PAST MASTERS

NINETY-TWO

Contents

1: The Doom of London / Robert Barr

2: The Wicked Flea / J. U. Giesy

3: Blind Man's Buff / J. U. Giesy

4: Not Quite Dead / Laurence Donovan

5: The Judge's Secret / Arthur Gask

6: Murder Tees Off / Laurence Donovan

7: The Oubliette Cryptogram / Julian Hawthorne

8: Bigler's Barometer / Sam Davis

9: At the Mickleham Arms / Helen Simpson

10: The Levitation of Jacob / Clifford Howard

11: The Adventure of the Whisting Omelette /

C. Ranger Gull and Reginald Bacchus

12: The Ghost and the Jewels / Lurana W. Sheldon

13: The Scientific Circle / C. C. Newkirk

14: Hole-in-the-Wall Barrett / Max Brand

15: The Love of a Loafer / Don Marquis

16: Leopards / Don Marquis

17: The Dragon of St. Paul's / C. Ranger Gull and Reginald Bacchus

18: The White Lady of the Snow / Richard Dowling

Cumulative Index #61-92

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1: The Doom of London

Robert Barr

1850-1912

The Idler Nov 1892

It's not hard to see this Victorian short story as foreshadowing the deadly London smog exactly sixty years later.

1: The Self-Conceit of the Twentieth Century.

I TRUST I am thankful my life has been spared until I have seen that most brilliant epoch of the world's history— the middle of the twentieth century. It would be useless for any man to disparage the vast achievements of the past fifty years; and if I venture to call attention to the fact, now apparently forgotten, that the people of the nineteenth century succeeded in accomplishing many notable things, it must not be imagined that I intend thereby to discount in any measure the marvellous inventions of the present age. Men have always been somewhat prone to look with a certain condescension upon those who lived fifty- or a hundred years before them. This seems to me the especial weakness of the present age; a feeling of national self-conceit, which, when it exists, should at least be kept as much in the background as possible. It will astonish many to know that such also was a failing of the people of the nineteenth century. They imagined themselves living in an age of progress; and while I am not foolish enough to attempt to prove that they did anything really worth recording, yet it must be admitted by any unprejudiced man of research that their inventions were at least stepping-stones to those of today. Although the telephone and telegraph, and all other electrical appliances, are now to be found only in our national museums, or in the private collections of those few men who take any interest in the doings of the last century, nevertheless, the study of the now obsolete science of electricity led up to the recent discovery of vibratory ether which does the work of the world so satisfactorily. The people of the nineteenth century were not fools; and although I am well aware that this statement will be received with scorn where it attracts any attention whatever, yet who can say that the progress of the next half-century may not be as great as that of the one now ended, and that the people of the next century may not look upon us with the same contempt which we feel toward those who lived fifty years ago?

Being an old man, I am, perhaps, a laggard who dwells in the past rather than the present; still it seems to me that such an article as that which appeared recently in Blackwood from the talented pen of Professor Mowberry, of Oxford University, is utterly unjustifiable. Under the title or "Did the People of London deserve their Fate?" he endeavors to show that the simultaneous blotting out of millions of human beings was a beneficial event, the good results of which we still enjoy. According to him, Londoners were so dull-witted and stupid, so incapable of improvement, so sodden in the vice of mere money-gathering, that nothing but their total extinction would have sufficed, and that, instead of being an appalling catastrophe, the doom of London was an unmixed blessing. In spite of the unanimous approval with which this article has been received by the press, I still maintain that such writing is uncalled for, and that there is something to be said for the London of the nineteenth century.

2: Why London, Warned, Was Unprepared

THE INDIGNATION I felt in first reading the article alluded to still remains with me, and it has caused me to write these words, giving some account of what I must still regard, in spite of the sneers of the present age, as the most terrible disaster that ever overtook a portion of the human race. I shall not endeavor to place before those who read, any record of the achievements pertaining to the time in question. But I would like to say a few words about the alleged stupidity of the people of London in making no preparations for a disaster regarding which they had continual and ever-recurring warning. They have been compared with the inhabitants of Pompeii making merry at the foot of a volcano. In the first place, fogs were so common in London, especially in winter, that no particular attention was paid to them. They were merely looked upon as inconvenient annoyances, interrupting traffic and prejudicial to health; but I doubt if anyone thought possible for a fog to become one vast smothering mattress pressed down upon a whole metropolis, extinguishing life as if the city suffered from hopeless hydrophobia. I have read that victims bitten by mad dogs were formerly put out of their sufferings in that way, although I doubt much if such things were ever actually done, notwithstanding the charges of savage barbarity now made against the people of the nineteenth century.

Probably the inhabitants of Pompeii were so accustomed to the eruptions of Vesuvius that they gave no thought to the possibility of their city being destroyed by a storm of ashes and an overflow of lava. Rain frequently descended upon London, and if a rainfall continued long enough it would certainly have flooded the metropolis, but no precautions were taken against a flood from the clouds. Why, then should the people have been expected to prepare for a catastrophe from fog, such as there had never been any experience of in the world's history? The people of London were far from being the sluggish dolts present-day writers would have us believe.

2:  The Coincidence That Came at Last

AS FOG HAS now been abolished both on sea and land, and as few of the present generation have even seen one, it may not be out of place to give a few lines on the subject of fogs in general, and the London fogs in particular, which through local peculiarities differed from all others.. A fog was simply watery vapor rising from the sea, for people then travelled by means of steamships that sailed upon the surface of the ocean.

London at the end of the nineteenth century consumed vast quantities of a soft bituminous coal for the purpose of heating rooms and of preparing food. In the morning and during the day, clouds of black smoke were poured forth from thousands of chimneys. When a mass of white vapor arose in the night, these clouds of smoke fell upon the fog, pressing it down, filtering slowly through it, and adding to its density. The sun would have absorbed the fog but for the layer of smoke that lay thick above the vapor and prevented its rays reaching it. Once this condition of things prevailed, nothing could clear London but a breeze of wind from any direction. London frequently had a seven days' fog, and sometimes a seven days calm, but these two conditions never coincided until the last year of the last century. The coincidence, as every one knows, meant death— death so wholesale that no war the earth has ever seen left such slaughter behind it. To understand the situation, one has only to imagine the fog as taking the place of the ashes at Pompeii, and the coal-smoke as being the lava that covered it. The result to the inhabitants in both cases was exactly the same.

4: The American Who Wanted to Sell.

I WAS at the time confidential clerk to the house of Fulton, Brixton & Co., a firm in Cannon Street, dealing largely in chemicals and chemical apparatus. Fulton I never knew; he died long before my time. Sir John Brixton was my chief— knighted, I believe, for services to his party, or because he was an official in the city during some royal progress through it; I have forgotten which. My small room was next to his large one, and my chief duty was to see that no one had an interview with Sir John unless he was an important man or had important business. Sir John was a difficult man to see, and a difficult man to deal with when he was seen. He had little respect for most men's feelings, and none at all for mine. If I allowed a man to enter his room who should have been dealt with by one of the minor members of the company, Sir John made no effort to conceal his opinion of me. One day, in the autumn of the last year of the century, an American was shown into my room. Nothing would do but he must have an interview with Sir John Brixton. I told him that it was impossible, as Sir John was extremely busy, but that if he explained his business to me I would lay it before Sir John at the first favorable opportunity. The American demurred at this, but finally accepted the inevitable. He was the inventor, he said, of a machine that would revolutionize life in London, and he wanted Fulton, Brixton & Co. to become agents for it. The machine, which he had in a small handbag with him, was of white metal, and it was so constructed that by turning an index it gave out greater or less volumes of oxygen gas. The gas, I understood, was stored in the interior in liquid form, under great pressure, and would last, if I remember rightly, for six months without recharging. There was also a rubber tube with a mouthpiece attached to it, and the American said that if a man took a few whiffs a day he would experience beneficial results. Now, I knew there was not the slightest use in showing the machine to Sir John, because we dealt in old-established British apparatus, and never in any of the new-fangled Yankee inventions. Besides, Sir John had a prejudice against Americans, and I felt sure this man would exasperate him, as he was a most cadaverous specimen of the race, with high nasal tones, and a most deplorable pronunciation, much given to phrases savoring of slang; and he exhibited also a certain nervous familiarity of demeanor toward people to whom he was all but a complete stranger. It was impossible for me to allow such a man to enter the presence of Sir John Brixton; and when he returned some days later I explained to him, I hope with courtesy, that the head of the house regretted very much his inability to consider his proposal regarding the machine. The ardor of the American seemed in no way dampened by this rebuff. He said I could not have explained the possibilities of the aparatus properly to Sir John; but for some reason not stated he preferred to deal with us. He left some printed pamphlets referring to the invention, and said he would call again.

5: The American Sees Sir John

MANY A TIME I have since thought of that persistent American, and wondered whether he left London before the disaster, or was one of the unidentified thousands who were buried in unmarked graves. Little did Sir John think, when he expelled him with some asperity from his presence, that he was turning away an offer of life, and that the heated words he used were, in reality, a sentence of death upon himself. For my own part, I regret that I lost my temper, and told the American his business methods did not commend themselves to me. Perhaps he did not feel the sting of this; indeed, I feel certain he did not, for, unknowingly, he saved my life. Be that as it may, he showed no resentment, but immediately asked me out to drink wine with him, an offer I was compelled to refuse. But I am getting ahead of my story, indeed, being unaccustomed to writing, it is difficult for me to set down events in their proper sequence. The American called upon me several times after I told him our house could not deal with him. He got into the habit of dropping in upon me unannounced, which I did not at all like; but I gave no instructions regarding his intrusions, because I had no idea of the extremes to which he was evidently prepared to go. One day, as he sat near my desk reading a paper, I was temporarily called from the room. When I returned I thought he had gone, taking his machine with him; but a moment later I was shocked to hear his high nasal tones in Sir John's room, alternating with^ the deep notes of my chief's' voice, which apparently exercised no such dread upon the American as upon those who were more accustomed to them. I at once entered the room, and was about to explain to Sir John that the American was there through no connivance of mine, when my chief asked me to be silent, and, turning to his visitor, requested him gruffly to proceed with his interesting narration. The inventor needed no second invitation, but went on with his glib talk, while Sir John's frown grew deeper, and his face became redder under his fringe of white hair. When the American had finished. Sir John roughly bade him begone, and take his accursed machine with him. He said it was an insult for a person with one foot in the grave to bring a so-called health invention to a robust man who never had a day's illness. I do not know why he listened so long to the American, when he had made up his mind from the first not to deal with him, unless it was to punish me for inadvertently allowing the stranger to enter. The interview distressed me exceedingly, as I stood there helpless, knowing Sir John was becoming more and more angry with every word the foreigner uttered; but, at last, I succeeded in drawing the inventor and his work into my own room and closing the door. I sincerely hoped I would never see the American again, and my wish was gratified. He insisted on setting his machine going and placing it on a shelf in my room. He asked me to slip it into Sir John's room some foggy day and note the effect. The man said he would call again, but he never did.

6: How The Smoke Held Down The Fog

IT WAS ON a Friday that the fog came down upon us. The weather was very fine up to the middle of November that autumn. The fog did not seem to have anything unusual about it. I have seen many worse fogs than that appeared to me. As day followed day, however, the atmosphere became denser and darker, caused I suppose, by the increasing volume of coal-smoke poured out upon it. The peculiarity about those seven days was the intense stillness of the air. We were, although we did not know it, under an air-proof canopy, and were slowly but surely exhausting the life-giving oxygen around us, and replacing it by poisonous carbonic acid gas. Scientific men have since shown that a simple mathematical calculation might have told us exactly when the last atom of oxygen would have been consumed; but it is easy to be wise after the event. The body of the greatest mathematician in England was found in the Strand. During a fog there was always a marked increase in the death rate, and on this occasion the increase was no greater than usual until the sixth day. The newspapers on the morning of the seventh day were full of startling statistics, but at the time of going to press the full significance of the alarming figures was not realized. The editorials of the morning papers on the seventh day contained no warning of the calamity that was so speedily to follow their appearance. I lived then at Ealing, a Western suburb of London, and came every morning up to Cannon Street by certain train. I had up to the sixth day experienced no inconvenience from the fog, and this was largely due, I am convinced, to the unnoticed operations of the American machine. On the fifth and sixth days Sir John did not come to the city, but he was in his office on the seventh. The door between his room and mine was closed. Shortly after ten o'clock I heard a cry in his room, followed by a heavy fall. I opened the door, and saw Sir John lying face downward on the floor. Hastening toward him, I felt for the first time the deadly effect of the deoxygenized atmosphere, and before I reached him I fell first on one knee and then headlong. I realized that my senses were leaving me, and instinctively crawled back to my own room, where the oppression was at once lifted, and I stood again upon my feet, gasping. I closed the door of Sir John's room, thinking it filled with poisonous fumes, as indeed it was. I called loudly for help, but there was no answer. On opening the door to the main office I met again what I thought was the noxious vapor. Speedily as I closed the door, I was impressed by the intense silence of the usually busy office, and saw that some of the clerks were motionless on the floor, and others sat with their heads on their desks as if asleep. Even at this awful moment I did not realize that what I saw was common to all London, and not, as I imagined, a local disaster, caused by the breaking of some carboys in our cellar. (It was filled with chemicals of every kind, of whose properties I was ignorant, dealing as I did with the accountant, and not the scientific, side of our business.) I opened the only window in my room, and again shouted for help. The street was silent and dark in the ominously still fog, and what now froze me with horror was meeting the same deadly, stifling atmosphere that was in the rooms. In falling, I brought down the window and shut out the poisonous air. Again I revived, and slowly the true state of things began to dawn upon me. I was in an oasis of oxygen. I at once surmised that the machine on my shelf was responsible for the existence of this oasis in a vast desert of deadly gas. I took down the American's machine, fearful in moving it that I might stop its working. Taking the mouthpiece between my lips I again entered Sir John's room, this time without feeling any ill effects. My poor master was long beyond human help. There was evidently no one alive in the building except myself. Out in the street all was silent and dark. The gas was extinguished; but here and there in shops the incandescent lights were still weirdly burning, depending as they did on accumulators, and not on direct engine power. I turned automatically toward Cannon Street station, knowing my way to it even if blindfolded, stumbling over bodies prone on the pavement, and in crossing the street I ran against a motionless "bus spectral in the fog, with dead horses lying in front, and their reins dangling from the nerveless hand of a dead driver. The ghostlike passengers, equally silent, sat bolt upright, or hung over the edge-boards in attitudes horribly grotesque.

8: The Train With its Trail of the Dead

IF A MAN'S reasoning faculties were alert at such a time (I confess mine were dormant), he would have known there could be no trains at Cannon Street station; for if there was not enough oxygen in the air to keep a man alive, or a gas-jet alight, there would certainly not be enough to enable an engine fire to bum, even if the engineer retained sufficient energy to attend to his task. At times instinct is better than reason, and it proved so in this case. The railway, in those days, from Ealing came under the City in a deep tunnel. It would appear that in this underground passage the carbonic acid gas would first find a resting-place, on account of its weight; but such was not the fact. I imagine that a current through the tunnel brought from the outlying districts a supply of comparatively pure air that, for some minutes after the general disaster, maintained human life. Be this as it may, the long platforms of Cannon Street underground station presented a fearful spectacle. A train stood at the down platform. The electric lights burned fitfully. This platform was crowded with men, who fought each other like demons, apparently for no reason, because the train was already packed as full as it could hold. Hundreds were dead under foot, and every now and then a blast of foul air came along the tunnel, whereupon hundreds more would relax their grips and succumb. Over their bodies the survivors fought, with continually thinning ranks. It seemed to me that most of those in the standing train were dead. Sometimes a desperate body of fighters climbed over those lying in heaps, and, throwing open a carriage door, hauled out passengers already in, and took their places, gasping. Those in the train offered no resistance, and lay motionless where they were flung, or rolled helplessly under the wheels of the train. I made my way along the wall as well as I could to the engine wondering why the train did not go. The engineer lay on the floor of his cab, and the fires were out.

Custom is a curious thing. The struggling mob, fighting wildly for places in the carriages, were so accustomed to trains arriving and departing that it apparently occurred to none of them that the engineer was human and subject to the same atmospheric conditions as themselves. I placed the mouthpiece between his purple lips, and, holding my own breath like a submerged man, succeeded in reviving him. He said that if I gave him the machine he would take out the train as far as the steam already in the boiler would carry it. I refused to do this, but stepped on the engine with him, saying it would keep life in both of us until we got into better air. In a surly manner he agreed to this and started the train, but he did not play fair. Each time he refused to give up the machine until I was in a fainting condition with holding in my breath, and finally he felled me to the floor of the cab. I imagine that the machine rolled off the train as I fell, and that he jumped after it. The remarkable thing is that neither of us needed the machine, for I remember that just after we started I noticed through the open iron door that the engine fire suddenly became aglow again, although at the time I was in too great a state of bewilderment and horror to understand what it meant. A western gale had sprung up— an hour too late. Even before we left Cannon Street those who still survived were comparatively safe, for one hundred and sixty-seven persons were rescued from that fearful heap of dead on the platforms, although many died within a day or two after, and others never recovered their reason. When I regained my senses after the blow dealt by the engineer, I found myself alone, and the train speeding across the Thames near Kew. I tried to stop the engine, but did not succeed. However, in experimenting, I managed to turn on the air brake, which in some degree checked the train, and lessened the impact when the crash came at Richmond terminus. I sprang off on the platform before the engine reached the terminal buffers, and saw passing me like a nightmare the ghastly trainload of the dead. Most of the doors were swinging open, and every compartment was jammed full, although, as I afterward learned, at each curve of the permanent way, or extra lurch of the train, bodies had fallen out all along the line. The smash at Richmond made no difference to the passengers. Besides myself, only two persons were taken alive from the train, and one of these, his clothes torn from his back in the struggle, was sent to an asylum, where he was never able to tell who he was; neither, as far as I know, did any one ever claim him.

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2: The Wicked Flea

J.U. Giesy

1877-1947

Weird Tales, Oct 1925

This text from Roy Glashan's Library online

The first of two more tales of Professor Zapt, his ingenious inventions, and their unexpected side effects on his family, the family cat, and the unfortunate Officer McGuinness

"WHAT," said Professor Xenophon Xerxes Zapt, the eminent investigator of the unknown in science, sometimes called "Unknown Quantity" Zapt, both from the line of his research, as well as the double X in his name; "is life?"

"Why— I don't know." Bob Sargent, fiancé of the professor's motherless daughter, Nellie, glanced from the record he was just removing from the phonograph in the living room of the Zapt home, to the little man, with graying mutton-chop whiskers, his body clad in the limp and comfortable if somewhat antiquated black alpaca coat he customarily wore about the house. "That is— I'm afraid I don't just appreciate the bearing of your question."

Xenophon Xerxes nodded. "I didn't expect you would." He continued to stare at the stalwart young attorney through the heavy lenses before his near-sighted eyes. "And you are not alone in your lack of comprehension, Robert. Nowadays the rising generation seems to consider life as something akin to that form of syncopated phonetic vibration commonly denominated—jazz."

"Well— possibly." Sargent slipped the record into the cabinet. "Does our music annoy you, professor?"

"That, Robert, is entirely aside from the point. Music is no more than sound, and— er— sound is a form of vibration, as you are presumably aware. And"— Xenophon Xerxes paused as though to give weight to the ensuing climax— "so is life, Robert— so is life."

"Oh, yes, of course," Bob hastened to agree. "I see what you mean now. And if both sound and life are vibrations, isn't that possibly the reason jazz has enjoyed such a vogue? Isn't it possible that there is a difference in the rate of vibration, and that this particular form of music quickens the ratio of the human—"

"Exactly!" Xenophon Zapt rubbed his hands together. There were times when he did not wholly approve of the young man his daughter had declared she intended to marry, but now— he beamed. "God bless my soul, Robert— you surprise me. Really I am amazed to find your mental perceptions so active. Can you perhaps see where the established truism leads?"

"Why— naturally— I suppose it means jazz will have a long life."

"Jazz is merely an illustration," Xenophon Xerxes frowned. "It has nothing to do with the case. Given a hypothetical cause it should be possible to predicate a theoretical effect."

"The trouble is that theory doesn't always work out in practise," said Bob.

"Admitting that— the failures are indubitably due to some fallibility in the original premise, Robert. And— such things lend zest to the investigation of nature's laws."

Sargent turned his eyes to Nellie seated on the living room couch, with a handsome Persian Angora cat in her lap. He sighed. Once the professor got started, the best thing was to let him talk himself out. "You are— considering some serious life problem, then?" he remarked.

"All life is serious, Robert." The professor compressed his thin lips. "And facetiousness is not an inherent characteristic of my nature. I am not prone to idly employ those variant vibratory fluctuations of the vocal organs, briefly designated speech."

"Certainly not, sir," Bob protested. "I meant that you had some application of the established relation between the correlated facts in mind."

"Goodness," said Nellie softly, with a twinkle in the blue eyes under her soft brown hair.

"Exactly." Xenophon Xerxes gave her a glance. "The word 'correlated' is well chosen, Robert. It is the correlation on which the whole matter hinges, in fact. Life being vibration, what, in your estimation, would be the effect of increasing the vibratory ratio, upon the phenomenon of cell multiplication we are in the habit of calling growth?"

"Why— er—" Bob lifted his gaze to the ceiling as though for inspiration; "possibly— if you increased your cell multiplication numerically as well as in rapidity, you might get a— a giant."

"Precisely." Professor Zapt nodded. "You not only might— you necessarily would. There are times, Robert, when I feel that were you to devote yourself to the endeavor you might develop a really excellent mind. But— no matter. Were one to apply this principle in the right direction he would almost certainly gain some interesting results. Take the ant or the flea, for example— what would be the result were either multiplied indefinitely in size?"

"Jazz," Sargent said out of an irrepressible sense of humor. "If you applied it to the flea, that is. They'd make everybody dance—"

"Bob!" Nellie cautioned, while her father put up a slender hand and stroked his whiskers as was his way when thinking deeply or annoyed.

Sargent subsided, and the professor, after a dignified interval, resumed: "I referred to an experimental application, rather than to one at large. Both insects are possessed of a remarkable proportionate strength. Were man endowed with an equivalent commensurate to his size, he could easily cover a league at a single leap."

"That would be as bad as the fairy story of the Seven League Boots, wouldn't it?" Nellie looked up smiling from tweaking one of the Angora's ears.

Xenophon Xerxes sniffed. Without deigning a reply he rose and passed from the room, disappearing up a stairway in the direction of the laboratory he maintained on the second floor of the house.

"And now he's mad again," Miss Zapt complained. "Bob, why can't you behave when he has something he wants to talk about?"

"Me?" Sargent protested with more vigor than grammatical correctness. "You were the one who mentioned fairy tales."

"But you made it worse. Anyway I don't care. Think of fleas as big as men—"

"I'd rather not. It sounds weird. I wonder how far it could jump."

"Oh— miles." Nellie smiled. "I s'pose I shouldn't have said that about the Seven League Boots, but— I could have done worse. You know that doggerel about fleas, don't you, Bob?"

"Can't say I do." Sargent shook his head. "But— almost any doggerel should harmonize with fleas."

Miss Zapt giggled.

"Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em. An' little fleas have littler fleas, and so ad infinitum," she recited.

Bob nodded. "Just so: ad infinitum. Only this thing of your father's is the reverse. It's crescendo, rather than diminuendo. And that brings us back to music. Let's have a little more jazz."

ii

"BOB," said Miss Zapt the next evening, "do you know what I saw Father doing this afternoon?"

"Rather not." Sargent grinned. "What was Father up to?"

"He was coaxing neighbor Brown's dog into our yard with a piece of meat, and then when the brute came over he took him into the garage."

"To hunt fleas!" Sargent sat down and eyed the little beauty before him. "Good Lord!"

"Bob!" Nellie's blue eyes widened swiftly.

"Sure!" Bob began to chuckle. "When your paternal ancestor get's an idea in his headpiece, Sweetness, the only way to get it out is to let it exhaust itself."

"But— you— you don't think he really means to try to— to—"

"Raise fleas? Ad infinitum," Bob harked back to her quotation of the previous evening. "Translated, ad infinitum means 'no end', as our English cousins put it. Sure! I think he means to do just that."

"But— if he brings them into the house!" All at once Xenophon Xerxes' lone heir appeared a trifle aghast.

"Oh— he'll keep 'em shut up somehow," Bob soothed.

"But— if they should get out! If they should get on Fluffy!"

There had been times past when the eminent investigator had not hesitated to make use of her cat during the enthusiasm incident upon some experiment, without Nellie's prior knowledge. And although thus far her pet had escaped any serious consequences, Miss Zapt never knew what might happen next. Because of that she knit her brows as she went on: "It would be just like him to expect me to let him use her as a— a sort of incubator for this monstrosity he thinks he's going to raise."

Bob shook his head. "Not very long if he succeeds. He'll have to keep the thing on a chain—"

"Bob!"

"Well—you never can tell about an ad infinitum flea. It's apt to hop off six or seven miles at a jump. He'll probably cage it and feed it on raw beef."

"Bob!"

"Or blood. He'll have to. If he gets anything like what he's after, rather than feeding off Fluffy in the ordinary sense it's more apt to chase her around the house."

"Bob— you're simply teasing, and I think you're— horrid." Miss Zapt wrinkled the end of her nose.

"As a matter of fact I don't know whether I am or not," said Bob. "I know it sounds ridiculous, but—"

"But imagine a weeny-teeny thing like a flea grown that big!"

"I'm trying to. It's an appalling thought. I can't imagine how he expects to bring the thing about." Sargent sighed.

"Neither can I. But he spent the whole morning in the laboratory."

"And in the afternoon he made gustatory advances to friend Brown's dog." Sargent chuckled again. "He was ready to start the job. Honey— that father of yours knows a lot about natural laws."

"But— this isn't natural!" Nellie protested. "How do you suppose a flea that size would look?"

"Not having considered the matter before, I'm hardly qualified to state— except that it would look like a flea in a telescope, I guess." Bob glanced toward a bookcase in the corner. "There's the encyclopedia—we might find a picture of the brute."

Nellie rose, and returned from the case with a good-sized volume. She began turning leaves. "Fl-Fle-a. Here it is."

Bob bent to inspect the paragraph on which her finger was resting. "Flea— (entom.) An insect of the genus Pulex, remarkable for its agility and troublesome bite. The common flea is Pulex irritans," he read, and paused to stare at a small illustration of the object in question. "Pulex irritans. Irritans is Latin for 'irritating' or 'annoying.' Pulex is his family name. Seems appropriate all right. The irritating or annoying Pulex."

"The whole thing is annoying." Miss Zapt closed the book with considerable force. "Why under the sun do you suppose father wants to waste his time enlarging or magnifying— or whatever he intends doing— a thing like that?"

"At first glance there does seem a reason for some such question," Sargent smiled. "But— I presume it's the principle involved."

"But— what's the use?" Nellie's tone showed exasperation.

"Why— I don't know. Don't they train 'em? Seems to me I've heard of trained fleas. Now if he could raise about a dozen Pulexes the size of a mouse or a— rat—"

"Bob! Talk sense. A flea that large would be— dangerous. Didn't you read what it said about their bite?"

"Yes. Troublesome, my child. But— he might use 'em in a moral crusade. A dozen turned loose on the beaches would discourage one-piece bathing suits. Mermaids would need a suit of armor and a club. And if he'd stencil 'em with anti-vice badges—"

"Oh, well, go on and be funny if you want to! I think it's simply crazy," Nellie declared with an irritated laugh.

iii

IT was some ten days before Bob saw Miss Zapt again. A legal matter called him out of town the next morning, so suddenly that he said good-bye by telephone. Consequently, the next time they were together it was some time before their conversation turned on any topic save themselves. Then Nellie changed it rather abruptly:

"Well, you were right. Father is having me buy beef."

"Seems to agree with you," Sargent said, without taking his eyes from her face or his arm from about her waist.

"I'm not eating it, silly,"' she rejoined. "What's the use of being stupid? You know I mean you were right in saying he'd feed it to— those fleas."

"Oh! And how is the irritating Pulex— or Pulexes?" Bob grinned.

"I don't know. I haven't seen them, and I don't want to see them. But he's got them in the laboratory, and every morning I have to order meat. First it was one pound, then two, and yesterday four—"

"Four!" Bob erupted. "Four pounds of meat to feed fleas? Holy Smoke!"

Nellie sighed. "He takes it up there and that's all except that he's been quite excited the past few days, and spends all his time in the laboratory except when I call him to his meals. I don't believe he's slept much the last two nights."

"Hm-m-m!" Bob seemed suddenly lost in silent consideration of Nellie's statement.

"What's the matter, darling?" she asked all at once.

"Eh? I was thinking." Sargent flung up his head.

"And I wasn't speaking to you," Miss Zapt returned tartly. "What is it, Fluffy? What's the matter?"

Bob became aware of the Angora. She had slid into the room and was standing in the center of the floor with a bushily expanded tail held very nearly erect. Her entire bearing was one of hesitation and doubt. She seemed vaguely disturbed.

For a moment after her mistress had spoken she made no move, and then, without warning, she sat down on her haunches and turned her head in an almost quizzical way in Nellie's direction.

"Meow!" She emitted a whimper between anathema and perturbed complaint, and began to quiver, finally lifting a hind leg toward her back in tentative fashion and discovering it would not reach. Yet instead of being returned to the floor that leg remained extended and commenced to twitch.

"Bob! She's going to have a fit!"

"Wait." Sargent laid a hand on Nellie's arm, while he regarded the cat out of speculative eyes. "Give her time to reach a conclusion."

"Time?" Miss Zapt's tone resented the suggestion. She advanced upon her pet.

And Fluffy drew back. In a series of amazingly rapid lurches she retreated like a poorly tuned motor thrown into the reverse, toppled all at once sidewise, became in an instant a wildly gyrating ball of long hair, head, tail and feet.

"Bob!" Nellie went to her knees beside the madly contorting body. "Telephone for a veterinary! Quick! Fluffy!" With a swoop of anxious arms she gathered the Persian to her breast, staggered to the couch and dropped down upon it. "Bob!"

"Wait," Sargent said for the second time. "I think I can do quite as much for Fluffy as a vet. Hasn't it dawned upon you yet, Sweetness?"

"What?"

"Fleas— or a flea perhaps. Pulex irritans. She couldn't reach it to scratch it and— it annoyed her. She's an irritated cat."

Miss Zapt sniffed very much as Xenophon Xerxes might have done in a similar instance. At the same time Bob's suggestion appeared to find weight with her, to judge by her expression. She dug slender fingers into Fluffy's hair in search of the possible cause of her actions. And Fluffy seemed actually pleased. She began purring gently— stretched.

A minute, two minutes passed. "I don't see it," said Miss Zapt.

"Well, keep it up anyway," Bob said. "It seems to soothe her."

Nellie turned actually angry eyes back to her quest. Of a sudden they focused intently. "Bob!"

"What?"

"I saw it. But it moved."

"It would." Sargent knelt beside girl and cat. He parted the pelt in investigation— revealed a darkly moving object, jammed down a thumb and finger and withdrew an object the size of an ordinary bean. "Got it," he announced and rose to obtain a better light on what he had found.

"What— is it?" Nellie joined him. "Woodtick?"

"No-o. It's a flea all right. Well— I'm darned." Sargent's accents were those of a slightly awed wonder. "It's an honest-to-goodness flea, but— Good Lord!" The blood-swollen body between his digits burst and left them stained.

"You've— killed it!" Nellie accused.

"Looks like it." Bob viewed the remains in rueful fashion. "Where's your father?"

"Upstairs. Do you think it's one of his?" Nellie's eyes were wide.

"Judging by its size. Come along."

SARGENT started for the stairs. Nellie went with him. Outside the laboratory door they paused and Bob rapped.

"Well? Well?" Xenophon Xerxes replied in the tone of one not wishing to be disturbed.

"It's Sargent, professor," Bob called. "I've something that belongs to you, I fancy."

"You've what?" The laboratory door was jerked partly open and Xenophon Xerxes peered out.

Bob extended his hand with the dead flea upon it. "It was on Fluffy. It was disturbing her a good deal, and we caught it, and— it burst."

"Naturally. But— it doesn't matter, Robert." The professor drew the door farther open. "Come in— and I will show you a really interesting exhibit of the scientific application of modern knowledge applied to the metabolic processes, and the use of vitamins."

"You mean— you have— others?" Bob edged into the room behind Nellie.

"Of course." Xenophon actually beamed. "Did you imagine you had destroyed the only one? Not at all, Robert. Not at all. Here—" He led the way to a glass box pierced at each end by a metal bar from which wires led to a small electrical generator on an insulated table. "You can see how they are coming on."

"Ugh!" Nellie gave one glance and shuddered.

Bob stared out of suddenly narrowed eyes. Inside the glass were possibly a dozen of the insects even larger than the one he had found. They swarmed over a lump of raw beef. "Remarkable. I wouldn't have believed it possible," he said at length.

Xenophon Xerxes nodded. "Man stands today on the threshold of things undreamed in other years, Robert. Today we are beginning to lay hold upon an understanding of life forces, and hence the processes of life itself. Organic therapy, the study of endocrine glands, has done much. But even the endocrines are powerless to function unless given the substance with which to build. There has been a missing link in our knowledge. Then came the discovery of vitamins— the essential growth-producing elements of food—the— er— essence of food. It was the application of that knowledge I found essential in this experiment."

"But— I thought you said life was vibration?" Sargent seemed a trifle dazed.

"I did, Robert. I did. Life is vibration. But let me ask you— what maintains vibration once it is brought into manifestation?"

"Why— er— force. Do you mean— food?"

"Exactly!" Xenophon rubbed his thin hands together. "You're coming on, Robert, upon my word! Therefore in order to obtain the success I aimed at, it became necessary to raise a vibratory rate in the presence of a food excess, and at the same time supply the impulse for that food's use. The generator here furnishes the vibratory rate. The beef is the food— its juices. As you know, in all electrical devices there is a negative and a positive pole. The negative is the active— the change- producing. Current flows from negative to positive. Therefore in order to supply my third essential, that small sponge on the negative electrode you see entering the cage is soaked in water- soluble vitamins, which are carried by the vibratory current to become a part of the contained atmosphere. The hypothetical requirements being correctly deduced and furnished— the result— well, Robert, you can see the result for yourself."

"Rather." Bob turned his eyes to the cage again and started. "I say, professor— are those things getting larger? They look bigger—"

"They are growing, Robert." Xenophon Xerxes smiled. "Don't let that surprise you. Growth is a multiplication of cells. And since a cell in multiplying, reproduces itself— you will perceive that the ratio of increase is the square of the primary number. For that very reason it will soon become necessary to destroy all save the best developed specimen of the lot. Of course when I stop the current passing, the rapid development halts."

Sargent nodded. "It's a good deal like compound interest, isn't it?" he said a trifle vaguely.

"I trust you find it interesting, purely as a demonstration." Zapt eyed him in a suspicious manner.

"Oh, yes, indeed." Bob took a long, deep breath. "I never saw anything like it, in my life."

"Without wishing to seem egotistical, Robert," Zapt accepted the assurance quickly, "I feel that I am justified in the assertion that until I brought about the necessary correlation of environment, outside of what has been called from time to time a freak of nature, neither did anyone else."

"I should hope not," Nellie broke into the conversation. "If he did, he probably thought he was drunk."

Her father viewed her in tolerant silence. He put up a hand and stroked his graying whiskers. "And as a matter of fact, Robert," he remarked, transferring his gaze to the already amazing products of his endeavors, "I may add that the experiment is scarcely more than begun."

iv

WITH that statement Mr. Robert Sargent most emphatically agreed on a later occasion, when, having apparently heard his voice below stairs, Professor Zapt came down in his flapping coat and a pair of carpet slippers and invited him up to inspect advanced results.

There was a childlike quality about the little scientist at times, in that he desired to exhibit the fruits of his labors, as Bob had learned in the past. And he judged that Xenophon Xerxes was handicapped in the present instance by Nellie's attitude toward what she frankly declared was an unwarranted interference with nature's designs as affecting insect life. Moreover he was genuinely curious to learn to what extent the professor had succeeded as he accompanied him back up-stairs. Nellie went along.

Xenophon Xerxes threw open the laboratory door with the hint of a flourish and jerked his hand at the glass cage Bob had seen before.

"There," said he, "is Pulex."

Sargent stared and caught his breath. Where before had been some dozen surprisingly large fleas, there was now but one. And that one was immense. It was monstrous— huge— a swollen, bloated, overgrown, Brobdingnagian extravaganza of a flea, that nearly filled the glass walls inside which it squatted, beneath a heavily-weighted top.

"Call him Pulex, do you?" Bob began, and paused at Nellie's gasp.

He turned to her, found her gazing at the unbelievable inmate of the glass box with wide-open, pupil-stretched eyes. Her lips parted. "You mean— you've given— that thing— a name?" she faltered.

"Exactly. Pulex, my dear, from the entomological denomination derived from the Latin— Pulex irritans—genus, Pulex— variety, irritans," Xenophon Xerxes announced.

Bob nodded. "Well— he looks irritable. Isn't he sort of cramped in that box?"

"Possibly," Zapt assented. "But you see, Robert, the process of growth has slowed the last two days. It is my opinion that development has about reached its limit."

"It's horrible." Nellie's face was white. "Bob— look at it— look at its— eyes. It— knows we're here," she chattered. "It's looking at us. It's terrible— wicked!"

"The wicked flea," Sargent said, smiling, as she paused with clicking teeth. "The wicked flea, and no man pursueth."

Miss Zapt broke into hysterical laughter. "The wicked— flea— and— no man— pur-su-eth! Oh, ha, ha, Bob! That's the best thing— you've said— in a month!"

Xenophon Xerxes stiffened before that outburst of what he plainly regarded as unseemly mirth. "Get her out of here, Robert," he directed. "Take her down-stairs. Women have no scientific appreciation. They prefer an untimely humor."

"Come along, Honey Lamb Child, we'll fly while no wicked flea can pursue us," Sargent prompted and led her back downstairs.

Once there she subsided upon the living room couch. "Oh, Bob! Did you— see Father's face?" she gasped.

Bob grinned and nodded. "He looked almost as irritable as Pulex," he said.

Nellie giggled. "Well— don't let's talk any more about it. I shouldn't have made him angry."

"All right," Bob agreed. Nor had he any intention of reverting to the subject when next he passed beneath the professor's roof.

Neither did he contemplate coming into contact with Xenophon Xerxes himself. The seclusion the eminent investigator had maintained during his experiment rather precluded that. Consequently it was with a feeling of distinct surprise that he found him puttering about the lower floor.

Furthermore, Zapt's demeanor was a thing calculated to attract attention, though he manifestly aimed at the reverse. His bearing, indeed, was that of a man in a state of mental unrest. He replied to Bob's greeting in absent-minded fashion, went over and moved a chair out of a corner, tilted it on its legs and set it back in place. Immediately afterward he left the room, and in five minutes he was back. He hung about, twiddling his fingers beneath the tail of his shapeless coat, until, seizing a moment when he fancied himself unobserved, he bent and glanced under the couch.

"Father!"

Xenophon straightened at the sound of Nellie's voice.

"What is the matter?"

"Nothing— er— that is, nothing." Xenophon went over and sat down in his favorite chair beside a table loaded with scientific journals and books. He sighed. For possibly three minutes he sat with forehead furrowed into a frown of what might have been consideration. Then he bounced up and went into the hall. Sounds indicated his investigation of a closet where umbrellas and raincoats were stored.

Nellie glanced at Bob, rose and passed silently to the archway through which the hall was reached.

"Father— what are you hunting?" she asked.

Silence followed, punctuated by the closing of the closet door. Xenophon Xerxes joined her, re-entered the living room and regained his seat. For a moment he drummed on the table with nervous fingers. He cleared his throat.

"As a matter of fact," he announced at the end of possibly a minute, "Pulex has escaped."

"Pulex?"

"Escaped?"

Bob and Nellie spoke at once.

"Yes." The professor got up again. "It's really most annoying. I— I can only blame myself. Quite early this evening I fell into a doze while observing what I felt sure were the final hours of his growth. I— er— forgot to shut off the generator, connected with the cage. I can only presume that it continued to run and— er— Pulex became too large for the container. At all events it— burst. When I awoke it was in fragments and the— er— insect had disappeared."

"And," Nellie accused, "that's why you've been roaming around looking under things the last hour?"

"Yes, my dear," Xenophon Xerxes sighed. "I— er— confess I have been in hopes of coming across it— that it had— er— secreted itself. I've been intending to have it permanently mounted as a demonstration of—" He broke off at sounds of a commotion in the rear of the house, cocked his head as though seeking to appraise them, and then exclaimed: "God bless my soul I Perhaps—"

Without finishing the hypothetical conclusion, he started for the hallway.

SARGENT and Nellie followed quite as a matter of course. The trio made their way to the rear, Xenophon Xerxes being the first to reach the kitchen and snap on a light.

His act revealed a remarkable sight.

Crouched on the floor was Pulex, and regarding him from a corner, half in terror and half in defiance, with every hair on her body in a state of furry excitement, was Nellie's cat.

"Fluffy!" Miss Zapt started forward to the rescue after a moment of breathless amaze.

"Hold on!" Bob swung her back, thrust himself before her, taking her task upon himself. He bore straight down on Pulex.

But Pulex did not wait. As Bob started he leaped.

"Catch him!" Xenophon lifted his voice in admonitory treble.

"Catch him yourself!" Sargent whirled. Pulex had leaped not from, but directly at him, and though he had ducked instinctively, a passing leg had rasped his cheek. As he turned, Pulex leaped again, missing him again as he dodged, and hit the farther wall with a heavy thud.

"Damn!" The expletive seemed jolted from Sargent's mouth.

Fluffy scampered between his legs, tripped him and sent him down to the floor with a bump.

"God bless my soul!" Xenophon Xerxes faltered. "The thing is— actually vicious. Did you notice that it seemed— inclined to attack you, Robert?"

"Yes." Bob scrambled up. "I noticed it." His eyes sought Pulex and found him squatted warily observant against a baseboard. "He's a wicked flea— but this time there's a man going to pursue him." He flung himself forward.

And Pulex exercised discretion. The kitchen window was open, and he lifted himself through it, butting headlong against a screen, tearing it loose along one edge and scrambling frantically through the resulting avenue of escape.

"God bless my soul!" said Xenophon Xerxes again. "I fear we've lost him, Robert."

"I don't know whether we have or not." Bob's blood was up. He dashed at the kitchen door and vanished through it.

Nellie joined him outside.

Zapt followed.

The three stood staring into the gloom of the back yard, faintly illuminated by the rays of a second quarter moon. There came presently to their ears a rasping, scratching sound from overhead.

Bob ran farther out and sought for its source. "There he is," he announced, and pointed to where Pulex was ambling sedately along the ridgepole of the house. As they watched, the fugitive gained the shadow of a chimney and disappeared.

"I'll get him out of that soon enough," Bob promised. "They can't stand water. Where's the hose?"

"I'll— I'll— bring it, Robert." Xenophon Xerxes hurried off, his coat tails flapping.

"Get a broom or a stick." Bob turned his glance to Nellie. "He'll jump when the water hits him. Be ready to swat him."

"Swat the flea," Nellie giggled and ran off to obtain the suggested means for so doing.

Zapt came back with the hose. He had turned on the water and thrust the nozzle into Sargent's hands.

Nellie reappeared with a broom and the handle of a mop.

Bob explained their purpose and Xenophon took the mop, stepping back from the wall of the house, with Nellie posted a short space from him.

"Now!" Bob lifted the stream of water against the chimney, and saw a dark object hurtle above him.

"Catch him!" he cried, turning toward Nellie and her father.

The hose turned with him. Its stream struck Xenophon Xerxes just below an uptilted chin.

"Professor!" Bob began in a tone of consternation.

