PAST MASTERS

NINETY

Produced by "Pulpmeister"

11 August 2022

Contents

1: The Bookie Bets on Murder / Roger Torrey

2: The Box of the Ivory Dragon / James L. Aton

3: The Incubus / Achmed Abdullah

4: The “V” Force / Fred C. Smale

5: Caught Out / Fred C. Smale

6: Zapt's Repulsive Paste / J. U. Giesy

7: Throne of Chaos / J. F. B.

8: Girls Don't Count / Douglas Newton

9: Myxomycetes / Arthur Morrison

10: Outwitted: A Lawyer's Story / Anonymous

11: Death Rolls Its Own / Laurence Donovan

12: Printer's Ink Runs Red / Roger Torrey

13: The Force of Circumstances / Louis Tracy

14: Louis Tracy Obituary / Anonymous

Cumulative Index #61-90

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1: The Bookie Bets on Murder

Roger Torrey

1901-1946

Super-Detective, July 1945

THOMAS H. GILBERT had a palace, even if the sign on the road leading into it read GILBERT'S FISHING CAMP. It's true it was on the ocean and that he had a cabin cruiser fitted out with outriggers for fishing the gulf stream, as well as two speed boats, all docked in the inlet that cut in next the house.

But he also had a house that was entirely modern, with a four car garage behind it, with four servants to run the shebang. He even had the grounds around it landscaped— one of the four tenants who had his own separate cottage at the side, was the gardener.

Quite a fishing camp and Gilbert was quite a man.

He was about fifty, white-headed and distinguished-looking, and almost a giant in size. He stood well over six feet in height and must have weighed two-twenty or over. He was tanned almost black and against this tan his white hair and teeth were startling.

And he was in a rage— he showed this in the way he stalked around his front room.

Philip Duval, his son-in-law, on the other hand, looked and acted upset and this was all. Duval was dark and Spanish-looking, and he walked and carried himself like a dancing master. He had a slight accent that wasn't unpleasant, but I thought, then and there, that he'd cultivated it for its effect on women.

He was the Simon-pure gigolo type and no mistake.

Gilbert's secretary, a man named Henson, was so colorless I had trouble in remembering  his name five minutes after I'd met him. And then there was Gilbert's trainer, a little Irishman named Murphy. He looked like an ex-jockey, and I found out afterward that's what he'd been.

Both he and the secretary sat over in a corner and had nothing to say, though Murphy worked steadily on the highballs the butler kept bringing in. I noticed the secretary wasn't having any— this though I wasn't paying any particular attention.

Gilbert said: "I'm glad you came out, Mr. Phelan. I called your New York office, asking them to send a man down, and they advised me you were here on vacation. They suggested I get in touch with you."

I said I was glad he had and lied in my teeth. It was my vacation and I'd earned it, and here the home office was putting me to work. I started figuring right then what I was going to tell Joe Pratt, my boss.

Gilbert said: "I own the Gilbert Stables, Mr. Phelan, and I'm being high-pressured because of it."

"Then you own Corsair."

"He's my best horse."

Duval said: "He's one of the best horses that ever ran, Mr. Phelan."

I'D seen the horse run at Belmont and thought the same, and the records bore me out. And I also remembered that Gilbert was rated as a millionaire horse owner, running his stables as a hobby. Certainly his place backed up the millionaire part of what I'd heard.

Gilbert said: "I've got my horses below, at Miami, waiting shipment. Now that our tracks are closed, there's only the Cuban and Mexican tracks in operation. It's either ship to Cuba or Mexico or stable them for the duration. I want to send my string to my Kentucky place but there are people with a different thought. They want me to ship either to Cuba or Mexico, no matter which. I refused to do either."

"They're your horses," I said.

"It's my daughter, too. They've taken her. Look at this note."

He handed me a typewritten note that read:

SHIP YOUR STABLE AS YOU'VE BEEN TOLD TO DO AND WE'LL SHIP YOU BACK SOMETHING YOU HAVE JUST MISSED. AND WE WANT FORTY GRAND FOR THE MONEY YOU'VE COST US BY FOOLING AROUND. MAKE UP YOUR MIND AND MAKE IT UP IN A HURRY. WELL TELL YOU WHAT TO DO WITH THE MONEY BY PHONE. CALL IN THE COPS IF YOU THINK IT WILL GET YOU ANYTHING.

Gilbert asked: "Do you make anything of it, Mr. Phelan?"

I said: "Sure. It's too wordy for a good ransom note. And it was written on an old typewriter. The top half of the S key is broken off, the letter E hits below the line and the letter M hits above it. And the carriage is out of order... it doesn't space correctly or write evenly across the page. But that's all. You'd have to find the typewriter to have it mean anything."

"I've had three notes before this, All telling me to ship to Mexico or Cuba if I wished to avoid trouble. This is the first that mentions money."

''Where are the other three?"

"I tore them up. I've had crank letters before and that's what I thought these were."

"D'ya remember whether they were written by this machine?"

"No, I don't."

The secretary spoke up from his seat in the corner. He said: "I remember them well, Mr. Phelan. They were. I recall thinking to myself that the machine that they were written on should be repaired."

Gilbert explained: "Henson opens my mail and gives me the personal letters. The others he answers without bothering me with them."

Duval said: "I've urged Mr. Gilbert to ship the string at once. And to pay the forty thousand, when it's asked for. It won't hurt the horses to run and it may save Cornelia."

Gilbert said: "What's your opinion, Mr. Phelan? I don't want to run my horses, but naturally, my daughter means more to me than all the horses in the world."

I said: "Let me get this straight. Why all this fuss about shipping your horses? Why should anybody care whether you shipped your horses to Mexico or Cuba or whether you shipped them to your place in Kentucky?"

"The book-makers, Mr. Phelan. With a few exceptions, there's not a horse running in Cuba or Mexico that any horse in my stable can't beat. And there's not a horse in either country that can hold a candle to Corsair. He'd be odds-on favorite, of course, but there are always people who'll play the long: shots: against the favorite. That's found money for the bookies. And they know the rest of my string as well. Working as a combine, they'd clean up a fortune every time my horses ran."

"Couldn't you?"

He said stiffly: "Mr. Phelan, I wager five dollars on my horses, every time one runs. As a gesture: I'm not keeping a stable to gamble with."

"What's your objection to running them then? I'm just trying to get this clear in my mind, Mr: Gilbert."

"I had a son, Mr. Phelan. Just before the order stopping racing in the States went through, I got word he was killed in action. In the South Pacific. It has made this war a personal thing to me... I'm afraid I took it too much for granted before. I can see the reason for the Government's order stopping racing now. People spend money for transportation, getting to the tracks. That money should be spent for war bonds. People spend money in the mutuel machines and with the bookies— money that. should be spent in the war effort. If I ship and race my horses for the benefit of a crooked bookie ring, the Government will lose a sizeable proportion of the money the bookies take from their customers. I feel strongly about this and have, since I heard of my son's death. I'll run my string; naturally, if it means Cornelia's safe return, but I'm not so sure it would mean that."

"You're sure the bookie ring is back of this?"

"It's the only explanation. The note is clear. What d'ya think about it, Mr. Phelan?"

It looked all wrong to me but I didn't say so. Kidnaping isn't in favor since the Government started cracking down on the snatch artists, and taking a millionaire's girl is quite different from grabbing a rival gangster and putting the bite on him. The gangster usually can't even go to the police. with. it when released. But a man like Gilbert could, and would, raise hell about it.

But there were some truths I could tell him and I did. I said:

"They'll hang no higher for murder than they will for kidnaping, Mr. Gilbert. If they're killers, they'll get rid of the only witness against them. Whether you run your horses and pay them the forty grand or not. They probably wouldn't take a chance on the girl identifying them if they were picked up. Of course if they worked it in such a way that she couldn't make a positive identification, they'd probably return her safely. Where was she taken from? The house here?"

"She was shopping in Miami," Duval said. "We drove down in the morning, three days ago: She had an appointment at a beauty shop and, after that, wanted to go to three or four women's stores. And I had some people to see, so we separated, arranging to meet at the hotel where we stayed, while the track was in operation. I waited for her a couple of hours... it was four in the afternoon by then... and then went to the garage where we'd stored the car. She hadn't been there. Then I got worried and started calling her friends. None of them had seen her. Then I called Mr. Gilbert and he hurried down. She hasn't been seen since that time."

I said: "I think this is the best way to work it as it stands, They'll give you. at least another warning, Mr, Gilbert. Probably two or three, realizing you're trying: to make up your mind what to do. I'd say hold. off until this next warning and then give the thing to the F.B.I. In the meantime, I'll see if I can turn up anything."

Duval said: "I think it's a mistake to. wait. I think you should ship at once, Dad Gilbert, and then be ready to pay the forty thousand when it's asked' for."

Gilbert gave him a look and it didn't take a mind-reader to see the old man wasn't too fond of his trick son-in-law.

He said: "I'll do what I think is best, Phil. Certainly Mr. Phelan knows. more about what's best to do than either of us: I shall follow his advice."

I said: "Have either of you any idea. of who's head of this bookie ring?"

"Certainly," Gilbert said. "It's a man named. Benny Sikes. He runs a crooked gambling house. And a part of the police force, naturally. Other places are raided; but Sikes' Casino Club is never touched."

"What's he like?"

"Smooth, but he's hard as nails behind that smoothness."

"I'll go down and look this man Sikes over. And I wish both of you would stay right here, while I do. I don't know him and he don't know me, so I can't do any harm by going down and looking him over."

Duval said bitterly: "You're going to fool around and Cornelia will be taking it on the chin, while you do. It isn't right. She's my wife— I think I should have some say in the matter."

Gilbert snapped back with: '"She's my daughter as well, Phil. I'll do what I think is best."

I asked Duval where he was supposed to meet Mrs. Duval and he told me the same hotel they'd stayed when the track was open. In Miami Beach, rather than in Miami proper. And gave me the name of the hotel. He looked puzzled at my asking this and I gave him a lie instead of an honest explanation.

I said: "There's no telling where they picked up your wife, Mr. Duval. She might have gone to the hotel to meet you and arrived before you did. It's barely possible I could pick up a lead there. The hotel detective might have noticed something that meant nothing to him, but would mean a lot to us."

"They couldn't take her out of a hotel like that, Phelan. There'd be fifty people or more in the lobby at that time."

"And they wouldn't realize they were seeing a snatch. It's been done that way plenty of times."

Gilbert said: "Would it help if I gave you a note to the detective? I happen to know him."

"It would do more harm than good. He might let something slip about the note. He might even be in on the kidnaping. I'll meet him casually and try to work out the dope from him in the same way. We've got to play this safe."

He could see that, and I shook hands all around and went back to town and to my hotel. And then packed a bag and caught the bus for Miami. And only hoped that whoever had the girl didn't have a watch kept on Gilbert's place so that I could be recognized as an interested party. Kidnapers are suspicious people and I didn't want to endanger the girl.

I had a notion she was in a tough enough spot the way it was.

2: Family Trouble

I DIDN'T KNOW ANYTHING about Miami or Miami Beach, but the hotel where Gilbert and his family had stopped, would have given the best a tussle for the honor. He had money, I knew that, and I had a notion he'd needed nothing but that to stay in the place. It was the kind of hotel that had as many suites as single rooms, to show the kind of place it was. I checked in without bothering to see what they gave me for a room, told the boy to take my bags upstairs, and then headed for the bar.

And found it would compare with the best in New York and not lose on the comparison.

It was the bar waiters I wanted to look over, and I thought I could stand a couple of long cold ones, as well.

I sat at the far end of the bar, where I could just see the service bar which was in kind of an alcove in back and at the side, and I started out with a Collins. And I picked the waiter I wanted before I was there half an hour. Apparently there were four of them. The first looked like the fresh type— the kind who'd give you smart answers instead of honest ones. The second looked stupid. The third looked as though he'd tell you what he thought you wanted to hear, just to be obliging.

But the fourth looked honest, intelligent, and a happy sort of lad. The kind that could be won over into telling things he shouldn't, if properly paid for it.

He just happened to be standing in front of the service bar, waiting for his tray to be filled, when the barman brought me my fourth Collins. I nodded toward the service bar and said: "That waiter, now. Isn't his name Eddie?'

The barman looked and said: "That's Joey."

I took a sip of my drink and said: "My mistake. Not that it makes any difference,"

He said: "All these colored boys look the same to me, too," and went away to stir something up for a lad who sat about the middle of the bar and who'd already had more than he needed.

And I finished my drink and went upstairs and called room service.

I said: "Have Joey bring me up a Collins, will you, please," and got a pleasant: "At once, sir," in return.

And with that done I took a look at what Gilbert's expense money was buying me.

THE boy had brought up my bag and it was neatly placed on the luggage rack. It was a corner room and all the windows were open, with a little breeze gusting across the room and passing through half-opened Venetian blinds, The furniture looked as though it had never been used and the bath looked like something from a jewelry store. And then I looked at the price card, which the law requires to be posted in every room, and understood why everything was so nice.

Gilbert was paying twenty-five dollars a day to keep me in splendor, which was exactly fifteen bucks a day more than I'd ever paid for a hotel room in my life.

About then there was a gentle tap on the door and I opened up for Joey, who had both a tray and a polite bow for me.

He said: "I hope you're going to like it here with us, Mr. Phelan."

They'd even given him my name when they'd turned in the order for the drink.

I said I was sure I was going to enjoy my stay with them and paid the check for the drink. And then I folded a twenty and handed that over, toe.

And said: "You look like a smart boy. That's why I asked for you."

He said: "Thank you, Mr. Phelan. I try to do my best."

I told him I was sure he did and he waited politely to see what I wanted to buy with the twenty.

I said: "Mr, Gilbert, Mr. Thomas H. Gilbert, lived here, didn't he?"

"Yes, sir, Mr. Phelan. He had suite 24-B."

"Wait on him much?"

"Why, yes, sir. And on Mr. and Mrs. Duval. And on Mr. Henson."

"What did you think of them?"

"Mr. Gilbert's a fine gentleman. And Mr. Henson, too, although of course he didn't tip like Mr. Gilbert. He worked for Mr. Gilbert, though, and none of the boys thought anything of it. And Mrs. Duval is as nice a lady as I ever waited on."

I had my answer. He'd left Duval right out of his answer.

I tried to make my voice confidential. I said: "I'm going to trust you, Joey. I'm a detective. Mr. Duval, before he married Miss Gilbert, had some pretty shady friends. We think he's mixed up with some of them who drifted down here for the racing season. We have a line on these other people, but we want to make a clean sweep of it when we pick them up. If Duval was in with them on a couple of tricky deals, we want him, too. You understand?"'

"Yes, sir, Mr. Phelan.'

"Now if he was in with this bunch, he'd have money. Did he show any money while he was here? Or wouldn't you happen to know? I know you boys talk about the customers, and if he was in the money you'd know it."

I still had my wallet in my hand and I took out another twenty but held it. Joey gave it one flashing glance and lowered his voice until he sounded as confidential as I had.

He said: 'Mr. Gilbert's a gentleman, sir. So are you— I can see that. But that Mr. Duval is just plain trash. But he didn't have any money. He got just the money that Mr. Gilbert gave him for an allowance and what he could get from Mrs. Duval... and she's going to divorce him. Just as soon as the horses are shipped to their Kentucky place and Mr. Gilbert has that arranged for sometime this coming week. She's had enough of him, Mr. Phelan, and I don't wonder. He quarreled with her all the time, unless she gave him money."

I said: "You certainly kept your ears open, Joey."

HE had an answer for that, too. He said: "I'm very much interested in psychology, Mr. Phelan. I went to college for two years, and I chose my courses with that subject more in mind than any other. That's one reason I work in the hotel. I can study people. Nobody pays any attention to a waiter, sir, and this is particularly true when the waiter is colored. I've heard the Duvals quarrel half a dozen times or more."

I tried to look disappointed. "It doesn't look like Duval's mixed up with this bunch we're after then, does it. I was hoping I could connect him up with these shady characters. But if he was behaving himself and not meeting any of these crooks, why I'll just have to take him off the list."

"He met Mr. Sikes plenty of times, Mr. Phelan. And that man Sikes is pure dynamite. If anybody could be more of a crook than he is, I'd like to see him. It would help in my studies."

"Sikes?"

"Yes sir. He runs a gambling house, and he doesn't run it honestly. And I've heard he has a police record, although of course that's only hearsay."

I handed over the second twenty.

"There's something else, Mr. Phelan, although I don't suppose it would help you. Mrs. Duval is going to make him a settlement when she divorces him. Forty thousand dollars, just to keep him from making trouble. I heard them talking about it when I brought them drinks."

"Did Mr. Gilbert know about this divorce? And about the settlement?"

"I'm sure he didn't, sir. Mr. Duval is afraid of him. And Mrs. Duval wasn't going to tell him because he wouldn't let her have forty thousand dollars if he thought Mr. Duval was going to get any part of it. He doesn't like Mr. Duval. I heard them quarrel once and Mr. Gilbert called him a leech. It was very interesting."

I said: "I was right about you, Joey. You're a smart boy."

"It's just that nobody pays any attention to waiters, Mr. Phelan. People talk in front of us as though we were part of the furniture."

I knew that, which was why I'd picked a bar waiter for information. I could have gone to a bellhop for it, but there was always the chance that the boy I'd pick might be touting for Sikes or for some other bookie in Sikes' ring. The chance of anything like that going on with a colored boy was considerably less.

I said: ''You understand, Joey, that this is between us. If Mr. Duval found I'd been asking questions about him, he'd warn his friends and we'd lose all the work we've put in. We'd just have to do 'it all over again."

Joey said fervently: "I'll never say a word, Mr. Phelan. I just hope that you can find something on that Mr. Duval. The man's just no good. Anybody that would treat a nice lady like Mrs. Duval the way he does, should be put in jail and kept there for the rest of his life."

I said I thought the same and asked him to bring me a fifth of Old Taylor, some ice, and some soda, And he was smart enough to see that the conversation was finished and picked up his tray and my empty glass and left on his new errand. That little interview had cost me forty dollars of Gilbert's money, but I thought I'd got value received for it.

I could see why Duval wanted Gilbert to run his horses and why he was making such a point of it. If his wife didn't come back, he'd be out forty thousand dollars.

3: Sikes and His Merry Men

SIKES' CASINO CLUB was set just between the business and the residential section and certainly wasn't on the quiet. Instead it had a neon sign that I could see while still two blocks away, and the front of it, which served as a bar was as wide open as a place could be.

For that matter the place was supposed to be a supper club, and there was a nice little dining room opening from the bar. With a tiny dance floor and a dais at the end that was just about big enough to hold a grand piano and a four-piece dance band. And they had entertainment as well, if the signs outside could be believed. A an dancer, a tenor, and a guy, who if his billing were right, could imitate every- thing and everybody.

I had a notion the food would be very good and that you'd pay a very good price for it.

The building itself was low and squat, one-storied and too fancy for my taste. But then I never did like the way they build them both in Florida and Southern California. And even I could see the building went well back from the bar and dining room— that these didn't take up more than half the floor space.

I ordered a drink from a curly-haired barman who was as pretty as many a movie star and then took out the guest card the hotel clerk had given me. He'd also given me a pitying look when I'd asked for it, but I suppose that he thought if a sucker wanted his feathers clipped, it was none of his affair. The barman came back when I'd finished my drink, and I ordered another and showed him the card.

I said: "Who do I show this to? I... uh ... didn't come here for dinner, if you know what I mean."

He grinned and said that he knew what I meant. Then jerked his head toward the end of the bar and said: "Go to the men's room and you'll see a door there marked PRIVATE. Just walk through it and you'll see somebody that will look at your card and pass you in. You staying at the hotel?"

I said: "Sure."

He sighed and said: "I'd like to just once, just to make it an even twice. But, brother, I couldn't stand the gaff. One night there would cost me more than a week in the joint I've got."

"I couldn't stand it either, for long," I told him. "But when a man takes his first vacation in two years, he's entitled to spend a little dough. I've got to work for it the same as you do, believe me."

He must have had a good heart as well as a pretty face, because he leaned over and said: "Watch yourself out in back, brother. I wouldn't go too heavy or you'll have to cut your vacation short. You might have to walk back to where you came from."

And then he changed his voice and said: "Here's Mr. Sikes right now. You can give him the card right here. Oh, Mr. Sikes!"'

I TURNED my head and saw a short and stocky man who was probably in his early forties. And that was striking an average because he could have been thirty or fifty. There wasn't a line on his face or a wrinkle around his eyes. He wore a dinner jacket and looked as though he'd never worn anything else. He had almost white hair— there was just the faintest tinge of yellow in it, but his eyebrows were three shades darker, and these slanted up a little at the ends. They made him look like a blond devil. He was probably around five-seven and must have gone around one-sixty for weight. There wasn't the least trace of expression on his face as he took the card the hotel had given me and looked it over, but when he was through with it, he gave me a pip of a smile and this changed him from a careful cautious man into a friendly, happy-go-lucky, cheerful soul.

He held out a hand and said: "Ah, Mr. Phelan. Glad to have you here, sir. You're at the hotel?'

"Why, yes."

I knew what he was thinking. Anybody that could afford the hotel could also afford to drop heavy dough in his games. And probably would. He nodded at the bar- man and said: "Another of the same for Mr. Phelan, Jerry," and then leaned against the bar, at my side.

He said: "From the North, Mr. Phelan?"

I said: "New York. I'll be here only for a week or so. With all this war work up there, contracts with a penalty clause and all, a man can't take much time away from his business."

He said that was certainly right and waited for me to tell him more. I knew the trick as well as he did. Just hold quiet and the other man will pretty soon tell you the story of his life. And I played chump and went along with the play.

I said: "I've got a little plant that turns out things for the Government. Of course I can't say what things. It's nothing much, but Uncle seems to think we can make them as well as some of the bigger outfits."

"Probably better," he said politely. "With a smaller place, a man can keep his eyes on things and not have to depend on foremen."

"That's why I feel I can't stay away very long."

I finished my drink and he said: "Shall we go back now? We have a bar back there, also, just for the, convenience of the guests."

He hadn't even bothered to ask me if I wanted to gamble— he was smart enough to know what I was there for. I said that would be fine and told him what a nice place he had and he shrugged and said he thought it was the best in town, if he. said so himself.

And then I looked at the bar and dining room and said: "I don't mean this part of it, of course."

Then I followed him to the back and main part of the place and saw what he meant— and we didn't go through the men's room to get there. He led me straight through, down a hall that started at the bar end and I took it this was private and just for the help and him.

And then we were in the gambling room, or rooms,

The main room was, at a guess, thirty by fifty. It had two roulette wheels and three crap tables running down the center, but only one of the wheels and one of the tables were working. There were four blackjack stands on each side of the room, against the wall. Past these there was a bird cage on one side—one of the rigs where a single die, probably eight inches square, is in a wire contraption shaped like an hourglass. This is spun over and over and the house pays off if the number you've picked is on top of the die, after it's flopped back and forth . between both sides of the hour glass.

Of course the house pays five to one if you hit, but there's six numbers on the die and it makes nice odds for the house. An eight year old child would. know better than to bet on the thing, but people who are smart enough to out-fox their fellow men go for it like a bar-fly goes for whiskey.

Across from this trap there was a nice little bar, not over fifteen feet long, but furnished and stocked with really fancy liquor. And on the bird cage side of the room, and between it and between each blackjack layout on that side, were a series of doors, two of which stood open. In each I could see a poker game running.

Sikes waved toward the last door and said: "We have a faro bank there, but we have little play on it. I don't understand it. I think it the best game there is."

I said: "All you need is a keno game set up against the back wall. Then you'd have everything."

He took it seriously. He frowned and said: "I've thought of that and decided against it. We'd get a cheaper sort of trade— there's not the money in keno any more."

He was right, of course. People play it at church socials where they call it bingo.

He beckoned a tall thin man who was as bald as an egg over, and said: 'Ole, this is Mr. Phelan. See that he's treated right."

And then, to me: "You'll excuse me, Mr. Phelan, won't you? I have to be out front at this time. It's dull now, but things will open up later—we really have a nice place from eleven o'clock on.'

He went back through the hall we'd come in, and the bald man showed me a dozen gold teeth and said he thought it was about time for a drink. He had a little accent and I decided he was Danish instead of the Swede I'd taken him for.

We went to the little bar, where I met a barman named Tom and here Ole in- formed me that all drinks were on the house and that the bar was maintained solely for the convenience of the players. That there was no charge for anything at any time.

ANOTHER gambling house trick— a man who's half drunk will spend his money faster than a sober man, and he won't catch a fast one nearly as quickly. And I also saw half a dozen hard-looking customers lounging around, watching everything, and I decided that if any fast stuff were caught by a customer, he'd be silenced fast and thoroughly. He'd be out on the street in less time than it would take him to tell about being bounced.

Ole didn't introduce me to any of this tough crew and I was just as happy. I've met my share of hoodlums like that and I'm not fond of any of those I've met.

And then I decided I'd better play dope as long as I was doing it with Gilbert's expense money, and bought a couple hundred dollars worth of chips from the cashier, who had a cage at one of the front corners of the place.

Ole bowed and showed me the teeth again while he wished me luck and I cut in at the wheel and started to play black and red while I tried to see if the wheel was gimmicked. And after an hour, when I'd run my two hundred dollars up to a great big two hundred and twenty-four, I decided that if the wheel were fixed they weren't using it. Of course the wheel itself had both a zero and a double zero, but most of them have, these days.

Then four new customers came in and headed for the wheel like homing-pigeons, and the fix went in right then.

The boys had money and wanted action with it. And how they got it. They started out with two thousand apiece and that did not last them twenty minutes.

And by that time, playing my system, I'd run my two-twenty-four to four-sixty.

My system was simple. I'd check to see which third of the wheel most of the money was on, then lay a bet on one of the other sections. I was winning three times out of five and that's percentage enough for anybody. I even figured out how the gimmick worked. The croupier, who looked like a Cuban, would merely put most of his weight on one foot or the other. This would automatically open the pins on one section of the wheel and tighten the other two. If he wanted the middle section activated, he'd shift a foot back and put his weight on that.

The gag's old but still good. He was on flooring so arranged that a man's entire weight would depress it in that spot. Sort of a rubber floor, you might say. Under the three tender spots on the floor were copper plates, these wired to other plates under the table legs. The legs were also wired in such a way that the slight current needed to operate the pins jumped through the floor. The table could be moved and would not show a sign of the gimmick— that's the beauty of the thing. The old way was to have the contacts in the table itself, where the croupier could operate them by hand pressure, but that kind of wiring is a cinch to find.

The boys got themselves more money from the cashier and came steaming back to get even, and inside of fifteen more minutes I'd won two hundred more. And then somebody tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around and saw Sikes.

He said: "Could I speak to you a moment, Mr. Phelan?"

"Sure," I told him, and started to pick up my chips, figuring to cash them in.

Sikes said: "They'll be all right there. Manuel will watch them and hold our place for you. Let's go to my office."

I said: "Sure," again.

His office was reached through one of the doors between the blackjack games, and I was a little surprised at it. With the swanky lay-out he had in front, I'd expected to see something nice, but this was bare, with just half a dozen worn-looking chairs, a battered desk, and some filing cabinets.

One side of the wall, though, was taken up by one of the biggest safes I've ever seen, outside of a bank. And it was flanked by two smaller ones, and I took it those would be used to handle the fast money, while the giant was used more as a safe deposit vault.

Sikes said: "Sit down, Mr. Phelan," and put himself in the chair across the desk from me. He said: "I misjudged you, Mr. Phelan, and making a mistake on a man is something I rarely do."

I looked as blank as I could and asked him what he meant.

"I mean I had you pegged as an ordinary customer, not a smartie."

I said I still didn't understand him and tried to look as though I really didn't.

He said: "Anybody that lays his bets on the tiger like you do is no chump. No ordinary customer bets like you do."

I laughed and said: "Gambling is a hobby of mine, Mr. Sikes. I always play small money against the big money."

"Do you always win?"

"Not always. It depends on a lot of things in the game, if you know what I mean."

I WAS telling him I knew his wheel was rigged but I was doing it in a wise way. Right then, all I wanted was a chance to get my hands on the battered portable that sat on the corner of his desk.

He leaned back and made a steeple of his hands while he tried to stare me down. And then he said: "I might make one mistake, Mr. Phelan, but not two. Not with the same man, anyway. Let's put it this way. Go ahead as you've been doing. And then let's say you let my place get along without you."

I knew what that meant, too. He was trying to see if I'd bluff, as well as how much I knew about his games. It was a straight challenge and I was sunk if I let it go.

I said: "Wouldn't you rather have me around here than the cops here? I know you're paying off and that you're under city police jurisdiction, rather than county. And I also know that the state troopers can come into either town and county and will with little urging. This is a tourist state and they'll crack down on anybody that's taking them. You know and I know the wheel I was playing is gimmicked. I doubt if any game you've got in the house will stand inspection. This town and county don't mind gambling if it's fair gambling, but they don't like the other kind. And a raid will show any smart cop what's going on. "Think you could get away with going to the cops?"

"Think you can get away with barring me from this drop of yours? I don't like to be pushed around, Sikes. I'm in your town but you're not fool enough to have me taken care of. You don't know whether I might not have a letter stuck around, telling about this conversation. Think it over."

He'd been thinking and thinking fast. He said: "How'd you like to work for me, Mr. Phelan? We could get along if we knew each other better."

"What d'ya mean work?"

"Suppose you played steadily here and that if you had a bad night, you'd get your money back. And when you won you'd keep it. The only thing I'd ask is that you'd keep it reasonable."

"What would you make by it?"

"People like to go to a place where they see a man win all the time. It convinces them the games are level."

It didn't mean any such thing in my case. It meant he didn't want anybody prosperous enough to live at my hotel, going around squealing about fixed wheels and odds and ends like that. And it meant he'd have time to look me up. But it was an in and I took it.

I said: "I-can't see how I'd lose and I can see how I could win. That's fair enough."

He smiled at me then and stood up and shook hands. And said: "Let's have a drink on it then, Phelan. You'll find ''m not such a bad guy when you know me a little better. If 2 chump comes up to you, holding out money for you to take, you'd be a bigger chump if you didn't take it. Isn't that right?'

I said that was my very thought. And tried very hard not to see the two men Sikes sent after me, and that was a job. Two clumsier men on a tailing job I never saw— they acted as Hawkshaw did in the funny papers a few years back. And to show the trust I put in Sikes, I gave the desk clerk a thousand dollars to put in the hotel safe for me.

I figured Sikes would steal the gold from his mother's teeth if he knew a place he could hock it. And that the boys who worked for him were as tough, even if not as smart.

4: Lost and Found

I GOT BACK TO THE HOTEL about four and the phone rang and woke me at ten-thirty. And I'm never at my best after a hard night. I reached for it, wishing the thing was out of order and, at the same time, wondering who could be calling me at that hour or any other. I was a stranger, outside of the thieves I'd met the night before, except for Gilbert and Duval, and they were supposed to be in Fort Lauderdale, not down on Miami Beach.

I said: "John Phelan speaking," and heard: "This is Phil Duval. I'd like to talk with you, Mr. Phelan."

I told him to come on up, and got room service and asked for ice and soda. And the order got there at the same time as Duval.

In a way it was funny. It was Joey who'd brought the ice and soda and while

he bowed and smiled at Duval, he kept giving me funny looks. And I winked at him and nodded, to show him it was under control. I asked Duval if he cared for a drink and he said he'd like nothing better, so I mixed two highballs and we started on them, watching each other like two strange dogs, making up their minds whether to fight or frolic.

Me on the bed, still in pajamas, and him in the best chair. From his looks he'd had as hard a night as I had.

I waited him out and finally he said: "I came to ask for help, Mr. Phelan."

He'd come to about the poorest place in town for it but I didn't tell him that. Instead I tried my best to look sympathetic.

"It's Dad Gilbert, Mr. Phelan. We never did get along well, I might as well admit it, but I've tried to do my best. And I think the world and all of Cornelia."

I remembered what Joey had told me about how much Duval had thought of his wife and had to resist the impulse to get up and smack his lying mouth. Instead I said it was nice to see a young married couple get along.

He said: "I want you to use your influence with Dad Gilbert, Mr. Phelan. He believes in you and he trusts you. He'd follow your advice I'm sure."

"I've already given it to him," I said. "I told him what I honestly thought was the best thing to do. I can't do more than that."

He said earnestly: "I don't think you've got a clear picture of this, Mr. Phelan. Let's take the note apart. It asks for forty thousand dollars. Well, Dad Gilbert is a wealthy man. Forty thousand dollars is a drop in the bucket for Dad. Corsair alone has won twice that, at least, in purses in this year's racing. And he hasn't got a poor horse in the string... they've all won consistently this year."

I said that was swell.

"But you can see, Mr. Phelan, why forty thousand dollars shouldn't mean much to him. I don't think it does, for that matter."

"I don't either," I agreed. "But money's money and there's no sense in throwing it away."

"If it would help get Cornelia safely home, it wouldn't be throwing it away, Mr. Phelan."

I said he was right there, of course.

HE went on with: "Now about racing the string. I can't see what harm that would do, either. What's the difference whether the horses are racing or exercised on the home track at the Kentucky place? For that matter, they'd be paying their way if they were running, and the other way they're nothing but an expense."

"From what you've said, I take it Mr. Gilbert can stand that. He's got definite ideas about running them now, and I see no reason why he should."

"But it would bring Cornelia back."

"I'm not so sure. Once she was home, Mr. Gilbert would probably pull the string back to Kentucky. The bookies would figure that... know they'd have to keep a hold on him. I'm sorry to be blunt, but they'd probably get rid of your wife and just stall Mr. Gilbert by telling him they'd send her home at the end of the season. They'd have to do something like that to protect themselves."

"I've got a feeling about this, Mr. Phelan. The thing for Dad Gilbert to do is what he's told to do. It may not be logical, but I've got that feeling."'

I couldn't stand any more of it. I got up and started mixing a couple more drinks and said, while I had my back to him: "How'd you feel about your wife getting a divorce? And don't it bother you about money, now that she's gone and you can't wangle it out of her?"

It took me another minute at least to finish with the drinks and his mouth was still open when I turned. He said weakly: "You've been hearing dirty gossip. You... you've been misinformed, Mr. Phelan. You can ask Dad about it. He'll tell you there's nothing in this talk about divorce."

"Could it be that she didn't tell him about it because he wouldn't give her the forty thousand dollars you want, if he thought you'd be the beneficiary? The forty thousand she was going to give you to make no trouble ?"

He was looking at me like he was seeing a ghost. He said:

"Damn you, Phelan. You can't snoop around in my personal affairs like that. I won't have it."

I laughed, and he said bitterly, "All right! All right! I can't whip you. You're half again as big as I am and I don't doubt but that you know all the tricks in that sort of thing. But there's other things I can do."

I took a chance and said: "Such as sic your friend Benny Sikes on me? That wouldn't work either. I've met Benny and he don't want any part of me right now."

"I've got nothing to do with Sikes."

"He tells me different.'

"What if I play in his place once in awhile? There's no harm in that."

I MADE another guess but this was just about a certainty, knowing both Duval and Sikes. I said: "And you paid the I.O.U.s you gave him by giving him tips on the condition of each Gilbert horse that was entered. If I told your father-in-law about that you'd be out on your ear so fast it would make your head swim. Whether you were married to Cornelia or not. He wouldn't stand a thing like that a second, He's honest."

"Sikes never told you anything like that."

"You don't know what Sikes told me. Sikes and I have an understanding."

"I did nothing like that."

"How much you owe him now?"

"Nothing."

I laughed again and said: "Why lie to me, sonny? Didn't you just hear me say I had an understanding with Sikes?"

He said desperately: "I'll make you a proposition. You help me to get the old man to ship to the tracks and I'll give you ten grand of the money I'm going to get from Cornelia."

"Aren't you going to cut me for half on the dough you're going to get from Sikes, for getting Gilbert to ship the string to a track? You wouldn't hold out on a poor guy like me, would you?"

Duval didn't even try to deny that Sikes would pay him if he got Gilbert to shift his string to a track where they still ran. He just sat there, looking sick. And then the phone rang and I answered it and heard a voice that was just faintly familiar.

It said: "That you, Mr. Phelan?"

I said: "Sure."

"This is Mickey Murphy."

"Who?"

"Murphy. You know. I work for Mr. Gilbert. You met me. I'm Mr, Gilbert's trainer."

I said: "Oh sure! I just got up and my head's not cut in yet. How are you, Murphy?"

"There's trouble here, sir. Bad trouble. I thought I should call you and I knew where you'd be staying, of course."

'"What's happened?"

"Somebody just killed Mr. Gilbert."

For a second I didn't think I was hearing right. I said: "Now what's that?"

"Somebody just killed Mr. Gilbert. He was walking out toward the beach, meaning to swim, and somebody shot and killed him."

'When did this happen?"

"Not over twenty minutes ago, sir. We all heard the shot and cook even saw Mr. Gilbert topple over. He was shot in the back and he was dead by the time we got there. It's terrible."

"Have you called the police?"

"I thought I should call you first, sir."

"Well, call them now. I'll be up there just as soon as I can get there."

I hung up and started to dress and Duval said anxiously: "What's wrong? What's happened?"

I said: "Somebody just shot and killed your father-in-law. Shot him in the back and he was dead when they got to him."

Duval said: "My God! This is terrible. I'll go right up there."

I was lacing my shoes but I stopped that and looked up at him. I said: "Not yet, sonny. You've got to help me with a little chore. Got a car?"

"Parked outside."

"Then you can drive me to where Sikes lives when he's not in his joint. And if you tell me you don't know where it is, I'll knock your face out the back of your neck."

He said: "I know where he lives. That's no secret... he's listed in the phone book."

SIKES lived in a neat little house, possibly six rooms, and in a moderately priced neighborhood. I knocked and a nice-looking girl— I put her down as around thirty— opened the door and stood there looking at me inquiringly. I suppose she wondered what I was going to try and sell her. She had one child, a cute little tyke not over three, hanging to her skirt, and I could see another in the hall behind her, although this last one must have been at least five. And I could hear a bunch of squealing coming from inside and decided that Sikes was really a family man.

I said: "I'd like to speak to Mr. Sikes, Miss. Tell him it's John Phelan, please."

The "Miss" stuff got her. No gal of around thirty minds being taken for a girl years younger, no matter what they say.

And this one said: "Why, yes, Mr. Phelan. Come right in. John's in the kitchen, just having breakfast. Right back here and excuse the looks of the kitchen. I haven't had time to get at it yet— my maid quit last week and I can't find another one. That is, one I'd trust to look after the baby."

I took it there was a third child and my respect for him grew. I followed Mrs. Sikes back through the hall, and when she opened the door of the kitchen, I thought all hell had broken loose. One kid, a boy of about six, grabbed her around the waist and hung, just screaming with laughter.

He said: "Mother, make Daddy stop. He grabs me and tickles me and I can't keep from laughing. And then I can't stop."

By then I could see in the kitchen and the first thing I saw was Sikes, wearing a pair of pants, an undershirt, a pair of slippers, and nothing else. He saw me just as I saw him and gave me a guarded look.

He said: "Well, Phelan. It's good to see you."

This as though we hadn't seen each other for months or years.

He shook hands with me as though he meant it and managed to shake his head warningly as he did. He said: "Myra, this is an old friend of mine. John Phelan. Johnny, this is my wife, Myra."

Mrs. Sikes said she was glad to meet me and asked me if I'd had breakfast or not. And when I told her I had, she tried to talk me into having a cup of coffee with them, at least.

Sikes said: "If you don't mind, Myra, I'll take John into the front room. We've got a lot of things to talk over... Don't time fly by, John?"

I said it certainly did and followed him into a front room that was definitely shabby. But also so clean it glistened. And once there he turned on me like a mad dog.

"HE said: "What's the idea of all this? What's the idea of coming to my house? I keep my business and my family separate. My wife doesn't even know I own the Club. I don't like this, Phelan."

I said I was sorry and that I didn't realize how he felt about it... how for that matter I didn't even know he had a family. And that what I had to tell him wasn't really important, but that I thought I should tell him, anyway.

He looked impatient and said: "Well, what is it?"

"It's just that I have to leave town for a couple of days."

"You're three times seven, aren't you?"

"I didn't want you to think I was up to some funny business. Something like calling cop, for instance."

Sikes lost part of his temper and said: "I might have thought something like that, when I come to think of it. Okay, Phelan. You're excused for a couple of days."

I said I'd see him when I got back and went outside and around the corner, to where I'd left Duval and his ear.

And found neither— which didn't surprise me too much. The cab cost me twenty dollars, but after all, the hacker was smart enough to see that I was in a hurry and took full advantage of the fact. It wasn't an easy trip up for me, either. I'd lost a damned good client, through no fault of mine, and I didn't think that would compensate for what I'd found— which was a lot of dope on the two men I was after.

5: Ambush Killer

GILBERT'S FISHING CAMP was really something when the hacker and I got there. In the first place, every cop in the county, city, and state, seemed to have gathered there. There must have been fifty or more of them, with half inside the house and the other half hunting around the grounds.

We had trouble getting there for that matter. The hacker started to turn off on the side road that led down to the place, and a fat cop in uniform stepped in front of us with his hand raised.

He scowled at us and said: "This road's closed. Sorry."

He didn't sound sorry. A tin badge on some people makes them think they own the world.

I said: "I work for Mr. Gilbert, officer. I was sent for."

"Who sent for you? Where were you when you were sent for?"

"Quit playing cop, stupid. I'll tell all that to whoever's in charge. That isn't you."

He stood there trying to make up his mind. He couldn't do a thing about it, though, and this finally drifted through his dim mind. He took down his hand and stepped back out of the way, but his neck was three shades redder than it had been before he stopped us.

The hacker stopped before he reached a tangle of at least thirty cars, and I paid him off and started into the house. And got stopped at the door by another bright lad.

I said: "Now what the hell is this? I work here, mister.'

This cop could have been a twin for the one out on the road. He growled: ''Doing what?"

"I'll tell that to the boss."

"He's too busy to talk with the likes of you."

"Like to bet on it?"

He looked undecided and then stepped to the side so I could pass. And I found the boss with no trouble at all.

He was in a uniform that didn't fit him and he neither talked or acted like a cop. For that matter, he wasn't. He knew the city commissioners though, and that's better than knowing a job, any time.

He came stalking over and said: "Who are you?"

I said: "John Phelan."

"What are you doing here?"

"I was working for Mr, Gilbert. Murphy, Mr. Gilbert's trainer, sent for me."

"Where were you?"

I gave him the name of the Miami Beach hotel and he lost three parts of his bluster.

He said: "What was the nature of your work, Mr. Phelan?"

"Confidential, Chief. I couldn't tell you without Mr. Duval's permission."

'"Where's Duval now?"

I tried to look surprised and asked: "Isn't he here yet?"

"He is not."

I said: 'Well, that's odd. He was with me in my hotel room when we heard the news of his father-in-law's murder. He started back here right then in his own car and I followed him in a cab. He must have broken down between here and there."

The chief said triumphantly: "You'd have passed him. Ain't but one road."

"I wasn't looking for him."

That was one bit of truth I'd said, anyway. The chief said thoughtfully: "Well, I guess he could have pulled into some garage to have his car fixed, at that. I'm Chief Brown, Mr. Phelan. Anything you know that can help us?"

"I just got here, Chief."

"Yeah, that's right. Any idea of who might have had it in for Mr. Gilbert?'

"Plenty of them."

"Who?" he asked, beginning to look eager.

I said: "Benny Sikes, down in Miami, but I stopped at his house on the way up here and he's clean. He was playing with his kids. He's got three or four of them."

The chief looked embarrassed and said he knew Sikes and that he didn't think Sikes would be mixed up in any murder. And I agreed with him.

I said: "He wouldn't. Not as long as he had the money to hire somebody to do his killing for him. But I wasn't taking a chance of missing anything."

"You shouldn't talk about people like that, Mr. Phelan. You can be sued for that, you know."

I laughed and said I'd like to live long enough to see the day Benny Sikes would sue anybody for slander.

And I added: "Let's not horse around, Chief. You know and I know what Benny is. He'll do anything he's big enough to do, and we both know it. You want to remember that protection of his is liable to wear out. Or Benny's liable to wear out. In fact, I think he's wearing out right now."

"Who else might have it in for Mr. Gilbert?"

"There's his son-in-law, Chief. Of course he was with me when this happened, but he could hire it done. Benny would set him in with the right people for the job if Duval asked him for a break-in."

"The hell you say," said the chief, with interest. "He could have been with you for an alibi, Mr. Phelan. You didn't tell me what kind of work you do, while I think of it."

"It's confidential work, Chief. As I told you."

HE'D have done a bit of bullying then and there, but he didn't know who I was and he was afraid I might be somebody who could make him trouble. Instead he waved a hand and gave me a lesson on police work.

He said: "I've got every available man out searching for the place where the killer stood. I even borrowed men from the County police. And the state men volunteered to help without being asked."

I told him that he had little chance of finding the place, and when he bristled and asked why not, I explained the crew would have the sand so scuffed up it would be impossible to tell a thing. Then he asked what he should have done to locate the killer's hide-out. I told him.

I said: "The cook saw Mr. Gilbert fall, Murphy told me. All you had to do was find out which direction Mr. Gilbert was facing when the bullet hit him, then check on the angle the bullet made going through him and then put the two together. You'd have narrowed it down to a lane not more than ten feet wide. Get the idea?"

He looked at me as though I'd pulled a rabbit out of my hat and said he never thought of that and that nobody on his force had thought of it, either.

I said: "The state troopers should have thought of it."

"They came after we'd started looking around," he admitted.

"Any idea of what he was shot with? I mean the calibre of the gun?"

"The coroner don't know, Mr. Phelan, except it was something pretty big. It hit Mr. Gilbert just at the side of his heart, but it blowed him all to pieces inside."

"Rifle then."

"Has to be. And there ain't many people in this part of the country that own rifles."

I nodded toward the wall, where there was a gun-cabinet with at least thirty different guns, all of them special jobs and all of them set so they'd show to best advantage. I took it Gilbert had been a gun crank, and a gun crank with unlimited money to spend can buy a lot of things with it.

I said: "With the size of this place and with the help busy about their business, a man could sneak in here and pick and choose among that collection. And there are shells for the guns in that cabinet, I'm willing to bet. And a man like Benny Sikes could get about any kind of gun his helper would want. You don't have to have a permit to buy a rifle."

The chief said fretfully: "You keep talking about Benny Sikes. You shouldn't do that unless you know something about him. Maybe he wouldn't sue you but that don't mean he'd like it much."

DUVAL came in then, swaggering a little, but he hesitated a bit when he saw me. And I gave him a break. I said: "I was just telling Chief Brown, Duval, that you probably had a break-down on the way up from Miami. I explained you were with me when we heard the news, and that we heard of it no more than twenty minutes after it happened."

He looked startled but picked up the cue. He said: "That's just what happened. My car started to miss and knock and I barely managed to make it to a garage. The mechanic had to drain the tank— there was as much water in the tank as there was gasoline."

And after that I'd catch him giving me puzzled looks all the time.

I asked the chief where Murphy was and he looked embarrassed and admitted he had him in one of the other rooms, under guard, along with the secretary and the help. And then I burned a little.

I said: "Any reason why? If he was trying to get away from you, he'd have done just that instead of calling in and reporting the killing. Whoever did it had half an hour to get away, that is, if he wanted to get away."

Chief Brown caught the last anyway. He said: ''What d'ya mean by that?"

I waved and said: "Mr. Gilbert isn't the only man to have a house on the beach, Chief. Any reason why one of the neighbors couldn't have sneaked up, shot him, and then sneaked back home. And then just sit there and wait for you to pin it on him? You'll have a job here, Chief, this is one of the bad ones."

"Now that you're here, Mr. Duval," Brown said, not having an answer to that one, "is it all right for Mr. Phelan to tell me what his job was with Mr. Gilbert?"

I shook my head at Duval and he caught it. He said: "I'm afraid that wouldn't be advisable at this time, Chief. You understand that Mr. Gilbert had many irons in the fire and that some of them are dependent on secrecy."

I said: "I'd like to talk with Murphy, if I could, Chief. And then, if it's all right with you, I'd like to go back to Miami. You don't need me as a witness. I wasn't even near here at the time Mr. Gilbert was killed. And my business in Miami is important."

"Go any time you want, Mr. Phelan. Murphy and the others are in... uh... the sun-room. You tell the officer who's at the door that I said you could talk to anybody you want. And I'm glad to have met you, Mr. Phelan."

We shook hands and wished each other luck, and I thought he'd need it if he ever got anywhere with his case.

And then I got thinking of how much of the same I'd need, and lost a lot of my cockiness. Then I said: "I'd like to see you a moment, Phil," and Duval followed me to the side of the room.

I said: "I gave you an out, mister. I could have said I hadn't seen you today. It would be a bit of perjury but what's that. Now what I want to know is this. Am I still working? I suppose you'll be in charge until your wife is found. At least until the will is read and whoever are named as executors take charge. What about it?"

"Well, yes, of course, Phelan, at least until I get Cornelia back safely. I intend to follow my own idea about this matter, though, Phelan. The string will be shipped to Cuba at once. And I'll arrange with the bank to have forty thousand dollars in cash in readiness at all times."

I said it was his and his wife's money now. And that I supposed it was their business what they did with it.

And then I went in for a chat with Murphy.

6: Dog Eat Dog

MURPHY, HENSON, the secretary, and the four people that worked on the place were all at one end of the sun room, and the cook, a big, buxom, colored girl, had been crying. I don't think Murphy was far from it, but Henson was quiet and colorless as ever. I got Murphy away from the others and started trying to make some sense out of the thing.

I said: "Now tell me all about it, Murphy. Right from say about an hour before it happened."

Murphy said: 'Well, we all had breakfast about nine. Maybe a quarter after."

"All?"

"The boss and Henson and me. Then we go in the front room and have another cup of coffee and the boss dictates three or four letters to Henson. When he gets through with this, we talk about the Kentucky place and how we're going to fix it up, after the war, when we can get stuff to do it with. A place like that goes to hell quick, unless it's kept up. Then we just talk about horses, and Henson goes away. He don't give a damn about horses but the boss always said he was the best secretary he ever had."

"What did Henson think about running the horses in Mexico or Cuba?"

"He was for it, Mr. Phelan. He says that they pay their way if they're running but that they're an expense if they don't. He's all business, that guy."

"What did you think about it?"

"I thought we ought to run 'em, too. But if the boss didn't want to, I didn't want to. I've been working for him sixteen years, and anything he wanted to do was right with me. If he wanted me to stand on my head in a corner, I'd have tried it."

"Sure. Go on, Murphy."

"Well, by and by the boss says he thinks it's a good day for a swim and goes and gets into trunks. He was like a damn' seal in the water anyway. He'd go down and splash around by himself if he couldn't get anybody to go with him. He starts down toward the ocean and in a couple minutes I hear this gun go boom. And then Alice, the cook, comes into the room and says Mr. Gilbert was shot and we all go down there. And he was dead by the time we got there."

"Were you all there? I mean everybody that stays here?"

MURPHY hesitated and then said: "Now, I think so but I can't be sure. We was just about nuts. The boss was on his face and there wasn't much blood coming from the little hole in his back, so I stuck my handkerchief in it to plug it up. Then we turned him over and there was a hole in the front of him that you could put your fist in. I ain't a doctor but I've worked enough on sick and injured horses to know he was a goner. I knew he was dead right then but I didn't want to believe it. Henson went back to the house to telephone for the doctor but I knew it was no use. A man can't be alive if the front of him's gone, and this hole wasn't more'n an inch from his heart."

"Where did the slug enter?"

"Straight across. Straight through."

"When you heard this shot, how far away did it sound?"

Murphy said slowly: "You know I've been wondering about that. I was in the front room and the door and windows were open on this porch, here. And the porch glass was down. And the back door, leading to the patio was open, so we'd get a draft through. So it would be hard to tell. But it seemed to me that it was pretty damn' close."

There was thick shrubbery growing right up to the house, so that didn't mean much. And a man in a room can't tell what direction sound comes from, half the time.

That was about all he could tell me, so I took the others in turn. Nobody was sure about anything except the cook, and the only thing she was positive on was that she saw Gilbert fall, just as she heard the shot. And she hadn't the faintest notion from where the shot came or how far away it sounded. She was in much the same position Murphy had been on that, though. Fore and aft ventilation, none from the side. She'd worked for Gilbert five years, acting as caretaker for the place when Gilbert and his ménage were away, and she was really broken up over the killing.

And for that matter, so was I. I'd barely met the man but he seemed such a swell guy.

I went back to the front room and found Duval and told him I was going to call a cab and go back to Miami Beach and start in again where I left off, and he agreed that was the thing to do. And surprised me by offering me the use of one of the Gilbert cars.

