broken in. You did quite right to tell Mrs. Strode to stay."

And after a few months Winifred saw a change in Mrs. Strode, and not only in Mrs. Strode, but in all the servants whom she had engaged. They worked the household like parts of a flawless machine. They grew to be imperceptible, shadowy, automatic, like Wang Fu and Mr. Jukes.

THE months passed and melted into years. Roger Orme became a great personage in the neighborhood. He interested himself in local affairs, served on the urban district council and on boards innumerable. They made him Mayor of Dunsfield. He subscribed largely to charities and entertained on a sumptuous scale. He ruled the little world, setting a ruthless heel on proud necks and making the humble his instruments. Mr. Jukes died, and other secretaries came, and those who were not instantly dismissed grew to be like Mr. Jukes. In the course of time Roger entered Parliament as member for the division. He became a force in politics, in public affairs. In the appointment of Royal Commissions, committees of inquiry, his name was the first to occur to ministers, and he was invariably respected, dreaded, and hated by his colleagues.

"Why do you work so hard, Roger?" Winifred would ask.

He would say, with one of his laughs : "Because there's a dynamo in me that I can't stop."

And all these years Miss Winifred Goode stayed at Duns Hall, leading her secluded, lavender-scented life when Roger was in London, and playing hostess for him, with diffident graciousness, when he entertained at The Lodge. His attitude toward her never varied, his need of her never lessened.

He never asked her to be his wife. At first she wondered, pined a little, and then, like a brave, proud woman, put the matter behind her. But she knew that she counted for much in his strange existence, and the knowledge comforted her. And as the years went on, and all the lingering shreds of youth left her, and she grew gracefully into the old lady, she came to regard her association with him as a spiritual marriage.

Then, after twenty years, the dynamo wore out the fragile tenement of flesh. Roger Orme, at sixty-five, broke down and lay on his death-bed. One day he sent for Miss Winifred Goode.

She entered the sick-room, a woman of sixty, white-haired, wrinkled, with only the beauty of a serene step across the threshold of old age. He bade the nurse leave them alone, and put out his hand and held hers as she sat beside the bed.

"What kind of a day is it, Winnie?"

"As if you didn't know! You've been told, I'm sure, twenty times."

"What does it matter what other people say ? I want to get at the day through you."

"It's bright and sunny— a perfect day of early summer."

"What things are out ?"

"The may and the laburnum and the lilac—"

"And the wistaria?"

"Yes, the wistaria."

"It's forty years ago, dear, and your voice is just the same. And to me you have always been the same. I can see you as, you sit there, with your dear, sensitive face, the creamy cheek, in which
the blooa comes and goes— oh. Heavens, so different from the blowsy, hard-featured girls nowadays, who could not blush if— well— well— I know 'em, although I'm blind— I'm Argus, you know, dear. Yes, I can see you, with your soft, brown eyes and pale brown hair waved over your pure brow. There is a fascinating little kink on the left-hand side. Let me feet it."

She drew her head away, frightened. Then suddenly she remembered, with a pang of thankfulness, that the queer little kink had defied the years, though the pale brown hair was white. She guided his hand and he felt the kink, and he laughed in his old, exultant way.

"Don't you think I'm a miracle, Winnie?"

"You're the most wonderful man living," she said.

"I shan't be living long. No, my dear, don't talk platitudes. I know. I'm busted. And I'm glad I'm going before I begin to dodder. A seeing dodderer is bad enough, but a blind dodderer's only fit for the grave. I've lived my life. I've proved to this stupendous clot of ignorance that is humanity that a blind man can guide them wherever he likes. You know I refused a knighthood. Any tradesman can buy a knighthood— the only knighthoods that count are those that are given to artists and writers and men of science— and, if I could live, I'd raise hell over the matter, and make a differentiation in the titles of honor, between the great man and the rascally cheesemonger—"

"My dear," said Miss Winifred Goode, "don't get so excited."

"I'm only saying, Winnie, that I refused a knighthood. But— what I haven't told you, what I'm supposed to keep a dead secret— if I could live a few weeks longer, and I shan't, I should be a Privy Councillor— a thing worth being. I've had the official intimation— a thing that can't be bought. Heavens, if I were a younger man, and there were the life in me, I should be the Prime Minister of this country— the first great blind ruler that ever was in the world. Think of it ! But I don't want anything now. I'm done. I'm glad. The whole caboodle is but leather and prunella. There is only one thing in the world that is of any importance."

"What is that, dear?" she asked quite innocently, accustomed to, but never familiar with, his vehement paradox.

"Love," said he.

He gripped her hand hard. There passed a few. seconds of tense silence.

"Winnie, dear," he said at last, "will you kiss me?"

She bent forward, and he put his arms round her neck and drew her to him. They kissed each other on the lips.

"It's forty years since I kissed you, dear— that day under the wistaria. And, now I'm dying, I can tell you. I've loved you all the time, Winnie. I'm a tough nut, as you know, and whatever I do I do intensely. I've loved you intensely, furiously."

She turned her head away, unable to bear the living look in the dear, sightless eyes.

"Why did you never tell me?" she asked in a low voice.

"Would you have married me?"

"You know I would, Roger."

"At first I vowed I would say nothing," he said, after a pause, "until I had a fit home to offer you. Then the blindness came, and I vowed I wouldn't speak until I had conquered the helplessness of my affliction. Do you understand?"

"Yes, but when you came home a conqueror—"

"I loved you too much to marry you. You were far too dear and precious to come into the intimacy of my life. Haven't you seen what happened to all those who did ?" He raised his old knotted hands, clenched tightly. "I squeezed them dry. I couldn't help it. My blindness made me a coward. It has been hell. The darkness never ceased to frighten me. I lied when I said it didn't matter. I stretched out my hands like tentacles and gripped everyone within reach in a kind of madness of self-preservation. I made them give up their souls and sense to me. It was some ghastly hypnotic power I seemed to have. When I had got them, they lost volition, individuality. They were about as much living creatures to me as my arm or my foot. Don't you see?"

THE white-haired woman looked at the old face working passionately, and she felt once more deadly fear of him.

"But with me it would have been different," she faltered. "You say you loved me."

"That's the devil of it, my sweet, beautiful Winnie— it wouldn't have been different. I should have squeezed you, too, reduced you to the helpless thing that did my bidding, sucked your life's blood from you. I couldn't have resisted. So I kept you away. Have I ever asked you to use your eyes for me?"

Her memory traveled down the years, and she was amazed. She remembered Mr. Jukes at the great shops and many similar incidents that had puzzled her.

"No," she said.

There was a short silence. The muscles of his face relaxed, and the old, sweet smile came over it. He reached again for her hand and caressed it tenderly.