"Ass!" The eminent investigator hurled his mopstick upon the ground and strode, dripping, into the house.

v

OFFICER DANIEL McGUINESS, patrolman of the district embracing the Zapt residence, rang in at the end of a round and gave ear to a question couched in the station sergeant's voice:

"Say, Mac, what sort of people are M.K. Brown and wife on Elm Street? Is the lady by any chance bugs?"

"Why," Danny frowned at the transmitter, "not thot I know of, sar-junt. For why do ye ask?"

"Well," the voice came back, "she called up a bit ago and wanted to know if we'd send out there. Said a flea chased her dog into the house."

"A— flea?" Danny steadied himself against the patrol box. "That's what she said."

"Ut— chased her— dog?"

"Accordin' to th' lady."

"How big— was th' dog?"

There was a pause while Danny waited for an answer. When it came its delay seemed explained by the sergeant's intention to make it sufficient:

"See here, McGuiness, don't get funny! Go find out what sort of hootch they're using, th' next time you pass their house."

"Yis, sor." Danny hung up, removed his helmet and scratched his head. Resuming his beat he turned over the amazing information he had just received— a flea— had chased— Brown's dog— into the house.

"It ain't possible," said Danny to himself. "It's been hot th' last few days, though. Maybe—anyway, when I git over there, I'll stop—though if there are any sich anymiles about th' place, 'tis more a job fer th' sanitary squad."

Wherefore, when he approached the Brown residence, he turned in from the street, mounted the front porch and set a heavy finger to a bell.

His summons was answered by Brown himself.

Danny knew him. "Good evenin', Misther Brown," he said. "Th' sar-junt was sayin' as how— maybe I'd better stop."

"Yes. Come in, McGuiness." Brown held the door wide.

Danny removed his helmet and followed into a room where Mrs. Brown sat. He accepted a chair. "An' now just phawt was th' trouble?" he suggested. "Th' Sarge was sayin' somethin'— about a— about a—"

"About a flea," Mrs. Brown declared in a tone of nervous excitement. "That is, it looked like a flea, except that it was so large. I never saw anything like it."

Danny nodded. "An'— ut chased— your dog?"

"Yes. He ran up on the porch and whimpered, and when Mrs. Brown went to let him in, this thing was right behind him," Brown said.

"Th' dog's a little felly?"

"He's a full-grown Gordon setter."

"You seen ut yourself?" Danny looked Brown full in the eyes.

"Yes." They did not falter. "When Mrs. Brown screamed I ran out to see what was wrong and there it was in the hall. Oh, I know it sounds crazy, McGuiness, but a man believes what he sees."

"Yis, sor— sometimes." Danny sniffed. It was almost as though he were seeking some definite odor.

And Brown noted the action. He laughed shortly. "Oh— I'm not drunk, McGuiness."

"Yis, sor— no, sor," Danny corrected himself quickly. "An' so this here— whatever ut was— follied th' dog inside?"

"It did."

"An' where is ut now?"

"It's gone. We didn't keep it as a pet. I tried to throw my coat over it, but it jumped back through the door."

"Oh, thin— ye druv it off." Danny rose. "Thot bein' th' case I don't see phawt I can do at prisint. If ye see anything more of it— of course—"

Mrs. Brown spoke again. "I suppose it was foolish to report it. But— it was so strange— I thought somebody ought to know such a thing was at large. So— I rang up."

"Yis, ma'am," said McGuiness. "I'll report to th' sar-junt th' next toime I ring in, that I come over an'—"

He broke off at the sound of a feminine scream from the street, whirled quickly, clapped on his helmet and bolted out of the house.

HE emerged to find a young woman clinging to the arm of a masculine companion and clattered heavily toward them.

"Phawt's th' matter?" he demanded, coming to a halt.

"I've— been bitten," the girl said in a gasping voice.

Danny eyed her escort in suspicious fashion. "Phawt was ut bit ye?" he asked.

"The— the— toad."

"Th'— toad?"

Danny McGuiness stared. His words came like a belated echo at the end of an appreciable pause.

"Yes. At least I guess it was a toad. It hopped out, just as we were passing." The young woman released her escort's arm and faced Danny.

Danny considered. "It hopped out an' bit ye— how?" he asked at length.

"Why— with its mouth, I suppose."

"Th' toad did?" Danny was breathing deeply.

"Certainly." The girl's companion spoke for the first time. "See here, officer, what's the matter with you, anyway?"

Danny took a grip on his senses and his club. "There ain't anything th' matter with me, young felly," he averred. "Where was ut this here toad bit ye, ma'am?"

"Why, right here," the victim declared.

Danny nodded. "Yis, yis, but— whereabouts on— yerself?"

"Oh— why, on the ankle— just above the foot."

"'Tis the usual location of ankles." Danny nodded again. "An' afterwards— phawt did th' toad do after ut bit ye?"

"Just a minute, officer," the other man interrupted. "We were talking of a—"

"You were talkin' of a toad," said Danny gruffly.

"Yes. And there's no use in going at the matter as though it had been a holdup or a thug. It hopped out and bit Miss Grant and hopped off again down the road. Then you ran out and asked what had happened. That's all there is to it. Are you able to walk, dear?"

Miss Grant murmured an assent.

Her escort turned back to Danny. "So now that you know all the details, if you don't mind, we'll proceed."

"Yis, sor." Danny drew back. "I run out because th' young lady screamed. An' phawt ye told me filled me wid surprise, because"— for the life of him he could not resist a parting shot, in view of the other man's manner— "'tis th' first toime I ever heard of a toad bite, by th' token that th' varmints haven't anny teeth. Good noight, sor. I hope ye git home all roight. Now if ut had been a flea—"

"A flea?" The other man eyed him, and all at once he laughed. "Officer, you've lost your sense of proportion. I saw it. It was as big as a—a scuttle of coal, at least."

"Yis, sor— 'tis sort of dark along here." Danny watched the pair move off, before he removed his helmet and wiped his forehead with the back of a hand. "Phew!" He replaced the helmet. "Th' flea was big enough to chase th' kiyoodle an' th' toad was big as a hod o' coal. Somebody's lost their sinse of proportion, all roight, I guess." He resumed his sadly delayed patrol.

"'Tis a funny noight," he mused. "Dog-chasin' fleas, an' bitin' toads. Domned if ut don't sound home-brewed. An' as for my sinse of proportion"—he gazed about him and chuckled— "iverything looks nacheral enough. Most loikely thim two was swateheartin' along an' th' poor toad hopped out an' scared her, an' she thought she was bit. Wimmen git funny notions, whin they're tuk suddint off their guard. As fer th' flea— beloike ut was somethin' th' fool dog treed."

But if Danny's line of argument satisfied him, what complacency he had evolved by the time he once more arrived at the end of his round was destined to receive a shattering jolt.

"McGuiness," the sergeant demanded, "what sort of a menagerie has broken out up there tonight? There's a man just come into th' emergency, says he was bitten in a taxicab."

"Bit-ten?" Danny faltered.

"Yes, bitten. Shut up and listen. He drove up there in a cab and went into a house. When he came out something was in the cab and bit him and jumped out of the window. He's got a wound on his leg and they're giving him anti-tetanic serum. He says he thinks it was a cat with hydrophobia—"

"A— a— cat?" McGuiness babbled.

"Yes. A cat— a mad cat. Understand? Now get busy and see what's broke loose. If you find anything— shoot it."

"Yis, sor." Danny was sweating from something besides the heat as he hung up.

"Howly Hiven!" he muttered as he closed the box with a slowness indicative of instinctive caution. "First ut was a flea— an' thin ut was a toad— an' now ut is a cat. Phawt th' divil is ut, I wonder—an' is ut wan thing or a menagerie loike th' sar-junt says? If ut is wan thing, how can ut be three things to wunst? I dunno, but 'tis surely somethin' or I've been overlookin' a bootleggin' joint. An' even so they ain't injectin' it intil folks in taxis. Thot felly has a wound."

Suddenly he tightened his grip on his stick, felt for his service weapon and started up the street with a newly acquired stealth.

"Shoot ut, th' sar-junt says. An' if I foind ut, begob I will. Maybe after ut's dead, we can foind out phawt ut is."

IN such a frame of mind Officer Daniel McGuiness once more approached Brown's house. Trees lined the street before it and Zapt's residence next door, their branches casting a checkering of shadow across the pavement. And as Danny advanced, peering intently about him— one of those shadowy patches— moved.

At least that is how it appeared, until closer inspection convinced him that some dark object was progressing along the sidewalk.

McGuiness came to a halt and stared. And even as he did so the thing crawled into a patch of light thrown by the corner arc lamp.

"Howly— Mither!" The words were no more than a startled gasp.

This was the most amazing sight in Officer McGuiness' life. Whatever the thing was, it was worthy of attention. It had an enormously bloated body, seemingly encased in a series of overlapping horny scales. And it dragged itself forward, mainly on a pair of grotesque legs that stuck up above its back, at the knees— or joints, or whatever one called them.

For a breath-taking moment Danny stood with an odd sensation as though the hair beneath his helmet was striving to push the latter off. Then his hand reached for his weapon. He was startled, amazed, dumbfounded, but not actually afraid. He had been told to shoot the thing if he came across it, and not for an instant did he doubt that he had met up with it. He drew the deadly service gun and aimed it. His hand steadied, centered the muzzle on the target.

"Bang!"

"WHAT was that?" said Miss Zapt.

Bob Sargent frowned. "It sounded like a blowout— or a shot."

At the last word Nellie's blue eyes widened. "Bob! It was right in front of the house!" She ran to the door and through it to the porch.

"Good evenin', Miss Nellie," a voice she recognized as that of the policeman on night duty in their district called. "Don't ye be scared. 'Tis nuthin'! I just shot somethin' wid hydrophoby."

"With— what?" said Miss Zapt.

"I dunno. 'Twas a funny-lookin' son of th' divil, askin' yer pardin."

"Father! Bob!" Miss Zapt ran down the steps and out to the street.

Xenophon Xerxes, once more in dry garments, followed with Sargent. They caught up with her where she stood beside Officer McGuiness.

"The wicked flea. He's killed it," she said, pointing to a dark and motionless object at his feet.

"Flea?" Danny began and paused as though short of breath. "Was ut a flea, thin?"

"Yes. The wicked flea, and no man pursueth. Haven't you read your Bible, Mr. McGuiness?" She laughed.

Danny nodded. "I hov thot. The wicked flea, an' no man pursueth."

He put out a foot and pushed Pulex. "Sure thin— he looks wicked but— I've been pursuin' him half th' evenin'. An' by th' same token Missus Brown was roight in sayin' he chased her dog into th' house."

"God bless my soul!" Xenophon Xerxes exploded. "Did— did this— this insect do that, McGuiness?"

" 'Tis phawt th' lady says, though till th' last few moments I've been misdoubtin' her word." Danny scowled.

"Marvelous!" The professor rubbed his hands. "Amazing! Ancestral instinct, perhaps. You see, he came on: Brown's dog in the first place."

"He— phawt?" Danny dragged his glance from the body of Pulex. "Howld on, perfissor. D'ye mean to say this thing come offn th' dog?"

"Of course," Xenophon Xerxes nodded.

"Thin," said Danny with conviction, "sure I don't blame th' kiyoodle fer tryin' to escape him, wunst he had shook him off. Begorra— I—"

"Wait a bit, officer," Zapt interrupted. "Of course the creature was not originally so— large." He plunged into explanations.

Danny heard him in stolid silence. At the end he glanced once more at Pulex, removed his helmet and ran a finger about its dampened band. "An' ye raised him from—"

"A pup," Sargent interjected.

McGuiness gave him a glance. "You raised him from an ordinary little wan, perfissor?" he said in a tone of wonder.

"Exactly," said Xenophon Xerxes Zapt.

"An' he escaped you the th' night?"

"Yes. Precisely. He escaped."

"An' chased Brown's dog, an' bit a young wumman on th' ankle above her foot, an' a man in a taxicab—"

"What! What's that?" Xenophon Xerxes exclaimed. "Do you mean—"

Danny nodded. "'Tis th' truth I'm tellin' ye, perfissor. 'Twas most loikely some of his ancestral instincts again. But th' sarjunt told me to kill ut, an I did so, an' whilst 'tis a raymarkable dimonstration, as I ain't denyin', I'm thinkin' that after all ut's small loss. Fleas of thot size—"

"I agree with you, McGuiness." Xenophon Xerxes thrust a hand into a pocket and withdrew a bit of crumpled paper to press it into Danny's unresisting fingers. "Here— is a trifle for your trouble. I do not regret your excellent marksmanship in the least. And I— er— appreciate your commendable fidelity to duty. As a matter of fact I intended giving it chloroform myself." He stooped and took up the carcass of Pulex. "Good- night, officer—good-night."

AN hour later, and for the third approached the telephone box at the completion of his round. He yanked it open and jerked the receiver off the hook. "Give me th' sarjunt," he demanded and waited till he heard that officer's voice.

"'Tis McGuiness," he said then, "an' I've claned up my district. I found thot flea an' killed ut—"

"What's that?" The sergeant's voice was gruff. "McGuiness— talk sense."

"I'm talkin' sinse," Danny retorted. "Listen." Then he explained.

"Oh— Zapt," the sergeant made comment when he had finished. "Well— that accounts for it, I guess."

"It does," said Danny McGuiness. He hung up and banged shut the box.

_____________

3: Blind Man's Buff

J. U. Giesy

All-Story Weekly 24 Jan 1920

"SIGHT depends upon the etheric vibrations which we are wont to denominate light," said Professor Xenophon Xerxes Zapt, the eminent investigator of the unknown (sometimes called "Unknown Quantity Zapt" by his associates by reason of the double "X" in his name). He spoke from the reading chair wherein he had been browsing over the pages of a scientific journal, in the living-room of his home.

"Good thing it does, too," declared Bob Sargent, fiancé of the professor's daughter Nellie, surveying the young woman in appreciative fashion. "If it didn't, I suppose we couldn't see a thing."

"Exactly." The professor nodded. "There are times, Robert, when you have a gratifying manner of perceiving the main point of a deduction to be arrived at by the consideration of already established facts. Light being the main instrument of vision, its absence from the scheme of things would rob us of one of the five recognized senses beyond a doubt."

"And yet," said Bob, "they tell us that black is an absence of light, don't they, professor? So if they're right why is it we can see a negro—"

"Wait." The professor held up a slender hand. "We were speaking of light, not color, Robert."

Bob nodded. "Well, yes. But if black is an absence of color, why call the negro a colored man?"

Xenophon Xerxes Zapt indulged in a frown. Displeasure shone in his spectacled eyes. There were times when he disapproved strongly of Nellie's choice of a future husband— when he was more than a little annoyed by the particular sense of humor possessed by the young attorney. And now that annoyance flamed. "If it were not for the facetiousness you at times exhibit, Robert," he said with a sudden stiffness, "I would be far more satisfied as to the amount of light contained in what you are pleased to consider your mind. There are occasions, when in endeavoring to discuss some scientific problem in your presence, I am reminded of the saying in regard to casting pearls of price before— er— porcine appreciation. Levity is the last characteristic of personality with which we should approach the consideration of natural problems." He reached up and began pulling at the graying mutton-chop whiskers on either side of his cleanly shaven chin.

Nellie gave Bob a warning glance, though her blue eyes were dancing.

And Sargent heeded the sign. "Well, really, professor," he said, "I had no intention of acting like the proverbial swine. Just what's the notion, will you explain?"

"Invisibility!" Xerxes Zapt pronounced the word with a force hardly to be expected from a man of so slight a frame. He was a little fellow, was the professor, customarily clad as now in baggy trousers, a loose coat and roomy slippers, in which he went puttering about the experiments that had won him a certain sort of fame.

"Invisibility," he repeated, eying Sargent. "Have you any conception, Robert, of all that may be embraced in that term?"

"Why— er," said Bob; "if a thing's invisible you can't see it— like a gas, or— "

"Exactly," the professor helped him out; "or the workings of some people's brains. Invisibility is the state wherein a substance defies the operation of the visible sense. What, then, if instead of arriving at such a state through the vaporization process as in the instance of a gas, substances should be rendered invisible, and at the same time their solidity were to be maintained?"

"It would be rather awkward, wouldn't it," Sargent suggested. "People would always be bumping into things."

"Eh?" Once more Xerxes Zapt eyed him in an almost suspicious manner. "Well, perhaps— perhaps they would, Robert. And in that fact lies the advantage to be gained. Now this article on camouflage, I have been reading would make it appear that camouflage depends on the ability of man to present a baffling aspect of ordinary appearance to the perceptive centers of the brain, through the visual function of the optic nerve. Am I plain?"

"I believe that is the generally accepted explanation," Sargent assented weakly.

"Exactly. But what if, instead of changing the aspect of natural objects, they were rendered incapable of being seen?"

"Holy smoke!" said Bob and paused in sudden comprehension. "I guess I begin to get your notion."

Xenophon Xerxes Zapt leaned forward. "It would revolutionize the entire system of defense which might be employed by a nation. It would enable a fleet of an army to disguise its presence completely. I think it was known to the ancients. Merlin, whom Tennyson mentions, had a cloak of invisibility, you remember. Robert— my mind is made up. I am going to do it."

"Make things invisible?" Sargent questioned.

"Exactly." The professor rose and shook down his baggy trousers. "And when it is accomplished I am going to give it to this nation. The United States of America is going to be rendered—"

"Not invisible!" Robert interrupted.

"Certainly not." Zapt gave him a withering glance. "I was about to say that to Xenophon Xerxes Zapt it was reserved to render his nation impregnable from attack."

"By Jove, professor, that's a wonderful thing if you can do it," Robert exclaimed.

"If— if?" the professor bridled. "Just so. In all ages progressive minds have had to contend with the doubt of scoffers."

Having delivered that parting shot, he turned and stalked from the room.

"Well"— Sargent looked at Nellie— "as long as he doesn't render you invisible, sweetness."

Miss Zapt glanced down at Fluffy, the beautiful Angora cat she was holding in her lap, tweaked one pink-tipped ear with her fingers and—flushed.

"If you don't quit making him cross he's apt to squirt some of it on you when he gets it finished," she cautioned.

Bob laughed. "Small danger. He's too wise. If he did that he couldn't tell when I was hanging around the prettiest little brown-haired girl in town."

And after that— well, quite a while after that— he said: "Good night."

Yet late as he departed, a light still burned in the room Professor Xenophon Xerxes Zapt had converted into a laboratory of sorts, on the second floor of his home.

A month went by, however, before anything came of the professor's scheme, and Sargent had put the thing completely out of his mind. Then on a certain evening he mounted the steps of the Zapt residence, found the door open, and save for the unguarded condition of the house, no sign of anybody home.

With the freedom of long acquaintance, he stepped inside and glanced around.

The sound of a soft voice calling struck his ears. "Fluffy— Fluffy— kitty— kitty— come here— come on and get your supper, honey. Drat it— where has the creature gone?"

Sargent grinned in pleasurable anticipation, and followed the sound to the rear.

"Won't I do as well?" he questioned, entering the kitchen where Nellie was standing with a brimming bowl of milk in her hands.

"Oh, hello, Bob," she answered, turning toward him. "I can't imagine where she is. It's time she was fed, but she doesn't come when I call her."

"Oh, well, she'll come back. It's a way with cats," Bob told her. "Put the milk on the floor where she can get it when she does. I've got something for you."

"What?" Miss Zapt set down the bowl as he had suggested, and came to stand beside him, as he produced a box from his pocket, and from the box a ring.

"You said you admired it the other day when we saw it in a window."

"Bob!" Miss Zapt seized it and slipped it on a different finger from the one where her betrothal solitaire already blazed. And then she put her arm around Bob's neck and stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

Sargent met her halfway, lifted his head and stiffened a trifle, and stood holding her still in his arms, until at length he let out a slow ejaculation: "What th' deuce!"

"What's the matter?" Nellie raised her eyes, then turned them in the direction his were already staring, to find them resting on the bowl she had placed on the floor.

And that was all— except that for some unaccountable reason— the milk was disappearing! Even as she stood as rigid now as Sargent— it's blue-white level went down!

"Bob!" she whispered in a tensely sibilant fashion; "do— do you see it?"

"That's the trouble," he said rather thickly. "I don't see a thing, and yet—that bowl of milk is going to be empty pretty soon."

And then as they stood arrested, scarcely breathing, it must be confessed, in the face of the inexplicable thing occurring before them, if they were to accept the evidence of their senses, Nellie's ears caught a faintly rhythmic sound.

"Listen!" Her blue eyes widened. Her hand crept up and laid hold of Sargent's fingers.

"Lap, lap— lap, lap." The milk sank lower and lower.

"Fluffy!" sad Nellie all at once.

"Fluf-fy?" Bob repeated.

"Yes." Nellie set her soft pink lips together. "She's there— drinking that milk. I've got to catch her, but— don't you let go of my hand."

She began to tiptoe forward, and Sargent followed. "Fluffy," she wheedled softly. "Fluffy— honey." She bent her knees and reached out groping fingers. And suddenly she tore her hand from Sargent's grasp and made a swiftly clutching gesture. "I've got her," she announced and straightened.

"Where?" said Bob a trifle blankly.

"Right here. I'm holding her in my hands. Never mind, Fluffy— muddy's got you."

"Well—" Sargent accepted the information. "You sound like it, and you look as if you were holding something, but darned if I can see her."

"Of course not." Miss Zapt's tone was one of quickening exasperation. "Silly, don't you understand?"

"No, I don't," Bob said rather shortly, hesitated briefly and went on again in dawning comprehension. "Unless it's some more of your father's—"

"It is," Nellie declared with conviction. "That invisibility stuff he was talking about last month. And he's— he's tried it on Fluffy, and—" Her voice began to quiver.

"Good Lord!" Bob gasped. "Well, never mind, sweetheart. If he did it he can undo it. Where is he?"

"I don't kno-ow!" said Nellie in a fashion suddenly savage. "But— I'm going to find him and make him bring back my cat!" She turned and ran out of the kitchen, into the hall that led to the front of the house.

Sargent caught up with her in a stride. For a moment he had felt shaken, by the uncanny way in which the milk had vanished, but now that he knew the explanation, the whole aspect of things was altered. He grinned as Nellie raced ahead, apparently holding nothing to her bosom. And then he put out a hand and drew her to a stand.

"Listen!" he said.

"Swish! Swi-i-ish!" A fresh sound broke upon their ears.

"What is it?" Nellie questioned as the thing continued.

Bob shook his head. "If you ask me, somebody's washing the front of the house with a hose."

"Father!" Miss Zapt emitted the one brittle word, shook off Sargent's detaining hand and darted toward the swishing noise.

Bob followed— just as he had been following Nellie ever since he knew her first. Side by side they reached the front door.

Side by side they paused and gasped as a sweeping spray of fluid met them.

"Swish! Swi-i-i-ish!" Again the deluge.

"Get back!" Half-blinded, Bob reached for Nellie, caught her and dragged her to him. "Get back!"

As he turned to regain the protection of the hallway, he had a blurring vision of a slender figure with mutton-chop whiskers and spectacle-rimmed eyes, playing the drenching liquid toward them from a length of rubber tubing; then—

"Swish! Swi-i-i-ish!" The stream caught them again— this time in the back, and— he found himself apparently still holding Nellie's arm, but— Miss Zapt had disappeared.

"Nellie!" he faltered. It was unbelievable. He could touch her, but he couldn't see her!

"Bob— oh, Bob— where are you?" He heard her.

"Right here," he said as a horrible thought laid hold upon him. "Nellie—can't you see me— dear?"

"No-o-o. I can feel your— fingers," she whimpered. "But— I— oh, Bob— I'm so wet and— frightened. You— you just faded out— all at once, after— father—"

"Father? Yes, father," was the answer.

Sargent saw the whole thing all at once. Father had decided to make a practical demonstration of his new invention or discovery, or whatever one wanted to call it— and he had started spraying the infernal stuff on the house. Well— it was his house, and he could do what he pleased about it, but when it came to using the thing on human beings—

Father's voice cut into his swirling consideration: "Robert— am I right in thinking I saw you and Nellie on the porch just now?"

Bob turned. The little man had switched the direction of his hose and was staring toward the house with near-sighted eyes.

"You're dead right, you saw us," he flung back a none-too-gentle answer. "But you can't see us now. You turned that confounded stream into our faces, and—"

"Why bless my soul— I didn't see you," said Zenophon Xerxes Zapt; "not until it was too late— that is— then I thought I saw you— and then you disappeared."

"Exactly," Bob agreed, very much as Zapt himself might have done it. "That's exactly what we did."

"Turn around then, Robert," the professor advised. "The substance only blots out what it touches."

"We did that, too. We turned around and were blotted out about the time you gave the porch its third dose," Bob rejoined, and paused in consternation. All at once he became aware that he couldn't see the porch floor or the steps, or Nellie, or himself. About all he seemed able to see was the little man standing there on the lawn squirting some sort of diabolical fluid out of the hose he now perceived came down from the laboratory window. And without the least warning he found that the sight filled him with a sort of quickly upflaring rage.

In a rush he was off the porch, which seemed to be there, whether he could see it or not, and flinging himself toward the source of his and its disappearance.

"Put down that hose!"

"Robert, to whom are you speaking?" Professor Zapt peered toward the changing sound of Sargent's voice.

"I'm speaking to you," Bob told him almost roughly. "Put down that hose or turn it off, or— something."

"Remarkable— remarkable," said the professor, smiling. "Robert, I cannot see you, though I hear you plainly. You appear to be actually very near me. If anything had been needed to clearly demonstrate the unqualified success of my recent investigations, this—"

"Put down that hose!" Bob said it for the third time and seized the rubber tubing in his hands.

And for some reason best known to himself, Professor Xenophon Xerxes Zapt chose to resist. He struggled to retain possession of the hose, exerting his frailer strength against that of the unseen, yet stronger man who was dragging on it. He tugged and Bob tugged, and all at once the professor lost his balance and sprawled upon the ground, while the nozzle released from his controlling guidance, whipped round like a serpent striking, and drenched him to the skin.

"Oh, I say, professor, I didn't mean to do that," began Bob, and broke off— because apparently he was speaking to nothing. Professor Xenophon Xerxes Zapt had vanished.

From the porch where she had been an unseen watcher Nellie screamed the one word "Father!"

Sargent put down the hose and groped toward where he had last seen "father" on the ground.

"Father!" Once more Miss Zapt was calling.

And Sargent's fingers made contact with something clammily wet and very active that bounced away from his touch and emitted a most irascible exclamation. "There, now, you impudent young whelp, see what you have done!"

"I— I can't— professor," Bob stammered, straightening and drawing a hand across his seemingly useless eyes. "I can hear you all right, but I can't see you."

"Father!"

"Yes, yes," Zapt answered his daughter's frantic query. "I'm— I'm all right, my dear."

"But— I can't see you— or Bob— or myself. Where are you?"

"Here. Sargent, where are you?"

"Here."

"Why bless my soul," said the professor. "We'd better get into the house and talk this over. Nellie, where are you?"

"Right here where Bob left me," said Nellie in a tone of incipient hysterics.

"Well, stay there, and we'll come to you," Sargent advised her. "I can't see the porch or the steps, but I can make out the door. Are you there, professor?"

"Of course I'm here," Zapt assured him none too sweetly.

"Then come along." Bob began moving toward what was still visible of the house, feeling with shuffling feet for the vanished steps, in order to ascend them to the equally vanished porch, where Nellie waited, to all appearances no more than a disembodied voice.

"Bob!" that voice came to him.

"Here— coming," he answered, and found the steps, and went gropingly up, hands outstretched before him. "Nellie?"

"Here!"

Beside the door he found her. She gasped as he touched her.

"It's all right now," he said, "I've got you. Talk about blind-man's buff!"

Behind him came a sound of two objects colliding, and the professor cried: "Ouch!"

"Father!" Miss Zapt stiffened inside the arm Bob had slipped about her; "did you hurt yourself?"

"Not irreparably, my dear," said Zapt in somewhat sarcastic fashion. "And I trust I have not badly damaged the steps. Where in thunder are you?"

"Right here by the door."

"Huh!" The sound of tentative footsteps came nearer. "All right— now I touch you."

"As a matter of fact," said Sargent, "that's my hand you're holding, but it's all the same. I'm holding Nellie. We'd better stick together."

The professor grunted and removed his clutching fingers. "We'd better get some place where we can locate ourselves by means of definitely known objects. Go into the living-room," he said.

They passed inside. At least they could now see where they were going. They gained the door of the living-room and passed through it. Bob led Nellie to the couch and seated himself beside her.

"Father, where are you?" she inquired.

"Here," came the voice of the professor. "In my usual chair, my dear. I presume you can see it, at least. Sargent, what are you doing?"

"I'm holding Nellie's hand." Bob told him the literal truth.

Xenophon Xerxes Zapt quite audibly sniffed. "At least," said he, "I can't see you."

"Well— you've nothing on me there, professor," Bob retorted. "Here's a pretty kettle of fish."

"Exactly," complained the professor. "If you young people hadn't interfered—"

"That's hardly the point now," Sargent interrupted. "The question now seems to be, how do we get rid of the stuff?"

For a time Xerxes Zapt made no answer, and then he sighed. "That is the point, Robert, of course," he assented. "But you see, I hadn't gone into it fully, and—"

"Father!" Nellie's voice cut into his confession.

"See here," Sargent half rose and sank back as her panic-tightened fingers held him. "Do you mean we've— got to stay— like this, till you think up an answer?"

"That's it, Robert," said Xenophon Xerxes Zapt in a tone he plainly strove to make soothing. "I think that I had— er— that I had better try to think."

Nellie began laughing. There was nothing of humor in the sound. It was just the cachinnation of jangled nerves and ended in a sob.

Bob put his arms about her and drew her head against his shoulder.

"Don't leave me, Bob," she murmured. "Promise me not to leave this house till I see you again."

"I won't," said Sargent. "I won't leave till your father has thought of something to get us all out of this fix." He drew his arms tightly about her shaking figure, and held her. The situation was rather eerie, to say the least. He could see everything in the room quite plainly—everything, but the professor, and Nellie, and himself.

And yet the sound of another sigh wafted to him from the reading chair beside the table, where presumably Zapt was thinking. It was followed by mumbled words: "Milk?— no— certainly not. Benzine?— scarcely. Ether?—"

"Ether ought to do it," Sargent caught up the suggestion. "You said it was etheric vibrations that were responsible for sight."

The professor grunted again; but made no further comment. Silence came down again. Dusk had fallen. The sound of shuffling footfalls struck on Sargent's ears— the snap of a switch. A sudden illumination filled the living-room and hallway. Plainly Zapt had turned on the lights. Bob listened while he padded back again to his chair and sank into it with a creaking of springs.

And then Zapt was speaking: "All things considered, Robert, I think we had best go upstairs and change our clothes."

Simple? It was as simple as that. Bob saw it in a flash. "Of course," he exclaimed, as Nellie stirred in his embrace at her father's words, "that will be all right for you and Nellie, but I haven't any extra clothes here, myself."

"I can lend you a bathrobe, Robert," Zapt replied. "Such a step will at least give us an opportunity to once more establish ourselves. The solution being mainly on our clothing, either their removal or their covering with an unsaturated texture, will render us visible in a major extent, even if it does not restore the visibility of our faces and hands. And, of course, I shall think of something in time. Alcohol might do it—"

"Exactly." Judging by sounds, the professor rose. "You will come with me, Robert. Nellie will go to her room."

"Come, dear," Robert prompted and helped Nellie to her feet. And then, as the fall of a heavy body, followed by inarticulate grunts and mouthings and mumbles came from the front porch, he paused.

The sounds went on. They might have been a scuffle to judge by their nature, or they might have been occasioned by some object trying to right itself. There was a clumping reminiscent of heavily shod feet—the rasp of stertorous breathing— then—

"Phwat th' divil?" a self-interrogation.

"Sssh!" One could fancy Xenophon Xerxes Zapt was the source of the sibilant warning. "Officer McGuiness. He's noticed the house, confound him. Quick now before he comes inside! Upstairs!"

In his last statement, Professor Xenophon Xerxes Zapt had been absolutely right. Danny McGuiness, large, florid, Irish, and a careful officer, had noticed the house, as a matter of course— as during his hours of duty patrolling the street on which it stood, he noticed it and half a hundred others every time he passed. And to-night as he approached it, just after dusk and the assumption of his tour of duty, he had noticed something about it, such as he had never beheld in all of his life.

He came to a halt and stared. And then quite slowly he lifted a massive hand and passed it across his eyes. Seemingly, he was gazing upon the roof and the second story of a house, without visible means of support, as the judge of the city court was wont to say of certain individuals brought before him. The roof and the upper story were quite familiar. Danny had seen them every night for many months, since the night he saw them first, but— the rest of the picture had disappeared. Everything below that strangely buoyant part of the structure was seemingly wiped out, very much as a drawing might have been sponged from a slate.

Hence Danny's instinctive gesture to his eyes. He knew he couldn't be seeing what they said he was. He had heard of such catastrophes overtaking a man in the past. Hemi— or semi— or something like that, the doctors called it. Anyway, a man saw only half of what he looked at, and quite plainly he was seeing— or he wasn't seeing— something like half of Professor Zapt's house.

He put down his hand and laid hold of the fence that ran in front of Professor Zapt's yard. All at once, regardless of the roof and upper story of the mansion at which he was staring, Danny felt a need of support. For a moment he stood clinging to it, and then— he decided on a test. Slowly he turned his vision away from the floating superstructure of a modern residence, and directed it across the street.

Then he let go of the fence and drew a long breath. He could see the other side of the street all right— all of it. Under such conditions his eyes did nothing by halves. He could see the houses from top to bottom, the boles as well as the tops of the street-fringing trees. Then— what in the name of all sense was the answer? Perhaps a temporary seizure merely— something he had eaten, maybe, that had caused a passing semiblindness. He turned back and once more faced in the original direction, and stiffened before the original effect.

"Well, sa-a-y!" said Officer McGuiness, and decided that the trouble must be with the house and not himself. He decided, also, to investigate.

He knew Xenophon Xerxes Zapt. Several times before he had known the professor to produce some odd results by his experiments— had even profited by them to some extent, when Zapt had seen fit to hand him sundry bits of neatly engraved paper, as a mark of appreciation of the interest Danny had displayed. Having recovered from his first shock of surprise, McGuiness was half-minded that he was facing some such condition now.

"Funny little feller," he muttered to himself, as he went up the walk from the gate. "Always fussin' wid' some sort of contraption. Lookit this now, wull ye— lookit— hull bottom of th' house gone— rest of it floatin'—"

Abruptly he collided with something and sprawled forward on what felt, even if it did not look like the steps of the missing porch.

For a moment he lay with the breath nearly shaken out of him, and then he began to feel tentatively about.

"They're here— even if I can't see 'em," he decided at last, the conviction driven into him by his fall and the verdict of his groping touch. "They're here, but— phwy is ut, I can't see 'em? Shure, now I'm here, I'll mention ut to th' perfissor. 'Tis a dangerous state of affairs indade, whin an honest man can't see where he's goin', an' moighty near breaks his neck."

Whereupon McGuiness got up and felt his way with searching feet to the top of the steps, and across the equally invisible porch, to the oblong of the door, beyond which glowed the lighted hallway. It was all most peculiar to be walking on something he couldn't see, and despite him, it affected Danny oddly.

"Phwat th' divil?" he voiced his bewilderment in a heavy rumble and stiffened in his tracks at a warning "Sssh!"

It was a sound of caution— a sibilant plea for quiet.

Danny considered quickly. His official instincts wakened. He strained his ears. The rasp of whispering came to him.

"Sssh! is ut— whisper— whisper? Be gob there's somethin' moighty funny goin' on about this house." Danny thought the words rather than spoke them, gave over his first intention of ringing the bell if he could find it, laid hold of the screen door and dragged it open and stepped inside.

The hall ran straight back before him. He saw the upward sweep of a flight of stairs. To the right lay an archway giving into a lighted apartment. McGuiness turned toward it, made his way into the living-room and gazed about him. So far as he could see he stood alone in a room otherwise deserted, and yet— dimly it seemed to him that he detected a sound of suppressed breathing.

He frowned. It was like being in a darkened room with some unknown person— only this room was brilliantly lighted and still he could perceive no one. A peculiar tingling, prickling sensation began to run up and down his spine. Somebody had whispered, and they must have been close indeed, for him to have heard it— somebody or something was breathing not ten feet from him. He was sure of it now.

The pad of a careful footfall! He whirled, tightening his grip on his club—to find nothing at all—or at least no one, before his starting eyes.

And yet that softly padding sound went on. It was as though unseen enemies were creeping upon him. Tiny drops of moisture started on his cleanly shaven upper lip. He spun about again at a rustle of movement from a new direction. His respiration quickened. A few moments ago his eyes had tricked him and now, seemingly, he couldn't believe his ears. Or could he? Those whispers— of breathing— of unseen footfalls, were all about him. Surely someone or something was moving in the room. Something? McGuiness began to lose some of his ruddy color. He wasn't a coward, but this unseen, this unknown, this apparently unknowable thing was getting on his nerves.

"Father?"

He jerked himself up at the sound of the articulated word— no more than another sibilant sighing, but none the less something within his comprehension.

"Sssh!"

There it was again— that plea for silence— caution— from the hallway now, or else his ears had utterly failed him.

He twisted himself toward it. "Perfissor—are ye there, perfissor?" he questioned hoarsely and advanced on legs that shook the least bit for all his dogged effort to control them. At the worst, he told himself now, he was facing something human.

And yet, when he reached the hallway and groped along it, searching, searching heavily for what he couldn't see, there was no one, and— a stairboard creaked. He lifted his eyes quickly. He could see the stairs and— there was nothing on them!

All at once McGuiness found himself shaken by something like a chill, and clenched his teeth.

"Aw go to th' divil," he snarled a gritting surrender, "shure an' I wasn't hired to go chasin' after ghosts."

A giggle— an unmistakable giggle— was wafted to him from the second story. And yet to his baffled imagination it was the gibbering of a disembodied something. Kicking open the screen door he stepped outside, removed his helmet to draw a none too steady hand across a sweat-dampened forehead, and took a deep and somewhat uncertain breath. Then, very slowly he found the steps and went down them, retraced his way along the walk to the street, and turned to look back at what he could see of the house.

It was just the same as it had been, only now McGuiness knew that no matter how it appeared, the bottom part was there, and— it wasn't the same after all— there was a light upstairs!

He regarded it for several minutes before he understood. When he had gone inside it had not been there— and there was that creak on the stairs! Somebody had whispered "father," and somebody had "sshed" the speaker into silence, and— somebody had giggled when he said he wasn't chasing ghosts— and the recollection of that giggle wasn't at all the same now as it had seemed inside the house. It had been a sound of amusement with nothing of menace about it. The officer was greatly puzzled.

All at once Danny McGuiness set his Irish jaw in determination. "Begob," he declared to no one but himself, "I'm goin' to get to th' botthom of this now, do ye moind. I couldn't see anywan at all, at all, but— by th' same token I couldn't see th' steps. An' yit, I found thim."

Jerking open the gate, he found the steps again with groping feet, went up them and reached the door and let himself once more inside.

Upstairs, he told himself. Upstairs he would find them. He would go up, and this time he'd demand an explanation. Sshes would not deter him any longer. There was somebody up there. Ghosts didn't turn on lights. He'd go up and find the lighted room, and—

Something brushed against his leg!

He started, checked himself, and stooped swiftly with reaching fingers. They closed on something furry— something silken soft— something that drew back and emitted an unmistakable hiss.

"A cat!" said Danny. "A kitty, d'ye moind now— an' I can't see her— I can't see her any more than I could thim steps— but— I can feel her— or I could. Kitty— kitty— come here, kitty." Still bent he began feeling in all directions, turning on heavy feet as he sought to come once more in contact with her. "Come, kitty— come to Officer McGuiness. Where th' divil did you go to?"

"Why, officer, such language! I'm surprised."

McGuiness straightened slowly. He glanced upward, quite to the head of the stairs— and remained staring while his heavy jaw sagged.

Because something stood there— only it was hard to say what it was— except that it appeared like the dress of a woman— just that— just a dress leaning a little toward him across the railing. Or no. There seemed to be a pair of feet beneath it— a pair of feet, but neither hands nor head! There was nothing at all above the neck of the garment save a little triangular spot, as white as— as white as a virgin reputation. And that was all. There wasn't anything else. There was just that tiny white triangle, and a pair of feet, and the dress.

So much he saw and then the dress was joined by two other garments— a jerkily moving bathrobe and a suit of clothes. The three formed a group and began descending.

"Whuroo!" Danny let the sound out of his chest in a sighing exhalation and stood watching. But it wasn't a battle-cry of combat— it was just the last stand of conscious volition. And after that, as the three headless figures marched down the stairs toward him, Officer Danny McGuiness was volitionally paralyzed. He stared with a never-shifting vision, but he neither spoke nor moved. He was past all speech or movement, until, suddenly— the lady's garment laughed.

"Why, officer," it said, "you look as if you were seeing a ghost."

Hope waked anew in Danny McGuiness's breast. He stiffened his shaking knees. The voice had nothing of whispers, of "sshes" about it. It had a distinctly human note. It sounded suspiciously like that of Professor Zapt's daughter.

"Shure, I— I don't know what I'm seein'," he stammered. "Fer th' lasht fifteen minutes ut's been pretty much now you see it an' now you don't wid me, miss—but mostly don't."

"Of course." And surely that was Xenophon Xerxes Zapt's voice emerging from the suit of clothes. "That's the substance on our faces, McGuiness. Come into the living-room and I'll explain the matter to your better understanding."

"All roight, perfissor," Danny assented. "It is yersilf, isn't ut, perfissor?"

"Of course," said the suit of clothes.

"An— th'— th' bathrobe?" Danny questioned.

"Mr. Sargent," said the lady's garment.

"Av course," accepted Danny. "I moight hov knowed it, if I hadn't been so—  surprised."

"Come on in and sit down while father explains it," the bit of rayon crepe said. And Danny followed while it led him in and gave him a chair, and seated itself on the couch at the bathrobe's side.

"You see, officer, I have discovered a substance which, applied to any object, nullifies sight," began the suit of clothes.

McGuiness nodded. "Shure, I don't know phwat nullyfies means, unless you put ut on th' steps, an' used phwat was left on yersilves an' th' cat."

"Exactly," the suit of clothes responded. "I suppose you noticed the house?"

"I did thot— phwat there was of ut, so far as I could see," said Danny. "'Twas that made me come in to see was I goin' bloind or phwat. Was ut you sshed when I was standin' on th' porch?"

"Yes," the suit of clothes replied. "We were just going upstairs to get some fresh garments so we could see ourselves, at least in a measure." They went on and explained fully what had occurred.

Danny grinned when the narrative was finished: "D'ye mean," said he, "thot you don't know yit phwat wull take ut off?"

"Exactly," the suit of clothes admitted in a somewhat apologetic manner.

"Nellie seems to be coming out of it better than the rest of us, anyway," the bathrobe suggested. "I can see her nose."

"I— I powdered it!" The lady's garment giggled.

"Powdered ut?" All at once Danny chuckled. That explained the white triangle above the garment's neck. Everything was coming clear at last.

"But see here, perfissor," he inquired, turning to where the suit of clothes was sitting rather limply in the chair beside the table. "Won't ut wash?"

"Wash?" the suit of clothes made irascible rejoinder. "Of course it will wash. It has to wash. I've been thinking about whether it will wash best in a solution of naphtha of gasoline. I—"

"But— I was speakin' of wather," Officer McGuiness interrupted.

"Water!" The suit of clothes literally bounded upright. "Why—why bless my soul! I dissolved the reagents in water. Water will take it off, of course! Here—" There was a brief pause and suddenly a neatly engraved bit of paper was seemingly floating just below the end of a sleeve extended in Danny's direction. "McGuiness, you're a wonder. Take this as a little mark of my appreciation of your assistance. I— er— frankly, McGuiness, I never before realized that you had a scientific mind."