He said: "I can drive only one of them and there's the station wagon for somebody to go into town for groceries. So take any one of them you want except the Caddy."

Which was fine. I went back to Miami Beach in a Packard convertible that was one of the last series sold before the tie-up.

SIKES was back in the gambling part of his place when I got there, and so I had to use the men's room entrance. And I could see he was getting a heavy play that night. He nodded to me as I started toward him, but kept on talking to Ole, who gave me his gold-toothed smile.

Sikes said: "Be with you in a second, Phelan. Anything new?"

I said: "Not a thing."And went to the bar and stalled there waiting for him. And while I waited I watched Sikes, and Ole, who was the manager when Sikes was away, and decided they were having a quiet little quarrel about something. Both were smiling and all that, but I could see that both were holding their tempers with an effort. Some people think that Swedes and Danes are calm and placid people, and no doubt some of them are, but I've never happened to meet any of that kind. Those I know argue and fight almost as fast as the Irish, and they have a flarey temper along with it.

Finally they broke it up and Sikes came over to me, and while I was no authority on the Sikes' temper, I could tell he was steaming.

I said: "I came back before my own affairs were over because I ran into something funny. You know I used to know a guy named Phil Duval. He tells me he knows you, too."

"I know him," Sikes said briefly.

"Well, I ran into him this morning. And do things happen to the guy! I took-him up to the hotel for a drink and he tells me his wife has been snatched, and that her old man's got lots of dough. So then he gets on the phone and calls her old man— he lives at Fort Lauderdale, and he finds that the old man's been shot and killed not over twenty minutes ago. So I go up with him and he stands there and tells the cops you had the old man knocked off. And that you had his wife kidnaped."

Sikes was looking at me in a funny way. He said: "Her old man owned Corsair."

"So Duval told me. Well, if I was you, I'd be expecting a little visit from the boys in blue."

"I've been expecting it," he said, staring at me with that same odd look. "I've been looking for it in fact. Listen, Phelan, I've got somebody I've got to see before he gets away. Wait here, will you— I'll be back in ten minutes or less. I want to hear more of this."

I thought of his typewriter sitting there on the corner of his desk and said I'd be glad to wait. I knew something was going sour— but I didn't know just what it was. I'd slipped and I knew it, but I didn't know just where.

HE left and I was out of my chair and around to the machine with a rush. I was nervous enough, though, to take my gun from its sling and lay it on the desk right handy. I tapped out the usual quick-brown-fox and the all-good-men-thing and then slipped my gun back where it belonged and got back to my side of the table. And I was barely in time.

Sikes came back, looking meaner than I'd ever seen him. He said; "That straight about Duval?"

I tried to look innocent and said: "Sure. Why the hell would I turn around and come back here to tell you a yarn?"

"Now just what did he say?"

"Well, he said you'd grabbed the girl to try and force her old man to run his horses either in Mexico or Cuba. That you asked for forty grand on top of it. And that the old man refused to pay or ship his string and that you had him killed, because you knew you could make the girl promise to do it.''

"Didn't the cop want to know what I'd make by having Gilbert's horses running on a Mexican or Cuban track?"

"Sure. And Duval told him you could clean up on the betting because Corsair could take any race against the competition he'd meet. And that the rest of the string would hold their own or better. He said you were head of a bookie ring."

"He really spilled to them, didn't he?"

"He did."

"I didn't think he'd do that. I knew he'd crack if any pressure was put on him, but I didn't think he'd go out of his way to make trouble for me."

I asked: "Did he know you well enough to know anything about your business?"

"He might have," Sikes admitted. "He was a prize sap, you understand, and there's lots of times I'd bring him in here and we'd have a drink or two together. It makes it more personal than drinking at the bar and they come back oftener. Would you say I was a guy that ratted on a friend, Phelan?'

I lied with: "Of course not. I wouldn't be here if I thought that."

"Then I'm going to tell you something. If it's going to be dog eat dog, I'll eat harder than he can. In the first place, he said I stole his wife and the price for returning her was forty grand and the Gilbert string to run on a foreign track. That right?"

"Right."

"Well, I'm going to rat. He stole his own wife. He got her convinced that she was in danger because of the letters her father was getting about shipping the string out, so he got her to hide. And I don't know one damn' thing about this forty grand business. Between you and me I wanted that string running in either Mexico or Cuba, but I don't stick my neck out for a kidnaping rap for a thing like that. I offered Duval ten thousand bucks if he could talk the old man into it. And I offered twenty-five grand to the secretary, a guy named Henson, if he'd work it. I also told Henson I'd get tough about a couple of I.O.U.s of his that I hold, if he didn't get busy."

SOMEHOW I'd never thought of Henson as being a gambling man, but that didn't mean a thing. I once met a bank president who played the numbers.

I said: "I couldn't see anybody taking a chance on the chair, or on life imprisonment, for a thing like that. Certainly not anybody with as nice a set-up as you've got here. D'ya know where the girl is now? Where he put her?''

"Sure. It's not more than a block from here. She's under the name of Dickson and she's in Apartment 2B. It's the Palmetto Gardens Apartments, and you reach 2B by an outside stairs. Here! I'll show you— I can point it out for you."

He led the way into the gambling room and across to a door that opened on an alley. It was bright moonlight, Florida has the brightest moonlight I've ever seen, and while it wasn't bright enough to read by, every building stood out as though painted against canvas.

He pointed and said: "The fourth building. That two story affair... the first white building you come to. The stairs lead up from the street on the far side of it."

I started feeling an itching between my shoulder blades. I said: "What the hell! It's none of my affair, What do I want with her?"

"You'd do me a favor if you went to her and told her to get the hell home, where she belongs. She probably don't even know her father's dead. The way it is, I'm in the middle. The cops can maybe prove I wrote the guy some notes— sometimes they get ideas. I'm damned sure I don't want the Federal boys snooping around on it. They would close me up here before I could spit."

"Why don't you talk to her?"

"She thinks I'm a devil with two tails. And with you knowing Phil Duval, you're the guy that can make her see reason. Do me a favor, Phelan."

I was getting touchier by the second. I'd had that feeling since I'd walked in the place. And it wasn't getting any easier. And I thought if I ever got my hands on that girl she'd go home, whether she wanted to go home or not.

So, like a fool, I said: "Okay," and started down the alley.

But I kept enough native caution, at least, to take my gun from its sling, and carry it loose, under my jacket.

7: Murder Strikes Again

THE PAY-OFF STARTED just before I reached the Palmetto Gardens, and at a place where the alley narrowed slightly. Two men stepped out in front of me, and the bright moonlight showed me the guns in their hands as clearly as if it had been broad day. Neither man said a word, but they raised their guns as though some drill sergeant had roared out AIM.

And I started shooting before they were half-way ready.

It had happened fast and I was rattled, and so I shot between them on the first try. Just dumb work, but the gun flashing right in their faces threw them as far off balance as they'd tossed me, by stepping out at me like that.

I put the one on the right down to his knees with my next try, this before he'd had time to get in action. The second of them was shooting like hell by then but he was a lousy shot. He'd tried for me three times and we weren't more than twenty feet apart, and he hadn't touched me yet. I also knew that wasn't going to last; the law of averages would give him a hit pretty soon, so I took steps about it. In

that moonlight, and shooting a gun I knew as well as I did mine, I could pick and choose my shots, and I did that one. I shot him in the belly and I could hear him grunt even over the roar of the gun. He sat down so hard he bounced, then went over on his side,

They'd both dropped their guns so I crossed the few feet between us and looked them over. The first one had caught it high on the right side, and would probably live if a doctor got to him right away. The second was dying right then, although he'd probably take fifteen minutes to do it. He didn't have a chance, and I doubt if he heard what I said to them.

I said: "Learn to shoot, you ——, before you start out again."

The first one heard me, all right. He was trying to spit blood, which showed I'd caught him through the lung, but he managed to call me three dirty names before I turned and went back down the alley toward Sikes' joint.

I had a few things to say to Mr. Sikes and I thought no time was like the present.

THE alley door was locked so I went around to the front and through the men's room. And Sikes didn't see me until I was within ten feet from him.

Even then he tried to carry it off. He said: "Did you see her?"

I said: "In the office, you ——. You've got a better chance of talking yourself out of it in there than here."

"Now, Phelan!'

He hadn't changed expression but I suppose I had. Anyway, he said hurriedly : "I'll go! I'll go!"

I looked for Ole as I herded Sikes into his office, but when he started around the desk for his regular place, I stopped him and made him stand against the wall, with his arms crossed so that each hand held an opposite shoulder. Then I edged around him, holding my gun against my hip so he had no chance to spin and grab it, patted him for a gun. And found none.

I said: "What's the matter, big shot?" and backed away so he wouldn't be close enough to rush me. "Trust the boys to look after you, eh?"

He said: "This isn't smart of you, Phelan. I don't know what the hell's the matter with you."

"There's two of your boys down the alley that can tell you," I said. "But I don't think one of them is able to talk and won't, unless he gets a doctor soon. A doctor can't help the other one. What he needs is a coffin."

"You say they're my boys?"

"I said it. They work here. Or they worked here— if that's better."

"They try to hold you up? That it?"

"They didn't bother with a stall. They just started to shoot."

"I don't know anything about it."

I said: "I'm going to do my good deed for the day in just a minute. And, mister! If I have any more foolishness from you, I'll do a lot more. What's the idea of sending punks like that after me? Don't you think I rate a good workmanlike job? Did you honestly think that two dopes like that could take me, when I'd been warned ?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"When you went out to see somebody, maybe a man about a dog, I don't know, you told them what to do and where to do it. Don't kid the old folks, sonny. What I want to know is this: Who tipped you on me?"

He said instantly: 'Duval. And the secretary. You know, Gilbert's secretary. I've known who you were all the time... I knew about you an hour after Gilbert hired you."

"You put up a good act, mister."

"I thought you were better off here, where I could keep an eye on you," he admitted.

"Still think so?'

"Well, no."

I said: "I shot one of your boys through the belly. He's dead by now, or near it. I'm going to give you a break. I'm going to shoot the ankles out from under you, and this gun will take 'em apart so that nobody'll put 'em together again. Or maybe you can think of a better place."

He said: "My God, Phelan! Don't. I'll sign a confession about trying to get Gilbert to ship his horses. I'll write it right now. You can turn me over to the cops then, yourself. What more do you want? I didn't ask for that forty grand, but I'll even say I did that, too."

"What about the girl?"

"I told you the truth about that."

"What about the two boys you had waylay me? Will you put that in, too?"

"I'll put in anything you say."

He was talking in a hurry then, but that was because I'd taken the cushion from his chair and was doubling it around the gun's barrel. His room was almost sound-proof and I suppose he thought I was banking on that. As a matter of fact I had thought of it, and if I'd had any intention of crippling him in cold blood like that, I'd have no more taken a chance on that "almost" sound-proofing than I'd try to fly. I'd have marched him out through his place and into the alley.

I said: "Sit down then and start pecking away at that typewriter."

He wasn't handy with the machine and it took him at least three quarters of an hour to get it done, with everything I wanted him to put in. And then I spoiled what I think he was planning on.

I said: "I'm going to call in a couple of men to witness your signature. And they won't be boys that are working for you. They'll be a couple of customers. And if you make a peep, I'll bust you through the belly. Nobody's going to send me into a plant and get away with it, mister."

I opened the door and saw two prosperous-looking gents not ten feet away, and I called them over, watching Sikes all the while. I told them what I wanted and they said that certainly they'd do a favor like that for anybody.

And they did. Sikes signed, with them watching, and they witnessed at the side, putting down their home addresses when I asked them to. And I thanked them and they left.

Sikes wasn't whipped, but I could see he didn't want any part of rough stuff. He had a notion his lawyer could clear him, and I thought very likely he could. So I made sure he'd at least get his lumps, and it was a labor of love.

I said: "Stand up." He asked: "Why?" but he got on his feet.

THE first time I hit him I landed on the bridge of his nose, and I could hear the bone and cartilage crunch under the gun barrel. He sat on his backside so hard I thought he'd break the chair and he squealed like a pig. And then I really worked him over. He'd put his hands up to his face and I'd take a full-arm swing at his short ribs. When you swing forty ounces of solid metal against a man's ribs like that, and put your weight behind it, something has to give, and metal's harder than bone. He'd moan and drop his hands and I'd smash him in the face. And all the time I was telling him that he was getting off cheap, that I should kill him.

At that I almost did. When he passed out, and it was from shock and pain more than from anything else, he was a hospital ease, and I made sure of his being one by kicking him a couple of times in a place where I knew it would do him no good.

I left him there on the floor, and I had a notion it would be sometime before he was able to send a couple of killers to waylay a man, even if he wanted to take the risk of another beating like that. And I also had a notion that, by the time I'd sent the confession he'd signed, all properly witnessed, to the paper instead of giving it to the cops, he'd be in the pokey whether he owned part of the force or not.

I'd done a dirty job, but I thought I'd done it well. My thought was that if the cops couldn't, or wouldn't do anything about a man that got away with what Sikes did, it was time somebody else stepped in.

And then I was sore about him trying to have me put out of the way.

THIS time I approached the Palmetto Gardens from the front, and as a respectable citizen, not as an alley prowler. And I decided that nobody had found the two men in the back, because there were no police cars around that I could see, and it wasn't likely they could have come and gone during the time I was working Sikes over.

It takes time for the cops to work around a place where a couple of men are shot. They search for anything they can find, and it's surprising how often they find something.

I went up the stairs to the second floor and found that 2-B was the apartment just past the stair ending, and I rang the bell with a story all prepared, in case Sikes had been lying about where the girl was being kept.

It would have been embarrassing to have the door opened by some big burly with a temper and a dislike of being awakened at that hour of night.

There was no answer at all, so I needn't have worried. The door didn't open and there wasn't a sound inside the house. And then I got that itching between the shoulder blades that meant something was wrong, and I tried the door and found it unlocked.

So I opened it and went in and struck a match and found the light switch.

I'd never seen Cornelia Duval, but I didn't have any doubt about it being her. She had an ice pick in her ribs, with the wooden handle jabbed down so hard it was pressing her nightgown into the wound. She was on her back, with her head tilted a little, and there was the least little trickle of blood coming from the lower corner of her mouth.

I judged she'd been around twenty-five and that she'd been a darn' nice-looking girl.

There was only one thing to do and I did it in a hurry. I found the phone, which was on a stand by the bed, and got the police department in a hurry. And I got a nice soft voice when the connection was made.

It said: "Desk-sergeant Callahan speaking."

I said: "I want to report a murder."

The voice said: 'Man, is this a joke?"

"It's no joke. It's Cornelia Gilbert, the daughter of the man who was killed at Fort Lauderdale this morning."

"You mean Gilbert?"

"That's right."

"Where are you?"

I told him.

"And who are you?"

He was filling out a form and being very exact about it. So I told him my name, my present address, and my permanent one in New York.

And then he said: "I wish you'd stay there, Mr. Phelan, until the officers arrive. Are you alone?"

"Why, yes."

"Alone when you discovered the body?"

"That's right."

He said: "I'm sure Lieutenant Bellew, who's in the station now, will want to talk with you."

And that was that. The sergeant had just told me, in a nice way, that if I wasn't there when the cops came, they'd be looking for me in a hurry. Working on the theory that I wouldn't have been the first man to commit a murder and turn it in before someone else did. And while I waited I spent the time trying to figure out just how much I should tell them.

I'd been hired to find Cornelia Duval and I'd found her. That was fair enough. And I knew who'd killed her, or thought I did. Fair enough again. But I had no proof of anything, any more than I had proof of who'd killed her father.

I thought I'd better play it safe until I found out what kind of man Lieutenant Bellew was.

You can talk with the right kind of cop, but the less you have to say to the other kind, the better off you are. If Bellew happened to be a friend of Sikes, I could see where finding Cornelia Duval's body might not have been a good thing after all.

Pew came, and with him a dozen more cops. And the police doctor and an ambulance. And a man from one newspaper and a woman from another, this last looking for human interest, I gathered. Bellew turned out to be a grizzled old duck who didn't speak two words where one would do, and who apparently had his crew under complete control. He'd look at the print man and nod, and the guy would jump as though somebody had touched off a firecracker in his pants. He nodded when I told him I'd found the body and that  my name was Phelan and then said just one word,

It was: "Wait!"

He let the newspaper man stay, so he and I went to the kitchen where we found an almost full bottle of bonded rye, standing on the kitchen sink, and the newspaper man and I went for that like a baby for its bottle. The newsman gave me the dope on Bellew and it didn't take him long to do it.

He said: "He's a mean old ——, but he's honest. He's one of the old-timers on the force, and he's too good a cop for the public to stand for him being fired. It's the one and only example I've ever seen of honesty paying off. And in spite of his rank, there are plenty of green men on the force who're making dollars where he's making dimes. Just because they know enough to look the other way. Sure, honesty pays— but not in money."

"I don't suppose that crack could have anything to do with Benny Sikes?" I asked.

He said: "That stinker!"

I said: "Want to see something interesting. It might even be something you could use in your paper."

I handed over Sikes' confession and watched him. He took it in sort of a bored way, but he hadn't got more than half the first paragraph read before he gasped and really took an. interest in what he was reading. He went all through it, taking particular notice of the way it was witnessed, and then he stared at me with the blank look a blind man has.

He said: "My God! How'd you get this, Phelan?"

"Just asked him for it."

"Who the hell are you?"

"A private cop working with no license. You might say I'm down here doing a public service. Of course, in this case, I'm sort of satisfying a private grudge. You read there where he tried to have me killed, and I'm funny that way."

"I've got to see Sikes. But I'll leave this written up before I do. It's big news when a girl like Mrs. Duval gets murdered, but this will take the top off the bookie situation in this town, and that's bigger. Okay if I show this to Lieutenant Bellew?"

"I wish you would. If I showed it to him, he'd raise hell with me for not turning it in to the department. I couldn't very well tell him I was afraid I'd be giving it to somebody who'd tear it up before I was out the door."

"He wouldn't mind hearing it. He knows what's going on better than we do. Was Sikes at his place?"

"He was when he wrote it out and signed it. He'll be in a hospital now, though."

"What happened to him?"

"He ran into the end of a gun some way. Clumsy of him, wasn't it?'

The newsman stared at me as if he didn't believe I was alive. Or human.

And then he said: "I thought I'd seen and heard just about everything, but how wrong I was! Mr. Phelan, I thank you."

I said: "Then stall Bellew for me, will you? Tell him I'll see him before noon, tomorrow, but that I've got important business in Fort Lauderdale that can't wait."

Then I left through the kitchen door, which opened on a fire-escape.

8: The Pay Of

IT WAS JUST GETTING LIGHT when I hit Lauderdale and the town had that dead, early morning look that goes along with that time of day. I slammed through the town and turned toward the beach, and by that time I was in a worse rage than I'd been in when I worked on Sikes. I'd been thinking about what he'd started, and how it was finishing, and the more I thought of 'it the madder I got. I'd liked Gilbert from the moment I'd met him, and apparently he'd been a fine gentleman because everybody else seemed to feel the same way.

But he'd had a full and presumably a happy life and he'd lived the bulk of it. His murder was a terrible thing, but nothing like that of his daughter's.

I granted that she was unhappy at the time she was killed. She was planning on a divorce, which certainly meant an unhappy married life, but that had taken only two years from her life. She had everything to look ahead to. Money, position, friends, and it somehow seemed so much worse for her to be cut down like that than her father's being murdered. Her life was ahead of her and his was largely past.

So I was raging when I drove into the side road that led to the FISHING CAMP. And it didn't help my disposition any when a man stepped into the road ahead of me and held up his hand in a stop signal. And I felt no better about it when I saw he had a sawed-off shotgun slung across his arm in such a way he could bring it to bear in a hurry.

I said: '"Now who the hell are you?"

And at the same time picked up my gun from beside me. I'd taken it out because its weight in the shoulder sling was binding my left arm in driving, and right then I was thanking my stars I had.

Because I was getting that itching between my shoulder blades, and because, somehow, the man with the shotgun didn't look like a guard.

He was looking at the license plates on the car, and shifting his feet, probably without realizing it, so that he'd have solid footing when he brought that scatter gun into action. I opened the door on the driver's side, as though I was going to get out, and he moved over to command that side of the car. I'd planned the move for him before he made it.

Then he spoke. He said: "I'm the guard, mister. This road is closed. Mr. Duval is sick and tired of people coming in and pestering him."

He tightened his grip on his shotgun and waited hopefully. He was thinking that it would look much better if I was out of the car when he shot me. It would be hard to make a self-defense plea stand up if he had to shoot me through the windshield of the car. It would be so much better if I was on the road and clear of the car. He could claim that I went for a gun and that I had to shoot— and who could prove different.

I said: "I work for Mr. Duval. What the hell! This is one of the Gilbert cars— I suppose the Duval cars, now."

"What's your name?"

"Phelan."

"Can you prove that? Got anything on you to prove it?"

"Sure."

"Well, show me. I can read 'em by the headlights."

By that time he was at the side, where he could blast me the second I got clear of the car. And I decided that I might as well get it over with, win, lose, or draw.

I located the door latch on the other side of the car and ducked my head below the windshield and dived for it. I fell out of the car; there was no time to get out properly, and he came around the hood just as I got myself straightened out. I shot once at him and was a little too bit to the left, because the slug hit the bonnet of the car and went screeching off in a ricochet. He ducked out of sight and I got to the back of the car in a rush.

And then got flat on the road and looked for feet and ankles,

Of course there were tires in the way but I figured I could last him out. And it took five minutes or more but I did. But he was in retreat, though ready to fight a rear-guard action, from the looks of it. He was backing away from the car and moving as though he was walking on eggs, and it was like shooting clay pipes in a shooting gallery. I had it all my own way. I was half under the car and he was in the open, and that made him stand out against the gun sights like a clay pipe in a shooting gallery is outlined against the back-board.

I shot, and he squealed like a pig as he went down. He'd even tossed the shotgun ten feet from him as his ankle went out from under him.

It took maybe five seconds for me to scramble from under the car and around it to where I could see, but in that time he'd managed to get to a sitting position, where he could hold his leg above the ankle with both hands. And I looked him over for another gun and found one in a pocket holster on his hip.

I said: "How's it go, Mac? You make a hell of a poor road block."

The guy had nerve. He was sweating from the pain in his ankle, but he managed to snap back at me. He said: "I was doing what I'm paid to do. You'll do twenty years for this."

I said: "I'll get a medal, Mac," and took off his belt and made a tourniquet of it above his smashed ankle. And then I loaded him in the car and kept on to the house.

THE cook was up and nobody else. I said: "Where's Murphy sleep? And was Mr. Duval home last night?"

She pointed out where Murphy was and told me Duval had gone into town with the police. And that he had to see Mr. Gilbert's lawyers and had said he'd probably just go to a hotel. The lawyer being in Miami, of course.

And I said that was fine and went to talk with Murphy, who was in the cottage at the side. He was in bed, but as soon as I went in, he got up and began putting clothes on his tough and wiry little body.

I said: "It isn't much, Murphy. I've got it tied and wrapped up, I think. Did Mr. Gilbert ever say anything about his will?"

"Sure he did, Mr. Phelan. And he always made a joke of it. He said he'd live longer than any of us that was mentioned in it. I'm to get twenty-five thousand and Henson is to get the same. The cook here gets five thousand. The gardener two thousand. It's the same with the Kentucky place. The people who'd been with him longest got the most money."

"Has Henson worked for him long?"

Murphy frowned. "Now that's funny. He hasn't. I guess it was because he depended on Henson so much. You see Mr. Gilbert didn't like details."

"Henson wasn't in the room with you when Gilbert was shot, was he?"

"Well, no. But he was in his room, because when we ran down to Mr. Gilbert, he was along."

I said: "Come along, will you? I want a witness to what I'm going to find."

We went over to the main room and to the gun case along the wall, and the cook came in and said: "You want that I should make your breakfast now, Mr. Murphy?"

Murphy waved at her to go away but I stopped her. I said: "If you will, I'd like you to call the town hospital and ask them to send an ambulance out here. As soon as they can."

She stared at me and Murphy said: "Ambulance!"

I said: "I shot a man, down the road, and I've got him in the back of the car. He won't talk with me, but he'll talk with the cops."

AND it was then that Henson came into the room. He had one of the guest bedrooms facing the ocean, and he was as neat and colorless as he'd always been. He didn't even flinch when I jammed the gun in his belly and patted him over for a gun.

I said: "Murphy, you can do this as well as I can. The cops might even like it better, with you turning up the proof instead of me."

I'd forgotten the cook. She said: "Oh my Lawd!"

I said: "Susie, you call for that ambulance. D'ya want that man outside to die, just because you don't telephone?"

She scuttled out, and I said to the staring Murphy: "Open that gun case and start looking the rifles over, will you. I want to find one that's either been fired and put back without cleaning, or one that's been cleaned this last two days. Either will do."

Murphy opened the gun cabinet, which was built-in and glassed in, and which was at least fifteen feet long, with the guns arranged in sets. And very pretty, if you're anything like a gun crank.

Henson said precisely : "I hope you know what you're doing, Mr. Phelan. I shall certainly have you arrested for this outrage."

I said: "That'll be just before they set you in the chair at Raiford."

Murphy was taking each gun in turn, out of the case. He'd sniff the barrel, then open the breach and rub a handkerchief around the chamber, looking for fresh oil. And he hit pay dirt on the fourth gun he tried.

It was a 32-40 target rifle, a heavy barrel mounted on a Winchester single shot action. One of the kind of guns that uses hand-loaded ammunition and which, with a good man behind it, can put 'em in a three inch circle at two hundred yards. It had an eight-power Fecker 'scope on it and it was really a job.

Murphy said: "This is it. I can smell it. It's been shot the last couple days. I can smell the burnt powder."

I said: "Lay it on the table. And remember, you're the one that found it."

He said: "Yes, sir, Mr. Phelan."

I said to Henson: "Okay, that does it. I've got the motive for you and. now I've got the weapon that did it. And I can place you next it. This gun doesn't make much noise, nothing like one of the new high-velocity guns. You shot from your bedroom, with the muzzle of the gun clearing the window so the sound would come from outside. Murphy, this is the guy that killed your boss."

Murphy said and calmly: "Is that a fact? Stand up, Henson."

Henson looked startled but he stood up. If he'd had a chance to think about it, he wouldn't have made a move, but Murphy's voice was at an ordinary level and I suppose Henson was used to doing what he was told to do.

And then Murphy sort of uncoiled. He hit Henson in the mouth with a looping right that pitched him back in the chair so hard that the chair went over backward.

And then he turned to me, just as calmly and said: "And should it be I should call the cops?'

I said: "Lord, no. We've got to get another killer yet."

9: Lady Killer

THE AMBULANCE HAD COME and gone by the time Duval drove up, and I had Henson in his bedroom. And I hadn't taken any chances with him. I'd got fine copper wire to tie his wrists and ankles and I had him trussed to his bed in addition.

This, because he'd blown his cork. He cracked and all of a sudden, and for a little while I believed he'd really broken up. And then I realized it was a phony, that he was already building up for an insanity defense. He raved about how Gilbert had mistreated him and how Gilbert was an unnatural father because he hadn't done more to get Cornelia away from the bookie kidnap gang. And how he felt himself called on to kill Gilbert, this so Duval would be in charge and in a position to meet the bookie's demands.

I put a handkerchief in his mouth and held it there with a piece of tape and went back to waiting for Duval.

And, in the meantime, put in a call for Lieutenant Bellew, at Miami.

I said; "This is John Phelan, Lieutenant. I wish you'd come up here."

He said: "Why should I?"

I said: "I'm waiting for Duval to get here. He's the guy."

"You mean she was killed by her husband ?"

"Sure."

Bellew said heavily : "You're crazy, Phelan, and I advise you to get down here in a hurry. If not, I'll have to put charges against you. You're the one that found her— I can't have you running over the country."

I said: "Listen! He did it. Got that clear?"

"A man don't kidnap his own wife. It's that —— of a Sikes. He's in a hospital room— some guy almost killed him, but I've got a man on guard at his door. I've been in touch with the chief up there. I know about the extortion demands that Sikes was back of."

"Part of it, only, Lieutenant. Duval wrote the last note, the one asking for the forty grand. He had access to Sikes' typewriter and wrote it there. She was going to divorce him, and he saw his chance for big money, when her father was killed."

"The next you'll say he killed the father."

"I've got that killer here. Duval originally was playing for the forty grand. He talked his wife into thinking she was in danger, because of the notes Sikes was sending her father. He talked her into hiding out in that apartment— he may have even rented it for her. You might check on that with the manager there. He thought that if he could get the forty grand that way, he wouldn't have to depend on her for a settlement... she'd promised him one if he didn't make trouble over the divorce. But there was a better than even chance that she couldn't get the forty thousand from her father, who hated Duval. So he insured himself by the ransom note, thinking it would be blamed on Sikes."

"You say you've got the man that killed Gilbert?"

"I've even got a verbal confession, in front of two witnesses, besides myself. Gilbert's cook and trainer both heard him. He's acting crazy now, but that can be beaten out of him."

He said he'd be right up then, and he actually sounded friendly.

DUVAL came in twenty minutes later, walking in as though he owned the place. He was half drunk and I suppose he'd been taking it to keep from thinking of the ice pick he'd driven into his wife. He looked at me as though he didn't believe what he saw, then looked at the gun I held and turned greenish.

I said: "That's right, Duval. I can't make au arrest but I'm holding you for the Miami officers. They're on their way."

He mumbled: "What's this?"

I said: "You slipped all over the place. The man you hired to stand guard on the road out here, to shoot me down as I drove in, is in the hospital. With a police guard on him, The note you wrote on Sikes' typewriter is another thing. Sikes admits writing the others but he knows nothing of that one. His confession will be out in a Miami paper this evening. In it he tells of you talking your wife into hiding out and he admits he told you he thought it would be a good thing. He also says that he said that, knowing it. would put pressure on Gilbert and help in forcing him to send his string out racing again. I've got that confession properly witnessed, and Sikes will go on the stand and testify against you. He has to—he'd be likely to be charged with it himself, if he didn't."

Duval sat down and said: "Murph, will you bring me a drink. I need one, if I'm going to have to listen to this crazy talk."

Murphy told him he could get his drink in hell.

I said: "I think you were only playing for forty grand, but when somebody did you a favor and killed your father-in-law, you saw where you could run it up into the big money. It would be a cinch to prove your wife was killed after her father was, and that would put you in line for the Gilbert money. You were taking a big chance but it was for big dough and you tried it."

He said: "None of what you're saying makes sense. It can't be proven."

I said: "It'll surprise you. I don't doubt but that you've left prints in your wife's apartment. Unless you wore gloves every second, you're bound to have left them. Maybe you wiped that ice pick handle clean, but a man can't be in a place ten minutes without leaving signs of his presence. And then the police, knowing you're guilty, will really go to town on you for a confession. You can think of that. If they were questioning you in a routine way, you'd probably come through on it. But when they're certain you're guilty, they don't question you that way. They know tricks. I don't know half as much as they do and I made Sikes talk all over the place."

Bellew must have come up from Miami with the siren open all the way. He walked in and looked the situation over and asked: "This the one?" He nodded at Duval.

I said: "He's the one you want. He killed his wife in your county. I've got the one that killed Gilbert in the other room, but I didn't want to turn him in to the city cops until I got this one for you."

Bellew had dull slaty eyes and he turned these on Duval and studied him carefully. And then said: "Wife killer, eh? What we'll do to you before we book you and you get in touch with a lawyer! So it wasn't enough, just shaking down your wife, faking a kidnaping and working with a crooked bookie outfit? No! You had to go whole hog or none. I'd pull the switch on that Raiford chair on you myself, if they'd let me. You can call the local chief if you want, Phelan. Any time now. I want to get this guy back where I can talk to him quietly."

Murphy said: "God give strength to your good right arm."

I said: "I'll be down as soon as I get rid of my other boy. Murphy, will you call the cops?"

And that was that. Bellew even cuffed Duval's wrists together behind his back, instead of letting the two men with him take care of him. He explained this to me, gravely.

He said: "I just can't take a chance with him, Phelan. You can see how he's acting. He's a homicidal maniac. Look at him jump up and down and try to get at us."

This with Duval standing as still as a statue— and with no more to say.

THAT was all there was to it. I put in a bill for services to the executors of the estate and they paid it. Henson pleaded guilty, of course claiming insanity, and the state brought out his real motive and backed it up with Gilbert's will, leaving him twenty-five thousand. When Sikes got on the stand and testified he'd offered Henson another twenty-five grand if he could get the string on a Cuban or Mexican track, the thing was all over but the shouting. Even the dumbest juror could see that with Gilbert out of the way, Duval would race the string. Or that Henson, her father's confidential secretary and companion, could sway Cornelia into letting the horses run.

He got the chair, although it's now up on the automatic appeal all death sentences have.

Duval's ease was even simpler. The D.A. came into court with a signed confession and Duval got life. I think he should have got what Henson got, but life in a Florida jail is nothing I'd wish on my worst enemy.

And I got a lot of work instead of a vacation.

It's worked out that way for the past five years, and the next time I take one, the office won't know where I go.

They'll have to send a detective to find me.

_______________

2: The Box of the Ivory Dragon

James L. Aton

The Danger Trail, June, 1926

At least one source suggests that Aton may have been born in Kentucky in 1879, but solid information is very scarce. The author published several short stories in 1925-1926.

SHANGHAI... February... Clammy morning... The great city where East meets West shivered in damp and foggy cold.

Sikh policemen muffled in greatcoats hummed manfully as they breasted the frosty air. White men of affairs whirled along to work in closed cars; lesser white men damned fate in rickshaws. Chattering coolies in quilted winter coats lurched along the Bund in vain search of warmth. The strip of garden between Bund and harbor that in summer had sheltered the choice loafers of Asia was now abandoned to the cold— and to Kelley.

Quite unmindful was Kelley of the air's wintry sting. He had no greatcoat and no gloves; yet he lolled on a bench, facing the chill from the harbor, and did not shiver. Part of his inner warmth came from an overdose of hootch; more of it came from the marrow of the man, grown mighty on winter seas. From the misty harbor came a raucous medley of fog-horns.

The lone man on the bench ignored them expertly; he was otherwise busy. Deep from his pants pocket he had pulled the handful of small coins that made up his available cash assets, and was looking them over— appraisingly, yet not cheerlessly. "Heck!" he meditated. "Guess I'll have to hunt for a job!"

He was a big man, was Kelley— too big for speed. There was a military erectness to his shoulders; a hint of the stevedore in his huge hands, the roll of the sea in his legs, the devil-may-care glint of the soldier of fortune in his steel-blue eyes. With more fire than wisdom he had adventured to the ends of the earth— and had now no more than a jingle of small change to show for all that he had fought and dared.

Of the coins in his palm, many were pocket pieces, rich with associations, but poor in purchasing power. The pennies were from dirty Singapore... the eight-sided annas from red-andyellow Bombay... the copper sens from the toy streets of Tokyo... the smart yellow franc from a wine-shop in Marseilles... the quarter from singing New Orleans. The few Shanghai dimes and coppers that topped the heap were reminders of the five hundred dollars that he had squandered in four glorious days on shore. The thought came that he might walk up Broadway to a native money-changer and swap his assortment of alien coins for a Shanghai big dollar; but—

"Nix!" he muttered. "I won't do it— I'll hunt for a job."

From his coat-pocket he took the paper he had picked up that morning off the street, and began awkardly to seek the column that told of help wanted. He was no reader; it would have been more in keeping with his genius to have prowled along the water-front, seeking a berth on an outbound steamer. But he had been on salt water steadily for a long year; he had it in mind now to stay on shore and see somewhat of this land of China. The want ads, when he found them, were few in number, as becomes a land where the man supply exceeds the demand:

"Number one office coolie, able to speak French, English and Mandarin"... "Experienced compradore by established house in Tientsin" ... "Chinese student will exchange letters with American man for mutual self-improvement—" ... "Russian Countess travelling to France wishes companion who will act also as nurse-maid" ... "Missionary family will employ trained amah—call mornings only" ...

"Nothing for me," reflected Kelley. Already his huge hands were crumpling the paper when a line in the lower right-hand corner caught his eye:

American with military training for special service. Apply at once, top floor, 600 N. Szechuen Road.

Kelley started. Across the wide sweep of the traffic-congested Bund he dodged his way, and stopped in front of a stately Sikh policeman who held the head of a narrow cross-street.

"Hey, Bud, where's this location?"

The American put his finger on the ad. The bearded Sikh read the name, then pointed— a vague gesture indicating some far-off indefinite spot in the teeming city back from the harbor.

Kelley went his way along the narrow cross-street, keeping his eye out for some fellow white man from whom he might seek more explicit direction. In the middle of the third square back from the Bund, he first saw the Lank Man with the Brown Beard, bargaining with a Chinese peddler who had spread his wares of polished brass out on the narrow walk.

"It's worth five dollars."

The Lank Man held a brass bowl in his hand. "I'll give you that— no more."

"No can do," the peddler was saying. "Eight dollars best price. I tell you true."

Kelley forgot his objective for a moment and stopped to stare.

Indeed, the Lank Man with the Brown Beard would have won many stares on any street in any city. Some would have gaped at his abnormally lank tallness, some at the outsprouting luxuriance of his whiskers, some at the light summer suit and topcoat that flapped about his leanness in the moisture-laden winter wind. Whether in New York or London, in Shanghai or Winnipeg, he would have stood forth, unreal, foreign, alien, one apart from the conventionalities of this world.

American he was, but, rarest of all Americans, an artist— glorious rebel against the ways of the majorities.

"I cannot afford eight dollars," began Brown Beard. "I—" he glanced up and saw Kelley gaping.

"How do you like it?" He held out the brass bowl. "The tracing, I admit, is crude— but the shape! Man! only a Chinaman could dream of a curve like that."

Kelley became aware that Brown Beard was speaking certainly to him.

"I don't know nothing about that junk," he admitted. "It all looks alike to me."

"Each of us has his separate dream."

Brown Beard looked keenly at Kelley. "There are some things, I fancy, in which you could see beauty." He handed the bowl back to the watchful peddler, then with a deft motion drew something from his inner coat-pocket.

"There, what do you make of this?"

Kelly looked curiously at the dagger which Brown Beard placed in his hand.

"That's Jap stuff!" he exclaimed eagerly. "Samurai, or whatever you call it. That's a real one— you don't see many like it They held 'em like this—" He illustrated. "Doggone hard things to dodge."

He continued to hold the dagger, studying it with approval. "That's a dandy!" he said, avidly. "That's a real curio. I'd rather own that than some of them old ones I saw in the Tower of London."

Brown Beard's eyes were fixed thoughtfully on Kelley.

"I thought you'd see beauty in that," he said as he put the dagger carefully back in his pocket. "Now you can understand how I see beauty in yon brass bowl."

"No, I can't," disputed Kelley. "A bowl ain't no use; a dagger is— anyway, it has been. Just think— maybe kings have been killed with that there weapon."

"Maybe they have."

Brown Beard was still eyeing Kelley; the intentness of his gaze was well-nigh disconcerting...

Kelley's mind swung back to his errand. "Maybe you can tell me where this street is." He drew the paper from his pocket and pointed to the ad. "I won't try to pronounce it."

"Ha!" There was meaning in Brown Beard's ejaculation as his eye caught the ad. "Six hundred North Szechuen!"

"Is that some place you know?" demanded Kelley.

"Looking for work?" countered Brown Beard.

"You've guessed it. Do you want to hire me?" The Lank Man seemed on the edge of saying something vitally important. His eyes devoured Kelley as a critic studies a canvas. Kelley shoved the paper back into his pocket and turned away.

"Let me know when you're ready to talk," he said gruffly.

The Lank Man was at Kelley's side in an instant. "Here, I'll show you the way." His hand rested on Kelley's arm as he pointed out directions. "You'll find it easily," he concluded. "It's on a main street. And pardon me for not answering; I went to thinking of something else. I'm very often absent-minded, you know. I'm glad we met. My name is Hamilton— Wall Hamilton. I hope we'll meet again."

"Same here!" Kelley was a welcomer of friendships. "My name's Kelley—plain Kelley."

"Good luck, Kelley!" The two shook hands. "Better look into that job thoroughly before you take it— don't set yourself up too high, and don't believe everything you see. Good-by!"

"He's a nut," mused Kelley as he went on his way. "I've seen 'em like that before. He's different though— that kind are mostly so wrapped up in themselves that they don't even see you. He's got eyes like a detective—" the big man chuckled. "Heck, wouldn't he surely make a right funny detective!"

ii

THE front door coolie at 600 Szechuen Road grinned understandingly at Kelley holding his morning paper, opened the door wide enough to admit the big American, pointed up the stairs.

"Topside," he said briefly. Kelley climbed— one flight, two flights. A door stood open before him; he looked. into a wide, low-ceilinged room. Soft coal smoked in the fireplace. A man— a white man with smooth black hair, heavy eyebrows, rich olive complexion— sat busy with documents at a square table. He glanced up inquiringly at Kelley in the doorway.

"I'm looking for a job," said Kelley, and pointed to his paper.

The man at the table exhaled authority— gave Kelley the feeling that he ought to salute.

"Be seated!" From his voice the man was American. "I'll be through shortly."

There wasn't much in the room to attract Kelley's eye as he sat comfortably waiting. Sagging cracks in the white-washed ceiling ... a map or two on the wall ... a shelf of sheepskin books ... a telephone ... beyond the fireplace a rifle atop a wide mahogany chest.

Kelley eyed the chest hopefully— here, he surmised, was an arsenal.

The man at the table was more interesting to look at than was the furniture of the room. Smooth skin, straight nose, strong chin, thoughtful mouth, glossy hair, all blended into insolent handsomeness. His air was capable, assured— the air that speaks of hundred-thousand-dollar positions.

Kelley compared him to Brown Beard: the one a ragged roamer, dickering with a peddler on the street— the other a dependable man of affairs.

"I hope I land the job," wished Kelley, and smiled at Brown Beard's advice that he be wary of what he saw. "I guess I know the real thing when I see it," he argued inwardly. "I guess Hamilton's the one that needs a guardian— not me."

He waited for a long hour. The man of affairs worked steadily at his documents, occasionally consulted the map of China that hung on the wall, once made use of the telephone— to relay a cablegram in code to the Department of State at Washington.

Kelley was more and more impressed; plainly this man stood high in Government service. At length he swung around.

"Name?"

"Clay Kelley."

"Military service?"

"Three years in the Marines."

"Discharge?"

Kelley dug the treasured paper from an inner pocket and handed it over. The man at the table studied it closely, compared it with a typewritten docket which he drew from the table drawer, handed it back finally without comment.

"Last job?"

"On a tramp— the Mary Peter. I quit last week— here's a paper," Kelley proffered a "to-whom-it-may-concern" signed by the captain of the Mary Peter.

The man gave it scarcely a glance.

"Have you been in China before?"

"Not before last Monday," admitted Kelley.

"Any friends here?"

"Not to speak of."

"Any money?"

Kelley grimaced. "Them sing-song girls are good gamblers," he said with apparent irrelevance.

The man bowed his head for a few seconds in thought.

"All right!" he said with decision. "You're hired."

"What for?" It was Kelley's turn to interrogate.

"Secret Service," the man at the table leaned forward confidentially. "I'll have to tell you a bit; I see you're the sort that can be trusted."

"You bet I am!" bragged Kelley. "You can just bank on me."

"My name is Leighton," went on the other. "I'm working directly from Washington— even the consular officers here don't know that I'm on the field. That's to avoid any possibility of a leak. It's ticklish work— I'm cooperating with a like man from London. We're looking for exports of opium. A good deal is smuggled out from here. If we can stop it, it will be easier than trying to uncover and confiscate it at port of entry. Understand?"

"Sure!" approved Kelley. "That's a good idea. It's nothing to land opium in 'Frisco— I've seen it done enough times. Where do I come in?"

"So far I've been doing only preliminary investigating," continued Leighton. "I'm onto the gang now that's doing the smuggling— it's an organized ring, you understand. I have authority to conduct a raid whenever I have a chance to confiscate a sufficient amount to make it worth while. Raids will call for more or less force; I need a man who can give a blow or two when there's need, and who can be trustworthy and discreet. I'm giving you a chance at the job."

"When do I start? What do you pay?"

"You start today. I may arrange our first raid to-night. The salary is two hundred per month gold, and necessary expenses."

"I'm hired!" Kelley expanded his chest luxuriously. "Lead me to it."

"The car is ready," said Leighton in a low voice. "Let's go."

It was eight o'clock— a dark rainy evening. Kelley had put in a lazy day, loafing most of the while in a room adjoining Leighton's office. He was tired of inactivity— hungry for action. The two of them piled into the back seat of a touring car, atop two silent and impassive Chinamen. In the front seat sat two more— one of them driving.

"These boys are fairly trustworthy," whispered Leighton. "They've been with me for a year. They're Chinese— of course I don't dare trust them too far! They might be tempted to drop the loot in their pockets and make away. That's why I've hired you."

The car leaped away at reckless speed. They skidded through curving narrow streets, dodged rickshaw runners and foot-passengers, shot past a loaded tram, swung around sharp corners, passed saluting Sikh policemen, scraped the curb to avoid an aged woman with a teapot who was tottering on bound feet down the middle of the road. The driver honked incessantly. Through the rain gleamed the lights of tiny native shops. Once Kelley spied a painted woman leaning out into the night from an upstairs window.

"We're raiding a house where there's opium hidden," Leighton spoke with the sharp detail of a stage director. "It's a Chinese house— seven rooms, one behind the other, with open courtyards between. There's only the one entrance. I'll stay with the car so as to ensure you a safe retreat. Two of these boys will guard the door of the house. You and the other two will do the actual raiding. I hardly think you'll meet with any resistance. Show the badge that I pinned on your coat, wave your revolver, and shout 'Police'— that's a word they all know."

"That part's all easy," said Kelley. "You couldn't pack enough Chinks into a seven-room house to scare me. What I want to know is where to look for the opium."

"That's what I'm coming to," answered Leighton. "One of these boys has been in the house and knows exactly where the loot is planted. In the third room back you'll find a mahogany chest with brass corners. It's a Chinese chest with a Chinese lock— easy to break open. Put this jimmy in your coat pocket."

The driver turned and spoke a word in Chinese to Leighton.

"We're almost there," said the chief. "Now listen: you'll find that chest full of clothes; throw them out. Clear at the bottom you'll come to a little box of carved ivory about two inches square. Don't stop to open it— drop it in your pocket quick and get away. We want to be gone before a crowd gathers; if we have to call for police help, it will make complications."

"Just that one little box?" asked Kelley incredulously.

"Just that," answered Leighton. "That's enough. There's enough opium packed in that little cube to pay ransom for a king."

IT WAS too easy ... So reflected Kelley as he bent above the mahogany chest in the dimly lighted room and threw garments of tapestried silk out upon the tile floor.

The aged door-tender had dropped from a tap of his fist; the two Chinese boys with waving revolvers and threatening shouts had herded the scared inmates of the house into an angle of the courtyard and were now standing guard while Kelley looted the chest. Nothing to do now but drop the little ivory box into his pocket and get away. Hardly a blow struck! It was too easy— it wasn't good sport.

The tiny box of carved ivory was in his pocket; he straightened up and turned, to leave. Sudden uproar in the courtyard— fierce shouts of fighting men! Kelley, uncomprehending, started for the doorway.  The shouters broke in upon him— a posse of fierce Sikhs with clubs and guns— turbaned Sikhs of mighty stature, dressed, in policeman blue. Kelley had no thought for catastrophes. Were not these his allies? Was not he also on the side of the law? Leighton evidently had been driven to call them to his help.

The club of a Sikh lammed the side of Kelley's head. About him flamed spinning stars; he reeled. Sikhs grabbed his arms and kept him from falling— dragged him roughly through the door. The courtyard whirled before his dizzy eyes— wavering torches— shouting policemen— his two Chinese confederates held captive— a lank white man in light summer suit with an outsticking beard of brown.

"What the hell?" whispered Kelley. His head sang; his thoughts were chaos. Wait till these dam' Hindoos find out their mistake— clubbing the very men they were sworn to aid. Just wait! The laugh will be on them all right then. On they jerked him furiously—through room and court and room, out into the street. He looked hopefully for Leighton to set things right. In vain! Leighton and his car had disappeared. Kelley's dizziness passed. He turned on his captors.

"See here!" he remonstrated. "You got things mixed; you—"

The police flourished their clubs; their grip tightened on his arms. Off into the rain they started. Kelley decided to be sensible. He shut up, and went along.

iii

HINGS were happening too blamed fast; Kelley's slow mind couldn't keep up. Only a minute ago there had been those fool policemen dragging him off to jail. And then through the darkness had loomed up the Lank Man with the Brown Beard. He had halted the Sikhs with a sharp word of command— had sent them about their business with a jabber of Hindustan— and now was leading Kelley off by the arm to Godknows-where— just the two of them footing it off alone through the rain.

"How come?" demanded Kelley.

"You're out on bail," explained Hamilton, "paroled to me. I know these Sikhs pretty well— I've been around Shanghai for some time. They know who I am and where I live. I convinced them that I knew you and that I'd be responsible for you; so they agreed to let me take you to my room and keep you till morning. I haven't much of a place, but it's better than jail."

Hamilton's explanation was labored and prolix. In a keener listener than Kelley it would have roused suspicion that he was handling only the fringe of the truth. But Kelley wasn't the suspicious sort.

"I saw you back there in the house," he said. "The way you stood there, I thought at first it was somebody bossing them policemen; and then I saw it was only you. How did you happen along just when you did?"

"Oh, I often roam around at night," evaded Brown Beard.

Kelley brushed cold drops of rain from his eyes. They were headed against the wind, and it was keen going.

"This is a hell of a night to roam around," said he.

"What made you do it?" countered Hamilton.

"We was out on official business," explained Kelley. "Them police will find they made a big mistake; they arrested the wrong men."

"Do you call it official business to break into a Chinese house and rob it?" asked Brown Beard quietly.

"Look here!" blustered Kelley. "I guess I know my business. You don't need, to think I'm a thief."

"It's what the judge will think," said Hamilton bluntly. "He's pretty short with Americans who break into Chinese houses. Only last month he sent two chaps to Bilibid. They forced their way into a Chinese residence under the pretext that they were international police searching for opium. When the Sikhs caught them, they were making off with five hundred dollars worth of jewelry. They're up for three years at hard labor."

Kelley had no answer. Here was something to worry about... Suppose Leighton shouldn't come forward to clear him.... But of course he would; he was the sort you could bank on. Kelley reassured himself thus again and again. Hamilton was likewise silent, his head down against the rain.

There was no further talk until they were snug in his warm room. The room was a medley of Oriental curios— painted silks and crescent swords on the walls— vases and candlesticks on the mantel—choice bits of lacquer and brass and cloisonne on the round table.

"This is a swell room," said Kelley as he dropped into a chair before the open fire. "I sure appreciate what you're doing for me. I don't want you to think I'm a crook."

"I wouldn't let you loose in here with my curios if I thought that," said Hamilton. "All the same, you have to admit that the evidence is against you. Why don't you open up, Kelley, and tell me all about it? I happen to be a friend of the judge, and if I have the facts, maybe I can help you out."

"I'm going to tell you," said Kelley. "But I want you to keep it all confidential. Maybe you can keep it from coming out in Court. I'm employed in the Secret Service, you see, and that's why."

He went on and told his tale through to the end. "And I got the opium," he wound up triumphantly and pulled the little ivory box from his pocket. "Got it just before those fool police butted it. Good thing they didn't search me, or I wouldn't have it now."

Brown Beard gave the box no attention for the moment.

"What makes you so positive that your man Leighton is in Government Service?" he asked.

"I saw his papers," testified Kelley. "And I heard him sending a cablegram to the Secretary of State. And what's more, I'm a judge of men; I know an official when I see one. He's a big man; he ain't no ordinary sort like you and me."

"But supposing you're wrong." Brown Beard turned a plate of ancient porcelain, over and over in his slender hands as he argued. "Supposing he wanted that house robbed and put you up to do it— so that he wouldn't get caught at it himself. What then?"

Kelley looked about stubbornly for an answer— and found it between his fingers. "Here's the box of opium," he retorted. "I guess that shows he was telling me the truth. There's enough dope in this here little box to pay a king's ransom."

"Must be going up in price," said Hamilton drily. He took the ivory box from Kelley's hand and glanced at it casually.

"By George!" he exclaimed, and sat up suddenly, straight and tense. His eyes devoured the carving on the little box with the rapt devotion of the connoisseur. He was again an artist, forgetful of all save the things of art.