"By putting you out of my life, I kept you, dear. I kept you as the one beautiful human thing I had. Every hour of happiness I have had for the last twenty years has come through you."

She said tearfully: "You have been very good to me, Roger."

"It's a queer mix-up, isn't it ?" he said, after a pause. "Most people would say that I've ruined your life. If it hadn't been for me, you might have married."

"No, dear," she replied. "I've had a very full and happy life."

The nurse came into the room to signify the end of the visit, and found them hand in hand like lovers. He laughed.

"Nurse," said he, you see a dying but jolly happy old man !"

Two days afterwards Roger Orme died. On the afternoon of the funeral. Miss Winifred Goode sat in the old garden in the shade of the clipped yew, and looked at the house in which she had been born, and in which she had passed her sixty years of life, and at the old wistaria beneath which he had kissed her forty years ago. She smiled and murmured aloud : "No, I would not have had a single thing different."

____________________

22: No Living Witness

Emile C. Tepperman

1899-1951

Secret Agent "X", June 1934

CRONIN jabbed his automatic in the man's stomach. The street, close to the water front, was dimly lit, deserted at night. Cronin's thick upper lip curled back mercilessly from discolored teeth.

"Stand still, guy. Don't raise your hands— just keep 'em where they are. Only don't make no funny moves, see?" He accompanied the admonition with a jab of the gun.

The victim was short, lean, and hard-featured. He evidently knew all about what a Colt can do to your insides if it's fired with the muzzle against your stomach. For he stopped perfectly still.

"If this is a holdup, you can have my dough. There's a ten dollar bill in my pants pocket."

"That's all I need," said Cronin. "Turn around."

The other turned, very carefully.

Cronin dug his hand into the man's pocket and dragged out the ten dollar bill, keeping the gun handy. He pocketed the bill, and suddenly his big hamlike arm encircled the little man from behind. He almost lifted him off his feet, and whispered in his ear, "I'm gonna knock you off, fella. Jake Cronin never leaves a living witness!"

The lean man squirmed, his hands clawing at the implacable arm about his neck. He tried to talk, but only a hoarse cackle gurgled out of his larynx.

Cronin's eyes glittered with killer's lust. He gloated, his lips close to the other's ear. "In case it makes you feel better, you ain't bein' rubbed out by any ordinary stickup. I'm the guy that pulled the Associated Jewelers job. That was a fifty grand haul. I just gotta have some spending money till the fence comes through with the dough for the swag."

The little fellow's face was purpling. He raised his heels in the air and drummed frantically at Cronin's shins. The sudden pain of the kicking heels drew an oath from the killer's lips. His arm tightened viciously. There was a ghastly crunching snap, and the little man ceased struggling. Cronin expelled his breath in a wheeze and dropped the inert body. It sprawled slackly on the pavement, the head tilted back at a gruesome angle.

The man was dead, all right. Cronin knew a broken neck when he saw one. Stooping, he started to go through the dead man's pockets. There was an interesting bulge under the vest But he was interrupted. Hard heels turned the far corner of the block, and he recognized the figure that passed under the street lamp. It was Detective Sergeant Pell.

Cronin cursed and melted into the doorway from which he had ambushed his victim. He felt his way through a black hallway, out into a back yard, over a fence and into an alley that led to the street beyond. As he emerged, he heard the blast of a police whistle. He grinned. That would be Pell, finding the body. Well, let him find it. They'd have to chalk up another murder to the unknown "Strangler's" account.

He strode swiftly away. A few blocks west he pulled the brim of his hat down over his eyes and entered a drug store. He bought a couple of packages of cigarettes, changed the ten dollar bill, and went into a phone booth. He dialed 211 and, when he got the long distance operator, he asked for a Chicago number. He got his connection, and a thin, rasping voice said, "Hello."

"This is—you know who," said Cronin, "callin' from New York."

"Gott!" said the voice. "Not Cro—"

"Shut up, you fool! You want to advertise it? It's bad enough I had to call you up. I was sick and tired of hiding out in that stinking boarding house room for five days. And no dough. When I gave you them sparklers, you promised to send me the cash as soon as you got back to Chi. Well, where is it?"

The voice shrilled despairingly. "Gott! Don't yell like that! I told you it might take me a couple of days to raise the money. That's why you held out two of the stones. You were going to pawn them, no?"

"Yes, and all the hock shops were wised up. I couldn't take a chance. If the cops caught on I was in New York, they'd figure me sure for that job. I'm supposed to be up in the mountains. I had to go out and get me some spending money on the q.t. tonight. So well where's the dough?"

The operator broke in. "Your time is up, deposit ninety cents for one minute more, sir."

Cronin thumbed three quarters, a dime and a nickel into the slots, and heard the other saying, "I raised twenty grand for that stuff this morning, and sent it with a guy named Gadwin. He's flying to New York—started early this morning. He should be there by now. Hurry up back and you'll maybe meet him."

"You sure you gave this guy Gadwin my right address, Dutchy?"

"Yes, yes. The right address he's got written down, with that phony name you're using."

"Okay," said Cronin. "I hope you ain't stringin' me, Dutchy. If you are—"

He hung up and strode out, keeping his hat brim low.

WITH the change of his ten dollar bill, he stepped into a lunch wagon and downed a plate of ham and eggs, two cups of coffee, and a cut of apple pie. He bought a newspaper and a fifteen-cent cigar, and strolled back to his rooming house.

Two-thirty-one Ellery Street, where he was temporarily stopping under the name of Jonas, was one of a row of bedraggled, crumbling four-story houses not far from the water front. Each one sported an eight-step stoop and a "furnished room" sign.

With his usual caution, he surveyed the street from the doorway of the corner store, and seeing that it was clear, walked swiftly to number two-thirty-one and ascended the stoop. He stepped into the dark hallway and stopped, motionless, his hand arrested in mid-air toward the shoulder clip where his automatic rested.

The powerful beam of a flashlight caught him full in the eyes. A moment later the hall light was switched on, the flashlight off, and his blinking eyes discerned Detective Sergeant Pell, covering him with a very steady thirty-eight.

"W-what's the big idea?" he mumbled.

Sergeant Pell was grim, the bleakness of his face denying the levity of his words. "Well, look who's here! If it ain't Jake Cronin in the flesh! And here I was thinking you were far away in the mountains!" While he talked, he frisked him deftly, and took the automatic.

"How'd you know I was here?" Cronin asked, dry-mouthed.

"Just an accident, Jake, just an accident. I wasn't looking for you. But now I know you're in town, I'm beginning to get ideas about that Associated Jewelers holdup, Monday, where the girl cashier was killed. Looks just like it might be one of your jobs. Let's go up to your room and kind of glance it over."