Officer McGuiness took it. He rose. "I'll be gettin' back on my beat now," said he. "But I'm shure glad to have been of assistance to ye, perfissor, an' I'm glad I understand th' sityation, or I reckon I'd be spendin' this here now to have a doctor examine my eyes."

"Well— all's well that ends well," remarked the bathrobe.

Danny, moving toward the hallway, paused.

"Thrue for ye, Mister Sargent, an' if you'll accept th' suggestion— maybe besides washin' yer hands an' faces, ut would be as well to use a little wather on th' front of th' house."

____________________

4: Not Quite Dead

Laurence Donovan

1885-1948

Private Detective June 1942

"GRAVE DIGGER" DOYLE conned over the information he had as he drove recklessly toward Malibu Beach. A woman's voice had tipped him off by phone that he could, if he hurried, have an exclusive story on the forthcoming murder of Marilyn Moore! It was crazy enough to be possible.

He hadn't had to dig up the dope on the glamorous Marilyn Moore. Every newspaper man in L. A. could recite it. It ran through his mind.

"Marilyn Moore only glamor girl resident at Malibu Beach who was not a movie star. Reputed to be heiress to millions. Residing with and guarded by her uncle, Luke Saunders, an old grouch.

"Known to be generous, having befriended and taken into her home one Larch Sells, down-and-out movie director, who was trying for a comeback. She always referred all newspaper interviewers to her late father's attorney, Samuel Crosser, who managed her reputed fortune.

"Nearly always accompanied in public by her Spanish, or Mex, maid and companion, one Rita Ibenez. Much publicized, but claimed she did not wish to go into pictures."

Apparently there had been neither murder nor other excitement inside the barbed wire of Malibu Beach when "Grave Digger" Doyle climbed from his car.

"And if Marilyn Moore's to be murdered, why in all hell should I be picked for an exclusive?" murmured Doyle, as he arrived at the elaborate, fifty-grand Marilyn Moore cottage.

FIVE minutes later he decided it was worth being kidded just to be here. The personal murder tip-off was screwy, but the ride paid off in just a view of this number with the baby blue eyes, the baby innocent mouth, and everything but a baby's brand of class-A knees.

She had a way of cocking her smoothly platinumed head to one side that did things to her shoulders and brought out her tightly bound breast that wasn't the least bit babyish either. She knew it, too, just as well as she knew her baby blue stare would knock them dead on glamor row.

But all that didn't keep the Grave Digger from shooting his direct question at point-blank range, even as he memorized all of her luscious details for future meditation on the lonely ghost watch.

"Who wants to murder you, honey, and why?"

That got her, but not the way the Grave Digger hoped or expected.

"It's short acquaintance, let's see—" She glanced at a studded wrist-watch as expensive as a mink coat. "Only two and one-half minutes. You call me honey as if you'd trotted me on your knees for years, and you expect me to answer an extremely personal question. Might I inquire in turn, Mister Doyle, who put you up to this, and why? And by the way, what is your business ?"

THE heavy knife thucked across the room from one of the open French windows that were really doors. The Grave Digger's only warning was a gleaming flash that threw him forward instinctively. His weight knocked the girl aside, but the burning agony in his shoulder came from the point of the knife going all the way to the bone.

He whirled toward the window, again by instinct. The second thrown knife whizzed by his head. The girl uttered a stifled and choking scream behind him and he heard her soft body fall.

He was in the open window with one jump, outside with another, and in spite of the pain in his shoulder he had the police automatic from its holster and had blasted three shots at the shadowy figure before it ducked around the corner of the Malibu Beach cottage.

He tripped and fell over an invisible wire rack placed for some climbing nasturtiums. When he got up, clawing and cursing, getting his gun out of the sand, a car was already thrumming away along the Roosevelt Road, going fast toward Santa Monica.

The knife in his shoulder hurt the raw flesh. He jerked it out with an oath, careless of possible fingerprints and jammed it, blade first, into his side pocket.

Men's voices were shouting questions from a couple of cottages. From the upper floor of the glamor girl's own shack a man called out.

"Marilyn? You down there? What was that— that reporter? Marilyn! This is Larch! Do you hear me?"

YOU didn't cover police for ten years in tough L. A. and its movie starlit environs without learning your way around. You didn't rate the name Grave Digger Doyle without having earned it.

Digger Doyle had a rep for coming in first with a murder story, if he had to commit assault and battery along the way. But this was a bad spot! Nota murder to be taken lightly.

Marilyn Moore, heiress and new kind of glamor girl in this winter of wartime jitters, might be a nice exclusive yarn as a Homicide case. But this was a little too damn exclusive.

"That was Larch Sells, the busted movie director, who called, and he knew I'm a reporter," muttered Digger. "Her camera-smashing, news-hating uncle, Luke Saunders, is somewhere about."

Digger Doyle was back inside the French window. He had one sickening flash of the lovely Marilyn lying upon a hand-woven grass rug. He was looking at her shapely class-A knees where her flimsy skirt had hiked up when the whole house blacked out.

"That second knife got her," groaned Digger.

Rita Ibenez, the Mex maid, had admitted Digger to the house. The maid called out shrilly as the lights went blotto.

"Marileen? Where are you, darleeng? What ees eet happen?"

A chair was overturned in a nearby room. A man cursed loudly.

"Damn the lights! Rita! Find a fuse! Did Marilyn go out with that scandal-hunting newspaper man?"

Digger had seen and heard this Uncle Luke Saunders at some of the night spots. There was no mistaking his hard, cackling voice.

Digger's brain recorded the fact that that made two men who had known he was a reporter. Larch Sells, the down-and-outer, living on the girl's generosity, and now this Uncle Luke.

"Hell an' Christmas!" muttered Digger. "No one here should have known I'm a reporter. Marilyn Moore herself didn't know it. Could be someone wants me personally to be found there with a corpse."

He felt quickly for the girl's pulse. There was none. So he slipped an experienced hand against the girl's breast.

If there was a heartbeat, his own pulse was pounding too much in his tingling fingertips to detect it. Digger had but one thought now. Someone, probably right here in this house, was behind his tipoff to come here to be the witness to a murder.

DIGGER DOYLE went into action. Before Uncle Luke Saunders, Rita, the Mexican maid, or anyone else could reach the black sun porch, he was running along hard-packed sand of the beach. He held the light body of the girl in his wiry arms, with her platinum head upon his shoulder.

Digger came onto the Roosevelt Road a dozen cottages away. Residents of other cottages were running toward the darkened Marilyn Moore place. The lights of the murder cottage flashed on.

Uncle Luke Saunders proclaimed a definite and damning accusation to the world.

"Somebody call the cops! Marilyn's been murdered! She's been kidnaped by Digger Doyle, a Chronicle reporter! Block the highway!"

"So Uncle Luke knows the girl is dead," said Digger grimly. "And he names me personally. But how would he know she's dead? Baby, someone will be needing a corpus delicti, and it may be Uncle Luke."

The Roosevelt Road was lighted, but Digger had parked his small, press car in the darkness under a spreading pepper tree. He reached the car undetected.

She might be very dead, but there was still something about the glamorous Marilyn that caused Digger to deposit the lovely body gently in the coupé seat. As he got under the wheel, all hell sirened from up the road in the direction of Santa Monica.

Digger left his head lamps dark. He turned the car in the wide high- way, his mind upon a nearby canyon side road. As the lovely Marilyn slumped over against his shoulder on the turn, Digger had a cold, clammy feeling.

He had a reputation as a "grave digger" on murder yarns, but this was his first experience at snatching a corpse. Wait till Bunny Roth, the city editor, and Captain Hemple, of Homicide, got this on him. There would be hell, brother!

His impulsive kidnaping of the body had seemed a hot idea at the moment, but it had gone cold on him now. The night sounded as if all of L. A.'s minions of the law had been lying in wait ready to pounce, as Digger turned on his lights in the canyon road.

A glance at his silent passenger did him no good. Her platinum head lolled too far back. Her face and throat were white, and still wonderful.

But there was a crimson blotch just below the white valley of lovely flesh over the tight bandeau. It was apparent that the death wound had been directly in the heart.

"But," questioned Digger suddenly, "what the hell happened to the knife? Did someone have time to snatch it away while I was outside the porch shooting at the killer?"

Digger eluded screaming cars on back roads, and reached a road through the oil derricks of Venice, the next beach spot to Malibu. He had no definite plan. He was sure of but one thing.

He had been personally called by phone and tipped off to go to Marilyn Moore's cottage. His unknown informant had said "there would be a murder," and upon this fantastic note had cut the connection.

So the whole layout had been framed by someone to take him in.

"But they'll have to catch their corpus delicti before they can work out whatever screwy idea is behind all this," said Digger. "And my one out is to discover who the hell is the most anxious to find the body."

Digger decided then upon his next move. He grinned as he came to it.

"I didn't rent that Hermosa Beach cottage to keep house with a corpse," he said grimly. "But Nicky isn't coming down until the weekend and I didn't give my right name."

NICKY wouldn't have been called a glamour girl. But she was red-readed and cute. She was the Chronicle's crazy gal photographer. And Nicky had thought it would be a grand idea if she and Digger could play at housekeeping on holidays, not knowing when the draft would haul him in.

Hermosa was ten miles from Malibu Beach. Digger parked the car among a whole block of empty cottages. Not one in fifty was occupied in winter.

Digger thought, Lord help him if Nicky could see him now! But when he had the glorified body of Marilyn Moore inside, Digger could have a few needed drinks and think more clearly.

The girl's soft body seemed heavy. Digger had almost forgotten his stabbed shoulder and the weakening loss of blood.

He found the living room couch in the darkness and placed Marilyn's still warm body upon it carefully. His hand touched the smooth, platinum head, and then he recoiled as if the corpse had bitten him.

"Oh, darling—"

Just like that. A long, sighing murmur. And for the first time in a spotty and girl-checkered career Digger felt the soft arms of a "corpse" slip quickly about his neck, and had his face pulled suddenly down to meet the parted, hungry lips that were cold enough for the dead, but very much alive in another and extremely satisfying way.

"Where are we, sweet? Why is it so dark—?"

Digger almost gagged as he heard the murmured words, felt the rounded chin snuggle close to his ear, and found his own instinctive kiss seeking a soft throat that was just above that crimson stain of death where a knife had pierced the girl's heart.

Digger freed himself, although he almost didn't at that. For Marilyn's sweetly fashioned body was quivering, trembling, and her arms were tightening.

And then she screamed. That was almost too much. Only some instinct of self-preservation caused him to clamp his hand over her mouth, for he still had that ghastly feeling that a corpse had kissed him in a dream, then the girl had screamed with realization that she was dead, that a knife had split her heart.

His senses were rocked, but hard sense had been too long a part of the Grave Digger to slip far. He had it now. That second knife had missed her. She had been out cold, fainting from fear, and the blood from his own shoulder had dripped upon her bosom as he had bent over her.

"Be quiet," he said, still restraining her attempt to scream again. "You're all right. I'm Digger Doyle. An attempt was made to murder you with a knife, but it seems to have missed. I got you away because I thought you were dead."

Back came that cool sense with which she had responded to his first question, about who would want to murder her, and why?

She ceased to struggle. She lay quiet as Digger told her everything that had happened, up to this minute here in his rented cottage at Hermosa Beach.

"And now what about some answers, honey? We leave off the lights just in case. I have to return you, of course, but now that we are here, suppose you answer my original question. Who wants to murder you, and why?"

"When I've bandaged your shoulder," she said calmly, but he had padded the knife stab and it had stopped bleeding.

"That'll keep, but Cap Hemple and the Homicide Squad will be going nuts. And seeing I just happened to take it on the chin, or the shoulder, for you, perhaps you owe me a yarn, baby."

"You're a nice guy, you know that, Digger," she said softly. "Surely, I'll do all that a little girl can, and possibly a bit more. How about beginning where we left off, with another kiss for the lady, honey? You called me the name first, you know."

Well, he had been around some, and then some. He had met them one way and another, and always they were different. But this gal with the flock of folding money, as widely reported, was something like had never been sandwiched into the middle of a nutty murder case that hadn't turned out to be murder— not yet.

"With all of my best for one swell gal," said Digger, and accepted what the funny little gods that pursue police reporters had provided.

Yet glamorous Miss Millions-or-so had been so calm about it, he got something of a shock from what happened. Her lips were no longer cold. Her arms demanded fiercely and it wasn't the stab in his shoulder that made him dizzy now.

The darkness became sweet and hot. He no longer had to keep a mere memory of the Class-A knees and a little bit more he had seen for lonely ghost watches of the future.

There was more, much more.

But that couldn't go on. The distant pealing of a police siren made sudden impact upon his brain. He came back from one delightful reality to another kind that was grim and highly involved.

"I CAN tell you now what it may be, darling," she said, at first only whispering sleepily, but finding her voice and sitting up beside him in the darkness.

"First, I haven't any millions, Digger," she said when she had quieted. "Only some thousands. And most of that went into a life and endowment insurance policy a month ago, to do something you'd never guess."

"I wouldn't even shoot loaded dice and expect them to come up seven after what's happened, honey. I can only hope there's a yarn in it that won't hurt you, an' that it'll save my spotty hide from being tanned and tacked up in the police morgue."

"Then, Digger darling, most of my supposed fortune, trimmed down by the war, went into a quarter of a million insurance policy for my baby, now two years old," she said quietly.

"Your baby— two years old— hell and high water, honey! It's a yarn, and what a yarn, but there goes your glamor and your—"

"It doesn't matter," she interrupted. "It's all right about the baby. She had an all right daddy, if that's what you're thinking about. Before the war and the RAF got into his blood. He was one of the first to go. Trying to build up what my father left me was Uncle Luke's idea, and I was really hoping for a chance at the movies, but playing hard to get. See?"

"Smart," commented Digger. "But tonight? I was called to see a murder, your murder, to be exact. And your Uncle Luke, and one other man knew I was there, and who I was, although you didn't. How come ?"

"Uncle Luke? That's strange, but it fits in. Don't get this wrong, Digger. I think my Uncle Luke's grand underneath, for all he's been putting on the Groucho uncle act. He couldn't— but, Digger. Since I took out that insurance, Uncle Luke has been getting some mail that has puzzled me."

"Like what?"

"Folders on South America and letters from owners of expensive cars who can't get tires and want to sell the cars cheap, and a whole flock of advertisements of other things that Uncle Luke never went in for—"

"Wait a minute," interjected Digger. "Uncle Luke showed you this mail ?"

"No, but Rita, that's my maid and companion, came onto it where Uncle Luke had hidden it, I mean the letters, on a shelf in one of his closets," said Marilyn. "And some- how, I've begun worrying about Lana, that's my baby, who is up on a farm above Santa Barbara. I wonder—?"

"I'm not wondering or waiting another damn' minute," cut in Digger. "Hell, brother! What a story, but there's a lot of work to do and you must stay right here, honey! Baby, you're a corpse! Yeah, there must be a corpse, and I have to be on the spot as a body-snatcher, or at least a kidnaper!"

"Whatever you say, Digger. But surely my uncle—"

"The others at the cottage tonight, honey?"

"Well, they wouldn't mean anything," she said. "Larch Sells, the movie director Uncle Luke picked up down and out, and has been helping along. Samuel Crosser, who was my father's lawyer, and Rita Ibenez, my companion."

"And possibly it was Uncle Luke who suggested the endowment or life insurance for the baby?"

"Well, no, he didn't. I think it was Larch Sells who first put the idea in my mind. But Larch is such a nice person, Digger. He only wants to come back and— well, he says when he does, my baby should have a living father."

Digger had himself a long drink. He was glad he had not lighted up the cottage.

"You're a hundred percent on brains, honey," he said. "You'll stay here a few hours. Say you have a few drinks, and go to sleep as if you were in your own little bed, baby?"

"Surely, darling," she said softly, touching his face. "Kiss me again, Digger, I'll do anything you say—"

A magnesium bulb splashed light all over the place. A camera clicked where the door had been opened softly.

"Now isn't that just too sweet," said a venomously purring voice.

NICKY, the demon camera girl, was all redhead. She was cute, with all of her parts fitted just right. Her mouth was a slash of red now and her eyes were a blue blaze as she slapped on the room light button.

"Sweet!" she said again wickedly. "Now if the Million Dollar Malibu Beach doll will stand up long enough to shake her skirt down a few inches nearer her knees, I'll slap her lipstick clear behind her ears! I said, get up! And button your blouse—!"

Nicky's camera hit the floor so hard it bounced, and she hissed not unlike a cat as she sprang. Digger backhanded her just in time, but pulled his punch so his arm only blocked her.

"Hold it, Nicky! You got the wrong slant! Marilyn—"

"Marilyn? Don't tell me you've only been grave-digging this time!" Clawed nails dug suddenly at Digger's face. "You're on the general alarm all the way from Pasadena to Long Beach for murder an' kidnaping, an' you come up with this— this— I sure can play the right hunches!"

"But Nicky, angel—!"

"Just you an' me says you, an' it'll be cozy for the two of us playing house together so it won't look like you're tryin' to beat the draft—" Digger got her claws out of his eyes and his hand over her mouth. He remembered to kick the camera so hard it smashed against the wall. If Bunny Roth ever saw that plate? "Now will you listen, brat!"

THEN he told her all, up to and beyond a certain interlude, including Marilyn's baby, and Larch Sells, the movie director who was trying to come back and wanted to be the baby's second father. And he thought of it then, and pulled the heavy-bladed throwing knife from his pocket.

He took on another little lesson in gals then. He knew you could beat some of them, and they would come crawling. Now he found out you could even be suspected of two-timing them, if you could ring in a real baby and pour it on, and Digger could pour.

Nicky wrenched away from him, going to Marilyn.

"You poor dear!" she cried out. "You'll have to overlook it, darling! I guess I got a wrong idea, but Digger'll fix everything for you! And I'll help—"

And damned if Nicky wasn't down beside Marilyn, an arm around her, and buttoning the crimson-stained blouse.

Then she was up and blazing away again.

"Well, what are we waiting for, Digger? The cops are looking for your car, but my sedan hasn't any press sticker! Let's go!"

Digger flicked out the cottage lights.

"Don't be nuts, brat," he said. "This is a lone wolf's job. No, wait. Maybe you've got something, Nicky. You can come along. Marilyn, you'll be okay?"

Marilyn's voice was low and full of something, perhaps only regret, and perhaps a little of "if I had only met you sooner."

"I'll be okay, Digger. Nicky, you're swell to understand."

WHATEVER Nicky understood, Digger was still in the driver's seat. He got out of her sedan at a lonely spot on the road across the grimy field of oil derricks.

"Who's nuts now, Digger?" said Nicky as he came back. "Why all the oil?"

He had walked through a sump hole almost to his knees. His trousers and shoes were black and sticky.

"Take the wheel, Nicky," he said. "Malibu Beach, and step on it!"

"Now I know you're nuts," she said, but stepped on it.

The unmarked sedan passed four prowling police cars. It went un- noticed. The cops were looking for a mad police reporter and a body. Nicky was a body, but she was alive and driving.

"Stop here," said Digger, as a closed, boarded up cottage, in the queer shape of a boat, showed up on the beach.

All around the closed cottage was sand as white as flour. It had been trucked all the way from Carmel, near Santa Cruz. And it was the only "flour white" sand on any California beach, except that single, half-mile beach at famed Carmel.

All other Southern California beach sand, including Malibu, was olden yellow. No doubt the one-time movie star owner of the closed cottage had a mental quirk. But the white sand had been brought here just to make her different.

She was so different that all of Malibu Beach residents took her to their hearts, so to speak, for they, too, believed they were different.

"Digger, what now?" wondered Nicky.

"Come on, brat," he said. "You'll have to do for a body. Play you're bait for a murderer who would kill an innocent baby and you won't mind the wear and tear."

He explained more in a few brief words. Nicky relaxed. Holding her under the arms, he pulled her along with her very nice legs dragging in the white sand, all the way to a little shack out behind the closed cottage.

And then he picked her up and carried her back in his arms. White flour sand stuck to his oily trouser legs and his shoes. Evidently the police hunt was dead in the vicinity of Malibu Beach and the Marilyn Moore cottage.

Digger waited while Nicky drove on. She was back in a few minutes.

"They're all there at her cottage, Digger," she said. "That is, all but Rita Ibenez, the maid. There's only one copper posted, and he's half asleep. I asked for pictures, but her Uncle Luke Saunders slammed the door in my face. They're a worried lot, Digger."

"They'll be more worried," said Digger grimly. "You see, Nicky, they have a murder the way someone wanted it, but a Homicide without a body is not what it should be."

"You be careful, Digger," cautioned Nicky.

"An' darling," she said, "I still want to play house."

He kissed her and said, "You be ready with your extra camera. Wait down the road a hundred yards."

DIGGER was right beside the lone policeman on guard before he made a sound. He coughed and the copper pivoted, his chin sticking right into Digger's driving punch. Digger hated to hit him the second time, but he had to be out for several minutes.

He put the sleeping copper behind some rose bushes.

Uncle Luke Saunders, beady-eyed, bony of face, a hard old man with too much Adam's apple, opened the door. The light was full on Digger, but the way Uncle Luke said, "Well, what is it?" he knew Uncle Luke did not know him.

Digger jammed his police gun hard into Uncle Luke's stomach. Uncle Luke would have cried out, but Digger said, "Don't get any ideas! I can burn only once, whether it's kidnaping or homicide! On in, Uncle Luke, and let's see the others!"

A big, young man with anxious eyes and trembling hands said, "What is this—?"

"Quiet, Larch," said Uncle Luke. "It's Digger Doyle, the kidnaper. And he—"

"Shut up!" snapped Digger, looking at a dark, dapper little man who was getting out of a chair and peering through thick-lensed glasses.

The dark, little man said, "What is wrong? You say this is the killer? This is Digger Doyle?"

Digger let him ask all of it before he spoke.

"That's right, friend," he said, and—"

But the slim, dark man was moving toward a phone on a table.

"You can go just so far, Doyle," he said. "I am Samuel Crosser. I'm calling the police. Your gun doesn't bluff me."

The cold nerve of the little lawyer made it tougher than Digger had expected. But there was a murderer on the loose, or at least one man who believed he had killed Marilyn Moore.

Digger snapped a shot at Samuel Crosser's hand reaching for the phone. The lawyer groaned and Digger pushed Uncle Luke down into a chair.

Larch Sells made a sudden reach for his pocket, but seemed to think better of it.

Digger was snarling. He was fairly sure Captain Hemple must have given him a tough rep. For that matter, Captain Hemple would like nothing better than to pin a murder or a kidnaping rap on Digger Doyle.

Nursing his bleeding hand, Samuel Crosser said, "You crook! Kidnaping's a capital offense. Marilyn's probably dead, or you wouldn't be here—"

"Keep that in mind, Crosser!" snarled Digger. "I can't cook any more for one thing than another! Someone else started this racket! Well, I'm hooked in, an' I'm collecting! See?"

"You whelp!" cackled Uncle Luke Saunders. "Is my niece alive? What do you want? Is it money? What have you done with her?"

"Now we're getting somewhere," said Digger. "You want Marilyn Moore, don't you? I'm the only one in L. A. who knows where she is. You're right. I want money. I want twenty G's. I've had too much of the cheap newspaper racket. This lifts me out."

"But where is she?" insisted Uncle Luke. "Twenty thousand? Yes! Yes! Tell us where to find her, and if she's alive, she'll need care right away! You fiend—!"

"Easy," cautioned Digger.

He had wasted all the time he had to spare. And he had watched their eyes go over him. That was enough. They couldn't have missed that "flour white" sand.

"A'right," grunted Digger. "Have the money in cash. I'll phone you at six in the morning. She's in a place where no one will find her, dead or alive, until I talk. I made sure of that. And as I leave, you sit tight."

He backed toward the door, his gun level.

"I'll know if you've spilled to the police before morning," he said. "Then you'll never see her again: Somebody picked the wrong guy when I was rooked into this thing."

WATCHING Larch Sells, Digger turned just in time to see Rita Ibenez. She was standing back in a doorway, her black eyes blowing, watching him.

Digger shivered. He was convinced that if Rita Ibenez had had a gun, he would have got it right there. He had another idea fast.

"You, Rita!" he said. "Come with me! You may be my little guardian!"

Larch Sells started from his chair, his hands clenched, but he sank back when the Mex girl spoke quickly.

"It weel come," she said. "You weel take me to Marileen?"

"I'll think about it," said Digger. "Just walk ahead of me, Rita. Remember, a spill to the cops, and no one will ever see Marilyn again, dead or alive. That's how sure I am. Adios, and sit tight."

The three men, Uncle Luke Saunders, Larch Sells, and Samuel Crosser stayed as if frozen to their chairs.

"For God's sake, Doyle!" burst out Larch Sells. "If they pay, promise you'll not hurt Rita!"

Digger laughed harshly. He left on that, worried some about the copper in the rose bushes. But he was still out of circulation.

NICKY stared hotly at Digger as he urged Rita Ibenez into the car.

"How you pick them up, I don't know," she said. "Now what good can she do?"

"None whatever," said Digger sharply, and crunched his fist on the Mex girl's chin.

He caught her as she fell, and picked up the heavy-bladed knife she had tried to use. He had caught the gleam of the weapon just in time as she had turned at the moment he was helping her into the car.

"And that answers what became of the knife that missed Marilyn," he said. "But we'll have other answers fast. Nicky, how did the radio calls say Marilyn was killed or hurt?"

"Why, the police gave out she was shot," said Nicky. "Everyone heard shooting, and there was blood on the floor after you had taken her away."

"That may make it just dandy, Nicky," he said. "You'll tie up the careless little lady in the car, and come back for me. You get yourself set off to one side of the empty cottage with your picture box, and maybe there'll be action stuff."

He slipped from the car where the white sand showed around the lone cottage that looked like a beached boat. Nicky went on down the road and he saw her turn off, before the car lights went out.

It was less than a mile from the Marilyn Moore cottage. But Digger worried when he had waited nearly half an hour.

"Hell! They couldn't have missed that white sand," he grunted.

Several cars passed, but none were of the police. Evidently the copper was still sleeping in the rose bushes.

Digger crouched just inside the little shack back of the closed cottage. He stiffened suddenly as a shadow moved around the sand in the darkness, coming toward the shack.

The shadow reached the half opened shack door and flashed a light. Digger, fully in the beam, rode it straight with a smashing fist wrapped around his automatic.

He pulled the fallen prowler inside the shack with, "One down, and a couple to go."

But he was caught by the flaming of a gun from the doorway before he could turn. The man with a pistol was no expert. Digger threw himself sideways and headlong at the gunman's knees.

As they crashed, Digger regretfully cracked him over the skull, a smart tap that caused him to drop a cheap revolver, but didn't quite put him out.

"Two down!" grated Digger, spreading the light of the fallen torch. "Larch Sells and Uncle Luke! Now—"

So many sirens screamed it sounded as if the police had brought the FBI and part of the coast defense army. It looked liked it, too, as armed men sprang from screaming cars.

Digger saw everything from police revolvers to Tommy guns encircling the white sand. Then another car skidded from the road into the sand.

Cute little Nicky jumped out, sprawling under a dozen flash-lights and beams from cars. Her shapely legs, the way she fell, were distracting.

"Here's the snatcher!" roared the voice of Captain Hemple, surging toward Digger with his gun drawn. "So you really dig a grave this time, Doyle! Murder, kidnaping, extortion, and you'll fry brown!"

"Yeah, he's killed her," said a sharp voice behind Cap Hemple. "He said he would, but all I could do lawfully was call the police. He's probably got her body buried in the sand, or—"

"Hold it!" With blood streaming from his nose, Uncle Luke Saunders cackled harshly. "She isn't here! He tried to kill us!"

Larch Sells was rubbing his swollen chin. He came out of the shack, weaving drunkenly.

"He's killed her sure," said Larch Sells.

The down and out movie director continued: "We tried to get to him, to find her, hoping she was still alive."

Digger saw Captain Hemple turn to the man behind him.

"How does it happen these two men came ahead of the police, Mr. Crosser?" he demanded.

"I warned them not to do it," said Samuel Crosser, the dark, little lawyer. "I—"

Nicky was up, and she was rolling Rita Ibenez from her car, all bundled up in ropes. Cap Hemple had his gun in Digger's stomach.

Digger said slowly, "I didn't kill her, but she's dead. The murderer jumped me at her cottage, hit me over the head, and he must have used my gun to shoot her."

Samuel Crosser blustered out,

"That's a lie. The killer threw knives and—"

The little attorney stopped abruptly. Digger smacked Cap Hemple's gun to one side, made a jump, and punched Crosser solidly.

"That's absolutely right, Crosser," said Digger, holding him from falling in a twist-arm grip. "And everyone else thought she was shot. Sure, I demanded twenty G's, and I warned three of you if you called the police you would not find Marilyn Moore alive."

Cap Hemple's men ringed Digger.

"Her Uncle Luke Saunders and Larch Sells wanted to save her, so they followed a trail to the only place I could have got white sand on my trousers," said Digger. "But you, Crosser, you called the cops, being sure I'd hear the sirens and carry out my threat."

"That's all a damn lie!" raged Crosser. "I'm Miss Moore's lawyer!  I had to protect—"

Digger jerked one of Crosser's thin hands up, holding it. He showed ridged callouses along his thumb. "No one but a professional knife thrower ever carried those marks, Crosser," said Digger, bringing to view two knives. "You threw by the pointed blades, so probably there are no prints. But I think Rita Ibenez—"

"Ramon! Ramon! Don't be treeked!"

Rita Ibenez, the maid, screamed from the ground. Uncle Luke Saunders swallowed hard and got out words.

"So that's why you kept reminding me of a manslaughter rap years ago?" exploded Uncle Luke. "That was it, Crosser! You had my niece insured for a quarter of a million, for the baby! And the baby is on a farm you picked out! With Marilyn and the baby out of the way, that money would have come to me, only there would have been that old manslaughter rap for you to hold over my head!"

Nicky straightened from beside Rita Ibenez.

"Samuel Crosser is Mex, and was or is Ramon Ibenez, the husband of Rita," said Nicky. "What a yarn. And she called Digger Doyle, because Crosser needed a quick newspaper story as to a murder, and believed Digger would dig in as usual and probably fix the crime upon Uncle Luke Saunders or Larch Sells."

"Holy cow!" roared Captain Hemple. "All this time, is Marilyn Moore dead or alive? And anyway, Digger, you obstructed justice! You kidnaped Marilyn Moore!"

"Ask Marilyn Moore. She's safe enough, in my own cottage," said Digger. "Let me go, and I'll bring her along in an hour."

Redheaded Nicky smiled a little.

"Come along, Captain Hemple, and we'll make it a party," she said. "Digger might forget to come back. Marilyn's probably sleeping in his bed. You see, Cap Hemple, Digger and I rented the cottage. We're being married in a few days. Aren't we Digger, darling?"

"Hell, yes," muttered Digger.

"It took me long enough to persuade you!"

_________________

5: The Judge's Secret

Arthur Gask

1869-1951

Chronicle (Adelaide) 15 May 1941

London-born dentist and author Arthur Gask emigrated to South Australia in 1920, setting up as a dentist. He began his other career as a novelist in 1921. By 1933 he was so successful as a writer that he gave up dentistry. He published some 30 novels and numerous short stories. His most famous creation was the detective, Gilbert Larose.

IT was getting on for ten o'clock at night, and in a closely-curtained room upon the top floor of a high building a woman was gazing intently into a large crystal ball reposing upon a bed of black velvet in the centre of a small table. The only illuminant of the room was a small, red-globed lamp, close beside which an incense pastille was burning in a brass bowl. The woman's head was hooded in a dark shawl. A deep silence filled the room.

Seated opposite to the woman, on the other side of the table, a man was scowling sullenly. Well into middle age he was distinguished-looking, and, with his lofty brow, his shrewd, stern eyes and his resolute mouth and chin, he seemed very out of place as a client in a fortune teller's parlor. Indeed, none realised better than he himself that he was out of place there and he was furious for having come.

A judge of the Supreme Court, a man of the highest intellectual attainments and noted for his unsparing condemnation of all forms of chicanery and sham, he knew it would be a public scandal if it became known where he had been. But he was excusing himself that it was in contemptuous curiosity only he had come. He had been taking a long walk, as he often did at night when he had something particularly important to think about, and, overtaken by a heavy shower of rain, had sought shelter in the entrance hall of a large block of offices. Then, his eyes roving carelessly round to the notice board upon which were inscribed the names of the many tenants of the building, he had suddenly become interested with a name he saw there.

"Madame Laselle!" he had exclaimed. "Now where have I heard that name before? Ah, I remember! The fortune-teller, the woman who bamboozled Susan last week at Mrs. Travers's!"

How scornful he had felt at the recollection! His wife had returned from her friend's house with an amazing tale of the marvellous powers of a crystal-gazer, an un-French-looking woman with a French name and a decided Scotch accent, who had been hired for the afternoon to tell fortunes. She had mentioned many intimate details of his wife's family life, and, besides detailing happenings in her past, had confidently predicted much of what her future would be.

How contemptuously he had smiled as he had stood waiting for the rain to stop! How convenient it would be if someone would tell him about the future, and, particularly so, about that investment a friend of his was trying to induce him to make and about which he had to give his deci-sion on the morrow! It would certainly be most useful if he could learn what was going to happen to that gold mine in Western Australia!

Bah, what credulous creatures nearly all woman were!

Then, the rain continuing to pour down in torrents and chafing at his enforced inactivity, the idea had come to him suddenly that he would go up and see what this fortune-telling woman was like. It was almost certain she would keep evening hours and he was curious to determine how a woman speaking broken English with a Scotch accent could have managed to so impose upon an audience of educated, if naturally inclined to be credulous, women.

At first he had dismissed the idea with the utmost scorn, but the rain still going on, more to occupy his time than anything, he had thought it would be amusing to see exactly what the woman was like, and so, finally, he had mounted the four flights of stairs and rung upon her door.

"Madame Laselle, Vocational Adviser," he had read upon the brass plate, and, in answer to his ring, it had been she herself, as he had guessed at once, who had opened the door.

"I want to consult you," he had said, but she had only stared hard and suspiciously at him, makinh no sign for him to enter the room. So he had added drily— "I have nothing to do with the police and I am quite alone. It is quite by chance I am here. I was caught in this rain, and, waiting in the entrance hall, happened to catch sight of your name upon the notice board."

"Vat you know about me?" she asked with a frown.

"That you are a crystal-gazer," he snapped. He tried to keep the con-tempt out of his tones. "That you can read the past and the future."

After a few moments of further hesitation, she at last invited him to enter and very quickly, to his idea, the tom-foolery had begun. For a short while he was interested in the paraphernalia of charlatancy, the darkness, the red lamp, and the burning incense pastille, but his interest there soon waned and, soothed by the silence and the semi-darkness, his thoughts began harking back to the matter of the contemplated investment. Should he put his money in it? It was a biggish sum his friend was advising, and there to was no doubt a great, great element of risk in the venture. Now that the courts were up, too, his friend wanted him to fly back with him for a long holiday, and he was not over-partial to aeroplanes at any time. Yes, everything wanted a lot of consideration and—

But his thoughts were interrupted here, for the fortune-teller at last began to speak and in a few moments, as if in a dream and to his intense amazement, he realised she seemed to be warning him against the very matters which had been in his thoughts.

"I see," she droned slowly and in a husky monotone, "two paths stretching away before you and mooch vill depend upon vich vun you take. Zey are drawing close now and you must make a choice from vich; vunce chosen, you vill not be able to draw back. Vun leads down into ze bowels of ze earth. It go on and on, but zen stop all at vonce."

She considered for a few moments and then shook her head slowly. "N-o, zat is not ze path you must take, for zose who follow it vill have to turn back. It lead novere."

Her listener's face was screwed up in a heavy frown. Of course, she was giving him the usual patter she pave to all her dupes, but how strangely what she was saying fitted in! The pathway into the bowels of the earth might easily mean the entrance into a mine, and she was telling him it would not be a profit-able one to follow. She was suggesting the gold-bearing veins might peter out. It was certainly a remarkable coincidence!

She went on, droning more slowly than ever.

"I see a great roll of sky. It ees blue and high and vide and ze sun ees shining. Ah, but from far avay I see a storm ees coming. Black clouds are gazering." Her voice quickened. "A ship ees plunging and rolling as if in pain. No, it ees not a ship. It ees an aeroplane in zose clouds and it disappear, oh, it disappear in smoke." Her voice trailed away. "For ze moment all ees dark."

The judge's frown was heavier than ever. It was incredible, but the coincidence was there, too! Still, only just coincidences that she had first hinted about what might perhaps be a mine and then had specifically referred to an aeroplane.

Then, with a start he asked himself did she know who he was and was she only fooling him? But he answered the latter of the two questions on the instant. No, by no possiblity could she be fooling him for, even if she was aware who he was, she could not have known anything about the mining property in Western Australia or the suggested trip by aeroplane. Those matters were known only to himself, his wife and his friend.

The fortune-teller was addressing him directly.

"You, Monsieur, you go in no aeroplane. It vill be dangerous eef you do." The judge spoke bitingly. "It is always easy to give advice, and easier still to read the future. A child is safe in telling you what is going to happen, as no one is in a position to contradict him."

"Zat ees so," she agreed at once. She nodded darkly. "But sometime I tell ze past as vell as ze future."

"Then tell me my past," he scoffed. "It vill cost more money, for it take more of my nerve out of me," and upon his shrugging his shoulders con-tempuously, she turned once again to her crystal. Another long silence followed and the judge was about to tell her he couldn't stop when her monologue started again.

"I see long ago," she said, "a young man who row in a boat viz ozers. Eet is on a river and zere is many on ze banks. I do not see vot happen, for et fade avay. Zen I see a church viz many in eet and zis man who is older now ees standing viz a lady at his side."

"When I was married, I suppose!" commented the judge drily. "A hap-pening in the lives of most men and not difficult to guess!"

The woman took no notice of the interruption and, keeping her eyes intently on the crystal, went on, "Zee lady ees tall and fair. She have blue eyes and a noble face."

"Good shot!" murmured the judge, frowningly to himself. "That describes Susan right enough, but then it is the description of hundreds of thou-sands of other brides."

The woman continued—"Zen I see zis man, mooch older still, in a room which look like vun of a 'ospital. He look very ill and zere ees a nurse standing by ze bedside. She bend over him and stroke his forehead. She ees young and have dark eyes, zis nurse, and she ees of petite figure, but she ees beautiful and have a lovely little face. The man vatch her always ven she ees zere and his eyes follow her ven she move. She smile at him, and he smile back at her."

Again a silence ensued, for there was now no interruption by the judge. His eyes were wide and staring, his ruddy face had paled and his forehead was pricked over in little beads of sweat. It seemed that he could hardly get his breath. He was hanging upon every word she uttered.

She went on—"I see zis man and zis girl togezer many times. He hold her in his arms, he kiss her and—ah, ze darkness come and zis crystal show no more." Her voice rose sharply in excitement. "Vait, vait! Ze darkness clear and eet show zis girl again. It ees in ze street and zere ees an upset motor car and men are running tovards eet. Ze girl ees lying on ze ground. She ees all crumpled up and she does not move. Her face is very vite. A-ah, but she ees dead! She vill smile and kiss no more!"

A hoarse ejaculation from her client, and the woman rose abruptly to her feet, throwing a cloth over the crystal with one hand and switching on the electric light with the other.

"I tell you no more," she said. "Ze strain ees too great."

The judge spoke with an effort.

"What's the charge?" he asked hoarsely.

"Vot you like," she replied. "Vot you sink it vorth."

The judge threw down a pound note and rose sharply to his feet. His only thought now was to get away as quickly as he could. Of the strong character he was, his mind was in a panic because of what she had told him, and he wanted now to think as hard as he had ever had to think in his whole life. With a curt nod to the woman, he let himself out of the room and passed hurriedly down the stairs and into the street. The rain was falling heavier than ever, but he plunged into it, so oblivious to all discomfort that he did not even trouble to turn up the collar of his coat.

His mind was in a state of dreadful turmoil. God, by what means had the woman been able to uncover that so closely hidden secret of his life? It was im-possible she could have learnt it in the ordinary way, for not a soul in the world had ever been aware that he and Elsie were lovers. They had guarded every step they took. They had made certain there should be no discovery. His thoughts raced back along the years. His marriage, five and twenty years ago, had been one only of convenience, and Susan had been but a stepping stone in his professional career. Her people had money and influence.

Then when not far off 50, it was barely five years back, Elsie had come into his life. He had been taken ill with pneumonia and she had been his special nurse. He had fallen madly in love with her and she had returned his affection. After he had got well and left the hospital they had continued to meet in great secrecy until that terrible day when she had been killed in a motor accident. The crystal-gazer had described her exactly, dark-eyed, petite and with a lovely little face.

He could hardly think coherently. What did it mean? How had the woman been able to see everything in her glass? Was it then possible that after all there was truth in what he, in common with all educated men, had held to be a shameless fraud? Were there powers that the world regarded with scorn and contempt, simply because they did not understand them?

Arriving home, he found his wife had gone to bed and, proceeding into his study, he unlocked his desk and from beneath some papers in one of the bottom drawers abstracted a small photograph. It was that of the dead girl in her nurse's uniform and upon the back of it was written in an unformed school girl handwriting. "To one to whom I give all my love.—From Elsie Bowen."

A scalding tear furrowed down his cheek.

It was a long time that night before he closed his eyes, but before sleep came at last he had made up his mind to make an intense study of Occult Science and determine for himself if there were any truth in it.

In the morning he informed his friend that he would not be investing in the mine and that, therefore, his projected flight to Western Australia would not take place. Then, his disbelief that the future could be foretold having been so profoundly shaken by the disclosures the crystal-gazer had been able to make about his past, he was not at all surprised when the aeroplane in which he was to have travelled crashed, with all its occupants being killed. As he was now expecting, too, the following week the report of the expert upon the mining proposition was unfavorable and the shares slumped badly.

A few days later he paid another visit to Madame Laselle's rooms, but found she had left the building, with no one knowing to where she had gone. To his indignation, he learnt she had had to go because of the threatening of the police.

Then commenced an entirely new life for the judge, with him becoming an entirely changed man. Convinced now that there were forces in the world of which hitherto he had not dreamed, he became an ardent student of Occult Science and devoted all his leisure to acquiring knowledge of what are known as "The Secret Teachings of the East."

Much to his family's disgust, he gave up all social functions, apart from his duties in the courts, becoming almost a recluse. This state of things went on for several years, and then he received a dreadful shock, one destined to be as far reaching in its consequences for him as that he had received when he had paid his visit to the crystal-gazer upon that stormy night.

One evening after dinner, just as he was upon the point of retiring as usual to his study, his wife remarked casu-ally, "Oh, Horace, you remember my coming home fom Mrs. Traver's, one afternoon some years ago, full of the astonishing things a crystal-gazer, that Madame Laselle, had told me?"

The judge's heart stirred at the mention of the name.

"Yes, I remember," he replied. "She told you several things which had happened to you."

His wife nodded significantly.

"And I don't wonder she was able to." She laughed merrily. "Why, she was Robert's sister and so, of course, would have known all about me."

"I don't understand,'' frowned the judge. "What do you mean?"

"Well, this morning cook pointed out to me a piece in the newspaper which said that this Madame Laselle had been arrested in Adelaide, and she told me she had learnt some time ago that the woman's real name was Flora McCullum and, as I say, that she was Robert's sister. Now didn't I tell you at the time that she spoke her broken French with a Scotch accent?"

"But which Robert's sister?" asked the judge sharply, an icy shiver beginning to run down his spine.

His wife was amused.