"What's the idea?" asked Kelley, "That's just an ordinary little ivory box."

"Ordinary!" cried Hamilton. "Kelley, that's the most exquisite carving I've ever seen— the very soul of Canton done in ivory. And old!— see, it has the delicate yellow of antiquity!"

He had taken a reading-glass from the table and was intent on the design carved on the box. "The imperial dragon," he went on, half to himself. "I understood there was only one box of this pattern in China. I wonder—"

He broke off and sat looking for many minutes at the curio while Kelley watched with yawning indifference.

"Did you look at the opium?— inside the box?" demanded Hamilton suddenly.

"Why, no," answered Kelley in bewilderment. "Leighton said it would spoil the evidence to open the box. But if you want to—"

"Oh, never mind," yawned Hamilton. He rose to his lank height and set the tiny box on the mantel. "It's tied with a peculiar silver cord that would take a while to undo— and I'd hate to cut it or break it. Kelley, you have one virtue: when you get an idea, you hang to it like a bulldog; but you have one Weakness: there's room in your skull for only one idea at a time– and therefore, you're a fool... What say we go to bed?"

Kelley had slept through typhoons and hurricanes, and he was not the sort to keep awake over the logic that had dubbed him fool. He stretched out on his back beside Hamilton in the comfortable bed, and slept— and snored.

"KELLEY!" said Hamilton sharply. "Here!" Kelley had finished breakfast before the cheerful open fire in Hamilton's room, and was amiably picking his teeth. "What's your honest opinion of Leighton this morning? Do you still believe he's on the square?"

"Why should I believe any different?" evaded Kelley; it was the most definite answer that he could make. "In that case, you'd better go and see him this morning," ordered Hamilton. "You'll not be wanted in Court till afternoon. I'll look for you back here at one o'clock. Perhaps Leighton can help you get clear. Here, take him his little box of opium." He handed the ivory box to Kelley as he spoke. "Now trot along."

"I thought you wanted to open this first," Kelley sought to temporize.

"No, no," said Hamilton wearily. "I've seen opium before. Besides, I have a busy morning and want to be alone. One thing, though—" His voice had the ring of command. "Do not tell Leighton that you have been with me. Now goodby— and good luck!"

Kelley went. He had the feeeling that he was walking in the midst of mystery, but he lacked the brains to think through. Between forces that he could not understand, he obeyed their pulls and pushes— and trusted to. Kelley's luck.

It was a drab morning, but North Szechuen road was vivid with color. It was a little while before Kelley realized that the color was that of many turbans wound 'round the heads of blackbearded Sikhs.

"All the policemen in town is out this morning," he muttered. "I hope they don't start pitching on me again."

Onward he went with fear and trembling. The groups of armed Sikhs watched him, but offered no interference. The front door coolie at Six Hundred peeped out cautiously.

"I want to see Leighton," announced Kelley.

"No can do."

The coolie sought to close the door, but Kelley's foot was in the way. Kelley shouldered his way in, shoved the little coolie to one side, and made his way up the two flights of stairs.

Leighton had not heard him coming. He sat at his table in the cheerful room upstairs, his head buried in his hands. A revolver lay close to his elbow. The fire was cloyed with the light ash of many burned papers.

"Here I am," said Kelley. "What do you want?"

Leighton leaped warily to his feet; his hand reached for his revolver. "Didn't you want me to come back?"

"What for?" Leighton's voice was suspicious and hard; the poise and self-possession of yesterday were gone; his mouth worked nervously.

"Why, to work, of course. I'm hired by the month, ain't I? The police butted in on me last night, but they let me go again. I'm out on bail."

"There'll be nothing for you to do for a few days," said Leighton, nobly pulling himself together. "Not till I get word from Washington. You may go where you please now. Tell me where you're staying, and I'll send for you when I want you."

"I have to appear in court this afternoon," related Kelley. "The judge is liable to send me to jail if he don't know I'm in the Secret Service."

"I'll telephone him," promised Leighton glibly. "He'll let you off all right."

"I got the opium O.K." Kelley pulled the little ivory box from his pocket.

"You did!" Leighton sprang forward and tore the box from Kelley's hand; his voice trembled with eagerness. "By Jove, that's it! Good for you! Did you open it?"

"No, of course not. You said not to. And I was lucky enough to keep it hid from the police."

Leighton made no reply. He turned his back and stood facing the window. He pulled a knife from his pocket; Kelley guessed that he was cutting the tiny silver cord that held shut the ivory box.

"All right?" Kelley took a step forward in his eagerness to see.

"You fool!" cried Leighton; he swung furiously on Kelley. "You ass! You crook! What the devil do you mean?"

"Mean?" Kelley in perplexity stooped and picked up the box that Leighton had dashed to the floor. A few waxy brown pellets were still clinging to its inside. He put them to his nose and sniffed.

"That's opium, ain't it?"

"Of course it is," Leighton screamed with rage into Kelley's very face. "I suppose you call it a joke— you big thick-head! Do you think I'd go to all that trouble to get ten dollars' worth of dope!"

"Well— but—" Kelley grew angry in his turn. "Stop your cussing and talk sense. Look out—"

His hands went up in self-defense. He was a big man and strong, but he was slow— no match for a foaming wildcat like Leighton. He found himself thrown down two flights of stairs as neatly as if he had been a sack of rice. The front door coolie took hold handily and dumped him forth into the cosmopolitan publicity of North Szechuen Road. The door behind him banged shut.

"Well, heck!" Kelley got staggeringly to his feet; his hand still clutched instinctively the tiny ivory box carved with the imperial dragon. "Everybody says I'm a fool. I'd like to know what it all means."

The ring of turbaned policemen had gathered closer while he was inside. They gazed at Kelley after the manner of strong men, but let him pass without interference.

"Guess I'll go back and see Hamilton," muttered Kelley as he started off. "There's one thing I can tell him for sure; that man Leighton is nothing but a blamed crook."

Hamilton was sitting in his armchair before the open fire when the door opened and Kelley limped in.

"Back already?" he asked without rising. "Didn't you find Leighton?"

"Sure I did! He's a crook! He threw me downstairs." Kelley flopped into a chair and gently massaged a bruise on his cheek.

"That's too bad. Sit still awhile and rest. I've been studying some of my curios."

Hamilton's occupation indeed was manifest. A brass bowl lay in his lap; a pair of porcelain vases and the Samurai dagger beside him on the table. His hand held a tiny object that glittered green.

"I wouldn't give a rap for all that stuff," said Kelley stiffly, "except that dagger— that's a real humdinger."

"You'll enjoy looking at this one." Hamilton handed across the tiny bit of green. "Handle it with care; it's valued at ten thousand dollars."

"Ten thousand dollars! Gee! What is it?"

Kelley looked with awe at the treasure— a mite of cool green stone carved into a pendant an inch and a half long.

"That the finest specimen of carved jade in China. It was stolen last summer from the Imperial Museum in Pekin, and there's a reward of a thousand dollars for its safe return. You and I will start for Pekin tomorrow to collect the reward."

"Where did you get it?" Kelley failed to grasp the significance of the "you and I."

"Last night, while you were snoring," was the answer. "I took it out of your little ivory box and left some pills of opium in its place."

"Oh! Then that—" Kelley sat and thought with growing understanding— pleased at his own astuteness in being able now to see through the whole mystery. "Sure, I see it all now. Leighton and his gang must have found out some way about the jade and wanted to steal it. And they hired me to be the goat— the yellow bunch! Say, he pretty nearly fooled me at that. I could have sworn he was on the square."

"He's a good actor," said Hamilton. "And he's shrewd; it's mighty hard to get anything on him. Even now—"

"And he told me it was opium," chuckled Kelley. "It was sure a joke on him when he opened the box and found it was opium. He's a crook all right He ought to be arrested."

"That's being attended to," said Hamilton patiently. "My men will pick him up this morning when he leaves the house. Perhaps you saw a few of them in the street."

"Your men?" asked Kelley. "I saw some policemen. Who the dickens are you?"

"I'm in the Secret Service," answered Hamilton. "I've been here in the East for some time— trying to round up a few birds like Leighton."

"You a detective?" said Kelley bluntly. "Well, there sure ain't nobody would guess it— not in fifty years."

"Thanks!" said Hamilton. "That's all to the good. But about this pendant—" He leaned forward and pointed with his pencil to the details of the Carving. "Observe here the cluster of pomegranates— and here the gnarled tree—and here the teahouse beside the one-arched bridge. The wisdom of a thousand generations graven on an inch-long gem."

"I can't see nothing to that," said Kelley. "Looks to me like it's all bunk. But, say, I want you to tell me one thing."

"Yes?"

"You called me a fool," owned Kelley. "And I am. But how did you guess it? And what made you believe I was honest?"

"Experience," answered Brown Beard drily. "Much experience— in the appraising of curios."

_________________

3: The Incubus

Achmed Abdullah

Alexander Nicholayevitch Romanoff, 1881-1945

The Blue Book Magazine April 1920

SPEAKING in after-years about that period of his life, Lloyd Merriwether, being a New Englander and thus congenitally given to dissecting his motives and reactions and screwing them into test-tubes, used to add, by way of psychological comment, that it wasn’t the big things that mattered in a crisis, but the small ones; and that, by the same token, it was not the big things one missed when one was away from that blending of hackneyed efficiency and pinchbeck mechanical process called Civilization, but the petty, negligible ones— those that have grown to become second nature, almost integrally part of one’s self, like one’s eyes, or ears, or nose.

Now— he would say— take, for example, a razor-strop or a box of talc powder. Take a bottle of eau de Cologne or witch hazel; or, if you prefer, a nail buffer, a pair of toilet scissors, or what not.

Silly, foolish, tinsel things, you say? Rubbish a man can do without just as well? Well— don’t you believe it! Not for a single, solitary moment!

Oh, yes! You can do without all that truck when you are home, all snug and taut and comfortable— with shops around you on every street so that you know you can buy them, if the spirit moves you and you have the price. Sure.

But suppose you find yourself somewhere at the back of the beyond, where you can’t buy the fool things for love or money— absolutely cannot get them. Why, at that very moment, those flummeries become vital—vital not from a pathological angle, because you always want what you can’t get, but really, truly, physically vital.

It was that which meant the tragedy of the whole thing.

You bet. Tragic! Although— not— because it was so ludicrous, straight through. For, you know, I was quite out of my head when that fellow from the Angom Presbyterian Mission picked me up. What was his name? Oh, yes. Morrison. Doctor Sylvester Morrison, an Englishman, and a very decent chap.

I WAS a raving lunatic when he found me. Sat there screeching some musical-comedy song of a few years back— “Gee— but this is a lonesome town!” or something of the sort.

Say! It must have sounded funny, back yonder, in the heart of Africa, with the sun rays dropping straight down from a brazen sky to shatter themselves upon the hard-baked surface into sparkling, adamantine dust— to rise again in a dazzling vapor.

Oh, yes. Very funny, no doubt!

And then I went for Doctor Morrison with my knife. Lucky for him that I had used my last cartridge.

Well, to go back to the beginning, I felt a presentiment of coming disaster shortly after I was faced by the fact that those ochre-smeared, plum—colored Fang coons had run away during the night, as fast as their skinny legs would let them. I never did find out what made them stampede, nor cared to discover the reason why. You know what they are like— half children and half apes, and chuck— full of animistic superstitions and the inhibitions that go with them. I guess they must have heard a drum-signal boom-booming through the night— some brute of a flat-nosed, tattooed medicine-man brewing his smelly craft somewhere in the miasmic jungle to the north, and giving them the tip that I was “dam bad ju-ju.” At any rate, there I found myself that morning, on the upper reaches of the Ogowe River, a day’s journey below Boue, a week from the coast, and all alone.

I was rather annoyed. You know, Africa raises Cain with a white man’s nerves and general amiability. And if I could have caught one of those runaway coons, I would have given him what was coming to him with my hippo-hide whip. But it was no use trailing them in the jungle. The wilderness had swallowed them, and so I contented myself with cursing them in English and Freetown pidgin.

Afraid of being alone?

Not I. You see, I wasn’t a greenhorn, but an old Africander, dyed-in-the-wool, dyed-in-the-trek, and able to take care of myself. I knew that particular part of the French Congo better than I know my native Cape Cod, and I really did not need a guide; nor porter for that matter, since I was to go the rest of the way by canoe.

Nor was I afraid of any stray natives popping out of the bush. I’ve always been friends with them. I am not an adventurer— seeking for the rainbow, the pretty little rainbow that usually winds up in a garbage can— not an explorer, nor a soldier. I am a businessman, pure and simple, and I needed the natives to bring me rubber and ivory and gold— dust, while they needed me to get them their particular hearts’, and stomachs’, desires—American cloth, and beads, and pocketknives, and Worcester sauce, and Liverpool trade gin, and rifles that didn’t shoot and similar truck. Of course, I did ’em brown whenever I had half a chance, and I guess they returned the compliment. So we had mutual respect for each other, and I wasn’t scared of them— not the slightest bit.

As soon as I discovered that my Fangs had stampeded, I took stock of my belongings, and I saw that they had not taken much— in fact, nothing except the little waterproofed pack which contained my toilet articles, mirror and razor and shaving— brush and comb and all the rest. Struck me as funny at the time. I said to myself that those Fangs were fools— damned fools. They might have helped themselves to some of my other packs as easy as pie. Food, you know, tobacco, beads, all that. But they had not. Why? God only knows. I told you before that they’re half children and half apes.

So I had a good laugh at their expense.

Well— I didn’t laugh much a few days later.

THERE I was, then, in the crawling, stinking heart of Africa, all alone, and— for the moment, at least— cheerful enough. For I am a businessman, and I told myself that those fool negroes had saved me a tidy little penny by bolting, since I owed them a month’s wages. Too, I was well supplied with everything a fellow needs in the wilderness, from quinine to matches, from tabloid beef to— oh, tabloid fish cakes. My health, but for occasional, woozy fever spats— they being part of Africa’s eternal scenery and accepted as such— was first-rate, and my canoe a snug, comfy little affair that pulled as easy as a feather.

I decided that I would just drift along down the Ogowe River to the estuary, and no hurry— not a darned bit of hurry. The Ogowe is not a treacherous water; the channel is clearly marked most of the way, and the mangroves sit rather well back— like hair on the brow of a professional patriot, eh?

As to the pack with my toilet articles? Well, what did it matter? There weren’t any women kicking around loose in that part of the Dark Continent to care or fuss if my hair was long or short, my complexion smooth or stubbly, my fingernails round or square. Blessed relief, in fact, to be independent of one’s outer man, I thought.

So, I repeat, I was quite cheerful— for a few seconds, perhaps minutes.

But, almost immediately, I knew that my cheerfulness was faked—faked by myself, subconsciously, for my own, private, especial benefit; almost immediately, I sensed that vague, crushing presentiment of coming disaster I told you about— and my nerves began to jump sideways and backward, like a whisky-primed Highland Scot when he hears the whir of the war pipes.

Of course, being a sensible fellow, and not imaginative, I tried to crystallize my nervous presentiment. Couldn’t, though. It was too subtle, too elusive— too damned African, to put it in the proverbial nutshell. All I was sure of was a sort of half-feeling— and I’ve had it before and since— that Africa was not a continent, but— oh, a being, a sinister, hateful, cruel, brooding monster, with a heart and soul and desires— rotten desires, mostly— and that this Africa hated me, because I was white, because I was an interloper, because I had no business there except— well, dollars and cents.

Yes. A mass of rocks and rivers and forests and jungles, this Africa, but with the physical, even the spiritual attributes of man— and I used to brood on that thought until often, in my dreams, I felt like taking Africa by the throat and throttling it as I would an enemy. Silly, too, since I needed Africa for the benefit of my bank-account and the encouragement of my creditors.

Never mind, though.

I just couldn’t crystallize that damned, sneaking, ghastly presentiment, and so, knowing even at the time that it was a lie, I said to myself:

“Fever, old man! Go ahead, and do the regular thing!”

I did. I dosed myself with quinine and Warburg’s and a wee nip of three-star just to top it off. Then I packed my canoe with a fairly steady hand, jumped in, balanced it and pushed off, gliding between the banks of the Ogowe River.

REMEMBER my telling you that I had intended drifting along slowly, that I was in no hurry? Well, the moment my paddle fanned the water, I reconsidered, subconsciously. I decided, again subconsciously, that I was in a devil of a hurry, that I must get away from the hinterland, from the Congo, from the whole of Africa.

I said to myself that, arrived at the coast, I would catch the first mail-boat bound for Liverpool and then on to America. No— I wouldn’t even wait for the mail-boat. I would go straight aboard the first dirty tramp steamer that came wallowing up from the south, and beat it home.

Home! That’s what I needed! And rest, rest— and a white man’s big, crimson drink in a white man’s proper surroundings—with white-aproned saloonkeepers and stolid policemen and, maybe, a night-court magistrate or two all complete. I wanted to be shut for a while from this stinking, brooding, leering Africa. I wanted America, the white man’s land, the white man’s blessed, saving vices and prejudices.

How I longed for it, longed for it as if it were a woman, as I paddled down the river!

Of home I thought, of foolish things— New York, and dear, garish Fifth Avenue all agleam with shop windows and the screaming brasses of passing automobiles, and the soda place around the corner on Forty-second, and the night boat to Boston— and a solid hour with the ads in back of the magazines. And then I looked about me and I saw Africa, putrid, acrid! And, gee! How I hated it— hated it!

I pulled myself together. Sure, more quinine, more Warburg’s, and another nip of the stuff. Back to the paddle with all my strength— and the canoe flying along like a sentient being.

I paddled as if all the furies were after me. Just opened a tin at random, sneaked forty winks now and then, and off again, though my hands were raw and blistered, my back sore and strained till I nearly shrieked, my legs numb from the knees down, my eyes red-rimmed and smarting with watching the current.

Three days. Four. Five—

And the work! And the sweat! And the heat! Why, man, all the heat of all the universe seemed to have gathered into a tight, crimson ball poised directly above my eyes.

But I kept right on, with always the picture of home before my mind’s eyes. Home, white faces, hundreds and hundreds of them, houses of stone, paved streets, a sun which did not maim and kill, then dinner, plain, clean, as dinner should be, the theater, and over it all the sweet home scent.

On the sixth day, I fell in a faint. Picked myself up again, rescued my paddle that was about to float away downstream, swallowed an opium pill, and called myself a fool. Perhaps it was the last helped the most. At all events, I was off again. But I felt weak. I felt conscious of a sickening sensation of nameless horror— and— do you know what I was afraid of?

I’ll tell you. Myself. Yes, myself! I was afraid of— myself. Momentarily, I crystallized it. Myself— and you’ll see the reason presently.

THAT DAY I did get into a mangrove swamp; a thick and oozy one, too, with the spiky orchids coming down in a waxen, odorous avalanche, and all sorts of thorny plants reaching down and out as if trying to rip the heart out of my body, as if trying to impede my progress, to keep me there. My hands and face were lacerated, my clothes torn, but I didn’t care. By main force, I jerked the canoe free and was off again, whipping the water like a madman; and the fear, the horror, the vague presentiment always growing!

And my hatred of Africa, it nearly choked me! And the loneliness! The loneliness which lay across my heart, my soul, my body, like a sodden blanket, and the fear that I would never reach home.

I lost all track of time. A week to make the coast, I had figured; and here it was at the very least the tenth day, and still my paddle went, still the river slid before my eyes like a watered-silk ribbon, still Africa unrolled like an odorous, meaningless scroll, still at my back rode horror and fear.

I don’t know how I missed the main channel, got lost in one of the numerous smaller rivers that empty into the Ogowe. At all events, late one afternoon, I found myself in a narrow, trickly stream, with my paddle touching ground every second stroke, and the banks to right and left like frowning, sardonic walls. It wasn’t a river any more— but just a watery sort of jungle trail, hardly discernible, wiped by the poisonous breath of the tropics into a dim, smelly mire which frothed and bubbled and sucked and seemed to reach out for those who dared tread its foul solitude.

I pushed on, through an entangled, exuberant commingling of leaves and lasciviously scented, fantastic flowers that vaulted above me like an arch, cutting my way through the mangrove that opened before my canoe, with a dull, gurgling sob, then closed behind me, with a vicious, popping gulp, as if the jungle had stepped away to let me through, leisurely, contemptuously, invincibly, to bar my way should I attempt to return!

On— and then, I don’t know what happened to me. I don’t know if night came, or if the creepers closed above me, shutting off the light of the sun, or if, momentarily, I became blind. I only remember that although, like an automaton, my hand kept on wielding the paddle, everything turned black around me… and the next thing I remember is that I shivered all over as if in an ague, that cold sweat was running down my face, that I groped for the quinine— could not find it…

Too, I remember, a sudden glimpse of jungle natives— dwarfs, you know, the useless African tatters of a pre-Adamite breed. I saw two or three of them in the blackish-green gloom of the trees, flitting past, gliding, indistinct. They blended into the jungle, like brown splotches of moss on the brown, furry tree-trunks, and they gave no sign of life except a rolling flash of eyeballs— white, staring with that aspect of concentrated attention so typical of savages.

I recollect, vaguely, shouting at them, for help, I suppose, my voice seeming to come across illimitable distances.

Too, I recollect how they ran away, the jungle folding about them like a cloak. Then I felt a dull jar as I fell on my hands and knees in the bottom of the canoe and rolled over.

I CAME TO, I don’t know how many hours later. I was cold and wet and shivery, and then I noticed that rain was coming down like a cataract. And at once I knew that I was dying. Dying! Sure. Straight through my delirium, I realized it. Realized, too, that only one thing would help me to cheat death: a sound roof over my head, sound flooring under my feet, sound walls about—a house, in other words. A real, honest-to-God white man’s house where I could take off my clothes and keep dry and warm, and give the quinine and the Warburg’s a chance to work.

A house! In that part of Africa! Might as well have wished for the moon!

And then, suddenly, I saw it— yes, a house!

It was not a hallucination, an optical illusion, a mirage, my delirious mind playing follow-the-leader with my eyes— and my prayers. It was real. Solid stone and wood and corrugated iron and a chimney and windows and doors all complete, like a bit of suburbia dropped in the jungle. I saw it through the steaming, lashing rain, on a little knoll due north, perhaps a quarter of a mile away from the river.

I jumped out of the canoe, landed, with clutching hands, in the mangrove, pulled myself up, ran as fast as I could, stumbling, tripping, falling, plunging. I hardly felt the thorns that scratched my face and hands and tore my clothes into ribbons.

I struggled on, with the one thought in my mind: the house— warmth— life!

How had the house got there?

Weeks later, I found out. Doctor Morrison told me, sitting by my bedside in the hospital.

It seemed that some imaginative chap of a West Coast trader had come up to London on his yearly spree. He must have been as eloquent as an Arab, for he met some City bigwigs that were reeking with money, and persuaded them that the French Congo hinterland was God’s own paradise, and just waiting to give them fifty percent on their investment, if they were willing to come through handsome. They were, and they did. They supplied a working capital big enough to make a Hebrew angel weep with envy. “Gaboon, Limited,” they called the new company, with laconic pride, and for some reason— the usual, you know, social stuff, Mayfair and Belgravia flirting with Lombard and Threadneedle streets— they appointed some fool of a younger son as general manager, the sort of gink whose horizon is limited by Hyde Park Corner and Oxford Circus, and who knows all about the luxuries of life, which to him are synonymous with the necessities. Well, he went out to the coast, up the river, took a look at the scenery, and decided that the first thing to do would be to build a suitable residence for his festive self. He did so, and I guess the imaginative West Coast trader who was responsible for the whole thing must have helped him. Naturally— think of the commissions he must have pocketed from the Coast people: commissions for stone and wood and glass and bricks and cement and whatnot.

Yes, that was the sort of house our younger son built for himself. Darn the expense! He was stubborn if nothing else. The house was built; he moved in, and three weeks later some flying horror bit him in the thumb, and he promptly kicked the bucket. About the same time our imaginative West Coast trader disappeared with what was left of the working capital of “Gaboon, Limited,” and nothing remained of that glorious African enterprise except the house, that incongruous, ludicrous, suburban house in the heart of the tropics— Westchester-in- the-Congo, eh?

I guess the natives must have considered it “bad ju-ju,” for they left it severely alone.

And it was bad ju-ju. I know.

All right. I made for it, running, stumbling, soaked to the skin. I pushed open the door, and, at once, I became conscious of a terrible, overpowering fear. Rather, it seemed as if the vague, crushing foreboding which I had sensed all the way down the river had suddenly peaked to an apex; as if the realization of that presentiment— the physical realization, mind you!— was waiting for me somewhere within the house. Waiting to leap upon me, to kill me!

But what could I do?

Outside was the rain, and the miasmic jungle stench, and fever, and certain death— while inside?

I stumbled across the threshold, and, instinctively, I pulled my revolver from my waterproofed pocket.

I remember how I yelled at the empty, spooky rooms:

“I will defend myself to the last drop of my blood!”

Quite melodramatic, eh? Incredibly, garishly so, like a good old Second Avenue five-acter where the hero is tied to the stake and the villain does a war— dance around him with brandished weapons.

I couldn’t help myself; I felt that ghastly, unknown, invisible enemy of mine the moment I was beyond the threshold. At first he was shrouded, ambiguous. But he was there. Hidden somewhere in the great, square entrance hall and peeping in upon my mind, my sanity.

Momentarily, I controlled myself with a tremendous, straining effort. I said to myself, quite soberly, that I had come here to get dry, to take off my clothes, and so I sat down on a rickety, heat— gangrened chair and began kicking off my waterlogged boots.

I got up again, in a hurry, yelling, trembling in every limb.

For he, my unknown, invisible enemy, had sat down by my side. I could feel him blow over my face, my neck, my hands, my chest, my legs, like a breath of icy wind. That’s the only way to put it. So, as I said, I got up again in a hurry, and I ran away, shrieking at the top of my lungs, peering into every corner, revolver in my right hand, finger on trigger, ready to fight, fight to death, if my enemy would only come out into the open— if only he would fight!

“Coward! Oh, you dirty, sneaking coward!” I yelled at him. “Come out here and show your face, and fight like a man!”

And I laughed, derisively, to get his goat; and then I could hear his answering laughter, coming in staccato, high-pitched bursts:

“Ho-ho-ho!”

Too, I heard him move about, somewhere right close to me, behind me, and I decided to use a stratagem. I decided to stand quite still, then to turn with utter suddenness and take him by surprise; to pounce upon him and kill him. Surely, I said to myself, if I turned quick enough, I would be able to see him.

So I stood there, motionless, tense, waiting, my mind rigid; my heart going like a trip-hammer; my right hand gripping my revolver; my left clenched until the knuckles stretched white.

And I did turn, suddenly, my revolver leaping out and up, a shout of triumph on my lips. But— he was not there. He had disappeared. I could hear his footsteps pattering away through one of the farther rooms, and, too, his maniacal, staccato laughter.

Oh, how I hated him, hated him! And I ran after him, through room after room, shouting:

“I’ll get you, you dirty coward, I’ll get you! Oh, I’ll get you and kill you!”

And then, in a room on the top floor, I came face to face with him! It was quite light there, with the sun rays dropping in like crackling spears, and as he came toward me, I could make out every line in his face.

Tall he was, and gaunt and hunger-bitten and dreadfully, dreadfully pale, with yellowish-green spots on his high cheekbones, and his peaked chin covered with a week’s growth of black stubbles, and a ragged mustache. His face was a mass of scars and bleeding scratches and cuts; and in his right hand he held a revolver— leveled straight at my heart.

I fired first, and there was an enormous crash, and—

Sure! I had fired into a mirror, a big mirror. At myself. Had not recognized myself. What with lack of razor and shaving-brush and looking-glass— and delirium— and fever—

Yes, yes. It’s the small things, the little foolish, negligible things one misses when one is away from civilization.

Pass the bottle, will you!

________________

4: The “V” Force

Fred C. Smale

1865-1917

The All-Story, December, 1913

I EXAMINED the bar of metal closely.

Subsequent measurements showed it to be fourteen inches long, three inches wide, and three-quarters of an inch thick. On the broad surface, about the center, was engraved a circle with strokes radiating from it, possibly a conventionalized representation of the sun. Beyond this no marks were visible.

The metal itself, so far as I could judge, was a very hard steel with a curious ruddy iridescence on the surface, somewhat reminding me of the appearance of “shot” silk. When suspended between the fingers and thumb and struck sharply it rang with a clear bell-like note. Evidently there was no flaw in the metal.

“Do you believe it?” I asked, looking up from my examination.

Walter Surtees shrugged his shoulders. “Twenty years’ residence in the East,” said he. “have taught me to believe many stranger things.”

“But this,” I protested. “ A mere bar of inanimate metal to have all the powers you ascribe—”

“Excuse me,” he corrected. “I don’t ascribe any powers to it—at least you haven’t heard me do so yet—I have merely retailed to you the statement made to me by the Tibetan priest who gave it to me.”

“Has it the ordinary magnetic properties?” said I. “But of course you have thought of that.”

Walter Surtees smiled. “Yes, I have tested it, but it doesn’t even lift iron-filings. No, it isn’t a mere barmagnet, whatever it is.”

“But that stuff about the ‘periodic powers,’ ” said I. “If there is anything in it at all it must be permanent. I am inclined to think the whole thing is a fable. I dare say those artful priests were able to play some curious tricks with it. It’s their business.”

My friend looked queerly at me for a moment before he spoke.

“Well, to be frank with you,” said he, “there is something supernormal about it. I haven’t confined my experiments to poking it among iron-filings.”

“What else, then?” I asked curiously.

“It shines in the dark, for one thing.” he replied. I laughed.

“Radium,” I suggested. “Possibly it contains a minute quantity. But that wasn’t what you were going to tell me. You would hardly call looking at it in the dark an experiment.”

Surtees rose and went to the door of the room.

“You shall see for yourself,” said he. He opened the door and whistled softly. Presently a huge, gray cat insinuated itself into the room and rubbed affectionately against my friend’s leg, purring gently the while. Surtees closed the door and returned to his chair.

“Now watch,” said he.

The cat followed him for a yard or two, then it seemed to grow suddenly uneasy. Its fur rose and its tail became enlarged.

In obedience to a sign from Surtees I placed the bar, which I was still holding, on the floor. The cat watched it as though fascinated and mewed plaintively. It now seemed more terrified than angry.

Slowly, as though against its will, the animal drew nearer with a curious sidling movement until at last it lay close to the bar, motionless and apparently exhausted.

“That is certainly queer.” said I thoughtfully. “I say,” I added, looking up sharply, “you’re not playing any hanky-panky tricks, old chap?”

Walter Surtees shook his head gravely. He was watching the cat.

“There may be some odor clinging to it which we cannot ourselves detect,” I suggested, “and which the cat can, and finds rather overpowering.”

“I never knew an odor to affect a cat or any other animal in that fashion,” returned Surtees. “This morning it only fluffed up and swore at the thing. Now it seems to be decidedly more impressed.”

He rose and lifted the cat gently. Then he started and examined the animal closely.

“Why, it’s dead!” he cried.

“Dead!” I echoed. “Nonsense!”

“Dead as mutton,” repeated Surtees. “Luckily it is my own cat and not the landlady’s. Poor brute! I was going to show you something else. The canary—”

“No, thanks,” said I. “We’ll spare the canary, if you don’t mind.”

After spending some time in futile examinations of both bar and poor pussy, we left the bar where I had placed it on the carpet and passed to some other of my friend’s curios.

But it was of no use. That infernal bar fascinated both of us. At last Surtees muttered something under his breath, and picking it up, replaced it carefully in a leather case.

“You take good care of it,” I remarked.

“It may resent neglect,” replied my friend lightly.

“Look here, old chap,” said I suddenly, “if I were you I’d take an early train to Brighton or Southend and chuck that thing off the end of a pier— leather case and all.”

“I am waiting to see what will happen,” he returned in a curious dull tone. “I intend to see it out.”

“Is there nothing that will check its influence?” I suggested.

“No antidote.”

“Nothing opaque to it, so to speak. I have thought of that. I tried lots of things this morning. Glass, electrified and normal— silk, water, shellac, a score or other things. I even borrowed an air-pump from the science school yonder and tried a vacuum. No use, any of it.”

“Didn’t you learn anything of its nature from the man who gave it to you?”

“He simply told me that he had taken it from the robe of a fellow priest, whom he found crushed to death.”

“Crushed to death! How?”

Walter Surtees shrugged his shoulders. “Some sort of panic, I believe. There was a big crowd of fanatics at some shrine or other, and this man seemed to have got underfoot. The story was very vague.”

“And he had this thing on him,” said I, musingly looking at the case on the table.

Surtees nodded.

I rose, and as I did so I swayed suddenly.

“Hold up— what’s the matter— dizzy?” exclaimed Surtees.

“It’s that confounded juju of yours,” I gasped, catching sight of a rather white face in the mirror. I pulled myself together and reached the door.

“I’ve found a better name for it than that,” said Walter Surtees. “The ‘V’ force— the vital force, you know.”

“We’ll leave it at that,” said I, feeling angry with myself and the mysterious drawing power which I still felt, though less strongly.

“Call it what you like, but I repeat my advice. Get rid of it or it may play cat-tricks with you," and I touched the dead animal with my foot.

Surtees seemed preoccupied and scarcely replied to my “Good night.”

I went slowly down the stairs with an uneasy feeling that I was leaving him to face some unknown danger alone.

I hesitated and half turned back. Then I heard the piano. Surtees was playing one of his favorite Chants sans paroles. I laughed to myself.

“Music hath charms,” I muttered. “It may soothe even a steel bar.”

Yet I could not shake off the memory of that poor brute of a cat and the mysterious suddenness with which death had come to it.

ii

TWO DAYS afterward I was at Bexhill on some business connected with property I had there. I found it necessary to stay the night, and as I was leaving my hotel for a stroll and last pipe before going to bed the boots handed me a telegram. It was from Surtees, forwarded to me from my town address. The message was brief but sufficiently disturbing. It ran:

Come to Pelham Street at once. Urgent. SURTEES.

Finding it would be impossible for me to reach Pelham Street until well after midnight, I hastily wrote a letter, explaining my sudden change of plan and left it for the man with whom I had an appointment in the morning.

At first the matter of the bar did not occur to me, and, as Surtees was of rather an impulsive nature, I thought his desire to see me might have its origin in some legal bother connected with a certain troublesome brother of his, of whom I knew.

It was a dark, foggy night when I arrived at Pelham Street, and the raw mist seemed to penetrate to my bones. There was a faint glow in the window of Surtees’s sittingroom—  not bright enough to indicate that he was up and about— but more as though a bright, clear fire had been left burning in the grate. Then I remembered that he used a gasstove, and was momentarily puzzled.

There seemed nothing to indicate impatience or anxiety on his part, and, as I had run out of tobacco, I decided to go on to the public-house at the corner— it was not yet midnight— and replenish my stock before seeing Surtees, who smoked a brand too potent for me.

I strode on past the house with this intent, when suddenly my legs became leaden and I felt as though I were battling against a strong head wind. Yet the murky stillness of the atmosphere told me that such was not the case. I strove against the unseen power which was holding me back, but with each step it grew stronger.

The street was deserted or my quaint struggles might have roused some doubts as to my sobriety.

As I paused in bewilderment a ragged tramp came shuffling along. As he passed me he gave a curious growl and staggered against the wall. With odd inconsistency I muttered “Drunk!” and, obeying an uncontrollable impulse, I stepped back to the door of Surtees’s lodgings and rang the bell.

Getting no reply, I tried the door, found it unlocked, and, breathing slightly quicker than usual, I mounted the stairs and knocked at Surtees’s door.

“Who is there?” asked a low, muffled voice, which I nevertheless recognized as that of my friend, and I answered sharply.

“Thank Heaven!” said the voice. “Come in— but take care— take care!”

I opened the door and beheld a strange scene. Surtees lay in a huddled position on the floor. Close to his face— within twelve inches— was the bar. It shone with a dull radiance, which filled the room, and by its light I saw that Surtees’s eyes were fixed upon it and slightly crossed as in a hypnotic trance.

As I stood momentarily in horrified surprise I became conscious of an almost overwhelming desire to grovel on the floor also. Something seemed to draw me forward and downward with compelling force.

Surtees spoke jerkily and as a man struggling breathlessly with an opponent. “Thank Heaven— in time— I hope!” he gasped, while I grasped the door-lintel and listened.

“Discovered— antidote!” he went on after a moment. “Direct sunlight—even daylight— weakens— nights— powerful— stronger each night— My Lord!” He broke off with a scream. “It— draws— life!” he moaned.

He had never turned his eyes to me once all this time, and he now collapsed limply by the side of the accursed bar.

“Look— out!” he whispered. At first I thought he meant this simply as a warning to myself. Then his real meaning flashed upon me and, bracing myself up, I made determinedly for the window.

I reached it in a staggering, drunken fashion and, moving the blind aside, peeped down into the street below, my head humming like a beehive the while.

Three figures, including a policeman, were loitering with apparent aimlessness directly beneath. As I looked a stout man came hastening along. I caught sight of his purple, anxious face in the light of a lamp. When he came up he checked his pace abruptly and lurched aside.

The policeman seized him and held him up, while the other two men seemed to look stupidly on. The sound of the constable’s gruff voice came faintly to my ear. Now came a hansom, driven rapidly. Directly beneath the horse reared up on its haunches.

There were shouts and a crash of broken glass. The hansom had turned over.

The street all at once seemed full of people and a woman’s scream rang out shrilly. I dropped the blind and turned aside.

“What does this mean?” I asked, and my voice shook. “Surely this, devilish thing— ”

Surtees turned his bloodshot eyes on me with an effort. “I cannot check,” he whispered hoarsely. “All— London —crushed— death! Crowd— mob— panic!”

“What must we do?” I cried.

“Big risk—”

I made a gesture of impatience, the movement turned to burlesque by the force which I felt dragging at every nerve and muscle. What could be worse than our present position?

“We’ll beat it somehow,” I said.

“Make— rush!” said Surtees faintly. I had unconsciously crept to his side, and we spoke in whispers.

“What— how?” I said vaguely. I felt a leaden dullness coming over me. Walter Surtees gave an odd, croaking laugh.

“A chase!”

“And if we cannot get away.”

“Remember— priest of Llassi!” was his reply.

“Come, then,” said I. “The sooner the better. I am the stronger— I’ll take it.”

“No,” whispered Surtees promptly. There was no time for argument.

“Let us carry it together.” said I. “Your right hand— my left.”

He nodded.

“Glove,” he muttered.

I understood and drew off the thick glove from his left hand and placed it on my own.

“Now,” said I. “Ready!” he muttered between clenched teeth. We stretched out our hands together. The bar seemed to leap toward us and there was a sound of impact as it met our hands, as though it were welded to us. I shuddered.

We leaped to our feet, a curious, sense of power tingling through our veins. The spell seemed to have been broken.

Meanwhile, the sounds outside had risen to a roar, and the street was filled by a seething, panic-stricken mob.

iii

“THE back!” cried Surtees. We dashed from the room, holding the bar between us. Our strength seemed irresistible. We moved as one individual, and even our unspoken thoughts seemed in unison.

We burst through the flimsy door leading to the back premises, carrying it clear off its hinges; and I afterward found that the jagged iron of one of these had caused a nasty gash in my shoulder. I felt nothing then.

On we raced, through a yard and into a narrow lane. Then, without a word passing between us, we burst off like some quaint quadruped. For a few minutes we saw no one, then suddenly we found ourselves in a main thoroughfare— the Edgeware Road, I think, but am not sure.

It was now nearly one in the morning and very few people were about; but we were dimly conscious of curious swervings on the part of those we did pass, and presently we heard the pattering of footsteps behind us.

We kept to the center of the road, which at that hour presented few obstacles. We could not have dropped the bar now even had we desired to do so.

Our pursuers seemed to be growing in numbers. They were horribly silent. There were no shouts— no cries to those ahead to stop us— only that fearsome patter of many feet behind. We dived down a side street which took us into an open space— Norfolk Crescent, we found it to be afterward. It might have been the top of the monument for all we knew then.

Apparently our pursuers had received a check, but, even as we paused a second, the head of the procession poured into the crescent. At the curb in front of one of the houses stood a motor-car— a long, low, gray machine.

“Quick!” panted Surtees hoarsely, speaking for the first time during our flight.

We literally flew to the car.

The chauffeur was dozing in furs. As we came up he lurched sidewise and fell almost at our feet. We scrambled over him into the car, and, while Surtees seized the steering-wheel with his free hand, I jerked back the starting-lever. Luckily, we both understood motors.

The vision of a wild-eyed man, clutching vainly at the back of the car, danced momentarily across my vision. I reached back to fling him off, and a sea of fierce, gibbering faces seemed to glide smoothly away.

I looked round dazedly. We were on a broad road which appeared to stretch away into infinity. Surtees sat beside me, his jaw set like iron, and his eyes glowing like live coals under his knit brows.

“Cannot we drop this infernal thing? It is like being handcuffed,” said I. I had no need to raise my voice. The car was almost noiseless.

“Try,” said Surtees grimly. But my hand felt paralyzed. I realized that I had no power over it. But I was desperate. It seemed ridiculous that I should not be able to conquer this mere piece of metal. Lowering the bar, of course with Surtees’s hand as well, I placed my foot upon it and we wrenched our bodies back suddenly. I groaned with pain. Half the flesh seemed torn from my hand— but we were free and our tyrant lay at the bottom of the car. “Shall I kick it out?” said I.

“No— no!” replied Surtees. “The sea!”

I understood. He meant to give this thing effectual burial. I leaned back and laughed a little. I was just beginning to realize what we had done and were doing.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Great Bath Road,” he answered.

“But the sea!” I exclaimed. “Why not the Norfolk or Sussex coast?”

“I didn’t stop to think it out,” returned Surtees dryly.

“Then we must go on—”

“Until dawn.”

“And then—”

“Relief and freedom,” said Surtees, his eyes fixed on the road before him.

The houses were thinning now and there were no lights. Fortunately those of the car were powerful.

“Well, we are free now,” said I, “if it comes to that.”

“Try to rise,” was Surtees’s comment; “only don’t fall out.”

I seized the side of the car and strove to raise myself from the seat. It was impossible and I sank back in renewed dismay. It was as though we were bound down by iron bands.

“Sunlight the only antidote.” My friend’s words flashed through my brain. Truly, we must go on— until the dawn.

“Is there petrol enough?” I asked.

Surtees shrugged his shoulders. “I hope so.”

“Where are we going?”

“Devon or Cornwall. What is the time?”

My watch had stopped, but just then we heard a bell somewhere give a solitary stroke.

“One,” said Surtees. “Sunrise half past six or thereabouts— over five hours.”

The effects of our violent exercise were passing off, and after binding up Surtees’s wounded hand as well as my own I busied myself with hunting out the rugs which had been considerately left in the car.

I found no goggles or vizors, and as the roads were in perfect condition, neither muddy nor dusty, we had no need of such. We had met very few vehicles.

A belated four-wheeler or two and one other motor were all, and we were going at too great a speed for the bar to have any effect on those. When we overtook anything, however, it was different.

This only happened once—  between Slough and Maidenhead. On a long stretch of road we rapidly overhauled the red light of another car, and as we came within thirty yards or so it suddenly slackened speed so that we almost dashed into it.

We swerved aside and dashed by. The other car seemed to leap at us and the occupants to tumble together of a heap. I set my teeth and held tight, but we just managed to clear them. Only our great speed saved them and us from what would no doubt have been a particularly complicated smash-up.

It must have been a very mystified party of motorists that we left behind, but we never learned that any one of them was hurt. Fortunately, throughout the whole of our journey the experience was not repeated.

I need not detail the entire course of that trying journey. We got no chance of bite or sup. Luckily the car held out, and the gray light of dawn overtook us on the north coast of Cornwall, where we drew up at last somewhere between Padstow and Newquay, near the edge of high cliffs directly overlooking the sea.

Our red-rimmed eyes looked out from pallid, dust-begrimed faces over a slate-colored expanse of waters. We were cold and faint with hunger.

With an effort I managed to drag myself from the car, but was for some minutes unable to stand. Natural stiffness seemed all we had to contend with now. True, our limbs seemed leaden and we lurched drunkenly against the side of the car; but presently we realized that the dread power of the bar was almost if not quite vanquished.

What would not we have given for a flask of brandy or even hot coffee— tea— anything to ease our parched throats and warm our chilled blood!

Presently the ruddy rim of sun shot over the horizon to our right, and Surtees, staggering to the car, rolled back the rugs and seized the bar recklessly.

He held it to the ruddy beams of the rising monarch which were struggling through the wintry morning mist. He gave a crazy, chuckling laugh. Then his face changed and a furious expression came over it.

“Curse it!” he cried, and, turning seaward, he drew back his arm and flung the bar with all his strength far out over the dull gray waters.

We could not discern the tiny splash where it fell some twenty or thirty yards from the shore and in, as we afterward ascertained, about twenty-eight fathoms of water.

We stood gazing dumbly for a moment. Then we realized that we were at last rid of our ghastly incubus and we danced on the grassy sward like lunatics.

“Sorry for the fish,” said I.

“Whatever the infernal thing can do,” said Surtees, “it can’t rise from the sea.”

We turned to the car and our eyes met. Surtees laughed rather grimly.

“We are in for trouble,” said he.

“On the contrary, we are just rid of it,” I returned lightly.

“We have only to explain—” I paused, and Surtees laughed again.

“Who will believe?“ said he. “No— we must clear out. The machine is useless to us now. There is no petrol. We must leave it here.”

I stood doubtfully and was about to make some suggestion, I know not what, when a glance seaward drove the blood from my face afresh.

“Look—look!” I cried.

At the spot where the bar had sunk was a huge mound of water like a gigantic wave. The surface of it was white with foam, and though it was as yet in the shadow of the cliff I thought I could discern something writhing and leaping therefrom.

Walter Surtees and I gazed spellbound. A sea-fog was rolling in rapidly, growing denser every moment, and ere it blotted the great tossing wave from our view, I fancied I saw a terrible, scaly head arise from the turmoil— a hideous monster with wildly whirling tentacles and ghastly, wide-open eyes. Then the fog hid all.

We lingered no longer, but turned and ran wildly, whither we knew not—  anywhere away from that awful nightmare. We escaped all awkward inquiries more by luck than anything else.

We found ourselves possessed of a few pounds in cash, enough to take us safely to Falmouth and thence to Jersey and France, where we lay perdu for a while, easily reenforcing our funds by means of letters to our bankers. The English newspapers were particularly interesting to us during the next few days.

We read how the Hon. Stockwood Ridgeway’s motor-car had been found deserted on the Cornish cliffs; of the mysterious happenings in the neighborhood of Pelham Street, W., and of the no less inexplicable slaughter of fish near the coast where the car was found, some hundreds of tons being cast up on the neighboring sands every tide for some weeks following; but a convenient theory of submarines accounted for the last named, and, curiously enough, the “riot” as it was termed, in Pelham Street, of which, after all, a few broken limbs were the worst results, was never connected in any way by the press with the “hiring” of the car.

I suppose our exit by the back door and dash down the lane broke the link which might have somewhat enlightened the public. Yet what more would they have learned? What do even Walter Surtees and I know, after all?

Where is the accursed bar now?

Walter Surtees suggests that some illadvised saurian has swallowed it and borne it off to spread calamity in other climes when its periodic power shall return.

I have sometimes wondered whether this story may not contain a clue to the fatal and unaccountable deviations of ships from their correct courses when near the Cornish coasts. However, here my story ends, as far as I know it. I hope it may never have a sequel.

______________

5: Caught Out

Fred C. Smale

All-Story Magazine, March, 1914

MR. ANDREW McCRAE, the news editor of the Morning Glow, frowned thoughtfully at the slip of paper before him and took the telephone receiver from its stand.

"Mr. Miller in the office?" he asked sharply. "Send him up."

Almost before he had replaced the instrument, the door opened and there entered a clean-shaven, swarthy-complexioned man of about two and thirty, with aquiline features and bright, restless eyes. His hair, which he wore rather long and parted in the middle, was jet-black and hung straight, as though he had just emerged from a bath.

Bat Miller was an American. One knew that as soon as he opened his month. In. the office they sometimes called him "The Sioux," and there was undoubtedly Indian blood in his veins. He now stood silently watching his chief.

"Bat, here's a job for you," said the great man. "I think you'll like it." He spoke as though it was not a matter of great moment whether Bat liked it or not. He had to do it, anyway.

The American took the slip of paper tendered to him and read what was on it, apparently at a glance. It was a matter of common knowledge that Bat Miller could walk into a room and, after one swift look round, go away and write an absolutely complete inventory of its contents. He returned the paper.

"Case of skipped with the dough," said he laconically.

Mr. McCrae frowned. He rather objected to his star reporter's free-and-easy Americanisms, but Bat was a valuable man, and his eccentricities had to be condoned.

"Yes; this Mr. Ralph Freemantle, secretary of the Weizerboom Cycle Company, has apparently absconded with a good share of their money," he returned with a slight severity of tone which was quite lost upon Bat. "I don't expect you to find him. He is probably half-way across Europe by this time. You see, he has had twenty-four hours' start.

"But I want you to get the details. How much he has taken— how he got in as secretary; for I may tell you the police suspect him to be what I suppose you would call a 'swell crook'; and there's a woman in it somewhere, of course."

Mr. McCrae was a bachelor and a misogynist.

"Get some sort of story here by midnight at the latest. It is eight now. You have four hours. I'll hold half a column for you— all I can spare." Bat considered for a moment.

"I suppose it's a sure thing that the guy has flitted?" he asked.

Mr. McCrae tapped the paper impatiently. "Doesn't this say the police have been hunting him since midday?" he retorted.

Bat nodded. "I'll pull out right away," said he. "No; I don't want that paper. I've got it all in my dome."

Mr. McCrae's face relaxed for a moment. "There, now," he mused; "any of the other boys would be whereing and whoing me crazy before he got off the mark. I will say that for Bat; he is quick on the uptake. He'll fill that half-column, all right. Maybe I'd better make it three-quarters."

And he proceeded to cut down a twothousand word report of a fire—  which an overenthusiastic correspondent had sent up from the provinces— to a three-line paragraph.

BAT MILLER at once made his way to the premises of the Weizerboom Cycle Company, in Holborn, and presented his card as representative of the Morning Glow. A driedup little man with a worried expression received him.

"What! Another of you?" he exclaimed irritably, rumpling his scanty hair. "Lord! there is nothing fresh to tell, beyond that the deficit seems rather bigger than was anticipated— nearer four thousand than three, the figure we put it at first. There's a man here from Hearder & Dean, the accountants, going through the books now."

"How's he got it— cash?" asked Bat. "Drew the whole lot from the bank— Universal Deposit— Clapham Branch— yesterday morning. Altered a check after it had been signed by one of the directors and myself. He wrote the check itself originally, so it was easy for him."

"But he couldn't have taken it all in coin."

The manager made a grimace.

"Oh, but he did! Had a taxicab waiting. Preached them up some yarn about a big sum wanted for extra wages at our works in Birmingham. We have had occasion to draw fairly large sums in coin before now, you see, though not quite as much as that, and it seemed O. K. to the bank people.

"Besides, there was the check, genuine enough. It took them half an hour to get it together, and the fellow waited as calm as a cucumber, barring-he said he hadn't much time to catch the train."

"Got a picture of him?" inquired Bat. The manager laughed grimly.

"His drawer was full of 'em," he replied. "The Dawn people have had one; here's one for you."

Bat Miller scrutinized the portrait. It represented a man of apparently about thirty, with clear-cut features and dark curly hair carefully waved over the forehead.

"Very indiscreet of him to leave these things round," commented the American. "Looks like some sort of stage guy."

"Oh, he's all that! Great man at comic songs and so on. I dare say that's what brought him down, getting in with a sporty set; no good to any young man, that sort of thing."

"True," said Bat gravely. He himself was as rank a Bohemian as existed in London. "But I understand that the police believe him to be a well-known crook."

The manager snorted contemptuously.

"The police!" he exclaimed. "I dare say! They must say something. His references were of the best, confound him!"

"Where is his little nest, anyway?" asked Bat. "He didn't live here on the premises, I take it."

"Maythorn Villa, Lombardy Road. Lee," was the reply. "But that has been overhauled. You'll only find his housekeeper there waiting for about three months' back salary. I guess she'll have to wait."

"You've been there?"

"With the police, this morning," replied the manager, who was beginning to show a querulous impatience.

"And there is no clue to this Freemantle's whereabouts?"

"None whatever, and now you really must excuse me. I have told you all I know. Oh, yes; take the photo by all means. It may help to track the rascal, if your people publish it."

Bat carefully placed the photograph in his pocketbook.

"Thanks," said he pleasantly. "I hope the crook'll get pinched with the goods on him, or within calling distance, at any rate. Good night."