Cronin felt a thick sensation in his chest as he led the way upstairs with Pell's gun an inch from his spine. The two diamonds he had held out were pasted to the bottom of the bureau drawer in his room. A good place to hide them from the landlady or a casual visitor, but they would never escape Pell's practiced search.

"How— how did you find this joint?" he demanded again, over his shoulder.

"It's funny about that," said Pell. "I wasn't looking for you at all. I was looking for a bird named Jonas. You see, I ran into a guy with a broken neck down by the water front. He had a wallet pinned under his vest. In the wallet was twenty thousand berries in big bills, and a card with a name written on it— Jonas, two-thirty-one Ellery Street. So I moseyed over, looking for Jonas, and who comes walking in behind me but Jake Cronin!"

Cronin stopped short on the staircase, his face gray with the realization of what he had done. He turned quickly, his arm coming backward in a short arc. His elbow jabbed Pell in the mouth, and the detective was thrown against the wall. Cronin faced him snarling. His right fist, balled into a vicious weapon of hard knuckles, was coming up in a smashing uppercut, when Pell's gun began to roar. Three times it kicked as he pulled the trigger. The slugs caught Cronin in the chest, and he toppled down the steps with a frightful cry that was drowned by the reverberations of the gunshots in the narrow hallway. He was dead when he hit the landing.

______________

23: The Pink Envelope

Russ W. Carter

The Cavalier, July 1911

There are a surprising number of Russ W. Carters to be found on Wikipedia, but only one is known to have written fiction at this time, and this is the only known story by that Russ W. Carter. Nothing else is known.

I HAD a definite purpose in going to Fond du Lac, and I also had a definite purpose in securing a front room in a hotel directly opposite the clothing- store of Hathaway & Reid. The fact of the matter is, I had positive knowledge that a crib had not been cracked in the burg for some little time.

Jack "Silk Hat" Halley had lit in and out one night with a bundle of something like eighteen thousand under his arm, but that was over three years ago. Nothing of any consequence had been pulled off since then. I figured the town was ripe for another one. Hence my visit.

For five successive nights I sat in my room with the lights turned low. I could sce without being seen. Like a vulture I watched the store of Hathaway & Reid. I saw the clerks and salesmen leave at six. On Wednesdays and Saturdays they stayed till ten. I observed that one of the firm, the senior member, a man with a Vandyke beard, invariably remained after the others had gone. I noticed that he seldom stayed long, but turned out the inner lights, locked the door, and departed usually half an hour after the others.

My vigil did not end there. Twice I sat up all night watching. Nothing escaped my observation. I saw the policeman put out the lights in the show-windows at midnight. A cut-off box had been placed outside for-that purpose. I observed that he invariably looked in and tried the door each time he came around. He did this every hour throughout the night.

It was evident that the firm employed no regular watchman. The cop, then, was the only one to look out for. I saw that I would have little difficulty in getting into the building. It was a three-story structure occupied wholly by Hathaway & Reid. On the second floor was the office of the firm. On one side of the building was a narrow alley. Half- way down this a gas-lamp flickered. No chance to enter this areaway from the main stem. It was too well lighted. I would be noticed. Access to it must be from one of its other outlets. In the daytime I took a stroll. I seldom took a stroll unless it was to learn things. My walk took me through several ad- jacent streets. I noted that the alley had two other openings. There were three ways, then, by which I could get in or out. Little chance of being cornered unless the bulls blocked all three.

Saturday night I decided would be the best time. The receipts would be heaviest on that day, and it was likely that the break would not be discovered until Monday. This would give me ample time to make my getaway.

Eight years as a safe expert in the employ of a Chicago firm of vault-makers had peculiarly fitted me for this work. I was acquainted with all manner of safes, from the humble old-fashioned kind that locked with a key to the modern time-lock type. Whenever a stout banker or a dyspeptic business man found that he could not open his strong-box, I was sent down to see what ailed it. In my eight years I had not found one that baffled me. My employers were proud of my ability in this line. They sent out a challenge to the other safe-makers. They offered five hundred dollars for a vault that I failed to open. This filled me with egotism. I decided that my services were valuable. I figured that I should be working for myself. So I went into the safe-opening business on my own account. I was successful from the start. In the past two years I had cleaned up— well, I had quite a roll. The proceeds of the first eighteen months I put in a bank at Rock Island. Every month I added to it. Then along came some one in the same line of endeavor as myself and cleaned out the bank. The police said it was the work of "Silk Hat" Halley. Anyhow, I got twenty cents on the dollar. This made me lose confidence in banks. After that I put my money in bonds.

At the hotel in Fond du Lac I ran across an old acquaintance. A fellow named Mason. He had formerly been with me in the employ of the Chicago vault-makers. He was now traveling for an office appliance concern and doing well. I had some little difficulty in evading his questions. He had not seen me for four years, and wanted to know all. I told him I was dabbling in land. He pressed me for information. I was considerably annoyed by his pointed inquiries.

In small towns it is necessary that a stranger have some definite business in being there, otherwise he is apt to be a subject of comment and speculation—perhaps suspicion. I had told the proprietor of the hotel that I was in the realty business. To this effect I put an advertisement in the local paper. The advertisement extolled the merits of my wonderful lands. Every day fifty people called to see me— some with money in their hands. I made the price high. They didn't stop to take off their hats, but flew down-stairs as though the house were afire. It served my purpose. It gave me an excuse for being there. I often wondered, though, if it would not have paid me better to have gone into the land and real estate business in earnest.

I examined the time-tables. I saw that there were two trains leaving Saturday night. One at 8 p.m., the other at 1.50 a.m. I figured on catching the latter. I must pretend to take the former. In this way they would not be apt to connect my leave-taking with the robbery. How could they? I would leave town at eight o'clock, the store could not be entered until after ten, because they kept open until that hour. It was a good alibi should the police take a notion to look over the list of strangers that had been in town during the time the job had been pulled off.

At seven forty-five I paid my bill amid a great bustle and hurry. Impatiently I demanded how much I owed. Three times I asked the proprietor if the eight o'clock train was always on time. I wanted to impress on his mind that I had taken that one. Like a man in a race with death, I grabbed up my grips and tore out. I heard Mason calling after me. He came out close at my heels. He insisted on walking down to the depot with me. Here was unlooked- for contingency. I hurried on, thinking to tire him. I hoped he'd turn back. He kept pace with me, however. Seeing he was determined to see me aboard—a thing which would knock my plans on the head— I stumbled and hurt my ankle. I missed the train. I checked my grips at the depot. We returned to the hotel.