"Robert, the butler we had at the time Robert McCullum, the man we used to think was always listening at the doors. Don't you remember you sent him away in the end because you caught him opening your desk when, one day, you had left your keys about?"

She went on talking, but her husband was no longer listening. He felt sick and stunned in mortification, for his mind had suddenly been illuminated with a great light. He swallowed hard. So he had been taken in as easily as the most credulous of those he had been wont to so despise. Without the slightest doubt the crystal-gazer had recognised him as her brother's employer and, from what the latter had told her of him and his household she had built up all she had been pretending to see in the crystal.

She had made out she had seen him as a young man in a boat race because her brother had, of course, mentioned the pair of sculls hanging upon the study wall. She had told him of the tall, fair girl of noble features who had been his bride because her brother had described to her the big photograph of the wedding group in the drawing room and, lastly, when searching through his, the judge's, desk, the man had come upon the photo, with the affectionate inscription on the back, and surmising a hidden attachment, had passed on the information there, again. It was public knowledge that he, the judge, had been an inmate of a private hospital for many weeks.

Then, about the goldmine and the projected flight to Western Australia, her brother had, of course, overheard all about them, and it had been just a guess that the plane would run into a thunderstorm— planes often did— and that the goldmine venture would turn out to be an unprofitable one— how often did they not? He went hot and cold in turns, feeling in the lowest depths of humiliation. From the tittle-tattle of a domestic servant passed on to common, uneducated woman who lived by her habitual cheating and deceit, he, who's life-work it was to weigh evidence, had been led, like the veriest simpleton, to envision a mighty world of occult mysteries to be explored.

He burst suddenly into a loud laugh.

"What are you laughing at Horace?" asked his wife.

"At the thought of how easily people are taken in, my dear," he replied, and then he astonished her by adding, "But come, now, I'm giving up all my studies for a while, so let's go to the pictures tonight."

______________

6: Murder Tees Off

Laurence Donovan

Spicy Detective Stories, Sept 1940

BOB CONANT’S prospective client landed in his arms, legs first. She was Wanda Hale. Conant had known her for several months as the prim little secretary to Mrs. J. Roller Morton, the aging, invalid wife of the tycoon of New Field valley. He had suspected she might have looks under her horn-rimmed glasses and her tightly combed hair.

But Conant had never even imagined she had such dandy legs. The big hands of the oil county detective slid along tapering curves. He had the sensation of his palms rubbing over snow-white velvet. He had to catch her that way, for she came plunging through bushes over a sharp bank.

The bushes hiked up and ripped her skimpy skirt. Conant’s hands gripped her just in time to check her fall, and just short of the peachy-pink froth of lace and silk enclosing her hips.

Conant weighed close to one-ninety, all hard muscles. Her un- expected appearance and swift descent rolled him to his back. ‘Her tight, secretarial hair-do went flying from its pins and the sun flickered on a tousled, reddish halo around the delicate oval of her face.

“Good gracious!” she gasped, her naturally red lips puckering with surprise. “I didn’t expect to meet you so suddenly, Mr. Conant.”

Her eyes, he could see now, were widely spaced, a liquid brown, and frightened. Conant’s coat was off, for the Oklahoma sun was batting close to a hundred. His thin silk shirt and her thinner silk waist, torn by the bushes, seemed like nothing at all between his muscled breast and the firmness of her bosom. He could feel the wild throbbing of her heart.

Conant’s gray eyes twinkled as his tingling skin chilled with the girl’s trembling nearness. He couldn’t have helped kissing her puckered lips, if he had tried, and he didn’t try. For five seconds Wanda Hale attempted to turn her head aside, then for another long five seconds her lips were parted, eager and responsive, and her arms clung about Conant’s neck,

He lifted her to her feet. “I can’t—can’t imagine what made me do that,” she said huskily. “Why, Mr. Conant—”

“Yeah,” he grinned. “It was kind o’spontaneous, but I can’t say I’m sorry. What happened, Wanda, to send you crashing down here into the rough? From what little I’ve known you, you’re not the excitable kind.”

SHE was fixing her little skirt the best she could, but there were still inches of lovely flesh showing above her rounded knees. “It’s Mr. Morton,” she said. “You’re his friend, and more or less in his pay as oil company detective, and I asked you to meet me here on the country club course because I didn’t want to be seen going to your office in New Field.”

“I can understand that,” he said, for New Field was a hell roaring, boomer oil town. “But what started you running?”

“I noticed two strange men following me,” said Wanda. “I slipped into the trees and bushes of the rough on the thirteenth green. The men tried to find me, but I threw them off. About Mr. Morton. He is about to commit a murder, Mr. Conant.”

“Everyone in New Field valley calls me Bob,” he suggested. “You haven’t been having a fantastic dream, have you, Wanda? Old J. Roller is as peaceful as they come.”

“He cleaned and loaded a revolver last night in his library, and he didn’t know I heard him talking aloud to himself,” she said.  “He was more upset than I’ve ever seen him, and he kept saying he would kill someone, but he didn’t speak any name.”

“He’s playing his afternoon round now?” questioned Conant. “You think he has a loaded gun on him?”

“Yes, I saw him on the thirteenth green as I got away from the two men watching me. I left Mrs. Morton in the car, where she could watch the players. I must hurry back, but you were the only one I could trust, and that’s why I phoned you to meet me here.”

They were in the scrubby woods, a short distance from the fourteenth green of the New Field Country Club. Voices of golfers could be heard calling out and laughing. The club course was nearly always filled at this hour.

Conant keened his ears for any movement near them and he scanned the bit of woods.

“You’d best get back to Mrs. Morton, Wanda,” he advised, and he was suddenly conscious that he wanted to prolong this interview. He had too damn’ much of a desire to take the slim, exciting body of Wanda Hale in his arms again, and somehow he imagined she was feeling the same way.

“Yes,” she said. “I must get some clothes from the clubhouse. Mrs. Morton will be impatient. Could you— would you meet me tonight, Mr. Conant? I’d like to know what happens, if you talk to Mr. Morton.”

“I’ll meet you,” he said instantly. “The name still is Bob. How about the lake boathouse, say at ten o’clock?”

Her eyes widened a little, but she smiled.

“There’ll be no one about at that hour,” she said softly. “I don’t— well yes, Bob. I want to know very much what you discover.”

She left him, moving as lightly as a deer, and skirting the outer fringe of the wooded rough, following the club driveway as she passed from his sight. Conant was starting toward the green, going through the small trees when a woman screamed. Another woman’s added her shrill voice of terror to the first outcry.

Some man shouted and other voices arose in a sudden bedlam of excitement. Conant lunged forward, seeing several figures running across the smooth, clipped grass of the fourteenth green.

“Good God! It’s J. Roller, he—”

“Stand back. Give him air—”

“Doc Simms— Doc Simms! Come back here, quick—!”

He was on the green now.

He saw fifty or more men and women centering toward a forming group near the middle of the course. With Wanda Hale’s apprehension for J. Roller Morton in mind, Conant wondered if there could have been a gunshot he had not heard.

His ears were keen. He was sure there had been nothing louder in the past few seconds than the crack of a clubhead on a ball. He snapped his eyes from face to face as he wedged in among the throng around a big man lying on the grass. Knowing every resident of New Field who frequented the country club, Conant became conscious of a pair of strange faces.

Thinking of Wanda Hale having been strangely trailed, he made a note to check upon these two men as soon as he learned more of what had happened. He wedged on into the group.

J. Roller Morton, tycoon of New Field valley, was as dead as. he would ever be. Blood streaked with gray oozed from a smashing wound that had cracked his skull over the right ear. Scarlet fluid threaded from his nose and mouth.

Old J. Roller’s big body lay nerveless and motionless. Death apparently had been instantaneous, Jim Colter, the oil company superintendent, had been playing the round with J. Roller.

“There wasn’t anyone closer to us than a hundred yards or more, back on the thirteenth,” said Colter. “No one called out, ‘Fore.’ It seemed to me that ball must have come out of the rough over to the right, but it was coming so fast I didn’t see it until I heard one awful crack, and J. Roller groaned and fell down. I saw the ball then bounce away.”

Dr. Thad Simms was a fussy, little man and nervous. He was kneeling beside old J. Roller.

“Couldn’t have killed him quicker if it had been a bullet,” he said, arising slowly. “Seems incredible that the toughest bone could be smashed like that by a golf ball that must have been dropping and nearly spent to be at the level of his head. It would be more credible if someone had driven that ball from only a few yards away.”

Doe Simms was looking straight at Colter. The oil super was dark-eyed, black-haired and swarthy. Conant saw a deep flush that might have been anger flood Colter’s neck and face.

“I get what you mean, Doc,” he said harshly. “And we were playing without caddies. J. Roller always insisted on packing his own clubs for the exercise. But the ball came from over in the rough close to the main highway, and I was so close to J. Roller that I heard the whistle of it before it struck him.”

Doc Simms was on his knees again, hand feeling J. Roller’s breast under his shirt, although there wasn’t a chance of a heart beat. Doc said, “What’s this? That’s a funny one.”

He was holding a newly polished. revolver he had taken from inside the dead J. Roller’s coat. There being no other law present, Conant stepped forward,

“I’ll take that, doc,” he said.

He thumbed open the gun. It was a six-shooter of an old pattern. Five cartridges fell into his hand. Old J. Roller had known how to load a gun to keep the hammer on a safety hole.

“What is it? Somebody said Uncle Roller was hurt— oh!”

THE girl who pushed in, speaking in a throaty voice, had a face a little drawn by too many nights of lost sleep, but darkly pretty and alluring, with midnight eyes like glowing coals, set off by curling black hair. Her short golf skirt and tight waist brought out breath-taking curves of a willowy figure that seemed to sway slightly as she spoke.

She was Sylvia Ames, the niece of old J. Roller. Her face went a little white, but Conant saw that her coppery, outdoor hands were steady enough on the handle of an iron that she must have been using to drive out of the rough. He noted quickly that she had come from the same direction as himself.

Sylvia Ames was silent, her mouth a grim, straight slash of red, as she was told what had happened. Conant did not speak, but his eyes were upon the girl’s face when she seemed against her will to half turn and scrutinize him closely.

Had she been over there in the scrubby woods of the rough, close enough to have seen and heard his meeting with Wanda Hale?

She turned away quickly, and Conant was sure she must have seen that meeting. He decided to let that rest for the time. Another little matter engaged him now.

Highly morbid interest had been holding all eyes upon the dead man. Conant eased back, glancing about for the two strangers he had noticed. They had withdrawn from the group, and he saw two men going among the trees, making toward the county highway.

Conant quested the ground. Apparently no one had thought of looking for the death ball itself. He saw a white, little sphere back of a man’s heels.

Conant adroitly got the ball between his number nines. He retrieved it so quickly that he believed he had been unnoticed. Then the intentness of Sylvia Ames’ glowing eyes fixed upon him made sure she had seen his find. She turned away, giving no more evidence of interest.

As Conant pocketed the ball, a bareheaded young fellow with a slick mane of almost baby yellow hair and bloodshot, hangover eyes, came around the edge of the group. Leaves caught on the bag slung over his shoulder indicated he had just come from the rough not far away.

He was Ralph Morton, the nephew of old J. Roller, and reputed to have been his favorite heir. Rumor had it, though, that J. Roller had been rumbling threats to disinherit his blond nephew since he had become involved with the wiles of a gorgeous trollop out of Tulsa, and had been hitting the wrong end of the percentage in the games at the High Hat gambling hell, New Field’s only gilded gyp joint.

Conant saw that Ralph Morton was more than a little drunk. But he saw the youth’s shoulders square up, and heard him swear savagely, as he saw the body of his uncle.

Then he heard young Morton say, “Dammit! I was in the rough, hunting a lost ball! I was playing around alone! I saw two women on the thirteenth green behind my uncle and Colter! They were both dubs, so that ball didn’t come from there!”

Conant thought Morton sobered quickly, possibly too quickly. Of all those about, Conant was aware that only Sylvia Ames and Ralph Morton seemed to have been in a position to have driven the death ball, and both were expert, long driving players.

Young Morton’s next outburst came as a surprise.

"Hell!" grated J. Roller’s nephew. "I don’t believe it was an accident! I—”

Doc Ames was the county’s deputy coroner. He interrupted, “If you know anything, Ralph, save it. This isn’t a time to be voicing groundless suspicions, I’ll talk to you privately later.”

Conant recalled that young Morton and Sylvia Ames were probably the only two persons who stood to benefit by old J. Roller’s death. Young Morton’s blurted, angry suspicion could be covering up. He could be drawing the reddest of all red herrings across the possible trail of a crime, the feigned accusation of possible murder coming from himself to direct investigation elsewhere.

“Conant!” called out Doe Simms.

But Conant was hurrying away across the green and gave no evidence he had heard. He did not want to divulge the little he already knew, until he discovered more. His thought right now was for Wanda Hale.

THE word of old J. Roller’s death had not already been flashed back to the clubhouse, Wanda would soon know of it. It was his hunch that it would be wise for her to keep silent concerning J. Roller’s mysterious purpose in carrying a loaded gun.

Conant saw the Morton sedan parked by itself just off the drive- way, among the trees where the aging and invalid Mrs. Morton al- ways enjoyed watching the play while J. Roller made his daily round. Conant was sure that Wanda would have returned to Mrs. Morton by this time, and if she had heard of J. Roller’s death, she would doubtless be either consoling her mistress, or be striving to break the news of the tragedy gently.

Drawn to the scene of the death, no one had apparently thought of the invalid Mrs. Morton or gone to the closed car in which she sat. Conant crossed among the trees. His eyes searched for Wanda Hale. He saw only Mrs. Morton sitting queerly and stiffly upright in the cushioned corner of the rear seat.

Conant’s spine suddenly went icy. He quickened his stride. As he opened the door, he saw that Mrs. Morton’s roundish, plump face had turned the color of purple clay. Her mouth sagged open. Her eye-lids were half closed, and the eye-balls were almost the same ghastly color as her skin.

Conant wasted no time feeling for the woman’s pulse.

“Apoplexy,” he muttered. “She’s been suffering with high blood pressure. Undoubtedly she heard and saw enough to know what happened. Perhaps she was watching J. Roller when he was hit. It was too much for—”

Conant ceased speaking abruptly. He shot probing glances all about. The scrub trees were thinly scattered here. There was no one near the Morton car, and there was no place of concealment for fifty yards or more in any direction. The highway lay a short distance off, white and shimmering hot under the one-hundred-degree sun.

“Well, bigod!” slapped from Conant’s tongue, as he peered more closely into the gruesome face of the dead woman.

He had been sure she had died swiftly, naturally, of apoplexy. A shock like that could have done it. But he knew now that she hadn’t. A single, red drop of blood glinted in the lash of the dead woman’s right eye.

Conant glanced quickly over his shoulder, made sure he was unobserved, then he touched a handkerchief to the drop, removing it.

“Murder,” he said softly. “And there won’t be a single clue to other than a natural death with that drop of blood gone. When the time comes, I can have an autopsy that’ll show where the death instrument went into the brain.”

For Conant was sure a pointed murder weapon had penetrated the brain. For sheer nerve in execution, this was as bold a murder as Conant ever had come upon. He knew that either a needle or some other point had been forced under the lifted eye-lid, between the eyeball and the rim of the socket.

Ruptured blood vessels gave the same effect as a stroke of apoplexy. The Japanese use a sharpened bamboo splinter, Conant recalled. In this case it might have been a steel needle, but it had been used by an expert.

Conant didn’t want to think as he did, but his suspicion was inescapable,

Once more the two persons who stood to benefit most by J. Roller’s death, and more surely by the coincidental death of his wife, named themselves in his mind.

RALPH MORTON, dissipated, and a little drunk, had come from the rough. Thinking it over, the young man had been rather slow to arrive on the scene, when excitement had been running over the golf course like a wave. Sylvia Ames? Dammit, was Conant’s thought. The hot-blooded, wild playgirl of New Field had known something she wasn’t telling when he had seen her. Those glowing eyes had been brooding, scrutinizing him, and watchful of every incident.

He was sure she had seen him pick up the deadly golf ball. He saw two women and Doc Simms crossing toward the Morton ear. As they came on, he took the death ball from his pocket and examined it closely. He grunted suddenly and moved out into the bright sunlight.  “A Red Seal, common enough,” he muttered, turning the ball over slowly. “A bit of hair and skin and blood. And not a single, damn’ abrasion or the slightest mark where a clubhead has ever touched. But—”

The ball was brand new. Evidently it never had taken the blow of a club, and certainly not such a drive as would have sent it shooting like an oversize death bullet. But there were several curious, straight little scratches along the sides of the hard rubber.

“Murder, two ways,” grated Conant, and turned to meet Doe Simms.

“She must have heard too much, and the shock came as swiftly as a bullet splitting her brain,” Conant said to doc. “Looks like apoplexy.”

Doc Simms nodded, making a perfunctory examination with nervous hands.

“I’ve been expecting her to go that way,” he said. “I had warned her against any excitement because of high blood pressure. But where is Wanda Hale? She seldom left her alone.”

Conant was sharply recalled to the fact that Wanda Hale had not returned. He said she might be at the clubhouse, some distance away, and promptly started in that direction. As he crossed the first green, he saw Sylvia Ames again.

The willowy, vivid girl had been going toward the Morton car, following Doc Simms. Conant saw her halt and turn to look after him. His cocked eye noted that she took two or three steps, as if to follow and overtake him, but for some reason she changed her mind and turned abruptly back toward the dead Mrs. Morton.

BOB CONANT’S insides felt frozen. The woman attendant at the clubhouse said she had not seen Wanda Hale.

“I’m sure she hasn’t been in the clubhouse at any time,” said the woman. “I did see her in the Morton car when Mr. Morton came up. Miss Hale was driving, and she turned back to park the car without getting out.”

Conant’s brain was doing queer flipflops. Wanda Hale had been followed when she had come to meet him. She had not reached the clubhouse. And it was certain she would not have voluntarily remained away from Mrs. Morton.

Conant heard the siren of a county police ear. He started to leave the clubhouse. Something inside warned him that the double murder of the Mortons had been too aptly timed to have been committed by other than the cleverest of crooks. Although young Ralph Morton and Sylvia Ames must come directly under suspicion, Conant was convinced that if either was involved, then the smartest of killers had been hired for the job.

“If this is what I believe it to be,” he said softly, “to broadcast an alarm over the disappearance of Wanda Hale would probably be her death warrant.” He added in a husky whisper, “if she isn’t already dead, and that means—”

Art Carlin, manager of the New Field Country Club who had a piece of several other enterprises in the oil boomer town, said, “Con- ant! Just a minute, Conant!”

Carlin’s eyes looked desperately worried, and smaller than ever above the bulging roll of his cheeks. He was broad, fat-paunched and nearly bald-headed. Anxiety rode his voice until he spoke haltingly.

“For God’s sake, Conant!” he exclaimed. “This accident to the Mortons is ruinous! I heard you asking for Wanda Hale! Do you think— has she disappeared? Conant, for the love of Pete what have you found out? Nobody seems to know who drove the ball that hit J. Roller!”

Carlin’s evident selfish thought of the business of the country club rubbed Conant the wrong way. Carlin stood there, locking his fat hands together.

“Nothing has happened to Miss Hale so far as I know, Carlin,” he said shortly. “Possibly she may have cut across the grounds and gone to the Morton home for something Mrs. Morton wanted. I don’t know who drove the death ball, and I have an idea that whoever did it was out in the rough, and doesn’t feel much like admitting it."

At that moment, young Ralph Morton strode into the clubhouse, and on across to the locker room. Carlin stepped close to Conant.

“I heard someone say J. Roller was carrying a loaded gun when he was killed,” he said. “I thought maybe— well— you haven’t heard of him having trouble with anyone, have you? If it turns out his death wasn’t an accident, I might as well close the club for—”

“To hell with you and your club!” snapped Conant. “Any time one of your members dies, I’ll bet you make a bee line for the dues book to make sure he’s paid up! I hear you have a piece of the High Hat club! It’d look smarter if you worried more about the hell that’s brewed down there!”

Carlin gulped air like a fish out of water. Conant turned and hurried from the club. He noted as he did that Carlin slid across toward the locker room.

“Probably he’ll try and pump Ralph Morton—”

Conant’s own words brought a sudden thought. He wondered how much young Morton owed in gambling debts. That might be an angle. Conant deliberately evaded the regular county police.

He had decided it would be useless to look for Wanda Hale in the vicinity of the club grounds. If she had been seized, he was convinced she would be held, if she were alive, in one of New Field’s many dives.

The sun had dropped. Conant drove furiously through gathering dusk toward the hell roaring town with its streets of oily, black muck. He was near the outskirts when a closed car meeting him, suddenly swerved, crowding him toward the shallow ditch.

Taken by surprise, Conant tried desperately to control the car with one hand, while he fished the automatic from his shoulder holster; snaky, blue fire tongued at him as the closed car’s fenders ground into his roadster. Conant slouched down, but a slug left a numb line across his scalp.

He could feel the blood well forth, as the roadster flipped into the ditch and plowed along on its side. It went all the way over on its top and Conant, dazed but still conscious, was thrown clear. The shriek of brakes hit his ears,

The closed car was stopping. There was no other car in sight at the moment. Conant heard a ear door slam. His quick wit informed him the probable reason he was wanted.

As feet pounded along the concrete, Conant flipped the death golf ball from his pocket. The open end of a tile drain pipe under the highway was only three or four feet away. Conant tossed the ball and heard it clunk dully inside the pipe.

He closed his eyes and played very dead. Two men were bending over him. Slitted eyes revealed the faces of the two strangers he had seen on the golf course. Conant was tempted to make a try for his automatic, or for old J. Roller’s revolver in his pocket.

A sudden kick that seemed to tear off an ear stopped that before he got his hands moving.

“Frisk him, grab it, and we’ll lam!” snarled one of the men.

Hands plunged into his pockets. They took his gun and J. Roller’s. Both men swore heavily when they failed to find the ball.

“Damn ’im!” said one. “Maybe he’s passed it along to someone else! We take him—”

A county police siren screamed from up the highway. The law car evidently was coming fast. Conant’s attackers left him on the jump. Apparently they did not care to be spotted alongside the wrecked roadster that would undoubtedly stop the police car.

“We'll have to pick him up later!” rasped one of the thugs.

Conant heard them turn their car quickly. It shot back down the highway toward New Field. Conant judged if he was to remain in the clear to find Wanda Hale, he must move fast. He felt in the tile drain for the death golf ball, but failed to touch it.

The police car was sending light beams around a curve only a hundred yards away, as Conant scrambled from the ditch and ran lightly across the weed-grown field. The county police would identify his roadster, but he could be free for awhile to make a tour of one or two hell-holes of the boomer town.

For one thing, he wanted to talk to that Tulsa trollop, Edna, whose mature gorgeousness was reported to have started young Ralph Morton along a rocky road. It being June, his watch showed the time to be five after nine o’clock, although night had fallen only a short time before. Before he started on his planned round of the dives, he had to replace his lost automatic.

He suddenly thought, more wishfully than hopefully, that perhaps Wanda Hale might still be free. Possibly she had been cut off from the clubhouse or the Morton car, and had wisely stayed clear of those who might have been watching for her.

CONANT called his boarding house, to have the landlady’s boy bring him the box containing a brace of automatics, from his room.

“Have there been any calls, Mrs. Rogan?” he added without much hope.

His heart suddenly began pumping double time. His whole body tingled.

“Yes, Mr. Conant,” said his landlady. “Just a few minutes ago, a Miss Hale called. She said if you came in, to tell you, you must be at the lake boathouse at ten, if possible. She said to tell you she would wait until eleven. Mr. Conant, do you think it’s proper—”

But Conant had pronged the receiver. He avoided the narrow, black muck of the main street, with its catwalks thronged with boomers, drillers, welders, and roustabouts. Five minutes later he drove a closed “for hire” car through a back alley and toward the county highway.

When he was two miles out, he was convinced no lights were following him. His mind turned to what Wanda Hale would have to tell him. He realized he was glowing inside because she was safe and he was to see her again within a few minutes.

Dammit! The softness of her body, the warmth of her lips, the husky sweetness of her voice had got him this afternoon. Murders and a deep sinister menace hanging over Wanda Hale, himself and probably others, remained to be solved.

Just now all that came second in importance to seeing Wanda Hale, to holding her in his arms again.

The New Field valley lake was a mile long. All of it was in the three-mile estate of the late J. Roller Morton. The booming oil valley was a depression seven miles long, with its rich pool pierced by piping fifteen thousand feet down.

Old J. Roller had been content with the millions in royalties he collected from the four miles in the lower valley. He had rigidly reserved the upper three miles, although it also lay over the pool of black gold. He had transformed its wooded grounds and its spring-fed lake into a virtual paradise for that sun-baked section of central Oklahoma.

As Conant glimpsed the lake, rippling and sparkling under a slowly rising moon, he recalled that old J. Roller had incurred considerable enmity and bitterness because of his determined reservation of the estate. He remembered that Jim Colter, the company super, had been one of a group that had some time before attempted to change J. Roller’s stand against any drilling above the four-mile strip leased to the company.

Conant was thinking more of Wanda Hale than all of the tragedy of the day, but he did take a minute out to wonder what would happen to old J. Roller’s prized estate, now that it was about to pass into the hands of young Ralph Morton and Sylvia Ames?

“They’ll probably dump it as fast as possible and start spending high and wide,” he said softly. “There may be legal restrictions, but it’s a dollar to a dime there’ll be drills sinking in the upper valley before next Christmas.”

CONANT parked his ear under the trees, some distance from where the shadow of the boathouse showed at the foot of a long, sloping piece of lawn and shrubbery. He moved cautiously, keeping to the shadows. Near the boathouse, he halted and listened for several minutes, but heard no one.

Keeping to the shadows, he pushed open the shoreward door of the boathouse. He knew he was in the long locker room. He stepped inside, and quickly to one side. His fingers rested upon the butt of the automatic in his side pocket.

He called out softly, “Wanda! Wanda Hale!”

His heart pounded and still he was cold all over when a husky whisper came so close by it startled him.

“Bob! Oh, Bob! I thought you would never get here!”

His hand fell away from his automatic, for the girl’s shadowy figure moved toward him. He could see her white face, and the white, reaching hands. She came into his arms with a long, deep sob, her hands locking behind his neck. His mouth was upon the soft, moist lips and her quivering body was moulded against him there in the darkness.

All at once, although he had believed this was what he hoped for and had wanted, the throbbing movement of the sinuous figure, the more than willing curve of her pliant back and the pressure of her warm, round thighs, informed him of the truth. True, he had wanted Wanda Hale and he had believed she wanted him, but this madness of demand surging through the girl was never that of Wanda.

He freed her lips, would have put her arms away.

“Yes, Bob Conant—” The voice of Sylvia Ames breathed hoarsely, sweet and thick. “I know— you expected Wanda— I heard you plan to meet her— I knew she couldn’t be here— I phoned a message for you— then I waited— Bob Conant please— I’ll make it worth your while— first, there’s me, Bob— I love you, Bob—”

Every grain of good sense told him he was in a trap, and every fiber of his body was responding to Sylvia Ames’ abandonment of herself to his arms. The unexpected madness of it twisted his normally clear mind. Well, why not?

Once she believed he returned her feeling for him, Sylvia Ames might talk. If he played her game to the end, she might become the means of saving Wanda Hale. For Sylvia must know where Wanda had been taken,

“A’right,” he mumbled quickly, and crushed her savagely to him.

The glorious curves of her weaving body pressed closer. She seemed to be drawing out his heart with the eager clinging of her lips, until he buried his face against her soft throat.

Fantastic murder, tragedy, sinister menace, even the vision of lovely Wanda Hale faded out on the storm that swept through him with pounding pulses. Sylvia Ames moaned softly—

BUT minutes later, the self-contempt of revulsion caused Conant to hold the quivering girl at arms’ length. She whimpered a little, but cool words suddenly shaped on her lips.

“You'll tell me, Bob darling,” she said. “Tell me where you hid the golf ball? I’ll—”

“Damn you!” grated Conant. “I might have—”

He slapped her roughly with his flat hand, causing her to stagger away from him. It was the sudden heat of his temper that probably saved his life.

A flashlight beam speared from the thick blackness at the end of the locker room. Guttural voices cursed. An automatic crackled. Conant threw himself flat, a gun coming into his hand. Before he could squeeze the trigger, a voice rapped out, “Rub out the dame now! We’ll never get a better chance!”

Conant’s gun and two other automatics made thunderous noise in the narrow locker room. Conant drove his slugs at the source of the flashlight beam. But before glass shattered and darkness shrouded the space, Sylvia Ames gave a gurgling scream.

Conant went sick all over. He saw the streaking red left by two slugs, one across the soft, white throat, and the other across the smooth flat waist. Sylvia Ames gave only that one scream, and as blackness came down upon him, Conant knew she had died almost instantly.

He emptied his gun, started to reach for his second weapon. His brain was dazed. Clearly Sylvia Ames had been bait for a trap, and just as plainly, the killers had ruthlessly plotted her murder. They had intended all the time that she must be removed.

Conant’s bitter thinking was snapped off abruptly. Evidently the gunmen were well sheltered, or at least he had done no more than smash their light. A weight descended abruptly upon the back of his head and ground his face into the floor.

His consciousness was blacked out and he felt no pain. As his senses faded, Conant was but dimly aware that he had thrust his second still loaded automatic under the waistband of his trousers, lying close along his groin.

THE blow on his head bound his senses for only two or three minutes, or so Conant guessed. Perhaps it was the name of Wanda Hale, spoken harshly that served as a sudden stimulant.

“Okay, sister! Have it your own sweet way!” a strange voice put out. “But when they find Wanda Hale, and Sylvia Ames, and this nosey dick, your burned bones will look pretty much alike! We know you saw the golf ball shot that killed Morton! And when we hid the high compression tube that shot it, you watched, and you hid it some other place!”

Another voice that surged through Conant with awakening rage, spoke more softly.

“This is the last chance to save your skin,” the man in the darkness said. “Tell us where the compression gun is to be found, and agree to play up to Bob Conant and get that golf ball from him, and you’ll not get only a break, but we’ll pay you enough to travel a long distance.”

The tone of Wanda Hale’s reply informed Conant that the lovely girl must be suffering extreme agony. Her refusal to comply with the request seemed to be coming from a choked, constricted throat.

“No— no! You’ll kill me, anyway! You killed Sylvia Ames, and she was helping you! You don’t intend that Bob Conant or I shall live! You want only one person, and that’s Ralph Morton! He’s the one—”

There was a swishing blow. The choked moan of the girl went through Bob Conant like liquid fire. But he compelled himself to lie still. He had little chance against several killers in the darkness, without knowing the setup at the other end of the long locker room,

He became conscious that the automatic he had emptied had been taken. But he had the comforting feel of the other loaded gun against his leg, where he was half lying upon it.

“Okay, boss!” snarled one of the killers. “I’ve dumped the gasoline. This old boathouse’ll go up fast and hot. We’re ready to fade out, and you can be back where you belong. If they make out anything at all from the burned bones, it will look as if this Sylvia Ames was torturing Wanda Hale, and this Conant barged in and there was a fight and a fire.”

“Right, Joker!” spoke the boss. “And the slugs through Sylvia Ames’ throat and stomach won’t ever be found. Conant hasn’t any lead in him either. There’ll be a lot of guessing, but not one definite thing. We’ll have to take a chance on the compression gun remaining hidden. No one’s looking for it, anyway.”

Conant restrained a mad impulse to draw the automatic and start shooting. He knew now that the death golf ball had been fired from a high compression tube of some sort. Wanda Hale had seen the killing, and had taken the unusual weapon after the murderer had hidden it.

Undoubtedly Sylvia Ames had been a party to some of the crime. The wild playgirl must have imagined she would share with her cousin, Ralph Morton, in the J. Roller Morton fortune. But Conant reasoned all to a logical conclusion quickly.

Sylvia Ames was no longer useful to the killers. Her sharing in the Morton fortune and estate might prove a handicap to their plans. On the other hand, Ralph Morton, with his mountainous debts, was without doubt in a position to be controlled easily.

The gambling, woman-crazy youngster would have to square up, and it was likely that all he would want would be plenty of money to squander on that Tulsa trollop and to gamble away.

“Yes,” thought Conant. “Unless it is blocked, drills will be down and the paradise of the Morton estate will be spotted with oil rigs and black with muck before Christmas comes.”

Perhaps five seconds of thinking. Conant was judging his best chance shrewdly. He gripped the hidden automatic, ready in case of a slip-up. The killers might bash in his skull to make more certain he would be burned in the boat-house. He had to chance them believing him still unconscious.

“Light  ’er up!” snarled a voice.

A MATCH glowed. Almost instantly there was a whooshing explosion, and fire leaked across the farther end of the boat-house locker room. Conant had to exert every ounce of his will to remain inert.

For between him and the jumping blaze was the slim, lovely white figure of Wanda Hale. The peach-pink scanties, and the pink brassiere binding her firm, young breasts were her only clothing.

“Damn ’em to hell!” gritted through Conant’s teeth.

For the girl was suspended by the wrists with a rope over a beam, her toes barely touching the floor. Across her flat, ivory waist and over her curving back were bloody red welts. It was evident that the girl had displayed unbreakable nerve in refusing to divulge where she had hidden the queer death weapon.

Her beautiful body swayed, turned slowly, highlighted now by the spreading fire. Conant saw three men now, three killers who were laughing ghoulishly and moving toward him and the shore exit.

Still he waited. They were three to one, and he had to be sure, even if he were forced to do some shooting. They clumped heavily away from Wanda Hale.

One said, “I hope that damn’ dick wakes up in time to know he’s being roasted alive.”

“Stop!” screamed Wanda Hale. “No! Please! Don’t do that to Bob! Wait! I’ll tell—the compression gun is—”

The leader of the three men laughed long and loudly.

“Save it!” he taunted. "You're a few seconds too late!”

Wanda was writhing, screaming. The three killers were alongside Conant now. Conant judged the gasoline fed fire would reach Wanda Hale within less than two minutes.

“I guess he’s out for keeps,” growled one of the men.

He drove a hard toe into Conant’s ribs. Conant’s teeth locked against any reaction or groan.

“Yeah,” the killer said. “He’ll wake up in hell. Come on, Joker, we'll take that cut across country and back to Chi before the cops start clutterin’ up the scenery.”

The three were at the doorway. One looked down at the blood bathed body of Sylvia Ames and grunted, “Too bad she had to be rubbed out. And, boss, we’ve got the ten grand, but if the rest of the hundred isn’t coming along when you begin pumping oil up here, we’ll be calling.”

“You'll get it on the dot,” was the reply.

CONANT reared to his knees. From that position, he deliberately split one man’s spine just below his skull. He had to conserve his shots. The second hired killer dropped instantly, and he was quick with his rod. Red slashes lashed at Conant and slugs chewed the floor. Something like a hot iron touched his neck. He pounded two slugs straight at the-red slashes. The shooting stopped and the killer screamed once. The third figure, that of the boss himself, was outside. He was running heavily away when Conant staggered to the door. Conant judged he had but two bullets left. The fleeing boss of the murder-drive to seize the Morton estate showed thick, lumbering legs in the moonlight.

Conant let drive at the legs. From the scream and the sudden crumpling of the broad figure, Conant was sure he had smashed bones. His own dizziness was forgotten. He whipped out his knife, and ten seconds later a rolling wave of fire was blistering his face as he cut Wanda Hale down.

He cradled her soft, limp body to him, his clothes smoking as he staggered to the open air. He made it only far enough to be away from danger of the fire. The body of Sylvia Ames was being cremated swiftly. He had no time to return for her.

POLICE sirens screamed a mile away on the highway. Voices were coming closer. The boat-house, with its store of gasoline, was a banner of flame lighting the lake.

Not far away, a broad figure was trying to crawl, the legs dragging like empty sacks. And Sylvia Ames was being converted to charred bone.

Wanda Hale opened wide, brown eyes. She seemed to imagine she was in another world.

“I tried— tried,” she murmured. “But they got you, too, Bob. I didn’t mind for myself—”

He clamped his mouth upon her hot, dry lips. From her trembling he knew she was beginning to realize they were still alive.

Fat Art Carlin was still trying to crawl, but he wasn’t getting anywhere. The police cars had stopped and men were pouring down the hill.

“We’re all right, Wanda, darling,” whispered Conant. “Carlin had Ralph Morton sewed up with debts. He had to remove everybody between young Morton and the fortune, with the estate. It’s the millions under old J. Roller’s reserved ground he was driving for.”

"Ralph didn’t know—?"

Wanda Hale’s voice quivered. Conant said, he was sure young Morton was the weak victim and not of the caliber to be a killer.

The girl’s arms were around Conant’s neck. “You do love me, don’t you, Bob?” she whispered.

“Let anyone ever try to take you from me,” he gritted. “We’re being married tomorrow as soon as New Field wakes up.”

“Then I can tell you, Bob,” she murmured happily. “I’ll need you badly. You see Mr. Morton changed his wills recently. I was to have a third of his fortune, sharing with Sylvia Ames and Ralph, for the care of Mrs. Morton. In event of one dying, I was to share with the other, administer the estate.’’

“Good God!” groaned Conant. “Then I couldn’t—”

“You will, or I won’t take a penny of it,” flashed Wanda Hale. “I don’t know anything about administering an estate and— Bob! With all that money, I’ll have to have some one.”

He nodded slowly. “Yes, I suppose so,” he admitted.

_______________

7: The Oubliette Cryptogram

Julian Hawthorne

1846-1934

Appleton's, Oct 1904

SURROUNDED by tall trees, with out-jutting eaves throwing a deep shadow over its front in the June afternoon, the house suggested the aspect of some ancient man of mystery meditating upon the magic of his youth, with his hat-brim pulled down over his introspective eyes.

Even in the broad daylight a certain duskiness invested the edifice, due in part to its faded and weatherbeaten hue, and partly to the gray texture of decay which centuries had imparted to its surface. It seemed to withdraw itself from the eye; and one would scarcely have been surprised, at a second glance, to find that it had melted quite out of sight, like a ghost before the investigations of modern science.

It stood on a cape of some twenty acres' area and of small elevation, round which, at a distance of a couple of hundred yards, the sea rolled in with a pleasant plunge and murmur. During more than two centuries the voice of the waves had caused the windows to vibrate in their sunken sockets; and in heavy storms the salt scud, flying from their crests, had whitened the small panes. Moss and lichens grew upon the ancient dwelling; birds had built nests in its crevices; and Nature, in all her widely-varying moods, had played with it so long that she had in a measure incorporated it with herself.

And yet it was, for all its loneliness and ghostliness, a very human dwelling; in its time it had been saturated with human life. In the seventeenth century one of its denizens had been accused of witchcraft. In the War of the Revolution, and in Indian disturbances before that, it had heard the sound of guns, and its rooms and corridors had been trodden by the feet of fighting men. During the period preceding the Civil War it had served as one of the stations of the Underground Railway. At one epoch, too, the representatives of the family which from the first had owned and occupied it had been rich ship-owners and merchants in the East India trade; their weddings had been celebrated here, their funerals solemnized, and the light footfalls and brisk voices of their children had filled the place with cheerfulness. Guests had come and gone, and the casements at night had glowed with the light of festival.

But these things had long since passed away; and, for many years before the summer day we speak of, the house had harbored but a single occupant, the last of his name, old Philip Carmichael. When, at a venerable age, he died, the dwelling with its furniture and surroundings had by his will passed into the possession of his nephew, a young artist, Thomas Sylvester. And today, for the first time since Carmichael's death, the heir, with Sybil Selwyn, whom he was soon to marry, and her mother, had come as a picnic party to visit the ancient homestead. They had driven hither in a carriage hired in the neighboring town, bringing with them Howard, the negro butler, who was the last remaining appanage of the Selwyn grandeur. Thus invaded, and its slumbers disturbed, the house had blinked its glimmering old eyes, yawned through its opened doors, and bestirred itself to perform, as best it might, the long-disused honors of hospitality.

ii

MRS. SELWYN was the recent widow of a minor New England millionaire, and had herself been a leader of the society elect. But, about a year before, while she and her beautiful daughter were in Europe, where the latter, having completed her school and college education, was receiving such finishing touches, in preparation for the brilliant society career that awaited her, as travel could bestow, news came to them that John Selwyn was dead, and that nearly all his fortune had been lost.

Sylvester had known and loved Sybil in her prosperity, but the discrepancy between their fortunes had prevented him from declaring himself. Her calamity was now his friend. He gave what aid he could in getting the remains of the estate in order; he met the two forlorn women at the dock on their arrival; he acted the part of a son to the widow; and in due time, when the changed current of the lives of the bereaved ones had become somewhat accustomed to its channel, he had asked Sybil to be his wife. Only then did he learn that she, too, had loved him from the first. Tom was still poorer than she was; but, under the circumstances, Mrs. Selwyn had no objection to offer against the match; no British lord or Continental prince could be her son-in-law now. So love, as has happened before, ftourished, like a flower on a grave, from the ruin of what the world holds dear.

The two lovers were, at this moment, in Philip Carmichael's study, a wide, low-studded room at the front of the house. In that deep-toned and dusky environment their fresh young faces and figures had the vividness which, in medieval missals, the monastic artists were fond of bestowing upon the effigies that stand forth from the dark.some background of the great initials. Sybil had seated herself in a leather-covered arm-chair, much too large for her; and Tom, the better to enjoy the lovely picture that she made, was perched upon the massive oaken table in front of her.

They were a handsome couple-Tom, a hazel-eyed, athletic fellow, with masculine features and sensitive expression; Sybil, with the dark, level brows that give such effect to blue eyes, and slender oval of cheeks and chin. Their conversation was that of lovers, the charm of which, to the interlocutors, is derived less from the subject matter than from the delight which each feels in listening to the voice and observing the countenance of the other. In this they are more profound than we outsiders.

"It's the most delightful place I was ever in," said Sybil; "and I will live nowhere else, no matter what mother may say. Besides, she always ends with liking what I do; she even likes you! And what a perfect name— 'Oubliette!' Was it always called that, or did your uncle give it?"

"He gave it," Tom replied. "I suppose the poor old chap felt like one of those fellows they used to sequestrate in the Middle Ages. There must have been imagination in him."

"I've felt all day as if he were following us about and watching us," said the girl. "I wonder if he likes us. Of course, he liked you.''

"I think he disapproved of me. He wanted me to give up art and go into business. When I wouldn't, he gave me up. In fact, I suppose he wanted to make a vicarious atonement, in my person, for his own unproductiveness."

"Unproductive! My idea of him is he was a sort of Hermetic Philosopher."

"There must be an occult bond of sympathy between your spirit and his," said Tom, smiling. "The neighbors have said for years that he was searching for the philosopher's stone. That out-house full of jars and rubbish at the rear was his laboratory. He may have been a reincarnation of that Carmichael witch of two and a half centuries ago. Well, he may have made gold, but there's no record of his spending any."

"But surely he was rich?" said Sybil.

"The Carmichaels of long ago were rich enough ; and he ought to have inherited something; but nobody knows much about him. The story is that the girl he was to have married died just before the wedding, when he was under thirty years old; and that he lived here as a hermit always afterward. It was thought he had a fortune laid up somewhere ; but after he died I saw his will; and except for a few small things, this house and the furniture was all he left; and they wouldn't fetch much at an auction."

"Then, for all he disapproved of you, he left you all he had?"

"Well, there was something I never told you about that. He had stopped all communication with me for years; but when we were engaged, I wrote and told him. He wrote back the only really nice letter I ever got from him. There was something fine in the old fellow I I have always thought that he was pleased for the very reason one would have expected him not to be— because I asked you to marry me after your father had lost his money, instead of before."

"Then he was wrong; for if you had loved me as much as I did you, you would have asked me before instead of after ; but you loved your pride better."