"Good night," replied the other absently. Bat slowly descended the stairs.

"Lee," he muttered— "that's south side. I guess I'll go there, though I dare say that little runt up-stairs is right; there won't be anything in it. Still— who knows!"

He was fortunate enough to catch a train at Cannon Street immediately, and after half an hour's run alighted at the high and windy station of Lee. He found Maythorn Villa to be a semidetached residence, built of dingy white brick; one of a couple of dozen, all exactly alike, overlooking some nursery-gardens. A small terrier barked noisily as he opened the gate.

"Didn't take his pup with him, anyway," muttered Bat. He rang the bell and glanced round speculatively. He knew that even modest little semidetached houses within half an hour's ride of the city were not to be had for nothing. He himself had to be content with a couple of rooms in the north of London. The shrubbery was well kept, too, and by the light of a lamp just outside the gate he saw that the drive had been newly graveled.

The door opened and an elderly woman stood regarding him inquiringly through her spectacles. She was soberly attired in a dress of some dark material with a white cap bearing a touch of heliotrope on one side. This was the housekeeper, no doubt. But Miller raised his hat.

"This is Mr. Freemantle's, I believe?" said he.

"Yes, sir; but he is not in now."

"No, so I understand," replied Bat dryly. "You will see by this that I am a representative of the Morning Glow newspaper." The woman took the card. Her hand trembled and she spoke agitatedly.

Yes. Of course you know what has happened. Oh, sir, it is a dreadful thing! I— I—" Unable to say more, she turned away with a little sob.

Bat knit his brows. He hated to see women cry.

"May I come in?" he said quietly. "I promise not to trouble you more than is absolutely necessary." The housekeeper recovered herself and turned to him again.

"Excuse me, sir," she said apologetically. "I have known Mr. Freemantle from a child. I nursed him as a baby, and I feel this very deeply indeed. Come in if you must, but I assure you I can tell you nothing beyond what I suppose you know already."

She led Bat into a drawing-room furnished with lavish taste, not to say extravagance. Photographs of various stage characters occupied a good deal of space on the walls, but there were many pictures which Bat's quick eye told him were of considerable value. Though the room was crowded with mostly knickknacks, he observed that the top of the piano was clear of ornaments—a fact which showed that musical enthusiasm had reigned supreme. A bright fire glowed in the grate.

"I keep it lighted, sir," said the woman with a pathetic little break in her voice, "in case he should come back. Perhaps it is all a mistake, after all! Who knows? I cannot believe it of him yet."

Bat shook his head as he sat down in one of the huge easy chairs, while the housekeeper took a stiff-backed one and smoothed out her lavender skirt in front of her.

"I am afraid there is small chance of that," said he. "You see, he cashed a check for an amount far beyond what it was originally made out for. Unhappily the thing is clear enough."

The woman nodded sadly. "Ah, yes, the police told me," she replied, "when they came and searched the house this afternoon. Of course I don't understand much about that. I never interested myself in his business affairs. I only knew he seemed to be doing well."

"Yes," returned Bat, glancing round; "he doesn't seem to have been living in what you may call penury. He occupied this house alone?"

"Yes— besides myself and a servant girl."

"Any relatives?"

"He has no one in the world. Both his parents died when he was very young. I have lived with him for nearly seven years— six in Birmingham and the remainder here. We had only been here nine months."

Bat questioned her further and she answered freely. Her own name was Gates— Mrs. Gates. Her husband had been an engine-driver and had been killed in an accident eight years before. Mr. Freemantle appeared to have lived a comfortable bachelor-life of quite a normal kind. An occasional trip to Brighton or Scarborough, with two or three jaunts farther afield, to Paris, Brussels, and one summer to Switzerland, had formed his only lengthy absences. He was very fond of theatergoing, and had at one time spoken of going on the regular stage himself. He belonged to two amateur societies— one solely dramatic and the other operatic, for he had a very good singing voice.

Bat Miller's eyes roamed round the room.

"I suppose these are some of him in various characters," said he.

"Yes," replied Mrs. Gates; but she seemed disinclined to talk further of her master's stage experiences; and, from the slightly disapproving tone in which she spoke of them, Bat suspected her of Puritanical tendencies.

"Well, I am very much obliged to you, ma'am," said he. "I have taken up considerable time, and you ought to be paid for it. It isn't as though I had an absolute right."

He placed half a sovereign on the little ormolu table at his elbow. Mrs. Gates raised her hand deprecatingly.

"Oh, it isn't my money," said Bat laughingly. "Our people like to pay for their stuff, you know."

The woman sighed. "It is very kind of you, sir," she said: "and I will not deny that it is very acceptable to me. I am sure I don't know what I shall do now," and she choked back another sob. "Oh, but all this will be sold up, of course," said Bat, indicating the luxurious surroundings; "and if I know anything, it will go far toward making good what has been taken, unless—" Bat added as a sudden thought struck him.

Mrs. Gates shook her head. "It's all hired. Except the photographs, of course— and the people are coming to fetch it away in the morning. They would have done so, anyway. There has never been anything paid beyond the first instalment."

"Phew!" whistled Bat. "I might have guessed that. He seems rather a versatile sort of crook, this—"

He checked himself suddenly at the look of pain on his companion's face and looked at his watch. "There is no train back to the city for over an hour," said he. "I'd like to write up my stuff here if I may. That waiting-room up at the depot is no boudoir. It's warmer here."

"Certainly, sir," said Mrs. Gates; though Bat thought he detected a certain note of reluctance.

"Thank you," said he. "I'll be no trouble— just a couple of square feet of table room, that's all I want."

As the housekeeper turned to leave the room her skirt caught in a little table and a vase standing thereon toppled over. She caught it deftly and, murmuring something apologetic, moved the whole affair to a corner. Bat Miller stiffened suddenly and drew in his breath with a half-smothered gasp. Then he recovered himself with lightninglike rapidity, though his eyes glittered behind the half-closed lids.

"By the way, I'll want to step down to the post-office to send my people a wire," said he. "Very well, sir; it is quite near. I will leave the door ajar, so that you can come right in on your return."

"Just so— many thanks," replied Bat, apparently deep in his note-book.

The woman left the room. Bat closed his book with a snap and, first seeing that the door was closed, walked round the room with his peculiar catlike tread, scrutinizing the portraits on the wall. Then he drew out the photograph he had procured in Holburn and gazed at it for some moments.

"Sure— it's a cinch," he murmured. His eyes were brighter than ever and his rather wide mouth set in a straight line. He opened the door and left the room with a swift, noiseless movement.

As he did so he caught sight of a feminine form vanishing through another door.

"So the help hasn't left the sinking ship, either," he muttered. "I wonder—old McCrae may be right—"

He walked to the post-office deep in thought, though his senses were on the alert for what happened round him, and he knew that he was not being followed. No one ever did that unknown to Bat Miller himself.

"Hold full column— good story," he wired the Glow. Then he sent another telegram elsewhere of a somewhat more urgent character, the wording of which made the girl look up at him curiously when she had read it. Bat held up an admonitory forefinger.

"Not a word to anybody," said he, with playful severity. The girl tossed her head.

"I know my duties," she retorted.

"I guess you do," said Bat calmly, "Send 'em by the quick wire, Molly— there's a peach."

On his return he found the front door half open. Bat grinned.

"Bluff's a good policy sometimes," he said softly. "But I'll make sure. I've come back, Mrs. Gates!" he sung out.

"All right, sir; I heard you."

"You bet," muttered Bat. "My watch has gone wrong," he continued. "The blamed thing has stopped dead— heart, I guess. Will you kindly tell me when it is half past nine?"

"Certainly, sir." Mrs. Gates had come into the hall and was placidly regarding him through her glasses, which glowed blood-red in the light of the hall-lamp.

"By the way," said Bat, "I'm sorry to be a nuisance, but would you mind letting your help bring me a cup of coffee and a couple of biscuits. I haven't had anything to eat since two o'clock."

The housekeeper frowned slightly.

"Help?" she said interrogatively. Bat laughed. "Your servant, I mean." he explained. "We call them 'helps' in the States. I'm American, you know, and haven't quite learned the British language yet."

Mrs. Gates's face did not relax.

"The girl has left," she observed; "but I will bring you what you require with pleasure."

"Left, has she?" exclaimed Bat. "That's rough on you. Well, if you will be so kind."

He passed into the drawing-room.

"I oughtn't to have let on," he mused. "That bit of josh of mine might easily ruin everything. Bat, you're some idiot."

Mrs. Gates brought his coffee and biscuits, but her manner had changed, and Bat cursed himself fluently under his breath. Left to himself, he carefully poured the coffee into the pot of a tall palm which adorned one corner of the room.

"I'm not taking any chances in the doping line," he muttered. For half an hour he wrote steadily, consulting the watch he had libeled at frequent intervals.

At last there came a tap at the door. Bat chuckled softly.

"Ten minutes before time," he said to himself. "No overdoing the hospitality stunt. Well, I reckon I've made allowance."

"Come in!" he cried, and as he spoke he carefully drew his loose papers over something on the table before him. The housekeeper stood in the doorway.

"Half past nine, sir," she said respectfully.

"Already?" cried Bat. "Well, I'm about through. Come in, ma'am, for a minute, will you? There are just one or two more points I'd like to ask about." Mrs. Gate's looked at him strangely and advanced into the room with evident hesitation.

Bat rose and, gliding behind her, closed the door. He also turned the key and withdrew it. So rapid were his movements that he was back again with the table between them ere Mrs. Gates could speak. But her quick ear had caught the noise of the key, slight as it had been.

"What are you doing?" she cried sharply, and Bat noted a sudden change in her voice. He eyed her with a quizzical expression.

"Sonny, the jig's up," said he quietly. Mrs. Gates's face paled and her figure stiffened.

"What— what do you mean?" she replied in a voice strangely hoarse and unsteady. "Who are you— a robber ?"

Bat smiled and shook his head.

"Oh, you Willie!" said he. "It won't do! I'm on to you! Do you get me? Take off that gray lid of yours and smile—no, you don't, you rattler!"

The housekeeper, livid with rage and desperation, had seized a chair and held it high in the air. In another moment it would have crashed down on Bat's head, but he swept his papers aside and raised the revolver which he had ready.

"Drop the furniture!" he said sharply. "It's on the hire system, and you've no right to smash it."

The chair was lowered, and two smoldering eyes glared at him in impotent fury.

"That's right," said Bat genially. "Don't let's have a rough house. You see, it's no good. I have wired the police and a couple of cops are about due— now, then, you fool!"

At the mention of police his captive had made for the door and was banging at it frantically with his fists.

"Leonie— Leonie— the police are here— save yourself!" he cried.

There was no attempt at the mellow contralto voice now, and a manly barytone carried the words throughout the house.

"Oh, Leonie, is it?" said Bat. "Well, I'm afraid Leonie's got the lemon this time. Ah— yes, I thought so."

A tigerish scream rang out, mingled with the gruff voices of men.

"They're roping Leonie," commented Bat Miller. "Now, they'll add you to the collection— ah, would you?"

Apparently maddened by the sound of the woman's voice, the disguised man sprang at his captor and tried to wrest his revolver from him, but Bat Miller's muscles were like whipcord. In a moment the frenzied man lay dazedly on his back, the gray wig awry, disclosing a bullet-head of close-cropped black hair beneath.

"Now, that's too bad," said Bat regretfully. "I wanted to show you up in full canonicals. If you hadn't got peeved I reckon we'd have had some fun. I'd have introduced you to the sleuths as Charley's Aunt from Dudville— ha, here we are!"

He broke off as a thunderous knock came at the door. Leaving his prisoner on the floor with a numbed arm, Bat thrust in the key and threw open the door, admitting two burly but rather ruffled-looking detectives, one of whom had a handkerchief roughly tied round his hand. Bat waved his hand airily.

"Gentlemen," said he, "allow me to present you to Mr. Ralph Freemantle in his star part, the old lady of the Grange. He will now take a call. I don't think he'll give you any Swedish exercises. I believe I shook him up some just now."

The figure on the floor looked comical enough, in spite of the bloodshot eyes which shot baleful glances up at them: but the men did not smile.

"He'd better come quiet," said the one with the wounded hand grimly, "or I'll feel inclined to pay him back for the trouble that tiger-cat of a woman of his gave us. She nearly bit my hand in two."

"But you didn't let her slip?" asked Bat.

"Constable has her all right below, sir, with the bracelets on."

"Ah!" sighed Bat, "that's no way to treat a lady; but I suppose you'll say ladies don't make meals off policemen's hands. You've a couple of taxis, have you? Well, I'll just pinch a ride on one. May as well finish up a pleasant evening in style."

"YOU SEE," said Bat Miller, as he sat in the office, later on, smoking a seven-inch Havana, "I never got wise until our sport caught that flower-jug so neat. No woman could have done it just like that.

"Then, once being on the track, the photographs did the rest. He was a fool to leave them about. That's the way with all these smart crooks that always slip a cog sooner or later, and being something of a good-looker, vanity was his rock. That wasn't a bad idea to make the piano the treasurechest, though you'd look for notes rather than bullion in a thing of that sort."

Bat paused for the expected laugh, but his long-drawn face was as immovable as stone, and nobody showed appreciation of his joke.

Bat sighed softly. "That double-identity stunt was a cute game enough, too," he continued. "Whoever would have guessed that the old dame who kept house there all those months was the bright-eyed boy himself? If I hadn't tumbled, they would have cleared out next day, cash and all, with no more notice being taken than if they were two mud-spots on a wheel.

"Nobody ever remarked upon the fact that Freemantle and his 'old-folks-at-home' dame were never on view at the same time. That Leonie was some peach, too; though after the rough and tumble with the sleuths she looked more like Calamity Jane from 'way back. A biter from Biteville! Gee! I'm glad I only had to deal with the male bird, though he'd have put me out o' commission if I'd given him half a chance.

"Oh, yes, boys; the Weizerboom people have promised to decorate me some. I'll ask you all to supper at one of the big grubemporiums up West when it comes off. But what galls me is that old Mac only gave me a column.

"Why, with a bunch of those photos to light up the sermon, I could have filled half a page at least."

_______________________

6: Zapt's Repulsive Paste

J. U. Giesy

1877-1947

All-Story, 29 Nov 1919

Professor Xenephon Xerxes Zapt strikes again!

"MEOUW!" The sound was one of feline protestation, a sort of outraged plaint, uttered in the accents of a snarling rage.

"Goodness! Was that Fluffy?" exclaimed Miss Nellie Zapt to her fiancé, Bob Sargent, with whom she was sitting in the dusk, back of the vines on the porch of her father's house.

"Sounded like her voice, at any rate," Bob agreed.

"Meouw! Psst! Zit!"

Nellie started to her feet and stood slenderly poised as a fresh outburst of something suspiciously like inarticulate profanity drifted to her ears. And then she laid hold of her companion.

"Come along, there's something wrong," she urged, and dragged him to his feet. She darted into the house intent on learning what had evoked the outcries so vociferously emitted by her pet, and Sargent followed very much as he had been following her for something like a year. She was a dainty, glowing creature, and Bob was all tangled up in her feminine charms. So he kept close now as with a tapping of quick little heels on polished wood she entered the living-room of the house via the entrance hall.

And then Nellie paused. She stared— at the figure of a small man with spectacles on the bridge of a high, thin nose, and iron-gray whiskers, who stood with back-tilted head, beside a small tin-pail deposited on the table in the center of the room.

"Father!" Miss Zapt gasped.

And Sargent also gave vent to an exclamation:

"Good Lord!"

"Eh?" Xenophon Xerxes Zapt, " Unknown Quantity Zapt," as his associates sometimes called him because of the double "X" in his name, the celebrated investigator of the unknown in science, lowered his head and jerked it around in the direction of his daughter's voice. There was the atmosphere about him of a small boy apprehended in some prank. He put out a hand and laid it on the little tin-pail.

"Did you speak, my dear?" Out of near-sighted blue, eyes, he peered at his radiant offspring, who had drawn herself up in an indignant fashion.

"I did," said Miss Zapt firmly. "I suppose you're responsible for that?"

She lifted a graceful arm and pointed overhead, as indeed she very well might, considering that she pointed at the wildly gyrating form of a superb Angora cat.

One would hardly expect to find a Persian Angora flattened, with no visible means of support, against the ceiling of a room, as this one certainly was. She hung there threshing with frantic legs at the impalpable air, with a motion not unlike a rather desperate effort at swimming, the total result of which was that she spun herself about in a circle, marked by a rapidly alternating head, from which gleamed yellow eyes and a twitching bushy tail. Her demeanor was little short of hysteria itself.

"Meouw!" she voiced her perturbation of spirit once more as she heard her mistress's voice.

With poor tact Sargent chuckled.

"Seems to have got the Angora's angora," he began. Miss Zapt gave him a withering glance.

"Never mind, Fluffy pet," she called encouragement to the glaring creature that had temporarily given over its efforts and rested with back pressed against the ceiling. And then she bore down on the little man who had once more lifted his eyes to the animal above him.

"I suppose this is another of your detestable experiments," she went on in a voice half tears and half rage. "What have you done to my cat?"

"Nothing, nothing— about the seventy-fifth of an ounce."

Professor Zapt fumbled in the pocket of a limp house-coat for notebook and pencil, opened the former and touched the latter to his lips.

"Father!" Miss Zapt seized both book and pencil. She stamped her slippered foot.

"Eh? Oh, yes, yes— exactly." Xenophon Xerxes glanced into her flushed face. "As a matter of fact I have done nothing to your pet, my child— nothing at all worth mentioning, that is. Indeed, as you will note I have even exercised extreme caution. I have closed the windows, and the ceiling, of course, prevents her further ascension. But— if you refer to her present position—"

"It is rather unusual, don't you fancy, professor?" said Bob. "Now if she were a flying squirrel—"

"Exactly," Xenophon Zapt cut him short. "The term flying-squirrel is a misnomer, however, Robert. The animal so-called is incapable of sustaining itself for any considerable time in the air. As to the former part of your remark, however— hers is indeed a most unusual position, and it is that which proves the complete success of my experiment. You are now witnessing one of the marvels of the ages— voluntary levitation— the rediscovery of one of the lost secrets of the ancients. The means by which—"

Abruptly Nellie caught up the little pail. "I suppose your lost secret's in this?"

And swiftly Xenophon Zapt put out a hand to retrieve what she had seized.

"Nellie," he commanded sternly, "replace that receptacle where you found it. As you surmise, it contains a substance of incalculable value— the first practical preparation of Zapt's Repulsive Paste."

"Wha-a-at!" Sargent crossed to gaze into the little bucket his fiancée was holding. "Does look sort of repulsive," he agreed after a glance at the mess in the bottom of the pail. "But— you mean this stuff is responsible for Fluffy's sudden elevation in life?"

"Exactly." Professor Zapt nodded. "The animal is not injured except in her feelings, I assure you. I merely rubbed a very small portion of the paste into the fur on the under side of her body, and she assumed the position you are now privileged to behold. I am sure that in later years you will be glad to recall this evening, to remember that you were the first to witness the reapplication of those principles once before known to our race. You—"

"Just at present," his daughter interrupted, "I'm far more interested in knowing whether having sent her up there you intend letting her remain until she starves to death."

"Eh?" Professor Zapt frowned. "Starves? Why, certainly not. Having demonstrated to our satisfaction the efficacy of this latest addition to science, we may consider the test as ended. If Robert will obtain a step-ladder from the basement, and you will procure some water in order that we may wash off the paste—"

"Sure," Bob assented, and departed on his errand. Nellie went with him as far as the kitchen.

Professor Zapt shook his head in depreciative fashion, retrieved his note-book and pencil from the table where Nellie had cast them, and began jotting down certain memoranda. His thin lips moved as his pencil traced its way across a page.

"The seventy-fifth part of an ounce," he muttered.

Above his graying head glared a very much disgruntled cat. It was not the first time her mistress's father had made her the subject of some experiment.

In due season Sargent and Nellie reappeared. Bob set up his ladder and mounted to the rescue. Below Nellie waited with a basin of warm water and a soft cloth in her hands.

"Lay her on her back," Professor Zapt advised as Sargent descended with the Angora clinging desperately to him. "That way she will not present any tendency to rise. The paste does not affect anything beneath it, but merely what is superimposed. That is the secret of its adaptability—"

"Exactly," Bob accepted, grinning, and got down upon his knees.

Nellie knelt beside him. Together they administered to the resentful cat. While Bob held her, Nellie applied water to the body of her pet and dried her fur with the cloth.

Fluffy glared, but submitted to superior force.

"Steady," said Bob at last, and turned her over. He removed his restraining hands, and in a flash she vanished through the door into the hall. Xenophon watched the entire performance, his blue eyes glowing behind their lenses. He nodded as she disappeared. He rubbed his hands together as Rob rose and assisted Nellie to her feet.

"A very satisfactory experiment," he declared; "a very satisfactory experiment, indeed. By it we have demonstrated beyond any possible cavil–"

"If you don't let Fluffy alone," Nellie turned upon him, "I'll— I'll pack up and leave home."

For years, since her mother's death, she had taken care of the little man's temporal wants and managed the house, but there were times when his complete attention to his scientific pursuits and his lack of attention to everything else, got badly on her nerves. And now her violet eyes were winking, and her red mouth quivered.

"Any time you feel like that, I'll see you have another to go to," Bob suggested as she paused, with a little catch in breath.

"Ahem!" Xernophon Xerxes Zapt glared. He did not approve so wholly of Bob as did his daughter.

"Do not make any premature preparations, Robert," he said, after a rather tense interval in which Nellie blushed. "The animal is not injured, as you yourself have seen, and as Nellie will realize in time. The main difficulty against which scientists have to contend in these days of self-interest is the conventional attitude of the average mind.

"Human beings are prone to allow some purely personal view-point to overshadow the major object to be attained. In the present instance it is consideration for a cat. It is permitted to obscure the fact that through her use we have demonstrated the rediscovery of the means by which the Egyptians built the Pyramids."

"What? By Jove!" Sargent opened his eyes in wonder as the point struck home. "You really mean that, professor?"

"Exactly," said Xenophon Zapt benignly, and stroked the graying whiskers on either side of his chin.

"But if that's the case," Bob began quickly, and came to a tongue-tied pause.

"It is the case, Robert."

"I know— but—" Sargent floundered, "if it is, why couldn't you have proved it just as well with a book or a rock or a box?"

For an instant the professor's blue eyes twinkled.

"I suppose I could have done so, Robert," he replied, "but, as a matter of fact, I took the first object at hand when I was ready to make the test. I— er— that is, I didn't, give the matter any further thought.

"My mind was focused on the larger point— the demonstrate which proves beyond question that Zapt's Repulsive Paste will revolutionize the commercial world. By means of it we shall be able to accomplish marvels heretofore quite beyond any engineering scope we shall, by inserting definite quantities of the paste between the object to be transported and the earth, be able to move enormous buildings, nullify the weight of tremendous loads, alter the entire present-day conception as appertaining to weight."

"I— don't doubt it," Bob agreed in actually enthusiastic fashion. "Lord, professor, it's simply wonderful when you explain it; and its already sent Fluffy to the ceiling, and moved Nellie to tears."

"You beast," said Miss Zapt; but she smiled.

Her father frowned. "My chief objection to you, Robert, is the somewhat bizarre sense of humor which induces you to approach matters of weight in a light mood. If you would refrain from undue levity, there are times when I would be inclined to appreciate your otherwise not unintelligent apprehension of the results of scientific investigation."

"I beg your pardon, sir," Bob apologized meekly. "What was it you were saying about the Pyramids?"

"The world has long marveled how they were built, how it was possible to transport and place in their walls monoliths of such enormous size. The answer was suggested some years ago, but never carried further, so far as I am aware. It was reserved for me to prove the truth of that suggestion and give again to the world a substance similar in effect at least to the one they used. "That substance you have seen in operation tonight. It is in principle a screen for gravitation. Objects above it become for the moment practically devoid of weight— mere trifles light as air."

"You— you mean it cuts off the operation of gravitation on anything above it?" Bob exclaimed. "Why, that's marvelous, professor."

"Exactly," Xenophon Zapt agreed. "Dead or alive?"

"Animate or inanimate, as you have seen." The professor rubbed his hands. He eyed the stylish oxfords his daughter's fiancé was wearing. "For instance, Robert, I could rub a certain amount on the soles of your shoes, and you would walk a certain distance above the floor. Depending upon the quantity employed in proportion to your weight, you would rise slightly or higher, as the centripetal force of the earth revolutions threw you off.

"The entire action is capable of regulation by means of a calculation based upon the weight of the object to be moved. If I knew your exact weight I could cause you to lose ponderability altogether. I could even make you disappear. Still," he sighed, "I presume Nellie would object to that even more loudly than she protested my use of the cat. However, as a matter of scientific demonstration, it would be interesting, I think."

"Oh, very." Bob drew his modish footwear well under the chair in which he was sitting, and Nellie stiffened.

Xenophon Zapt arose. "I think I shall go to my study now and write a brief account of my experiment. To-morrow I shall begin the preparation of a large amount of the powder which, blended with water, constitutes the paste. I shall organize a company after a bit. If you wish, Robert, I shall permit you to purchase a reasonable amount of stock. Good night."

"Good night, sir. Thank you," said Bob, and watched him disappear, a quaint, little figure in his loose slippers, his iron-gray whiskers and his shapeless, flapping coat. And after he was quite out of sight he turned to Nellie.

"Lord! Do you suppose he's really got it?" he remarked. "Something surely happened to Fluffy, and after we washed off the paste she was all right, and— I guess those old wiseacres did know something in their day. It makes a fellow feel funny— Egyptians and Pyramids, and all those things folks have pretty nearly forgotten. Say, what was that record you got the other day for the machine?"

Five minutes later, while, Professor Xenophon Xerxes Zapt drew paper before him and dipped his pen in ink, his daughter and Sargent sat very close together on the living-room couch, while a phonographic reproduction of "Mummy Mine," echoed softly through the house.

TRUE to his promise Professor Xenophon Xerxes Zapt spent the major portion of the succeeding day mixing and blending the ingredients of the powder which, when mixed with water, constituted the Repulsive Paste. He heaped it upon a tray and left it on a table in the up-stairs room that he habitually used as the scene of his scientific investigations— a room overlooking, from broad windows, the tree-shaded street.

And the succeeding morning he charged down-stairs about ten and informed Nellie that he had nearly overlooked the fact that he meant to attend the meeting of a scientific body to which he belonged in a neighboring town. In considerable haste he arrayed himself in clean shirt and collar, the frock-coat, to which he consistently clung, and hat, and was on the point of departure for a train, when Nellie suggested that he had better wear his shoes, rather than the slippers on his feet.

The professor acceding rather impatiently to the suggestion, the change of footgear was made and he departed. After that the day dragged past until four o'clock. At that hour Bob Sargent, seated in the office where he dispensed legal advice to sundry clients, answered a ring on his phone.

"Oh, Bobby," came the voice of Miss Zapt, "come up to dinner. Dad's gone to one of his society meetings and he won't be home till rather late, and with all these recent burglaries and holdups in the city, I'm sort of nervous."

"Yes, you are," said Sargent with a chuckle, deriding the confession of Miss Zapt's timorous nerves.

"Yes, really I am," she insisted. "You'll come, won't you, Bob?"

"I will," said Bob without hesitation.

And he did. Because he was in love, and a dinner with his sweetheart tête-à-tête is something no true lover in his senses will pass up.

He arrived about six with a box of Nellie's favorite candy and anticipations of a pleasant evening, since Miss Zapt's experience as manager of her father's household had made a dinner under her supervision a thing not to be missed. In this particular case anticipation proved no more than the precursor of realization.

The dinner was a course affair of finely balanced quality, and the two young people rather dallied over it, from soup to cheese, as young people sometimes will, until a sudden deepening of the twilight sent Nellie to the window just as a peal of thunder reverberated sharply through the house.

"Goodness, it's going to rain cats and dogs, Bob!" she exclaimed. "The sky's as black as ink."

"Let 'er rain," said Sargent, content with a well-filled stomach and the society of the lady of his affections. "We've a good roof over our heads, so we should worry."

"I was thinking of father," Nellie explained and giggled as she recounted the professor's attempt to leave home without his shoes. "He's so absent-minded about little things. Mercy!"

A small cyclone seemed sweeping through the house, sending curtains eddying in flapping streamers, and doors banging as they were caught and slammed in the draft. There followed a few moments of rapid effort in closing windows and making all secure, and then youth and maiden stood briefly watching the first dashing flurry of the summer shower, before they pulled down the shades and withdrew to a lowtoned conversation, dealing as usual under similar conditions, quite largely with themselves.

MEANWHILE, some distance up the street a large and heavy-set figure sheltered itself as best it might beneath an arching tree, while waiting for the shower to pass.

It was that of Officer Dan McGuiness, patrolman on the beat that included the Zapt house. It wasn't a very exciting beat as a rule, but recently Danny had been nursing hopes. As Miss Zapt had said to Bob that afternoon, there had been a lot of burglaries of late and Danny really couldn't see why fate should not be kind and send one of the as yet unapprehended prowlers into his quiet street. He was thinking about it now as he listened to the patter of the rain among the leaves.

"Shure it would be a grand night for a poorchclimber to git in his fancy wuruk," he soliloquized. "Th' wind an' th' rain would cover any noises he might be makin'. 'Tis th' sort of noight I'd consider as made to me order was I a burglar myself."

And the thought having taken hold upon him was with him still, as the shower swept on across the countryside, and the moon appearing, began to flirt with the dripping landscape from behind a veil of ragged clouds. It sent him on down the street with a wary eye for any burglarious-minded individual who might have been of the same opinion as himself.

Thus he came in time to a house, with a wide front porch, above which was an open window; and rising over the top of the porch as Danny watched, an object like a human head. With a heart beginning to beat more quickly, McGuiness drew into the shadow of a tree and waited. He knew this house as the home of Professor Xenophon Xerxes Zapt, inhabited by the old man and his daughter; and that open window and the head rising cautiously over the edge of the porch roof fitted in with the thoughts he had been entertaining.

He thrust his club into its loop and felt for his revolver. He was convinced that at last he had been given his chance to prove himself. The head kept on rising. It was followed by a crouching body, and a pair of legs. It became the figure of a man crawling on top of the porch toward the open window with the silent caution of stealth.

Once it appeared to hesitate, to slip on the slanting surface, and then it again went on. Officer McGuiness had seen enough. He drew his gun and started at a heavy run for the gate in the fence before the house. And, having reached it, he slipped through it without sound and following not the walk, but tiptoeing with burly caution over the dampened lawn, made his way quite close to the porch. Then and then only did he lift his voice in a heavy, authoritative summons:

"Coom 'out of ut, me poorch-climbin' beauty. What are ye doin' up there?"

For a moment the figure above him went flat. The flirtatious moon peeped out long enough to reveal it sprawled on the rain-soaked shingles. And then, in most surprising fashion— it floated straight up into the air!

Danny McGuiness stared. Little by little while his breath came harshly, he tilted back his head to observe that most amazing ascent of a human body without apparent means or visible cause.

The man was swimming up as one might swim in water, to judge by the frantic threshing of his arms and legs. But— Danny had never heard of any one's swimming in the air. His eyes popped and his jaw dropped as his intended prisoner mounted twenty, fifty, seventy feet and paused, seemingly unable to go any higher.

The policeman removed his helmet and scratched his head. The thing was beyond all precedent of experience, a defiance of natural law. A criminal accosted might vault a fence, or climb a wall, or even scale a building in an effort at escape; but to drop on his face and bounce into the air— and— stay there like a— like a kite! Danny put some of his bewilderment into a baffled mutter.

"He— went— up," he mumbled. "Howly Mither, is ut a man, or a flea or a flyin'-fish, divil take 'im. Coom down, I says, an' instead of realizin' th' disadvantages of his position, he rose straight up like a aeryoplane an' there he is."

And then remembering the dignity of the law and his own standing as a representative of its force, he addressed the figure above him:

"Well, that's enough now. Yer quite a burd to judge by yer actions, but— come on down out of that, and light."

Above him the figure was still undergoing contortions beneath the moon and the broken clouds. As he spoke it rolled half-way over and started like a plummet for the earth. Out of it there broke a strangled exclamation of sheer instinctive terror. By a wild effort it again reversed its position and once more shot aloft.

"Up an' down," said Officer McGuiness. "Ye've foine control an' quite a lot of speed, an' that was a grand exhibition. But finish th' trip th' next time. I've seen enough of yer tricks."

There followed a breathless interval and then a gasping response drifted faintly downward.

"I c-aa-a-an't!"

"Huh?" Officer McGuiness began to feel the least bit annoyed. He began to entertain a suspicion that this night-hawk was making sport of a member of the police. At the least he was denying what Danny had actually seen with his own good eyes.

"Ye can't can't ye?" he remarked at length. "Well, th' way ut looked to me ye started all right."

"Yes, an' if I'd 'a' kept on, you dub, I'd a broke my neck."

"Shmall loss an' ye had," said Danny, his anger rising at the other man's form of address. "An' 'tis not all noight I hov to stand here watchin' ye act like a bloomin' bat."

"Who's actin'?" It was a snarl that answered. "If you think I'm doin' this for my health, you got even less sense than th' average cop. I tell you—"

"That's enough. You don't need to tell me nuthin'." Officer McGuiness's outraged dignity came to his aid. "You're under arrest."

"Oh, am I?" Apparently the man in the air was inclined to dispute the patrolman.

"Ye are." Danny stood by his statement none the less. "Then why don't you come up and get me?"

"Because I ain't no rubber ball."

It was a taunt and nothing else, and Danny knew it, but he didn't know exactly what to do about it. He shifted his position, moving in until he stood close beside the porch. It was a most amazing situation by which he was faced. It offered obstacles he didn't see just how to overcome. He might call the fire department and get the extension-tower, but— that would ruin the professor's lawn. He might shoot the defiant captive, and yet he doubted if such action on his part would be considered as justified. There might be a question as to whether or no a man's floating up in the air constituted resisting arrest. He had been taught that an officer should always keep cool. Only it was hard to keep cool in the face of such an amazing situation.

Once more he scratched his head and eyed the figure between himself and the moon. The odd thing was the fellow didn't go any higher or even try to swim off. That was another thing that Danny couldn't understand. In fact, he couldn't understand anything that had happened during the last fifteen minutes. The whole thing was a bit too much for his brain.

"How do you do ut?" he asked at length.

"I don't do it, you square-head." The flying man disclaimed all hint at a personal prowess.

"Oh, don't you?" A fine scorn crept into Danny's tones. "Then I should loike to know who does."

"I don't know, dang it," gibbered the other's voice. "You started it yourself, comin' up on me like you did. There was something on the roof, I tell you. I laid down in it when you yelled at me. I felt it, it was sticky. I got it on my clothes—"

"On th' roof?" Danny interrupted with a flash of understanding. He knew considerable about Xenophon Zapt. He had even been mixed up once or twice in his experiments, quite outside his own intent. And this was the professor's house, and the fellow had just said that there was something on the roof of the porch, and—

"Yes. It stuck to me when I laid down, an' it's keepin' me up here, I guess. If I lay on my face I'm all right, but I start fallin' as soon as I turn on my back. Here's some of the danged stuff, if you want a closer look."

Something whistled through the air and hit the spot where Danny had been standing. But Danny wasn't there. As the other man spoke he had ducked and stepped aside. And straightway he became conscious of two things at once. The man had sunk a trifle nearer the earth after throwing down whatever it was he had scraped from his clothing, and— there was something the matter with his, Officer McGuiness's, foot. It was exhibiting a most remarkable inclination to rise into the air despite efforts to keep it on the ground— it was throwing him off his balance.

Instinctively he hopped sidewise to save himself from falling, landed his one sane foot in what might have been a mass of soft mud on the grass under the eaves of the porch and became aware that it also had gone wild.

At once Officer Dan McGuiness found himself in a most bewildering case. He had large feet, powerful, tireless in the path of duty, and the soles of his shoes were of a large expanse. Yet, strangely enough now, those heavy feet seemed to have taken on a quality positively airy. Strive as he would they refused to remain on the grass. In desperation he essayed a step and found himself unable to thrust either leg or foot downward to a contact with the earth.

Still struggling against belief he repeated the endeavor with the other foot and found himself mounting to the level of the porch roof. Then and then only did realization and acceptance of the situation come upon him.

"Whu-roo!" He gave vent to a full-toned Irish shout of comprehension and continued his progress aloft.

Inside the house as that shout woke the echoes of the night, Miss Zapt pricked her pretty ears.

"Bob," she said sharply, "what was that?"

"Sounded like a yell or a battle-cry or something," Sargent made answer. " I've had a notion I heard voices outside for the past few minutes. Maybe I'd better find out."

He rose, and Nellie followed him into the hall. He opened the door and they both stepped out on the porch. At first they saw nothing, and then a gruff voice drifted to them:

"Lie still, ye spalpeen. Ye tould me to come an' git ye an', begob, I hov. Quit yer squirmin' or I'll bust yer bean wid me club."

"Bob!" Miss Zapt seized her companion's arm. She had recognized those stentorian tones: "That's Officer McGuiness. They— they must be on the roof."

"Probably." Sargent went down the porch steps before he lifted his eyes, and then he, too, gasped at what he beheld and his voice came a bit unsteady.

"Good Lord, Nellie! Look at that!" He lifted an arm and pointed to where Danny, treading air very much as a man treads water, was endeavoring to still the struggles of a human figure sprawled out weirdly with its face to the earth.

Miss Zapt took one glance at the spectacle above her and shrieked: "Bob— they'll be killed!"

There came the click of the gate and a little man with iron-gray whiskers and a flapping frockcoat came up the walk.

"Ahem," he said rather dryly, "just what is the meaning of so excitable a statement? Who will be killed, may I ask?"

"Officer McGuiness and— somebody else," Nellie stammered.

"Eh?" Professor Zapt stared, out of his nearsighted eyes. "Indeed? I fail to perceive any indications of an impending tragedy myself. Where are they?"

"There!" Once more Sargent pointed aloft.

"Huh?" The professor tilted back his head as Bob's arm rose. "God bless my soul!" he exclaimed and stared through at least fifteen seconds of contemplation before he raised his voice in a question: "Officer McGuiness, exactly how did you get up there?"

Danny may have sensed the presence of those beneath him, but if so he had thus far given no sign. Now, however, he managed to snap the handcuffs on his man, tilted his head and shot a glance at the earth.

"An' is ut you, professor?" he replied. "Shure, an' if it is how I got up here yer askin' why I walked, though barrin' th' fact how I done ut I dunno, except that after this poorch-climbin' beauty floated offen yer roof when I tould him to come down, I stepped into somethin' on th' grass an' found mesilf endowed wid th' ability of follerin' after, belike because of whativer it was I had got on me fate. An' 'tis not so much how I got up is troublin' me now, as how I shall git down wid th' burd I've caught."

"Remarkable— actually remarkable!" said Professor Xenophon Xerxes Zapt. "Officer, this is most amazing. Let me think— let me think."

He made his way to the porch steps and found himself a seat. "If I moight be suggestin', sor, don't be thinkin' too long at present." Danny's voice came down in the tone of a plaint.

" 'Tis tiresome work entirely, this walkin' on air. 'Tis not an angel I am as yet, an' there is nothin' to sit on at all, at all, an' th' steady movement is tirin' on th' legs."

"Then stop it," said the professor in a manner of impatience: "Keep your feet still and float."

He began pulling at his graying whiskers as though minded to tear them out by the roots. Presently he hopped up, trotted a few steps down the walk, lifted his eyes to the laboratory windows and nodded.

And then he turned to Bob and Nellie.

"Did it rain here to-night?"

"It did," Bob declared. "Wind— preceding the shower?"

"Lots of it at first."

"That explains it," said Xenophon Xerxes Zapt.

"Glad of it—" Bob began.

The professor gave him a glance. "If you will kindly let me finish my remarks. As I told you I would, I prepared a quantity of the Paste Powder the other day and left it when I departed this morning to catch a train. In my haste I forgot to close the windows. The wind blew the powder upon the roof and the rain converted it into the paste and washed some of it off on the lawn—"

"If yer quite done thinkin', professor, sor," Officer McGuiness interrupted, "would you moind tellin' me how to get down?"

"Eh?" Xenophon Zapt jerked up his head to view the patrolman and his captive. "Oh, yes— yes— certainly. That's simple. You have the substance merely on your feet?"

"Yes, sor."

"Then hold them up."

"Hould thim up? Hould thim up where?" Danny's tones were growing a trifle excited. "If I try houldin' up my fate, I'll be losin' my balance an breakin' my—"

"Exactly." Professor Zapt's voice grew crisp. "Take hold of your prisoner, bend your legs at the knees, so as to elevate the soles of your shoes and let gravity do the rest. Robert— go turn on the hose that we may wash the paste off the officer's feet when he reaches the ground. He's all mussed up."

Bob departed, running on his errand. By the time he was back Danny had effected a landing and was kneeling on the grass with his captive stretched out on his back within reach. Inside five minutes the paste was removed from McGuiness's feet and he stood erect.

"Shure, an' 'tis wonderful stuff, professor," he began after he had taken a deep breath of relief. "An' what moight you call th' same?"

"Zapt's Repulsive Paste," said the professor. "It robs anybody placed above it of weight."

"What do ye think of that now?" Officer Dan exclaimed. "But 'tis no more than th' truth yer spakin'. I've had an example of its effects myself. Oh, would ye!"

He broke off and sprang, snatching into the air to grip and drag back the form of his prisoner, who in the momentary distraction of conversation had managed to roll himself on his face. Danny slammed him down none too gently, it must be confessed.

"Lie there now, ye human balloon," he admonished in a growl, "or I'll make ye more repulsive than any kind of paste ye ever saw. If ye think I'm going to let Spur Heel Eddie slip out of my fingers, once they grip him—"

"Spur Heel Eddie?" Sargent repeated in excitement. "McGuiness is that right?"

"Roight ut is— dead roight, Misther Sargent," Danny chuckled. "Shure, an' 'tis a foine noight's wuruk. He's th' burd we've been sort of thinkin' was behindt all these here burgularies th' last two weeks, an'—"

"And you caught him trying to burglarize my house." Professor Zapt's fingers slipped inside his coat. They came out with something crisp.

"Officer, let me express my appreciation of your fidelity to duty."

"Thank ye, sor." Danny deftly pocketed the "appreciation" without removing his watchful eye from Eddie. "As I was sayin, McGuiness niver shirks his duty, an' 'tis a foine noight's wuruk."

"I'll go in and telephone for the wagon," suggested Bob.

"Don't trouble, sor," said Danny. "Begorra, I'll be takin' him in myself."

Stooping, he rolled Eddie face downward, seized him securely by the slack of the trousers and started to walk with him across the grass.

"Ye'll notice that wid. all this Repulsive Paste smeared on him, if I carry him loike this he hasn't any weight at all," he announced from the gate.

"Exactly. You're a man of intelligence, McGuiness." Xenophon Xerxes Zapt turned to enter his house. "Good night."

"Good night, sor," Officer McGuiness made answer.

"Good night," Bob echoed with a chuckle as he watched Eddie, literally held fast by the strong arm of the law, born off down the tree-shaded street until he disappeared.

Professor Zapt whirled upon him.

"The occasion is not one of levity, Robert," he remarked in decidedly acid tones.

"No, sir. Merely of levitation," said Bob.

__________________

7: Throne of Chaos

J. F. B.

All-Story Weekly, 1 Sept 1917

One of those writers who preferred to be known only by initials, and is therefore effectively anonymous. I can't say if this is the same J. F. B who wrote the short story "The Prince Imperial"  which appeared in 1887. Nothing else can be found.

WHETHER or no I am doing wisely in giving to the world a full and true account of the mysterious death of Fred Ryder may be open to question, but having given the subject the most careful consideration of which I am capable, and being sustained by the opinion of the dead man’s wife, I am moved to reveal the stupendous facts of the immediate circumstances of the tragedy.

Fred Ryder was my brother-in-law and my closest friend. We had known each other from early boyhood, and, as the years sped, our friendship waxed to the full development of a complete understanding. Ten years ago he married my only sister, Alice, and the bond of their mutual love had been tightened by the advent of their two children— John, now eight years old, and Annie, six.

My brother-in-law had an income from real estate sufficient to provide him with all the necessities and most of the luxuries of life. Alice, too, has an independent income of her own, so Fred was wholly free to devote all his time to the study of applied science, particularly chemistry, which was his pet subject. Shortly after the birth of Annie the family went to reside in a house which had been built to Fred’s specifications on a little estate he owned on the slope of Overlook Mountain in the Catskills.

There was nothing remarkable about the house except in its prevailing feature of comfort, the work of housekeeping being reduced to a minimum by a host of electrical appliances installed by Fred. The power for these was supplied from an immense turbine on a mountain river a few hundred yards away which operated a powerful dynamo, and this also furnished electrical energy in Fred’s laboratory, which was located conveniently at the end of the garden in the rear of the house.

Situated as it was, the place, of course, was a little lonely, but the solitude appealed to Fred, for it insured freedom from interruption in his work. My sister, however, felt the lack of human companionship; and it was this, I believe, which actuated her and her husband in giving me a pressing invitation to come and live with them, an invitation of which I was glad to avail myself.

I speak, therefore, with intimate knowledge when I say that the family life of my brother-in-law and sister— of all of us, in fact— was one of almost unmitigated felicity. Up till that day, now nearly two months ago, when the dreadful blow fell, not a cloud bigger than a man’s hand had appeared in that domestic heaven.

For a few months before the catastrophe we had observed that Fred became more and more absorbed in his work. Day after day he would spend all his time in the laboratory, remaining there until far into the night.

My sister would have been alarmed at his complete absorption had I not reassured her. I knew Fred well, with the less intimate, more detached, but more observant knowledge of a lifelong friend. I believed I saw in the abstracted eagerness of his manner that he was on the trail of some discovery. I did not pretend to him that I noticed anything unusual in his conduct, nor did I question him. Often before I had observed him in moods of exaltation only a little less lofty than the one in which he was now soaring, and I knew that at such times he hated interference.

So now, though he told me nothing— indeed, he rarely even spoke to me— I was not surprised, for I was well aware that I was quite unable to follow him into the intricate recesses of science where he stepped with confidence. And then suddenly his manner changed.

One morning he came down to breakfast, and was again to all of us the same unabstracted, normal Fred as of old. He looked haggard and wan, but he was in high spirits as he joked and laughed about commonplace things. But though his manner was superficially the same, yet it seemed to me that there was a subtle, an indefinable, difference.

To me he was more companionable than ever; to his wife and children he was even more tender than usual, with now and then an unwonted wistfulness in his affection. After breakfast he took John and Annie out with him to the garden, and Alice seized the opportunity to tell me she was very much worried about him.

The night before, she said, he had left the laboratory and gone to bed much earlier than had been his custom of late. She could not tell the exact time, for she had been asleep, but she thought it was before eleven o’clock. At midnight he had wakened her by rising in a state of excitement which he endeavored vainly to subdue, and as he dressed he had explained that there was an important phase of the work he was engaged on which he had overlooked, and that he could not rest until he had satisfied himself of the result of certain reactions.

She did not see him again till nearly six in the morning, and then he had returned cold, fatigued, and dejected. He had come and put his arm around her, sitting beside her on the bed, and kissed her with profound— almost solemn— devotion. She had simply urged him to come to bed and snatch a few hours of sleep to relieve his nervous emotion. He had got into bed, and, although he could not sleep, he had grown gradually calmer, and when the first gong sounded for breakfast in the morning he had insisted on rising to join the family.

Looking out of the dining-room window which gave on the garden, we could now see Fred and the two children enjoying themselves in boisterous amusement around a bonfire he had built under the copper beeches near the laboratory. He had gathered a great heap of dead leaves and twigs and set fire to it.

As we watched, we were surprised to see him enter his workshop and emerge a moment later with an armful of scientific instruments, which he threw, recklessly on the pile. Several times he reentered the laboratory and came out again with his arms full of books, papers, and instruments which he heaped upon the blaze, to the shrieking glee of John and little Annie.

We attached no special significance to his action, he having many times recently referred to the antiquity and inefficiency of his scientific outfit, and we were satisfied that he was simply cleaning house in preparation for a more modern equipment.

During the next six days Fred retained his accustomed manner; he was himself again. Only one thing did we notice that struck us as a little strange, which was that after the morning of the bonfire he never again entered the laboratory. Most of the day he spent in his smoking-den, and after dinner, in the evenings, he would sit with me before the open fireplace in the dining-room, a baizecovered table between us, on which were a tantalus, a box of cigars, and a chess-board.

Happy evenings they were to me, and I know they were happy, too, for Fred.

On the night of the sixth day, after he had checkmated me in the most brilliant game I had ever seen him play, he remarked casually to Alice and me that he thought he would go out for a tramp in the moonlight. Alice did not oppose him, although I knew she always held such expeditions dangerous. As for me, I felt a bit chagrined that he did not ask me to go with him, but, feeling that he might want to be alone for a quiet meditation, I said nothing about it.

The following morning, as I was taking a pipe in the garden after breakfast, Peter, our chauffeur and coachman, brought me my letters. The superscription of one of these, I observed with a shock, was in Fred’s handwriting. I felt immediately that something was wrong; many little things in Fred’s conduct which I had only half observed, or to which I had attached no importance, came crowding on my memory. In trepidation I tore open the letter, and this was what I read:

I KNOW that the very receipt of this note from me will, to some extent, have prepared you for a shock. You may, indeed I know you will, believe me when I say that the only regret I have in doing what I am about to do is the grief it will bring to Alice and you. As for my children, they are fortunately as yet too young to be affected by this trouble, and there is none else for whom I care.

When you are reading this I will be dead. You will find my body lying beside the black pool over Echo Lake, near the summit of Indian Head Mountain. Break the news gently to my wife, and, when you have done this, give her the enclosed note. All my affairs are in order. I have made you executor of my estate. You will find my will in the safe. I need not admonish you to take care of Alice and my children, you would do that in any case. I enclose also two sealed copies of a memorandum— one for Alice and one for you— in which I set forth the awful, the sublimely horrible experience which befell me, and which has driven me to self-destruction. These are not to be opened until a week after the inquest, when my fate will have been forgotten by the gossips. I leave to Alice’s judgment and to yours the question of making known the contents. Remember me always as your affectionate brother,

FRED.

There is no need to intrude on the grief-stricken privacy of my sister. Peter and I went to the place indicated in Fred’s letter. It was a small pool of semi-stagnant water. I knew the spot well, and often had admired the thick profusion of its broad fringe of sedge.

As we approached it now we were mystified to observe that the pool had dried up and that all around it the sedge and grass had been burned up and scorched for a distance of many yards. At another time this would have aroused in us the most profound astonishment, but our thoughts were diverted by the sight of Fred’s body lying at the edge of the scorched zone. The head had been almost torn from the trunk by some disruptive force applied, apparently, within the mouth.

But the extraordinary fact was that expert medical testimony at the subsequent inquest declared that the disruptive force had been produced by no known human agency. I believe I have now told all the salient incidents in this case as they were observable to us who were so closely in touch with the central figure, and, having in mind the grave possibility, if not likelihood, of error creeping into the record were I to continue the narrative in my own words, I think it best to produce here the memorandum left by Fred exactly as he wrote it:

THE FRUIT of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death into the world, and all our woe. And it came to pass that I, too, did eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree— the Tree of Knowledge— and the veil was lifted from the mystery of this world’s destiny, and I saw death and destruction. I have stumbled, or I have been led, into the hideous arcanum of nature, which is chaos.

It is difficult for me, almost impossible, for I am but mortal, to tell you my story. An experience which transcends all human experiences defies description. But I will try. I must, however, disclose only so much as will set up the truth of what I relate. I may not be too precise, for that would be to defeat the very object for which I am about to immolate myself.

For months past I have been engaged on many scientific problems, chiefly of a chemical nature. The exigency of the times led me to conceive the possibility of being able to provide for the safety of our United States by presenting her with a potent instrument of defense. The object I had in view was to produce an explosive substance which would be at the same time abundant, easy of production, altogether safe to handle, and available for all purposes.

You know that the prices of the ingredients of every known explosive have increased enormously since the outbreak of the European war. Some chemicals necessary to the manufacture of explosives, hitherto commonplace, are almost unobtainable, and others, being mineral derivatives, are monopolized by the countries in which these mineral deposits occur. But in any event, even in normal times, the manufacture or production of explosives is always costly.

The first object I had in mind was an explosive compound, the component parts of which would exist in superabundance, and the production of which would be cheap. My second object was safety— both before and after explosion. It is a point generally overlooked in discussing the ethics of the use of poisonous gas, that all explosives in common use give off gases which are either highly deleterious or poisonous. In this sense they are all dangerous after use. Before use, they are all dangerous because there is none of them proof against either the fool or the foolhardy.