We played billiards until eleven o'clock. I must get away from him or I could not put my plan into execution. I tried to get away while he was in the barber-shop, but he insisted on me coming in with him while he got shaved. We played pool another half hour. He finally signified his intention of turning in. I yawned and acquiesced. I told him I was going to leave by the one-fifty. He shook hands, bid me good-by, and went upstairs.

Ten minutes later I slipped out by a side entrance. I walked briskly north. It had begun to rain. There were few peo- ple on the streets. I had an hour yet before it would be safe to go to work. I spent the time in walking about. I moved fast as though hurrying home out of the rain. I was careful not to walk on the same street twice.

During my three years as a crib-cracker I had acquired much knowledge. Experience is a great teacher, and I had learned many things. I had learned that there is only one way to open a safe— the way it is intended to be opened. In obstinate cases nitroglycerin is good. But it is bothersome and makes such a confounded racket. Quietness is a necessary adjunct to successful operation. I used the nitro once. I found it expeditious and withal very effective. It not only blew the safe door off but came near blowing my head off with it. I immediately discarded it as a precarious method.

I had also learned that the less tools the less chance of being nabbed. Many times I owed my liberty to fleetness of foot. The fat cops couldn't hold a candle to me when it came to kicking up gravel. Had I been hampered with a kit of yeggman's hardware I would have been eating at the county expense long ago. Besides, the police have a way of tagging these things, such as exhibit A, exhibit B, et cetera, et cetera. Very embarrassing to have a garrulous lawyer hold one up in court and say: "Gentlemen, here we have a curious  little instrument. You will observe that it is of a hard, metallic substance. An alchemist would probably diagnose its composition as that of a very fine steel. This singular implement, gentlemen, is utilized by those with nefarious motives for the purpose of gaining access to a building or place by unlawful means. It is what is known among habitués of the underworld as a 'jimmy.'"

Therefore the less junk you cart around in this business the less evidence for the jury to gape at. When a jury begins to lean forward, to get a better look at the curious tools found on the defendant, look out! If they stare at them in open-mouthed wonderment you might as well shake hands with your friends and tell the gas company to take out the meter. It's ten to one you won't be home for quite a long while.

Yet some kind of a jimmy is indispensable. In fact, a burglar without a jimmy is like a barber without a razor. I carried a short piece of heavy wagon-spring. If pursued I could throw this away. Few would attach any great importance to an old piece of wagon-spring lying in the street. I also carried a small bottle of chloroform and a gun. The chloroform I could smash against a brick wall. The gun— well, all who carry revolvers are not safe-blowers. I had a special permit. These three were my only tools. No nippers, no skeleton keys, no gags, no files, no rope, no saws, no pinch-bars— not even a valise in which to put the boodle. Awkward to have a "bull" stop you and want to know what you have in the suspicious-looking satchel.

Loot that I could not carry I left be- hind. Too many had been caught trying to lug too much. So I never took more than I could carry. I usually managed to take away all in sight, however.

I had also learned all about burglar-alarms. In fact, I had invented one or two myself. The principle of the others I understood. Some of them were quite ingenious, but like everything made by man, they had their vulnerable points. It's a poor inventor that doesn't know the weak spots in his own invention. I knew mine and was not long in finding out those of the others.

At twelve o'clock I entered the alley. I was quickly at the rear of Hathaway & Reid's. There were two small windows in the basement These were hid behind a pile of broken boxes. Noiselessly I removed the boxes. It took me fully twenty minutes. The slightest noise would bring the bulls down on me. I finally got at one of the windows. There were no iron bars on this Very careless of Hathaway & Reid. They should have had at least Wire screens on them to keep out marauders and prowlers.

Shoving my jimmy under the window, I drew up on it steadily. The sash crackled and chipped off. The window refused to budge. Long disuse had wedged it tight. Setting a block of wood under the jimmy for a fulcrum, I placed one foot on it. I jumped quick and gave it my full weight. The catch snapped. A moment later I was inside. A few rats scampered away on my entrance, but that was all. Shading my light about— handy things those cigar-lighters— I saw that the cellar was strewn high with packing cases. Picking my way through these, I quickly brought up at the foot of the stairs leading to the floor above. Up these I crept. A few moments later I stood in the office on the second floor. Before me was the safe. It was a modern affair, ponderous, imposing, defiant. Guaranteed fire, water, and burglar proof. I had seen many such. Given twenty minutes I knew I would have it open. Calmly I went to work. I first gave my attention to the alarms. There were three of these, all different in device, but identical in principle. In two minutes I had put the telltale appliances out of commission. They could do no harm. This done, nothing remained but to open her up and take out the money. There was lots of it, I knew. I fancied I could see the safe sag in the middle under the weight of it. I bent to the task. Patiently I manipulated the tumblers. For ten minutes I worked. My wrist tired. I rested,. then went at it again. One by one they dropped into place. How well I knew their sounds— like ten-cent pieces dropping in a copper kettle— each one so alike, yet so: distinctive.

One more and she'd swing. Hark! what was that? From somewhere in the vast recesses of the place was borne to me another sound. A sound that set my heart beating like a sledge-hammer, and brought a cold sweat to the roots of my hair. The sound of a key grating in a lock. Yes, there was no mistaking it. There is no other sound like it. In the deep silence it was distinctly audible. As though turne to stone, I stood listening, waiting— waiting for what? An unpleasant panorama raced in chaos before me. The cops! I've been seen! flashed into my brain. It lodged there and burned like a red-hot iron. Capture! The pen! It all loomed up before me with a sudden and startling hideousness.

Distraught with apprehension, I stood as though clamped to the floor. The rasping scraping continued, then ceased. A bolt shot back, a door squeaked, and a draft of air, cold and damp, was wafted to me from below.

Some one had entered from the street! I heard the catlike tread of the intruder quickly cross the floor beneath. He was at the foot of the stairs. He was just then ascending.

My escape was cut off, I had delayed too long. Trying the door of a room leading off, I found it unlocked. Swiftly, steadily bearing down on the handle to stifle a possible squeak, I pushed it open and glided in, closing it behind me, not a moment too soon. I heard the knob of the outer door turn. The door was opened a few inches. For a full minute I heard nothing. The man had not entered, but was looking in. A tiny beam of light shot across the floor. It deflected and danced on the ceiling overhead. The partitions dividing the various offices stood about eight feet high. From there on up to the ceiling all was open. The next moment the man entered the outer office.

With cocked pistol I stood in the room, breathless, motionless, silent. I had no means of telling what kind of a place I was in. I did not know whether there were other exits or not. I dared not flash my lamp to see. I berated myself for not having done this earlier.

I saw that if I could reach one corner near the door I might escape detection. The door was one that swung inward. Standing in one corner I knew that I would be concealed by it should he open it. If he took a notion to look behind— well, it would be his life or mine. I had sworn that I'd never be taken alive. Inch by inch I edged toward the corner. A gasp, a sigh, the creak of a board would surely betray me.