Tom got down from the table and kissed her, and then resumed his seat.

"I wish I'd known him," said Sybil; "I'm sure I should have liked him. Have you got that letter he wrote about me?"

"It's in the studio in town, vain girl! By the way, though," he added, beginning to search in his pockets, "there was something I meant to show you ; it would suit you, for it's mysterious and medieval— a cipher, or something of that sort."

"Oh, Tom, a cipher!" exclaimed Sybil, sitting up. "Isn't that fine? Don't say you can't find it! I'm an expert; I used to make ciphers for the girls when I was at Vassar. What sort is it?"

"A sort I couldn't make head or tail of— not that I ever tried much," said Tom. "Oh, here it is! Quite in the romantic style, you see ; written on parchment, in faded ink. Yes, uncle must have had imagination-that is, if he made it."

"What a curious one!" murmured the girl, examining the frJl enigmatic document which Tom put in her hand. She placed it on the table and began to study it intently.

"Either it's very abstruse or very simple— I can't tell which, yet. Did he say any thing about it in his letter?"

"Only that I was to keep it by me and look it over occasionally; it might prove useful, he said. But I suspect the old gentleman may have been a joker, in his way."

"No, Tom; this may be the secret of the philosopher's stone. Your uncle is here— I can feel it! And he has given us this so that we can make enough gold for you to build a splendid studio and go to Italy in the winter. Give me a paper and pencil, and sit here on the arm of the chair, and we'll work it out together."

"I haven't either the brains or the faith for it, and I should only make my uncle's ghost angry, and he would change the gold into cobblestones. You solve the cipher, and I'll make a sketch of you meanwhile; this light suits you. You have the regular features of the classic Greek, but with the American fire in them; and as you sit there, you look like a Cimabue saint as well. Heavens! what hair!"

"How can I work while you arc going on like that?" protested Sybil, blushing, and looking more than ever adorable. "If you won't help me you must go out of the room. Go and sketch the stairway— you said it was pure Colonial. Come back in half an hour."

"Half an hour!" repeated Tom, his face falling. "I've lived twenty-eight years, and have been loving you for ten years already, rich and poor, in sickness and in health, at home and abroad; and now you ask for half an hour more. Besides, for aught I know, my uncle may be a real necromancer, and be waiting here to steal you away. Those big books in the bookcases look like books of magic: and no doubt this is the room in which he used to cast his spells and summon his familiar spirits. Can't you make it ten minutes?" Sybil gave a little laugh.

"If your uncle is here, it's to tell me the secret of the philosopher's stone ; and half an hour isn't too much for that. Think of all we can do with it! And though I like being poor, you need money to paint the kind of pictures you like, instead of pot-boilers to sell. And if you'd really wanted me, you might have had me any time the last five years, at least. Be good, Tom! The sooner you go, the quicker I shall be done."

"I wish I'd burned up the old cipher! It's a sinister omen that the first thing it does is to part us! I feel very doubtful if we shall ever meet again."

"I shall have made you a rich man before we next see each other, at any rate," returned Sybil, as he kissed her; "and then, perhaps, you won't care any more for a poor girl like me!" At that he kissed her once more, and retired reluctantly, with a backward glance at the exquisite picture she made in the dark, mysterious old room. Then the door closed between them.

iii

TOM did not care to sketch the pure Colonial stairway; but he sat himself down on the lower step, in full view of the study door, and, taking out his drawing pad, began to draw the image in his heart of what was on the other side of it. And then something induced him to add the suggestion of a tall, shadowy figure, with a gray beard, hook nose, and cavernous eyes, bending over her shoulder as she worked on the cipher.

There was certainly something in the atmosphere of Oubliette that disposed the mind to such notions. The place was not only rich in picturesque legends, but, if you listened, you heard all manner of strange, soft sounds; sighings and whisperings; noises as of quiet crcpitations in the walls; light footsteps along the floors; slight tremors of the ancient framework; a door would yawn silently open as you approached it; a murmur as of voices conversing in some remote quarter would steal along the passages, ceasing as you bent your ear to listen.

Such phenomena are common in old houses which have been neglected, and are readily explained on a material basis; but if you yield to the suggestions of imagination, you may conjure up phantoms. Tom was not, in his own opinion, in the least inclined to a belief in the supernatural; but he was an artist to the ends of his fingers; and it was inevitable for him to seek to express his sensations. Thus he found himself drawing a ghost, as it were, involuntarily. And, having drawn it, he became uneasy, and wished to open the door to assure himself that all was well.

Surely the half hour had passed! Let us take advantage of our privilege to have a peep at what is going on behind that closed door. There sits Sybil, busy with the cipher and her notes, at the study-table. Is any one else there? A glance tells us that there is none. Against the wall stand the heavy bookcases with their serried volumes; at the back of the room is a deep fireplace, with its dusty hearth and capacious chimney filled with a drapery of cobwebs; to the left of it is a big ebony cabinet rich with curiosities from the East, collected by Carmichaels in ages gone by; the dusky and grim portraits of several of these worthies look down from the walls. The heavy curtains of the windows obscure the light; but we can see that they are secured, in the oldfashioned way, by a billet of wood jammed in between the frame and the sash. There is no other door to the room than that with which we have made acquaintapce; no aperture in the wainscoting,·or in the heavy planks of the floor, through which anything larger than a mouse could make its way. Doubtless, in the old days, many a witch had soared up on her broomstick through the wide funnel of the chimney; but those cobwebs have not been disturbed for a generation. No; no living creature except Sybil is present, and all seems well with her. She is absorbed in her problem; she concentrates her gaze on the queer old cipher, bending her dark brows together over it; anon, she jots down some characters with her pencil. Shall we, too, steal a look at the odd inscription displayed upon the bit of yellow parchment? Here it is:

Has it any meaning? Or is it, as Tom surmised, one of Uncle Carmichael's saturnine jests? If we may judge from Sybil's preoccupation, she inclines to the former hypothesis. But, as she sits there, bending over her task, one might almost fancy that the shadow of the partly-drawn window curtain, thrown upon the impalpable dust in the sunbeam, assumes a particular formthe vague adumbration of a figure, stooping near her shoulder.

And having allowed ourselves to go so far, can we go a little further, and supply the semblance of a gray visage-a misty beard that almost sweeps against the girl's cheek? No, there is nothing; or it is but the recollection of Tom's drawing that has aroused within us some subjective faculty of vision ? But, again, if there were such an apparition, would it forebode benefit or mischief? bserve her face once more. Has there not flashed into it an expression of sudden hope and anticipation? She turns her head abruptly, 50 that, had any one really been behind her chair, he would have met the immediate glance of her eyes. But there is nothing to be seen, further than the massive bookcase with its rows of tall volumes and the other objects we have indicated. Still she gazes in that direction, however, something as she might had she overheard a ghostly chuckle or the ghost of a voice addressing an inner sense, summoning her-whither? Now she rises to her feet, pushing back the heavy leather-covered chair in which the old magician had so often sat.

It was but a few moments after this that Tom also started to his feet, and his drawing-pad, escaping from his fingers, fell to the floor. An expression of acute attention, rapidly dcvdoping into one of alarm, overspread his countenance. Was that Sybil's voice that he had heard, raised as if in excitement or fear, and immediately followed by a heavy sound as of some ponderous object falling to the floor? He stood listening; there was no further noise. What had happened?

After a few seconds, during which he held himself motionless, the voice of Mrs. Selwyn, with its composed, well-bred drawl, came from the head of the stairs:

"Oh, are you there, Tom? I thought I heard Sybil call. What is it?"

The young man pulled himself together and, controlling his voice, said: "She's in the study; I'll see what she wants. "

And stepping quickly across the intervening space, he opened the door.

iii

THE first thing upon which his eager eyes rested was the leathern chair; it was pushed a little to one side, and it was empty. During the next instant he made the visual circuit of the room. Sybil was nowhere to be seen. Feeling as if he had received a heavy blow, his gaze reverted stupidly to the empty chair and to the table. The voice of the girl he loved had been in his ears not sixty seconds before; she had but just risen from that chair; the paper on which she had written, the pencil which she had used, lay on the table, fresh from her fingers; beside them was the cipher, which, to Tom's dismayed apprehension, was the evil cause of the astounding, the incomprehensible event that had taken place.

He advanced mechanically to the table, and took up the bit of paper on which Sybil's notes for the solution of the cipher had been jotted down, as if he imagined that some occult hint would thus be conveyed to his mind as to what could have become of her. But neither from the occult nor from anything contained in the jottings themselves did any enlightenment visit him. He folded up the paper as if he were preserving a memento, and put it in his pocket.

Then he once more looked round the room. Sybil was not there.

When we are abruptly brought face to face with a miraclewith something which nature declares to be impossible— the logical result is madness. The circumstance which saved Tom's sanity may have been the consideration that this miracle involved Sybil. Miracle or not, she must be found. The blood which had crowded to his heart, leaving him pale and shivering, leaped again to the surface. He felt that to find her he could conquer impossibility itself. But manly and lover-like though this feeling was, it did not tell him how the conquest was to be accomplished. He could not go anywhere to seek for her, because, despite the evidence of his senses, he could not believe that she was not still in the room. How, indeed, could she not be there? Yet how, in that case, could he not see her? He clenched his fists in a sort of rage, and groaned aloud.

At that juncture Mrs. Selwyn, with her dignified pose and with the broad sweep of her conventional skirts, entered the room. She was a calm and comely woman of five and forty, with the signet of Society stamped upon her contour and every movement; even her widow's weeds made one admire the art which could transmute grief into fashion. The habit of her face assured one that no stress of emotion could seriously disturh its conventional serenity ; not so much that the emotion might not exist as that training had atrophied the physical means for its outward portrayal. There could be no impossibilities or miracles in the world in which she lived.

"I think, after all, daughter," she remarked, as she crossed the threshold, " that we might contrive to make the house habitable if—oh," she broke off, "I fancied Sybil was here."

"She was here a few minutes ago. Since I left her I've been sitting right opposite the only door of the room. She has not come out; but she doesn't seem to be here. I can't think what has become of her."

Mrs. Selwyn allowed this statement to sink into her mind, and then said, incontrovertibly: " But, then, she must be here."

"Well—" said Tom, inviting the lady, with a gesture, to see for herself. Mrs. Selwyn let her eyes travel over the apartment, and then repeated, with polite tolerance: "She must be here; otherwise, it would be absurd, you know."

"Just after she cried out, something heavy seemed to fall; but I can't see that anything is out of place. I don't understand it."

Mrs. Selwyn considered further. "You have been within sight of the door since leaving her?" she then said. "What were you doing? Perhaps you dropped into a nap, and she came out without your knowing it."

"Me take a nap when I was waiting for the half-hour to be up!" exclaimed Tom, indignantly. "Besides, I was making a sketch of her as I last saw her, and was in the midst of it when I heard her voice. That door wasn't opened till I opened it."

"There must be some mistake," remarked the lady, composedly. "Sybil is full of fun and spirits, of course; but she is always a lady!"

It was evidence of the acuteness of Tom's distress that he noticed nothing comical in this assertion, open though he ordinarily was to humorous impressions. He simply fixed a blank stare upon his interlocutor and muttered between his teeth:

"There's some deviltry. She's gone!" And then he burst out in a sudden flame: "I'll tear the house down! I can't stand it! I must have her! Sybil! Sybil!"

His voice, raised to its full compass, rang like a trumpet through the old building. Mrs. Selwyn was startled and shocked; but her mind was unable either to understand or share the young man's apprehension.

"Why, my dear Tom, the child can't have been kidnapped, or vanished into thin air. And now it occurs to me that she is probably in the kitchen helping Howard with the lunch. Let us go there."

The futility of this proposition deprived the artist of words; but no words could avail in such a situation. He and Sybil had been jesting about ghosts; here was a mystery that made ordinary supernatural happenings seem tame. The bulwarks of scepticism crumbled before him. The persuasion seized upon him that Sybil was in the room, but had magically been rendered invisible. He stretched out his hands and grasped at empty space. His intended mother-in-law, fearing that she had a maniac on her hands, shrank back toward the doorway, and almost came into collision with the stalwart form of Howard, the butler, who was hurrying in from the hall.

"Was it me you was cawlin', Mis'r Sylvester?" he enquired, with the urbane grimace which was the token, as he conceived, of the high breeding which should mark a retainer of the aristocracy. "I tho't I heard you' vawce, sah. I just stepped up to the attic— tho't mebbe I fin' some dishes faw th' picnic. An'thin' wanted, sah?"

"Have you seen Miss Sybil within the last half hour, Howard?" asked Mrs. Selwyn.

"Why, no, I ain't seen Miss Sibbul, Mis' Selwyn; but I did. think, 'few minutes back, I heard her vawce, sort o' faint, like it come f'om fah off. Seem' like it come through the wall of the attic, Mis' Selwyn."

"Through the wall of the attic!" echoed Tom, in stupefaction. "Come and show me the place! What sort of a devil's house is this!"

Seizing the surprised ncgro by the arm, he started up the staircase, Mrs. Selwyn following in a somewhat scandalized state of mind.

At the head of the first landing there was a panel let into the wall, on which were fastened four bells on springs, communicating by wires with various apartments of the house. Just as Tom reached the landing, the second from the right of these bells rang sharply within two feet of his face.

He stopped, with his eyes fixed upon it, his fingers gripping Howard's arm so hard that the big negro winced. After the sound had ceased, the bell continued to vibrate for a few moments on its rusty spring; then, at another impulse, it rang again; but the pull broke the corroded wire, and the bell fell rattling to the floor at the men's feet.

At this juncture, Mrs. Selwyn, in the course of her leisurely progress, came up with the others. Tom turned to her with a ghastly face.

"Who did that?" he faltered. " There is no one in the house but ourselves here, and Sybil," was this imperturbable lady's rejoinder. "Naturally, Sybil must have rung it. She has got locked into one of the rooms, of course. All we have to do is to trace the course of the wire, and we shall find her. I was convinced from the first, you know, that there could be no mystery in the matter. These old houses have all sorts of odd corners—"

"You said you heard her up in the attic!" interrupted Tom, turning fiercely on Howard.

"I tho't somet'in' sounded like her vawce, Mis'r Sylvester; but so't o' distant— not like she was there herse'f, sah," said the butler, in a quavering voice, wiping the sweat from his brow with the cuff of his free arm.

"She may be in peril of her life, and we stand doddering here!" cried Tom in anguish. "Get me an axe, you jackass! I'll follow that wire if I lay the house in ruins!"

The wires, in fact, entered the wall at a short distance from the panel, and their further course could be followed only by breaking the wall down.

Howard sprang down the stairs with an agility that would have done credit to a man twenty years his junior, and disappeared toward the region of the kitchen. Tom, with dry lips and fiery eyes, forged back and forth on the landing like a tiger caged.

"I hope you will commit no unnecessary destruction, Tom," remarked Mrs. Selwyn. "There is no question of danger, I am sure— but you are so precipitate! I suppose I had better go down and look after the luncheon myself; Sybil may need some refreshment after she gets out; and we must be thinking of starting home again in an hour or so."

The conception of Sybil's mother tranquilly occupying herself with the luncheon, while her daughter might be undergoing nameless tortures from evil spirits, once more bankrupted her lover's resources of expression. But before the lady could depart on her errand Howard came panting up with an axe; and the relief which this implement of action afforded to the young man, hitherto suffering from the misery of enforced impotence, was so great as almost to restore him to his normal good humor.

He seized it and swung it back over his left shoulder with the athletic vigor which had made him the most puissant oar of his day in the university.

"Oubliette, eh?" he growled, between his teeth. "I'll decipher his old Oubliette for him! Keep your eye on the wire."

Crash! came down the axe upon the wood and plaster ; and Mrs. Selwyn, with the pained expression of a lady to whom physical violence is distasteful, stepped back and withdrew her skirts from the flying spljnters. Smash I it went again, and a big piece of the lath-work was driven in. Tom gathered himself up for the third blow, and delivered it with all his force. A considerable portion of the wall gave way, disclosing the hollow within its two sides; and the head of the axe flew off and went rattling down into the cavity.

"D——!" ejaculated the destroyer.

"Tom, is that necessary?" murmured Mrs. Selwyn, before he could finish the word.

"Ma goodness, sah, I guess yo' opened de do'!" exclaimed the negro, grinning excitedly, and thrusting his head through the opening. "Yo' sure have! Seems like dey struck a light down dah, too !

"A light!"

Tom whirled the butler away from the cavity, and craned his own neck through it. And, of a truth, from the inmost of the downward darkness appeared a yellow gleam, gilding the hollowness with an irregular ribbon of light. It had not the flicker of fire but the steadiness of the rays of a lamp.

But how could a lamp be burning quietly in the interior of the wall of a building erected before the Revolution?

The lamp itself— if such it were— was invisible in the depths; but, as Tom stared down toward it, with amazement crinkling the roots of his hair, a voice issued from the bowels of the unseen, remote, but unmistakable—

"Tom, is that you ? Do stop; you nearly hit me with the axe-head!"

"Wow! Sybil!" yelled back the lover, in a hoarse tone that broke in the middle. Then his knees gave way and his strength went from him, so that he was oblige to hold on to the sides of the aperture with both hands to prevent himself from falling. But in that moment, his soul knew the very essence of joy. George Washington achieved immortality with his little hatchet; but Tom Sylvester had opened the gates of Heaven with a rusty old axe.

v

"THEN she is in the kitchen after all?" said Mrs. Selwyn, in the slightly interrogative tone which seems to imply, politely, " What did I tell you!"

But the tumultuous tide of Tom's emotion carried him beyond the reach of innuendoes, and even of the recollection of his intended mother-in-law's existence. He presently applied himself once more to the mysterious abyss.

"Darling," he called down, "what happened to you?"

"I am well," came the reply, in the beloved voice; "but I shall have to stay here till you come and fetch me."

"Where is it ? How shall I get there?"

"I'm in your Uncle Carmichael's secret room. He brought me down here. You must get here the same way I did."

"His secret room I How do you mean he brought you ? Why can't I come to you down this hole? What way did you go?"

"I came the way the cipher said; and you must read the cipher"

"I read the cipher!" cried out Tom, in consternation. "How can I read it, or anything, in the state of mind I'm in?"

"You will find the key to it in the notes I left on the table. Tom, dearest, don't be so headlong. This is a serious and wonderful thing. You must do as I tell you-or as your uncle wished, rather. He has the right to ask it. Go down in the study and read the cipher-you will find it very easy ; and when you've done it, you will see that it was worth while. It would be ungrateful to him for me to tell you anything more."

"But, Sybil," remonstrated the distracted lover, "to lose all this time! What has happened? If you knew how I felt I"

"Dearest, I'm safe, and I'm doing right. Do as I say; you won't be sorry!"

Tom had a struggle with himself. The fiery impatience of the artistic temperament battled for mastery; but love and reason, in unusual partnership, beat it down. Sybil was not in immediate danger; she was evidently much in earnest in her strange plea; and there was in her voice an intonation— the more effective coming from the mysterious remoteness of her unknown retreat-that admonished him to acquiesce. But to acquiesce was one thing ; it would be quite another thing to decipher the cryptogram.

At this juncture, however, he recalled having put the paper of her notes in his pocket ; he felt for them; they were there. He had not understood their purport at his former hurried inspection ; but they might aid him after all. At any rate, if the task were to be attempted, the wise course was to set about it without delay.

He turned to descend the stairs. Mrs. Selwyn made a movement as if to address him, but he passed her with the unseeing eyes of a somnambulist, and the next moment he had entered the study and closed the door after him. The lady and the butler were left confronting each other. By the manner in which she rose superior to this inattention Mrs. Selwyn proved her right to society leadership.

"Howard," she said quietly to that bewildered individual, "while Mr. Sylvester is occupied with Miss Selwyn, we will prepare the luncheon. I will hull the strawberries; you may lay the cloth under the oak to the left of the porch. Don't make the ice-cream till everything else is ready; and be very careful about the salt."

The calm explicitness of these directions acted as a stimulus upon the disordered nerves of the servant, and restored him to his wonted cheerful alacrity.

"Awll right, Mis' Selwyn I I wait on you, M'," he responded; and, with the smirkings and bobbings of happy hereditary dependence, he followed that stately Serenity kitchenward and became absorbed in his proper industries.

Meanwhile, Tom had settled himself doggedly at the table, in the ancestral chair, and was bending every faculty upon the riddle of Oubliette. He would have preferred the axe; but he proudly yielded to superior orders. The affair represented itself to him as a life-and-death combat between himself and his Uncle Carmichael; the latter had made the interpretation of the cryptogram the condition of Tom's reunion with his mistress.

So be it! The challenge was accepted. The advantage was with the ghost; but Tom set bis teeth as in the last lap of the mile foot-race, and fixed his eyes upon the tape and away from that beloved figure that was sitting somewhere, so near and yet so remote, waiting to award him the palm of victory. The tape, of course, was the bit of parchment with the queer figures inscribed upon it, and the paper of notes bearing upon the same.

"I'll do it !" said the young man sternly to himself; "I'll teach him that no ghost can beat Tom Sylvester! and when I've done it, I'll never forgive him—never!"

The notes were as perplexing, in their way, as the cipher ; but after a while, Tom began to discern some method in them. Sybil's first effort had been to determine whether the character of the cipher were to be regarded as standing for what they were or for something else, and had decided in favor of the former hypothesis. She had then proceeded to make trial arrangements of the letters, taking them vertically, horizontally, and diagonally; but no apparent success had attended any of these dispositions.

As Tom pored over the page, however, his eye was attracted by a hitherto unconsidered memorandum in a corner, which read as follows:

"5's backward— 5's reversed— yes, that's it!"

Was this a clue? He reverted to a study of the cipher itself. There were, as we have seen, four squares of letters, forming a larger square, separated by two lines of blanks at right angles. In the right-hand bottom corner of the lower right-hand square, he finally observed two odd-looking figures; they were not letters, like the rest; they seemed to be arbitrary marks. For a time, he contemplated them unintelligently; then, as if a word had been whispered in his ear, he suddenly made a discovery. It thrilled him like an electric shock. The figure at the extreme right was a 5 turned wrong side before.

The penultimate one, which resembled the other, was an S similarly treated. What did this mean? What could it signify— unless it were the key to the whole mystery! With a tremulous breathing and sparkle of hope he returned to the cryptogram.

The squares contained twenty-five letters each-five on a line. Now, Fives Reversed— let us see! The first line of the upper left-hand square read "Ollup." Read backward, this became " Pullo." Might not this be "Pull" and the first letter of another word? What was the next word? He tried the second line of the same square— "Lovdr." Reversed, this was "Rdvol." Connected with "Pullo," he got "Pullordvol." There was no possible sense in that; and yet he had followed the key. And yet, again, had it not succeeded with Sybil? Had she not written— "Yes, that's it!" and nothing further? She must, then, have applied the key and worked the spell. Perhaps it was a purely magical spell— mystical— having no outward or literal meaning ; and it would not work for him, though it had worked with her, because he did not possess the mystical genius. Perhaps its effect was to render the person invisible, or able to pass through solid matter— into the Fourth Dimension; and she was now in that Dimension, and he could never reach her!

He sprang up from his chair, and paced up and down in the room, aimlessly, in despair. In the old ebony cabinet there was, among other curious objects, a Burmese idol, squatting cross-legged, made of gilded wood ; but the eyes were of some dark precious stone that had a peculiar, subtle gleam in them. At a certain point in Tom's disordered ramblings, this gleam intercepted his line of vision and brought him to a pause. He and the idol eyed each other, motionless, for some moments. Was it hypnotism? Was it the vibration of some occult intelligence?

After the lapse of a due interval Tom came to himself, as it were, with a start, and walked quietly back to his chair. He resumed his pencil and paper with the manner of one who knows what he has to do. Instead of the second line of the first square, he added to the first five reversed letters the first five reversed of the second square. The result brought a sort of radiance into his face; he pursued the same method with the two next lines of the two squares. As he worked, disconnected mutterings escaped from him.

"Uncle, you made a mistake there— but no matter."

"Why, it's as simple— a child might do it!"

"Sybil— Sybil— I'm coming!"

"Too plain to be seen-that's all!"

At last the work was done: he rose and approached the first bookcase with an assured step. Reaching up to the fourth shelf from the top he removed from it the third volume from the left. Inserting a hand into the empty space he drew from it a small bar or rod of steel, over a foot in length, and half an inch in diameter. With this he prodded into the back of the bookcase till he felt the end of the rod enter a corresponding hole in the rear woodwork. He gave a shove, and an entire section of the bookcase yielded inward, like a door on its hinges; pressing against it, it gave way still further, though with a resistance as if from a hidden spring. But when the door was at right angles to its original position, there was a click, and it remained stationary.

It flashed through his mind that Sybil had not done this, and that the door had consequently sprung closed behind her, preventing her return. But she must previously have replaced the book and the rod, and thus covered her trail. He was now gazing into a recess, which at first seemed dark ; but he presently was aware of an illumination proceeding from below, by which was revealed a flight of stone steps descending to the right.

His heart was beating heavily as he went down the steps, and, again turning to the right, found himself on the threshold of a chamber about ten feet square and seven in height, though the ceiling had been partly removed, probably for ventilation.

The chamber was dry and clean. Against one wall was fixed a table on which burned an oil lamp; along the adjoining wall stood a settle with hair cushions on it; on the third side was a shelf; and beneath it a washstand. The place with its various little appliances for comfort, compactly arranged, reminded one of a ship's stateroom. The opening in the ceiling evidently ascended through the cavity of the house-walls, and accounted for the sound of Sybil's voice in the attic and for her conversation with Tom after he had broken in the panel on the stairs. Indeed, the head of the axe lay on the floor beside the table.

But Tom, at this time, was conscious of none of these details. His whole soul was aware only of the figure which had risen from the settle and confronted him with arms outstretched. The light of welcome in her eyes was deepened by an expression of mysterious exaltation. She was as one fresh from converse with things beyond the sphere of sense ; and it was with awe as well as joy that her lover took her to his breast. But the lips that met his own were Sybil's; and she was only more than ever his because of the unnamable difference that had been wrought in her.

vi

THAT evening, in the city mansion, the lovers sat as was their wont in the little room which communicated, through curtained folding-doors, with the front sitting-room, in which Mrs. Selwyn was dozing with a book in her lap, decorously weary with the vicissitudes of that memorable day.

"It was a mere chance, after all— the discovery of all that wealth," Tom remarked, breaking one of the happy pauses of their conversation. "But for you, it would probably have remained there forever. I'm glad I owe it, as well as all other happiness, to you!"

"I have another feeling about it," Sybil answered thoughtfully. "Riches come and go, we don't know why; and they can bring trouble as well as joy. I think your uncle felt that, and meant to make his gift of them partly dependent upon the mystery we call chance. He wished us to feel that, if we received them, we must thank, not him only but— the same Goodness that gave us to each other!"

______________

8: Bigler's Barometer

Sam Davis

Davis, 1850-1918

The Black Cat, Jan 1898

I EXISTED contemporaneously with Bigler in Virginia City, and recall the circumstance  with some little degree of pride.

We all had our vices in those days, and while not mentioning my own, I will take the liberty of stating that gambling was Bigler's. His never-ceasing desire to make merchandise out of the bad judgment of other people was notorious, and I am frank to admit that on more occasions than I would care to enumerate I have fallen a victim to his extraordinary tendencies in that direction. ·

Yet I feel that a proper regard for his memory compels me to say that in his halcyon days he scorned the slightest approach to underhanded play on his own part, nor would he tolerate it for a single moment in others.

l recall, as I write, how he once killed a man who had cheated him at cards at the Ozark saloon at Carson City, the place of my present abiding. He had lost a couple of thousand, for which he cared little, and was proceeding on the quiet tenor of his cocktail route, when he chanced to learn, by the merest accident— he was not the man to go prowling about searching for ill of his kind— that his antagonist had resorted to the desperate extremity of nailing· a rabbit foot under the table where the game had been in progress, hoping thereby to reap unfair advantage for his own unworthy ends by hoodooing his opponent.

It was this reliable revelation that caused Bigler, after several minutes of mature reflection, to return to the scene of his undoing, and shoot a hole into Miles Hickey, which, according to the report of the coroner's jury, resulted in the death of the latter gentleman.

Next day when before the magistrate, he remarked that his case was of such a nature that he would need no attorney, and making a statement of the simple facts as near as he could recall them, was interrupted during the recital, by the information that he was discharged, as the honorable court had no further business with the case except to read a sharp reproof to the officious district attorney for obtruding it upon the court, at a positive expense to overburdened taxpayers. Even the plea of the dead man's attorney, that the deceased had a large family to support, was swept aside by the court as having but scant relevancy to a matter which was pure and simple self defense, and nothing else that the court knew of.

The killing of Hickey, however, did not seem to satisfy Bigler, as it did not bring back the money he had lost, and he seemed to think the State should reimburse him. As no move was made in that direction, he vowed that, as cheating was recognized in Nevada, he should in the future take care of himself, and other people could do the same.

He lost at cards and he lost at stocks, and finally had to hire himself out to Jack Bradley as a common hostler. They had known each other in the mines, and been chummy in the old days, but Bradley had become a millionaire now, and there was a gulf between them. The only common ground they met on was the inborn disposition each had to gamble on anything that possessed the slightest ingredient of chance.

Bradley considered himself something of a weather sharp, and liked above anything to bet on the possibilities of a rainstorm. He used to bet Bigler a month's salary or any part of it on the weather, and Bigler, being dead game after the manner of his class, never failed to come to the center when bantered by his employer. He sometimes won, and sometimes lost, but in the long run found that he was working for Bradley for nothing.

Noting the habits and peculiarities of Bradley, he made an important discovery. It was nothing less than the fact that a few days before the weather was bad Bradley became very logy in his walk, and that prior to clear weather he was light headed or "nutty," so to speak.

Pondering on this circumstance, Bigler figured out the scientific reason of it. Bradley had worked in a Virginia City pan mill before he was wealthy, and had become salivated with quicksilver. In this way he had been transformed into a human barometer, a natural product, as one might say, and much more reliable and sensitive than the manufactured article.

The way in which the quicksilver mounted to his head or settled in his lower extremities was a most positive indication of weather events; the prognostication never went astray, and his spirits rose and fell with the mercury.

After Bigler had figured this down to an allspice, he came to the center in great shape when his employer wanted to gamble on the weather. But he went into the game intelligently and with proper forethought. He let Bradley win a few small bets while he was experimenting with his system, and then lay. back for big money.

The system worked like a charm, and when he was losing his money, betting the wrong way on purpose, he felt happy, for he knew just what a fine financial future was ahead of him. He allowed himself to lose so many times that he finally got odds of ten to one, and then he made ready for his series of grand coups.

When he saw Bradley getting gay and predicting that the Populist party would carry thirty-four States in the Union, he considered it about time to bet on fair weather, as Bradley's talk showed very plainly that the mercury was getting to his head, and fair weather was a dead certainty.

So he went over to Dun's saloon and borrowed the money .to put up the spot cash. He won a cool thousand, and this made old Bradley mad and reckless, and filled with a desire to get even.

When a man gets in this condition he becomes an easy game, and a certain prey to designing enemies. Bigler went at his man while the demon of a desire to get even had full possession of him, and in a short year had his money and his real estate safe in his pocket, so to speak.

Recalling the way Bradley had given him employment in his days of poverty, he generously reciprocated the favor, and put his old employer at work on the horses the latter had once owned. In this way be had a more favorable opportunity than ever to study the weather through Bradley,—he called him Jack now,— and soon acquired a local reputation for being the greatest weather prognosticator of the far west.

It was not long, however, before he began to weary of his limited orbit, and his friends encouraged him in the ambition to fill a wider sphere, secretly hoping, of course, that the sphere aforesaid would prove too big for him to fill. They urged him to go in and make a national reputation, and cast all the other weather prophets in the shade.

Spurred on by such encouragements, he finally got the Nevada legislature to memorialize Congress to give Bigler a chance to forward a few sample prophecies to the weather bureau at Washington, just to show the department how the thing was done. The memorial also set forth the great advantages to agriculture of having a reliable weather man on deck in place of the old skates who were at that time drawing salaries to deceive the people.

In due course of time Bigler received notice that the department was ready to receive his weather prognostications. This concession had been brought about through the untiring exertions of Senator Jonas, who had left a senatorial poker game at Willard's in order to bring the matter before the attention of the government. This honor somewhat excited Bigler, and he began to talk in his sleep.

He always made Bradley sleep in the same apartment, —for old acquaintance's sake, he said, but really to have him where he could study his changes of mercurial altitude,—and he gave forth so much weather in his somnambulistic trances that Bradley began to listen.

When he heard him mutter night after night, "If Jack only knew what was in him; if he only knew the cinch I have," and talk of that kind, Bradley went on a mental prospecting tour over himself, and like a flash he hit on the fact that he was loaded up with quicksilver, and the miserable ingrate he had called his friend had been utilizing him as a human barometer.

The whole solution of the mystery came to him as rapidly as the returns on election day, that are posted up in New York several hours before the polls have closed in California. He began to wonder if the Lord would ever allow him to be sufficiently satiated with the satisfaction that was undeniably his due.

At first he decided to squash off the earth, as he would a noxious insect, the man who had robbed him of his wealth and reduced him to the level of a stable chambermaid, but after reflection he concluded to resort to strategy, and first break him of his reputation and humble him in the eyes of all the world while in the zenith of his fame.

It was easy enough. All he had to do was to pretend the quicksilver was in his head when it was in his feet, and vies versa. He began practising how to be hilarious when actually depressed, and how to be melancholy when, in reality, he was brimming with levity. The last was a simple matter, for he was naturally of a morbicund disposition; but to appear hilarious when actually depressed required greater histrionic effort.

Finally, however, by practise, and the assiduous study of the humorous columns of the local press, and Joe Miller's jest book, he became a master of dissimulation.

The time arrived for Bigler to send on his first national prophecy— he was prognosticating for a continent now, and feeling nervous. He watched Bradley like a cat. Bradley was also a good deal excited, for he realized it was the final struggle of their wits.

Although his spirits were at the top notch, he began at breakfast to complain of cold feet, and all clay he grew more pensive and melancholy. That night he asked Bigler to untie his shoe, advancing as a reason that he was unable to lift his foot up and lay his ankle over the other knee. When he crawled into bed he hinted at a desire to commit suicide.

This last remark was enough, and Bigler, rushing to the telegraph office, wired his first prophecy— a list of predictions of cloudbursts and cyclones, tempered with hail and lightning, that would have raised the hair of the American people in every town and hamlet and sent half the population to their cyclone cellars and storm caves if the papers had ever gotten hold of it.

The fact that the weather department keeps its forecasts out of the press until they are over-ripe, so to speak, was all that saved it. Immediately there began such a spell of heavenly weather that Jack Bradley had to buy lead insoles for his shoes to keep himself from jumping up and down. Then came the change. He suddenly felt the subtle fluid surging into his feet, and it dropped with such a thud that only by a superhuman effort could he act chipper and happy, and reel off the jokes he had mastered. However, his desire for revenge, aided by his artistic temperament, brought him through.

After three or four anxious hours, during which Bradley saw with horror his meteorological instrument getting gayer every moment, this false prophet, now reduced to the pitiful necessity of hedging, rushed away again and sent off a second message.

He said that the cyclone he had expected had met with a counter current and caromed off to the North Pacific Ocean, where it was churning a hole in the water and destroying the ships that were en route for the Arctic regions. The country could now look for a long spell of serene, delightful weather such as it had not experienced for years.

Scarcely had the bulletin been issued when the storm of the century burst upon the country and destroyed thousands of lives and millions of dollars' worth of property.

This disaster proved fatal to Bigler. Being a proud man, and unwilling to give up without a struggle, he decided to cut loose from Bradley, strike out independently, and go into training as a barometer himself. But as his age and dignity made the long preparatory course at the pan mill out of the question, he tried to hasten nature by adding a capsule of the desired element to his daily bill of fare; and died within a year, a victim to overweening scientific ambition.

Meantime, Bradley, awakened at last to the mine of wealth within him, decided to work it on his own account, and, fearing a repetition of the Bigler episode if he remained on his native heath, smuggled himself through the French Custom House, and is now at large somewhere in Europe.

For that reason, if any one should, in the course of foreign travels, run up against a middleaged, nervous, stoop-shouldered man, of markedly mercurial spirits, who wishes to bet on the weather, he'll do well to save his money. The man is no other than Bradley, the original and only Human Barometer; and he's betting on a sure thing.

_________________

9: At the Mickleham Arms

Helen Simpson

Helen de Guerry Simpson, 1897-1940

The Weekly Westminster, Nov 3 1923

WE all turned to stare at the old lady as she came into the bar. She held in her respectably gloved hand a small tight bunch of mignonette, whose green heads protruding from a stiff funnel of newspaper instantly filled the room with an incongruous scent. She had a pink, humorous face, like some politician of the older school; and she eyed her bitter against the light with a gesture and pose of the head that would have dignified a glass of port reflected from a mahogany table. We did not speak to her, but regarded her with disapproval as a mere casual adventurer within our boundaries; she was not disconcerted. She dwelt apart, in a rosy atmosphere not to be dulled by our antagonism. She took a draught of bitter, only a mouthful or two, with deliberation; then, setting down the glass, with a word and a glance she gathered us, still hostile, into her circle.

' 'Ot,' she said, and fanned herself with the mignonette. We looked at each other, undecided. She continued easily, 'It's the pore 'orses I'm sorry for; 'uman bein's can look after theirselves.'

A further draught of bitter drove home this point, and as she lowered the glass she paused, fixing a compelling gaze upon the lady in mauve.

'They ought to 'ave 'ats,' she concluded, and set the glass down. The lady in mauve, though particular as a rule, was roused to speech by this absurdity.

'Their yers is the wrong shape,' she said coldly, and moved in her chair so that her profile was obscured by a drooping purple plume.

'They 'as them abroad,' insisted the old lady. 'In Rome.'

I opened my mouth to ask a question, but the old lady broke covert in another direction.

'I'm seventy-six,' she announced abruptly, 'but I seen a lot.'

'Ah,' said the lady in mauve.

'We're Victorian girls, me and 'er,' continued the old lady, accepting her as an ally on the strength of this single ejaculation. 'Victorian. She kep' us in order. One 'usbin', and stick to 'im, that was 'er motter. Not one or two, like they 'as nowadays. But there wasn't none of these Ladies' Bars then.'

'When I was a girl,' said the lady in mauve, confidentially, 'I used to like a drop o' stout. For the matter o' that I do still. But if you'll believe me, I never could 'ave it in peace. I used to slip in to the Colville down in Jersey Street, and gulp it down, and then out again as if I was shot. There wasn't no ladies in the bars then.' She tossed her plume, and we all felt that civilization had advanced since those bleak days. We sipped more genteelly, and looked more kindly upon the intruder, who once again, by the mysterious quality of her smile, gathered our attention. She leaned forward.

'We knew a thing or two, for all that,' said she. 'Shh!' Evidently she considered silence the better part. We took the hint, rapidly considering what the thing or two might be.

'But I like to see young people enjoying life,' she continued. 'That's what it was give 'em for. Nobody's young for long. But the memories'— she lifted a compact hand— 'the memories is sweet.'

'Ah,' the lady in mauve agreed. 'I done most things—'

'Been to Rome?' the old lady inquired brusquely.

I waited, breathless. Now we were coming to it.

'No, I 'ave not,' the lady in mauve answered with hauteur. 'As I was saying—'

But the old lady was too quick for her.

'I been to Rome,' she announced. 'Seventeen year ago it was, with my son. 'E went on business. That was the year when they 'ad the great eruption of Vesuvius— 'eard I was coming, I expec'.'

We laughed, but the lady in mauve finished her stout and sat with a fixed expression, cheated of her reminiscence.

'I was alone a lot,' said the old lady, 'but I didn't care. No. I used to go roamin'— roamin' in Rome. One day I walked out to where they said there was twenty-six miles o' marble under the earth. Outside Rome, that was. Now mind'— she addressed us with sudden severity, sketching a Parliamentary gesture with a lifted hand— 'pay attention to this. This is gospel I'm telling you, not paper.'

We composed ourselves to listen, but in that moment the landlord had crossed her field of vision. She accosted him. 'Guvnor,' she asked, 'what's the matter with you? You ain't smilin'. Ain't you well?'

The potentate paused, astounded, his mouth drooping like the red flaps of skin beneath his jaws. At last he answered briefly, in his throaty voice:

'I'm all right; much the same,' and turned to survey the ranked bottles.

'You don't look ser charmin' as usual,' said the old lady, with a wink at us. The back of his neck flushed. He moved away almost hastily to loom above a masculine audience which took him seriously. The old lady's eye followed his retreat, and there was a gleam of triumph in it. She turned to us once more.

'As I was saying,' she went on lightly, 'I went out there to this place, what's this they called it: outside of Rome, it was? I 'ad my seventieth birthday in Rome,' she added in an aside to me, 'seventeen years ago. Shh!'

She resumed her narrative.

'And when I'd gone something like 'arf a mile, what should I see but a sort of little statue. A little bit of a thing it was— so 'igh.

She measured the height with her hand.

'And there was writing on it. In English and Italian. And what do you think it said? You don't know? Well, I'll tell you. That's what I come for. It said, "This is the spot where Nero stood when 'e watched the burnin' of Rome." '

She sat back in her chair, and we stared at her and at each other, over our glasses of bitter and stout and gin.

'That's what it said,' she continued, ' "the spot where Nero stood." I thought to myself, "I've 'eard of you, you nasty feller," and so, then, what do you think I did? I was wearing an English pair o' boots— boots I'd brought with me a month before all this 'appened I'm telling you -a military 'eel, they 'ad— and I thought, I'll put my good ole English boot up 'ere on top o' this statue where Nero stood. I could do it then; might 'ave a bit o' difficulty now. And so I upped with my foot, and I put my boot right on it. And I thought. This'll be something, when I get back, to tell the girls and make 'em laugh. Military 'eels, they 'ad.'

She mused for a moment.

'Many's the one I've told that story to,' she said. 'If I've told it to one, I've told it to 'undreds. It always makes 'em laugh. And the cleverer they is, and the more well-educated they is, the more they laugh. Ah, well.'

We sat spellbound. The old lady, infallibly recognizing that the moment had come, gripped her tube of mignonette and rose.

'I'll be going now,' she said, and laid one stumpy finger delicately against her nose; over it she cocked at us an eye at once deprecating and naughty. 'Shh!' she said, and went.

As the doors swmng behind her I felt a sudden sense of loss. Good company is so rare, and this had been mature and excellent as a vintage wine. But she was irrevocably gone. In the bar nobody knew her; the dark, jostling streets outside held my treasure most securely. And since she was an artist I knew that she would never come to that Ladies' Bar again.

_________________

10: The Levitation of Jacob

Clifford Howard

1868-1942

The Black Cat, September 1900

I CAST my eye over the advertising columns of the Journal I was attracted by the following notice, printed in small type and tucked away in an inconspicuous place:

HIRAM JACOB

Post Office Box 975

ANNIHILATOR OF THE UNDESIRABLE

I am not naturally a person of much curiosity, but it seemed to me that there was something very unusual about this advertisement. It may not have impressed other readers in the same way, but it surely appealed to me as a most singular announcement. I could not rid my mind of it, and the more I thought of it the more curious I became.

But I never spend time in idle speculation. My policy is to get at the facts of a case. Accordingly, I clipped the advertisement and enclosed it in a note addressed to Hiram Jacob, asking him to furnish me with full particulars.

After waiting a day I received this answer, written on the typewriter in regular business form:

My dear sir:—

In reply to your favor of this date I beg to inform you that I am now prepared to fill orders for the extermination of human pests. Drunkards and worthleaa grandparent a specialty. Particular attention paid to the annihilation of personal enemies, money-borrowers, organ-grinders, mischievous gossips, miserly relatives and confirmed dyspeptics. In short, my business applies to all individuals who are a burden to society or whose existence interferes with the life, liberty or happiness of others.