To overcome this I aimed at producing an explosive which would give off no poisonous gases, and which would respond neither to severe shock nor to direct inflammation. Finally, I wanted to make an explosive in which I could regulate both the rate and the resultant force of the explosion, so as to make it usable for every purpose.

All explosions may be regarded as processes of quick combustion, in which the residual gases are hundreds of times greater in volume than the original explosive. The only difference between combustion and explosion is in the length of time occupied in the disintegration. When an explosive action has begun in any substance, the phenomenon is propagated throughout the whole mass by being reproduced from molecule to molecule. It is the rapidity with which this propagation proceeds that determines the nature of the consequent reaction, and it may vary from the rate of ordinary combustion to the inconceivably high velocity of detonation.

Roux and Sarrau were, I think, the first to differentiate between explosives and to divide them into two classes. These they called explosions of the first order, or detonations, and explosives of the second order, to which ordinary explosions belong. The detonation of an explosive, such as nitro-glycerin, guncotton, or picric acid, is obtained by exploding with fulminate of mercury; and in this case the explosive substance is disintegrated almost instantaneously.

Ordinary explosions may be produced either by direct application of fire, or sufficient heat, or by a small quantity of gunpowder. It is this kind of explosion which takes place in firing a projectile from a rifle or cannon. In fact, such an explosion is the only suitable one for the purpose because detonating explosion would probably burst the breech.

The phenomenon of varying rates of combustion or disintegration may be observed sometimes in the same substance. You can, for instance, burn a stick of dynamite; you can also burn a bit of celluloid, but if you heat it and strike it with a hammer it will explode.

Guncotton, however, affords about the best example: When wet and closely compressed, guncotton burns slowly; if loose and uncompressed, it will flash off; if spun in threads, it can be used as a quick fuse; and dry guncotton can be exploded by a fulminate.

Many mixtures and compounds which are capable of explosion are less sensitive than those I have just mentioned, and require a very powerful initial impulse to cause them to explode. Some of these substances, such as ammonium nitrate, trini-tronaphthalene; and potassium chlorate, were until recently regarded as non-explosive, because the method of exploding than had not been discovered.

The explosiveness of potassium chlorate was. I think, first discovered at the fire which took place at the Kurtz works, St. Helens, in May, 1899, when 156,000 kilograms of the chlorate, which up till then had been regarded as a combustible merely, exploded with terrific force, bringing death to unwitting bystanders.

Many years ago, acting on the assumption of the universal applicability of the hypothesis of evolution, I had begun to study the chemical elements with a view to finding out the nature and course of the evolution taking place in these elements themselves.

Collaterally with this there was another problem which I regarded as the main object of my investigations. It is not necessary, nor is it advisable, for me to do more than outline this problem. It was suggested to me a long time ago by an address delivered by Ramsay, and it had to do with the discovery or isolation of the primal or fundamental element in all matter. I do not know whether I have actually succeeded in doing this, for my experiments have come to an abrupt, a terrible, ending; but a few days ago I did finally succeed in breaking up one of the most familiar elements into two more fundamental than itself, and it was this discovery which laid open for me, and for all of us, the path of absolute ruin.

But I anticipate.

Meanwhile, I had synthesized a great number of unstable chemical compounds composed of elements readily obtainable. These, from their very nature, were, I knew, readily capable of disintegration, but I had hitherto failed to find a suitable impulse, or an impulse sufficiently strong to effect the disintegration of any of them with explosive violence.

When, however, I did finally succeed in breaking up the element of which I have spoken into two more fundamental than itself, I found that one of these two, which I have named mortifier, effected the result at which I had aimed on some of the compounds I had synthesized, and on further investigation I discovered that this was due to the extraordinary affinity of mortifier for the hydrogen elements in those compounds. Its affinity for the hydrogen atom was so intense, so powerful, that the disruption of the whole mass took place with detonating violence.

Satisfied at last that I was on the right track, that I had practically achieved the object I had set out to achieve, I decided that night, not yet a week ago, to make this a pausing place in my labor. For many weeks day and night had ceased to have any special meaning for me. I had prosecuted my research restlessly, relentlessly, snatching now and then an hour or two of fitful sleep. I had felt, I had known, I was on the right trail.

As game is to the pointer, so had my quarry been to the distended nostrils of my intellectual being. As a weasel pursues the hapless rabbit, so had I followed fast and ever faster the elusive object of my chase, until at last I had caught up with it, grappled with it, and beaten it to subjection. I felt the fierce, primitive, passionate triumph of the hunter. But, over and above all, I felt the intense pleasure which attends alone the fruitful exercise of the rational faculty.

Yes, to-night I would go to bed early. Although it was not yet eleven o’clock, I had become quite drowsy, which was not to be wondered at, I reflected, considering the severe strain to which I had been subjected for so long. So I wrote down rapidly a few notes in a manner unintelligible to any one but myself. These I locked carefully in my bureau, and then, as a final precaution, I doublelocked the door of my laboratory, and stepped out into the garden.

The night was chill and clear, and a million eyes of heaven peered down upon me with the calm serenity of infinite mystery, as if to chide me for the pride I had taken in wresting one little secret from reluctant nature. Chastened by this thought, I entered my house, went up straight to my room, and crept into bed beside my wife, who was already asleep. For a moment I thought of waking her to tell her of my discovery, but she being so sound asleep, and I being so jaded in mind and body, I postponed that sweet pleasure till the morning.

And now, how can I, who am no writer— I, who am ever conscious of the clumsy awkwardness of my literary expression— hope to tell you through the medium of the written word the infinite horror of the tragedy which befell me that night?

On going to bed I had fallen quietly asleep, but my mind could not detach itself from the problems on which it had labored so long and actively. I know that I dreamed long and wearily, but I remember definitely only the final portion of my dream.

I seemed to have marched in a long night tediously over an arid desert until I came to the edge of a precipice whose depth my vision could not penetrate. Still as I stood gazing out over the void, it seemed to me that I saw a little star shoot forth from its celestial setting and approach me; and as it came nearer it grew into a huge, blue ball of intense brilliance, becoming bigger and bigger until at last it burst into a glorious spray of surpassing splendor, illuminating by its glittering refulgence the surrounding waste. In an instant I saw that I stood at the edge of the earth beyond which there was naught. I awoke.

Calmly I awoke, and my opening eyes again met the cold, mysterious scrutiny of the unlidded eyes of heaven. And, as I looked, there came to me as if from an immeasurable distance a wail of infinite pathos— such a wail as might arise from the souls of a myriad unconceived babies sighing for existence. Whence and from what the wail came I do not know. I heard it only for a moment, and then it was lost in the slow and churchyard tones of the great hall-clock striking the hour of midnight.

Suddenly I sat upright as if electrified, every nerve and muscle in my body racked and taut in a paroxysm of terror. I felt— I could almost see— the hideous specter of an infinite, black doom crowding in on me as if to overwhelm me. Choking with dread, I craned forward eagerly to clutch at something— anything— to take hold of an object fixed and tangible. For a thought— Oh, God, what a thought!— had seared itself into my soul and left me numb with horror! Many a time before in a dreary vigil of the night had I been stricken with a vague, an indefinable, terror. This I remembered now; and I remembered, too how the first glimpse of russet dawn had soothed my weary spirit, and with the remembrance I felt a little easier.

The thought I had conceived, I argued, was monstrous, impossible. Such a thing could not be. Yet, I could not remain one moment longer abed. I felt I could not put off for a minute the absolute proof to myself that my thought was nothing but an hallucination.

I arose, therefore, at once. And as I did so, my wife awoke, and, while I dressed I explained to her, in as quiet a manner as I could assume, that I wished to test the effect of a reaction which I had overlooked in my researches. My heart bled for her, my darling Alice, in pity for the extreme worry which I knew my ill-concealed excitement and unusual conduct would arouse in her, and I felt inexpressibly grateful to her for the implicit trust she had always placed in me, no matter how eccentric my actions might appear.

Fully dressed, I left the house, and, walking down the garden, the bracing, nipping air of early winter whipped me into renewed vigor. Collected now in mind, and refreshed in body, I entered the laboratory, turning on the switch as I closed the door carefully behind me. Taking up a test tube, I walked over to a water-faucet and allowed a few drops to trickle into it. Under the full light of a Tungsten lamp I dropped carefully an infinitesimal quantity of mortifier into the water in the tube, and the water flashed off almost instantaneously!

Repeating the experiment, this time will a few drops of water of normal salinity, I introduced once more a particle of mortifier into the water; and the result was, as I had anticipated, not a flash but an explosion, which shattered the test tube in my trembling fingers!

To describe my sensations at this moment would be wholly impossible. There are no words in any language to describe them, for no man had yet conceived the infinite import of my experience. Rooted in sublime dismay, I stood there in horrid contemplation of the destiny of the world as revealed in the fragment of broken glass gripped tightly in the fingers of my outstretched hand.

I do not know whether I have yet made clear to you the reason for my utter perturbation. Remember I have told you that I had found that the substance mortifier had an extraordinary affinity for hydrogen. Its affinity for this element was so great as to disrupt with extreme violence the water molecule, made up, as it is, of two atoms of hydrogen with one of oxygen, and the violence of this disruption was such as to propagate its influence through the whole mass of the water. More than this, I knew from the inherent nature of the reaction that its violence was, within certain limits, commensurate with the salinity of the water on account of the sodium element in the salt. In short, I had achieved what I had set out to achieve.

I had discovered an explosive, abundant, easy of production, and of such a nature that I could regulate the force of the explosion— and that explosive was water! How long I stood in contemplation I cannot tell, for the notions of time and of eternity had already blended into each other and become indistinguishable.

But as you would measure time, I stood there as if petrified for probably only a few minutes. And then a faint ray of hope that this chalice might yet be removed from my unwilling lips pierced the blackness that encompassed me. It was possible, I thought, that though an explosive effect had been produced by mortifier on a small quantity of water, yet the reaction might not take place where the quantity of water was very great.

Urged by this faint glimmer, I resolved to put the question immediately to the test of actual experiment. Far up on the flank of Indian Head Mountain there was, I remembered, a pool of stagnant water formed by the rain in a cup of the hill. The pool was isolated, and, after the week of drought which we had just had, I knew that the earth all around it would be quite dry. Here, I decided, would be just the ideal place for the momentous experiment.

Taking a minute quantity of mortifier, I incased it carefully in a soluble capsule, making the capsule of such thickness that it would take about ten minutes to dissolve in cold water. Then, donning a light overcoat and a cap, I locked the door of my laboratory and went out into the night. Walking as quickly as I could, running even where the ground permitted, I breasted the slope of the mountain, and, aided by the clear light of a crescent moon, arrived at last, panting, at the side of the pool.

It was then two o’clock. As I stood there for a moment with open mouth to take breath, I could feel and hear in my throat the throbbing of my overstrained heart. Knowing that no living thing, save, perhaps, a few small animals, would be in the vicinity at that hour of the morning, I lost not a moment, but took the capsule of mortifier from my pocket and placed it carefully in the water at the edge of the pool.

Then I walked to a knoll a few hundred yards away, from which I could have an unobstructed view of the pool should anything happen. Nor had I long to wait before something did happen! From the spot where the pool lay there rose up into the highest heavens a column of blue flame of miraculous volume which almost scorched me with its intense heat, and all around me there were innumerable cracklings and minor explosions; and I felt my face and hands bedewed by a mist of reformed water vapor— produced, as I knew, by the recombination of the dissociated hydrogen and oxygen elements set free by the initial flashing of the water in the pool. As I have said, the initial effect of the mortifier on the water was a flash; there was only wanting the presence of the sodium element to have produced an explosion.

Aghast with terror, I cried aloud in the night and fell upon the ground in a transport of unutterable woe. Who was I, or what was I, that fate should have singled me out from the uncounted human beings of the earth to be the fortunate recipient of a secret so titanic? Blind fool that I was! But a few hours before I had prided myself on "wresting one little secret from reluctant nature."

But now I knew that I had been made the luckless victim of a monstrous confidence, thrust on me by a ruthless nature only too terribly eager to impart it. I, who had believed myself to be a free agent in my investigations, had penetrated a forbidden mystery to my own undoing.

I had discovered a substance of such hideous potentiality as to invest me with all the attributes of a malignant god of destruction! Lying prone upon the ground, my mind grasped gradually more and more fully the vastness of the awful secret, until at last the full truth swept over me with cataclysmal effect. Only to step to the seashore— to cast a particle of mortifier on the moving waters— and in a moment the earth would be a nebula. Like Lucifer of old, roaming with his legions through the trackless universe, so, too, could I, in imagination... behold the throne of chaos, and his dark pavilion spread wide on the wasteful deep!

With him enthroned sat sable-vested night, eldest of things, The consort of his reign. For some reason I now became tranquil. I do not know why or how this was so, but I think it was due to the sublime, if Satanic, grandeur of my reflection. Rising up, I essayed to walk back to the pool, but the ground around it over a wide zone was still so hot that I could not come near it. This did not trouble me, however, for I could realize well enough what there would be to see, so I bent my steps toward home, where I arrived about six o’clock in the morning.

As to the course of action I would follow, my mind was now fully determined. Plainly I could not live. It would be impossible for me to go my accustomed rounds as if nothing had occurred. Such a secret as weighed on me would, I knew, inevitably bear down upon me and crush me with its intolerable burden. I might of course, for a time preserve my counsel absolutely within myself. But the time would surely come when I would be driven to madness, and, in that condition, what might not I do? And, even if I were able by superhuman force of will, to preserve my sanity, how could I provide for the possibility of falling sick, or meeting with an accident, and subsequent delirium blurting out the whole facts of my infernal discovery?

No, there is no way out for me, but to die. But before I should die, it was necessary for me to remove all vestiges of my researches. You remember that morning after breakfast when I brought the children out with me into the garden, and danced with them around a bonfire of my books, instruments, and papers.

That was the first part of the holocaust offered up for the safety of the world— a sacrifice that is now complete in my own immolation. The philosophy, the fundamental knowledge of the world and of the destiny of the human race has been revealed to me. I see now that we are but the playthings of nature— a picture puzzle— a set of blocks, provided for her amusement. Already she has completed one design of which she has become aweary, and, like a wanton child, she is crying to have the blocks jumbled up again to begin another picture.

The world is but as a drop of water which condenses in the air, falls to the earth, and. in the passage, becomes tenanted by counties organisms. Then the sun dries up the drop. The organisms are no more. And the eternal cycle goes on forever. Sometimes I have felt tempted to use my knowledge for my own aggrandizement, to exercise my power, or, rather, to use the threat to exercise it to impose my will up the world.

Compared with my power, what would be the strength of potentates, princes, kings, or emperors? At my word wars would cease, or be enacted with ten-thousand-fold ferocity. I had nothing to do but to prove, to demonstrate, the efficacy of my terrible secret, and from a houseboat on the Hudson I could dictate my pleasure to the world. I could crush the human race in absolute bondage.

To tell with the thought! But this I believe, of this I am fully convinced, that somewhere, soon, some one else, if not many others, will stray along the path which leads to destruction. Man is afflicted with the curse of reason, and many men are using that reason in a manner and in a direction which will lead with certainty to ultimate total disaster. There are, I know, scores of chemists on the face of the earth who are engaged in just such a pursuit as I followed. It may be a year, it may be a century, but the day of wrath— that dreadful day— is fast approaching.

And now I go from you. To-night I will go up into the mountain beside the pool where the final proof of my damnable experience was established. For a sentimental reason I would like to die there and, besides, I want to give myself a final demonstration. I will take with me a small soluble capsule containing the last particle of mortifier now in existence. This I will put in my mouth as I sit beside the pool, and I will then fill my mouth from a flask of salt water. That will be the end.

_______________

8: Girls Don't Count

Douglas Newton

Wilfrid Bernard Michael Newton, 1884-1951

Sunday Mail (Brisbane) 9 August 1942

WHEN the inter-island steamer Starbrook sank two men and a girl alone reached the nearest island alive... but this isn't one of those stories.

One of the men was Tontine, the tall, monkishly severe medico-scientist, who had after four years of grinding search, just run to earth the germ of the deadly atoll fever. He was on his way to San Francisco laboratories to put the finishing touches to the anti-toxin that meant the saving of millions of lives.

The other man was Baiter, the bull-big island millionaire, who carried the prosperity of tens of thousands in his shrewd hands. The girl was just called Milly. She did not matter any more than that; she was a plump, prettyish flirtatious little flapper, of no brain, occupation, or any account in the world.

The island was no more romantic. It was a rough, bare broken tooth of rock sticking out of a blank sea. A few small coarse bushes managed to cling to it, but there was not even one coconut tree of song and story in sight. The rock felt like the top of an oven to their bare feet.

Tontine looked at the bushes and muttered through salt-rimmed lips: 'No food there— plenty of shell-fish, though.

'Food!' croaked Baiter. 'It's just one plain, long drink I'd sell my soul for. I wonder where the blazes we are?'

'The second officer told me last night that the St. Swithun's Rock was only land for hundreds of miles,' giggled the girl.

The two men looked sharply at each other, realising the worst. The St. Swithun's Rock was reputed waterless.

They explored the whole of the islet— it took them thirty-eight minutes— and found that its reputation was justified. There wasn't one full and satisfying drink for one of them on that rock. They found just one tiny pool, or rather, puddle of water. It was a mere saucer-shaped depression over a pocket of gritty earth in a crack of the rocks, and it held two inches of clearish fluid.

Baiter, with his bull thirst, could— and wanted to— suck it up in a single guzzle. Tontine's coldly disciplined mind stopped him.

He found a shallow shell, and they drank one scoopful of the shell each. Half a teacupful of water each exhausted their supply.

The water was brackish, and Tontine was of opinion that it was a percolation through from the sea. He was right. The depression filled up with water again, but it took twenty-four hours. By that time the torrid heat from the shadeless rock and the salt from the shell-fish they had to eat to live made their thirst a madness.

WHEN they had drunk their ration, Tontine drew Baiter away from the girl to the other end of the rock, and said in his passionless scientist's voice:

'We've got to face the facts of our position squarely. Baiter. What do you think of our prospects of being rescued?'

'Pretty good.' Baiter spoke carefully, for his cracked lips were hurting. 'The inter-island packets always make a point of sailing close to this rock— in case there are any castaways, you know. We're bound to be picked up presently.'

'What do you mean by presently?' asked Tontine.

'Six— eight weeks,' said the millionaire. 'On their regular sailings— it can't be before that.'

'That's how I worked it out,' said Tontine in the voice of a man who had just proved a scientific theory. 'And we'll all be dead in four to five weeks. Baiter— under these conditions and with this water supply.'

Baiter had only to look at the calmly intelligent face of the scientist to know that he was right. Also his own parched throat was arguing in the same strain. Tontine went on a precise and unemotional tones:—

'I'm speaking as a medical man and a scientist. That's our limit of life in the circumstances— with three of us sharing the water.'

'But a bigger chance for one— or two?' Baiter said hoarsely.

'Two will pull through on the supply,' said Tontine evenly. 'That's why we've got to face our problem without any sentiment. Baiter. Enough water to save two— three means death for all.'

Baiter looked across the islet at the girl Milly. She was sitting on a ledge over the sea manicuring her nail— that was Milly. Even in the supreme moment of life and death all her silly mind had thought of was grabbing a vanity-bag full of things for beautifying herself.

Tontine read Baiters look with a dry, judicial smile, and said passionately:—

'Yes— 'Yes— two of us can live, Baiter, if we decide that one of the three must be sacrificed. The thing you and I must face with frankness and without sentimental nonsense is: Who ought to live ? Which two of us three are we justified in saving?'

Baiter's eyes winced away from the girl and fixed themselves on the passionless face of the scientist. 'You've already made up your mind which two,' he muttered hoarsely.

'I have. As a scientist, I can look at such a matter dispassionately. My training has taught me to judge without pity or favour. To be frank, I think I must live. I don't care a darn about life or death for myself— but I know I carry the lives of millions in my I brain. If I can reach my San Francisco laboratory and spend one month there, I can clean the islands of an hitherto unconquered disease. That's certain.. If I live it means that millions will not die. Facing the matter squarely, I know I owe it to those millions to live.'

Baiter weighed the matter in his shrewd mind and nodded.

'Well, that leaves me and the girl. Which lives?'

'I'd like the girl to live— sentimentally,' Tontine said judicially. 'But I can't justify it scientifically. We know exactly what she is; a useless, pretty little nothing. She serves no purpose in the world. Her future can be little more than a series of flirtations with insignificant young men like the second officer, with perhaps a marriage to a similar nobody in the end.

'She is an entirely useless entity, Baiter, whereas you mean something to the world. You've done fine, constructive work in the Islands, you'll continue to do such work. Thousands depend on you. Your death would be a disaster to them and a definite loss to civilisation. Therefore. I must decide that a creature who is of no human value whatsoever has no right to stand in the way of your living.'

Baiter sighed, but said quietly: 'That's how I would argue, myself, but, naturally, a man has a certain chivalry where a woman is concerned.'

'I know,' Tontine nodded. 'That is why I took the initiative. We scientists are a cold and clear-headed breed. Baiter. We can assess values without letting our hearts control our minds. I'd like the girl to live— but in plain, practical sense why should a useful life be thrown away for mere sentiment?'

'I know— the sense is with us, even if it's hard on the girl,' agreed Baiter. 'The girl gets no more water, then?'

The girl got no water when the ration was served out twenty-four hours later. Tontine served it out. Baiter said he couldn't face it; it needed the calculated pitilessness of science to refuse the girl.

SHE was startled when Baiter drank his shellful— she had expected to be served first. When . Tontine shared the third and last shellful with Baiter, she stared wide-eyed, paralysed with incredulity.

'You've— you've left none for me!' she gasped.

Baiter said harshly: 'We've decided .... It's sense— The least useful has to be sacrificed.'

The girl's face began to twitch, and slow, dumb tears slid out of her eyes as Tontine began to reason with her— scientifically.

Baiter could not stand it. With an oath he sprang up and walked to the end of the rock. He came back only after the girl had risen suddenly in the midst of Tontine's talk and slipped trembling away to a nook where she hid herself like some poor, hurt animal.

'My God!' Baiter cried. 'I couldn't stand that, the sight of her face....'

'It wasn't pleasant or easy,' Tontine said through pallid lips. 'But it has to be faced.'

They agreed then and there that to save themselves from any weakness, and also to prevent the girl getting at it, to cover the tiny spring with a big rock that could be lifted off only by two of them handling it together. They did not see the girl for the rest of the evening, but in the middle of the night Baiter cursed, lifted himself on his elbow, and cried:—

'You awake. Tontine?'

'Yes, I hear her, too,' Tontine answered quietly. 'She's been crying like that all night — while you slept.'

'Snivelling like a damned spoilt child!' Baiter said furiously. 'We can't stand that, Tontine— weeks of it, perhaps.'

'It won't be weeks.' Tontine said slowly. 'We've— we've got to be strong,  Baiter.'

'WHERE'S the need,' Baiter raged. 'We'll shove her into the sea— put her out of her misery.'

'No,' Tontine said sharply. 'That's murder, Baiter.'

'And what's the other!' the big man jeered. 'Bit squeamish for a cold-gutted scientist, aren't you?'

Baiter, Tontine saw, was getting out of hand. He hadn't the scientist's discipline and hardness of mind. Indeed, Tontine caught sight of him trying to lift the rock off the spring about midday, but it was really too heavy for one, and their drink at least was safe from him. That was not the only anxiety Tontine had that day.

About mid-afternoon he saw the girl wading out from their tiny beach. She waded until the water was up to her small, neat knees, then she began to ladle the sea up to her face. He ran out to her.

'You mustn't do that!' he cried. 'Drinking sea water means agony— madness.'

She backed away from him brokenly. Her face, wet and lifeless, turned spiritlessly to him.

'I'm only bathing my face,' she said huskily. 'It— it cools. ... I know I mustn't drink. ...'

Baiter snarled like a beast when Tontine got back to shore.

'WHY didn't you let her drink, you fool?' he said. 'The sooner she goes nutty and does for herself the better for us.... And, by heavens, it's not going to be easy for us, anyhow!'

His big meaty frame was feeling the heat and the lack of water acutely. Vet he mastered himself enough to hold back when they shifted the rock for the daily shareout of water. He let Tontine drink first, and stood back while the scientist filled the third and last shellful. But he swore at the girl, who had crept up to a rock near them. She made no attempt to plead for a share— just stood in a dreadful silence watching wide-eyed as the precious water went. Baiter's threats and rage could not even move her to tears— she just stood spellbound, staring at the water.

Baiter was still trying to drive her away when Tontine stood up. He was able to step past the millionaire and give the full shell to the girl.

Baiter screamed in frustration, and tried to snatch the water, but Tontine stood in his way. Tontine found himself saying:

'We're human, after all. Baiter. We mast give her a chance— share all risks evenly.'

Baiter shouted: 'So that's how your darned science really functions?'

He stood for a moment, his face working, then he went very still.

'All right,' he said grimly. 'Only I believe your science— and will stand by it. There's water enough to save only two of us. Missy,' he said quietly to the girl. 'He decided you weren't one of the two to be saved. Now I'll decide. You've broken our bargain. Tontine, so you suffer.... I and the girl live.'

He jumped at Tontine and knocked him down with a single blow. Then he flung himself on to the scientist, his great hands sinking deep into the thin throat. Tontine hadn't a chance. His frail figure was no match at all for Baiter's bull-like physique. His hands flailed ineffectually and then sank limply. Baiter was throttling the life out of him.

The girl watched the fight wide-eyed. She did not stir. She knew Tontine had condemned her to death: she knew that with Tontine dead she would live. She watched, the man's feeble hands twitch and go limp. And then something stirred in her. Without a sound she bent, lifted a great piece of rock with, both hands, and crashed it down on Baiter's head.

WHEN Tontine recovered consciousness a week later, he was so feeble that he could do no more than move his head. But he was in a better case than Baiter, who still lay unconscious, his head bound up on what was obviously part of a girl's under-garment.

Tontine found they were lying in a cool patch of shadow. He saw that the miracle came from no more than a girl's skirt, which she had split down one side and managed to stretch over them from rock to rock. She came up even as he looked about him, and poured sea-water from a shell on to the skirt.

She looked dreadfully emaciated and weak. He could see that plainly, for all that she wore was a pair of silk knickers and a brassiere— her other garments she had given up to them.

She sank on to her knees beside him, smiling wanly when she saw his eyes were open. He tried to speak, but his lips were parched and cracked. She left him and came back with a shell in which there was a few drops of water. With infinite caution she dipped a rag in this and wetted his lips.

HE cried out for more, but she could not give him more. Only later did he realise that she had given him her own ration. And her ration, even at that, was pitiful enough.

As his wits, though not his strength, came back he could watch her closely. She allowed herself no more than half a shellful of water a day. The rest she gave to him or to Baiter, delicately, carefully squeezing the drops between the unconscious millionaire's lips from a rag.

She suffered herself so terribly from this stinting that when he found his voice he expostulated with her. He stared at her. Both he and Baiter had decided she must die when they had power over her helplessness. Yet here she was slowly killing herself.

THEY were rescued on the sixth day after Tontine had regained consciousness, and three days after Baiter had opened his eyes. Tontine and Baiter knew that the girl Milly had saved their lives at the risk of her own— Tontine left Baiter little doubt about that.

They were grateful to her— but in reason. She would not let them be more— or let them like her more, even if they had the inclination. On the trip home she flirted with the third officer instead. Quite a useless little female.

_______________

9: Myxomycetes

Arthur Morrison

Warwick Examiner and Times (Qld) 26 Oct 1914

[The Strand Magazine, Sept 1914]

AT MY FIRST encounter with Mr. Montgomery Staggers he offered me, out of pure personal regard and affection, five thousand shares in the Stumer Gold, Diamond, Silver, and Gas Mine, Limited, at fourpence a share; an offer, by his own confession, equivalent to making my fortune in a fortnight. Somehow I refrained from buying those shares, and on later occasions I neglected other similar opportunities. After this the financier's zeal for my temporal welfare somewhat abated, and with no more than one or two further attempts to endow me beyond the dreams of avarice, he descended to an occasionally expressed desire for the loan of half a crown. It was thus that I first heard of myxomycetes.

I was base enough, at first, to suspect Mr. Staggers of inventing this word, but you will find it in any dictionary or any encyclopaedia and you may find myxomycetes itself on an old tree-stump— any number of species of it, and men of science call it protozoa— the lowest form of animal life.

Unless you am a hardened teetotaller you are probably aware of those wine-shops in London where a basket of free biscuits stands near a crumbled heap of eleemosynary cheese. It was at one of these institutions that Mr. Montgomery Staggers absorbed his daily sustenance and transacted such business as he could compass, the fluid share of the honor was mine, Mr. Montgomery Staggers being snugly entrenched between the biscuits and the cheese, while he proceeded to deliver himself of the following:

PEOPLE have been most shockingly fed up with mines, but they're as good a promotion as anything even now, if you can only get 'em to bite. Scientific invention's all my eye; the scientific chaps don't seem to know the game, and they're bound to let you in for something sooner or later. No more science for  me, not after old Burridge and his blooming myxomycetes.

I was in with a useful little crowd at that time that was very enterprising, and game for anything. What money was wanted we usually got from a chap called Stibbins— for office furniture and such, not much— but he certainly had ideas sometimes, and synthetic goods was one of his specials. Commercial Syntheses, Unlimited— you could do so much with it, you see; anyhow, it seemed so; synthetic bricks, synthetic timber, synthetic leather, glass, wool, gold— anything; make 'em all chemically. We made up our minds to do it properly; get a tame science merchant and put him in a proper laboratory, just to show the mugs, with all his synthetic bricks and timber round him; and a precious large lot o' retorts and tubes and jars and glass bubble-shaped things end blow-pipes.

So Stibbins got hold of Burridge. He'd been a teacher in science schools, but he was always hoofed out because he would muddle with his own experiments instead o' teachin'. So we got him a new suit o' clothes and all the retorts and stinks and stuff he wanted, and shoved 'em all in the back room o' the office Stibbins took in a court off Broad-street.

"And now," says we, "go ahead and make bricks out o' straw or anything you like in them glass things."

"Bricks?" says the old chap. "I want to make protoplasm. I believe I can generate life. It's the dream of my career."

"Life be blowed," says we; "we want something with money in it, like bricks. It'll do if you only make-believe to make 'em in a scientific way.''

They were buildin' a new bank up the street, and I went out and borrowed a few bricks in the dusk. We brushed 'em up neat and set 'em out on a bit o' green baize in the office with a label "Synthetic Bricks— the Finished Article."

And next morning Bashford Keeble— he was one of us then— brought in. a bit of synthetic timber he'd sawed off a new fence, and we put that on another bit o' greet baize with a label of its own. We bought a bit of synthetic leather at a grinder's shop for a bob, and we all put in specimens of synthetic glass— such a lot of empty whisky bottles that Stibbins said there was nothing so suspicious as overdoin' it, and pitched most of 'em out. You never saw anybody more surprised than old Burridge when he saw the specimens all nicely laid out with their labels in the front office.

"But I haven't made 'em yet," says he.

"What rot," says we. "Of course you made 'em— there they are! We can't wait for your experiments— this is business."

I ought to have told you that besides Stibbins and me there were old  Bashford Keeble and a couple of others, Pewtris and Crump. I did the gentlemanly man o' the world, and Bashford Keeble was the respectable virtuous. He had a very high, shiny forehead— mostly baldness— beautiful wavy grey hair and a beard like Moses. You'd have trusted him with your last bob— lots o' people did it at different times and sure enough it was their last. What?

Stibbins pulled the strings generally, and Pewtris and Crump were what you might call general utility.

First we were after a private syndicate— just a few select mugs at as much as they were good for apiece; got at through the partnership and investment advertisements.

Well, began on the syndicate, but somehow the syndicate wouldn't begin on us. We got out ads, solid-lookin' enough for the Bank of England, but, at first we didn't get a bite. Nibbles, yes; miserable nibbles. Old fogies would come in and listen to it all, and take a peep at Burridge and the stinks, and say the  bricks were wonderful, and the bit o' wood was marvellous, and the leather amazing, and the bottles that life-like they almost smelt of whisky; and then they'd say they'd think over it, and they'd go fading out on to the stairs and never be heard of again.

Stibbins was getting short and rusty about the whole thing. and kept throwing up to us the money we wore all costing him for the new clothes he'd rigged us out with, and all that. And then I had a good , idea. So I knocked up a little ad. like this

A unique opportunity of lucrative investment in the greatest scientific discovery of the age, with an important directorship, is open to a woman who is able to exercise independent judgment untrammelled by the "advice" or other patronage of the duller sex.—Address, Commercial, 5 Duffield Court, Broad street.

That went into a suffragette paper and it rather fetched 'em— quite a number. The trouble was we had so many call that were all ready for the directorship but wanted to leave out the investment. And then all of a sudden we had a double event in one day. Old Burridge invented his myxomycetes and Miss Agatha Gunter answered the ad.

WE GOT the invention first. Stibbins and I were sittin' in the office, when suddenly there came a frightful yell from the stinkshop. We thought old Burridge had caught fire at last or something, and rushed at the door in a bunch. But there was the old frump dancing and waving his arms like mad, and staring at a little gruelly splash on a bit o' glass lyin' on his bench.

"Got it!" shouts the old boy. "Organic life! Synthetic myxomycetes! Done it! Me alone! Hooray!"

And before we could make up our minds whether to knock him down, or tie him up, he burst into a gabble of explanations.

"Oh, stow the pigeon-English," says Stibbins; "what is it in plain Whitechapel?"

"Myxomycetes," says Burridge; "protozoa, the lowest form of animal life— I made it synthetically! It's quite a new species, too— stronger in growth and assimilation than any 'of 'em, and grows with the damp of the atmosphere alone. Look here— that splash on the glass is dormant, and ready to throw out spores; but look at this !"

He scraped up a bit with a knife, and put it on a piece of firewood; and sure enough it settled down in a sort of blob and then began spreading out little points very slowly all round.

We watched the points creep out over the wood, hardly moving; and then Burridge dipped a little glass rod in water and let fall a drop or two in the wood just by the side on the jelly. The moment it reached the damp it rushed ahead like 'one o'clock; ran all along the bit of wood and spread round it till it was covered.

"It's eating that wood up," says Burridge, and he dropped it into a jar. Sure enough, presently it all sort of melted adown in the bottom of the jar and there was no wood there— one o' the rummest things I ever saw. Creepy; too, to think that messy stuff was really alive and calmly lunchin' off our firewood in that gluttonous way.

"It's a most amazingly vigorous species," says Burridge, grinning with triumph all over. ''Nothing like' it in the natural protozoa. Anything that's really wet it gobbles up like lightning. Look at this."

He tore off a bit from a duster, and dipped it in water. Then he picked up another bit of the jelly on the knife and wiped it on the wet rag. It just rushed all over that rag, and in two seconds it was another lump of jelly, which he dropped into the jar on top of the first.

"You see," says Burridge, "in the glass jar it goes dormant. So it would on metal; it only grows on what it can eat, and it only eats organic matter or its derivatives. Warmth makes it grow and eat quicker, so does darkness. Dryness stops most species, and perhaps absolute dryness would stop this; but as it is, the ordinary moisture of the atmosphere keeps it going, and any great moisture— well you've seen what that does."

We were standin' round among the bottles and gadgets starin' and tryin' to think of some way to turn old Burridge's jelly into the merry ha'pence, when I happened to peep over Crump's shoulder into the outer office and there saw a lady. I dropped myxomycetes and skipped out for business.

This looked more like progress. The lady was labelled money all over. Real lace, no less;  diamonds at her neck; gold purse in one hand; gold lorgnette in the other.  Not young, no; and a bit severe to look at, especially when she popped up her gold lorgnette and stared at you through it.

She came to the point straight away— she was ready to invest in anything she was satisfied with. What was this?  And before I could begin to explain, there was that oily old flatterer,  Bashford Keeble, wagging his venerable, locks on the other side of her, and taking the words out of my mouth. Stibbins lay low. He was no society . ornament, and he had the sense, to know it.

We pointed out the bricks and old Burridge began his discourse at large on bricks as a moral institution.

"Bricks, my dear madam," he said; "bricks, produced by this wonderful synthetic process add the advantage of great commercial possibilities to the universal higher significance of that brick in general. The thoughtless throng is apt to ignore the moral import of the brick. The brick in its multitudes gives shelter to the human race, supports the domestic hearth, has its part in the sanctity of the home. It is an inspiring 'thought—"

"Yes, yes," says the lady; "and do these bricks support the domestic hearth any better than the usual kind?"

"Much," says Keeble; "it's one of their chief recommendations."

"AIso," I put in, "the whole scheme is more particularly calculated to support in opulence the domestic hearths of those investors who come in privately now— on the ground floor, as we say in the city."

"Indeed!" she says; "and how do you make the bricks?"

"By the process invented by our Mr. Burridge, whose name will resound throughout the ages when Newton's is forgotten. You see, we take hydrated salicia of ammonia and magnesia, and then, combining these ingredients with calcium, and adding the proper quantity of potash and free silicate, we pass the whole through an intricate process of— er— synthesis, and what with the synthesis of the combination actin' on the combination of the synthesis, and the consequent reaction on both— why, there you are, don't you know!"

"Dear me!" says she, looking hard at me through her lorgnette all the while. "So much simpler than baking clay! Show me something else!"

Somehow I began to feel that the stroke hadn't quite come off, but I  dashed in on the wood tack.

"Now, this timber," I said, pickin' up the specimen; "we're anticipatin' an enormous revenue from chemically produced timber. Quite indistinguishable from the natural article, and free from all knots and defects, made in any lengths to order, at a price beyond the reach of competition with enormous profits. To a lady of your educated intelligence I need scarcely point out the enormous, the universal demand for timber."

"Timber," says old Keeble, shovin' in his oar from the other side, "hitherto only to be procured by the barbarous destruction of the fairest scenes of sylvan delight, will now be supplied to the crying needs of our fellow-creatures by an inexpensive but moral chemical process, placing it within the reach of the humblest."

"And what's the inexpensive moral process?" asks Miss Gunter.

She had a way of starin' immovably at you through those frozen glasses all the while you were speakin' with about as much expression on her face as the back of a tombstone, and then rappin' out a question like an assegai.

Old Bashford Keeble never could be sure of the scientific patter. He flourished his hands in a sort of general way, and said it was done with lignum and cellulose, and synthetic combination, and other secret ingredients.

"Oh!" says the lady, as though she hadn't expected that. "Have you tried melting sawdust?"

Poor old Keeble waggled his hands feebly and said it seemed a good idea, and he'd mention it to the board.

"Do," says Miss Gunter; "it's just the sort of thing that might interest a board."

Old Keeble and I looked across at each other pretty blank, but to hear her voice and look at her tombstone face it was hard to believe she was guyin' us, even now. She reached over and took up the piece of leather.

"And this is the synthetic leather, is it?" she said, turning it over. "Extraordinarily like the real thing, quite extraordinarily. If you were not so honest you might safely call it genuine.  But's rather rudimentary. Why not synthetic boots? You're more advanced with the glass, I see. Such a convenient shape, isn't It? I suppose you'll soon produce bottles ready labelled?"

"And with whisky in 'em," I said, with something as near a wink as I dared.  For it was plain now we weren't scorin, and old Keeble was shakin'  his head and waggin' his hands and tryin' to look as though he wasn't responsible for anything.

"Yes, yes; very profitable to somebody, no doubt," says Miss Gunter. "Where's your works?"

"No works, as yet," I said; but we've a little laboratory here where Mr. Burridge worked."

It struck me suddenly that we might do something after all, if we could impress her with the myxomycetes. So I said, very confidentially. "I don't know  if I ought to mention it yet, but as a matter of fact he really has made the  most astounding discovery only just now. He has produced life by chemical means!"

"Indeed! How wonderful!" says she, calm and stony as ever. "Show me. Let us come and see life by chemical means."

We went into the back room, and she almost seemed to take to old Burridge, comparatively speaking. He was bubblin' all over still, and he explained all about myxomycetes and the formic aldehydes and amino acids, and he did the experiments again with a larger piece of wood and a wet duster. Miss Gunter was so taken with it she forgot to say anything sarcastic, and old Keeble, findin' her comin' round a bit on this, butted in again, and poked his fingers and his whiskers into things and muddled up the explanations, and did all he could to shove himself in front of poor old Burridge, who was providin' the show.

I must say it was a fascinatin' show, with its horrid, slobbery creepiness. To know that beastly jelly was alive, and to see it go reaching out over things and wrap 'em round and eat em up, and to see it rush ahead like lightning the moment it met any sort of moisture, as though a drink stimulated its appetite— well, creepy fascination was all you could call it! I found myself sort of dislikin' the stuff more and more, as you might lookin' at a worse than usual kind of reptile, and yet being fascinated to see it. Miss Gunter, stony as she was, kind of stood off and pulled in her skirts, but couldn't take her eyes off the stuff till the experiment was done, and the swelled jelly dropped into a jar.

Then she said, "Thank you, Mr. Burridge. It is most interesting. This is one thing I can congratulate you on at any rate, and I really think I should like to come again!" Quite gracious to old Burridge.

"Certainly— delighted, I'm sure," said old Keeble, buttin' in as usual and rubbin' his hands. "I shall always be most pleased—"

"Yes, yes," says Miss Gunter, turnin' on him stony again; "and what do you propose to produce from this discovery of chemical life? Synthetic menageries?"

She'd got him fixed with her glasses, and old Keeble could only smile uneasily and shrug his shoulders and waggle his hands as though he'd lost a towel.

MISS Gunter took a general look round and round.

"Quite the most interesting afternoon! I really think I must come again. I've to see my broker to-morrow evening at eleven, and if there's time, I might come then. It's all so very original!  Good afternoon!"

With that she was gone, and in the next second old Keeble had bolted after her. I saw his game in a flash— treacherous old blighter. He was throwin' us over— betrayin' his pals. Here was a woman rollin' in money and single; that was enough for him. He'd been sort of washin' his hands of us in dumb-show ever since it was plain she wasn't swallowin' what we served her; and now he was off after her by himself. I saw at once it was a thing that must be seen to; and if the lady preferred a weddin' to shares in a syndicate, what was the matter with me? I grabbed my hat and hooked it after Keeble.

It's a short court, and by the time I was out of the front door the lady was gettin' into a spankin' landaulette car waitin' at the end of the court in Broad-street, and Keeble, with his beard all flyin' and his shoulders bobbin', was holdin' the door and seein' her in. There's a tea-and-bun shop at the corner of the court, with an entrance in each street. So I just slipped in there till I saw Keeble retire and the car begin to move off, and then I dashed out of the front door and slipped on to the step.

"Pardon me, ma'am," I said; "One word, in justice to myself!"

She stopped the car.

"Well," she said, "and what do you want? I can't wait here long."

"My dear madam," says I, "I am ashamed, positively ashamed, to have appeared wanting in respect for the intelligence of a lady of your incisive. intellect. I wish to be allowed to warn you against the nefarious designs of the Commercial Syntheses syndicate. As to my own seeming part in their scheme, if you I will allow me a few minutes' explanation "

"Oh," says she, "another penitent, is it? I can't wait now. I've I just sent the other away, He's to be here at the entrance of the court to-morrow morning at half-past ten to catch me before I go in, and explain everything. You had better come too. Good afternoon!"

I skipped off the step with the best show I could muster, and the car sailed off. It was a bit awkward. To begin with, I wasn't ail together sorry to be cut off just then, because, as a matter of fact, I hadn't any particular explanation ready, and it might have been a bit awkward to invent as I went along. On the other hand, old Keeble and I were to weigh in our explanations in a blessed chorus. As I turned it over, the humour of the thing came uppermost, and it gradually presented itself in the light of a prodigies lurk. Old Keeble would know nothing about the arranged chorus, and when I turned up, all ready for the fun, he would be rather off his game. I spent half the night thinking' out my part.

But it wasn't needed— not a line.

I GOT to the office pretty early in the morning; but only just before old Keeble; and when he came in, he came like a fireworks; and he was bald as a coot, head and chin and all! All his wavy locks and every hair of his beard was gone, and anything less like Moses you couldn't invent. You'd only have known I him by his clothes.

"Look at this!" he blared, "I'm ruined! I can't show myself for half a year! , This is what comes of that old fool's experiment!  I must have got some of the spores or something out of that stuff of his into my beard yesterday. I thought I felt something gummy in it, and as soon as I began to wash, it was all a mess of that infernal jelly, and the more I washed the worse it went; till it was all over my head and I could feel it gnawing' into my skin! I thought I was goin' stark ravin' mad! I rolled over in the bedclothes and wiped it off on the sheets, and I got up like this. Not a hair on my head— not a hair! I rubbed it all over with vaseline and stopped the gnawing, or I believe it would have eaten my head off! And while I was doin' that it ate the bedclothes, and I left it comin' downstairs, gobblin' up the stair carpet!"

He fell back into a chair for a moment, blown; and then he jumped up and went for the back room.

"I'll exterminate the stuff, and Burridge too!" he yelled.

Poor old Burridge was busy with his jim-jams, and wasn't prepared to receive cavalry, so to speak. Old Keeble burst in on him like a bomb-shell, and before I could interfere he'd swept off a whole tableful of retorts and things, and whacked the jar of myxomycetes into the fire place. It smashed into fifty thousand bits, and Burridge set up a howl like a tortured soul.

"The spores'll be everywhere!" he yelled, scrapin' at the stuff with the fire-shovel.

"Yes— have some of em!" bawls Keeble, firin' another jar at his head.

It hit the wall and splattered everywhere, and then I grabbed Keeble and  Stibbins and Crump came in and pacified him with office-rulers. Stibbins had paid hard money for the stuff in the office, and he was sensitive about it. I presently left him trying to clean up, and slipped out to keep my appointment with Miss Gunter. I hadn't to wait long at the end of the court before I saw the spankin' landaulette sailin' up.

"Well," says Miss Gunter, "and where's the other penitent?

I explained the accident. "It's a most unfortunate occurrence, I said, "and I expect it'll be a long time before he's visible. Some might call it a Judgment.

"So they might," says she. And where's your judgment?"

"That," I said, "I am content to leave in you hands. At any rate, this unfortunate accident gives me the opportunity of expressing, unheard but by you, my gratitude for the angelic influences— yours, Miss Gunter— which has made another and a better man of me. Partly in my innocence, led away by evil persons— older men I may say, much older— and partly, let me confess it, with a new heart, tempted by the prospect of gain held out to me, I was about to engage— had begun to engage, in fact— in an enterprise of questionable probity; when suddenly, by the magic of your presence, your manner, your words, your better, nobler influence, for which, if I may offer the devotion of a life-time—"

"Why, bless me," says Miss Gunter. "I do believe you're making love to me; nobody ever did that before. I thought your venerable friend was beginning yesterday, and I was so sorry I hadn't time to let him go on. But don't you stop on my account. Come inside the car— it's beginning to rain."

So it was. It was ploppin' heavily on my new hat and all over the best suit of clothes I ever had. So I nipped inside, and went on.

''Your woman's heart," I said, "your divine instinct has told you the truth, Agatha!— If I may call you so— I saw the charming name on your card— Agatha—"

"Why, what's the matter with your hat?" she said, suddenly, staring at it through her glasses.

I whipped it off, and there, in great blobs, was that unholy jelly myxomycetes! The stuff and its spores had flown everywhere in the scrimmage, and now the rain had finished the job, and the blobs were running together in masses! And even while I stared, fascinated and horrified, a great dollop fell plop on Miss Gunter's dress and began to spread! More, I was coming out in great spots of jelly all over my clothes, my boots— everywhere!

A full comprehension of the state of affairs struck Miss Gunter in a flash. She sprang up with a yelp I shouldn't have expected of her, and shoved me out into the street.

The unspeakable jelly was climbing all over me, but I gasped "Agatha! Agatha!" and I heard her scream to the chauffeur, "Home! Home! As fast as you can! Never mind the speed limit!"

IT WAS the end of love's young dream. What happened to that dear lady in that expensive car I never knew, though I often try to imagine. There was nothing in the carriage part of the car that myxomycetes wouldn't eat, except the metal fittings, and it depended entirely on an uncertain equation of distance home, blocks traffic, and speed of car, whether or not that stony maiden lady arrived home on a bare iron chassis, clad in a mass of jelly.

But for the moment my business was to get into the office, and I ran, with my clothes and boots melting off me as I went. I rushed, up the stairs and into the office. And there the sight was appalling.

Myxomycetes was crawling everywhere and eating everything, and nothing stopped it but the stone passage at the outer door. Carpet, chairs, tables, wainscot— everything. It was the most unholy scrape I ever was in. I got home somehow, in five bob's worth of rags from Houndsditch, and we left that office with nobody but myxomycetes to settle with the landlord.

____________

10: Outwitted: A Lawyer's Story

Anonymous

Pearson's Monthly Illustrated Adelaide News (SA) 1 Nov 1883

(Credited to Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, no issue cited)

"Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly" ran 1876-1904, and then under several different titles, but with a continuous numbering sequence, until after World War 2.

'ARE you a lawyer, sir?'

I started violently at the words, for I had been sitting for some time at my desk, plunged in a fit of the deepest thought, and had not heard anyone enter the office. It was a warm summer's evening, and I had left the windows and doors open, for the sake of a refreshing draught.

Rising from my seat and turning up the gas-jet on the table, I turned and surveyed my interlocutor, who proved to be none other than a well-dressed, rather good-looking man of forty, or thereabouts, of middle stature, and possessed of a small, piercing pair of eyes, which returned my gaze unflinchingly.

'I am Mr. Avery, the junior partner of the firm, as you might have seen, had you taken the trouble to read the sign upon the door,' I replied, shortly; for I was in nowise pleased with his intrusion upon my reveries.

'True,' he answered, courteously; 'but the door was open, and the hall unlimited. I require your services for a short time,' he resumed, seating himself, 'provided your are disengaged for to-night.'

'Professionally I am at your disposal for the evening,' I answered.

'Ah! your remark reminds me of the ordinary prerequisite,' he said, laughingly, taking out his pocket-book, and laying a bill of large denomination upon the table.

But I waved my hand impatiently, informing him that no payment was necessary until after consultation, and requested him to proceed to business.

'The business to which I referred,' he continued, replacing the money, and fixing his keen black eyes upon my face, 'will require your services until late in the night, if not until to-morrow morning. My niece who resides some miles from the city, is dangerously ill, and her recovery being extremely doubtful, she desires to make her will. For this purpose I have applied to you, promising you, should you accede to my request, any fee you may demand.'

I communed with myself for a few moments, eyed the mail suspiciously, and then asked the distance to the young lady's residence, and the mode of conveyance thither.

'About five or ten miles,' he responded, handing me his card, on which I read—

Martin Jackson,

Harlem,

Illinois.

'It is a short distance from Harlem, and as a train does not leave Chicago for some hours yet, I have provided a carriage and driver, which awaits on the street. May I consider your services as engaged?'

I responded that he might, and a few moments sufficed to find us ensconced in a close carriage, which took a westerly direction, at moderate speed.

The more populous portion of the city was soon passed, my companion, meantime, enlightening me with an account of his niece's sickness, and previous history; and, an hour after leaving the place of starting, we found ourselves a mile from Chicago, nearing the wooded ridges which skirt its extreme limits. I was a young man, and my nervousness and suspicions of the man beside me may be excused, when his evident rmvint.v in nnn lovimr myself, an experienced lawyer, are considered.

His story, too, did not sound consistent in all respects, for he spoke of his niece, Miss Blanche Pickering, as being, at times, subject to short fits of insanity. I, therefore, was prepared to find something mysterious on my arrival at our destination— which occurred shortly— in a thick grove of oak trees, some four miles from the city limits.

When the carriage stopped, it was in front of a large, dark-looking building, of stone, standing a short distance back from the road, and surrounded by tall poplars. A feeble light flickered in a single window at the side of the house, and a few dim rays shone through the lower story window.

One thing struck me as rather curious, as I walked up the gravel-walk to the mansion, and tended to arouse my suspicions once more. The man, Jackson, dismissed the carriage, after paying the driver, with a few low, whispered words, the import of which I was unable to ascertain; and the hack turned sharply, as if to retrace the road to Chicago. I said nothing, however; but, shifting my revolver into a more convenient position in my inner vest-pocket, entered the house with my companion, who unlocked the door with a latch-key, and was ushered into the parlor which was poorly lighted, by a hanging hell.

Having seen me seated by a table, on which were spread refreshments, Jackson left me for a short time, and, returning shortly with a large, well-built man, whom he introduced as Mr. Cooper, his cousin, took a seat beside me, his companion following his example, and filling out some wine, requested me to join them, which I courteously refused, on the plea of being a teetotaller.