The man remained in the outer office. He could not be a bull or he would have immediately searched the rooms. He had made no move to do so. Who, then, was it? I waited a while, then noiselessly crept to the door. 'There was a painted glass panel in this. Through a tiny spot from which the paint had fallen off, I got a view of the man. He was bending before the safe. His dark form was lit up now and then by the light he carried. The reflection of its rays from the glistening safe threw his outlines into bold relief. The man bending before the vault was one of the firm. The one with the pointed beard. He was turning the dial with one hand, now and then glancing at a piece of paper held in the other. Could the man be robbing his own safe? Improbable! Yet such things are not uncommon. His intentions could not be honest, else why had he come in the night? Why had he entered with so much stealth? Why did he glance nervously over his shoulder and stop and listen when a button of my coat grated against the woodwork? Why did he pull out a gun and creep softly to the door of the room in which I stood. Why did he throw back the door and flash his light in, then, muttering, retrace his steps to the safe? He must have some reason for all this. Why was this necessary? He was opening the safe every day and must certainly have the combination firmly in his memory. I crept again to the door. Fortunately he had closed it after him. I saw him fumbling again at the dial.

"Ah!" I heard him exclaim. The next moment the vault door swung open. Reaching in he drew forth package after package of bills neatly tied with paper bands and shoved them with a stealthy movement into a satchel.

A bold plan came to me. I would step in and make him disgorge at the point of a gun. But I was restrained. Another scheme had popped into my head. A scheme that gave promise of greater returns— blackmail! It's an ugly word and— what? Despicable, you say. Yes, of course, but, then, mine is a despicable business any way you look at it. What difference is it whether I open a man's safe and take the money, or let him open it and then take it? None that I can see. The method may be different, but the principle is the same. Yes, I would let him depart with the money, then stroll in later and confront him with his crime and— well, the chances were he'd pay willingly, quickly, and often. I would have a steady income. He would not. Flee the country? No, he was too cute for that. He would come to work Monday and be as much surprised as the others to find that the place had been robbed.

So I allowed him to go. I heard him descend and walk quickly across the floor below. Then came the slamming of a door, the turn of a key, and— silence! I was alone again. Alone with a looted safe.

There was no need to remain longer. The money was where I could put my hands on it at any time. It was just as much in my possession as though it were in my pocket. I passed into the outer office. I stepped on something soft. I picked it up. It was the envelope on which was written the combination. I scanned the figures. Quickly I bent before the safe. Then I thought, of what use to open it now— none. The vault was empty. Nothing of value remained. I tossed the envelope aside, then picked it up again. It might come in handy. I would keep it as evidence— evidence to support my statements when I should face the man who was keeping my money for me. I thrust it in my pocket. I would examine it more closely later. Going down I passed out the same way I had entered. Ten minutes later I had reached the depot and with little preparation was aboard the train bound for Milwaukee.

I would lay low for a while, one week, two weeks, a month if necessary. Then, after the police had failed to solve the robbery and things quieted down, I would waltz in and have a talk with my friend and trustee, the partner with the Vandyke beard.

On the train I drew forth the envelope. It was of peculiar pinkish color, a kind seldom used nowadays. It was addressed to Ralph Conners, 89 Street, Peoria. A letter inside was signed "Alice," 635 N. Street, Chicago. The letter was couched in endearing terms— to all appearances a love missive. So Mr. Vandyke was also carrying on an intrigue. Good! That would cost him a little more or else interested parties would be informed! Yes, detestable I know, but is it any more detestable for me to demand money for my silence than it is for my victim to carry on clandestine correspondence without his wife's knowledge? If men will commit these indiscretions, then they must pay or be exposed. That's fair, isn't it? You may not take this view of it, but I am not disposed to argue the matter, so we'll let it drop.

I looked at the envelope again. Ralph Conners. I repeated the name over and over. Where had I heard it before? It sounded familiar, but I could not place it. Then I remembered! It came to me like a flash! Ralph Conners, alias Spike Redmond, alias "Silk Hat" Halley! I never had the pleasure of Mr. Halley's acquaintance, but I'd heard enough about him to know that he was no ordinary yeggman. He was clever. I could tell that from reading the newspaper accounts of his exploits. But what was one of the firm of Hathaway & Reid doing with a letter belonging to.the most notorious safe-blower in the country? I pondered long over it, and I could not fathom it. All the way to Milwaukee I revolved it over and over in my mind. I failed utterly in its full solution.

THE THIRD DAY in Milwaukee I ran across Mason again. He was just going into a store.

"Wait," he said, "I'll be out in a minute. I've got this fellow on the string for a big order." He went in and I waited. In fifteen minutes he came out, his face radiant.

"It was a cinch," he said. "I stuck the old geezer for five hundred dollars' worth. Heigho! bigga da commish, old kid, bigga da commish." He was highly elated and slapped me on the back in his enthusiasm.

"How's the land graft?" he asked.

"Punk," I replied, then turned the conversation. I had no desire to have him asking pointed questions.

"Why don't you get into this game?" he said. "If you're any kind of a talker at all, you can cop off fifty a week easy. No trouble to get orders if the goods have merit. Drop that land stuff: it's a dead one; too many in it. I've been with this firm three years now, and it's a snap. Just like picking up dust with a suction sweeper. I could get you with these people if you want to take it up."

I told him I would consider the matter.

His work was done for the day. We walked along to his stopping place, talking leisurely.

"Ever play 'pitch'?" he asked.

"Occasionally," I replied.

Time hung heavy on my hands, and I was not unwilling to enter anything that would help make it pass quickly.

"Did I tell you I was going to get married?" he remarked, as we threw off our coats in his room.

"No, are you?" I asked.

"Yep, next week. Got everything all arranged."

"Who's the unlucky woman?" I inquired jokingly.

"You know her," he returned. "Used to be stenographer for a time with the Vault Company.

"Go on," I exclaimed. I was considerably surprised and not a little disappointed by this intelligence, for I had hopes in the direction of that particular young lady myself, and although I had not received much encouragement, I had not yet given up hope.

"Surest thing you know," he said, noting my incredulous look. 'She's the finest little woman in the land. Turned down old Dundy himself for me. Yes, sir, and I'm clean daffy about her. When we're hitched I'm going to quit the road and locate somewhere. You must come and see us when we're settled."

"I certainly will," I said, handing him my card. "There's my address. When the honeymoon is over drop me a line, and I'll come up and deliver the paternal blessing and throw a few old shoes to make it interesting."

"Be sure and take the heels off the shoes," he returned with a laugh; then dealt the cards. "Will you keep score?" he asked.