I am the discoverer and sole possessor of a method of annihilation that defies detection. It is instantaneous, clean, noiseless and absolutely certain. It leavea not a shadow of a trace behind. It is annihilation, pure and simple. This I guarantee. In the case of relatives it saves all bother and expense of funerals. This is an important item.

My term are $500 for each case, cash in advance. Twenty percent  discount for two in a family if ordered at the same time. Orders executed within three days after receipt, or money refunded. Special yearly rates for the annihilation of tramps. My patrons assume no risk. Those who fear possibility of detection (though I guarantee there is none) need not reveal their Identity. Simply write name and address of party to be extermiated and forward with bank note to Yours truly,

Hiram Jacob,

Annihilator of the Undesirable.

There was a straightforwardness about this letter which impressed me very favorably. The man was evidently sincere, notwithstanding that he was several generations in advance of his time. But I was particularly struck with what he said in reference to his method of business.

The absolute annihilation of a body has always been regarded a fi a physical impossibility, yet here was a man who claimed to have discovered a means of accomplishing it and was ready to put it to practical use for the benefit of humanity.

As an investigator and a seeker after truth I felt it my duty to look into this matter more deeply.

I have spent many thousands of dollars in scientific experiments and research, and the question of five hundred dollars offered but little objection to satisfying myself of the truth of this man's claim regarding his remarkable discovery.

A more serious matter was the selection of somebody to be annihilated. I had in mind quite a number of both men and women who would answer the purpose very satisfactorily.

The difficulty lay in making a choice. There were several whose sudden taking-off I knew would prove a godsend to their relatives. In fact, I was myself possessed of an aged and unbalanced aunt, whose death was impatiently awaited by every member of the family.

She was a helpless invalid, totally deaf and almost blind, and subject to the peevish hallucination that the neighbors were spitting at her. Her lucid moments were devoted to wagging her head and mumbling grievously because she was not in heaven, where she had an idea she belonged.

Everybody said— and said it quite freely, too—  that it would be a mercy if she died. But whenever she developed alarming symptoms which gave promise of her speedy termination, the doctor was hastily called and she was nursed back to life with much care and solicitude.

It was probably the same spirit which impelled us to do all we could to prolong her days of misery that now deterred me from selecting her for the hand of Jacob. Besides her I had two or three other relatives who, for one reason or another, wouhl have been more agreeable in the graveyard than around the house, but I have a natural delicacy about tampering with relatives. At the same time, to get rid of a member of the family would have served a purely personal end, and that was not my object in this matter.

I desided simply to make a scientific investigation, aside from all family or selfish considerations, and I therefore determined to select someone whose annihilation would not only serve the cause of science, but at the same time be a benefit to society at large.

Accordingly, I picked out Bill Tizer. Bill Tizer was a notorious scamp— a hard drinker and a gambler; convicted of a number of minor offences and always suspected of larger ones; a charge on the community, utterly worthless, and a dangerous element of society. If ever there was a man unfit to live it was Bill Tizer, and I felt myself a public benefactor when I placed my order for him with the Annihilator of the Undesirable.

For the next two days after mailing the order I spent my time following Bill Tizer about town. It was important that I should be on hand when the annihilation look place, and as a consequence most of my time was given up to lounging about in saloons. It was not altogether good for my reputation, but I have learned to sacrifice much for the sake of science, and when it was rumored that I had taken to drink and was seen prowling about Deadman's Alley in a state of intoxication, I accepted my fate with the meekness of a martyr.

The reward of my vigilance and self-sacrifice came at last. It was on the afternoon of the third day, and it may not be amiss to add that I shall never forget that day.

It was shortly after three o'clock. I was crossing a street in the business section of the city, following in the tipsy footsteps of Bill Tizer, who was a few feet ahead of me. I was just in the act of reaching forward to pull him out of the way of a cart when a most astonishing thing ocoured— Bill Tizer suddenly vanished.

The hand that I had raised to take him by the shoulder fell upon empty air. Only an instant before he had been directly in front of me. I was looking right at him. Now he was gone as completely as if he had never existed. The effect of his disappearance was like that of a gas jet that is suddenly extinguished—  now you see it, now you don't. He simply went out of existence, instantly and completely, without a sign, without a trace of what had become of him.

Had I been the only witness of this marvel I should probably have doubted my senses; but what I had seen was confirmed by the driver of the cart, who was so overcome with fright that he gave vent to a series of unearthly yells, which not only served his horse as a pretext to run away, but attracted a large and inquisitive crowd.

The street at this point is paved with Belgian blocks. I examined the pavement carefully. It was firm and solid. There was no man hole, no sewer trap, no opening of any kind into which my victim might have fallen. Neither could I discover the slightest trace of the man. There was no sign of blood, no scrap of clothing, no mark of any sort in the dust or on the stones— absolutely nothing to indicate the spot where he had disappeared or to show how he had passed out of existence. He was gone, body and soul.

There could be no doubt about it; I was the witness of a marvellous phenomenon, a phenomenon in contradiction of all the laws of physics— the complete and total annihilation of matter. The demonstration was complete and beyond question; but the mystery of it was unfathomable.

The announcement that Bill Tizer was missing and that no clue to his whereabouts could be found attracted but little public interest. Despite the story of his disappearance as told by the drunken driver, it was taken for granted that he had tumbled into the river, and the police made no special effort to find him, nor did I deem it worth while to make any mention of my association with the affair. It was a case of good riddance to bad rubbish, and the public was satisfied to let it go at that.

But scarcely bad the incident passed from mind, when the mystery connected with it was revived by another remarkable and mysterious disappearance.

A retired banker, an old man by the name of Muldoon, suddenly disappeared one morning. He had left his home to call at the house of a friend about two blocks away. Several persons distinctly remembered having passed him on the street, and one man testified that he had stopped and talked with him at the very doorstep of his friend's house. That was the last seen of him. He never reached his destination.

While the police and the public racked their startled brains for some solution of this extraordinary affair, I saw in it at once the mighty hand of the mysterious Jacob. Evidently he had secured another customer, for I had not considered it necessary to place a second order with him, as he had fully satisfied me of his ability as an annihilator.

My chief desire now was to learn his secret; yet there was something so overwhelmingly wonderful and incomprehensible about it that I was at a loss to even conjecture his possible method of operation.

Then, about a week after the annihilation of the venerable Muldoon, the community was thrown into a state of bewilderment by the similar disappearance of an old lady.

Her case was even more remarkable than either of the previous ones. She was an invalid (had been an invalid for fifty years), and was being wheeled slowly up and down the sunny side of the street near her home, when suddenly she and her entire outfit of chair, nurse and pet poodle vanished from the face of the earth.

It may readily be imagined that my science-loving soul was tiiTed to its depths by this demonstration of Jacob's miraculous force; and while, of course, I agreed with the community that it was a very unceremonious way for this time-worn lady to make her exit from the stage of life, I was too deeply impressed with the scientitic aspect of the case to give much attention to the sentimental side of it.

But my feelings on the subject were very abruptly altered by a startling and most unexpected incident. I received the following letter from Hiram Jacob:

Dear Sir:

Your attentions to a certain young lady, whom it is unnecessary for me to mention by name, are the cause of much unhappiness to a fellow-mortal. On his behalf I warn you to completely sever your acquaintanceship with the said young lady on or before the 20th inst.

Now, I am not a man who is readily frightened; but the prospect of personally experiencing complete annihilation was by no means agreeable. There could be no doubt that that was the meaning of the letter. Some cowardly rival for the hand of Helen Baker had evidently placed an order for me with the inscrutable Jacob.

Unfortunately, Miss Baker had so many admirers in addition to myself that I was at a loss to know which one to accuse of this villanous threat; nor was I in a financial position to wreak wholesale vengeance by placing an order for the annihilation of the entire lot.

At the same time, I did not propose to be bulldozed, and within an hour after the receipt of the letter I called on Miss Baker with an avowal which I had had in contemplation for some time past; and when I left I was calling her Helen, and we kissed one another good-night.

I mention this, not so much for the purpose of showing Miss Baker's preference for me above her numerous suitors, but to demonstrate that I am no coward.

I knew it would be both senseless and futile to call the attention of the police to Jacob's letter. It contained no real threat of violence; and were I to explai n who the writer was, by declaring him to be the destroyer of Bill Tizet, it would be impossible to prove it. Besides, if by any possibility I could prove the assertion, it would necessarily involve me in the matter and I would be adjudged as guilty as Jacob himself— perhaps more so— and that would mean the disgraceful termination of my days on the end of a rope. Between the two, I preferred clean, respectable annihilation.

As to giving up Helen, that was out of the question. I was engaged to her now, and I am particularly conscientious about keeping my engagements. My rival should see that I was not a man to be intimidated, and furthermore I was determined he should not succeed in his murderous design. I made up my mind to find Hiram Jacob. I felt that if I could once get hold of him I could arrange matters to our mutual satisfaction as between brother scientists.

Pride would not permit me to write to him, for I would not put myself in the attitude of pleading for mercy. I had made several attempts before to locate him, for my curiosity had impelled me to seek from him an explanation of his marvellous secret, but all my efforts in that direction had been in vain. Beyond his post-office box he appeared to have no existence.

As the matter had now assumed a much more serious aspect I devoted my entire time and energy to his discovery. The date fixed for my extermination was but five days off. Three of these days I spent in the post-office, from early morning until late at night, keeping a watch on Box 975. Despite my vigilance it was not until this much of my time had been consumed that I was able to discover who took the mail from this particular box.

It was only then by the merest chance that I made the discovery. I happened to turn rather suddenly in my slow pacing up and down the lobby and caught a small boy in the act of taking a letter from No. 975. He unlocked and closed the box again so quickly that had I been fifteen seconds later I should have missed him.

Putting the letter in his pocket he left the building. I at once followed him, keeping him well in sight, but avoiding any appear ance of tracking him. After a walk of several blocks he stopped at a letter box on a street corner. Taking the letter from his pocket he placed it in a large envelope and sealed it, and was in the act of mailing it when it slipped from his hand and fell to the ground. Ere he could pick it up I saw the address, "Room 37, Dunton Building." That was all. There was no name.

But the clew was sufficient, and the next day found me knocking at No. 37, Dunton Building, bright and early in the morning. Six different times I called and pounded on the door and stamped about impatiently in the hall, but each time without success. Then the janitor told me that no one occupied the room. He said some one had rented it, but never used it; the only one who called was the postman, and he always dropped the letters through the opening in the door.

With the aid of a button-hook and several keys I succeeded in gaining an entrance to the room the next morning. This was the twentieth of the month, my last day of grace, and I took it for granted that desperate chances were permissible. The room was without furniture and totally bare. On the floor lay two letters where the carrier had dropped them through the door. I had brought my lunch with me, for I was determined to remain until Mr. Jacob called for his letters.

Notwithstanding the janitor's statement, it was plain that Jacob must sneak into the room some time during the day or night to get his mail. I also had my revol ver with me, for contingencies. Two or three hours passed, without a sound or sign of anybody.

My vigil was becoming irksome. I sat on the window-sill, keeping one eye on the door and allowing the other to see as much as it could of the roofs and chimneys outside, by way of diversion. Twelve o'clock came and I was still alone. I took my lunch from my pocket, and as I did so I happened to glance down at the floor.

The letters that had been lying there close to the door had disappeared.

A creepy chill passed over me. No one had entered the room. I had fastened the bolt when I came in and the door was still bolted. There was no opening under the door through which the letters could have been extracted.

The situation was positively uncanny, and combined with the mystery of Jacob's existence and the realization of his fearful power, I do not think I can be blamed for feeling decidedly uncomfortable— not to say scared.

There are times when the bravest of men lose their nerve, when judgment and reason are thrown to the winds under the stress of sudden fear or excitement. I rushed from the room and out into the street. There was now but one chance for my life. Pride, love, happiness must be the sacrifice— but Helen would understand when I explained the terrible situation to her. The last day of my life was ebbing away, and Jacob, that dark angel of death, might take it into his head to call early.

When I reached the house I hesitated. My senses were coming back to me. Perhaps my hated rival was watching me, smiling with diabolical satisfaction at my weakness. I let my hand drop from the door-bell without ringing it. Pride and determination returned. I was myself once more— unconquered and undaunted. I turned and walked with a firm step toward my own home. Arrived there, I wrote a long and most affectionate letter of farewell to Helen. I decided to send it by special delivery, in order that she might receive it before the news of my disappearance reached her. lt would lessen the shock.

As I read the missive over it brought tears to my eyes, it aroused in me an inexpressible sympathy for Helen in her impending bereavement. She would be deprived even of the consolation of putting flowers on my grave. There would be no grave, no remains, no funeral, no opportunity for a last expression of love. I also wrote letters to several of my scientific friends, explaining my situation and asking them, in the name of science, to discover this man Jacob and force from him an explanation of what had become of me.

I was still writing, seated at a small table on the back veranda overlooking the garden, when I was interrupted by the appearance of a small, genial-faced man, about fifty years of age, who came up the steps, smiling mowst graciously.

"Pardon my interruption," he said politely, coming forward and shaking my hand with great cordiality. "My name is Jacob— Hiram Jacob."

Then, taking a seat directly opposite me at the table, he continued— smiling blandly all the while— "I have called a little earlier than I expected, as I have an engagement out of the city ; and it has occurred to me that if you have come to a decision in the matter about which I wrote you, it would be useless to put off till to-morrow that which can be done to-day. May I ask, therefore, what your decision is?"

"My decision is that I will not be bulldozed by anybody," I answered warmly, bringing my fist down on the table.

"Very well," he replied calmly. "That settles the matter at once. But before proceeding, I think I owe you an explanation, in view of my letter of the fifteenth."

"No explanations are necessary," I retorted. "I am fully aware of who you are, Mr. Jacob, and what you intend doing. I have myself employed your services."

"Ah, indeed,'' he answered. "Of course as all my correspondents are anonymous I cannot be expected to recognize old patrons. I trust you found my services satisfactory?"

"Not only satisfactory, but of the greatest interest," I replied, glad of a chance to gain time. "I am myself a scientist, and your discovery has aroused my most ardent curiosity and, I may add, my warmest admiration. And by the way," I added suddenly, "I am also much interested in the manner in which you obtain your mail from Room 37, Dunton Building."

I thought I would startle him, but he answered quietly: "In my room below No. 37, where I have an office in the name of Thomas Sullivan, I simply pull a cord that is attached to a hinged plank in the floor above, and the letters drop through an opening in the ceiling whenever I am ready to receive them. That's a very simple trick; don't you think it is?"

I told him I thought it was very simple indeed.

"I want to be perfectly frank with you," he went on, "for there is no reason why I should conceal anything from you. lt flatters me to know that you were  interested in my discovery, and I have no objection to explaining it to you, as one man of science to another, especially as you will yourself be the subject of a demonstration of it within the next few minutes."

"Will seven hundred and fifty dollars induce you to throw up the job?" I asked.

"Couldn't think of it for a moment, my dear sir," he answered, striking a match and lighting his cigar. "I have a reputation to sustain, and I have made it a rule never to permit anything to interfere with carrying out an order. I can assure you, however, that it is painless, absolutely painless; and besides, you have the satisfaction of knowing that your annihilation means the happiness of a fellow-being."

"Then you mean to say that there is no possible means by which this murder can be avoided?" I asked, half rising in my chair with a determination to have first playing the game by shooting Mr. Jacob through the head.

"Tut, tut, my dear sir; you will gain nothing by such tactics as that," he answered, serenely, looking at me with half-closed eyes as he puffed the smoke from his smiling mouth.

"I have merely to press the button you see on this instrument," he added, holding up to view the small, leather-covered box he had with him, "and the work is done in the twinkling of an eye."

I settled back in my chair.

"And is your power of annihilation contained in that l ittle, camera-like box?" I asked, forgetting in my curiosity the fate that was so near at hand.

"Just so," he responded; "just so. You have hit the nail on the head. I have simply to point the annihilator at my subject and push the button. Great invention, is it not?"

He turned the apparatus slowly around in h is hands, wh ile he fixed his gaze upon me with an expression of benevolent appreciation of my interest in the matter.

"In this instrument is stored the greatest power of the ages, the power of levitation. You look surprised; but the truth is, I have discovered a means of destroying gravitation— and behold, I have levitation, the antithesis of gravity! Many men have claimed this before and have duped the innocents by illusions and stories of floating bodies, men and furniture suspended in mid- air! But common sense should have told them that the destruction of gravity would not have such a result as that.

"What is it that holds us on the earth? It is the force of gravity, is it not? Of course it is. In this latitude the earth revolves on its axis at the rate of nearly a thousand miles an hour. Now, when I destroy in you the force of gravitation, you, as a man of science, know as well as I what will happen. The centrifugal force of the earth's revolution will shoot you off into space at the rate of sixteen miles a minute; so fast that the eye cannot follow you. You will be out of sight in a twinkling. Now, that's as plain as the nose on your face— don't you think it is?"

I assured him that it was all very plain.

"As to what becomes of you," he went on, "is neither here nor there. So far as this earth is concerned, you will be annihilated. You will leave it with the force of a cannon-ball and nothing this side of the moon can stop you. You may perhaps land on the moon or you may go on to the sun, or you may continue to shoot through space, forever and a day. But these are questions that concern neither you nor—"

There was a crash; the table was violently upset, and Hiram Jacob was gone. A hole in the roof of the porch marked his exit from earth.

He had accidently pushed the button while the machine was pointed toward himself; and as he had it in his hand at the time, it of course went with him, as did also the chair on which he was sitting.

After gathering together my scattered senses, by which time Mr. Jacob and my chair were fifty miles on their way to the stars, I picked up the table and quietly destroyed the letters I had written, and after a little while I called on Helen to talk over the plans for our wedding.

______________

11: The Adventure of the

Whisting Omelette

C. Ranger Gull and Reginald Bacchus

1876-1923, and 1874–1945

The Ludgate, May 1899

CONCEIVE my portion. Night was falling very shrewd, with rain coming up black from the sea. I could hardly see my way a yard before and not at all behind, and the moor was full of break-neck places hid among the heather. I had no impulse in me but just to sit down and swear, only the moor seemed too lonely for my own voice. I was a fool to have left Plymouth on such a day of cloud-rack and coining storm. There seemed nothing a man might do for shelter.

I roamed the moor like a lost sheep, and I believe I would have welcomed a prison-breaking convict from Princes Town, so lonely was I. My flask was empty of comfort, there was never a match in any pocket of my coat, and I was sorely hungry. There seemed no chance of succour, and I was beginning to think I should spend a merry night alone upon the moor, when I ran hard up against the stone wall of a house.

The house stood up alone in the middle of the moor, with no garden or fence to shield it, and I felt my way round, no great distance, till I came to a door, upon which I beat lustily. The door opened and the light ran out of it, cutting the darkness with a golden knife. I heard a voice asking me to enter, but at first I could not see from whom it came because my eyes were blinded.

When I had gone in and was seated by the fire, I saw my entertainer was a man well set up and of a good carriage, but curious in face. It was difficult to determine whether he was a young man or an old one. His hair was grey, verging on white indeed, and his face was lined, but his eyes were a young man’s eyes and his skin was healthy and clear.

The room itself was furnished like a monk’s cell. The floor was bare of carpet, there were no pictures on the walls, and there were only three articles of furniture, two chairs and a table, all of massive build, clamped to the floor. I never saw such an empty room. A few books lay about the floor, and a shelf on the wall bore some eating utensils and a loaf of bread.

I was beginning to thank my entertainer, when he started violently and began to tremble.

“You will think my request a strange one,” he said, “ but believe me, I am not mad, and you would confer a favour upon me. Might I ask you to place your walking-stick in the further corner of the room.”

I was taken aback by his request and his evident discomposure, but I could not afford to quarrel with the warmth and chance of supper, so I did as he desired, looking at him in amazement. When I had returned to my chair by the fire and he was at the other seat by the table, he apologised and said, “ My request will seem very strange to you, sir, and this bare room and lonely dwelling-place must also have aroused your wonder. I can explain them both, and have nothing to hide, and if you will help yourself to any food and wine that is upon the shelf, I will tell you my story. First, however, I will replenish the fire.”

He took a log from a pile by the hearth— I noticed he handled it very gingerly— and placed it on the flames. Then he told me the following story.

The Adventure of the Whistling Omelette.

Aylmer Facinorious was a young musician of some promise and of a sunny, happy disposition. Throughout his life he made it his business to be always pleasant with himself, and though his earnings were not far from meagre he kept a bright face, and when he could not afford to purchase a cigar vowed that there was nothing like a pipe.

He lived in Chelsea among the artists, and in the evening at winter time, in some big studio where the firelight flickered on the walls and his friends sat silent, he would often sit at the piano and improvise soundpictures for them or play to them some dainty dance of old gold and green by Grieg.

Among the circle of artists with whom he lived there were two girls who shared a flat together, and with one of them, Audrey Anderson, he fell violently in love. Audrey was ready to be won, and promised to marry him, but as she had very little money, and Aylmer had none at all, it was obvious that they must wait.

Wait they did for more than three years, and at the end of that time, though they were more in love than ever, they were both as poor as before. They wanted to be married very much, and the sacred and close communion of husband and wife seemed the only thing in the world; but as neither of them were very brilliant at their work, they could not find a way to the most modest eldorado.

Hope deferred made their heart— for they had but one between them— very sick indeed, and Audrey began to grow pale and to fret. Aylmer, in desperation, produced the trashiest of songs, which, despite the large numbers that he could easily produce, still failed to bring him any prospect of a sufficient income.

One evening, bright and fair to most of the world, but very gloomy to Aylmer, after a weary and fruitless round of visits to music dealers, he turned into a little restaurant in Soho. Audrey was in the country, and London seemed more than usually grim and unfriendly to the young man. A chance in his wanderings brought him by this place, where he had often been very happy with his sweetheart over a simple dinner and a bottle of cheap claret. The small room upstairs was almost empty, for it was early, and Aylmer noticed only two people as he pushed open the swing doors— an old gentleman who was a habitue of the place and a stranger who sat at a table by the window.

As the night was rather hot and the window was open, Aylmer took a seat at the same table, and after a minute or two found himself in easy talk with his vis-à-vis.

The stranger, a tall, thin-faced man with a mass of red hair pushed back from a singularly high forehead, introduced himself at once as Mr. Paul Bullo, scientific investigator, late of Kansas City and now of London. He seemed to take it for granted that their friendship was a settled thing, and plunged at once into an animated conversation on a variety of intimate subjects.

He told Aylmer all about his early struggles in the Western States, how he had worked at any job that he could find in order to feed and clothe himself, while all his spare hours and many of his nights were spent in ceaseless scientific experiments. A small invention connected with the working of railroad signals had brought him enough money to send him East, and he had become a workman in Mr. Edison’s laboratory. From this point his progress in scientific knowledge had been very rapid, and at the age of thirty-three he found himself one of Edison’s right-hand men, and possessed of a reputation that made him known to the first scientific circles of Europe.

It was a few years after this that his uncle, Rupert Hocker, met with a violent death at tne hands of his own workmen who were out on strike, and left him the whole of his immense fortune and a partnership in the great pork-packing industry of Hocker, Sweetman and Bock, Chicago, Ill. Mr. Bullo had immediately sold his share in the business, as he inherited from his mother’s family a suspicion of Jewish blood which made him disinclined to be prominently connected with the bacon trade.

Possessed at last of the means to gratify every desire, he had spent ten years in extended travel round the world, visiting in turn every laboratory and scientist of repute. Then, when near upon his fiftieth year, he had settled in London to spend the rest of his life producing new inventions and elaborating those which he had already conceived.

He told Aylmer all about his house in Bloomsbury Square, and the many strange conceits that it contained. He said that with his marvellous system of electrical machines he needed but the assistance of a cook and engineer to supply him with every detail of modern luxury, and told how, by the pressure of a finger, he could gratify his ear with the sweetest music, or dream for a space to the sound of life-like imitations of singing birds. Sometimes he would please his eye with moving pictures caught by the camera from all the countries of the globe. His house was his own world to him, he said, and he rarely went out among men save on those rare intervals when the noiseless forms that flitted across his picture sheets seemed to shame him into the confession that even the happiest of recluses must now and then rub shoulders with mankind.

He told the story of his life in a brisk and graphic manner, eating and drinking meanwhile with a rapidity and precision that were almost mechanical. Aylmer listened with extreme interest, rarely interrupting the course of the narrative save for an occasional exclamation of surprise and wonder as Mr. Bullo detailed with extraordinary lucidity his invention and working of some new engine or apparatus.

At the end of his recital the American paused, seeming to invite a return of confidences, and Aylmer, who was greatly attracted by the man’s personality, poured out the details of his own life struggle, his love, and the apparent hopelessness of the future. When he had finished, and the little restaurant, which during their talk had been crowded, was now empty again, Mr. Bullo spoke.

“And now,” said he, “our dinner has been much spoiled by our talk; will you join me in an omelette which they make for me according to a special recipe of my own. I can promise you that you will like it.”

Aylmer acquiesced, and in a few minutes the patron himself appeared with the omelette which he placed before Mr. Bullo in a manner which was at once deferential and awe-stricken.

“Would you oblige me by cutting it,” said Mr. Bullo, “ It is a conceit of mine to prefer my guest to do that duty on the occasions that I have this particular dish.”

Aylmer drew the knife, quickly across the steaming omelette, when suddenly it emitted a loud strident whistle, and rearing itself upon its end began to pirouette daintily round the dish.

“A little invention of my own,” said the millionaire in a delighted tone. “You see it is quite simple,” and capturing the spinning confection, he withdrew a tiny glittering object. “This is all,” he said; “your knife surprised the mechanism, and you see the result. I have made an especial study of mechanical jests as applied to cooked dishes, and frequently amuse my friends in this fashion. Last Christmas Day, I had a plum-pudding, out of which, when opened, mechanical dickie-birds, painted to represent the feathered songsters of all countries, flew to different perches about the room and warbled for upwards of twenty minutes. It was a pretty prank. And now I must be upon my way. Here is my card. Should you feel inclined to visit me, I have a plan which with the aid of a little courage on your part may place you in a position to be speedily married.”

He summoned the waiter, and, despite Aylmer’s protestations, insisting on paying the bill for the two dinners, left the room very quietly. Three times was the young musician in imminent peril of being run over as he made his way to Piccadilly Circus to find his omnibus.

The indefinite promise of the millionaire following on the wonderful stories that he told, produced an extraordinary exhilaration in Aylmer’s mind, and he drifted through the crowded streets realising nothing but the beautiful future he was planning in his own thoughts. At last, after the pole of an omnibus had grazed his shoulder, and he felt the hot, strong breath of the horses upon his cheek, he pulled himself together, and as a relief to his feelings was extravagant to the extent of a long telegram to Audrey. He smiled to see how the amatory wording of it stiffened the good post-mistress’s cheek to a frigid displeasure.

He judged it best not to be too impatient in his visit to Mr. Bullo, and it was not till nearly a week had passed that one wet, clammy summer’s evening found him on the doorstep of the house in Bloomsbury Square. The door opened suddenly, and Aylmer was confronted with a large hall somewhat bare of furniture. As there was no servant to be seen, he stood upon the threshold for a moment not quite knowing what to do, until he saw an arm of wood shoot out from the wall bearing in its fingers a card with the legend “Up one flight of stairs and the first door to the right.”

He followed the directions nervously, bearing in mind the many mechanical pleasantries of whose existence about the house Mr. Bullo had apprised him. He reached the door, and as his foot touched the mat it opened and he walked into a room entirely bare of furniture, save for one arm-chair by the fire, in which Mr. Bullo was sitting.

The latter welcomed the young man with a great show of enthusiasm, and pressing a knob in the elaborately carved mantelpiece, caused a panel in the wall to swing back. Out of the opening another arm-chair ran upon wheels, easily and noiselessly, while it was followed by a small table bearing bottles and glasses.

“Here is sherry,” said Mr. Bullo, “or if you prefer it, spirits. Supper will be ready in one minute, and you must be contented with a cold feast, for though I thought you would come to-night, I could not be certain of the hour.”

They fell to talk, and Aylmer was presently astounded to see a band of rats run quickly across the floor and disappear into holes that opened to receive them. They were pursued by a pair of magnificent cats, and Aylmer could hear the rattle of the mechanism as they nosed about the holes.

Mr. Bullo clapped his hands.

“You must excuse me,” he said, “for my childishness in thus forcing my wonders upon your notice, but they are so dear to me, and it is such a pleasure to have a new audience for their exhibition.”

In a few more minutes there was a faint sound of a bugle coming from the lower part of the house. Mr. Bullo stamped his foot twice, and almost immediately the floor parted in the centre and a magnificently appointed table covered with the choicest of viands rose into sight.

“I must apologise once more,” said Mr. Bullo, “for this somewhat antique device, which smacks, I admit, of the Christmas pantomime, but I have tried in vain to invent a new one which should work with the like simplicity. At any rate, here is supper.”

They both did excellent justice to the feast before them. Never in his life had Aylmer tasted such delicately cooked foods or sipped such rare wines, so that when the supper-table gave way to another loaded with fruits, sweets from New York and Paris, and the most expensive kinds of cigars, he was in the best possible humour to accede to any proposition, however hazardous, that his host might put to him.

During the meal itself nothing extraordinary had taken place, but at dessert, Mr. Bullo’s face took on once more the deprecatory smile that Aylmer had begun to recognise as herald of impending wonders. Leaning forward he appeared to touch some spring concealed among the flowers. Immediately a little fountain tinkled in the centre of the table, music from a hidden orchestra floated about their ears, while upon a great silver dish three bananas rose upon end, and began lustily to buffet themselves upon a pineapple, which,throwing out long tentacles, defended itself sturdily from its foes.

“Well,” said Mr. Bullo, “I have played the magician enough. Now, come into my study, which is entirely free from mechanical tricks, and we will talk over the plan that I am about to propose to you.”

The study was a small room, very comfortable, and Aylmer, who was beginning to experience a nervousness Whenever he saw Mr. Bullo stretch out his hand, was relieved to see the whisky and tobacco produced without any appeal to science. The millionaire lost no time in opening the subject.

“At Lower Edmonton,” he said, “hard by the cottage where the late Mr. Charles Lamb wrote many of his instructive essays, there is a house. This house is my property, and on it I have spent five years and many thousands of pounds. It contains, and I am not boasting, the most perfect products now existing of applied mechanics. It is, sir, a trick-house!”

Mr. Bullo’s voice had quite lost its earlier tone of banter, and he looked very shrewdly at his young guest as he continued. “The tricks are not of the same pleasant and harmless nature as those with which I have this evening entertained you, but are in some cases serious attacks upon the person, and many of the things that may happen in this house are sufficient to try the nerves and courage of the bravest and most alert man who should venture to pass a night there. In fact, no one has ever done so since the machinery has been in working order, and I am prepared to offer £20,000 to the man who shall stay in that house three whole days and nights and come out alive. None of the traps I have laid are necessarily fatal. It is a fair bet. A brave man against the products of a scientist’s brain and twenty thousand pounds if he wins. Do you take me, young sir? and do you think there is any one who will pit himself against my brains for so large a sum of money? Yourself, for instance. You have no money and yet you are very anxious for marriage. Will you go to my house, and try for the £20,000 ? As you stand, what is your future? It is the worst of all penury, genteel penury. If you marry, your love may make you happy for a time despite the odds, but you are a man of the world, and you must know the inevitable end. A family, possible sickness, a sordid struggle for life, and gradual starvation. Now look at the other picture— the ‘bid for freedom’ let us call it. Three bad days and nights— possibly not so very bad, as I may be over-confident of my machinery— then the £20,000 for you when you come out ; nearly £800 a year, marriage, and lifelong happiness with Audrey. Come, I will give you three days to decide. You need not be afraid of being defrauded. Everything shall be in order; my solicitor will draw up an agreement for us to sign. To-day is the seventh, on the tenth I shall expect an answer. I think you will be my man.” Aylmer was silent for quite ten minutes. The clock ticked feverishly, seeming to hurry rather than to measure time; and Mr. Bullo, crouched in his chair, was watching intently, an extraordinary brilliance in his eyes.

“You say that none of the tricks are designedly fatal; you give me your word on that?” the young man said at last.

“I pledge you my word of honour!” said the millionaire, jumping up with outstretched hand. “The scheme sounds wild and mad, I own, but it is my hobby. I have always been madly fascinated by machinery. If you went careless and unprepared anything might happen, but going as you do, awake to every chance, you have no business to be killed. You’ll get badly frightened, no doubt, but that’s all!”

“I suppose you won’t give me any idea of what may happen ? ” said Aylmer.

“That wouldn’t be fair!” answered Mr. Bullo, with a chuckle. “ I cannot do that! I will say, however, that there is nothing like pasteboard ghosts or tricks with limelight. Everything is purely mechanical. It is simply a big mechanical joke; rather a dangerous one, perhaps, but then there is a big compensation. But wait a minute, I will introduce you to Mr. Willy, my engineer; he has been my right-hand man in carrying out the scheme.”

He pressed a bell, and in a few seconds the door opened and Mr. Willyappeared. He was a small man, broad, and brown of face, with extremely deep lines round his eyes and mouth. His eyes, which twinkled incessantly, were bright blue, and as he spoke the Welsh accent rapped sharp and crisp upon the ear. He was wiping the oil from his fingers with a tattered cloth as he entered the room, and he apologised to Mr. Bullo for his grimy condition.

“Look you, sir, I have made her fly at last,” he cried, and producing a mechanical owl from one of his capacious pockets he cast it up in the air. The solemn bird circled twice round the room, and then perching on the mantelshelf said “Mister Willy ” three times, and in the most natural manner in the world.

Mr. Bullo ran to it at once and patted it lovingly. “Thank you, Willy, thank you!” he cried, “ we shall soon have the whole animal kingdom. I have an idea for a giraffe which— but I forget. There is more serious work toward. Let me introduce you to my young friend, Mr. Aylmer Facinorious, who is very likely going to stay at Lever Lodge and try for my guineas.”

Mr. Willy shot a quick, cunning smile at his master, but the latter’s face did not move. “Tell him, Willy,” he went on, “that he isn’t going to be killed, only frightened and perhaps a trifle bruised,— eh, Willy?”

Mr. Willy fumbled with the piece of cotton waste that he still held in his hand, and looked from one man to the other before he answered. All his movements were very quick and jerky and the especial twinkle of his eye and the endless quivering of his shoulders gave him the appearance, which was quite false, of a nervous man.

“Oh no, sir," he answered there will be “ believe me, sir, indeed no danger of life whatever.”

“Very well,” said Aylmer, “I will let you know, Mr. Bullo, before the week is out. I have not to my knowledge ever made an enemy. I am, therefore, disinclined to believe that you should have any wish to take my life. It is, as you say, Mr. Willy, a great deal of money, and I am a fairly desperate man. The possession of this money would ensure the happiness of my life, and I think that I shall go to your house. Well, I will say good night. Thank you very much, Mr. Bullo, for your most excellent supper and the entertaining evening that you have given me. Mr. Willy, I have no doubt we shall meet again. Goodnight.”

When he was outside in the open air he drew a deep breath and turned once to look up at the gloomy house. All the windows were brilliantly lighted, and he could see, sharply silhouetted against one of the blinds, the black figures of Mr. Bullo and Mr. Willy, each holding a wine-glass. At the same moment the sound of loud brazen music, mocking music it seemed, came out over the square. It was a sudden flourish of trumpets, and when it ceased he could hear the panting of a gas-engine in the cellar.

He set himself to walk home, for at this time the omnibuses and trains had ceased running and he had no money for a cab. The wet mist which he had left outside when he entered the house was now gone, and the pavements were bright and clean as his footsteps struck echoes from the flags.  He enjoyed his long walk, and as every step took him further from Bloomsbury he felt the more determined to brave the unknown terrors of the house at Edmonton, and the more certain that he would come victorious from the ordeal.

There were but few wayfarers at that hour of the night, and when, at Hyde Park Corner, the dawn came, he stood and watched for a while. He slept but little and sat alone all the next day waiting for Audrey, who was coming home in the evening. He had made up his mind that he would tell her nothing of his dangerous purpose, but would pretend an engagement to play at a provincial concert to explain his three days’ absence. He felt supremely confident in himself, but as the hour of his sweetheart’s coming drew nearer he found it hard to repress a feeling of nervousness, a fear of some untimely accident that should take him for ever from Audrey.

At six o’clock he went to Paddington, and presently the great engine glided majestically into the station at the head of its train. By a lucky chance the carriage in which Audrey was drew up exactly opposite where he was standing, and in a moment his lady was in his arms. Neither of them could ever see why they should not embrace in a station. As Audrey herself said, “We love each other, so what does anything else matter?”

When they were in the cab Aylmer forgot everything for a time. To have her little slim hand in his— with the tyranny of a lover he had made her take off her glove— to be close to her in a little world of their own, to watch her sweet face all aglow with tenderness and trust, this indeed was the great thing in life.

“Darling," he said, “love of my heart, I can think of nothing but you. Oh, I have wanted you so. How splendid when we shall always be together for ever and ever. It’s awfully strange, but I don’t want any companionship but yours— just to be with you, that is all.”

Then Audrey asked him the question that she always asked him because it was so sweet to hear his protestations.

“Darling, will you always love me— when I am old and ugly, even?”

So for half-an-hour they prattled like children, hand in hand. They at least knew the best life has to give. To them, though they had little else, was given the supreme and inexpressible joy.

The cab spun rapidly through the pleasant streets of the West End, and the drive came to an end all too soon for the lovers. Aylmer gave up Audrey to Miss Chilmaid, the girl with whom she lived, and, promising to be back later in the evening, went home to a solitary dinner.

It was not until after they had been together for more than an hour that he dared to tell her of his prospective absence. The thought of lying to this sweet, good girl was horrible to him, and when at last he summed up enough courage to announce his concert engagement at Ipswich, and the probability of his being away for three days, it was with bald words and a blushing face.

Audrey said very little. She was sorry to be parted from him so soon again, but engagements of any sort were rare and had to be welcomed with considerable joy.

Soon afterwards they said good night, and Aylmer wrote to Mr. Bullo accepting his challenge in the matter of the house, and suggesting a meeting on the following day for the drawing up of a proper agreement. He said that on the day after he would be ready to go to Edmonton. He received a telegram from Mr. Bullo in the morning, and at three o’clock was closeted with him in the private room of Mr. Hartley, a solicitor, in Chancery Lane.

The formalities were few and quickly despatched, so that by half-past four Aylmer was once more in Mr. Bullo’s house. It had been decided that he was to go to Edmonton at once with Mr. Willy, and to dine in Bloomsbury Square before setting out. Dinner was agreeably free from mechanical pleasantries, and at eight o’clock Mr. Bullo rang for Mr. Willy, and the three went into the study for a final drink and cigar before the commencement of the adventure. At half-past eight Mr. Bullo rose from his chair, and, going to the young man, shook him warmly by the hand.

“The time has come, my young friend,” he said, “let me thank you again for j our acceptance of my wager. You are a man, I can see, and I doubt my machines will frighten you but little. We shall see, and believe me, Mr. Facinorious, it will be with the greatest pleasure that I shall hand you my cheque on Friday. Now I commend you to the guidance of Mr. Willy. He will leave you in Lever Lodge and will set the machine in action. At midnight exactly on Friday. Au revoir, Mr. Facinorious, and good luck.”

They were not long about their journey, for Mr. Bullo’s carriage whirled them quickly to the station and the train started immediately. When they arrived at Edmonton, Mr. W illy explained that the house was close at hand, and they set out for it on foot. Lever Lodge was a square and compact building of not at all a forbidding aspect, standing in a pleasant garden that was surrounded by a red-brick wall.

Mr. Willy walked with Aylmer up the gravel path that led from the garden gate to the front door, and, turning the lock with a latch-key, showed the young man into a brilliantly lighted hall, and then, bidding him a f ood evening, banged the door behind im.

The First Day

AYLMER paused for a moment irresolute. The hall was large and almost bare of furniture. The very emptiness of the place seemed sinister, and cold fear suddenly claimed the young man as her own. Through a tall window opposite to him he could see the moon floating peacefully among soft clouds, and the mellow sound of lowing cattle came at intervals over the fields.

He was seized with a frantic desire to get out into the world, and, turning back, he shook at the door. There were no apparent means for opening it. Locks and bolts it appeared to have none, and he was forced to accept the situation and realise that he was really a prisoner in this house of fantastic horrors. He stood there, his stick poised as in self-defence, while the loud ticks of a tall clock seemed to mock him with their cold regularity. Nothing happened, and he remembered that Mr. Willy had told him he would find food and wine in a lower room, and that, should sleep oppress him, there was a sleeping chamber prepared upon the upper floor.

He walked a little down the hall, placing his feet very gingerly.

A rack fitted with clips for sticks and umbrellas stood against the wall, and he placed his stick in one of them. To his unutterable surprise, as he did so, the stick was caught up by the clip and struck him two violent blows upon the face. He stumbled back smarting with pain and fell against the opposite wall. His walking-stick, a light malacca cane, fell back into the rack with a rattle and the vestibule was as silent as before.

The unexpectedness of the thing frightened him for a moment, but he soon remembered that it was not very dreadful after all. He resolved to try and unravel the mystery, and very carefully he went up to the rack and quickly grasped the cane. To his surprise it came out quite easily, and when he felt the clip he found it apparently a fixture with no trace of anything unusual about it.

Puzzled and smarting, yet admiring the cleverness of the apparatus, he walked down the hall in search of food. He came to some stairs which led downwards, and tightly grasping the banisters, for he had thoughts of a possible trap-door beneath his feet, he went down to the bottom.

The stair-way and the passage at the foot of it were all brilliantly lighted by electricity. There were several doors in the passage, and while he was hesitating which he should open, his eyes fell upon one of them to which a card was nailed bearing the words “Supper. First Day.”

He opened it without mishap, and a comfortable room discovered itself with a cold supper neatly set forth upon a table in the centre. Everything looked particularly inviting. Aylmer began to remember the genial eccentricities of the millionaire, and to think that possibly there was not much in the wager after all, and that this might be but a fantastic method of doing him a service. He sat down with much satisfaction before a bottle of sherry and a cold duck, making a very hearty supper.

Only one mechanicaljpleasantry disturbed his feast, and this partook of the nature of a comedy, and did not fail to afford him some amusement. About half-way through the meal the mustard-pot— a handsome utensil of silver— opened its lid and remarked something that bore a suspicious resemblance to Mr. Bullo’s “twenty thousand pounds,” and then, with a sudden cackle of laughter, shut with a click.

Thoughts of the phonograph immediately came into Aylmer’s mind, and his suspicions became a certainty when he found that the pot was fixed to the table.

After supper he found some excellent cigarettes on the mantelshelf, and seating himself in a roomy chair was soon enjoying the luxury of the post-prandial tobacco. His mind was mellowed by his meal, and he allowed his eyes to wander lazily round the handsome room. He was pleased to see a small piano in the corner, with a richly carved case of ebony, and when he had finished his cigarette he went over to it, thinking to pass an hour pleasantly with Chopin.

He began a nocturne of which the first few notes were struck entirely upon the base and treble notes, leaving the central octaves untouched. Then, when he touched a black note in the centre of the instrument the first attempt upon his life was made by the hellish ingenuity of Mr. Bullo.

As his finger descended on a key in the very centre of the board a sharp report sounded in his ears, and he felt something like a red-hot iron touch his cheek, while simultaneously a quantity of smoke curled out from a carved boss in the front of the piano.

His cheek began to bleed profusely where it had been grazed by a bullet, and with a sick horror in his veins he staggered to the table and poured himself out a glass of wine. Had the aim of the concealed pistol which he had unconsciously fired been directed an inch more to the right his brain would have been penetrated, and he would have been lying a corpse upon the carpet!