After a few moments of conversation, I was again left alone, and, lighting a cigar, awaited patiently my summons to actual business. The door was opened a short time after, and by request of Cooper I followed him up the staircase into the gloomy hall above them, anil into a room, where was seated my first applicant by the side of a boil, apparently in conversation with some one reclining there.

The room was a luxurious one, and appeared more so for the great contrast; it presented to what other portions of the house Iliad seen. The rich carving, the heavy tapestry, and general appearance of the surroundings, bespoke the wealth of the possessor, whoever that person might be. Seating myself at a small table drawn up near the bed, with Jackson seated in his former position, and Cooper withdrawn to the other end of the apartment, reclining on a lounge, and apparently indifferent to all that was to transpire, I awaited further developments, taking one look at the face of the occupant of the bed.

It was no wonder that I gazed long and earnestly at the countenance of the woman who reclined there. A more perfect face I had never seen— pale, and with an expression of care and pain, it might have been, yet there was no trace of sickness or disease, and as my eye wandered from those beautiful features, the sad, yet sweetly smiling eyes, down to the white, plump hand which rested in the large brown one of Jackson's, I felt that there was some mystery in the case, and that he had been untruthful in his revelations.

Suddenly the man arose, dropping the lady's hand, drew up a chair opposite to my own, and with an impatient, uneasy exelammation, brought my investigation to a termination.

'You will draw out the ordinary formula of a testament,' he said, giving the young girl a close, scrutinizing look, in which I could detect a warning expression, 'writing as I dictate— Miss Pickering having acquainted me with her destined disposal of her property— and allowing her to acquiesce when it is finished. I suppose her affirmation will be all that is necessary?'

I was somewhat surprised at the strangeness of the request, but replied— 'Certainly, if I am confident that she is compos mentis, and she is too sick to dictate herself.'

Here a slight exclamation broke from the lips of the occupant of the bed, as if about to frame a word or sentence; but she was checked by Jackson, who, with a threatening scowl, evidently not meant for my observation, said—

'Do not exert yourself, my dear niece; I will do all that is necessary.' And then, as I drew the writing material before me, he quickly leaned over toward her, and hissed in her ear: 'Remember — be careful!' with such emphasis as to cause her to sink pale and trembling, back among the pillows of the bed.

A half hour elapsed, and the will had been completed. All Blanche Pickering's property, personal and real, was to be divided between the man Jackson and his son Henry, with the exception of a few small legacies.

Then I read it, and after propounding the few necessary interrogatories to the legator, which were answered in a low, trembling affirmative, I requested her to sign it.

Drawing my chair up to her side, with the paper and pen in my hand, I awaited for her to obey my request— intimating to Jackson that it would be as well to have Cooper as a witness.

The latter individual had evidently fallen asleep, for a call to him not bringing him to the bedside, Jackson arose and walked to where his confrere lay. At this moment, and with the rapidity of light, the girl's hand caught my own, and leaning my head downward, so that I could listen to what she might desire to say, I heard her whisper, in passionate, beseeching words:

'I am forced to this! They intend to kill me! For heaven's sake, help me!'

Then she sank back, and before Jackson had been able to observe us, we had both resumed our former relative positions.

At last the will had been signed, witnessed, and sealed, and, hat in hand, I stood at the table, awaiting my client's further pleasure, as if I had not the idea in my mind of returning before morning, and that, too, with an officer of justice.

Mr. Jackson handed me a bill of a large denomination, shook hands with me warmly, and then requested Cooper to show me to the door. As I left the room, I cast an encouraging glance at Miss Pickering, which did not escape the notice of her lynx-eyed guardian, for he looked me sharply in the face, as if to detect some sign of recognition there.

Then I followed my servitor down the stairs, listened to his untruthful regrets that the carriage must have returned to the house, as agreed upon, and then gone to the city, declined his offer to remain for the night, and having been directed the route to Harlem, stood once more in the open air.

My first thought was to make all haste to the city, and, on the slight evidence of foul play, I had to obtain justice for the young girl.

The idea was immediately discarded; for, as I was about to start out, a wild scream of terror assailed my ears. In a moment I was again up the steps, and turning the knob of the door in an ineffectual attempt to gain admittance. I was about to attempt to force an entrance through the window, when the door was flung suddenly open, and the man Cooper stood before me.

He discovered me at once, and, with an oath, struck at me wit his clenched first. Evading the blow, I whipped out my revolver, and striking him with the butt-end, knocked him senseless upon the stoop. I was again about to turn and enter, when the form of Jackson dashed down the staircase, through the open door, and I felt myself in his grasp.

I saw at once that he was unarmed, and elevating my pistol, fired; but the shot was turned aside, and the weapon knocked from my hand to the ground. Then ensued a fearful struggle between us, in which we both were precipitated down the steps upon the gravel walk below— I uppermost. It was, perhaps, for two minutes that I hold him by the throat, dealing him blows with my disengaged hand— he having the other in his strong grasp— when, with a dexterous twist of his powerful arm, he turned me aside, and I lay prostrate upon the ground, with the vice-like grip of his strong fingers grasping me by the throat, until my eyes were starting from their sockets, and every muscle became inactive.

Seizing a large stone, which lay near him, he raised it in his left hand, and was about to strike me on the head, when a sharp, loud report rang on the air. The form of the ruffian fell back— his fingers relaxed their grasp. A form in white passed before my uncertain vision; and then, for the space of five minutes, I was utterly unconscious.

When, at length, the mind awoke from its stupor, a form, in night-clothes— that of Miss Pickering— was bending over me, chafing my temples, and attempting to perform what nature had done— restore me to sensibility.

From her I learned that she had arisen from her bed at the exit of the two ruffians from her room, and, observing my dangerous situation, had fired at Jackson just as as he was about to strike me with the stone, with my revolver, which she had picked up on the stoop.

I also learned that her scream was caused by the resolution of the murderous twain to start after and murder me— fearing that she had communicated something to me which might upset their well-laid plans.

Having securely bound the still unconscious Cooper, and removed the corpse of Jackson into the house, we awaited the coming of morning.

Miss Pickering, meanwhile, informing me of her imprisonment, by Jackson, for over a year, and his resolve to force her to make her will, and then make away with her. Her parents having died, and left her sole heiress to a large property, her appointed guardian, Jackson, a half-brother of her mother's, was playing for a no diminutive stake.

The next morning a farmer's wagon conveyed Cooper to the city; and the affair having been reported to the proper authorities, he was immured in the county gaol, whence he soon after left for the State Penitentiary.

Miss Pickering was entirely exonerated from all blame in the killing of Jackson, and her estate properly administered a few months later, she having been of age for over a year. And not long after Miss Blanche Pickering became Mrs. Avery.

The will and revolver are still in our our possession— the sole mementoes of that exciting night, when I almost lost my life, and gained a bride.

______________

11: Death Rolls Its Own

Laurence Donovan

1885-1948

Super-Detective July 1945

"I'M Aileen Court, and this is my sister Thelma. We have just arrived from Australia. We wish to see Counsellor Arnold Barker at once."

The speaker was red-headed. It was a natural color and bright like a flame. Sister Thelma was also a gorgeous redhead. But her hair had a different tinge, like the glowing of polished copper.

Three girl typists in the front office of Attorney Arnold Barker, in Miami Avenue off Flagler Street, looked up with eyes snapping. The three gave a combined sniff and a snicker. Two of the typists had boy friends in the Land Down Under. Their general opinion of Aussie girls gave way to scornful giggling. The Aussie sisters could have given them all handicaps and beaten them from neck to heels on the delightful curve of their tall figures. Their faces were differently shaped, but a man would have had trouble making up his mind which was the prettier.

The outer office of Attorney Arnold Barker maintained a sort of worn-out dignity. Along with this went a male reception clerk with slick black hair and a 4-F chest expansion. He thought he was quite a lad with the ladies, seeing there were so many girls left behind.

The male clerk put on his best condescending smirk.

"Mr. Barker doesn't bother himself with the troubles of foreign war brides," he announced, getting the expected snicker of applause from the three typists. "Mr. Barker wouldn't see you if he were in, peaches."

"My name is still Aileen, and it's none of your confounded business why we wish to see Counsellor Barker,'' flashed the red-head called Aileen.

Aileen's blue-green eyes glinted with warning. Her sister Thelma turned slowly speculative brown eyes upon the snickering girl typists.

"From what I can see, Aileen, you don't have to guess twice why the American boys are picking out so many Aussie girls," said Thelma, of the coppery hair, with malicious intent. "Also," and she turned her slow eyes upon the 4-F male clerk, "these American girls must be suffering with what the Yankee army men left behind."

The male clerk drew himself up indignantly on his skinny legs. The Aussie called Aileen laughed musically. The typists by this time were staring at the oddly fringed jackets the Aussie sisters were wearing.

"Must have come right out of what they call the bush," put out one typist in a hoarse whisper meant to be heard.

She didn't know how right she was. The soft, hand-worked jackets were of the finest tanned kangaroo hide.

The 4-F male clerk recovered his poise somewhat. He stepped closer to the girl Aileen at the rail.

"While Mr. Barker doesn't bother him- self with war-bride cases, if you happen to be lonesome, how's about me picking up a pal and showing you girls some of the bright spots in Miami?" simpered the clerk, "Whassay, peaches?"

The male clerk was close enough to make a mistake. The milky smooth cheek of Aileen, with her impudently tilted nose and a few sun freckles, was too much for the smirking clerk to resist.

"I'll bet we can make you forget—" The clerk walked right on into it.

He reached out a thin hand and lightly pinched the cheek of the Aussie called Aileen. The Aussie girl did not speak. It was doubtful if the three typists had time to observe what happened.

Aileen's right hand snapped out with the speed of a striking snake. Her long white fingers were hooked behind the neck of the romantic clerk. The clerk's squawk was almost a scream as he came off his feet, giving a splendid imitation of the man on the flying trapeze before he landed in a crumpled heap against the outer office wall.

THE clerk started to scramble to his feet, swearing. It was then that the little Aussie called Thelma went into action. She assisted the clerk from the floor and he sailed right on over her head to crash head-on into the private switchboard.

"We came up here peacefully to claim two millions in diamonds!" announced Thelma without batting one beautiful eye.

The three typists were clustered together, evidently trying to escape from these crazy Aussies. The switchboard was a complete wreck, but the 4-F male clerk had all his fighting mad aroused. He was still game enough to make another pass at the Aussie called Aileen.

This time the Aussie girl took him with what might have been a strangle hold learned from some commando sergeant. She used him as a battering ram to break through the door of the private office, heedless of the broken glass showering around her.

Aileen left the male clerk on the floor. He was out cold this time.

"We'll have to call again, Thelma," said Aileen. "Counsellor Barker is not in his office."

By this time one of the terrified typists had made it to a corridor phone. As the Aussie sisters gathered up their hand-worked purses, also of soft kangaroo leather, Thelma's purse popped open.

A very efficient army automatic hit the floor with a metallic ring and bounced. Perhaps the safety catch had been off. The gun exploded and its slug caromed wildly off the office rail and splintered the glass of a picture frame on the wall.

At this inauspicious moment one Bart Cassidy, plainclothes dick who had been in the building, entered in response to the call for help made by the scared typist. Cassidy swallowed hard when he lamped the pair of redheads and, in spite of his sworn duty, he wondered which he would pick— Aileen, of the blue-green eyes and flaming hair, or Thelma, of the big brown eyes and the deeper coppery sheen to her well-poised round head.

Cassidy took in the damage at a glance, heard the reviving male clerk yammering for the Aussies to be taken to jail, and looked at the army automatic which Thelma was just then restoring to her purse.

That these two lovely creatures had practically ruined one clerk and wrecked the outer office of Attorney Barker seemed inconceivable to young Detective Cassidy. But he had his duty to do.

"Sorry it is I am," announced Cassidy, confronting the brown-eyed Thelma. "But I'll have to take you in. You girls oughtta stay out of these cocktail bars. I'm havin' to charge you with disorderly conduct, assault and battery, and illegal possession of firearms, which will probably give you the next six months to cool off."

Cassidy added, "I'll take that gun," and reached for Thelma's purse.

A white arm as lithe and strong as a young python was suddenly wrapped around Cassidy's throat from behind. That was Aileen. Cassidy received the purse from Thelma. But he got it squarely between the eyes with the hard weight of the army gun inside.

The department dick folded up; closed his eyes and not even the screaming of the fleeing typists could awaken him.

"We do not want to go to jail, Thelma," said Aileen calmly. "I think we should leave at once."

"We'll have to go pronto, as that Yankee army sergeant always said, Aileen," advised Thelma. "If we descend by elevator, someone might interfere with us. I saw a fire escape at the corridor window."

The Aussie redheads departed by way of the fire escape.

2: Violent Redheads

JIM (THE OWL) O'HARA. Hesitated over taking the phone call. It was now 2:30 A.M. in the editorial rooms of the Miami Tribune. Owl O'Hara had promised to sit in on the poker game starting at 3 A.M. in the club the gang called Poverty Flats.

Watkins, the city editor, growled at his ace police reporter. Owl O'Hara had been so long a veteran digger-upper of crime in all its brackets that virtually all the city detective department was out to hang up his hide.

Owl's long face didn't fit his name. Still there were dicks in the department who swore O'Hara could see in the dark. Owl considered himself hardboiled and murder was his meat.

"Y' takin' this call, Owl?" grunted fat and graying city-editor Watkins. "Voice sounds like a blues singer who's strained her V strings."

Owl O'Hara had a hunch then. That kind of voice would fit one of the redheaded Aussies who had been giving him the jimmies for the past two weeks. Either Aileen or Thelma.

"And why would either one be buzzin' me at this hour?" muttered Owl O'Hara. "I'd be in a jam with Chief Martin if he even suspected I knew the pair of violent outlanders, not to mention livin' in the same Coral Gables apartments."

O'Hara glanced at his watch, figuring on the minutes left to arrive at the poker game after one of these outlander Aussies finished pegging him an earful. O'Hara's first discovery was that he wasn't sitting in on any poker game at 3 A.M.

"Mr. O'Hara?" The voice was throaty and deep. "I can't waste time. This is Aileen. There will be a killing if you don't come to your Venetian Apartment as fast as you can push your car. You may be too late even then—"

"Hold everything!" snapped O'Hara, pushing black hair out of his agate-blue eyes. "What's this tripe? What's—?"

"There isn't time, but a killer with a gun is trying to break in right now. He's prying at the window."

"For the luva Pete!'' exclaimed O'Hara. "You're on a phone. Whyn't you call the cops ?"

"Because, as you well know, O'Hara, Thelma 'and I do not want to be locked up for the next six months!" replied the deep voice. "Now will you please hurry? This killer has me cornered alone, and in your apartment, O'Hara."

"What the—? In my apartment?" yelled O'Hara. "An' what are you doing—?"

He was abruptly cut off by what sounded like his apartment phone cradle crashing to the floor. He thought he heard a scream, but he wasn't sure.

"Of all the nitwit dames!" complained O'Hara, making sure his .38 was in its shoulder holster. He said to Watkins: "If there's a call for me, say I got tired and I'm hittin' the hay for the night.'

Watkins had gimlet eyes and they bored into him.

"From what I heard of your end of the conversation, and the feel you made for your rod, I don't think it's the hay you're figurin' on hittin'," exclaimed Watkins sarcastically. "Chubby! Grab a handful of plates and take a little ride with Mr. O'Hara!"

Chubby Merkle would climb a ship's mast in a hurricane for good pictures, but he couldn't stand the sight of blood.

"Hell's bells, chief,' pleaded O'Hara, "This is a personal matter."

"Get on your horse, Chubby!" snapped the dyspeptic city editor. "There ain't any personal business on your beat before three o'clock, Mr. O'Hara. And who were you advisin' to call the cops?"

"C'mon, Chubby!" growled Owl O'Hara.

He figured he could ditch the overweight cameraman somewhere between Miami Avenue and Coral Gables. Which he failed to do.

OWL O'HARA let Chubby and himself into the Venetian Apartments less than twenty minutes after he had taken the call from the red-headed Aussie girl. "Both of them Aussies are crazier than the kangaroos they brag about ropin' in their native badlands," muttered O'Hara as he failed to detect any sign of bloody carnage about the ornate, tiled first-floor lobby on which his bachelor apartment was located. "This one about a killer just about equals the wild one about hunting two millions in diamonds."

O'Hara reached the thick, wide door of his home, Apartment 1-B. He placed an ear to the panel and listened. If there were death inside, or life either, it gave forth no sound,

O'Hara inserted his key and swung the heavy door open silently. A pink, dozing lamp gave the only light. But that was sufficient to show the body lying in the middle of O'Hara's best and only rug.

Owl O'Hara was far from being a meticulous bachelor, but he had gloomed onto that Oriental rug at a bargain. His first look was for bloodstains, but there were none.

Behind him, Chubby Merkle moaned. The cameraman was never completely at home in the presence of violent death. Nevertheless Chubby was preparing a magnesium bulb and was getting set to snap a picture of the body on O'Hara's rug.

O'Hara had no intention of permitting that picture to appear as a public record that his apartment had become the sudden resting place of a corpse. At the best, this wasn't a nice corpse to have appear in the public prints.

Something, several things had happened to detract from the symmetry of the face.

One ear was twisted and torn as if a vicious terrier had made a running jump for it. The nose was a blob of bloody flesh. Both eyes were blackened and closed, and the thick lips of the mouth had been split. Notwithstanding all this, Owl O'Hara instantly muttered, "Legs Killian! An' that means Gent Barillo is in this somewhere. Which makes horses of funny colors since Barillo lost his tourist sucker play on the shutdown of Hialeah, Tropical Park, an' the dog tracks. Barillo's neck-deep in some other racket by this time, but where do the Aussies come in?"

The shock of discovering that Legs Killian, one of Barillo's gunsels, had chosen his one arty rug as his last resting place had temporarily caused O'Hara to forget all about the phone call of the redheaded Aussie dame, Aileen, that had summoned him to his suddenly unhappy home.

Chubby Merkle was still moaning, but was going right ahead planning for a magnesium shot of the corpus delicti, as Legs Killian appeared to be. O'Hara had just observed the strange circumstance of Killian having dropped his blue-steel rod within touch of his facile, killer fingers.

"O'Hara! Stop that moon-faced fellow from making a photograph of this kidnaper or myself!''

The abrupt cry came from shadows at one side of the door where O'Hara had not yet glanced. There was action with the throaty but musical words.

It seemed to O'Hara that the heads and writhing bodies of half a dozen snakes hissed past his ear. Chubby yelped behind him with all the pathos of a dog that has just had its foot stepped upon.

The special bulb was torn from Chubby's fingers. Its thin glass splintered and stung O'Hara's cheek as it passed, firmly in the grip of the writhing lashes. O'Hara now had identified the "snakes" as the three-foot split ends of an Australian bush whip.

ONE of the red-headed Aussie lovelies had shown O'Hara such a whip. It had an over-all reach of about six feet. Its split lash ends were weighted with leaden shot. This did not add to the pleasure of man or beast upon which it might be used. At the time, Aileen had carefully explained:

"There are some bad black boys in the back bush where we rope kangaroo. There are also wild dogs, We have heard there are some of what an army sergeant told us are the wolves here in America. The sergeant suggested that our bush whips would stop any of the wolves he had ever seen."

As Chubby lost his flashlight bulb and nursed aching fingers, O'Hara snapped back to the real reason for his sudden summons from the lure of a poker game at Poverty Flats.

"Aileen? exclaimed O'Hara. 'What happened? Why is this gunsel here and why was he trying to kill you?"

"Gunsel?" The throaty voice was puzzled.

The trim girl who came from the shadows could be described as full-blown, but like a creamy white rose at its best before any of the petals begin to fall. Her loosely bound red hair was so flaming that it gave her oval face the appearance of whitest buttermilk.

Sun freckles sprinkled lightly over the broad forehead and along the tilted nose made her skin appear only more milky. It was her firmly curved, naturally red mouth that would have conveyed a warning of danger to any of the army sergeant's predatory wolves.

"Gunsel?" repeated Aileen. "He wasn't trying to kill me. In my room he only said someone he called the boss wanted to see me. Then he pointed that little gun. I ran out of our rooms and over here, because I had no telephone. Mrs. Blossom, the land- lady, let me in. But this... this gunsel found a window and followed me."

"Then you killed him?' wondered O'Hara.

"That I did not, O'Hara. I had the bush whip hidden behind me. I snapped the gun out of his hand. When he kept coming toward me, I stopped him. He can't be dead."

3: "Here's Your Gunsel!"

"YOU SAID IT, Aileen, he's alive," admitted O'Hara, arising from beside the sleeping Legs Killian. "But when he wakes up, he's gonna wish he was dead. When he wakes up—?"

Owl O'Hara permitted his final words to trail off. Which at once produced a choking protest from Chubby Merkle, the Trib's ace cameraman as long as there was no blood involved.

"No, O'Hara! No! Not that! I won't be party any more to body-snatchin', what with Chief Martin achin' to get you or me caught up in something that will put us on the road gang."

An unholy light danced in O'Hara's dark eyes. In the first place, this apparent attempt of the notorious Barillo to snatch one of the red-headed Aussie girls lent some credence to a story that Aileen and Thelma had told him, but which O'Hara was too smart a newshound to believe— or thought he was,

This story of the red-headed violent cuties had to do with a cold two million dollars' worth of diamonds, established as a trust fund for them by their late father during pre-war days. Which would make their value at least double under existing demand, providing there were such diamonds.

Aileen and Thelma Court had wangled their way over from the land "down under", as they had blandly told Owl O'Hara a few days before, to claim these diamonds. It seemed that this compact fortune had been left by their late father in the hands of an uncle who bore the good, old-fashioned and honest-sounding name of Nathaniel.

"And since Thelma, she's the younger, turned eighteen, we haven't heard a word from Uncle Nathaniel," was what Aileen had told O'Hara, "We've never seen Uncle Nathaniel, but he always had written us a letter twice a month."

Seeing that the red-headed sisters, each in her own way, had plenty of what it takes to bring on the wolves, O'Hara had taken, as he told himself, a strictly friendly interest.

With one of Gent Barillo's hottest gunnies sleeping upon his one and only rug, O'Hara had a sudden reversal of mind concerning the story of the Aussie sisters, Aileen and Thelma Court. If it were true that a top-flight racketeer of the ilk of Barillo had suddenly taken an interest in these Aussie sisters, there might be something to that fabulous story of the diamonds after all. From Aileen's own words, O'Hara could but assume that a kidnapping and not a killing had been intended.

''Where's your sister Thelma?" questioned Owl O'Hara suddenly.

If it were possible, Aileen's face turned a little whiter.

"I wish I knew," she said. "She left here shortly before twelve o'clock saying she

was going to the midnight cinema. It's long past the time for her to be home."

O'Hara puzzled for a moment, pushing the thick black hair out of his eyes. "This whole thing has got me backed up," he said musingly. "Gent Barillo does not send out to pick up someone without a reason, and that's not all, Aileen; you wouldn't know who Barillo is, I hope, but how would he have your address here at the Venetian Apartments when the cops have had a general alarm out for two days and have not been able to pick your address up?"

"Oh, that?" exclaimed Aileen casually. "After we had the trouble in Lawyer Barker's office, I called Mr. Barker on the telephone and gave him our address. Mr. Barker said it wouldn't be a good idea for us to run into trouble with the police right now, and he would keep it a secret."

"Barker said that?" snapped O'Hara.

"Why, yes. He also said that he hadn't seen or heard from Uncle Nathaniel Court for nearly two months and that his cottage, in some place he called Coconut Grove, has been closed."

BY a series of quick deductions, Owl O'Hara thought he was beginning to add up to the answer. It was an answer, though, that left out the one mysterious figure of the whereabouts of this Uncle Nathaniel,

"You've really been telling me the truth about a trust fund of two million dollars in diamonds?" questioned O'Hara sharply.

Aileen's bluish green eyes widened.

"Had you thought at any time we were not telling the truth?" she said indignantly.

"I'm just a poor struggling newshound," said O'Hara, almost plaintively. "I hear, and I even see, so many things I don't believe."

Chubby Merkle was standing in the middle of the room, as shaky as a mold of jelly, trembling with fear. "What're you gonna do?" asked Chubby. "Ain't it about time we called the cops?"

O'Hara's mind was made up for him suddenly. A maliciously humorous light came back into his dark eyes. "Calling the police because one of Gent Barillo's gunsels got himself bush-whipped?" He grinned. "Not any! I've got a better idea."

"No!" pleaded Chubby. "There ain't any better idea,"

Two minutes later, O'Hara had emptied an old-fashioned round-topped trunk that he had dragged from the rear of the long clothes closet. The old trunk had many cracks and seemed well enough ventilated. Nevertheless, O'Hara brought a knife from the kitchen and widened some of the cracks.

Chubby just stood in the middle of the floor and moaned.

The Aussie girl stared at O'Hara. "You intend to bury him alive?" she inquired sweetly.

"It'll be worse than that," growled O'Hara. "Before he's finished, Legs Killian probably will wish he had been buried alive."

O'Hara gagged the sleeping Legs Killian effectively, before he doubled his body into the old trunk from which the tray had been removed.

"It won't hurt him to do a bit of thumping around, when he wakes up," observed O'Hara. "Only, I don't want him yelling ahead of time. In a few minutes, Chubby, we're moving some of my old books."

Chubby's teeth were clicking together. O'Hara took a long two minutes out thinking, then he summoned the sleepy Mrs. Blossom, the landlady. He had lived at the Venetian Apartments a long time. He soon arranged for Aileen and Thelma, if and when Thelma returned, to be transferred immediately to another apartment on the second floor. Their names to be omitted from the vestibule list for the present.

"You always were the devil, Jim O'Hara," Mrs. Blossom smiled. "But I never thought you would go so far as to adopt two redheads all at the same time."

Aileen consented to the move, saying she would keep watch for the return of Thelma and having O'Hara's promise that he would be back in a short time.

Some fifteen minutes later, O'Hara's battered sedan stopped alongside a stretch of vacant lots bordering the Tamiana Trail.

"Isn't Gent Barillo gonna get a big surprise when Legs Killian is finally picked up, alive and kicking, in an old trunk!" O'Hara grinned. "Especially seeing that I'm leaving his rod, fully loaded, in the trunk with him."

4: Crafty Mr. Barker

"NO, THELMA HAS NOT returned," spoke the throaty voice of the red- headed Aileen. Tears were not far behind her throat now. "O'Hara, what am I going to do?"

"T know exactly what we're going to do," said O'Hara. "I'll have Mrs. Blossom keep an eye out for Thelma if she comes back. We're going for a little ride over the Venetian Causeway to a nice big house up on Hibiscus Creek. That happens to be the domicile of Arnold Barker, one time big-shot lawyer. Today, a shyster scraping together any business, clean or dirty, that comes his way."

"Why, O'Hara!"' exclaimed Aileen. "He was my father's counsellor for many years."

"You heard me say he was a one-time big-shot lawyer," said O'Hara dryly.

"I... I don't think... there would be any pix for me, would there?" stuttered Chubby Merkle.

"Might not be any pix," snapped O'Hara, "but as long as I've got your fat mouth right close to me, I know who you're talking to, and about what."

Still chuckling over what Gent Barillo would think and say when Legs Killian would be rescued from that old trunk in that vacant lot, O'Hara pushed the sedan back downtown. He got on Flagler Street, turned off on Biscayne Boulevard and crossed over the toll-charge Venetian Causeway.

It was not quite graying dawn, as he followed the winding roads along. the so-called creeks that created numerous islands for millionaires' residences. He pulled in from a straight boulevard to the monstrous pile of stucco where Lawyer Barker still managed to live in splendor in spite of his greatly lowered rating as an attorney-at-law.

Arnold Barker was not a prepossessing figure; he was partly bald, with a hooked nose, a tight mouth and black eyes that dug into O'Hara. Barker very grumpily wanted to know the occasion for a call at this ungodly hour. Then the middle-aged shyster saw Aileen Court for the first time. In O'Hara's keen judgement, there was more than surprise at the mere fact of Aileen's presence here, after O'Hara had introduced them. It was as if Lawyer Barker were questioning how she could be here at all,

From that moment, Lawyer Barker exuded a forced geniality.

"Sit down, my dear, sit down," he invited Aileen. "I'll mix up some drinks," waving away a sleepy, half-clad butler.

O'Hara caught Aileen's bluish green eyes studying him. They created a sensation along his spine such as the hard-boiled police reporter had never known. Aussie girls who went around beating up armed gunnies with bush whips hardly fitted into romance. Yet, O'Hara wondered if Aileen were not something of the type he needed to fit into his life. He shook off the feeling.

It seemed to him that the hook-nosed Lawyer Barker was gone for some considerable time for the mere mixing of drinks. He wondered why the sleepy, gray-haired butler had not been sent for the drinks,

The butler was carrying the tray when Barker returned to the living-room.

"Now, let's have it!' said Barker, apparently having loosened his spirit with some Scotch while he was absent. He said to Aileen: "After that muss in my office, I considered it best to keep your address out of the hands of the police. In fact, I went so far as to file a complaint just to keep the cops from getting ideas."

OWL was too old a hand to have the blinkers pulled over his eyes.

"Let's begin at the beginning, Barker," he said curtly. "What's become of Nathaniel Court?"

"I wish I knew," Barker sighed heavily. "It's been almost two months since I saw him. He said then that he expected his nieces from Australia, although he would try to prevent them from coming to America."

"Why?" snapped O'Hara.

"That, I wouldn't know," said Barker. "T had been given to understand by the father of these girls that he had entrusted two millions in diamonds to their Uncle Nathaniel to be delivered intact when the . youngest, Thelma, would reach eighteen."

"Where are these diamonds?" asked O'Hara.

"That is a point upon which Nathaniel Court has been adamant. Beyond letting me know that they are in a private steel vault and probably not in a bank, he has told nothing."

O'Hara's brain worked in the usual deductive grease. He remarked quietly, cynically: "And not even Gent Barillo can get the secret out of him."

"What in hell do you mean by that?" raged Barker. "Are you intimating—?"

"I'm not intimating,' drawled O'Hara. "I'm just saying that Gent Barillo doesn't play for peanuts, and Gent Barillo has somehow obtained the address of the Court sisters that all the regular police force of Miami has failed to produce."

Barker arose. "I find no reason to discuss this with you further, O'Hara," he said harshly. "On the other hand, I'll be pleased to take the whole matter up, at any time, with Aileen or Thelma Court. Goodnight, sir."

Aileen started to speak but O'Hara put his hand on her arm.

"When you've been given the brush-off," he said, "sometimes it's wiser to let yourself be brushed. Let's go."

Barker seemed genial again as he accompanied them to the door.

Chubby Merkle had been left. waiting in the car. As usual, he was growling. "There is too much traffic along the creeks, for this hour in the morning," he complained. "I've seen three cars go by. Mebbe I dreamed it, but the men in all three seemed to be giving this old jalopy the hard once-over."

O'Hara laughed. "Demon cameramen should not have imagination," he grunted. "We're heading for the nearest phone. I want to call the Venetian and see if your sister has returned, Aileen."

There it was again, her firm hand closed on his arm. O'Hara felt as if a hot iron had been run down along his spine. He never would have believed he would fall for a girl tough enough to whip a gun out of a mobster's hand and then give him the works. But that was the way it seemed to be. It was worse when he glanced at Aileen and she smiled at him.

They found a phone at a filling station before leaving the millionaires' islands.

"Yes, O'Hara," said the voice of Mrs. Blossom. "Sure and the other redhead has come back. Also, she has brought company. She is entertaining a truck driver. And that ain't all, O'Hara. He brought along his truck, which is all loaded and should be well on its way north by this time. I tell you, O'Hara, them redheads are the devil."

That was all O'Hara could get from the usually loquacious Mrs. Blossom. He returned to the car and told Aileen.

"Let's hurry, O'Hara,'" urged Aileen breathlessly.

O'Hara swung his old sedan away from the filling station and into the middle of the graveled driveway. A heavy black car, bearing down upon them, was hitting at least seventy. O'Hara twisted the wheel desperately. Seeing that a collision appeared inevitable, he failed to clear the other car. His old sedan was much lighter and it was lifted by the heavy bumper of the speeding car.

For the space of ten seconds, O'Hara was conscious only of turning over and over. Then he knew the water pouring through the doors was that of dredged-out Indian Creek.

O'Hara pulled Aileen through a door that just cleared the surface of the creek at the shore. Chubby Merkle was climbing out, pulling his camera and swearing.

The speeding car, which O'Hara had no doubt was meant to be a murder car, had not waited. O'Hara got himself and his soaked companions back to the filling station where the attendant gawked at them.

No, he had no time to get the license of the speeding car. All he had seen and heard was the collision. O'Hara loosened up with about all the bills he had in his pocket. It was enough to hire the coupe the filling- station man used to travel to work.

"We've got to get to Thelma," pleaded Aileen.

O'Hara examined his .38 and discovered it hadn't been water-damaged.

"I'm sure Thelma will be okay for the time," he said. "We're returning to pay a surprise call upon Lawyer Barker. If I'm not mistaken, he had a hand in what has just happened."

Crowded into the small coupe, they passed a maroon sedan coming. from the direction of the Barker residence. At the moment, O'Hara was thankful for the change to the coupe. He had a hunch that the maroon sedan would have stopped if they had been identified.

O'HARA punched the buzzer at Lawyer Barker's big house. The five or six times he punched it brought no results. A queer look came over his face.

"It doesn't pay to play with fire," he observed to no one in particular.

He tried the big door and the latch had not been closed. When he went in and turned toward the living-room, he held out an arm and told Aileen to stay back. He could hear Chubby Merkle's teeth chattering. He knew that Chubby had the same sensation that he had encountered. The hardboiled police reporter had experienced it all too often. That sweetish smell in the air could be but one thing. That was human blood.

The one-time big-shot Arnold Barker, more recently shyster mouthpiece for racketeers, lay in front of the fireplace. There was ample reason for the scent of human blood. Most of Arnold Barker's blood had been drained from two deep knife wounds in his throat. There might have been a possible witness if it had not been that the aged butler lay across a chair. The back of his skull had been crushed.

"Now I' know," O'Hara said softly to himself. "Barker, the shyster, is no longer useful to Gent Barillo. I should call Chief Watkins but there's no sense in stirring up the law until discovery of the crime comes about in due course."

He came out to Aileen and Chubby Merkle, shaking his head.

"Lawyer Barker will be of no further use in finding your uncle, Aileen," he said gently. "I think we have business with a truck driver. Some things are beginning to add up. Hundreds of trucks are hauling the winter produce out of the Everglades. That racket would be peanuts for Gent Barillo, but— many mysterious things happen in the heart of the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamps."

5: A Living Ghost

THE TRUCK DRIVER had the drooping jowls of a bulldog and less than the intelligence of a smart monkey in his eyes. He bore the remarkable name of Bowser. He was gloomily happy.

While the Aussie sisters were in each other's arms, O'Hara studied the heavy-featured Bowser. The abducted truck driver had something more than respect for his red-headed abductor.

Thelma's nose was straight and she lacked freckles. Her skin was darker than Aileen's, more in harmony with her coppery hair. Bowser's truck was parked in front of the Venetian Apartments and was piled high with crated lettuce from the truck farms far back in the Everglades.

"Two men grabbed me and put me into a car when I came out of the cinema," explained Thelma. "I was blindfolded and gagged. The car went many miles. I could hear frogs and loons and other swamp birds. I guessed we were driving west from Miami."

"How come you're here?" asked O'Hara.

"Oh, that," said Thelma. "I was put into a small hut with but one guard. I took his gun away from him and hit him over the head. Then I saw Bowser starting out with his truck. I climbed over the lettuce crates and held my gun against Bowser's neck. So he brought me here."

Thelma told her simple story with a little smile, but then her brown eyes clouded.

"I think I've found Uncle Nathaniel," she told Aileen. "An old man with a white beard was taken into a canoe. He was crying out, 'I can't stand another night out there.' I heard one man tell the old man he would soon have company and then he would be glad to talk. That was all before the canoe disappeared."

This was clicking with what O'Hara already had surmised. He had guessed that Uncle Nathaniel Court was being held by the Gent Barillo mob. The abduction had been engineered by the dead Attorney Barker.

"With two millions in ice at stake and the girls' uncle holding the secret of the diamonds, why should Gent Barillo take a chance on having to split with Barker?" muttered O'Hara. "But there's more to it than the diamonds."

O'Hara turned upon Bowser.

"All the truckers coming out of the 'glades have been paying off to Gent Barillo, haven't they?" demanded O'Hara.

Bowser stuttered a denial of knowing anything about it. O'Hara slapped the big trucker to the floor. When he got up, he slapped him down again.

"You're all through anyway when they find your truck," asserted O'Hara. "You might as well come clean."

"We've been paying five dollars a week to different fellows,' admitted Bowser sullenly. "Now will you let me go?'

"No, O'Hara,"' put in Thelma suddenly. "I've heard about these American rackets, but there's more than that. There's more than lettuce on that truck. I heard a slickly dressed man telling some of the others to 'be sure the stuff has heads of lettuce packed around it in the inside crates.' "

A trucking-protection racket. A kidnapping in a play for two millions in diamonds. Now the suggestion that Gent Barillo was working the Miami and northbound trucks for smuggling.

Gent Barillo appeared to have done himself well after the closing of the ice trade O'Hara tried to guess what might be smuggled in such quantity as to be hidden in the trucks.

It was well after daylight now. A boy on a bicycle rode along crying out an extra of the morning Trib. O'Hara sent Chubby out to buy a copy.

Several things had been busted wide open. First, the bodies of Attorney Barker and his butler had been found by a neighborhood patrolman.

Second, one Legs Killian, identified as "one of Gent Barillo's boys," had been discovered at daylight. The gunsel had been sitting on a bench in Bayfront Park. A slug had gone into one ear and out of the other.

O'Hara was tired, but there was no time to lose. Thelma's description of the gray-haired prisoner in the 'glades made it seem certain that Nathaniel Court had been a prisoner and tortured for many days, perhaps weeks.

Attorney Barker had lied though when he had said he had not heard from Nathaniel Court for two months.

"I don't care about the diamonds," cried out Aileen. "If only we can save Uncle Nathaniel."

"I'm having a look-see inside that truck-load of lettuce,' announced O'Hara. "Chubby, you stay here and help keep an eye upon Bowser."

Thelma laughed 'shortly. ''That's all right, but Bowser likes me too much to want to run away. Don't you, Bowser?"

"Uh-huh," grunted the droop-jowled driver.

His dull eyes held all the devotion of an overgrown Newfoundland puppy.

O'Hara didn't mind Aileen's trailing him out to examine the truck. Because the Aussie girl caught his hand and held it in a warm clasp. He was swearing inside, thinking of her being the heiress to millions in diamonds. O'Hara was wishing he had never met the Aussie sisters. They reached the grilled entrance of the Venetian Apartments which stood out alone in a wide, unbuilt block. O'Hara swore and made a jump forward.

The loaded truck was starting to move away. O'Hara could not see the driver, being on the wrong side. But he cleared his and made a run for it. He almost missed Aileen keeping pace easily beside him.

Apparently there were no witnesses to the departure of the loaded truck or the pursuit of O'Hara and Aileen. The big truck picked up speed slowly. O'Hara believed he could intercept it or at least get a crack at the driver when a turn had to be made into the Gateway Boulevard leading to the Tamiami Trail.

That was a big mistake. O'Hara had seen no sign of human life as he raced with Aileen to catch the truck at the corner turn. The truck appeared to stall, stopped abruptly near a long stretch of vacant lots.

O'Hara saw the black and the maroon sedans too late. They were parked around the corner. And four tough hoods were bobbing up from the protection of wild cactus and cabbage palms.

Two of the hoods carried choppers. Two depended upon their rods.

There was a fifth fellow who seemed to be armed with only a toothpick. O'Hara had seen the sartorially elegant Gent Barillo too often to mistake the racketeer. Barillo came up facing Aileen and O'Hara.

"Too bad for you you didn't drown in Indian Creek," said Barillo softly. "So you had to stick your newsy nose into this, O'Hara. You'll be a long time under when the story is printed, if it ever is. You an' the redhead get into the black sedan."

Even then O'Hara believed the spirited Aussie girl would have made a fight against overwhelming odds. Then O'Hara ceased to believe anything at all. Gun metal crashed across the back of his skull.

O'HARA was seated alongside the red-headed Aussie girl when his senses came back. He was completely taped, gagged, and blinded. He knew Aileen was there only by the soft pressure of her shoulder.

O'Hara's intimate knowledge of the Everglades informed him their car must have come some distance along the Tamiami Trail, the only direct, paved highway between Miami and the Gulf Coast. He knew when the car turned into slower and bumpier going that it was following one of the countless sand-rut roads penetrating the heart of the 'glades and Big Cypress Swamp.

O'Hara could hear Barillo, in the seat ahead, conversing in a low tone. The car's radio was blasting. A news bulletin came suddenly and it had the impact of an electric shock:

"SPECIAL BULLETIN :—Thelma Court, one of the Australian girls wanted for several days by the police for wrecking the office of the murdered Attorney Barker, has been picked up in Coral Gables. The girl was in the company of a truck driver who is alleged to have been connected with the Gent Barillo mob. Thelma Court is being held in connection with the Barker murder, on the report of a filling-station attendant that a red-headed girl and two men hired a car from him which has not been returned. The attendant stated that the red-headed girl and the men spoke of going to Attorney Barker's residence. The other sister and James O'Hara, newspaper police reporter, are on the police pickup list."

O'Hara could feel the convulsive straining of Aileen's soft body alongside him. Barillo swore heavily and turned off the radio.

"That ain't helping you two one damn' bit," he growled over his shoulder.

6: An Old Man's Nerve

THE TAPE WAS TORN painfully from their eyes and lips when the car finally came to a jolting halt. Gent Barillo's face was oily and his black eyes mirrored his enjoyment.

"What you're seein', O'Hara, won't be doin' you a damn' bit of good unless you kick in and be reasonable. Then what you're seein' won't be here to make you a story anyway."

O'Hara saw a small but complete ware- house and wharf set upon a deep black channel. He could tell from the oyster shells on the piling and the tide-run marks that this channel was in Big Cypress Swamp. Also it had to be close to the Gulf of Mexico. As he looked a loaded vegetable truck was pulled up alongside the small warehouse. Four or five small crates were brought out of the warehouse and shoved to the inside of the crated vegetables.

Barillo snapped out an order: "Let's get this started and we'll see what the old man will do when he finds his pretty red- headed niece on the platform of the sun shack."

O'Hara might have said several things but he kept his teeth clicked shut. Although her mouth and eyebrows were reddened where the tape had been torn off, Aileen smiled at him.

"I think we'll soon find Uncle Nathaniel,' she half-whispered.

Their legs had not been bound and they were shoved toward the flat-bottomed boat. Two men picked up long poles then sent the boat across the black channel into what appeared to be an endless space of more black water. O'Hara shuddered in spite of himself.

While the swamp here became more shallow and the knees of an occasional cypress thrust down into the black water, O'Hara knew that all the space they were covering was filled with deadly sink holes and quicksands. O'Hara didn't miss either the spots of gaping white that looked like open mouths. They contained the deadly fangs of the one snake more deadly than the rattlers, the cotton-mouthed water moccasin.

It seemed to O'Hara the boat had been poled nearly a mile and the course it took hid the warehouse and wharf from view. The light spring sun was already broiling O'Hara's face and hands. He knew Aileen must be suffering equally. But even this did not prepare him for the cruelty and torture that lay ahead, devised by the sadistic soul of Gent Barillo for the seeming purpose of compelling a helpless old man to reveal the secret of where he had hidden two millions in diamonds.

It was a sheet-iron shack that stood upon the tiny hummock entirely surrounded by a wide expanse of the deadly black water with its quicksands and its poisonous moccasins. Not until Aileen and he were compelled to mount a small raised platform inside a _  SUPER-DETECTIVE.

the sheet-iron shack did O'Hara realize to the full the torture that was ahead. It was only after their swearing captors tore the tape from their arms and freed them, keeping their guns upon them, that O'Hara realized what was to come.

O'Hara realized too that the emaciated body with only torn rags as a covering, and with a face swollen under a white beard to almost blackness, must be the Uncle Nathaniel of the two Aussie girls.

Their captors lost no time in leaving the shack. The shack was boiling to a temperature far above a hundred and which was filled with literally millions of mosquitoes and tiny black gnats.

THE attack of the insects was immediate and vicious. O'Hara tried to protect Aileen's face and neck with his coat. It was now late afternoon. Finally the coat had to serve to keep the myriad of mosquitoes and gnats off both Aileen and O'Hara as much as possible.

The emaciated old man had pulled an old gunnysack about his face. He seemed in a delirium and his eyes were swollen almost shut. Uncle Nathaniel, however, was of saner mind than he seemed, though his thickened lips only whispered :

"I'll never tell... Barker will never find… diamonds are where nobody..."

Uncle Nathaniel laughed croakingly, deliriously. O'Hara agreed that Attorney Barker would never find the diamonds.

"Full moon—" whispered Uncle Nathaniel. "Water comes... fish ... 'gators crawl in, Aileen, I know that is you. Diamonds gone... have few thousands... you and Thelma..."

O'Hara quieted the old, apparently dying man and he slept.

O'Hara saw the sheet-iron door had not been locked. The black water and the oozy quicksands provided prison enough. O'Hara studied the tide marks inside the shack.

The four-foot platform was necessary. High tide, now already in flood, would come into the shack around the platform. O'Hara looked out through the doorway. Hundreds of fish, Gulf fish— red snappers, kingfish, tuna— were floating toward the shack on the tide.

"I have the answer to Barillo's smuggling game," said O'Hara. "Commercial fishing boats are being passed by the Coast Guard. Gent Barillo isn't in the fish business. The fish are being dumped from boats coming to his wharf. That means something much more valuable has been hidden under the iced fish."

"Do you think this Barillo wishes us to die out here?'' asked Aileen.

"No," stated O'Hara. "Barillo must realize that Uncle Nathaniel hasn't many hours to live. He may leave us here part of the night as a final play upon your uncle's nerves, hoping he'll break. I don't believe he ever will."

"And then—?" Aileen's voice was anxious,

The girl's face and hands were swollen from insect bites. But she still tried to smile.

O'Hara had suddenly made up his mind.

"There'll be no and then, Aileen,' he said. "High tide will give me three or four feet of water over the quicksand ooze. I can swim out by resting some on cypress roots. We were brought no more than a mile."

"Then what will you do, O'Hara?'' asked Aileen.

"Barillo's few men will be busy, off-guard. There are Tommy-guns. I'll need only one. Then I'll be coming back for you and Uncle Nathaniel."

"But how will you find the direction of Barillo's wharf?"

It was growing dark, suddenly as always over the 'glades. A faint glowing light appeared above the trees in the distance.

"There it is," said O'Hara. "Barillo is rushing to unload a boat. A fire has been built for light to load a truck. That'll be my pilot light. I can make it."

O'Hara was staring at the bodies of fish floating in on the tide. The water was in a turmoil out there. Many fish were disappearing.

O'Hara had forgotten about the 'gators.

"Yes, O'Hara, we can make it!" exclaimed Aileen suddenly. "It's dark enough to start."

"What do you mean, we can make it?" growled O'Hara, "It's my job. Once the feet are put down into the oozy bottom to rest, the quicksand will take you. I'm a good swimmer and I'll take breathers on cypress roots."

"He looked at Aileen, swore and turned his head quickly away. The amazing Aussie redhead already had her dress stripped over her head. She was right down to essentials for swimming.

"Thelma and I hold the mile swimming record at home," Aileen smiled. "If you get tired, O'Hara, I'll give you a hand."

7: Tommy-Gun Talk

O'HARA SLIPPED into the warm, brackish water with Aileen close beside him.

"I forgot about the 'gators," he muttered.

"Alligators never attack humans in my natural history," said Aileen. "They eat fish, eggs and small animals. Unlike the crocs—"

"Is there anything you Aussie gals haven't learned?' muttered O'Hara.

"Not much," admitted Aileen casually. "Except one thing, and O'Hara, I think I'm taking lessons in that since meeting you."

Her small hand touched his shoulder, then she was slipping ahead with a gliding crawl stroke that seemed to mark her as tireless. Although O'Hara knew 'gators were not dangerous to humans, the stir in the water about them sent little bugs crawling along his spine.

Porpoises, as big as cows, had followed schools of mullet into the Big Cypress Swamp. Combined with the 'gators they kept the water churning. Phosphorescent light played over the water.

O'Hara could be thankful for this. Otherwise their own swimming might have been marked later or if Barillo had decided to send out a boat. When they reached a jutting cypress knee, O'Hara was compelled to pull himself up for a rest.

Aileen stayed partly in the water, her white legs moving slowly.

Suddenly the rustle and hissing of a deadly moccasin came from the big cypress knee on the side nearest Aileen. The reptile's head was within inches of Aileen's face.

O'Hara was chilled, but he went into action. He could see only the snow-white mouth of the snake in the moonlight. O'Hara hurled himself across Aileen's body. His stomach shrank, but his hands snatched directly at that white, venomous mouth. His sudden movement and considerable luck carried the four-foot moccasin with him on into the water.

O'Hara expected every instant to feel the deadly fangs. Yet he clutched at every available part of the writhing snake. He was crushing the moccasin's triangular head upon the cypress root before he fully realized that he had escaped being bitten.

The Aussie redhead was not one to bubble over.

"You'll do in a pinch or for a lifetime," she remarked quietly.

Which was sufficient to drive the shaking reaction from O'Hara and give strength to his almost paralyzed muscles.

THE flat boat, with two men poling, stood out, a magnified, enormous shadow. O'Hara touched Aileen and whispered:

"Stay back. I'll have those two muggs in the water before they know what hit them. I'll get at least one rod."

"You keep forgetting me,'' replied Aileen. "Suppose you take the mugg, as you call him, at one end of the boat, and I'll work on the other one. It will be easier if their legs are suddenly snatched from under them."

The two disgruntled muggs were cursing over the job of poling the flat boat over the shoal black water. The boat carried an outboard motor for deeper channels. It was unsafe to use this motor where the water shoaled and was filled with cypress roots and snags. Once jammed with the tide running out, the boat might remain there for many hours.

As O'Hara reluctantly consented, Aileen, whom he had to admit was a better swimmer than he, glided silently toward one end of the boat. O'Hara selected the chunky mobster poling at the stern. He noticed the outboard motor. He didn't realize then how much that motor was to mean within the next hour.

A sibilant hiss came from Aileen. Because 'gators still stirred the water and thumped it loudly with their tails as they fought over the floating fish, the noiseless approach of Aileen and O'Hara was unnoticed.

Thus it came about that two unsuspecting muggs uttered combined yells. They must have believed that a pair of 'gators had reached into the boat and closed upon their legs. O'Hara vaguely saw the mugg seized by Aileen go toppling overboard, his pole clattering to the bottom of the boat.

O'Hara pulled a fast one. He locked his arms around the legs of the mobster at the stern pole. He jerked them from under him, throwing him into the boat on his face. Because the mugg was half-stunned, O'Hara was into the boat and handing him solid punches on the back of his neck before the mugg recovered. He retrieved an automatic from the man's shoulder holster and just to make sure, he clunked him on the back of the skull with the gun barrel.

He looked and Aileen was pulling herself into the bow of the boat.

"I couldn't help it, O'Hara," she half-apologized. "That fellow hit his head on the side of the boat and went under. He didn't come up so I missed getting his gun."

By this time O'Hara saw that the boat was but a couple of hundred yards off the Barillo wharf. The fire on shore outlined a small fishing schooner and a truck being loaded. Half a dozen figures were moving between the fishing boat across the wharf to the truck.

O'Hara saw Gent Barillo's slick well-garbed figure standing fully in the light of the fire. None of the men seemed to be especially on guard, but one mugg held a light Tommy-gun over his left arm. It caused O'Hara to have a suspicion that one of the three fishermen he saw aboard the boat might not be in thorough agreement with the smuggling racket.

The tide, having reached its flood, was setting out strongly. Drainage from the miles of flat black water was flowing in the deeper boat channel that led to the Gulf.

O'Hara half-whispered to Aileen: "The tide's swinging along the shore directly into that old wooden wharf and the boat. Pole in close to shore. I've an idea we're going swimming again."

They had but the one gun that had been seized by O'Hara. Because of the firelight brilliance, the boat was still in deep darkness.

"Slip into the water, Aileen," directed

O'Hara. "We'll make it ashore here. I'll dump this sleeping mugg close to shore."