I fished in my pockets for a piece of paper on which to keep track of the points. I could find nothing suitable except the envelope on the back of which was the combination. I had no desire to mark that up. I left it on the table and went over to look in my coat.

"Where the deuce did you get this?" I heard him exclaim. I turned around. In his hand he held the pink envelope. He was gazing at it intently.

"Why, what about it?" I asked, returning to the table.

He paused

"Oh, nothing," he replied, tossing it back. "Only I thought your name was Barry: I was wondering what you were doing with mail addressed to another. I bid five on my hand "

I thrust the envelope in my pocket, then looked at my cards. I saw that I had nothing.

"The bid is yours," I said. "What'll it be?"

"Hearts."

We played several games.

Finally he said: "Where did you get that envelope, Barry?"

I then told him the whole story. I omitted nothing. I recounted all from the time I left the employ of the Vault Company to the present. I told him of the many hauls J had made. Of the narrow escapes. Of my various artifices, modes, and methods. Of the money I had lost in the Rock Island Bank. I told him of the Fond du Lac deal. How I had posed as a land speculator. How I had feigned a sprained ankle when he accompanied me to the depot. How I had entered Hathaway & Reid's. How one of the firm had beat me to it. How I proposed to blackmail the man. How I had found the letter addressed to Ralph Conners which the man dropped. How I would inform his friends and the writer of the letter as to his true character unless he divided handsomely. Mason listened to me with rapt attention. When I had finished he let out a low whistle.

"Well, upon my soul, Barry, you've certainly got nerve," he said, "but it's a dangerous game. Better quit it before they get you. Take my advice and quit before it's too late. It'll be twenty years if they land you."

I replied that I would quit only when I had made up the sum that I had lost in Rock Island.

"How much did you lose there?" he asked.

I told him. He regarded me intently and with no little astonishment for several moments.

"l tell you what I'll do," he said. "I've no desire to see you behind the bars, and I know that's where you'll land if you keep on. So I'll give you the amount you lost in Rock Island provided you will agree to quit this thing and engage in some honest enterprise."

To this I would not listen. We argued half an hour. Finally after a prolonged conversation I consented.

"I 'll give you this money," he said, "on condition that you hand over that letter you have and also agree to abandon that blackmail idea." Then he hesitated for quite some time.

We argued another half hour. I finally gave in.

"I can give you most of it in cash," he said, "but will have to give you my note for the balance."

I handed him the letter. He opened a trunk and drew forth a small grip, which he unlocked. He took out several packages of bills neatly tied with paper bands. These he tossed on the table. He also tossed a pointed false beard on the table. The note was signed Ralph Connors. We finished the game in silence.

__________________

Index to Past Masters Nos 61-89

The "Author Index" to Issues 1-60 has been uploaded separately at MobileRead

Achmed Abdullah

Grafter and Master Grafter 84

The Fetish of Remorse 83

Framed at the Benefactors' Club 73

Interlude 84

The Mystery of the Talking Idols 63

Poker 89

Cleve F. Adams

Default With Doom  81

A. St. John Adcock

Ambitious Man 89

George Ade

Making the Grade 78

"A. E. P."