He sat down again upon the chair, and began to realise to what he had pledged himself. His former cheerful thoughts were violently dispelled, and he began to see with unmistakable clearness that he was in a house of horror, from which it was unlikely he would ever emerge.

Little things in Mr. Bullo’s manner came back to him with a new significance, and were made plain in the light of his recent experience. He felt sure that he was doomed, and with that thought came the thought of his love, Audrey.

The anguish was unspeakable. He had said a long farewell to those dark eyes and small caressing hands. His fingers went to his watch-chain, where he had fastened a little golden cross which she had given him. As he sat still with bowed head, grasping the charm, he began to repress and control the agony that was surging over him. His pain began to condense in his soul and turn to strong purpose.

At length he rose up proudly, still grasping the little cross.

“I will be a man,” he said out loud, as if challenging the watchful engines which lay waiting all around him. “If I die, I will die as a man; if I live, Fortune is kind to me. Even if I die I shall see Audrey again somehow, and it’s not long to wait.”

Then with a firm step and smoking a fresh cigarette, he left the room and went up the stairs into the hall. His manhood had come back, and he felt prepared to endure and contend with anything.

He saw by the clock that it was very late, and the excitement of the day had left him weary, so he determined to find a bed and sleep. Accordingly he mounted the stairs warily.

When he reached the top of the stairs he looked back into the hall, and even as he did so the electric light faded away as if he were being watched by some unseen intelligence. The landing on which he stood was still lit, and resolutely suppressing fear he walked round it, surveying the closed doors in turn. On the door which was to his right hand as he ascended he found the following label:

Bedroom

First Night

He stood upon the mat hesitating whether to go in or not, when there was a rattle in the lintel. Turning sharply towards the sound, he saw a little shelf had fallen down on which was a note addressed to him by name. He took it up and found it ran as follows:—

My dear Facinorious—

You are no doubt by this time thoroughly frightened, and imagine it is my fixed intention to kill you. Now listen. There is no reason why you should die. I do not deny that there are plenty of possibilities that you may unwarily fall into one of the many traps set for you. That is a part of the wager between us— a wager which is a fair and aboveboard one. On the other hand, I assert with absolute sincerity that by unceasing watchfulness you may win the wager unharmed. I am not, I repeat, the bloody-minded monster you imagine me to be.

Yours

Bullo.

Aylmer read this note with great care. It gave him new courage and he remembered that after all it was his own choice that he was there. The proud resignation that had sustained him gave place to hope, and he began to experience something of the joy of contest, the pleasure of pitting his brains and cunning against the grim and lifeless adversaries awaiting him on every side.

He opened the bedroom door with great caution, and finding the room within was dark, struck a lucifer match upon his heel. Then he saw a gas-bracket by the fireplace, and, advancing slowly towards it, he turned the tap and held the match up to the burner.

There was a sudden hissing noise, louder than the ordinary sound of rushing gas, a slight pop as the gas ignited, and a long rod of light flashed out at him, hitting him on the shoulder.

In a moment his coat and shirt were a mass of flames. The flame went right through the fabric of his clothes, and scorched the skin beneath, before he could rush back out of its path.

Directly he had done so, and was crushing out the life of the fire with one of the bed coverings, the jet of gas flashed back into the bracket, and the room was dark for several seconds.

Then the electric light began to glow from a globe in the ceiling. The pain from the burn was intense, and he sank down on the bed, too conscious of the physical sensation to be very clear as to what had happened. When the first agony was over, and he could suffer with more equanimity, he felt that, despite his resolutions of caution, he had been very foolish.

Had he examined the gas-bracket in the first instance, he could not have failed to notice the nozzle which directed the jet of gas, and the unusual appearance of the burner would have warned him from tampering with it. Perils menaced him at every step, and it was only by an almost superhuman prudence that he could save himself.

When he thought of Audrey, his courage became strong again, and the sense of absolute power and resolve that sometimes comes to a man in great peril calmed his nerves.

He fell asleep, still thinking of her, and though his wounded cheek and scorched shoulder were very painful, he was little awake during the night.

The Second Day

THE morning was flooding the room with sunlight when he awoke. He could not believe himself to be in peril. The decent, comely room, with its bath full of water standing by the bed, the sun pouring in at the window, the song of the birds in the garden outside, all combined to make the events of the night before seem some evil dream, which had fled before the sun. His injuries were better, and in every way he felt a man again. At the same time, he could not but think that the ingenuity of Mr. Bullo and Mr. Willy would have foreseen this, and that it behoved him to be very much upon his guard.

He got out of bed, and carefully examined the bath. It was one of those shallow saucer baths, and it seemed as if nothing could possibly be wrong with it. Standing by the side was a cork mat. His first idea was that possibly the liquid in the bath was not water at all, but some acid which might burn him. He put the tip of his finger into it, but found it to be unmistakable water, both to taste and touch.

Then it occurred to him to move the bath close to the window, as there seemed some companionship in the birds and green trees outside. When he caught hold of the rim of the bath to pull it along he found his prudence rewarded. Something was not quite right, for the bath was fixed to the floor and would not move.

When he made this discovery he stepped back, one foot resting upon the cork mat. He fancied for a moment that the mat gave ATE as he trod upon it, and simultaneously he heard most unmistakably a sharp metallic click. He knelt down by the mat, and after an attentive examination found that it had sunk a quarter of an inch into the floor.

He had a strong knife in his pocket, and inserting it in the crack at the edge of the mat was able with its aid to prise it up. It lifted like the lid of a box and disclosed a trough in the flooring full of wheels and shining metal bars. Aylmer could not repress a smile of satisfaction. To find some of the hidden machinery, to see the veritable agents of the trickery, seemed to rob the place of half its terror.

These sudden and mysterious occurrences had all the horror of their mystery, and even to have surprised the secret of one of them was a signal victory. He looked carefully into the aperture, wondering what new attempt upon his life its contents would betray.

It appeared that the pressure of his foot upon the mat had set in motion a lever which had withdrawn a bolt at the end of the trough nearest to the bath. The explanation flashed upon him at once; the bottom of the bath was now held in its place by the frailest of supports sufficient to sustain the weight of the water, and had in fact become simply a trap-door.

He resolved to test this, and leaning over the edge of the bath struck the bottom a heavy blow with his fist. There was another click, a rush of water, and the sheet of tin gave way and disappeared with a loud, echoing rattle, laying bare a smooth shaft which seemed to go right down to the cellars of the house.

As he leant over he could feel cool air upon his face. The discovery was unnerving, but there was a great exultation in it. Carefully skirting the pit he went to the window and looked out. The window was barred outside, but he could see a large and shady garden full of fine trees and pleasant lawns, as peaceful a place as a man might care to walk in. He resolved to open the window and inhale the morning air with its scents from all the lavender and wall-flowers below.

He had just unfastened tne catch and was about to push up the frame when he stopped suddenly. To open a window was so ordinary and simple a thing that he had forgotten his caution. After some consideration he raised it very slowly, carefully avoiding the open space between the sill and the rising window. It was well that he did so, for when he had raised it some two feet it broke away from his hands and fell back into its place with a heavy clang. Had his hand or fingers been beneath they would have been very badly crushed if not entirely amputated. He had half expected this to happen and it did not startle him very much, so with a superior smile— for he was growing very confident— he took up a light bedroom chair and smashed the glass, letting the delightful air stream into the room.

When he had enjoyed it for a time he went cautiously downstairs into the hall. The clock was striking eight as he came down the stairs, and as the last note died away a card made its appearance on the top, bearing the following legend:—

Breakfast. Second Day.

Will be served in number five on the lower floor.

Water may be boiled and tea made without any danger!

This announcement seemed to promise a truce, and he went carefully down to the passage where on the first night he had supped. He passed the room with the piano, the door standing open as he had left it, and a faint smell of gunpowder still hanging in the air.

Number five was comfortably appointed, and the materials for breakfast were upon a table by the window. When he had finished an excellent meal, which was considerably enlivened by the graceful dancing of a penny roll to strains of music which proceeded from an ostensible box of sardines, it was close upon nine.

As the hour struck there was a whirring, humming noise, and from an aperture which opened in the wall protruded the mouth of a large metal trumpet. Aylmer rightly concluded that the instrument was connected with a phonograph. It gave him the following message in jerky, metallic accents:—

“Mr. Bullo presents his compliments to Mr. Facinorious, and begs to inform him that he is free to walk in the garden for an hour unmolested. Before ten strikes Mr. Facinorious must be back in the house, or the door will close and the wager be lost!”

A second after the instrument had made an end of speaking, and while the trumpet was slowly going back into the wall, the window, together with the space of wall beneath it, swung open in the manner of a door, and the garden, full of scents and brilliant as a pane of stained glass, lay open for him to walk in.

It was inexpressible joy to walk in the garden. As his feet trod the sweet grass of the lawns, and he heard the summer wind dealing delicately with the leaves of the elms, he wept tears of pure relief. Every sunbeam was a smiling ray of hope, he felt sure that before long he would hold, Audrey in his arms. There was sometliing of her in every pleasant aspect of the garden. The house itself, seen through the trees, wore such a comfortable presence, and seemed to have such good pride of itself that he would not believe it could be sinister. His body alone remembered. The chatter of the birds seemed to laugh at fear and to dispel it.

He consulted his watch frequently in order that he might not be late, and when it showed five minutes to the hour he entered through the opening in the wall. As the gong of the clock beat out ten the window swung into its place, and he was a prisoner again.

The problem before him was how should he spend his time. It would be madness to explore the house, and yet did he remain still in one room it was almost certain that Mr. Bullo would have provided for the contingency. It was idle to suppose that he would be allowed to avoid danger in that way. He resolved after much consideration to go back to the bedroom. He imagined that he had, in all probability, unmasked its worst horrors, and that he would be safer there than anywhere else.

When he came into the hall he saw his stick still in the rack, and conceiving that it might be useful he took it out. The clip turned under his hand, endeavouring to repeat the blow which had assailed him on the first evening. This time, however, he was well prepared and easily prevented a contretemps.

He went slowly and quietly up the stairs, and when ne was a yard or two from the door he stopped, suddenly arrested by the sound of some one moving about the room. The door was half open, and tightly grasping his stick he peeped in.

An extraordinary sight met his eyes. From the pit in the centre of the bath projected the top of a steel ladder, and busied at the mantelpiece, with his back to Aylmer, was little Mr. Willy.

Aylmer realised that he had found the engineer in the very act of preparing a new trap, and that it was of great importance that he should not himself be seen. Mr. Willy had a bag of tools, and taking a spanner from it he began to unscrew a bolt at the corner of the great mirror which was over the mantel. When he had taken out two screws the glass swung open on hinges, revealing a cupboard in the wall. In the centre of this space, which was entirely filled with machinery, was a large circle of polished steel from which projected four tubes like gun barrels, which he noticed pointed directly at the pillow of the bed.

When he had carefully oiled and cleaned the bars and wheels Mr. Willy went again to the tool basket and took from it a brownpaper parcel. Untying the string, he disclosed four rods of dull steel, each about a foot long and with arrow-heads of the same metal.

Taking a dart the engineer rammed it into one of the tubes which projected from the disc, obviously compressing a spring as he did so. When only the head of the dart was visible there was the sound of a catch falling into its rest, a half revolution of the wheels below, and the missile remained in its place. When he had loaded each of the four tubes in this way the engineer took out a large key. In the corner of the aperture there was a clock face, and moving a finger on an index dial to the hour of two, he wound up the machinery. Then, with a little chuckle of satisfaction, he swung the mirror back into its place, and gathering up his tools slowly disappeared into the shaft.

Aylmer advanced into the room as Mr. Willy’s head went down out of sight, and though he did not dare to peer into the pit, he could hear the engineer moving in it like a rabbit in its hole.

He realised the ingenuity of the hellish device at once. At two o’clock in the morning, when in the ordinary course of events he would have been peacefully sleeping, the mirror would swing noiselessly aside and the heavy javelins would be discharged at his defenceless form. His luck was stupendous, for had he not actually seen the preparations no power on earth could have prevented his death.

It was a new idea to think that Mr. Willy, and possibly also Mr. Bullo, were present superintending the progress of their experiment in person, and it was not a pleasant one. For aught he knew his every action was being scrutinised, his every precaution noted and provided for. Still, there was but a day and a-half more to be endured, and he was warned against what he expected would prove to be the greatest peril of the night.

The afternoon passed entirely without incident. He did not go into any of the other rooms until eight, when a card on the clock in the hall informed him that dinner was served in a room upon the first floor. He found the apartment without difficulty, a handsome panelled place with a ceiling of oaken beams. It was the finest room he had yet seen in Lever Lodge, a kind of studio one might have supposed, or perhaps designed for the game of billiards.

A small round table was spread with cold viands, and he sat down to it with appetite. He wondered if Mr. Bullo had arranged any pleasantry with the table furniture. So far all his meals had been the scene of some small and harmless mechanical joke.

Accordingly when a large willow pattern dish ran away with a handsome silver tablespoon, he laughed merrily and appreciated to the full this practical illustration of the nursery rhyme. It was, he thought, a kindly humour of Mr. Bullo’s, and he laughed again to find himself playing the part of the Little Dog in the childish drama. His amusement was short-lived. The chair which he was occupying was one of those “study chairs” in which the seat is supported by a screw which allows it to revolve at the pleasure of the occupant. He had tried it carefully before sitting in it, and had examined it all over for something suspicious, finding nothing in it that was untoward.

As he was reaching over the table for a cigarette he found himself wrenched suddenly round, and spinning with inconceivable rapidity, the chair rushed up towards the ceiling. The unexpectedness of the whole thing paralysed his forces, and his head was within a foot of a big beam and in a second more would have collided violently with it, when he leapt from the chair and fell. He was thrown with tremendous force full on to the table, completely smashing the woodwork, and he sank, stunned and giddy, among the debris of the dinner, and bleeding from half-a-dozen cuts. He made desperate efforts to keep a clear brain, but it was impossible, and in a few seconds, he entirely lost consciousness.

It was hours afterwards when his senses came back to him, and, full of pain, he crawled away from the wreck around. His watch showed him that it was three o’clock in the morning, so that he must have been lying motionless where he had fallen for some six hours. Every bone in his body made protest as he moved.

The wounds upon his hands throbbed painfully, and the burn upon his shoulder began to trouble him again. At all costs he felt that he must sleep, and, desperate of consequences, he sought his bedroom.

When he entered, he saw that the mirror was hanging out from the wall and that the tubes upon the disc were empty. He turned at once to the bed and found, as he had expected, that the darts had been fired. Three of them had penetrated deep into the pillow, and a fourth was buried in the mattress and had only been stopped by the iron of the bedstead beneath. He was in too parlous a state both of mind and body to care much what happened, and throwing himself upon the end of the bed, he sank into a heavy stupor, in which even the fear of that fearful house could find no part.

The Last Day.

ONCE MORE the morning came with all its summer splendour, and once more it found Aylmer more hopeful than he had been the night before. He noticed, nevertheless, that his hands shook very much, and he started at every trivial sound. He also found that he had a curious disinclination, a physical disinclination, to touch anything. His hand, stretched out to grasp the bed-rail or a chair, drew itself back without any order from his brain.

In going through the hall on his way to breakfast, he found a letter in the box upon the front door. It was an ordinary letter from the outside world, and he had never been so pleased with a postmark in his life before. It was addressed to “Aylmer Facinorious,” and was in the handwriting of Mr. Bullo. It ran :—

My dear Facinorious,—

Only one day remains to you, and at twelve o’clock to-night I hope to hand you a little cheque that we know of. Till then be brave, and believe me I have no more sincere wish than that you will be perfectly successful. I must, however, warn you that— as you will no doubt expect— this last day will be the time of greatest trial, of most imminent danger. Also, if you will allow me to give you a hint, I would advise you not to stay too long in any one place. Bullo .

After breakfast Aylmer was afforded the opportunity of a walk in the garden, and then, as the door in the wall closed on him, began the last terrible hours of the ordeal. After the plain warning of the letter he did not dare to remain in the breakfast room, and yet to move about seemed almost equally foolhardy.

It was then that all his confidence finally left him, and he could call no manhood into his brain. He felt that all his former escapes had been vain, that the last act in the drama was at hand, and that the very walls would fall in upon him and crush him rather than let him escape.

His face began to change quickly as the overmastering horror of his position left his brain and went for the first time into his blood. He crept about the house like a hunted creature, tapping the walls and doors with tremulous crooked fingers and laughing softly to himself. A sick thirst began to sand his throat, and his eyes to lose their human look. The letter had utterly unmanned him.

With the suddenness of a blow, the terrible strain of the last two days had now its swift effect. He became a piteous, timid thing but little resembling a man as he stole softly round the house. Deep furrows showed themselves in his grey face, his lips scrabbled meaninglessly. As the hours went on he moved faster and faster, finding it impossible to remain still for a moment.

Ever and again he would howl like an animal and beat upon the walls, careless of results. Nothing whatever happened. No single occurrence broke the monotony of fear.

About eleven o’clock, when he knew that his trial would last but another hour, his sanity left him. He felt sure that he had but a few minutes to live, that some swift secret stroke would destroy him before midnight. He ran from lighted room to lighted room, as if something were pursuing him, whimpering as he ran. Mr. Bullo faded from his mind, and he only knew that he was afraid.

The millionaire had indeed inflicted his last and most fearful horror. There were no more traps in the house, the machinery was all out of gear and the dynamo in the engine-house was stopped and cold. The place was safe for a little child to ramble in, but fear had come to it more surely and completely than before. When Mr. Bullo and Mr. Willy opened the front door at midnight, they found Aylmer lying motionless upon the floor of the hall.

THUS ENDS the tale told me by the young gentleman in the house upon the moor, but as the acquaintance begun in so casual a manner has since ripened into a firm friendship, it needs that say another word or two.

Aylmer stayed another fortnight in the lonely house, until his nerves had recovered tone, and Audrey, who was staying at Princes Town— I found her to be the dearest girl— visited him every day. At the end of that time they were married, and both myself and my collaborateur were invited to the wedding, which was a pleasing function. When Aylmer’s rich relations found that he had twenty thousand pounds, many of them died and left him large sums, so that he is now very rich indeed.

The failure of a famous bank unfortunately deprived Mr. Bullo of his vast wealth. Hearing of this, Aylmer very kindly offered him the position of gatekeeper at Compton, his country house in Hertfordshire. Bullo gladly accepted, and his mechanical pig George, which can sing a comic song in the broadest Hertfordshire, is extremely popular with all the country side, and a never-failing draw at the village penny readings. Bullo is never tired of relating how when the Prince was shooting in the neighbourhood he asked to see George, the mechanical pig, and expressed himself as pleased with the merry toy.

Of Mr. Willy I can say nothing that is good. He has a small competence, and lives in Bristol, where he spends all his time in the society of a fair florist, who is addicted to the vice of gambling. I do not wish to speak of him.

_________________

12: The Ghost and the Jewels

Lurana W. Sheldon

[Lurana Waterhouse Sheldon Ferris, 1862-1945]

The White Elephant,  14 July 1897

I AWOKE this morning in the ward of a hospital, the most interesting patient, the house physician tells me, that has ever been received here since the building was erected. The interesting part did not lie in the fact that I had been found unconscious in the street with apparently no trace of injury or illness upon me, but because when the ambulance surgeon examined me for papers he found that my pockets were fairly bulging with precious gems, the value of which meant a princely fortune.

I was weak and dazed when the physician told me about it, but noticing intuitively how keenly be watched me, and how suspiciously he and the nurse glanced at each other now and then, I hastened to rally my returning strength in order to tell him as quickly as possible the details of my most horrible experience.

It is not often that a man gets lost in the woods adjoining his native village, but in the darkness of last night's sudden storm I strayed from the path, and soon had lost my bearings completely. With astonishing swiftness the sky became as black as ink, and the rain began falling with hardly a moment's warning. On and on I went through the rain and darkness, getting more and more confused about my location, as I noticed no lights, even in the distance. I knew that the woods extended many miles toward the city, but whether I was headed toward the town or for home, I could not discern in the impenetrable darkness.

I remained under the trees as long as I dared, then fled from their protection in awful terror, as the lightning struck one and shivered its branches. There was nothing to do but search for shelter. I rushed hither and thither in the darkness and cried aloud, hoping that someone would hear me. I was wet to the skin and breathless from running, yet I dared not stop for a single moment.

Suddenly in the light of a blinding flash I saw before me the outlines of a house standing by the roadside, but a few steps distant.  Even in the first moment of delight I was thrilled with alarm at its unexpected presence in that spot. I knew the district as well as I knew my farm, and I was positive there was no such house within fifty miles of that location.

A feeling of horror swept through my brain— the sight of the house had completely unnerved me. Yet there it stood, grim, silent and spectral. There was not a glimmer of light from basement to roof, and the whole architecture of the house looked strange and unearthly.

The wind swept by me in furious gusts, the rain poured down and threatened to engulf me. There was nothing to do but rush to the house and trust to the Fates for my night's protection. I pounded on the door, but there was no response. In sheer desperation I broke in a window. When I was safely inside and away from the storm I found that I was able to think more calmly. A thrill of relief passed over my form, yet my heart seemed to sicken and sink within me. The atmosphere of the house was cold and damp, there was the odor of a vault in the room I had entered.

Hastily scratching a match I looked around. Wonder of wonders! I had found a palace!  The draperies, although musty, were rich with gold, the furniture was heavy and the carpet like velvet.

I called aloud to my unseen host. Surely someone must inhabit this princely dwelling. But the echo of my voice came back to me in such a hollow moan that I fairly trembled. In spite of the hangings and furniture of the place my cry had resounded from room to room, and returned to me as empty as though I had screamed in a tunnel.

Such a curious matter affected me strangely. It was another proof of the unnatural appearance of the house, and yet I was inside it and it had not crumbled.

Creeping from room to room, I inspected the dwelling, finding luxury and magnificence everywhere, but no sign or sound of a living tenant. At last I became too drowsy to feel afraid, and too utterly weary to spend more time in speculation. Whatever it was, it was a shelter from the storm, and if it was deserted, my presence would not harm it.

Cautiously I groped my way to the stairs, then climbed them in search of a sleeping apartment. The velvet carpet was like moss beneath my feet; an army might have tramped up those low, broad stairs and never have disturbed a sleeping inmate.

In the upper hall the air was better, but there was still that I dampness that chilled one's blood— that charnel-house odor that froze one's marrow. Opening a door at my right, I entered a room— another match showed me that it was what I longed for. There were gorgeous hangings on every side, and a massive bed occupied one curtained corner. Between two heavily draped windows stood a rosewood dressing-case, composed of drawers and a plate-glass mirror.

But the broad, velvet sofa was what I sought. It was a pity to soil the bed with my rain-soaked garments. I turned the key in the door before I lay down, then smiled a little at my own precaution. I would hardly be disturbed in this deserted abode, unless it was by spirits or uncanny creatures.

I fell asleep, wondering about the house, about its presence and its gorgeous furnishings. The storm was raging as hard as ever— the last I remember was a peal of thunder.

Suddenly I awoke from a heavy sleep, and in a moment I had arisen to a sitting posture. My hair was standing upright on my head with fright. I could feel my limbs stiffening as the thrill of terror swept through them. What was it that trespassed on my stolen rest? I tried to cry out, but my tongue was speechless.

There was a hand upon the door that led to my room. Oh, how glad I was that it was securely fastened! I strained my eyes, and my heart stood still. One moment of suspense, then— the door was opened.

Great God! What manner of thing was this ? What hideous apparition had appeared before me? Moving slowly, but screeching with shrill laughter as she came, a fearful, wizzen-faced old hag approached me from the open doorway. I saw distinctly her sparse, gray hair framing her blear eyes and shrunken neck-then the skeleton-like arms, the wrinkled breasts— then—

As if I had been struck with a heavy hammer I fell back, stunned, among the pillows. Was it woman or ghost that stood before me? A wraith from the tomb or the infernal regions? It was only a head on a scrawny neck, a pair of arms set in bony shoulders, but below there was nothing in the shape of limbs or body. Screaming with laughter this thing floated by at about the height of a medium tall woman, and as it moved slowly, like a person walking, it waved its gaunt arms in the blackness above it. Then, though my body was like lead, my ears heard acutely as she talked and jibbered in an excitable manner.

"He is mine! He is mine!" she cried, over and over. "The bonny young lad with his golden tresses! To-night I shall hold his head on my breast. I have his promise at last, my own beautiful darling!

"I will deck myself for my love!" she shrieked, then moved swiftly through the darkness to the massive mirror. In the polished glass I could see her face even plainer than I had seen it when she passed me. There was a curious glow like phosphorescent flame that seemed to fall upon her, while the rest of the room was enveloped in darkness.

Had the grave given up its dead, her flesh could never have been more hideous. Yet she gazed at herself and smiled in glee. She leered at her image and blew kisses at it from the tips of her crooked, claw-like fingers. Mumbling and jibbering she moved to and fro, arching her scrawny neck and uplifting her shoulders. It was as though she was studying each hideous pose and selecting the one which would best please her lover.

Then, while I gazed, she bent her head and the bony fingers began toying with the keys that dangled in a bunch at the side of the mirror. Selecting one she opened a drawer which she drew out entirely and dropped on the carpet. Again the ragged hair fell about the scrawny neck as she bent and thrust her arm into the aperture below her. She must have touched a secret spring and discovered another drawer in the interior of the dresser, for a moment later she withdrew her hand fairly overflowing with precious jewels. Over and over she returned to the drawer, bringing forth each time more exquisite treasures, and then breaking forth into peals of shrill laughter she began decking her forehead, her neck and fingers.

"He will love me now!" she cried with pride, "when he sees the glitter of my costly trinkets! There are few who have diamonds and pearls like these— I  will wear them to-night in my true love's honor! O, false, false men— I have probed your secrets— I have learned your natures through years of sorrow! Beauty is your god and wealth your master! See! I am blessed with wealth and beauty, can you not love me now, my bonny darling?"

There were diamonds and rubies shining in her hair, and her breast was ablaze with its mass of jewels. Suddenly she threw her arms above her head, twirling and twisting them in fantastic contortions. The gems on her brow seemed to shake and quiver; her bosom rose and fell in a rhythmical manner.

Like a flash of lightning it crossed my brain— she was dancing for joy, this unearthly old creature. Flinging up her arms, she burst forth into song, her strident voice grating harshly on the air in time to the measure which her arms were beating.

"Haste, my love, the hour is near ;

See, I deck myself to please thee I

Come, love, come, I wait thee here,

Love with kisses soon shall tease thee!

See the bright-eyed gems awaiting,

See the lips thou soon shalt press!

Midnight is the time for mating,

Hasten to thy bride's caress."

The hideous song ended in a hollow laugh, and the motions of the head and bosom gradually subsided. What next would she do ? I stared in horror. The ghostly dance had nearly bereft me· of reason. Slowly the long arms were extended before her, and the head began swaying with a different motion, which was as unmistakable as the other. It did not need the mockery of her raven's croak to see that she was crooning a lullaby, and rocking in her arms an imaginary baby.

Never shall forget that sight! My God! It is before me at this very minute ! Mad with the passion of love, she sang, or rather croaked, as to a sleeping infant. Hushing and cooing as a mother would, she rocked and soothed it on her scrawny bosom. Suddenly she stopped in her cradle song— it was evident that she was done with her motherhood's fancies. Breathlessly she glided back to the mirror, and with husky tones continued her talking.

"Aha! My cunning shall conquer yet! He shall love me! He shall— my bonny darling!

"Do you care for rubies, my pet?" she cried, as she clasped a fire-red bracelet on her skeleton wrist, "or is it sapphires like these that will give you most pleasure?

"Ah! He is young and proud, the lad I love, but I shall feel the throb of his heart on my own. To-night! To-night-he shall be my husband!"

She tossed her arms far above her head; the flash of her jewels lit the apartment.

"Hark! Whose was that footsteps?" she suddenly screamed, then like a frightened thief kept still and listened.

Gliding by me again towards the outer door, the head, arms and bosom came close within my vision. With the gems in her locks they looked grayer than ever, and each hair stood out stiffly like a fragment of metal. Her eyes were rolling in a frightened way. She was gnawing her chin with the fang that was longest. Close to the door she placed her ear, then withdrew it again and hurried back to the mirror.

"It is he! It is he!" She was muttering now, but my ears were so tense that they caught every whisper. "He has come, my beloved! I know his dear step!''

She jerked at her jewels in the delirium of happiness.

Had he come? I listened in vain for a step. I was mad with the longing to witness this meeting! In the horror of the scene I had comprehended it all, but its gruesome fascination I could not fathom. She was a wretched old woman of miserly wealth, who had eaten out her heart with misguided passion. She loved a young man and would wed him, she said. Was it her or her jewels that he longed for? I wondered. He was coming. I knew it by the joy in her face and by the way she extended her arms in welcome. The rubies flared on her breast as she moved; the emeralds gleamed like the eyes of a dragon.

Turning until she faced the outer door, she stood, half gasping, in her mad exultation. I saw the lean arms rise to encircle his neck, and the hideous lips protrude as though she would kiss him. In the rapture of the moment she seemed to forget her jewels. But in one brief moment her joy had fled, and with the miser's instinct she was guarding her treasure. Had he turned upon her then in this moment of her bliss? She shrieked like a fiend as she darted from him. Scream after scream pierced the air, awakening into life every slumbering echo. Shriller and sharper rose that blood-curdling cry from the dry, rasping throat of this hideous vision.

"Murder! Help! Murder!" The cry filled my ears. "Save me !" The cry thrilled my marrow with horror.

Even in her terror she returned to the mirror— it seemed as if she was guarding the secret drawer while she struggled with her ghostly assailant. The face of the mirror still reflected her features, but, merciful God ! What a horrible picture! Like one whose throat had been clutched in a merciless grasp, she strangled and choked 'til her temples were livid. There was madness in the stare of those fast glazing eyes as they turned toward the thing that had thus come upon her.

Fiercely the long, bony arms beat the air. I could see the skeleton fingers as they clawed into darkness. Was she struggling with him whom she so blindly adored, or was it some foe who had intruded upon her? Fainter and fainter her cries rent the air— she was choking again, I could hear her death gurgle. I strained my hot eyes for a sight of his face— I would have given my life for a glimpse of his person! How had he entered, and what was his shape? The strain on my brain was almost driving me frantic.

But the woman alone was all I could see— the hideous old head and the trunkless bosom. Lower and lower bent the wizzened neck, as though with the presence or his weight upon it. The lank, bony arms were losing their strength. With a horrid groan she gave up the struggle.  Down the old head fell with a dying grimace, and the unearthly vision was swallowed up in darkness.

After it was over, my strength revived ; the blood began slowly to flow through my members. Rising to my feet, I struck a match, then slowly crept over to the scene of the struggle. On my hands and knees I traversed the spot, finding no sign or vestige of the murdered woman. A sigh of relief escaped my lips as I rose to my feet before the mirror. In another moment I was fumbling with the keys that still dangled in their place beside the glass, and even in my terror of limb and brain l promptly selected the one which I had seen the woman use when she discovered the hiding-place of her jewels. Passing my hand over the surface of the dressing-case I found every drawer in its proper position, but just as I had seen her do, I drew out one drawer and dropped it gently upon the carpet. Then, thrusting in my hand, I explored the cavity. In a moment I had found the secret drawer; I tried the key; the drawer flew open! What my fingers touched I could not see, but I knew by the feeling that they were precious jewels. Rings, brooches and necklaces, I drew them forth, and even the reflection of my feeble match made them shine and sparkle with resplendent luster. In a fever of excitement I continued my search until I was confident that not a gem had escaped me. But my limbs were trembling as with an ague chill; I dared not remain there a moment longer.

How I reached the road I do not know, but reaction of some kind must have followed promptly, for I was found, they tell me, lying unconscious in the road, my pockets fairly bulging with the mysterious jewels.

_____________________

13: The Scientific Circle

C. C. Newkirk

1870-1938

The Black Cat, March 1900

PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS WARD was a veritable living and walking encyclopedia of facts. He viewed everything that came before him from the only standpoint he knew— that of cience. When Ward looked at the pink of n. woman's cheek, there is no doubt but that he at once began to calculate how many blood capillaries would be necessary to produce the degree of pink apparent; how deep these capillaries lay from the surface of the skin, and what addition, or subtraction, of heat, cold or emotion would heighten or diminish the glow.

In short, Ward would look at a rose without seeing its beauty, but its integral parts he would pick asunder that he might analyze them in his cold, calculating, scientific fashion. He once said he had never encountered a problem in books or in life that he had not been able to solve by scientific deduction.

Physically he was tall and angular. As to the manner in which he moved he was ungainly, even awkward. The students called him "Old Cube Root" when his back was turned, or when he was so absorbed that he could hardly have heard thunder. Ward kept himself clean-shaven, but, in contrast to this, he never brushed his clothes. He had cold and keen gray eyes which in variably looked through great silver-rimmed spectacles. It is needless to add that Ward was never married and probably never will be. He would not know what to do with a wife. Possibly such a thing as marrying has never occurred to him.

In 1891 the professor's too close application at the college in which he has for many years held the chair of natural science, began to tell on him. He became emaciated, and it was apparent that his strength was waning, but Ward took no reckoning. He was advised by his physician and his friends to take a few months' rest in a change of sceue ami air, but he paid no heed.

Then his condition became so alarming that a meeting of the college trustees was called aad Professor Ward was temporarily discharged from his chair, on full pay, with an appropriation voted to defray the expenses of a three months' vacation, to be spent wherever his fancy might suggest.

Like a philosopher he acquiesced, and the day following started for Mexico, the flora and the mineralogy of which he had long sought an opportunity to study.  Theoretically, he was as familiar with Mexico as book knowledge could make him. Professor Ward travelled by rail to New Orleans, from which point he embarked on a passenger and freight vessel bound across the gulf for Vera Cruz. In the railway coaches he sat calmly surveying the panoramic landscape, and on the deck of the vessel, aft, he lounged by the hour, his hat drawn down well over his eyes, which looked vacantly out through those great silver-rimmed spectacles, over the sunlit surface of the tropic gulf.

From Vera Cruz, Ward travelled over the Mexican-Interoceanic Railway northwest to Jalapa. There he tarried two days, picking up all the information he could that would be of value to him on his trip inland and making preparations for the journey. His outfit, which be bought at Jalapa, consisted of a trusty, rather than a beautiful, horse of sufficient weight and strength to carry himself, a repeating rifle, enough provisions for a fortnight, his botanical specimen cases, some drugs and a light mineralogical outfit.

Thus equipped Ward left Jalapa and travelled north. He had enquired carefully as to the possible sources of danger on his intended route, and was assured that he would be perfectly safe from molestation so long as he remained on the main road. But his plans did not permit of adhering to this altogether, and he was especially warned against a belt of very rough and rocky country, some half a mile or more in width, which he would enter after crossing what was known locally as "the divide." Amid the precipitous crags of that desolate region, where an incautious step or a deliberate push would send a man to swift and horrible destruction, many travellers had disappeared, and not by accident alone.

When the Professor had covered perhaps fifteen miles of plain, swamp and wood, the path became narrower and his progress slower. When, at the end of a three hours' journey, he dismounted to tighten the saddle girth, he discovered the loss of a blanket, which had worked from under him. He remembered having seen it in place only a short time before and believed he would find it not far to the rear. Hitching his animal, he started back afoot. The quest led him a vain quarter of a mile, when he was suddenly diverted by what sounded like the tamp-tamp of a horse's hoofs, around a turn in the route over which he had ridden. There was a thick growth of timber, and he could see nothing. Acting on a first impulse, he stepped a few feet to the side and entered the obscurity of some twining vines. In this covert he waited.

The hoof-beats drew near, and presently a mounted man rode into full view and stopped. The rider was a swarthy Mexican, with flowing black hair and his steed a magnificent roan. Across the pommel of his saddle the Mexican balanced a Winchester, and, leaning forward, he studied the ground over which Ward had ridden. Strapped behind the rider the professor espied the blanket he had lost.

Why had the Mexican halted? Why was he carrying his rifle unslung? Why did he examine the ground ahead? While Ward was weighing these thjngs over the man on the horse rode forward and passed from sight. The scientist then became concerned for the safety of his own horse and equipment and followed stealthily in the rider's wake, keeping himself under cover and the Mexican in view.

Thus the unique procession moved ahead to a point where Ward's horse came into view of the mounted man, who instantly crouched in his saddle, pulled his horse about, and moved noiselessly but more rapidly on the back track. Again Ward stepped aside into concealment and again the Mexican passed him, looking backward frequently.

By a detour Ward reached his horse, mounted and proceeded with such apparent unconcern that he did not once look behind him. One would have thought he bad forgotten the strange occurrence entirely. On the contrary he was carefully working out its solution, thus:

"The man behind me is a Mexican highwayman— a personage by no means uncommon in this territory. He is at this moment, and has been for several hours, dogging my trail. He will pursue these tactics until I leave the beaten path and strike off through the rocks across the divide. Then he means to shoot at me from behind, take my horse and effects and throw my body over a precipice! He believes me to be in ignorance of his presence and means to keep me so to the end. He is trailing me as much by broken twigs and earth marks as by sight, and can follow me unerringly and yet remain a mile or more behind. There is to be no open fight. I am not to have an equal chance. It is to be assassination. This move will not be attempted immediately. Fortunate thing I lost the blanket!"

The professor went into camp at sun-down. He chose a spot of considerable area, free from timber and much in the form of a natural clearing. In its centre he boldly built a fire and cooked supper, confident that, until he crossed the divide he would be perfectly safe. Afterward he opened his assortment of drugs and selected from among the many small phials one bearing a red label and containing a thin, colorless liquid, hermetically sealed. Instead of the ordinary stopper the bottle was provided with an automatic injector.

This fluid was one of Professor Ward's triumphs in chemical discovery. Its most remarkable property was that on being exposed to the air its expansion into a gas was instant. Moreover, its particles as quickly permeated the atmosphere to an extent proportioned to the amount exposed, rendering senseless and helpless any living thing within its influence, for a period of from fifteen to twenty-five minutes, or until the gas became so widely diffused as to lose its power. In short, its action and effect was much like that of chloroform, except that the sensibilities of man or animal were paralyzed instantly.

The professor next took from his belt a Winchester cartridge, and after some difficulty removed the lead ball, leaving the charge of powder in the shell. He then inserted an air-tight, two-grain gelatine capsule of double strength, full of the mysterious liquid, being careful not to release any of it. This capsule he forced into the shell against the powder. The last step was to place the curious missile in his Winchester so that it would be the next load under the hammer. Ward then lay down, and feigned to sleep, knowing that where he was he was safe from attack, but kept such perfect virgil as to feel sure that the Mexican could not have passed his camp that night undiscovered.

At daybreak the professor started forward. There was nothing in his demeanor to indicate that he knew himself to be followed. After he had been in the saddle a short time he took from his pocket a small compass, which he carried in his left hand, directing the horse with his right. As he left the camp behind him he increased his pace, pushing the animal as fast as the growth of trees and brush would permit. Any one who could have watched the compass needle as to its bearings with reference to the direction the horse was moving would have concluded Ward to be traveling in a large circle.

This was true, but a man following would not have suspected it, first, because of the circle's great circumference, and, second, because the mountains, or other elevations which might disclose the fact, were, at the point chosen by the professor, concealed by forests. The scientist's purpose was now apparent. He had adopted a curious strategy to gain a position to the rear of the Mexican without the latter suspecting it.

An hour's riding brought Ward to the point where he had started on his circular route, and so accurate were his calculations that he did not vary but a few feet from the trail. Dismounting, he carefully examined the ground, and as he climbed back into the saddle smiled grimly, something rare for Ward. The Mexican was ahead. Ward had found the hoof-marks of the roan.

Again the scientist proceeded rapidly, yet with extreme caution. As he bent forward in the saddle and peered ahead through the silver-rimmed spectacles, he presented a most grotesque appearance. He had thus traveled in the Mexican's wake more than a mile. His urually imperturbable nature was keyed up to a snapping tension, not so much through fear a in anticipation of a new experiment. Suddenly he stopped abruptly and slipped from his horse. Leading the animal from sight he hastily tied it. Then he stole forward a short distance and dropped on one knee. About fifty yards ahead of him leisurely rode the Mexican. Quickly Ward brought his Winchester into position until the muzzle hung steadily and the broad back of the Mexican filled the sights on the barrel. Then the scientist pressed the trigger and jumpecl to his feet.

Almost simultaneonsly with the report of the rifle the roan and its rider sank to the ground.  The elated Ward started to run forward, but as he advanced was seized with a feeling of giddiness and, realizing that he was approaching the sphere permeated by the powerful gas, he beat a hasty retreat. Gradually the power of the anaesthetic became so diffused as to allow him to go forward a second time.

The unconscious Mexican lay with one leg pinned under his horse's body. Ward pulled him free, but only to bind him securely with a part of his own trappings. But a few minutes passed before the highwayman opened his eyes. When they met Ward 's they flashed in terrible hate and as the man made an effort to rise he discovered, for the first time, that he was a helpless prisoner. Ward nearly lost his equanimity at the outcome of affairs and at the success of his experiment. Undoing the prisoner's feet, but leaving his arms pinioned, Ward managed to lift him astride the roan and lash the highwayman's feet together under the horse's belly.

Five hours later the exultant Ward entered Jalapa astride his own horse and leading behind him the roan on which sat the Mexican, tied to its back, outwitted and humiliated. The prisoner was turned over to the authorities and proved to be a notorious bandit, who for many months had terrorized the Vera Cruz country. Ward, having proved himself able to cope with all the dangers of the region, at once returned and systematically gathered all his desired specimens, and then departed for Yucatan, where the remainder of his vacation was pleasantly, safely and profitably spent.

AGAINST the wall in the scientist's library rests a rifle. It is silver mounted and beautifully carved, with its rich ebony stock artistically inlaid with curious designs in ivory. Ward prizes it, not so much because it was once the property of a man who would have taken his life in a far-away country, but because it is a souvenir of a problem which his science solved.

_______________

14: Hole-in-the-Wall Barrett

Max Brand

Frederick Faust 1892-1944

Munsey’s Magazine, August 1919

IF this story were not fact it would not be written. It is too incredible for fiction. The best proof of its reality is the very fact that it is incredible, but if further proof is wanted it may be obtained from the twelve good men and true who formed the jury at the trial of Harry McCurtney. If they will not do, certainly Judge Lorry is an unimpeachable witness.

The story has to do with probably the oldest combination known to stories— a hero, a villain, and a beautiful woman.

The hero was young, handsome, talented; the villain was middle-aged and rather stout, and smoked big black cigars; the beautiful woman was very beautiful.

Whatever the reader may think, this is not a motionpicture scenario. However, it sounds so much like one that it might as well start in the movie way. The camera, therefore, opens on a close-up of the middle-aged villain.

As the round spot of light widens, everyone can see that the man is a villain. The way he chews that long black cigar, for instance, emitting slow; luxurious puffs, is sufficient proof. No one but a villain really enjoys good tobacco; but to pile Pelion on Ossa, there are other proofs— lots of them. He has a square, bulging jaw, a straight-lipped, cruel mouth, a great hawk nose, and keen eyes buried under the overhanging shelter of shaggy brows. He is frowning in his villainous way and looking down.

The spot of light widens still further and includes the beautiful woman. She is very, very beautiful; a blackhaired type with questioning, dark eyes. She is dressed in black, too, filmy over the arms, so that the rose tint of flesh shines through. She reclines in an easy chair with her head pillowed gracefully and canted somewhat to one side, while she studies the villain and defies him. One notices her slender-fingered hand drooping from the arm of the chair, and compares it with the big fist of the villain, wondering how she can have the courage to defy him. She seems to know all about him.

Well, she ought to. She is his wife.