He made sure the automatic clip was filled with its quota of ten slugs. Half a minute later he had emptied all the gasoline from the outboard motor tank by turning it up and releasing the cap. The extra two-gallon can with the precious priority fuel was next poured along the bottom of the wooden boat.

WHEN they were in the water, O'Hara said ruefully; "This is the chance we have to take.'' He put the automatic close over the gas and triggered it once. There was a flash of flame.

The tide ran faster as they neared the channel and swung the flaming flat boat directly into the flimsy wooden wharf and the fishing schooner. The crack of that shot had startled Barillo and the half-dozen men with him. They were rushing onto the wharf watching the oncoming boat.

At this moment O'Hara's feet touched solid coral. Aileen and he climbed out. The boat was within a few yards of the wharf. Barillo's men with drawn guns were watching the boat, looking behind it into the darkness. The direction of that one shot had been indefinite.

Aileen and O'Hara were within thirty or forty yards of the wharf and warehouse but in the darkness on the other side of the fire. A man ran out with a long pole evidently intending to fend off the flaming boat.

O'Hara snapped a carefully aimed slug. The man with the pole crumpled down with a leg shattered. O'Hara dropped, pulling Aileen down. Instantly the guns of Barillo's men were blazing. Slugs whined into the darkness. O'Hara had Aileen flattened behind a slight hummock.

Gent Barillo was the first man to dive for cover. He didn't quite make it. Once more O'Hara used a carefully aimed slug. He was thankful now for the long practice he had had on the police target range. He was convinced he had shattered Barillo's knee as the racketeer rolled and screamed.

There was a slight crash. Gas-fed flames licked up over the flimsy wooden wharf. It caught and the blaze spread. O'Hara counted four men darting out of the warehouse which the flames were swiftly approaching. There was a grinding noise of motor-starting. A loaded vegetable truck came into full view in the firelight scarcely twenty yards away. O'Hara wasted two slugs before a front tire of the truck blew out with an explosion louder than that of the guns.

"Stay here, Aileen," grunted O'Hara.

He was weaving through the darkness. Barillo's boys were piling off the truck. One carried a Tommy-gun. O'Hara was suddenly so close upon them that he might have been mistaken for one of their own number in the darkness. The man with the Tommy-gun found out his mistake too late. O'Hara's automatic cracked across the back of his skull. In O'Hara's mind was a picture of a dying skeleton that had been a man, out there in an iron shack where he had undergone weeks of torture....

Only Barillo himself and one of the fisherman aboard the schooner were alive when the Tommy-gun stopped rattling in O'Hara's hands.

The first move was to strip the clothes from one of the mobsters. He handed them to Aileen in the darkness. Gent Barillo was pleading, cursing, promising big dough. O'Hara simply wore a hard grin. He found that the surviving fisherman was friendly.

From the ice hold of the fishing boat and from the burning warehouse they brought a dozen small, tightly wired bales.

"It was a tight little racket," said O'Hara to Aileen. "There's still a boat here. We must go back for your uncle."

OWL O'HARA pointed out to the county and city law the bales of deadly marijuana that had been brought in by fishing boats and smuggled into Miami and northward in the vegetable trucks. "Only the greediness, first of that shyster Barker and then of Barillo who had him murdered, brought us to this racket that pays off big both in money and the lives of boys and girls,"

"One of these days you'll get too far ahead of the department," growled Chief Watkins from Miami, "and when you do O'Hara grinned at him. The police doctor said Uncle Nathaniel had some chance for life and that his mind was already clearing. Thelma had been brought out in a police car and joined her sister Aileen. Bowser, the truck driver, had been released. Chubby Merkle had returned the filling- station car by remote control. He had hired a boy to take it back.

O'Hara looked at Aileen. The Aussie redhead looked just as beautiful in the mobster's rough clothes as she had in a dress,

"Too bad; he muttered, "you girls have to have millions in diamonds."

"But they haven't millions in diamonds," came the thin voice of Uncle Nathaniel. "That is what I've been trying to tell. The diamonds were in a steel safe on my private yacht. The insurance lapsed because of war risk. Before it could be renewed, the yacht was apparently sabotaged and sank in the deep water off the Miami Beach channel. There are no diamonds. There will be only a few thousands of my own money for Aileen and Thelma."

O'Hare drew in his breath sharply. Aileen and Thelma were smiling at each other.

"Now," said Thelma. ''We can get us a job in an American war plant like we wanted to do. Possibly my boy friend in Melbourne will now listen to sense when he finds out we're no longer heiresses to a diamond fortune."

Aileen's blue-green eyes turned toward O' Hara.

"I wonder," she said quietly, "if I could find an American boy friend who would also listen to sense."

O'Hara grinned broadly. "You're sure enough through looking," he said and took her in his arms.

_______________

12: Printer's Ink Runs Red

Roger Torrey

Speed Detective, Oct 1945

This late Torrey story in Speed Dective is also an example of how the pulps, when pressed for space, leave things out. This story starts out without a chapter or chapter heading, then has chapter and chapter headings regularly from Ch 2 until Ch 5. Then, when the second half of the story ("continued on page 83")  is shuffled off to the back of the magazine, no further chapters or chapter headings.  So it's not me, folks.

I LIVE in an apartment house that sports a desk and a desk clerk, by this never means a thing. My little pals sail past the desk as it they don't see it, and the clerk who's shy, just gulps and lets them go. So I was sore instead of surprised when somebody started pounding on my door at a quarter after twelve. I'd been in bed an hour, and was just nicely asleep. I went to the door, but I was talking about having to go to it, and what I had to say was profane, not polite.

It was Jim Pender, who's in a way of being a friend of mine. And he looked as though he was seeing the little men that run around the base-boards.

I said: "Come on in, Jim. You look as if you need another one of the same."

He said: "I'm in trouble, Mickey. Bad trouble."

"Have a drink and tell me about it."

"I don't want a drink."

I said: "Dammit, I do. Come on in."

Once inside, where I had a chance to look at him, I could see that he was really up in the air. He runs a wholesale tobacco-and-candy company, and that business is a gold mine if it's run right.

And Jim Pender ran his business right. He knew everybody in town, had what amounted to a monopoly on his kind of business, and was running for the State Legislature on the Democratic ticket.

Which made him a cinch for election.

I made myself a drink with rye and ice and soda and Jim again refused one, and he was a drinking man, if not a lush.

He said: "I've got to keep my head, Mickey. I'm really jammed. I flatter myself that I've got as good a name as most men of my age, but I can't stare down what's looking me in the face."

I took a sip of my drink and said: "And what's staring you in the face, mister?"

He said: "Murder."

IF I HADN'T KNOWN Pender as well as I did I probably would have thought of the possibility of error. But when he said "Murder" I knew it was murder and nothing else. He wasn't the panicky kind. He was big and blond and placid, and this was the first time in my life I'd ever seen him upset.

I said: "All right, Jim. Take it easy. Now— who was killed and how are you mixed in it? Don't tell me that everything went black and all of a sudden you found yourself standing above the body, with a smoking gun in your hand. I won't believe it."

"Don't kid about it, Mickey," he said hoarsely. "I'm not fooling. It's murder, like I told you. It's Smiley."

"The guy who's running the scandal sheet?"

"That's right— that's the man. I had an appointment with him, and when I went to keep it, at his shop, I found him on the floor. Dead, with blood all over."

"How d'ya know he was dead?"

"I... I felt of his wrist. There was no pulse."

"Have you called the cops?"

"I couldn't, Mickey. I threw the guy out of my office earlier today. Right down the stairs. The police would certainly find that out. He was killed just before I got to his shop, because his wrist was as warm as if he'd been alive."

"If you threw him out of your office, how come you made an appointment with him at his shop? The police are going to ask you that."

"Maybe if I don't report it... if I let somebody else report it, they won't drag me into it."

Our town isn't so big, around eighty thousand, but that doesn't mean there's not some smart men on the force. He was a cinch to be dragged into the mess and I told him why.

I said: "Look, Jim! The minute the news comes out about Smiley being murdered, people are going to talk it over. Your throwing him out of your office will be remembered. You can bank on it. You'll have to tell why you did it. And why you agreed to meet him at his place, afterward. The cops aren't dopes... they find out things like that."

"But I can't tell why I agreed to see him."

"Why not?"

He got red in the face. He said: "He was trying to blackmail me. I'm running for office, Mickey. Now's no time for a scandal. I decided I'd advertise in his damned sheet. He propositioned me about it this afternoon, and when I told him I wasn't interested, he hinted he would publish a news story about me that I wouldn't care to see in print."

"And you got sore and threw him out."

That one got the faintest sign of a grin from him. He said: "I did more than throw him out. I picked him up from the chair he was cowering in, heaved him toward the door and grabbed him when he opened it, and then pitched him down the stairs. It's a wonder he didn't break his neck on the way down, and he was limping when he walked away. I don't think I was ever so mad in my life."

"I don't blame you."

"Then I got thinking it over and thought it might be better to go along on it until after election. It's next month... I thought I'd pay off that long and then tell him to go to hell."

"How does the blackmail tie in with the advertising? You said first that you were going to advertise with him and then you say he was trying to blackmail you."

Pender said bitterly: "That's the way he works it. It's legal. He finds out something about you and then comes up and asks you to advertise in his dirty sheet. He charges you blackmail prices for the advertising. In my case it was five hundred dollars an issue, and the sheet comes out as often as he wants to print it."

"He gets all his advertising that way?"

"Nobody in his right mind would advertise in that sheet unless he was forced into it, Mickey. Have you ever seen one?"

I said I had and started to get dressed. He looked a little more hopeful then and asked me if I had any idea of what was the best thing for him to do.

I slid into my pants and said: "I have. We're going down there together and discover the body. I'll call the caps. Our story is that you got a phone call from Smiley, whom you knew, asking you to drop in at the shop some time this evening. You happen to be with me and so I drop in with you. We find Smiley. And you'd be better off if you tell them about having an argument with Smiley this afternoon. They'll find it out, anyway. Tell them you loaned him money and that you asked him for it and he refused to pay you. And that you knew he had it, and that you got sore because he wouldn't pay you. That's how the argument started, you can say. Then tell them he called you a dirty name and you gave him the old heave-ho. Tell them you thought he called you to give you this money you loaned him... that will explain your being there at his shop. And me being with you will furnish you an alibi of sorts."

"That's swell, Mickey! I don't like to drag you into a mess, but I don't know anything about this kind of thing."

It was a back-handed compliment but I didn't mind. I get so few that any kind words are appreciated.

SMILEY'S PRINT SHOP was on a back street, a shabby neighborhood. I've noticed that a lot of print shops pick the same kind of location, and have finally decided that the reason for it is the noise they make. The presses rattle and clank and I can understand a landlord not wanting to rent to such a noisy tenant— that is, if his place was alongside quiet business houses. They'd move and he'd be stuck with his noisy renter and that would be his only renter.

In the section Smiley was in, noise made no difference. There were warehouses, garages, machine shops, and an ice plant, and all the noise that Smiley could make wouldn't be heard above the din.

There was a dull light coming from the front of the place and there also was a neat little hole through the right-hand front window. It was pretty, with cracks starring out from it in all directions. Some of them went clear to the edge of the pane.

Pender said: "The door's open— I walked right in."

"And left prints all over the place, I betcha. It don't make any difference, now, Jim. We dropped in together, we say. What would be more natural than your touching things?"

He said: "It's back there. By the biggest one of these. He jerked his head toward one of the machines, some kind of binder, I thought. And I also thought that Pender didn't know any more about the printing business than I did, and all I knew was that they used ink and paper to do it with. We went to the back of the shop and, in the shadow of this press, if that's what it was, was Smiley.

He was face-down and there was quite a lot of blood. He'd crawled, apparently blindly, at least ten feet, and five feet of that distance were turned from where he'd run into the press or binder or whatever it was.

I said: "He was standing by this gadget and somebody saw him through the window and took a crack at him. It was nice shooting."

"Shooting's too good for a man like that," Pender told me. "It's guys like that that make all the trouble in the world."

By that time I was squatting on my heels beside the body. I tipped its head a little and then got up.

I said: "Did you know he had a printer?"

"Well, no, Mickey. What's that got to do with the mess?"

"That's the mess," I said. "This isn't Smiley, dammit. This must be some guy that works here. I wonder where he keeps the phone."

THE NIGHT MAN on the desk was Sergeant Ollie McKinney, and we'd always got along.

I told him it was Mickey O'Connor and he said it was Desk-sergeant McKinney and then we got down to brass tacks.

I said: "Who's working tonight?"

He played it straight with: "In what department, mister?"

They kidded themselves into thinking they had their detective force in special categories, but that was a joke. The town isn't big enough to have what few cops we have left placed on special duty. Some of the boys enlisted and some were drafted, and the town's running as best it can with a skeleton force.

I said: "Homicide, sergeant.''

He did a double take on that one. He said: "Oh yes! That will be Lieu— Hey! Did you say homicide?"

"I did."

"You kidding?"

"I'm not. I'm calling from Smiley's print shop and we just came in here and found his printer dead. Shot. Somebody from the street potted him through the window."

"Olson's working. I'll tell him about it."

I said: "Do that," and started prowling the shop. And was lucky enough to stumble onto a file of previous issues, covering the past year and a half. I'll admit I stumbled into them where they were parked in a filing case, but I still think it was a coincidence. I was looking for the place Smiley kept his case records on the people he was shaking down.

I'd just got some of the old papers tucked away, under my shirt, when Smiley came beaming in. We were away from the printer's body then, clear up front and in another aisle, so Smiley hadn't seen a thing wrong.

He walked up to Pender holding out the hand of friendship, but he'd have looked more natural if there'd been a knife in it. He had a smooth and oily voice and I didn't like him and never had.

He said: "It's nice your coming down like this, Jim. What d'ya say we just forget about that little trouble in your office today? I will if you will, and no hard feelings between us."

Jim seemed to have gone blind, because he didn't seem able to see Smiley's hand. Smiley reddened a little but didn't speak out about the slur. Jim said: "You two know each other?"

We said we knew each other.

Smiley said to Pender: "I'm sorry I'm late. My pressman let you in?"

Pender -said: "Oh, sure. He was here when we got here."

I knew what was the matter with him. He'd been sure that it was Smiley whose body he'd seen, and here he was talking to the man himself. It was upsetting and Jim had already taken quite a bit that evening.

I said: "This pressman of yours, Smiley? I don't believe I ever saw him around town."

I'd known Smiley for the year and a half he'd been in town and we'd never made any pretense of having any use for each other. Of course I knew what he was doing, but no client of mine had had trouble with him and so I'd never tangled with him. I'd rather looked ahead to seeing him stretched out dead on the floor, though, just because I hate a blackmailer. I think blackmail ranks next to kidnaping on the dirty-crime list. While I don't approve of it, house-breaking is by comparison a good clean crime. Murder, in some cases, is almost justified, though by this I don't mean murder caused by greed. But the blackmail victim hasn't a chance. If he pays, he's bled dry; and if he toughs it out, he's pilloried.

Now, when I asked about the pressman, Smiley gave me a superior sort of grin and said: "I can see you don't know anything "about the printing business, O'Connor. These fellows come drifting along, work for a week or so, and then go drifting along again. They work enough to keep them with a roof over their heads and a bottle of whiskey in their bellies, and that's all."

''This one you've got now? Know anything about him?"

"My dear O'Connor! Why should I know anything about him, except that he's a good pressman? I'm not in the least interested in the man."

"You will be."

"Why?"

"He's back there dead," I said.

Lieutenant olson was a big bland man, who had a swell grin and the palest eyes I've ever seen. Even when he was laughing so hard he'd have to hold his sides, those eyes never softened a bit. He wore nothing but grey, except for tie and shoes, and these were black. He weighed at least two-twenty and was the star man on the police wrestling team. For that matter he was star man on the police pistol team as well, the regulation Police Positive our foree uses looks like a toy in his hand.

He said to me: "Now have I this right, Mickey? You were with Pender and you just went along with him when he kept this date? That right?"

"That's exactly it, Ole."

"It wouldn't be that Pender came down here expecting trouble, and that you came along to see he didn't lose?"

"It would not. You know I wouldn't lie to you, Ole."

"Not unless it paid you, you wouldn't I noticed something funny. Did you—?"

"Funny about what?"

"About this dead man. Didn't you get it?"

He'd caught it, so I thought I might as well admit I had, too. I said: "If you mean that from behind he looked like Smiley, I caught it. He had the same sloping shoulders and he was about the same size. Yeah, I caught it."

"I wondered if you did. And I wonder if Jim Pender did. And I know twenty other people I can wonder about, along with you two."

"You think somebody mistook this gay for Smiley? That it?"

Olson spoke as if talking with himself—as if he were thinking aloud. He said: "Here it is, Mickey. Here's a boomer printer come to town. A man who probably doesn't know a soul here... these printers are a clannish bunch. Why should anybody bust him through a window with a high-powered rifle? It doesn't add up. On the other hand we have Smiley, who this other guy resembles from the back. Here's Smiley who's been here a year and a half. Long enough to make enemies of half the town. I know twenty-five people who I swear would kill him like a flash, if they thought they could get away with it. If I was picking him up and he ran, Mickey, I don't think I'd shoot at his legs. And that's a hell of an admission for a cop to make."

"You know his racket then. Ole?"

He waved a hand the size of a ham. "Sure. Not that it does us any good. Blackmail's about the toughest thing there is to stick on somebody. We know how he works it and some of the people he's working it on, but what good's that? We run into scandal at the departmental! the time, naturally. Unless it can't be avoided, we keep quiet about it."

I'd run into enough scandal in my little private-cop business, and the bulk of my business was skip-tracing and petty stuff like that.

I said: "It must be a paying business. Smiley is certainly spending money and a lot of it. He's got two hundred dollars' worth of clothes on his back, and he's living at the Towers, which is the highest- priced place in town, if not the best. He's got five thousand dollars' worth of automobile, even if it's second-hand. And it must cost him nothing but money, this digging up the dirt on our good citizens."

Ole said: "He's banking about two thousand a week, Mickey. We've been taking an interest in him."

"Over this advertising-blackmailing thing?"

"Oh... things..." Ole said vaguely.

I knew that was as far as he'd go— but I also knew the cops were watehing Smiley for something more than the racket that was hitting Pender.

And so, in turn, hitting me.

2: I Find Murder

PENDER'S place was five miles out of town, built on a point that jutted out into the lake. It was too lonesome for my taste, but Pender and his wife and kids were nuts about it.

And I'll say it was a pip of a place.

The house had maybe ten rooms, with the biggest porch in front I ever saw. Glassed and screened, and they spent most of the summer out there. He had a man and wife living in a little cottage behind it, and they took care of the place so well that all Pender had to do, when he got home, was lift his drink up to his face. Both the man and his wife were better than green hands when it came to shaking up a cocktail. They were named Jules and Josie, and it wasn't a gag. That was really their names. Both French— Josie had been born across.

Pender and I sat on the porch, and I could hear Mrs. Pender bustling around inside— the front room opened onto the porch—and Pender had been almost going nuts, waiting for her to go inside so I could tell him the score. He was trying to keep it away from her and so we couldn't just go to his room for a conference.

I took a sip of my drink and said: "They're just about ready to hang it on you, Jim. You know where I got it from, but of course this isn't official. The guy you're running against is no fool and he's asking why you were down there at that hour to meet Smiley. He doesn't come out and say you killed this printer, thinking it was Smiley you were shooting at, but if the man he's talking with walks away with that impression, this rival of ypours doesn't worry. And there's been so much talk about it the police will act soon. They'll have to."

Pender swore but it was more bluster than temper behind this. He said:

"Mickey, I don't want this now. I can't win this election if I'm fighting murder charges. And I don't want to fight murder charges. I didn't do it and I don't want to be crucified for something I didn't do."

I said: "You know Ida Durstin? The gal that married old Simon Durstin? The department-store Durstin?"

Pender nodded and said: "I've heard of her. Who hasn't? When a guy sixty years old marries a girl twenty-five, and when he's filthy rich and she hasn't a dime, there's always talk. It's the sugar-daddy stuff carried to an extreme."

"She was around the printing shop before you were. She's got a Cadillac convertible sedan that's a bright blue, and she's got a long black bob and big black eyes and a shape."

Pender was staring. "Well, what of it? I'll bet there's lots of girls with black hair and eyes and a good figure. How d'ya know it was Mrs. Durstin?"

I grinned and Baid: "More stuff from my pipe line into the police department. The beat cop say the big car parked there, about a block from the print shop. Then he saw it cruising along when he made his next round. This went on until the beat cop got curious and jotted the license number down in his notebook. The cop remembered it when this printer got killed, and the cop told Lieutenant Olson."

"Well?"

I SAID: "About two months ago old Durstin came to the office and wanted to hire me to follow his wife around. He had a notion she was seeing too much of the chauffeur, if you know what I mean. He's a jealous old goat, believe me. I told him to wash his own dirty linen if he had any, but to do it at home. And I advised him to be sure the linen was dirty be-fore he washed it... or he'd put himself out on a limb that somebody would saw off behind him."

"I thought private detectives did that all the time. I mean get divorce evidence."

I said: "If the girl or guy was an awful bum, 1 might. Not in this ease. The old boy's almost crazy with jealousy. I wouldn't blame the girl, no matter what she did."

"There's that, too," Pender agreed.

I said: "What's got Lieutenant Olson down is the number of suspects. That's why I think he's going to grab you. He can place you on the scene just abont the time the crime was committed and he can't put any of the others there."

"What others?"

"Every man that advertises in that nasty little sheet of Smiley's is a suspect. That is, if you work on the theory of the printer being killed by mistake, by somebody who thought he was Smiley. Of course Olson's got the girl placed around there but he doesn't think she could do a job of shooting like that."

"I don't suppose she could," Pender said gloomily.

I grinned and said: "She was runner-up in the woman's part of the State skeet shoot. The only one that could beat her was once national woman's ehampion. If she can shoot a shotgun like that, you can bet she knows a bit about a rifle, too. Ole Olson may be cutting her out of his mind as a suspect, but I'm not."

"She probably had a date with some guy and was waiting around for him to Bhow up."

I said: "Could be."

Then Josie came out with a tray of fresh drinks and a wide grin. She told us, with quite a lot of accent, that the madame had ordered them for us and that dinner would be ready in about an hour.

Pender waited until she was back in the house and blossomed out with an idea that I already had thought of. He was even excited about it.

He said, smacking his knees with his hand and spilling part of his drink on the other knee when he did it: "By George! Mickey, she might have seen something. After all, a man standing in a car, and shooting through a shop window with a high-powered rifle, isn't a common sight. I know the policeman who was walking that beat didn't see anything out of the way, but he passes that way only once once an hour, I understand. It's just possible that she saw the killer."

I said: "Maybe I should talk with her."

"You certainly should."

I  laughed and said she was going to stop in at my place, after she attended the show with a bunch of other high mucky-mucks. That is, if she could get away from her husband.

I told him I was trying not to miss a thing that could help him, even if it meant browbeating a poor, helpless little girL

He didn't know why I grinned then, but I had reason. I'd called her and told her f wanted to see her and she'd naturally asked me what about. I'd said it concerned the printer killed in Smiley's shop, and that both she and others weren't in too good standing on the matter. Then she just about tore my ear off telling me what a heel I was to threaten a girl like that. She used language that would hare had our wire disconnected if the operator had happened to cut in on us, and I'd finally broken it up myself.

I said: "You be there as soon as you can. And let's have an end to the tough language. I think we're on the same side, you fool"

She said, and meekly: *TU be there as soon as I can make it," and I gave her my address again.

It was the first time I'd ever got tough with the wife of a couple million dollars, and I felt good about it

I LEFT Pender's about half past nine and with about half a load aboard. So much so that I decided to call on Smiley to see if he'd heard anything about his dead pressman. He'd offered to write to the guy's union and make inquiries about him, and an answer was about due. And I didn't want to go home and sit around an empty apartment while waiting for Mrs. Ida Durstin, who might or might not show up.

But when I stopped at the Towers and asked for Smiley, they told me he was out and had been out since early in the evening.

Then I got a bad break, although at the time I welcomed it.

Along came Lieutenant Olson, off duty. Of course he was subject to call at all times, but he'd put in his regular stint for the day and was just killing time.

He seemed glad to see me. He said: "I was hoping I'd run into somebody I knew, Mickey. What d'ya say we have a drink? Maybe two drinks."

I told him he should be at home with his wife and family and he grinned happily at me and told me his wife and the two kids were visiting her mother, back in Iowa. And that he was on the town.

Then one drink led to another and it was after eleven before I realized it, and it was half after eleven before I got out of the cab in front of my apartment house. And then I saw three police cars, the ambulance, and the medical examiner's big sedan— all up and down the street.

I got stopped in the lobby by a big cop whom I didn't remember but who seemed to know me.

He said: "No dice, O'Connor. There's nothing in this for the likes of you."

I said: "I don't get it."

"The gravy boat ain't landed. Orders is that nobody goes up. That means you, along with everybody else."

"I live here, mister."

"Three newspaper guys have tried to pull that on me already."

"Ask the desk."

The night clerk was a timid little guy but he told the truth. The big cop shouted over: "Say! This guy live here?" and the little guy squealed back: "He certainly does!"

I went upstairs then and found what all the commotion was about.

It was Ida Durstin— and she'd been killed just outside the door of my apartment.

3: Gun Missing

PENDER came up fifteen minutes later and in plenty of time to meet the police. I was standing in my doorway, watching them work, and I saw Pender when he stepped out of the elevator.

And even at that distance I could see he was excited. He stared at the hall full of cops and ambulance men and at the medical examiner, who had a white uniform coat on over dress trousers. Pender came up to me by sliding along the wall. An All-American full-back couldn't have ploughed through the crowd in the center of the hall.

He said: "What's it all about, Mickey?"

I said: "Listen! If you want to hear real language, listen to that medical examiner. He was on a party and they drag him out to look at a dead woman. He don't like it."

You didn't have to listen to hear the medical examiner. You couldn't keep from hearing him. He was about half- tight and he was as sore as a broken thumb. He was asking everybody why he couldn't be left in peace, just one single night. He was asking why in the so-and- so he had to be dragged away from his friends to state that a woman was dead and that she'd died from a knife wound in the back. He said, and loudly, that his mother's old Aunt Sarah could determine the cause of death in such a case— and that it proved his mother's Aunt Sarah had more brains than half othe police force.

The medical examiner had always been a profane man, but he was outdoing himself right then.

Pender said: "What is it? Who was killed?''

I said: "A girl named Durstin, I think. One of the cops thinks that's her name." And under my breath I said: "Pass it off, you dope! Play like it don't mean a thing to you."

The lieutenant in charge came over then and I introduced Pender to him with the usual: "Lieutenant Arne, this is Jim Pender, Jim, Lieutenant Arne. Arne does stuff like this every night."

Arne was a tall, thin man who looked as sour as a lemon, while actually he wasn't that way at all. He was the opposite, and I often had wondered how he'd held a job on the force and stepped up to that rating. He was the kind of guy who'd catch a pickpocket with a hand in the -Arne pocket and who, instead of taking the pickpocket to the station, would loan him a buck.

They shook hands with the usual glad- to-know-you stuff, and I asked the lieutenant in for a drink. He looked the situation over and said that he might take a small one, as everything seemed to be under control, and we went inside and I closed the door. And then, just as I was getting ice cubes out of the frigidaire, I heard a tremendous pounding at the door.

I put the ice down as I went through the living-room and past Arne and Pender, and when I opened the door I saw

Lieutenant Olson, whom I'd left not an hour before.

He said cheerfully: "I thought we should have a nightcap and I brought one along. See?"

He held up a bottle of whiskey in each hand and I decided he'd been just wolfing them down since I'd left him.

I couldn't do anything about it. I didn't want him to see Pender there, but there was no way I could avoid it.

I said: "Come on in, Ole. I can make a party out of this if company keeps coming in and if company keeps bringing their own liquor. Come on in."

Of course he did. He stared owlishly at Arne, who said: "Well, if it ain't Ole?"

OLSON lost a little bit of his drunkenness when he saw Pender, who stood up and shook hands with him. And he lost the most of it when Arne answered his question.

Olson said: "Who's out in the hall?"

"Who ain't?" said Arne, grinning. "That damn' medical examiner's better than a show. You should have heard him tonight. He always cries when he has to go to work, but tonight he's in the pink."

"I mean who's the stiff?"

"Some woman named Durstin, I think. At least one of the boys says he thinks that's who it is. There was no pocketbook or anything by her, so we don't know for sure, yet."

Right then Pender acted as though he was trying to put the noose around his own neck. He said nervously, to me: "I've been trying to get in touch with you for the last hour, Mickey. I was up here trying to catch you in, half an hour ago."

Olson was as sober as a judge right then. He asked Arne: "How long's this woman been dead?"

Arne told him: "Maybe half an hour, maybe three-quarters. That's what the medical examiner says, anyway, though when he gets on the stand and testifies he'll give himself a hell of a lot more leeway."

Olson asked me: "You and Mr. Pender find this body, too?"

I said: "Don't be like that, Ole. I never saw the woman in my life. The name's familiar, somehow, but I don't place her."

I was hoping that Olson had enough liquor in him to be a bit blurred, and that he wouldn't remember all he'd told me about the girl. But no luck. He was like an old-time fire-horse that heard the bell.

He said: "You place her all right, Mickey. It's the girl that was running around in Smiley's neighborhood, when that printer was killed. You remember that, don't you? You should— you found the body."

"Sure I remember."

Ole turned. "And you, Mr. Pender. Do you recall it, also?"

Pender said: "Why, of course."

"Do you happen to know anyone named Durstin?"

"I know Simon Durstin quite well," Pender said. "I seH him tobacco and candy for his counters. He's one of my best customers."

"That's his wife out in the hall— did you recognize her?"

"It so happens I didn't see her. Not that it would have made any difference. I've never met the lady. My relations with Durstin were entirely a matter of business."

"Sure of that?"

"Very sure."

I was proud of Pender then. He was standing up to Olson and holding his own, and that's a hard thing to do, with those pale eyes staring at you.

Olson said: "Now it wouldn't be that Mrs. Durstin, who was in the neighborhood of the Smiley print shop at the time the printer was shot and killed, it wouldn't be that she witnessed the killing, would it?"

Pender said: "I doubt it."

"Why?"

"She'd have reported it to the police, of course."

"Suppose she had everything to gain by Smiley's death. You notice I'm taking for granted that the printer was killed because he was mistaken for Smiley, I hope."

"I gathered that. I know of no reason, though, why the lady wouldn't have reported it. Whether Smiley's death would have benefited her or not."

"Did you see Mrs, Durstin at any time tonight?"

"I wouldn't have know her if I'd seen her, Lieutenant. I've never met the woman, as I told you."

That was all of that. Ole apparently decided he was getting nowhere and let it drop for the time being. And it was something he was going to pick up again, of that I was sure. He was going to pick it up and worry it the way a dog does a bone.

Arne said: "Aw, sit down, Ole, and have a drink.

"If the two cases tie together, we can figure it out later. This one's mine and the other one's yours, and we can work 'em out together."

Olson sat down then and joined the party, such as it was. I could see that Pender was relieved to have the questioning over and I could see Ole sitting there, trying to make two and two add up to five. And I also could see that Pender had something he thought was important, something important enough to take Wifi out of his house and downtown to see me at almost midnight.

It wasn't until almost three before Arne and Olson left, and by that time Pender was almost jumping up and down with nervousness. The minute the door slammed behind them he started in with what he had to say—and it was plenty.

He said: "I thought you ought to know about it at once, Mickey. My rifle's gone. A .270 Winchester, just about the same size gun that killed that printer."

I should have known right then who the killer was, but I muffed it.

If I'd pulled the handle, I'd have hit the jackpot then and there.

4: Loose Ends

SMILEY was in his office when I called the next morning, and he didn't seem glad to see me at all. I looked at his filing-cases, wondering just how much assorted dirt was in them, and then decided he'd keep the really juicy stuff either at home or in a safe-deposit box. Anything hot enough to collect on wouldn't be safe in a tin filing cabinet that could be opened with a can-opener.

He said: "All right, O'Connor. What is it? I've got a busy day ahead of me and I can't give you much time."

He'd started the act when I was with Pender, at the time when we'd found his dead printer, and I didn't like it then. I liked it less the more I saw of it, and I decided I'd had enough. I picked him up from bis chair by the front of his coat and shirt, and I slapped his face, palm on one cheek, back of the hand across the other, with half a dozen good solid smacks on each side. His arms were flailing away, but not at me. He was just trying to get his feet under him, trying to get a little balance.

Then I let him back in his chair and said: "No more of that, little naan. You're not big enough or tough enough to give me that kind of lip."

He said he'd have me arrested, and I laughed and waved a hand. He looked around his empty office, empty except for the two of us, and be got the idea.

I said: "If you get me arrested and I ever find it out, I'll do a hospital job on you. And you can quote me and see what sympathy you get from the cops."

He said: "I just asked you what you wanted."

"You know what I want. Did you hear anything from that printer's union?"

He said sullenly: "I have. But I don't know that I should show it to you. You have no official standing in the matter."

I told him he'd look pretty with no front teeth, and he softened up in a hurry. He tossed a telegram in front of me and told me to read it, then went over to the window and stared out of it. The wire read:

DONOVAN GOOD REPUTATION BUT HEAVY DRINKER. NO TROUBLE. FAMILY MAN. NO KNOWN ENEMIES.

It was signed by a union secretary.

I'd hoped for a little dope, but I hadn't expected any, so I wasn't too much hurt. I said: "Thanks!" and Smiley gave me a dirty look and didn't answer. I had a notion I'd be featured in his scandal sheet if he thought he could get away with it— and I didn't worry a bit. He wasn't the fighting kind, not with his fists at least, and so I didn't worry.

I forgot that when you hurt the pride of a certain type of man he cherishes a grudge. Amd if I'd remembered that, I don't know whether I'd have placed Simley in that group.

He was just a pain in the neck to me.

PENDER drove me out to his house— I'd used all my A-tickets and couldn't get any more gas until the fifth of the coming month, and I was complaining bitterly about this to him as we rode along.

I said: "It isn't right. My car is listed as being used for business and pleasure, but the O.P.A. board can't see the business part of it. You'd think I drove the thing just for transportation to the movies and to take a girl out riding. The old stall about running out of gas on the lonely road is a stall no longer. A girl's a fool to go out with a guy these days— he'll run out of gas and be telling the truth."

Pender said it had cut both his sales and delivery service just about in half.

I said: "There's plenty of black-market gas but I won't do it. Maybe they won't take me in the Army or Navy, but I'm damned if I'm going to burn gas they can use. Not unless I do it legally."

Pender swung around a truck and then back into the proper lane on the highway. He said: "There's bootleg coupons now for gas. The country's full of them. They're supposed to be good enough to fool the average man, too, and that would eertainly take in the average gas-station man."

I said I'd heard that, too, and Pender swung into the road leading to his point of land and house. We went inside, passed clear through the house, and then went downstairs to the game room.

A billiard table took up the center of the room, and there was a tiny little bar at one corner of it. Not over six feet long. The walls were hung with hunting prints, the lights were all concealed, and there was a fireplace that could take four-foot wood. Banked around it were deep leather chairs, and the room had a restful, pleasant air about it that made you feel good just to be in it.

Pender waved proudly and said: "Nice, eh?"

I said it was very nice and meant it. Then he pointed to the wall and said: "The gun was there. In the cabinet."

He had a section of the wall indented about six inches and there were a dozen or fifteen guns hanging there on pegs. Rifles, shotguns, and a couple of .22 target pistols. Pender pointed to a blank space in the rifle section.

"There," he said. "It was there. The best gun I had. A .270 Winchester with a Noske 'scope on it. Just the kind of gun somebody used on that printer."

I said: "It's a plant, all right. We've got to find it in a hurry."

He looked doubtful.

I said: "If the police find it before we do, you'll end that day in the pokey. There wouldn't be enough left of the slug for the ballistics man to determine whether it came from your rifle or not, but the man can and probably would testify it came from a gun of comparative power. If the cops find it in your place, it'll be you for it."

"But why should they find it in my place? The last time I noticed it it was hanging here where it belongs."

I gave it to him in simple words. I said: "You're being framed, Jim. And I'm afraid it's working. It's a surprise to me the cops haven't picked you up by now. Look at it. You're put on the spot when you found the printer's body. Somebody probably stole your gun to do that job. You walked into the girl's killing and that was pure accident, but it ties with you. The police will claim she was cruising around that section and saw you do that shooting. They'll claim you killed her to keep her quiet."

"I didn't even know the girl. I know her husband, that's all."

"You'd have a hell of a time proving that to a jury, mister. They're supposed to give the defendant the benefit of the doubt, but when the victim's a girl, they give the defendant the doubt the other way. The poor guy's got to prove himself innocent instead of the State having to prove him guilty. And the worst of it is that if they jug you and book you for murder, you'll stay there. You can't get bail for a murder suspect in this State."

"Why should anybody frame me?" Pender asked. "I've got business rivals but they're not enemies."

"Could it be that whatever Smiley's got on you has anything to do with it? I don't know what it is and I don't care, but is it anything that could kick back and be kicking back now?"

"Heavens, no. It's something that happened ten years ago. But my wife's both jealous and religious. She can't divorce me, according to her church, you understand. She'd be miserable and she'd make life miserable for me. And a thing like that, if it came out, would lose me a lot of votes with the church people. Here's what happened, Mickey. You can see that there's no chance of this trouble coming from it."

HE proceeded to give me much the usual story. He'd gone to the big town on a State lodge convention and he'd got himself taken drunk. In fact he'd been tight from the time he'd left until he got back. During that time he'd got acquainted with some gal, who he said was a good scout and as much there for a good time as he was. It was an old story and he told it as though he was ashamed of it— while the average man would have been bragging about his part in it. Nobody was hurt, it was over and done with, but somehow Smiley had dug the thing up and threatened to use it if Pender didn't pay his advertising-blackmail levy.

I said: "How would Smiley get hold of it after so many years?"

"Probably the guy that's running against me told Smiley. My current political opponent was there— he's a brother lodge member. He may have caught on to what was going on and now sees a chance to make trouble for me with it."

That seemed logical, all right. I said: "We don't make anything by mooning around here, Jim. Forget it. We'll keep digging and maybe something will turn up. First, we'll take that warehouse of

yours apart, looking for the gun. That would be a good place to plant it. You own a coupe— we'd better look in the rumble seat for the gun. It will be some place where the cops can find it easily, you can depend on that."

I was banking on the warehouse showing pay dirt on the gun business, and my only worry was whether the cops would find it before we did.

WE COULDN'T start any search as long as the warehouse was open and running, and so I spent some of our wasted time in looking Olson up. And found that I'd been right in worrying about Pender getting thrown into the pokey. In the first place, Ole Olson was sour as he could be. He claimed the only way he could have a bigger hangover was to put on weight. The one he had, he said, was as big a one as a man his size could support.

I was properly sympathetic and told him he should bring his wife home so she could keep him away from his wild bachelor friends. And he said: "Damned if 1 don't think you've got something there."

I said: "I saw Smiley and he showed me a wire from that pressman's union. They gave the guy a clear bill of health."

Olson said: "They're burying him, even. He had just seven bucks in his pocket and he owed that for room rent. If they don't bury him, the city will have to."

I said it was tough— that printer being mistaken for Smiley that way.

Olson looked thoughtful. He said: "That's sort of funny there, too. I asked Smiley if he wanted a police escort and he said to hell with it. But I know the little rat's a coward—so it doesn't jibe. I'd think he'd want an escort. He knows there's plenty of people gunning for him. I can name you twenty men he's shaking down, right now, and heaven knows how many turned him down. Every time you read a dirty little article in his paper, you know somebody backed up on him."

I said I'd figured out the same angle. And I handed over the file that held all the back issues of the sheet, since Smiley had started it a year and a half before.

Olson looked astonished when he saw what it was. And then said: "I hate a liar worse than anything in the world, Mickey. So I'm not going to ask you where these came from."

I said: "A buzzard brought 'em to me. A buzzard is the only bird dirty enough to touch the damn' things."

And with that we started looking through them.

Some were four pages thick and some were sixteen. The early issues were small, but the thing bad gradually built up. It was the size of a tabloid paper and printed on the same kind of newspaper stock. Its title was THE TRUTH —the title blazoned across the head in letters three inches high. The first issues had little advertising, but this had built up plenty during the year and a half.

It was a cinch to see how it went. In the first few articles Smiley had picked on our local slot-machine king. First veiled hints, and then when the guy still held out, he'd gone into names and dates and places. I remembered then that there'd been a drive against gambling and the one-armed bandits had disappeared for a little while.

Right after that the sheet began running ads of the Star Billiard Rooms, which was the front from which our slot-machine mogul operated. And I noticed the sheet had nothing more to say about the slot-machine menace.

The next one picked up a theater man who was putting up a new building. It mentioned wiring and foundation work that wasn't up to State specifications on the safety factor. This went on for less than a month, and then the sheet came out with advertisements about waiting for the grand opening of the new Palace Theater.

AND SO it went. There'd be a reference to some business man's trip to the city. In the next issue the same business man would have an ad in the thing.

It was vicious, and unless somebody made a complaint and backed it with proof, it was sure and certain.

Olson said: "If his advertisers get together and lynch him. I'll turn my back on it. I won't see a thing. Nobody on the force will. I don't say that some of the boys won't take a little honest graft, here and there, but this is slow death."

I said I thought the same.

He spoke along in the same voice then, trying to trap me. He said: "What's he got on Pender?"

I said that, as far as I knew, nobody had a thing on Pender.

Olson laughed at that one and I didn't blame him.

I said: "You'll find out, Ole, that the key of this thing lies with Mrs. Durstin. I don't know that it will ever be cracked, now that she's dead."

"It's an angle," he admitted. "And we've been working on it. We've been working on these others, too. I've had four men out trying to trace where all these people were that night and it's an impossible job. That neighborhood, where  Smiley's got his shop, is almost deserted at night. It's a wonder that beat cop saw Mrs. Durstin down there. There's only one thing to do and I'm going to do it."

"What?"

"Pick up Pender. If I charge him with murder— and I've got enough to make it stick before the Grand Jury right now— he'll maybe break far enough to give me the dope on this little rat of a Smiley. I could make things a lot easier for him if he'd sign a complaint against the guy."

"It takes proof to make a blackmail charge stick."

Olson stared and said: "In this town? Mister! The D. A. would pack the jury with people who'd been stuck or who were afraid of being stuck. They'd give that guy life for stealing a kid's bicycle. That's why I don't get it, this turning down a bodyguard."

I said I didn't understand it either and said goodbye for then. It was getting close to quitting time at the warehouse and I wanted to get that gun business cleared up before they took Pender away to the pokey.

And I wanted to tell Pender what to do and how to do it.

5: We Find the Rifle

PENDER was in his office, waiting for me, and he was in a fever of impatience. He said: "I thought you'd got lost, Mickey. The warehouse has been closed ten minutes now."

I said: "Take it easy. In the first, place, the cops are going to pick you up and charge you with the only thing they can hold you on. Suspicion of murder. You can't make bail on it. Then they're going to try and talk you into signing a complaint against Smiley, charging him with extortion. If you sign, they'll make it easier for you. Don't sign— don't do anything except keep your mouth shut. That clear?"

He said he understood and so we went out and down the street two block* to Pender's warehouse.

The place was big, very big. Pour stories high and covering half a block in floor space. The watchman was just starting on his rounds, and Pender let him go, telling me: "He's got thirty-odd clocks to punch and it'll be an hour or more before he's back. We might as well take the ground floor first."

And we did, and until that time I hadn't realized the job we'd taken on. We turned the work lights on and they made the place as light as day, but with crates and bales and cartons piled and scattered everywhere, there were ten thousand places where a rifle could have been concealed.

I said: "We might as well use our heads on this, Jim. The gun wouldn't be hidden where it would be hard to find. If it was, the cops would skip it and that's what the guy don't want. He wants them to find it."

Pender looked thoughtful.

I said: "We should go through the office, first. That's the first place the cops would look. You've got the cigarettes in a separate room, haven't you?"

"Why, yes."

"Then that's the second place."

We were at the back end of the place then and we ^started toward the front, where the office was. In the back, the place was stacked high with crates, with just a narrow aisle between each row of them, and we were talking across one of these rows, he being in one aisle and me in the one next to it. So when the shooters started to shoot, we didn't know whom he was shooting at— although I don't doubt that Jim thought as I did— that the Judgment Day had come.

I saw the man as I went into action. He was by the office door, down on one knee and with his cheek cuddled down into the rifle's stock. The gun slammed again, booming like a cannon in that low-ceilinged room, and then I knew whom he was after. Because the slug hit a crate right by my head, and splinters went every whichway.

I was going up like a monkey by then. I got my hands on the edge of the crate that topped the pile, and I really yanked. It came over and didn't break, but that wasn't enough. I got two more down, blocking the aisle, and all the time hearing that damned rifle blast away, and by that time I was praying that Pender was doing as I was. What was saving me was the lighting. The work lights weren't more than ten feet above the floor and they have a tremendous strength. Nothing like an arc light, of course; but a five-hundred-watt light, set into a burnished reflector, is bright. And the room was studded with them.

The shooter hao to face into this glare and he couldn't help being dazzled by it. The 'scope sight the gun was fitted with multiplied this three times, too, so I could understand how he was consistently missing as he was.

And then my barricade was complete and I started to have fun myself.

The lights were as bad for me as for him, of course. Probably worse, because he was slightly in shadow from the office hall behind him. I got down on my belly and eased my arm and gun, and then my head, from the side of my protecting crate, and I wasn't six inches from the floor when I did it. And then I turned loose and knew I'd missed at the same time the gun rockede back in my hand. And the worst part of it was I couldn't tell whether I was shooting over him or under him or pulling the shot to the side. The heavy lights above me blurred the Patridge sight on the rear until I couldn't see the square front sight clear enough through it to know whether I was centering or not.

IT DOESN'T take much error in sighting a short gun to throw a slug ten feet to the side at a distance like the length of the warehouse. And if the square front sight is above the square notch in the rear, I'd be more likely to hit the ceiling than the kneeling man.

Pender shouted something at me just as I shot the second time, but I couldn't tell what it was— not with the roar of the gun in my ears. And I was beginning to worry, too, and I was thinking of myself instead of Pender.

The guy had spotted the flashes of my gun and was putting them in at me close to the floor.

I ducked back away from that side of the barricade and this time heard what Pender was saying.

It was: "The watchman may catch him from behind."

There wasn't a chance of that. The watchman had barely started his rounds, but I got the notion all right. Pender wasn't used to being used as a shooting- gallery target and was naturally worried about it.

No more than I was, at that.

I said: "No chance, but maybe the rifle guy won't know that. He's not going to keep this up for long."

Pender said: "I hope not, O'Connor," and I gave him credit for keeping his voice steady. It's not many solid business men who can stand steady during a thing like that.

Then I took a chance. I figured I had to do something because the shooter was getting the range. I waited until he fired, and then, while he was working the bolt to throw another shell into the chamber of his rifle, I stood up and let the last four slugs in my gun loose at him, putting 'em in as though I was doing rapid fire on the range. I didn't think I had much chance of hitting him unless through luck, but I wanted to help make noise. It stood to reason that some cop would eventually hear the battle and would come running.

I dropped down again just as he shot and he took the top board off the upper crate I'd shot over, and I decided I wouldn't try that trick again. The guy was too handy with the rifle— he was snapping that bolt back and forth like a Camp Perry shark.

I stuffed fresh loads into my gun and tried him from the floor—and that time I connected. And solid. He spraddled out on the floor, falling over the rifle, and I heard Pender's whoop even above the roaring echo of the shot.

He said: "You got him, Mickey! You got him!"

I didn't answer, because I was getting out from behind my barricade and running toward the fallen man. There was a chance that I'd just clipped him hard enough to put him down for a few seconds and the closer I was to him if he came out of it, the better off I'd be.

I NEEDN'T have worried. My slug had caught him in the throat and had taken two inches of bone out of the back of his neck coming out. A big gun isn't pleasant to shoot in close quarters like that because of the muzzle blast, but if you hit something with one of them, the something goes down.

Jim Pender then did something I didn't think any sane man would do, and he did it before I realized what it was. He reached down and pulled the rifle from under the dead man.

And said: "My own gun, Mickey! The one we've been looking for."

I said: "Put it down. Or wait. You'd better give it to me— I can get away with a yarn where you can't."

He looked puzzled.

I said: "Don't you see, Jim? You're under suspicion now. I wouldn't put it past the cops, now, to claim you staged this business. That we shot the guy and fixed this up to look like a gun battle."

He handed me the gun and I leaned it against the wall, at the side. I said: "I grabbed it before I realized 'he guy was dead. Just to keep him from coming to and snatching at it. Protecting myself, you might say, and I'll certainly say it."

I'd been so busy that I hadn't been paying any attention to outside noises, but now I heard an axe hit the outer door of the place, and heard muffled shouting along with the smashing of the axe. 1 didn't think it was any fault of mine that I hadn't heard the racket before, either. We were in p hall that led from the office to the main floor, and the outside door was thirty-five or forty feet away and at least two inches thick.

And when you've shot and killed a man you're not at your best.

I said: "Here's not just the cop, here's a whole damned flock of cops. This is the riot squad coming in with the axes. Better let them in if you want any door left in this place."

And I went with him and called Lieutenant Olson, while Pender was letting the squad in and arguing them out of the notion of beating his head in for not de- ing it sooner.

They somehow had the notion they'd caught a burglar.

IF OLSON had had high blood pressure he'd have had a stroke. He stared down at the dead man and then eounted the empty .270 cartridges on the floor, where the gun had ejected them. There were nineteen of them. He looked at the gun standing against the wall, and I thought he'd blow his top then. And, of course, he blamed me for that, as I'd thought he would.

He said: "What the hell's the idea in that, O'Connor? Mean to say this guy got up off the floor and leaned the gun up there? And then went back and laid down? Your story stinks."

"He dropped, Olson, but I didn't know how bad I'd hit him. I got the gun out of his reach as fast as I could."

"Nuts! A blind man could see the guy was deader than last week's newspapers."

"You don't think so fast after a guy blasts at you that many times with a rifle. I wasn't taking any chances."

"Whose rifle?"

I spoke fast, before Pender could louse the thing up. I said: "Why, Pender's! He left it here because the gunsmith's place was closed when he took the gun down there today."

"This isn't his office, O'Connor. Why didn't he leave it in bis own office? I know where that is— I've checked it."

I tried to act like I was getting sore. I said: "Now look, Ole! His own office is two blocks up the street. That's his main office. This office in the warehouse, here, is also his, even if it's just used to check shipments in and out. Why should he lug the gun two blocks up the street when this place was handy? The gunsmith's place is just down the street." That was the truth and one break we were getting. Then Olson picked another touchy spot in the yarn.

He said: "And I suppose Mr. Pender"— here he stopped and bowed to Pender in a nasty way— "I suppose Mr. Pender also left a box of shells for the gun, along with it. Thoughtful, I'd say."

I couldn't answer that one and had to let Pender do the best he could with it. And he didn't do so badly at that.

"I can't explain that," he said. "The gun was empty, of course, and of course I didn't have a box of shells along with it. Why should I? I just wanted the trigger pull smoothed up a bit."

"I suppose the guy came furnished with his own ammunition," Olson said.

Pender said, and very calmly: "He must have. It's the only explanation. He possibly saw the gun in the office, here, and decided he could find use for it."

"Was he after you or O'Connor?"

I said: "After me, Ole. But I'm damned if I know why. You can tell that by the damage he did to the crates of goods I was hiding behind."

"Why would he be laying for you?"

"That I don't know."

"What you working on?"

"Not a thing."

"What about Mr. Pender's trouble?"

"I mean nothing besides that. And I'm just curious about that. I happened to be along when that printer's body was found, that's all. And I can see how the police can misunderstand Mr. Pender's position in this thing."

A plainclothesman named Ellis eame up then and said: "We've identified the guy, we think, lieutenant. We think his name's Richetti. There's not a thing on him that's got his name on it, but one of the boys thinks he knows him. He's got a gas station attached to a gyppo garage, out on West Ninth, we think."

"Check it, eh? Go out and get somebody from out there that knows him and make sure."

Ellis grinned and said he'd already sent out two men in a cruiser to do just that, and went back to where the police photographer was using flash bulbs.

Olson said: "All right, O'Connor! You know anybody named Richetti?"

"I do not."

"Ever get gas out on West Ninth?"

"Probably. I still don't know this guy. I never saw him before."

"You, Mr. Pender?"

Pender shook his head and said the same as I had.

Olson grumbled: "It seems a damned funny thing to have an absolute stranger turn loose at you people like that. In fact, it's impossible. It has to be impossible. There's a tie-up between you, somewhere, and I want to know where it is."