The End of Sherlock Holmes  67

W. L. Alden

After the Comet 67

A Case of Dual Consciousness 84

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

A Tricycle Made For Two 82

Mark Allerton

A Christmas Mix-Up 70

The Stanhope Scandal 70

Harley S. Aldinger

The Green Intelligence 85

Frederick Irving Anderson

The Signed Masterpiece  82

Anonymous

Armistice  78

A Barrack Ghost Story 76

Beautiful Decoy 89

Beauty in Flight 76

A Chance Meeting 84

Chinese Murder  80

A Detective Adventure  80

The Diamond Necklace 62

The Great Auk's Egg Affair 61

Fool Proof  75

The Hachma Ruby 86

The Hat Trick 71

Haunted  78

Jacobs and Gale, Tobacconists 70

John Sherlock's Alibi 86

Local Color 75

An Old Norman-French Story 76

The Petrie Plan 83

The Pretty Passenger 88

A Railway Murder 70

Remorse 76

Retribution 74

Revenge 74

Rogue's Room 86

The Ruins of the Abbey of Fitz-Martin 64

The Skipper's Scheme 73

A Solicitor's Story (as by "S.S.")  75

The Stamp Thief 71

The Thriller 71

The Two Chignons 85

F. Anstey

Taken By Surprise  66

Edwin L. Arnold

The Haunted "Smoker" 87

Alice and Claude Askew

Heritage of Lucille Rivers 82

Francis Henry Atkins

The Lay Figure  63

Edouard A. Aujard

The Flood 75

The Swing of Sentiment  75

Laola of the Isles 85

Stacy Aumonier

A Source of Irritation 73

Straight Griggs 78

F. Britten Austin

Into the Blue 79

Irving Bacheller

Holy Poker 71

The Prodigal Village 71

Mrs. Baillie-Saunders

The Wrong Reception  83

Louisa Baldwin

The Weird of the Walfords 89

James Barr

The Man in Moccasins  82

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

Bradford's P-Luck 83

Breakfast at the Savoy 79

The Coral of Idris 83

Death Gave Him His Chance  63

Not Upon the Sleeve  79

J. J. Bell

The Lovely Little Dinner 70

The Price of a House  63

"Sir William"  61

Elizabeth W. Bellamy

Ely’s Automatic Housemaid 88

E. F. Benson

Negotium Perambulans  64

The Terrace 69

J. D. Beresford

The Hidden Beast 75

The Looking Glass 87

Harold Bindloss

Trooper Jenkins 68

Ottwell Binns

The Britisher 73

Dixon's Romance 75

George A. Birmingham

Jimmy Cassidy's Picture  80

The Spy 81

Michael Bittner

No Greater Love  88

Algernon Blackwood

The Kit-Bag 76

M. McDonnell Bodkin

The Will and the Man 79

Edward Boltwood

Foghorn Fernando 86

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

Other People's Money 89

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

The Corner of John Street 80

A Diabolical Experiment 87

Her Ransom 80

The Ghost of the Cabinet 80

Lady Langton's Jewels 80

A Literary Secret  66

Scarsley Moor Mystery  66

Coutts Brisbane

Without Fear 76

George Bronson-Howard

The Prophetic War Correspondent 79

K. R. G. Browne

On the 6.15  80

The Green-eyed Remedy  82

Two Women in the Case   80

Thomas Burke

The Bloomsbury Wonder 61

The Horrible God 62

Laughing Lillian 62

The Yellow Imps 62

Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Christmas in the Fog 87

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Who Murdered Mr. Thomas? 68

Ellis Parker Butler

The Inexorable Tooth 79

Just Like a Cat 71

Mr. Wellaway's Host 77

The Ninety And Nine  69

Something for the Kid 77

Blackmail Broadcast, Unlimited  80

Donn Byrne

The Wake 88

Thomas Byrne

Prima Donna's Diamonds  80

Sir Gilbert Campbell

The Mystery of the Essex Stairs 62

Scott Campbell

In the Powder-Box 80

The Man and the Motive 83

The Point of Contact 70

The Price of Perfidy 78

A Study in Green 73

Under the Crown 70

Without Air 73

Reginald Campbell

The Howling Of Dogs 80

Russ W. Carter

The Pink Envelope  89

Agnes and Egerton Castle

The Great Todescan's Secret Thrust 70

Stephen Chalmers

The Great God Ananzi  86

Robert W. Chambers

The Princess Zimbazim 79

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

Mayfair Melody 86

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

Marie Corelli

The Sculptor's Angel 88

Anne Crawford

A Mystery of the Campagna  85

W. E. Cule

A Ship's Bell 88

Atwater Culpepper

Gunfire at Scarlani's 89

Captain Henry Curties

Redeeming Flames 79

Norbert Davis

You Bet Your Life 77

E. M. Delafield

The Luggage in the Hall  66

Donald Devereux

Mr. Keeble's Funny Story 83

Charles Caldwell Dobie

The Open Window 71

Douglas M Dold

A Creeping Terror 84

Laurence Donovan

Death Makes a Man Mad 84

He Gave Him a Gun 84

Whispering Death 84

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

The Pass of Nolan's Welcome 81

J. Allan Dunn

The Screaming Skull 85

Edward Dyson

A Golden Shanty 65

The Third Chair 65

Charlton L. Edholm

Gorilla Girl 84

Red Evidence 84

Fred Engelhardt

Heritage of Osiris 75

George Allan England

Drops of Death  68

A Question of Salvage 81

Ribbon of Fate 81

Gwyn Evans

The Pool of Secrets 88

Charles J. Finger

The Lizard God 81

The Shame of Gold 81

Howard Fitzalan

The Red Hand 78

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Three Hours Between Planes 65

Francis Flagg

By the Hands of the Dead 81

The Master Ants 81

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

Hulbert Footner

Assorted Chips 86

Ford Madox Ford

Riesenberg 61

Andrew Forrester Jr.