"So do I," I said.

Olson sighed and said: "I'm too softhearted for my own good. I should take you down, Mr. Pender, and book you for suspicion of murder. My boss told me to do just that, and before this last raniky-boo. Why I don't do it, I don't know."

I said: "I know," and he asked me why.

And I told him.

I said: "For one thing, Ole, you think as I do. You think somebody's putting a frame around Pender. And for another reason, you know you haven't got enough on him to hold him. It takes more than just suspicion to put a charge like that against a man as prominent as Mr. Pender, and no Grand Jury will bind a man over on what you've got. Just as soon as I can tie Richetti, if that's his name, up with whoever's framing Pender, we'll have something. And if we can put Mrs. Durstin in the thing, some way, we'll have it cinched. All I've got to do is put all this together."

Olson laughed sourly and said that a little job like that should be no bother for me at all. But he let us go, after telling us he'd let us know when to appear for the inquest.

I HAD company waiting for me when I got back to the apartment, and for once my rabbity little night clerk had made the company wait downstairs. It was Simon Durstin and a long lean man with him, whom he introduced as Mr. Neff. It seemed Mr. Neff was one of the Durstin lawyers. I hadn't had any use for Durstin since he'd tried to hire me to spy on his wife, but I was really glad to see him. His dead wife had been mixed up in the mess, and there was always a chance of him knowing something about it.

I said: "Well, Mr. Durstin! I was going to see you in the morning. I think we should compare notes."

Durstin was little and wizened, but he was no chump. All the matter with him was that he was a fool about women— and had been particularly a fool where his wife had been concerned.

He said: "Ah, yes! There are several things I'd like to take up with you."

I took them both upstairs and Durstin took a drink with me while Neff refused. Which surprised me, as I'd thought it would be the other way around. All that Neff did was sit back in his chair and watch me, as though I was a bug on a pin.

Durstin asked: "I'm sure you remember our previous conversation, Mr. O'Connor."

I said I remembered perfectly.

"You'll recall I suspected... well, to be brutally frank, I suspected my wife of being romantic with her driver."

"I remember."

"I didn't discharge the man, you know. I thought it better to keep him on, with the idea that by watching them, I could possibly tell whether my suspicions had any basis in truth."

Neff said: "Tell him the truth, Simon. He's guessed it anyway."

Durstin colored and said: "All right. If you must know, Mr. O'Connor, I proposed discharging him and Mrs. Durstin made an issue of it. You will understand that I had nothing but suspicion to go on and so let the man stay on."

I said I understood.

"The man had quit, Mr. O'Connor. Or shall I say he's dropped out of sight. With almost a month's salary due him. It doesn't seem in character... he was always after money. It's my honest opinion that Mrs. Durstin was giving him money constantly."

I took the chauffeur's description then. It seemed he was tall, dark, and good- looking, was named Robert Pike, and was somewhere in the early thirties. It also seemed that he'd done just about everything except spit in Durstin's eye, all during the time he'd worked for him, depending, I supposed, on Mrs. Durstin keeping him safe on the job.

I said: "What d'ya want me to do? Find him?"

Durstin said earnestly: "Mr. O'Connor, that man's got something to do with poor Ida's murder. I know it— I feel it. I want you to connect him with it."

"Maybe you're imagining things. I can see where you'd be prejudiced."

"I'm certain that he's involved in her death, Mr. O'Connor."

IT WAS evident that Durstin didn't know what had been going on and I couldn't see any harm in telling him some home truths.

I asked: "Did Mrs. Durstin ever ask you, or advise you, to advertise with a man named Smiley? A man running a little smut sheet?"

"She did. Naturally I refused. The man's rates were exorbitant—his nasty little paper was no medium for department-store advertising, and the whole thing was out of the question."

"Did she tell you why she wanted you to advertise with this Smiley?"

"Why yes. She had met him at a party and rather liked him. She told me he was having a hard time getting started in the town but that she thought he'd eventually build his paper up to something worth yhile. I read one copy of his paper and differed with her."

I said: "Mrs. Durstin was around Smiley's print shop, Mr. Durstin, at the time a printer, working for Smiley, was shot and killed. I will add that the printer was shot in the back, from the street, and that from the back he resembled Smiley. The police think as I do. We believe Mrs. Durstin saw and recognized the killer, and we believe the killer took steps to silence her. You understand that Mrs. Durstin was cruising around the neighborhood in her car, and that the printer, in all probability, was shot from a car. The killer used a rifle, you see, and he wouldn't be fool enough to wander around the streets on foot, sniping away like that."

Neff said: "That would explain Mrs. Durstin's checkbook, Simon. You see, O'Connor, Mrs. Durstin had drawn a considerable amount from her bank, lately. Far more than she had any legitimate reason to draw. We supposed she had been giving money to Pike, her chauffeur, but this may put a different construction on the matter. It's blackmail, Simon."

I said that Smiley had been blackmailing at least twenty-five people, but that knowing it and proving it were different things. That the cops had been trying to nail him on it for sometime and hadn't got to first base. And that the police theory was that some blackmail victim had got more than he could stand and had shot the printer by mistake, thinking he was doing away with Smiley.

NEFF asked: "What do you think, Mr. O'Connor?"

I said: "I don't know. It was dim in the shop and at a distance, and looking through a window, it would have been an easy mistake to make. If it had been Smiley who'd been killed, the police wouldn't be trying so hard to solve the case. I can tell you that. They'd make a pass at it, of course, but they wouldn't work too hard on it. But with the printer getting it, it's different. He was the innocent bystander that's always getting it in the neck, and the police are really looking for his killer."

Neff nodded and said he could understand that. Apparently he'd spent the first ten minutes in sizing me up, and now had decided he could talk in front of me and say something besides just words that meant nothing.

He looked over at Durstin, who nodded, and then went on with: "Mr. Durstin wants you to find the man who murdered his wife. It's hardly necessary to tell you if there's a blackmail angle to it, it must be hushed. He wants you to find this chauffeur, this Robert Pike, and find definite proof that he's either connected with Mr Durstin's death, or absolutely innocent, beyond a shadow of a doubt. You see, Mr. O'Connor, Mr. Durstin doesn't want to persecute an innocent man, but he's convinced that Pike's guilty.

Durstin said: "If you can prove him guilty, Mr. O'Connor, I'll pay you any bonus within reason that you ask."

I said: "You certainly must hate the guy's guts."

Durstin said: "When you are convinced your wife is playing around, month in, month out, and you see the man you suspect is her lover, day in, day out, you learn to hate."

Neff looked at him with no sympathy, and I could understand why. Here the old goat was crying about his wife playing around before her death, and he'd done nothing at all about it. That is, nothing but condone it. If I had Neff picked right, he'd have kicked the little woman out into the cold and cruel world, and I had a notion he'd do the booting fast and thoroughly.

I know that's what I'd have done.

I SPENT the next three days talking with some of the people who were advertising in Smiley's smut sheet, and found out several and many things. The first was that they were scared to death of what he could print about them if they didn't behave. The second was that they ene and all hated him and about half of them admitted it. And the same people also admitted; tacitly, that they weren't going to dor anything about it. I had a regular system worked out in talking with them, after the first half dozen.

I'd say: "I'm working on the Durstin murder. You know... Mrs Durstin, Simon Durstin, the department store man's wife."

They all either knew, her or about her. And they'd all say what a terrible tragedy that had been and how sorry they felt for poor Mr. Durstin,

And then I'd say: "We have reason to believe Mrs. Durstin was killed  because of her witnessing a murder that happened just before. A printer, working for Smiley. Of course you know Smiley?" About half of them, would, then deny they knew Smiley, this, in, spite of the fact they were advertising in, Smiley's paper. If they denied knowing Mm, Pd point this out and tell them, they'd forgotten the man, undoubtedly. If they admitted knowing him, it was just that much easier.

I'd say: "The police believe this printer was killed; by mistake. That the killer thought he was shooting at Smiley."

I'd then get the stock question. Whoever I'd be talking with would ask why should anyone want to kill Mr. Smiley. And then I'd give 'em the stinger.

I'd say: "Anyone of the many people he was blackmailing. Yourself for instance; Of course if you can prove where you were that night, say between ten- thirty and eleven-thirty....

The only ones who knew for sure where they were at that time were the homebodies, and that kind of alibi isn't worth a whoop. In a couple of cases I found men who'd had company in, for bridge er something like that, and, with these I could do nothing. But I could work on the ethers and did.

I'd' say: "Of course the police aren't working too hard on this— they're taking it the routine way. But with me it's different. I've got a client who wants his wife's murderer punished and he'll willing to go to any lengths to see that's done. You see the position it puts me in, of eourse."

None of them, saw, or they claimed they didn't see.

I'd say: "It's this. We believe Mrs. Durstin saw the man who killed that printer. We think the same man. killed her. It's a question of motive— it's only right that everybody that had a motive to get rid of Smiley is checked, That's just common sense."

From here on I'd get different reactions; Some of them would tell me to go to hell and dare me to try to prove they had anything to do with, Smiley, other than, advertising in his paper. Others would crack and! beg me not to drag them in it, and just about admit they were being blackmailed in. a legal way.

I'D GONE just about all the way down the list of advertisers before I really found gold. And I found it talking with a deacon of the church, who had a Sunday-school class that one day in the week andi who robbed the widows and orphans right and left the other six.

He said: "I'll admit it, Mr. O'Connor. I am paying a form of blackmail. I am paying five hundred dollars a copy for advertising not worth a fifth that. But I have no choice."

"What's he got on you?" I asked.

He told me and I wanted to laugh and had a hard time not doing it. He'd had some girl out; he and the girl had got themselves pie-eyed— and he'd tied his car up with a telephone pole. He and the gal had taken off across the fields and he'd walked all the way home, to find the cops camped on his front porch, waiting for him. He was still tighter than a tick and he'd admitted he'd been driving the car when, it had smashed.

So the cops took him down, to the pokey and held him overnight. In the morning he managed to make bail and get out, and by throwing his weight all around town he managed to get the charges squashed.

But Smiley had found out about it and showed the poor guy proofs on the little news story he was going to run about it. Though, according to Smiley, he'd never run a yarn like that about a good advertiser.

I could imagine what a story like that would do for a Sunday-school teacher.

I said: "All right, mister. A Lieutenant Olson of the Homicide Squad will be up to see you. Tell him just what you've told me. He'll keep your name out of it if it's possible."

"He simply has to, Mr. O'Connor. It would ruin me if it was known."

I said: "There've been two people killed. Maybe you think that's something that should be hushed up, too. And Lieutenant Olson will want to know where you were at the time both that printer and Mrs. Durstin were killed. You'd better tell him the truth, mister, or you're liable to be down in the jail with a charge against you that you can't make bail for."

I left him shaking all over and just right for Olson. I didn't think Ole could get enough from him to make a blackmail charge stick against Smiley, but it was a step in the right direction. And I hadn't been home in the apartment for more than five minutes before the deacon called me.

He said: "I just remember something, Mr. O'Connor. Possibly it has no bearing on the matter, but I remember seeing Mrs. Durstin talking with Mr. Smiley on the street once. This was a month or more ago."

I said that I knew Mrs. Durstin and Smiley knew each other. I did, too, but I couldn't very well have made it stick in court as proof. She'd agreed to come to my place when I'd told her it was about the printer being shot and about Smiley. She'd been in that neighborhood. She'd tried to talk old Simon into advertising with Smiley and she'd told him she'd met Smiley at a party.

The last didn't mean a thing. She wouldn't be either the first or last wife to lie to her husband.

WHAT I had to do was to have solid testimony and here was a bit of it. But at the same time I didn't want my church deacon to think he was giving me anything— I wanted to keep him worried and ready for Olson. I thanked him and hung up the phone, and it wasn't more than another five minutes before Olson knocked on the door.

He said: "We're getting some place now, Mickey."

I'd started making drinks as soon as I saw who it was, but now I stopped and stared at him. He sounded as if the end of the world was on him.

I said: "What the hell's the matter now, Ole?"

"At this rate I'm going to ask the undertakers for a cut. If I don't catch this damn' killer soon, we'll have to start a new cemetery. We'll have the old one full and overflowing."

"Who's it now?"

"Mrs. Durstin's chauffeur. A guy named Robert Pike."

"Well, go on."

He took down half the drink I handed him, with one swig. He said: "The guy's been dead about three days, the doc thinks. He was just out of the city limits, about ten feet in on an empty lot that's grown up with weeds. A couple of kids went by with a dog, and the dog found the body and started barking. The kids went in, thinking the dog had cornered a cat, and they found Pike."

"Was he shot there?"

Olson shook his head. "He was not. No blood. Shot three times through the body and once through the head. No, he was carried in there— we've traced where they dragged him through the weeds."

I said: "Tough. Well, at least I can tell old Durstin that I know where his missing chauffeur is. And I'll bet the old geezer'll be tickled to death when he finds the guy's in the morgue."

"No doubt, no doubt," Olson said wearily. "This has got me down. Oh yes! We checked on that guy you killed in the warehouse— and what d'ya think? The guy was running a gas station, all right. And he was running it with a bunch of these phony gas tickets. He was sellng them, right along with gas and oil. There's no doubt of it— he had tickets enough there to get two hundred thousand gallons of gas, at least. Mean anything to you?"

"Not a thing."

I thought he was going to say something more about it, but he didn't. He just held out his glass for a refill.

And I got on the phone and told Simon Durstin about his chauffeur being found dead in a field, and gave him what details Olson had given me.

Durstin seemed very happy about the whole thing.

I WAS BEGINNING to get a lot of ideas, but the trouble was I had too many of them. If I was right one way I'd be wrong in all the others, and one thought seemed just as sensible as the next.

For one thing, I was trying to do too many things at the same time. I wanted to stick Smiley for blackmail, for one thing. I wanted this so bad I could taste it. Naturally I -wanted to get Pender clear of any suspicion of murder and I could see where that job was getting tougher by the hour. Things were happening on that front that had no rhyme or reason behind them. Such as that attack on us in the warehouse.

That last really bothered me. I'd come out of that all right, but it was just luck that had taken me through. If somebody was trying to get me shot down and was using hired help on the job, it was just a matter of time before I'd go down to stay. It's tough enough shooting it out with a known enemy, but when you don't know who's after you, it's impossible to protect yourself.

One of the most logical suspects on the frame against Pender, of course, was the man who was running for the State Legislature against him. The guy was as crooked as a braided rope, that I knew, but I couldn't somehow figure him as being back of any murder frame. He'd take advantage of any trouble Pender got into, naturally, and would certainly make trouble for Pender if he could.

But murder's strong stuff— too strong stuff for the average politician to swallow, and that's what the man was. Just an average, run-of-the-mill, crooked politico.

Then I had Smiley. There was a chance, of course, that Smiley had been sore enough at me to hire somebody to put me out of the way, but the little cuffing around I'd given him was hardly reason enough for murder. He knew, too, that I was trying to stick him for extortion and blackmail, but the cops hadn't been able to pin anything on him— and so why should he be afraid of me?

The Durstin business was an added complication. I could understand how Smiley had been working on her— that was easy. The slimy devil had probably worked it through some of the help. He'd probably found there was more than smoke in the reported romance with the chauffeur, and he was the kind of operator who'd find the fire under it That I could understand; but I couldn't see why Pike, the chauffeur, had been killed.

That didn't tie in anywhere. Pike had nothing to lose except a job, and that's no loss in this day and age. He could have gone to work in fifty different places, the way the labor problem is these days. As far as any scandal hurting him, that was a joke. Old Simon Durstin could have sued him for alienation of affections, probably, and probably would have won a judgment, but a judgment against a man like that isn't worth the paper it's written on.

THE ONLY logical answer to that killing was that Pike was dangerous to somebody. The killer might have thought Mrs. Durstin had told Pike what she'd seen by the print shop, or the killer might have thought she'd told Pike something of it.

Anyway, he was out of the thing now.

Then I had at least twenty-five other people who had reason to hate Smiley. Any of them might have reached the breaking point and gone down to shoot Smiley and made the mistake of shooting his printer instead.

Against this, though, was Pender's gun being stolen. That went along with the frame against Pender, and none of the other poor guys who were getting the bite put on them would have anything to gain by framing Pender. For that matter, there was little chance of any of them knowing that Smiley had his hooks in Pender.

The Durstin woman was the key to everything, but I couldn't find any place where the key would fit. She'd had nothing to do with Pender; so she wouldn't be in any frame against him. Neither had Pike, the chauffeur.

But then Richetti, the man who'd tried to gun me out in the warehouse, had had no connection with either Pender or me, and he'd certainly done his best to put me in the morgue, along with the other victims.

The more I thought of it the more of a headache I got, and I finally said to hell with it and went to bed and tried to sleep.

I didn't do so well, though— I don't think I had more than three hours' sleep when Olson came up at ten in the morning and woke me.

OLSON had a hang-dog look and that's something unusual for the big Swede. He's a guy who bulls ahead on the theory that whatever he does is right and to the devil with anybody who doesn't like it.

He said: "You're not going to like this, Mickey."

"Not going to like what?" I asked, heading for the frigidaire for ice cubes. I like a drink when I get up in the morning, working on the idea of getting wide awake in a hurry. Certainly a stiff slug will either wake you or knock you out at that time, and either's better than running around in a fog.

Olson waited until I'd made a drink for each of us and then he said: "I picked up Pender at his office, just as he got there.

Make no mistake— I didn't want to do it.

But the police commissioner and the chief and the D. A. got together and I have to do what they tell me to do. You know how it is, Mickey."

I said I knew how it was and that I knew he wasn't trying to play heel with either Pender or me. And asked: "He charged yet?"

"The D. A.'s office is making it, Mickey.

On the old gag— the 'information-received' thing. I came up to tell you right off the bat. You'll want to get in touch with his lawyer, won't you?"

"Can't Pender use the phone?"

"Well... uh... I don't know, Mickey.

They had some talking about keeping the thing quiet for the legal forty-eight hours. If they do, they won't let him phone. They won't take a chance on having his lawyer getting him out with a habeas writ."

I said: "There's going to be a lot of hell raised about this, Ole. One good thing, though. If they keep it quiet, it won't hurt Him on the election."

Olson looked unhappy. He said: "And that's something else I wouldn't depend on, Mickey. There's cops in and out of the station all the time, and any one of them might let it slip. It's news, and some of the papers will pay for that kind of news. The guy that's running against him would pay. That louse of a Smiley would pay."

"You get anything from that Sunday-school teacher?"

Olson brightened a little. "He says he'll testify in front of the Grand Jury if we can get Smiley with something that will hold him. He'd do that with the idea of strengthening any case we can make against Smiley. But he absolutely refuses to swear out a warrant against the guy.

He says Smiley worked the racket in a legal way and that he won't put his neck out. And the hell of it is he's right."

I said: "I'll get that guy Smiley if it's the last thing I do. If it wasn't for that smutty sheet of his and the way he runs it, none of this would have happened. The man should be lynched."

Olson said: "If you start a lynching bee, do it on my day off, so I can go along with you. I'm beefy— I could put a tot of weight on a rope."

I PHONED Jim Pender's lawyer and told him what had happened and he told me he'd get busy and see what he could do. And then I had a bad few minutes phoning Mrs. Pender and telling her what had happened. She was nice about it. She said she knew I was doitig all I could for him, and that she was sure everything would come out all right, but she didn't sound optimistic.

It was then I decided to go whole-hog or none that night. I wasn't getting anywhere by playing it decently and legally, so the other way seemed indicated.

And then Smiley put out a speeial edition of his dirty little sheet, and if there'd been any doubt in my mind about what to do, the paper killed it. His lead story was a humorous little thing about Pender. He spoke of Pender as the town's "playboy," hinted definitely at what Pender had been trying to conceal, and ended the pretty little poison-pen thing with the information that Pender was in the bastille.

He didn't call him by name, but nobody in the town could mistake a thing in the article. Pender was too well-known for anybody to miss on who Smiley meant.

He even took a cut at me in the thing. He said that the only surprising thing was that the plug-ugly who was the pal of the jailed citizen wasn't in jail with him. And hinted that every hour I was free was just borrowed time.

I've seen men horse-whipped for less than he had to say about me.

Smiley lived at the Towers, the best apartment house in the town, and I knew better than to ask for Smiley. With the way he was operating, he'd have everything but land mines to keep possible trouble away. And I wouldn't have asked for him anyway— if I had any argument with him I didn't want anybody remembering me.

Getting into the place was no trick at all and I knew Smiley had the penthouse. And I'd been in the place enough times to remember that the elevator didn't make the last story to the penthouse, but stopped at the floor below.

I wait in at the service entrance and up the service stairs and I didn't meet a soul until I got to the fifth floor.

And then it was just a chambermaid working the night shift, and she gave me an incurious look and that was all. And I had my hat pulled well down and I don't think she'd have been able to recognize me five minutes afterward.

Just as I got to the last floor and had only one flight more to get to the penthouse, I heard the elevator grind to a stop, and I cracked the service door enough to be able to see Smiley and a flashy-tooking blonde come out of the cage and start up the stairs.

The blonde was going to be an added handicap, but I'd gone too far to back down then. Besides, I was getting madder by the moment— the more I thought of what was going on the more sore I was.

So I started up the stairs after Smiley and his blonde.

WHEN I was on the roof, with the door leading there closed, I felt better. Getting up there where I wanted to be gave me a lift and made me think that maybe things might break right for me after all. And so I looked around to see what I was up against.

In the first place I was in the open, with maybe twenty feet separating me from the penthouse itself. This was built to look like one of the model houses you see at expositions— flat-topped, with a lot of windows, and with what walls there were made out of glass brick. It had a terrace running along the front and side that I could see, and this was roofed. There were tables and lounging chairs along this, all modernistic. It was very neat, and the penthouse itself was much bigger than I'd thought it would be. I thought it would have at least six rooms, and possibly more.

I could hear muffled voices from the house and I took my Betsy gun from under my arm and started that way. And then I ran into a piece of hard luck. Or into a colored boy who looked like hard luck to me.

He came out on the side terrace with a tray of drinks and started putting them down on one of the pipe-and-glass tables. That's all they were— twisted pipe with a sheet of glass over the top. He didn't see me for a second and I moved in on him fast. Then he looked up and spotted me and the gun, and he dropped that damned tray about a foot. It landed on top of the table and it sounded as if the side of the house had fallen out.

Smiley called from inside the house: "What the hell's the matter with you, Johnson? What did you break this time?"

I didn't say anything— just raised the gun muzzle so it centered on the boy. And he used his head, even if he was scared into a delicate grey.

He called back: "Nothing, suh! I jus' slipped."

I heard Smiley yap about "damn' clumsiness" and then I was up to the boy with no time to waste. I hated to do what I had to do, but I had no choice. The thing was far enough along then so that I couldn't stop, and the boy could be the one to tip over the apple cart if he got loose.

I swung the gun against the side of his jaw, and put enough weight behind it to put him over to the side about five feet. I tried not to hit him hard enough to break his jaw, but I also tried to come close to it, and I got it just about right. He went down as though he had no knees and he cracked the back of his head against one of the chairs, so I knew I wouldn't have to worry about him for a while.

And then I went inside, in time to meet Smiley just as he came from another room.

I hit him and I didn't care whether I broke his jaw or not. I didn't— I landed too high. I could feel teeth breaking out from under the gun's muzzle, but it didn't knock him out. He squealed like a pig and raised his hands to his face, and I jammed the gun into his fat little belly as hard as I could and he brought them down again. On the next swing I caught him where I wanted, about halfway along his jawbone, and I had to step back to keep him from falling on me.

And then I went in the other room to take care of the blonde.

THIS ROOM was a honey— if you like 'em furnished screwy. Every other panel was a full-length mirror, and the blonde was in front of one of these, with both hands up to her head, fixing her hair-do. She saw me coming in from behind her— or saw my reflection— and it was apparent that she saw the gun. She kept her hands right where they were and she didn't raise her voice.

She said: "Just like good old Chicago, hey, Mac! My purse is on the table in the other room and there's about forty bucks in it. Take it and welcome. But you're a chump to knock over this place. It's going to take you too long to get out of it."

I said: "I'm cutting the manager in on the take. I'll have lots of time."

She had nerve enough actually to laugh at that one. She said: "And what did you do with Fatso, might I ask? He's got a safe here, though, Mac, so I don't suppose you'll get much pickings from him, either."

I could see a half-open door that led to a bedroom, and I motioned toward that. I said: "Inside, sister! I hate to do it, but I'm going to make you stand in a closet, just like you were a naughty girl. I can't watch you and everything else at the same time, and you're smart enough to make me trouble if you got a chance."

"Right you are," she said, now turning. "I'll see you do three to five for this little caper, Mac. It'll maybe teach you a lesson, too. You've got nerve but no sense. If you had, you'd pick a place where you could make a getaway."

I'd caught it by then and I wasn't having any. She was expecting somebody else to come in and was stalling me until they got there.

I said: "In the closet, Blondie. And pronto."

She went ahead of me and opened the closet door by herself, and I could see it was roomy, with plenty of air space for the time she'd be locked in it. And I also made sure the lock on it didn't operate from the inside. She waved to me as she went in and she was still carrying the thing off.

She said: "Don't run off and leave me, Mac. Because it'll sure as hell get stuffy in here by and by."

I said: "If I do, I'll phone the manager and tell him where you are. I won't let you smother— you're too good a sport for that."

She gave me a little curtsy for that and I closed and locked the door. I went to the kitchen and found a bottle of ammonia and into the bathroom and found a cold wet towel.

And then I tied the colored boy up with his own belt and hauled him out of sight, and finished the job by gagging him with a lemon I'd also found in the kitchen, tying this in with a kitchen towel. I'd dumped some of the ammonia on Smiley's shirt front and draped the towel over his forehead, and he was already starting to come around when I got through with his boy.

SMILEY was stubborn, but not for long. I didn't think he would be. If I was caught, I'd be stuck for assault with a dangerous weapon, attempted robbery at the point of a gun, illegal entry, and probably half a dozen other charges, and I explained to him that I had nothing to lose and plenty to gain by getting rough.

I said: "And it'll be a pleasure, you little toad. I'll love it. Just tell me again you're not going to do what you're told."

I'd raked him a couple of times with the gun, and his face was swelling in a couple of places. He was so scared that sweat was just rolling from his face, and when he tried to talk he did more stammering than anything else.

He said: "All right, O'Connor! You've got me. What d'ya want?"

"Who's coming up here?"

"I... a fellow named Joe Peterkin."

"Do I know him?"

"I don't think so."

I took a chance and asked: "Another hired hand? Like Richetti?"

He was so anxious to get out from under that he slipped and badly. He said: "Honest, O'Connor, I had nothing to do with that. That was Richetti's own idea."

"Who got the rifle from Pender's house?"

He looked stubborn again and I tapped another tooth loose. If I'd had dibs on the dentist bill he was going to have, I'd have been in the money.

He said: "Richetti. He took the rifle."

"About Ida Durstin. Who did she see shooting the printer? And don't tell me you don't know."

"Richetti. He... well, he and I got in an argument and he got sore about it. He got over it... we straightened it out."

He'd said this last like he'd practised it and I knew full well he was lying by the clock. But I didn't want to take time out to argue it.

I said: "Okay! On your feet!"

"What are you going to do?"

"You're the one that's going to do it. You're going in and open your safe for me."

"I haven't any safe here, O'Connor."

"Your blonde bombshell says different. Must we go through this again? Don't you want any teeth left at all?"

He managed to totter to his feet, and the things he called the blonde were marvelous. She'd have had to have been triplets to be all the things he said she was. And I got sore and slammed him across a kidney with the flat of the gun and I gave it all I had. I'd liked the blonde— at least liked the nerve she'd shown.

I said: "That'll be all. If there's going to be any cursing done here, pal, I'll do it. Get at the safe."

I didn't even know where it was, but he led the way into the bedroom and polled away a thick throw-rug from a corner. The next thing that came up was a section of flooring, about three feet square, and with this gone I could see a modern little cannon-ball safe, built into the floor. And I squatted right down next to him while he opened it, just, om the chance of there being a gun left right on top.

That's one of the oldest gags in the business and it's just as good now as the day some smartie first thought of it.

I SHOULD have caught wise before, but the second Smiley got the safe door open I knew the answer. The safe was jammed with gas-ration books and. being shut up in that small space they gave themselves, away. They smelled like fresh, ink so much that even I could tell what, it was. And I don't know any more about the printing business than a cat knows about heaven.

The funny part of it was. that Smiley thought that was what I was looking for.

He said: "There it is. But they don't hang you for counterfeiting coupons." The answers I'd figured; took care of that, too. It explained why the printer had been shot to death... and it wasn't going to be the dead Richetti who'd be blamed for that.

I said: "So that printer caught wise to you, eh? And you had to get him out of the way. or lose your soft snap? And you saw a chance to lay the thing on Pender, thinking the cops would think just as they did—t hat the guy was killed by mistake? By somebody who thought he was boating at you? Mister, they may not hang, you for making, phony gas tickets, but they'll sure as hell hang you for murder.''

"You can't prove anything. like that, O'Connor."

I said: "Nuts? If I can't. Olson can. We've been looking for the wrong people. We've been trying to place somebody you'd been blackmailing down in your print-shop neighborhood. Now we'll try and place you down there and that won't be hard to do. You're known down there and have a right to be down there, so nobody would think anything about seeing you around at that hour of might. Now that we know who to ask about we'll have no trcvdde finding somebody that saw you there. Think it over, smart guy."

Somebody from the door said: "You think it over yourself, smart guy. And drop that gun!"

I was sitting on my heels and I went back from them, spinning and rolling at the same time. I heard a gun blast from the doorway even before I saw who was standing there, but when I shot back, the man in the doorway went out of sight as though somebody had pulled him away. Smiley was flat on his face on the floor, and at first I thought he'd ducked to keep low and out of the line of fire.

That was before I saw the blood dribble out from under his head.

OLSON was in a fix and no mistake. He had his counterfeit gas tickets and he had the man who'd printed them, even if the man was accidentally dead from a bullet through the head. It seemed that the man in the doorway, one Peterkin hy name, had been startled when I'd done my rolling act, and had shot in too much of a hurry. He'd caught his boss, Smiley, right under the ear, and Smiley probably didn't even know he'd been hit.

It was a good thing for Smiley at that He'd have died in the chair for murder, certainly. With his blackmailing record no judge would show him mercy.

I'd caught Peterkin high in the right shoulder and he wasn't hurt too bad. He wasn't happy about it, of course— the slug had smashed up a lot of bone— but he was in no danger. And the D. A. was going to let him plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter in return for the information he had about what had happened and who else was in the gas coupon deal.

But Olson was jammed. I was guilty of at least six minor and major crimes, and, under the circumstances, had to admit it. I'd even called him up there and waited for him, so there wasn't a chance of my pleading false identification. The colored boy was there to testify that I'd smacked him down. The blonde was there to swear I'd pat her in a closet at the point of a gun.

And there was Peterkin, now a State's witness, to swear I'd shot him through the shoulder.

Olson couldn't do a thing except take me in, although he talked himself hoarse explaining he was forced into it.

He said: "You'll be up before the Grand Jury, Mickey, and I'll be called, too. I'll clear you there or break my neck trying. You did the work on this, even if you didn't do it legally."

I said: "I'm not fretting."

He asked why not and I gave him the angle I'd thought out.

I said: "Now look! You got the fake gas tickets, didn't you? But me, I got all the blackmail stuff that Smiley was holding over a bunch of the most prominent men in town. You couldn't get a Grand Jury that didn't have one or more of those guys on it, and if you think they'll return a true bill against me, after what I did for them, you're wrong. I'll go out of there as free as the air."

"There's that, all right," Olson said thoughtfully.

"And I gave them back their blackmail stuff and didn't charge any one of them a cent for recovering it. You know that, too."

"Well, yes. But it's been my experience, Mickey, that people forget favors done them, mighty quick. Maybe you shouldn't depend on that too much."

I grinned and said: "There's none of them will forget that favor, Ole. Because I read every word of the stuff before I handed it over and even made notes about it. And I told them so. I figured then that a bunch of prominent people might be a good thing to have on my side, and I was right."

He said I was no better than Smiley and that I had both larceny and blackmail in my heart.

PENDER gave a party for me but it was private. Just the two of us in his game room, and the refreshments were rye and soda, though from the way Pender talked and acted I could have had anything in the world. He'd bailed me out while I'd waited for a special meeting of the Grand Jury to be called, and I'd been lucky enough to have had him on it.

They did everything but give me a medal instead of an indictment, although Pender claimed it would have gone that way whether he was on the jury or not. He argued that Smiley had such a smelly name in the town that anybody getting rid of him could write his own ticket.

I said: "What with Peterkin knowing all about what went on, and turning State's evidence, it worked out very well. But who'd have thought Smiley had the nerve to do his own killing?''

Pender said: "He was forced. That printer got smart and caught him running oil a batch of coupons on his own press. So Smiley had to get him out of the way. And he had to get Ida Durstin out of the way for the same reason. She saw him stand up in his car, outside the shop, and do the shooting. And Smiley knew damned well she'd told Pike, the chauffeur, about it and so he had to get him, too. He was afraid of you, so he had Richetti try to do you in, but that didn't work out so well."

I thought of that shooting in the warehouse and how Richetti had blasted at me nineteen times with the rifle, and said that Richetti had almost scared me to death even if he hadn't managed to hit me. Even thinking of it gave me the shivers, and so I took another drink to counteract the chills.

Pender said: "He was just too smart. If he hadn't tried to implicate me you'd never have been in the thing at all. Olson would have run around and found out nothing at all and Smiley would have got away with it."

I defended Olson with: "Ole had nothing to go on. He suspected Smiley of being mixed up in that gas-coupon thing, but that was all. He knew like everybody else what Smiley was doing with his paper, but he couldn't do anything about that, either. If Smiley hadn't spent too much money, I doubt if Ole would have even suspicioned him of that gas business."

Pender said that all was well that ended well and I was inclined to agree with him. He was a cinch to make the State Legislature, something he'd set his heart on doing. He was out of a bad jam and he hadn't been hurt in it, to any extent. At least twenty-five good men and true were sleeping easier at night, with the evidence of their little mistakes in their own hands and so harmless. I felt badly about Mrs. Durstin getting in the way, but she'd asked for something like that when she'd started playing around with people like the chauffeur and Smiley. Smiley and a pair of assorted thugs were out of the way for good and all, and that was a fine thing for everyone concerned. They were together in a rotten black- market racket and they had it coming to them.

And I thought I was well ahead of the game. I not alone collected a nice fat fee from Pender, but I had at least twenty-five new and influential friends. And I knew they'd continue friendly, too.

Everyone of them knew I knew too much about them— it was be friends with me or else. I wouldn't have blackmailed any one of them for any reason, but they didn't know that and I didn't intend for them to know it.

I was going to try to play it cagey for once.

_________________

13: The Force of Circumstances

Louis Tracy

1863-1928

Liverpool Herald (NSW), 16 Jan 1904

IT WAS not until Jerningham waa in the train, homeward-bound, and rushing cross the smiling plains of Savoy, that reaction came.

He quitted Rome in astonishing health and spinits. Fresh despatches were indited, though the Anarchist kept his word, and the original documents travelled in the same train as the King's Messenger, a fact that provoked explanations to an astounded Under-secretary.

But a vivid recollection, detailed and ordered now that the danger had passed, could not fail to assert its influence, and Herbert had never been so ill since he contracted Nile fever as during that hot and weary journey across Switzerland and france, as his route lay through the Mont Cenis Tunnel.

He was so ill at Calais that he dreaded lest the passage should be rough. But the sea was kind to him. The surface of the Straits mirrored a blue sky, and the sea-breeze gave him fresh vitality as soon as the Calais-Douvres swung clear of the long pier.

It is a good sign in a man when he produces his cigar-case. By the time Dover Castle emerged triumphantly out of a sunnier haze the King's Messenger was puffing away contentedly. The strain had ended. Thenceforth the memories of that quiet room in the Via Napoli would crumble into forgetfulness, just as the hateful place itself would disappear under the Government edict that ordered its demolition.

He had chosen the quietest corner of the deck forward of the bridge, and shared its recess with a couple who did not seem to court observation. The man was a distinguished-looking foreigner of military appearance, possibly a Roumanian, though his clothes in no way differed from the attire worn nowadays by most Europeans of social prominence. The lady with him was an unmistakable Parisienne, fragile, beautifully dreEsed, with a face and hair of the latest tints.

She was veiled and wrapped in furs, shrouded from the outer air like a rare orchid; and Jerningham classed her as one of the half-dozen women whom Paris delights to honour for a year as 'stars' though their lustre only illuminates the fringe of society.

He would not have given either of them a second thought were it not for an incident that happened some twenty minutes before the steamer entered Dover Harbour,

A lanky youth, carrying a small camera, came and sat disconsolately on a bench close at hand. A stout man, unsteady on hm feet, was discoursing volubly to a friend on the necessity of Britain's naval predominance, when the vessel's wheel was suddenly put hard aport, to clear a email fishing-vessel. The quick swerve gave her an unexpected ron, and the fat man sat down violently on the deck.

Instantly the youth snap-shotted him. But an officer ran down from the bridge, seized the camera, and threw it over-board, saying sternly :

'I warned you before that taking photographs of passengers was forbidden. You know that one gentleman complained of you. Now you must put up with the consequences.'

The boy looked like to cry. His sallow face flushed, and he protested shrilly :

'I meant no harm.'

'Perhaps not. Neither will it do you any harm to learn to obey orders.'

The sailor strode away, and the wouldbe photographer gazed ruefully at the sea, which had swallowed his beloved Kodak.

Jerningham thought the action a very high-handed one. He approached the sufferer.

'It was too bad to treat you in that way,' he said kindly.

The youth, striving vainly to affect indifference, summoned a sickly smile to his aid.

'I forget,' he answered. 'Who wouldn't forget when that fat chap flopped on the deck?'

'But to lose jour camera in that way—'

'Oh, I don't blame the officer. He did tell me about it soon after leaving Calais. It is all the faule of those two. They reported me to the captain.'

He pointed towards the pair who occupied the recess vacated by Jerningham.

'They reported you!' said Herbert in surprise.

'Yes. The lady ie pretty enough not to object, I'm fcure. It ÍB beastly rough on me. I'm an apprentice in a motor-car works, and I shan't be able to buy another camera this Bummer. My people only allow me ten francs a week. And this is my holiday. Jolly fine start, ain't it P'

Jexningham was sorry for the boy, and he resolved to do a generous act.

'I think I can find a spare camera in my room,' he said. ' Give me your address, and I will send it to you.'

'Well, you are a brick!' exclaimed the other, with an eager joy that more than repaid Jerningham for his kind design.

An addtesB waa forthcoming, and the boy, in hin thankfulness, confided that he had already taken three spools of negatives before the confiscation.

'I'll develop them,' he said enthusiastically, 'and send you prints of the lot. I've got you among 'em in two positions.'

'I MEANT you to have a quiet time for a couple of weeks, Jerniugnam,' said his chief, 'but there is a special trip to Montenegro, and I have been asked to send you. You stand high in favour at the Foreign Office, and if things go on, like this, I fear you will soon be taken from my staff. Are you able to start to-night P'

This only meant that a telegram to Cowes preceded his departure from Charing Cross, to take once more the protracted flight over the map of Europe which waa now becoming so familiar to him.

Ten minutes after he boarded the Panther, she steamed past the picturesque tower that adorns the entrance to the tiny port, and Lieutenant-Commander Short was explaining to him some of the worry that lay ahead.

'We are bound for Cattaro, across the Adriatic,' he said, 'I suppose you are carrying despaches to the British representative at Montenegro?'

Jerningham nodded.

'I expected aa much,' growled the sailor. 'The result is that for the next three weeks we will be prowling about the coast of that wretched little hole, and examining every ship that flies the British flag, whilst incurring every sort of risk of making a mistake, and causing trouble with France or Germany.'

'What on earth is the matter?' cried Herbert.

'Gun-running, my boy. Importing rifles and ammunition to arm the innocent Christians of Macedonia against the blood-thirsty Turk. A worse set of pirates than the innocent Christians themselves never existed, and it seems that a well-known Birmingham company has supplied them with a ship-load of stuff during the last two months. The second is now en route, and it is believed the cargo will be discharged near Cattaro. Once ashore, it will be easily smuggled through Montenegro. The Germans are at the same game, and a French ship passed us, homeward-bound, in ballast, two days ago. Of course, Britain must be extra virtuous,and if this second consignment gets past us, I, at any rate, shall hear about it. Confound every orthodox brigand in Macedonia, I say!'

'Are the shippers known?'

'Rather! The Britannia Gun Company of Birmingham.'

'And the vessel?'

'The Sais, of Glasgow— a slow old tub. She sailed from Goole four days ago. The odd thing is that she cleared direct for Gattaro. I suppose they thought there was no use making a false declaration, and hoped to carry the affair through on a bluff. But the Turkish Ambassador protested, and Montenegro says: "We can do nothing"; so here I am, having come hot-foot from Malta to meet you.'

'I am sorry to be the object of your wrath. I, too—'

'My dear fellow, I am only growling at luck. Have another split?'

'But if the Sais is so slow,' remarked Jerningham, 'she will not be here for another week.'

'Not if she tries her leaky boilers to the uttermost. Then again, the arms may be landed somewhere on the coast and she may be beating about a week or more making the necessary arrangements.'

'If you fall in with her, what happens?'

'I can only stop her from landing the stuff at the request of the authorities. She can cruise the Adriatic for a year under my nose, and I am powerless, so  long as her captain lies to me about his consignee.'

The outlook was not very cheerful, but Jerningham had, perforce, to make the best of it.

At Gattaro he met a busy Consul. In view of trouble throughout the Balkans, Montenegro was arming on her own account, and the Consul assured Herbert that it was a difficult— almost impossible— task to distinguish between one class of importations and another.

'Moreover,' he said, 'I have done my duty in warning the home Government as to what was taking place. They send you to help me, so you must take charge of the whole business. I will help you to the extent of my powers; but you can see for yourself that for me to devote all my time to examining suspicious steamers is out of the question?

Jerningham had not bargained for such a devolution of responsibility, but he accepted it without demur. The instructions given to the Consul concerning him were specific enough. They showed faith in his ingenuity and tact, and he resolved to do his best.

News came, too, from Gibraltar, that the Sais had coaled there, and was delayed by a faulty crank. She might not reach Cattaro for a fortnight or three weeks.

Commander Short's temper at this announcement became temporarily unbearable, and it was a great relief to all parties when a magnificent steam yacht, the Bluebell, flying the British flag, but no club burgee, steamed into the bay about eight days after Herbert's arrival. It was quickly ascertained that her owner, a well-known sporting nobleman, was on board, and had brought with him a small party of guests, their objective being a shooting expedition among the Albanian mountains.

Lord Ensmore paid a formal visit to the Panther,  and be was instantly invited to 'bring the crowd' to dinner.

Three men came— his lordship, another youthful aristocrat, and the Marquis of Clovelly, Lady Cecilia's father!

To say that Jerningham was amazed at this strange meeting is to feebly express his sentiments. He had never felt so greatly nonplussed as when the marquis, a handsome man and very energetic, greeted him pleasantly.

'I have heard about you from my son,' he said. 'You must be a devil of a fellow, according to all accounts. Why, even Cecilia says that your adventures are talked of in the Court. What on earth are you doing here?'

Jeningham was nervous enough, in all conscience, but he managed to say that the disturbed conditions of affairs in the nearer Turkish Provinces accounted for his presence at Cattaro.

'Where did you sail from?' asked Commander Short, addressing Lord Ensmore.

'From Marseilles. We left there on the fifth,' or ten days earlier.

Jerningham fancied that the Marquis of Clovelly shot an angry glance at his noble host.

'The fifth?' cried the sailor. 'You must have taken it easy. From the way the  Bluebell came round the Point this morning, I should have thought she was good for eighteen knots.'

'Twenty!' cried Ensmore enthusiastically. 'Her engines are a new experiment by Baird's, Plenty of power no vibration, small consumption. I assure you—'

'Let us go on deck, interrupted the maiquis, and Herbert was now quite certain that his prospective but unknowing father-in-law regarded Ensmore as a talkative ass. Why?

The answer soon came.

Late that evening, when he called on the Council, before retiring to his hotel, the latter said:

'I hear that the Marquis of Clovelly is on board the big yacht which arrived to-day.'

'Yes, I dined in his company.'

'Well, of course, you know who he is?'

'Not particularly. Why should he interest me— from your point of view, that is?'

'My good sir, he is chairman of the Britannia Gun Company. He has evidently come here to look after the interest of his firm, and see that they are paid in hard cash before the goods are handed over.'

An imbroglio with a veageance! Lady Cecilia's father interested in gun-running, and he, Jerningham, deputed to frustrate his designs by every means in his power. What a misfortune! Success or failure in his mission was now fraught with disaster.

He either became discredited in the eyes of the Foreign Office, or earned the lasting hatred of a nan whom he hoped to be able soon to ask for his daughter's hand.

He was quite overwhelmed by the catastrophe. After vainly endeavouring to sleep, he rose and dressed, intending to stroll about in the cool air until daybreak.

He found some considerable commotion in the hotel court-yard, and the cause was soon explained. A high Montenegrin official was about to depart for Cettinge by a special post carriage at 2 a.m.

He waited to see the great man's departure, and even in his despairing perplexity he found room for some surprise in the fact that the distinguished traveller in question was none other than the military-looking gentleman who crossed the Channel in his Company.

With him was a lady, but, alas a far different individual to the dainty Parisienne.

'Who are they?' asked Herbert, when they had driven off.

'The Princess Maria, of Montenegro,' answered the interpreter in German.

'But who is the man?'

'Oh, he is the husband, the Comptroller of Military Stores. All the high officials have to marry the royal ladies, as the reigning house is poor, and the government salaries must be kept for their benefit.'

Even the distraught King's Messenger was forced to smile as he remembered a certain photograph in the pocket of a Norfolk jacket among his belongings. What would Princess Maria say to the Comptroller of Military Stores if she saw it?

He wandered about the quays during the night, but at five o'clock ue felt tired. He fell fast asleep, He was awakened by Commander Short, whose amazement was undisguised at finding him already dressed.

'What's the matter? Not ill, I hope!' cried the sailor.

'No, not ill; only worried.'

'So am I! Here's a nice kettle of fish. It seems that the Marquis of Clovelly is our true bird. Every ounce of ammunition, every rifle and bayonet, is on board the Bluebell.'

Jerningham was wide awake now. Here was another complication.

'How do you know?' he cried.

'Some of my men and some of the Bluebell's crew got drunk together last night; but the yachtsmen were able to carry less liquor, and one of our chaps wormed out of a confiding fireman that the Sais transhipped the lot to the Bluebell off ihe coast of Morocco; and the stuff might easily have been landed under our very noses when the Bluebell warped up to the quay for coal.'

'What are we going to do?'

'Do! Why, warn the noble gun-runners that the game is up. They must find a market elsewhere. Let 'em go to Constantinople and bribe some Turk to buy the consignment. Anyhow, I will see that not a case goes ashore here. You had better come with me and interview the enterprising marquis,' he added.

'Oh, hang it all!' groaned Jerningham. 'I want to marry his daughter!'

He bowed his head between his hands:

The sailor whistled.

'By Jove!' he said. 'What a mix up!'

But duty takes no heed of love affairs. They must act, and at once.

Eight man-o'-war's men pulled them off to the Bluebell and Lord Ensmore received them, expressing his pleasure at their early call.

He was not so pleased when Commander Short explained his business at the interview which followed in the chart-house.

The Marquis of Clovelly, too, became very sallow as Jerningham read his instructions from the Foreign Office. Evasion was useless. The chairman of the Brittian Gun Company took the whole onus on himself.

'Lord Ensmore regarded the latter as a mere bit of fun,' he began; but the owner of the Bluebell interrupted:

'I stood in five thousand,' he said.

'Oh, do shut up!' shouted the marquis, 'It is bad enough to incur such a tremendous loss as this speculation must prove without blurting out our business to the world.'

'I am sorry,' said Commander Short laconically, 'but orders are orders, and must be obeyed. Do not attempt to trifle with me. If the Bluebell can do twenty knots, Lord Ensmore, the Panther can do twenty-two.'

'It is too bad,' growled the older man. 'The fact is, Commander Short, that I have no case. All I can do is to ask Lord Ensmore to take our cargo back to Gibraltar, where the Sais is still laid up. The venture is entirely my own, and the risk lies with me. I admit I am beaten.'

Jerningham, who had his own reasons for anxiety, silently bent over the letter of instructions from the Foreign Office.

'Does any one here know how long it take to reach Cettinge?' he asked.

'About five hours in a diligence,' answered Captain Short.

'Perhaps I may be able to arrange the difficulty,' answered Herbert quietly. 'I cannot promise anything, but there is a chance— a remote chance— that I may induce the Government of Montenegro to do a deal with you, not at revolutionary prices, it is true, but in a way that would save any actual loss.'

'By Jove! if you could, I would believe all that Billy has written about you,' cried the marquis.

The stipulated promise was given and accepted.

THAT EVENING Jerningham was in Cettinge. He presented himself at the villa of the Comptroller of Military Stores.

'I have but recently returned from Berlin and Paris,' his Excellency conescended to explain, 'and I made contracts in those cities.'

'You also visited London,' said Herbert.

'No,' he said. 'There was nothing to be gained by doing so.'

'Your Excellency forgets,' he murmured.  'You crossed the Channel in the Calais-Douvres on the 4th inst. You were photographed.'

His Excellency took the absurd little photograph, and examined it closely. At that instant the Princess Maria entered.

'Alexis!' she cried.

'Coming, darling. By the way, monsieur, I shall be pleased to have your company during the drive to Cattaro to-morrow morning.'

He followed his wife, only stopping to light a cigarette with the tiny roll of paper.

The youthful recipient of the Kodak was much surprised to receive a telegram from far-off Montenegro asking him to forward his set of films used on the Calais Douvres.

But he obeyed, and ten days later Jerningham saw bonds for a large amount handed to the Marquis of Clovelly in payment for military stores.

WHAT Lady Cecilia thought, and what she wrote, were different, yet alike.

'Isn't he a darling?' she thought. 'Even my father thinks the world of him.' But she wrote, on a telegraph form:

'What is this magic I hear of? Come and see me on Thursday at four.'

_____________

14: Louis Tracy Obituary

Anonymous

Queenslander (Brisbane) 23 Aug 1928

THE death is announced of Mr. Louis Tracy, the well-known journalist and author. Mr. Louis Tracy, C.B.E., who was born at Liverpool in 1863, entered on his journalistic career, on the Northern Echo, Darlington, in 1884. Then he Went to Cardiff two years later, and to Allahabad (India) in 1889. Returning to England in 1893 he acquired with others an interest in the London Evening News.

In 1895 he went to the United States, and in 1900 revisited the United States and the Punjab. In 1916 he made a trip to the United States, where he lectured and wrote extensively on the war. While on the editorial staff of the Times and Daily Mail he became a member of the Westminster Abbey Restoration Fund, and collected many thousands of pounds in the United States during 1921.

He wrote many novels, his first being The Final War, in 1896. His last book was The Woman In the Case, in 1927.

______________

Index to Past Masters Nos 61-90

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

—The Incubus  90

—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

—Outwitted: A Lawyer's Story 90

—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

James L. Aton

—The Box of the Ivory Dragon 90

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

J. F. B.

—Throne of Chaos

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 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

—Death Rolls Its Own 90

—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

—Zapt's Repulsive Paste 90

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 Eleven  72

Arthur Morrison

—Myxomycetes 90

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 79

Douglas Newton

—Girls Don't Count 80

—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 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

Fred C. Smale

—Caught Out 90

—The “V” Force  90

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

—The Bookie Bets on Murder 90

—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

—Printer's Ink Runs Red 90

—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

—The Force of Circumstances 90

—(Obituary)  90

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    69

—The Little Walking Corpses 86

—Satan's Scalpel 878

E. F. Ziska

—Man of Ages 78

______________

Table of Contents

1: The Bookie Bets on Murder / Roger Torrey

2: The Box of the Ivory Dragon / James L. Aton

3: The Incubus / Achmed Abdullah

4: The “V” Force / Fred C. Smale

Unnamed

6: Zapt's Repulsive Paste / J. U. Giesy

7: Throne of Chaos / J. F. B.

8: Girls Don't Count / Douglas Newton

9: Myxomycetes / Arthur Morrison

10: Outwitted: A Lawyer's Story / Anonymous

11: Death Rolls Its Own / Laurence Donovan

12: Printer's Ink Runs Red / Roger Torrey

13: The Force of Circumstances / Louis Tracy

14: Louis Tracy Obituary / Anonymous

Cumulative Index #61-90