Arrested on Suspicion 61

Robert Edward Francillon

A Circumstantial Puzzle 62

Ralph Franklin

Reward in Hell 86

R. Austin Freeman & Clifford Piers

By the Black Deep  64

Tom Gallon

The Haunted Picture 87

Ltnt Edgar Gardiner

The Cruise of the Vega  82

The Snake Strikes 81

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

J. U. Giesy

Not Down on the Bill  82

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

Alan Graham

The Bat And Belfry Inn 87

Dahlia Graham

Her Fatal Gift 79

Gordon Graham

The Great George Mystery 85

Frederick Graves

White Flame  62

Evelyn Everett Green

The First Class Passenger 82

The Grey Lady of Lakeside 82

Intimate Enemies 82

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

The Soul of a Ship 87

George Hibbard

The Allard Burglars 88

Robert Hichens

The Nomad 85

Headon Hill

The "Artemis" Mystery 65

The Bank Clerk's Love Story 65

The Dining-Car Clue 65

Limping Justice 65

Roy L. Hinds

The Murder Master 80

Roy W. Hinds

What He Taught Best  80

William Hope Hodgson

Bullion!  88

S. B. H. Hurst

The Ball of Fire  74

The Receipt 74

Washington Irving

The Adventure of the German Student 86

W. W. Jacobs

Captain Rogers 71

A Love Knot 70

M. R. James

Canon Alberic's Scrap Book  82

Malcolm Jameson

The Anarch  69

Doubled and Redoubled 85

Tricky Tonnage 81

Val Jameson

"Burglin' ain't the game it was" 61

Edgar Jepson

The Infernal Machine 79

Madderson's Mascot 79

A Troublesome Widow 79

Jerome K. Jerome

The Dancing Partner 74

Rudyard Kipling

The Phantom Rickshaw 73

A. W. Kapfer

The Phantom Drug 82

Robert Keene

The Dangerous Day 86

A Hand-Bag Too Many 86

The Vanishing of Benjamin Vex 86

Otis Adelbert Kline

The Dragoman's Secret 74

Stolen Centuries 65

Thomas H. Knight

The Man Who Was Dead 61

Alexander Kuprin

Menagerie 83

Terror! 89

Edmund Leamy

My First Case 74

R. C. Lehmann

The Umbrosa Burglary 67

H. Field Leslie

The Winged Ones 86

Henry Leverage

The Absconder 83

Black Light 66

The Crimp 66

Crooked Charity 67

Over the Wall   76

$-Rays 84

Lazar Levi

Mistress of the Undead

Sinclair Lewis

The Cat of the Stars 68

Seven Million Dollars 68

The Willow Walk 61

Sumner Locke

A Question of Rights 82

W. J. Locke

The Conqueror 89

H.P. Lovecraft

The Colour out of Space 81

Obit: Henry St. Clair Whitehead 71

Marie Belloc Lowndes

An Unrecorded Instance 61

Harris Merton Lyon

The Weaver who Clad the Summer 88

Herbert MacAlpine

A Dog-House Detective 89

Richard Mace

The Emerald Beetle  62

Arthur Machen

The Shining Pyramid 71

Fred MacIsaac

The Abominable Test 76

Julia Magruder

The Secret of the White Castle 65

William J. Makin

The Death Barge 73

The Planes that Never Returned 73

Charles J. Mansford

The Brigand of Kairouin the Holy  82

The City of the Scarlet Scarabeus  82

Francis Marlowe

Hostile Witness 83

Don Marquis

Accursed Hat! 70

H. B. Marriott-Watson

The Devil of the Marsh 89

Richard Marsh

The Mask 88

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

Robert Duncan Milne

Ten Thousand Years in Ice 85

William Henry Moberley

The Great Valdez Sapphire 63

C. S. Montanye

Old King's Coal   72

One Hour Back 85

That Finished Product 85

Thieves Three 84

To Skid or Not to Skid 85

White as Snow 85

F. Frankfort Moore

The Crock 87

Joan Dark 65

Cary Moran

Murder Magic  89

Ainsworth Morgan

Lady in Lower 11   72

Ward Muir

A Blind Man's Home-Coming 87

Detective Tempest Faces the Music  80

Europe is Wonderful 87

Sargasso 86

Talbot Mundy

Bengal Rebellion 69

Neil Munro

The Tudor Cup 88

Edith M Nesbit

In the Dark 64

Man-Size in Marble  65

Number 17    61

The Third Drug 88

Clarence Herbert New

The Passing of an Angel 79

The Warburton Mystery 82

Where There Ain't No Ten Commandments ("Culpeper Zandtt")  79

Douglas Newton

Straight Enough 73

Hume Nisbet

His Reward  88

David Wright O'Brien

Hokum Hotel  68

Fitz-James O'Brien

The Wondersmith  64

Owen Oliver

The Awakening  74

A Feminine Stand 81

Vincent O'Sullivan

The Business of Madame Jahn  64

Thomas Nelson Page

What was the Lady's Choice? 62

Miles  Overholt

Wrong Number 75

Barry Pain

"Owing to the War" 88

Sir Gilbert Parker

At the Sign of the Eagle  70

K. R. Patterson

Conscience 83

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

The Cotton Stopper 79

Doctor Grimes Awaits Probate (as by Arthur Mallory)  73

Expert Testimony 74

Inside the Limousine 78

To Professional Services— $100,000   70

Muriel A. Pollexfen

The Conjurer of the Clouds 83

Melville Davisson Post

The Laughing Woman 79

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

A. T. Quiller-Couch

Our Lady of Gwithian 83

Allan Ramsay

The Adventure of the Table Foot 86

Anna Steese Richardson

Morrell's Memoriser 81

Edith Rickert

The Chair That Smiled 74

W. Pett Ridge

The Fixing of Mrs. Farwell  80

Expert Interference  82

Walter Ripperger

The Cardboard Clue 62

School For Murder 69

Morley Roberts

The Egregious Goat 73

Arthur Somers Roche

A Cancelled Sale 82

In the Money (novelette) 67

Michael Romain

Genesis   76

David C. Roose

Dobson's Plots 86

Anthony M Rud

The Invisible "Blinker" 73

Rafael Sabatini

Intelligence 84

G. Morris Sand

Carnival Killer 84

Duncan Campbell Scott

The Witching of Elspie 78

Chris Sewell

The Intruder 82

Marion Shaler

The Court of the Wicked Queen 87

Sandy Sharp

The Diamond Bracelet 89

Helen Simpson

Hotel Evidence 89

J. Johnston Smith

Queen Of Diamonds  75

Thorne Smith

Birthday Present 66

Andrew Soutar

Bluebeard 63

D. H. Souter

Conroy 74

Raymond S. Spears

The Cruise of the Cadis  84

The Horse Thief Rendezvous 89

Mississippi Medicine 88

On the Dodge 89

A Pearl of Price 88

Soft-Paw Ignorance 88

F. St. Mars

Another Pawn of Fate 84

Charles B. Stilson

Dr. Martone's Microscope 72

The Pipe of Death 85

The Sky Woman 67

The Soul Trap 72

Bram Stoker

Our New House 89

Halliwell Sutcliffe

Handsome Jack  67

Miss Phyllis Brown 67

Murgatroyd's Wife  67

Georges Surdez

The Baturu Mandarin 89

Charles the Bold 76

The Man from Nowhere 89

Spite Corner 76

Annie S. Swan

Concession 85

Dead Men's Shoes 86

The Diplomat 86

The Mystery of the Old Tin Box 86

Somebody's Sons 88

Carl N. Taylor

The Opium Smugglers  80

Emile C Tepperman

Coffin Cache 63

No Living Witness 89

Basil Thomson

The Burglary in Middlesex Street 86

E. Temple Thurston

A Cameo 69

Roger Torrey

Black Murder 78

Dice and No Dice 77

The Frankie and  Johnny Murder 83

Justice Borrows Bullets 85

The Missing Mr. Link 83

Murder Backstage 83

Murder By Accident 77

One Escort— Missing or Dead 85

Three Dead Men 83

Ticket to Death (as by John Ryan)  77

Two Little Men 84

Edward W Townsend

A Deal in Mines and Morals 77

Louis Tracy

An Idyll of the Hills 88

The Wrong Number 87

Katharine Tynan

Lettice Langworthy's Prince 87

H. D. Umbstaetter (as by Barnes MacGreggor)

The Great Star Ruby  80

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

Hugh Walpole

The Tarn 86

The Twisted Inn  86

"Wanderer"

Waif of the Bush 74

Harold Ward

"Great Minds Run—"

Cy Warman

"Sycamore": A Ghost Story  87

Stanley G Weinbaum

The Red Peri  69

Albert Richard Wetjen

The Chief of the Loch McCree 61

The Devils Ransom 82

Raid on Jigger's Reef 76

The Ship of Silence 86

Harvey Wickham

The Man With the Painted Nose 75

Edith Wharton

Kerfol  87

Ethel Lina White

An Unlocked Window  78

White Cap 89

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

The Next-to-Last Laugh 79

When Sky Crooks Fall Out 84

H. C. Witwer

Money to Burns 71

Mary E Wilkins

The Shadows on the Wall  64

Lee Willenborg

The Queen's Emerald  88

Edward Woodward

Clarence 75

John Worne

The Brink of Destruction 87

Bertie and the Doorstep 87

May Wynne

Cornflower Blue 86

Leroy Yerxa

O'Sheen's Photo Finish 85

O'Sheen's Sweet Tooth 85

Gordon Young

Bogus Gems 89

Arthur Leo Zagat

Coward's Kill (novelette)  69

The Little Walking Corpses 86

Satan's Scalpel 878

E. F. Ziska

Man of Ages 78

______________

Table of Contents

- 1: The Weird of the Walfords / Louisa Baldwin

- 2: The Devil of the Marsh / H. B. Marriott-Watson

- 3: Beautiful Decoy / Anonymous
- 4: The Diamond Bracelet / Sandy Sharp
- 5: Ambitious Man / A. St. John Adcock

- 6: Gunfire at Scarlani's / Atwater Culpepper

- 7: White Cap / Ethel Lina White
- 8: Hotel Evidence / Helen Simpson
- 9: Poker / Achmed Abdullah

- 10: A Dog-House Detective / Herbert MacAlpine

- 11: Bogus Gems / Gordon Young
- 12: The Baturu Mandarin / Georges Surdez
- 13: On the Dodge / Raymond S. Spears

- 14: The Horse Thief Rendezvous / Raymond S. Spears

- 15: Murder Magic / Cary Moran

- 16: The Great Beast of Kafue / Clotilde Graves

- 17: Terror! / A. Kuprin

- 18: The Man from Nowhere / Georges Surdez

- 19: Other People's Money / Christopher B. Booth

- 20: Our New House / Bram Stoker
- 21: The Conqueror / W. J. Locke
- 22: No Living Witness / Emile C. Tepperman
- 23:  The Pink Envelope / Russ W. Carter
- Cumulative Index #61-89