The camera now opens out to the full and one sees the room. It is very big. There is a soft glimmer of diffused light, which is brightest on the corner of the grand piano and the slightly gray head of the villain. His big feet are planted in the thick texture of a rug. An arched doorway opens upon a vista of other rooms fully as sumptuous as this one. Proof positive that the man is a villain! He is too rich to be good.

The woman is talking. She leans forward with a smile that would win the heart of an armored angel— one of Milton’s kind; but the man still frowns. It is easy to see that he is going to refuse her request— the beast! She concludes with a gesture of infinite grace, infinite appeal.

This is what she said:

“So you see, John, it was really a good act on the part of Harry to rid the world of that unspeakable uncle of his. Why, there isn’t a soul in the city with a single kind word for that old miser, William McCurtney! He never did a gentle act. He broke the heart of his wife and killed her. He has kept poor Harry in penury.”

The villain removed the black cigar from his teeth with a singularly unattractive hand. It looked as if it had been used all his life for grabbing things— and then holding them. His eyes burrowed into the face of the beautiful woman as if it made not the slightest difference to him whether he was speaking to his wife or not.

“This is the case,” he said. “Harry McCurtney killed his uncle, William McCurtney. He did it by putting poison in the Scotch whisky which old William was drinking to the health of his nephew. A maid saw Harry put something into his uncle’s glass. She afterward got hold of the vial of poison, out of which only a few drops had been poured. There was enough left to kill ten men. When old McCurtney died that night, the maid called in the police and had Harry arrested. She produced the vial of poison as evidence. The case was easily made out. A druggist has sworn that the poison was purchased from him by young Harry McCurtney. Tomorrow the jury is certain to bring a verdict of guilty against this man. That, in brief, is the case of the man you want me to defend.”

“Your brevity,” said his wife, “has destroyed everything worthwhile in the case. You have left out the fact that William McCurtney was a heartless old ruffian— a miser, hated by everyone and hating everyone. You have left out the fact”— here her voice lowered and grew musically gentle as only the voice of a woman of culture can grow— “you have left out the fact, John, that Harry McCurtney is a rare soul, an artist, a man unequipped for battling with the world. With the fortune he inherits from his uncle he would lead a beautiful, an ideal existence. He would do good to the world. He is—he is—a chosen spirit, John!”

“And he murdered his uncle,” said John Barrett, “while old William was drinking his nephew’s health and long life.”

“That is an absurd and brutal way of stating it,” said Mrs. John Barrett. “You cannot reduce the troubles of a delicate and esthetic soul to such a bald statement of fact.”

“I should have to be a poet to do him justice?”

“You would.”

“However it is a waste of time to attempt to defend this fellow. I’ve seen the evidence. He’ll hang!”

His wife rose from her chair and stood facing him. All the color went from her face; she seemed to have been painted white with a single stroke of an invisible brush.

“He must not hang! John, you can defend him. I’ve seen you win more impossible cases than this! I remember the Hanover trial. John Hanover was guilty. All the world knew it; but all the evidence of his guilt came from one witness. On the last day, before the case went to the jury, you put the witness for the prosecution on the stand. I’ll never forget it! You drew him out. You seemed hopeless of winning your case; you seemed to be questioning him simply as a matter of form to justify the collection of your fee. And the witness grew very confident. Finally you asked him the color of the necktie which Hanover was wearing when he committed the crime. The witness said without hesitation:

“ ‘A red tie with white stripes.’

“With that you clapped your hand over your own necktie, sprang to your feet, pointed a melodramatic hand at the witness, and thundered in your courtroom voice:

“ ‘What color is the necktie that I’m wearing?’

“The witness was dumfounded. He couldn’t tell. Then you turned to the jury and discredited all that witness’s testimony. You said you had been wearing the same necktie day after day in court, and the witness didn’t know what its color was. Then how could he be sure of the color of the necktie which Hanover wore, when he had only seen Hanover for a few seconds, committing the murder? It showed that the man was giving valueless testimony; that he was lying out of hand. And the jury acquitted your man. John, you can do some miraculous thing like that now for my friend, Harry McCurtney. You’ll find some way. Why else are you called Hole-in-the-Wall Barrett?”

While she completed this impassioned appeal, John Barrett regarded her with utter unconcern. He might have been listening to the accomplishments of some fabulous character rather than to one of his own most spectacular exploits.

“To be brief, Elizabeth,” he said, “I won’t take the case. I’ve other work planned for tomorrow.”

And he turned to leave the room. Who but a villain could have turned his back on such a woman and at such a time? She stiffened; her head went back; there was a tremor of coming speech in her throat.

“She is about to play her last card,” a gambler would have said, and she played it.

“John!” she called. The villain turned only half toward her at the door. “There is another reason why you must defend McCurtney,” she said. “I love him!”

It sufficed to make the villain turn squarely toward her, but he showed not the least emotion. His head bowed a little, thoughtfully.

“Ah!” he repeated. “You love him?’’ And with that he shifted his glance up suddenly and met her eyes. She shrank back, trembling. One could see that she was expectant of a blow, a torrent of abuse. Instead, he smiled slowly at her. She made a little gesture. There seemed more appeal than anger in it.

“You don’t care, John? I knew you didn’t care!”

“If you love him,” said the villain slowly, “I suppose I don’t care.”

“You never have,” she answered. “You merely bought me— with your courtroom eloquence, and your money— just as you would buy a fine piece of furniture. You wanted a decorative wife for your home— someone you could be proud to show.”

It was not a quarrel, you see. For it happened in the twentieth century; happened yesterday, in fact. Neither of them raised their voices. There fell a little silence, and silences always make a woman explain.

“I’ve tried to love you,” she said. “I’ve tried to break through that hard exterior you wear like armor. I’ve guessed at depths and tendernesses in you, but the only time I’ve heard poetry in your voice was when you said before the minister, ‘I will!’ Since then I’ve waited for a touch of that sound to come back into your voice, but it never has, and gradually I’ve learned the truth— you never really cared for me.”

John Barrett was a villain; also a vulgar man. “The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” he said. “If I haven’t seemed to love you, why— I haven’t.”

And he grinned; it was not by any means a smile.

She shuddered as if those hands of his, made for gripping great burdens, had closed on a vital nerve that ran to her heart. She turned away, veiling her eyes with her hand. Surely it was strange that a man could give up such beauty!

“And will you defend him?” she asked in a whisper.

“If you love him,” said Barrett, “I shall set him free for you. Good night, Elizabeth!”

He strode out of the room. She ran after him a few steps and followed him with her eyes down the long vista of the rooms; but the massive shoulders went on their way with characteristic swagger; the bowed thoughtful head never once cast back a glance toward her.

“It is done!” said the beautiful woman, and sank into a chair. Her eyes were half closed, and she smiled— the smile of the twentieth-century woman, which is harder to read than the smile of the Sphinx.

ii

THE next afternoon she sat in a front seat in the courtroom and bent eyes of sad sympathy upon Harry McCurtney. There were others who looked on him in the same way. They were not, to be sure, quite like the beautiful woman, but then they were fair enough to have filled up a motion-picture background.

What woman under thirty could look upon him without some such sad emotion? He was very young; he was very handsome. The brown eyes were as soft and liquid as the eyes of a thoughtful Byron— or a calf. That tall forehead and that long, pale face— they brought home all the romantic melancholy of life to a woman under thirty. Even the twelve good men and true felt some ruth as they glanced on him who was about to die; but being hardheaded fellows, those twelve, they looked away again and cleared their throats and frowned. Metaphorically speaking, they were rolling up their sleeves and preparing to grasp the knife from the hands of blind justice.

The hero knew it. He turned those large, soft eyes on the jurors, and then flicked them swiftly away and let them journey from one fair face to another along the benches of the courtroom. And at last, as one overcome by the woes of life, he bowed his head and veiled his eyes with his long, white, tremulous fingers. A beautiful hand! It should have rested upon velvet; should have toyed with locks of golden hair, or blue-black hair— Elizabeth’s hair was blue-black.

The crowd had not come to hear the plea of Hole-inthe-Wall Barrett, simply because it was not known until the last moment that he was taking over the case for the defense; but the moment his burly figure appeared, swaggering toward a chair, a hum and then a whisper and then a voice passed through the crowd.

His honor removed his glasses and frowned. The clerk rapped for order. From that moment everyone waited; everyone was expectant. The prosecution was uneasy; the district attorney drank many glasses of water; the jurors set their teeth as if they were resolving their collective minds that they would not be budged from their duty even by a John Barrett. They scowled and nudged one another with assurances of immovability; they smiled upon the district attorney; they frowned upon Harry McCurtney and John Barrett.

The proceedings passed quickly. The district attorney made a very eloquent speech, painting in colors of crimson and black the damnable crime of this treacherous boy who could poison his uncle while the murdered man was drinking his nephew’s long life and happiness. The jury shook its collective head and scowled again on John Barrett, as if they dared him to come on and fight now. But all the time Hole-in-theWall Barrett sat teetering slowly back and forth in his armchair, staring blankly from face to face and picking his teeth.

As has been said before, he was not only a villain, but a very vulgar man. The prosecutor’s case was in. There was only the plea of John Barrett to be heard. The judge frowned his defiance on Barrett; the district attorney did likewise; the jury deepened its scowls; the fair mourners covered their faces and waited. Barrett rose in the most matter-of-fact manner, with the most unmoved face, and crossed to the table on which stood the damning exhibit, the vial of poison. He finished picking his teeth, but continued to chew the toothpick. Indeed, he was a very vulgar man.

“Your honor and gentlemen of the jury,” he said, “the prosecution has proved conclusively that certain drops from this bottle were poured by the defendant into a glass of whisky, which was drunk by William McCurtney, who thereafter died.”

It was like the fall of the first sods on the coffin. The defense was throwing down its cards. McCurtney raised his head; a greenish-yellow was invading the pallor of his poetic face. Something extremely un-poetic was in his eyes.

“The court has been informed by various experts that the contents of this bottle are deadly poison. If they are, unquestionably the defendant is guilty of murder, most damnable murder.”

It was a strange exordium. The crowd frowned with wonder and waited for the appeal which must follow— sounding periods, moving eloquence. But it must be always remembered that our villain was a most vulgar man. He raised the little vial. “The proof of the pudding,” he said, “is in the eating.”

And he drank the liquid in the vial— he drained it slowly to the last drop. Then he turned and extended an arm of command over the jury, which had arisen to the last man, staring upon him with pallid faces and open mouths.

“Now set that man free!” he thundered, and strode from the courtroom.

The man was set free. The jury was out one and onehalf minutes before it reached its verdict. And the first one to get to the acquitted man, who sat as if stunned, with wandering eyes, was Elizabeth Barrett. Love will find a way, even through a courtroom jam.

A note was brought to McCurtney; they read it together.

“Bring Elizabeth to my house, McCurtney,” ran the note. “I have something to say to you both.”

As they sat in her car, she said: “He knows, Harry!”

“Knows what?” asked Harry. “About us,” said Elizabeth tenderly.

“About which?” said the hero vaguely.

“About our love, dear,” explained the beautiful woman.

“My God!” said the hero. “Stop the car! Turn it about!”

“Harry!” cried the beautiful woman. “You aren’t afraid?”

“Afraid?” stammered the hero. “No, of course not!”

“Poor dear! Of course that hideous trial has destroyed your nerves; but think of the long years of beautiful peace which we will spend together!”

“John Barrett!” muttered the hero. “He knows?”

“I told him.”

“Elizabeth, were you mad, to tell that brute of a man?”

“He didn’t care. In fact, that’s how I induced him to defend you.”

The hero wiped his brow. “He won’t oppose,” said the beautiful woman, and she looked out the window with something of a sigh. “He won’t hinder us in anything. I suppose— I suppose the divorce will be easily granted me. And then—”

“Yes, yes!” murmured the hero. “But let’s talk about that later. The important thing now is John Barrett.”

“We’ll talk to him in a moment. It won’t take long. I suppose he wants to make the necessary arrangements for the— the divorce.” She leaned back against the cushion and smiled that twentieth-century smile.

“By Heaven!” said the hero, “I don’t really know whether you’re glad or sorry, Elizabeth.”

“Neither do I,” she answered, and then, opening her eyes suddenly to the matter of fact: “Neither do I know whether I’m gladder to have my freedom, or sorrier to wade through the disgrace of the divorce court.”

“Hm!” said the hero.

The car stopped in front of the columned entrance to the Barrett home.

“Aren’t you coming, Harry?” she asked with some impatience. “Give me time, dear,” said the hero. “My wits are still back there in the courtroom waiting for John Barrett to begin his appeal.”

“And mine,” said the beautiful woman, “are in the bright future!” And again she smiled the twentieth-century smile.

iii

THEY entered, and a servant told them that Mr. Barrett expected them in his private library. They climbed to the third story.

“This climb,” smiled Elizabeth, when they arrived, a little breathless, at the door, “is the only thing, I’m sure, which keeps John from becoming stout.”

“Hm!” said the hero.

They entered, and the door clicked behind them. It was a circular room, with a vaulted ceiling. The walls were lined with unbroken rows of books. There was not even a window; the air came through two ventilators. John Barrett stood in front of an open fireplace with his back to them, so that they could not tell, at first, exactly what he was doing there.

“We are here, John,” said Elizabeth in a rather thin voice.

“Oh!” boomed Hole-in-the-Wall Barrett. “Are you here?”

And as he turned half toward them they discerned his employment— he was heating the end of a stout poker in a bed of white-hot coals.

“Good God!” whispered the hero. He seized the knob of the door; but it did not budge. He could not even elicit a rattle from it when he shook it frantically.

“The door locks with a spring,” explained John Barrett, turning squarely toward them, and still twirling the poker in the coals.

“Help!” yelled the hero.

“Harry!” said the beautiful woman in some disdain.

“It is often necessary for me to hold the most secret conferences here,” said the villain, “and therefore I have had these walls built so thick that no sounds can enter or leave. The room is impervious to noise. It is necessary, because some really strange things have happened here.”

“What do you mean?” said the hero, his voice changed beyond recognition.

“It is a suggestion,” said the impassive villain, “for those who desire privacy. A room like this, for instance, would be ideal for writing your poetry, McCurtney.”

“John!” said the beautiful woman sharply. “What are you driving at?”

In that vulgar atmosphere it was no wonder if she had learned to use slang. The hero, however, did not seem to notice it. His curiosity, for the moment, overwhelmed any other emotions.

“How in the name of Heaven,” he said, “did you survive that poison?”

“Was it poison?” queried the villain. “Well, albumen coagulates and collects around certain poisons. I had swallowed several raw eggs just before I entered the courtroom. It is not a new trick. The moment I left I was taken by two doctors to a private room, and my stomach was pumped out.”

“Oh!” said the hero scornfully. “I thought it was some ingenious thing you did!”

“Oh!” said the villain. “Did you?”

“John, why have you sent for us?” said the beautiful woman.

Barrett buried the poker in the coals so deep that it would not topple out, produced one of his villainous long cigars and lighted it. He then picked up a riding whip which had fallen to the floor, and hung it again above the fireplace.

“It is about your leaving,” said the villain, and took the handle of the poker.

“Have you made up your mind to oppose me?” she asked.

“If you love this man,” he said in his calm voice, “I sha’n’t raise a hand to stop you or to hinder your happiness. I would even drink poison again to help you along.”

“You?” said the beautiful woman.

“Because I love you,” said the villain.

“You?” said the beautiful woman.

“Rot!” said the hero.

“But,” went on the villain, “if you really care for this fellow here— this sneaking cur who makes my hand itch— if you really care for him, I’m sure that I can get along without you.”

“Do you mean—?” cried the hero.

“I mean, Elizabeth,” said the villain, “that I’ve probably made many mistakes in my treatment of you. I’ve never been a man of many words— outside the courtroom. I’ve usually depended on actions instead. After I married you, I didn’t think you required more proofs of my love. If you do, I’ll try to give them to you— not in words, because this is not a courtroom; but I want you to know that I’ve crossed the line from my old life and stepped into a new. This is the proof.”

He drew out the poker from the coals. It sparkled and glittered and radiated snapping sparks in showers. The iron indeed, seemed instinct with a terrible life, a volition of its own.

“God!” whispered the hero, and cowered against the locked door. The beautiful woman said nothing at all.

Coming to a point halfway across the room, the villain took the glowing iron and with it seared a smoking furrow, crooked and deep, across the polished wood from one side of the room to the other. The mark still fumed when he stepped back and cast the poker clanging on the hearth. It was an ugly mark, and a melodramatic thing to do, but the villain was a vulgar man.

“If you doubt that I love you hereafter,” said the villain, “don’t wait for me to tell you, but come up here and look at this mark on the floor, Elizabeth. You’ve done to me what I’ve done here.”

“John!” whispered his wife.

He turned his cigar and blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. Truly, a very vulgar man!

“Elizabeth!” groaned the hero. “Are you going to leave me?”

“John!” whispered the beautiful woman, and she ran across the smoking furrow on the floor, stretching out her arms to her husband. He removed his cigar.

“You will be able to open that other door,” he said. She opened the door and went out.

“And now?” asked the hero hoarsely.

“And now,” said the villain, “I have always been a man of few words.” So saying, he took down the riding whip from above the fireplace. The room was impervious to noise. It was necessary, because some strange things happened there.

__________________

15: The Love of a Loafer

Don Marquis

1878-1937

Cosmopolitan Sept 1927

DICKIE PETERS rose feeling worse than usual; and that was pretty bad, for frequently Dickie felt a trifle worn and frayed in the mornings. He had a confused sense that something very important had happened the night before, something enormously, transcendently important— something that might alter the whole course of a man's life. But what was it?

"I must have made another million dollars," said Dickie, grinning somewhat wryly at himself. "But where is it?"

That was always the question when Dickie made a million dollars— where was it? He was forever making a million dollars— on the backs of menu cards in restaurants and clubs, on the margins of newspapers and the blank leaves of theater programs, and on table-cloths themselves. An idea, a white surface, a soft black lead-pencil— and Dickie was off!

Presently he would be convincing everyone within sound of his voice that there were millions in it— whatever "it" might be. Not the least convinced would be Dickie himself. For at thirty- six he was still an enthusiast, a believer. After one of these fervid sessions Dickie always felt so wealthy, and so benign and friendly towards all the world, that almost anybody could borrow ten dollars from him— if he had it. And frequently he had, and they did.

"Where was I last evening?" he asked himself as he went into the bathroom of his little bachelor apartment in the Forties and turned the cold water into the tub. A medley of confused images and pictures began to form and dissolve in his aching head, and for a moment Dickie endeavored to watch them as one might watch a bad cinema show to which one had come too late to catch the clue of the story.

"The question should be, where wasn't I?" he said presently, giving it up.

"A million dollars last night and this morning only a bad taste," he said and looked at the cold water. There was a malevolent glitter of wintry light upon the surface of the water, as if it consciously rejoiced in the agony it was about to inflict upon him.

"I know what you think," he said, addressing the water. "You think I am nothing but just a table-cloth millionaire." He had once been called that by a friend, and in his hours of candor and dejection he was inclined to admit there might be truth in it. And after a bad night he always looked at the water in the tub and talked to it before he could force himself to enter it; he dramatized the plunge before he took it, for his was an essentially dramatic nature.

"I know what you think," he said to the water. "You think I'm a bum. But I'm not a bum. If I were a bum I wouldn't even consider getting into that tub!"

The water malignantly succeeded in registering its arctic quality. It was silent, but nevertheless Dickie knew how it hated him. "You think I'm a flivver," said Dickie to the water. "You think I haven't got the nerve. But I have! I'd have the nerve even if you were full of icebergs and walruses and polar bears and Eskimos."

There had been one certain morning some months previously when, as he talked to the water about polar bears and walruses, Dickie had begun to see these interesting animals; and the sight had affected him painfully. Now he made conversation about them a kind of touchstone. If he could talk about them without seeing them, perhaps the night Before hadn't been so bad after all.

"Who's got guts?" he asked. "I have!  Who's not a total loss? I'm not!"

And with that he went into the water. One scream and the worst was over. He came out, toweled himself vigorously, glowing physically, and warmer with the consciousness of a moral victory. And he needed something to give him that consciousness. For Dickie was at times aware of a certain deterioration. The cold bath itself was a test. If the morning ever came when he couldn't force himself to it, Dickie would feel definitely upon the down-grade.

None of his friends, and friends he had in well-nigh incredible numbers, could have told you exactly how Dickie lived. He would have found it rather hard to be definite about the matter himself.

"Sometimes," he said, "I'm lucky, and sometimes I'm unlucky."

There had been a time when he described himself as a broker. He still dabbled in the stock-market, with varying success. One of his dreams was to come into possession of an absolutely sure-thing tip from a big operator. In conversation with him you discovered that on one of his boundaries he was vaguely allied with the arts; that is to say, he had put money into musical shows and into the legitimate drama at times, both his own money and that of his friends, and sometimes he lost and sometimes he won. He could become more eagerly enthusiastic about a show— almost any show— than even the author or the star.

There were periods when he described himself as a promoter. He had been known to have jobs— he had first come to New York as a newspaper man. He had once been a press-agent for a grand-opera star, and at another time press-agent for a circus. He had written vaudeville sketches and he had been a bond salesman.

Dickie sometimes considered very seriously the idea of marrying a wealthy woman. He might possibly have done so, for he knew a number of wealthy women, and— as Dickie modestly put it himself— "Women, as a class, sort o' like me." Unfortunately, when Dickie fell in love it was always with some girl who was not wealthy, and when he was in love he was eagerly,  enthusiastically, genuinely in love.

HOW did it happen that he always got most deeply in love just at the times when he was deepest in financial embarrassments?

"Fate," was his own explanation of this phenomenon, "Just fate!"

But these spells of poverty, coinciding with his periods of amatory enthusiasm, did save him from getting married— and as regards matrimony he was habitually two-minded. "It's a of yes-and-no game," Dickie would say, ''and maybe it's a good thing fate always intervenes."

He had never been more in love, nor more perturbed about financial matters, than on this particular morning when he was trying to remember what exceedingly important thing had happened the night before.

"Maybe I proposed to somebody last night," he said. "Who? And was she rich or poor? And did she accept me? And will she hold me to it? And what will Julia think of me then?" Julia being the girl— not wealthy— with whom he was in love currently.

"Confound it, I'd marry a rich woman and be done with it if it wasn't for Julia— and if marrying money wasn't too much like holding down a job." For Dickie did not like holding jobs. They took so much time. What he liked doing best of all was sitting down after dinner or luncheon with a pencil and a white surface and an idea, and enriching him- self and his immediate circle.

He dressed himself with his usual conscientious care and felt somewhat cheered as he looked at himself in the mirror. "You're not really a hard drinker," he reassured his reflection in the glass, "and you're not really a bum. But there is something a little wrong about your memory. Why in the dickens can't you recollect where you were and what happened to you last night?"

Care returned to him again, and he went out into the street with a worried look between his eyes, his brow contracted with the effort to remember.

Dickie lived in a block in the upper Forties, between Sixth and Fifth Avenues. It was commonly reputed to have sixty speak-easies in it. He turned into a chop-house near the Sixth Avenue end of the block, passed through the dining-room, traversed a narrow passage and rapped on a sliding panel in a heavy door.

The panel slid open and a pale-blue, watery eye surveyed Mr. Peters through the aperture.

"It's me, Bob," said Dickie ungrammatically.

The door was unchained and Mr. Peters entered. The room had been made into an exact replica of the old-fashioned bar-room— the vanished barroom with the brass foot-rail and the free lunch at the end of the counter, the like of which stood on every other corner in the pre-Volstead days. It was just the same— and yet it wasn't the same. For in spite of the sawdust on the floor and the long mirror in the back and the conscientious nudes upon the walls, the care-free, happy manner of the old days was absent. That is to say, one felt one could be jolly here so long as one was not too jolly.

"Bob," said Mr. Peters to the bartender, "was I in here last evening?"

"You were that, Mr. Peters," said Bob.

"Was I lit up?"

"No, Sir," said Bob. "I've never seen you that way, Mr. Peters. You're one of the most conspicuous gentlemen to hold his own that I ever served."'

"Remember whom I was with?"

"With several gentlemen," said Bob. 'Quite a few gentlemen was in here giving the Eighteenth Amendment the razz in a heartfelt way, last evenin'."

"Gentlemen who come here all the time?"' persisted Dickie.

"You was among friends, Mr. Peters," said Bob, "but I got the notion somehow you was all new friends to each other, but friendlier new friends I never seen."

"You don't remember what I was talking about, Bob?" asked Dickie. He hoped that some chance phrase might revive in his memory that all-important Something that had happened to him the evening before.

The bartender, with knitted brows, considered profoundly, stroking the gray walrus tusks of his mustache. Finally the light of triumph came into his eyes, and a flicker of hope stirred in Dickie's breast.

"I do," said Bob. "It was feenancial! Your talk was concerned with makin' a million dollars for everybody present. Myself, I was one of your heirs. Some folks is but too willin' to let bygones be bygones, but I ain't possessed of that kind of ingratitude, and this mornin' I thank you for last night, Mr. Peters."

"But how was I going to make that money?" said Dickie.

"Well," said Bob, "some way feenancial it was. Or so I gathered from the talk. But somebody was sayin' limericks all the time, and somebody was singin' songs, and somebody kept tellin' the one about the Scotchman over and over, and I was busy with the bottles, and somehow or other the details got away from me. But it was some way feenancial."

"Thanks, Bob," said Dickie. He finished his drink and went into the dining-room and had a very light breakfast, still in great perplexity. The sense that something tremendously important, magnificently important, had occurred the previous evening grew and grew upon him.

He left the chop-house, walked six doors east and entered an Italian restaurant, a basement table d'hôte place.

"Tony," he said to the proprietor, as that oily and falsely genial person came forward to greet him, "I was in here last night, wasn't I?"

"Yes, Mr. Peters," said Tony, rubbing his pinkish hands together.

There is a legend that Tony's hands are pink because he makes the wine he sells fresh every morning. He also sells what purports to be Scotch whisky. There is no bar in Tony's place. His truly-hellish concoctions are drunk from china cups and served from innocent-looking coffee-pots— if you are a chemist perhaps you can figure out what sort of metal these coffee-pots are made of, for it is an observed fact that Tony's evil liquids actually do not eat holes in them.

"Was As I drunk?" asked Dickie.

"No, no, no!" cried Tony, with a grin like a flash of dental lightning. "'Not-a da le-e-e-ast leetle bit-a drunk! Verra, verra sober! You praise-a da wine verra, verra much las' night, Mr. Peters, you praise-a da Chiant' my brother send-a me from Italy."

"How drunk I must have been," murmured Dickie, as he went out, "to praise Tony's wine!"

He betook himself five doors farther east, climbed three flights of stairs, passed a little card certifying that he was a member good standing of the Interboro Golf Club through a narrow slit in a wall, and was admitted to a large room around two sides of which ran a buffet bar.

"Deacon," he said, to the presiding genius of this rendezvous, "was I here last night?"

The Deacon looked at him out of a pair of eyes that would have been exact mates except that the upper lid of the left one habitually drooped, imparting an air that was at once knowing and slightly sinister to his pale countenance. He was a slender, quiet man, angular and bony, dressed in black clothing faintly reminiscent of clerical garb. But when he spoke his voice belied his appearance and his nickname of Deacon, for it was the hoarse accents of the underworld which he expelled from one corner of his mouth without moving the opposite side of his face, a trick of speech peculiar to the convict.

"You was, Dick," said the Deacon.

"Intoxicated?"

"Plastered," said the Deacon.

"Whom was I with?"

"Little bozo who didn't look so good to me," said the Deacon. "He was drinkin' Worcestershire sauce with an egg in it. Who was this bird?"

"I don't know," said Peters.

"Anything went wrong? Been rolled, Dick?" croaked the

Deacon hopefully. "Say the word, Kid, and I'll have one of the boys look that bozo up for you and give him the works."

"Thanks, but don't bother, Deacon," replied Dickie, shuddering away from this friendly offer to arrange a bit of felonious assault for his benefit. 'It's nothing serious." The Deacon seemed disappointed, even a little hurt by the refusal, and insisted on Dickie's having a thimbleful of French brandy with him. It was most excellent, as cognac goes these days, and Dickie had a second thimbleful, remarking jocosely:

"This sure is the place for the cognac-scented cognoscenti to hang out, Deacon."

The levity was a flight above the Deacon's perception; but he, nevertheless, smiled a thin-lipped smile which revealed a golden tooth, and whispered harshly: "Jus' say the word, jus' say the word— any time I can do you a favor like that, Dick."

"Darned old criminal!" said Dick to himself as he went down the stair. "He really meant that. I wonder why it is that crooks, children, nuts, women and dogs always seem to like me."

It was the third place he went after he left the Deacon that some small cell in his brain suddenly opened— perhaps under the stimulation of strong drink— and recalled one place he had been, certainly, the previous evening—Madge Elder's dressing-room.

"Heavens!" he said, in something like fright. "I didn't propose to Madge, did I?"

Madge, one of the many queens of musical comedy always regnant in New York, might be just whimsical enough to take him at his word and marry him for a change, he reflected.

She had usually married wealthy men, but she was an unaccountable person, with an active sense of humor— and it might be, it might be! He didn't want to marry Madge, although he liked her, but that would make not the slightest difference in the world to Madge, as he well knew. If she took the notion to marry him she would do it no matter what he thought about the matter— and maybe he had given her the notion.

"And what would Julia say to that?" he sighed. And then, sadly: "I wonder if I'm going to have to quit drinking."

He pursued his inquiries, becoming more and more worried, as he progressed along the south side of the block towards Fifth Avenue, calling at every variety of place in that exceedingly variegated and joyously careless block. He learned that he had been in most of them, sometimes accompanied by one jolly playmate, sometimes companioned by as many as half a dozen.

"Must have been somebody's birthday I was celebrating last night," said Dickie. "Whose, I wonder?" Not Madge's, he was sure; no lady had been with him— and Madge never called attention to her birthdays, anyhow.

It was at, perhaps, the tenth place which he visited that he made a further partially successful attempt at recollection— it came to him all at once that he had left Madge's dressing-room with some friend of hers whom he had met there, and that it was about ten o'clock. He remembered Madge's saying that it was about ten. It appeared possible that this stranger and himself had gone about together for hours and hours afterwards. But who was the fellow, and what did he look like? Dickie struggled vainly for a name, for the remembrance of some salient feature.

"I think," said Dickie, "I'll go and see Julia."

And then, as the possibility that he might have proposed to Madge recurred to him, he murmured: "I'll tell Julia she's got to marry me right away."

Marriage with Julia appeared more desirable than it ever had before, not merely for its own sake, but also as a protection trom Madge— if he given Madge that notion.

"Julia's got to marry me the first thing tomorrow morning,"' resolved Dickie.

He crossed the street and entered the of the establishment over which Julia presided midway in the block— "Mme. Julie" was the sign on the window, and it was the office of a laundry, both hand and steam. Julia Martin, manager and half owner of the business, discovered that there is, for some strange reason, a commercial advantage attached a French name in New York City. And so, when she took charge, she became "Julie Martin".

With her dark hair, and clean-cut aquiline features, and glowing eyes, she did not look unlike the Frenchwomen who manage small businesses so successfully, although she handsomer than the average run of them. She sometimes amused herself by affecting French accent and turns of speech with patrons. But not with Dickie; for Dickie she was frankly Julia Martin, originally a Poughkeepsie girl, and now a New York business woman very proud of her success.

And well she might be, for she had resolutely battled her way onward from bookkeeper to half-ownership in ten years. She was especially proud of the hand-laundry side of the business and of her reputation for dealing with fine  fabrics as they should be dealt with.

She was behind the cashier's desk as Dickie entered, and she gave him a smile that was once warm and quizzical.

"Julia," he said, without preamble, "I want you to marry me tomorrow."

Her smile, as she answered him, became even more quizzical.

"I've got too much sense for that, Dick," she said, "and I've told you so a dozen times since Christmas."

Being fond of Richard Peters was one of the few weaknesses Julia had allowed herself in her very busy life. In the three years she had known him, and sometimes yearned over him as if he were a wild and engaging boy, and occasionally gone about with him to theater and cabarets, she had always succeeded in concealing from him the real depth of her affection. Julia had a heart— but she had a head, too. And Dickie— well, you've known Dickie for several pages now, and you can see very well, why he really wouldn't do.

"I'll get a job," said Dickie.

"Come in sometime," said Julia, "and tell me you've had a job for a year— the same job— and maybe I'll talk it over with you!"

"You're a mercenary wash-woman," said Dickie, "and you have no idea whatever of romance or passion or the finer things of life."

"Mercenary!" laughed Julia. "Look here!"

And she led him to a small back office, opened a filing case, and extracted therefrom a bill— his own bill. He saw with astonishment that he owed her $167.50.   He would have been still more astonished if he had known that on three different occasions during the past year Julia had gone into the hand-laundry side of her establishment, after work hours, and washed and done up his shirts with her own hands; and that she always personally kept his buttons sewed on. Not for worlds would Julia have had him guess this.

"You haven't paid me a cent since the first time you proposed to me, and I think thats the real reason you proposed," she gibed. "Do you get your meals the same way?"

They were out of eye-shot from the street, and Dickie, suddenly overwhelmed by her warm-blooded nearness, threw his arms about her and kissed her on her red mouth. For an instant she seemed yielding to him, yielding richly— and then she recovered herself pushed him away.

"Don't," she said. "It's not quite a square deal— when you know I can't marry you."

"But you can!" said he.

"Listen, Dick," she said seriously. I'm fond of you— you know that. But I— well, I can't afford you! If I were worth a million dollars, I might take a chance— or even a hundred thousand. But as it is, you'd be too expensive a luxury."

Dickie flushed. But he did not answer angrily. "I was worth a hundred thousand dollars once," he said thoughtfully. It was the solemn truth. Dickie had really been that much ahead of the game at one time. "I wonder what I did with it," he murmured. For it had gone from him in less than a year. His face getting still redder, he moved towards the door.

"Come back here— don't go away mad!" she cried.

"You're right about me— I'm not worth a hoot; and I probably couldn't support a wife," said Dickie, pausing nevertheless. "But just the same, you ought to know I wouldn't be supported by one. When I said I'd get a job, I meant it." Then he suddenly became angry, and spoke without realizing that his anger was more at himself than at her. "If you had a million dollars, you could go to blazes before I'd propose to you," he said, "and you know it, too, Julia!"

Her anger answered his own.

"Be a fool!'' she blazed. "That's right— be a fool! You know very well, Dick Peters, that I don't care about money, any more than you do! When I marry, I'll marry a man that's got hold of his life— you get me? A man!"

Anger did not answer her again. A sudden humility and dejection descended upon Dickie. Then he mumbled: "I'm going home and take a warm bath."

Julia watched him out. "Warm bath? What did he mean by that?" she asked herself, staring after him.

And then the proprietress of Mme. Julie's establishment ceased to be an efficient business woman for a while. She threw herself into a chair and cried and sobbed— and sobbed and cried again.

But Dickie, as he crossed the street, was smitten with a vision that kept him from indulging himself in that warm bath. What he saw in front of him was a face, a face floating as it were, a face detached from time and space and all surroundings, drifting independently. It was a man he had been with last evening and it gave Dickie something to go on.

He went through the rest of his route with the question upon his lips: "Was I in here last night with a dark-complexioned, sleek-looking young fellow about thirty years old, with a big Roman nose and black hair plastered down tight to his head with this slick-em stuff?"

And in no less than four different places the answer was: "Dickie, you was!" not including two places in which the answer was: "Dickie, you were!"

It was the prominent nose which had emerged first from the mists into consciousness— a nose large and strong-looking and heavy enough, Dickie thought, to pull any head and body after it. His query finally changed to: "Say, was I in here last night with a fellow with a nose?" And he was gratified to perceive that that was all he need say— just "a nose." He had been to at least a dozen places with that nose.

Dickie got another notion. He said to himself, "If this bozo with the nose comes to life for me because of the few little drinks I've had, why not take a few more little drinks and get into just the same condition I was in when I was with him? Then, no doubt, I will remember who he is and what we talked about."

After about the third little drink he began to admire himself greatly for the notion. He was sitting in a tea-room when this admiration struck him, with two acquaintances, and they were imbibing gin cocktails from teacups.

"What the world needs," said Dickie, "is the application of psychology to the practical business of detecting crime. The creation of a bunch of psychological detectives— men who are skilled in mind-reading, in all varieties of thought transmission, in telepathy, in exploration of the subconscious as well the conscious mind. A psychological sleuth!

"Why, with a few scientists at my disposal I could organize a bureau right here in New York City, the like of which has never existed on the face of the earth before, and this would be just the time to do it. There has never been an era in the history of the world, in any city of the world, when there has been so much crime as there is in New York City today, crime that needs detection badly. There is million dollars in it— let me show you." With a soft lead-pencil and the back of a bill of fare Dickie was soon engrossed in making million dollars once more.

"You see, these detectives," said Dick "these superior, trained, scientific, telepath sleuths will even know what crimes the criminal element intend to commit before they have committed them, by getting into touch with them telepathically. It will be the great crime prevention agency that the world has ever seen. We should be able to sell our services at a high figure to every corporation New York City; banks and jewelry stores will simply have to have us. What we need is some capital to organize our corporation. Somebody's got to go into Wall Street right away and get hold of the capital—"

And then he paused, his pencil in the air.

"Wall Street!" he said and gave a whoop. He stuck the pencil in his pocket and without a word to his prospective partners in the Psychological Detective Agency, he walked from the tea-room, and that promising enterprise perished then and there.

"Wall Street!" With that word there had been another click in Dickie's mind.

Now he remembered whom the nose longed to! It was the nose of that spectacular young Wall Street operator, Theodore Jarvis. All the world is aware of the sensational rise Theodore Jarvis, from messenger boy to a great stock exchange operator, and the details do not need to be repeated here. Jarvis! It was Jarvis whom he had met in Madge Elder's dressing-room last night, and. they had gone away together to get a drink They had planned something— planned some thing together— but what was it?

Dickie sat with this problem for half hour, but the secret resolutely refused to emerge any further into the light of day. And then the notion came to Dickie that might have come to many more commonplace persons half an hour sooner; the notion of calling Mr. Jarvis on the telephone. He was lucky enough to catch him before the great young man left his office for the day. But Jarvis did not recall ever having met any Richard Peters.

"Don't you remember what we talked last night?" said Dickie, wishing to heaven that he himself could remember it. "After we left Madge Elder's dressing-room? Certainly you must remember it!"

"Oh," said Jarvis, "so we met in Elder's dressing-room?" Then, with reluctance: "Well, come on down and I'll see you."

Dickie was into the subway and out again and into a large office-building in the finance district as rapidly as the Interboro could manage it for him.

Mr. Jarvis proved to be a rather pleasant looking chap in spite of his salient probe and narrow forehead. But he seemed a trifle worried when he received Dickie.

He looked long at him.

"You say I met you in Madge Elder's dressing-room? I knew I met somebody there, but I don't remember you."

It was evident to Dickie that if it hadn't been for the mention of Madge Elder he not have got to see Mr. Jarvis at all. But Jarvis looked, in fact, a little suspicious of him. Dickie risked everything on one remark:

"You don't mean to say," he said, "that you have forgotten what we talked about!"

Mr. Jarvis was blunt. "I don't remember talking with you about anything, Mr. Peters."

"But you couldn't have forgotten a thing of that importance!" protested Dickie.

"Mr. Peters," said Mr. Jarvis, "I never discuss matters of importance with perfect strangers."

"But we weren't perfect strangers, you know," said Dickie. "We were both friends of Madge Elder and we got better and better acquainted as the evening went on. We got terribly friendly as we had more and more drinks together."

Mr. Jarvis looked at him, still in silence for a moment, and then in cold dignity delivered himself of this declaration:

"Mr. Peters, I never drink. Probably you were drinking yourself last evening, Mr. Peters, and talked this important matter over with somebody else."

Dickie felt somewhat humiliated and more than a little angry. He was conscious that the liquor he had drunk himself that day was diffusing an odor around Mr. Jarvis's business office, and he felt he was rapidly declining, in Mr. Jarvis's estimation, to the status of the visionary and the souse.

"Mr. Peters," said Jarvis, "what is this important thing that you fancy you talked over with me last evening?"

There it was! What was it?

Dickie stared long at Jarvis in silence, hoping for even the slightest inspiration, but it did not come. And in another moment he was being gently eased out of Jarvis's office.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Peters," said Jarvis with chilly politeness.

On the pavement outside the office-building, Dickie stood and stared upward between the great buildings at the cold, cruel sky. He had no doubt now that millions had been within his grasp. He had lost them forever. He had lost them because he was a waster, a drunkard, a ne'er-do-well. It served him right. Julia had been right... He wasn't a man!

It would have interested him greatly if he could have seen Mr. Jarvis in the room he had just left, staring at the wall, and could have heard his murmured meditations.

"So that," said Mr. Jarvis, "so that is the bird I was drunk with last evening! My Lord, what did I say to him? Could I have told him— but no! I can't imagine myself getting stewed enough to pass a tip like that out to a stranger! He didn't know! If he had he would have come through with it!"

MAYBE, Dickie reflected, he really hadn't talked with Jarvis about anything important the night before. Probably he hadn't. It was just the idea of being with Jarvis that had inflamed and disordered his imagination. He humbly confessed to himself that he was like that— easily inflamed. Probably, after all, the thing that he had been trying to remember was that he had got himself engaged to Madge Elder. Well, anyhow, he thought, Julia couldn't have anything to say to that now! Julia was through with him. He might as well call Madge up and find out the worst. He went into a telephone-booth.

"Madge," he said, warily, "I suppose a lot of people have been congratulating you."

"Only two or three people know about it yet, Dickie," answered Madge's musical voice. "'And see here, don't you tell, either, until I say you can. A girl wants to be the first to announce her own engagement!'

"All right, Madge," he said, with a sinking heart. So he was engaged to Madge Elder! And then, because he was a chivalrous soul, and fundamentally game, he said: "You know I've always been just simply crazy about you, Madge, old dear!"

There was a melodious tinkle of laughter from Madge. "You old sweetie!" she said, smacked a kiss into her end of the telephone connection, laughed again and hung up.

Well, here it was, out at last! The important thing that had happened the night before was, after all, that he had got himself engaged to Madge Elder. And Julia— but he wouldn't let himself think about Julia. He was miserable. How could he face Madge? He couldn't. He sent her a box of flowers, and a note saying that he would be out of town for ten days.

"Ten days will give me time to think," he said.

But the next ten days were a miserable period for Dickie. He had losses at poker. He had losses at craps. He had losses at the grand old game of keeping one's self-respect. He arose one morning and found nothing clean to put on— neither socks, underwear nor shirts. There must be at— at— well, at the laundry— quite a bundle of things. And, he calculated, the bundle should have been back yesterday. He had the janitor up.

"Sure there isn't a bundle of my laundry sticking around somewhere, George?" he inquired of the colored man.

"No, Sah," said George. "It came ovah yest'day f'om Madame Julie's, and they wouldn't leave it without the money— said it was C.O.D.— and I didn't have the change myself, Mr. Peters." And then, sympathetically: "Dey nevah done dat befo', Mr. Peters— ain't no way to treat a gen'man!"

"Oh!" said Dickie. "All right!"

He felt hurt. Sorry for Julia, he told himself. He had never thought it possible there could be anything petty about her— but this was petty. Because she must know, she certainly knew, that she had practically all his things in her possession.

What was that bill of hers? Somewhere on the road towards $200. Very well, he would borrow the money and pay it— pay it at once.

It was three hours before he was able to achieve the total sum, from different sources. And while he was collecting it, he also collected something else—inadvertently; to wit, a job.

"I need a press-agent, Dick," one of his friends, a theatrical producer, told him, "and I wonder if you can help me out."

Here it was again— a job! Dick reflected, and all the vicissitudes of his checkered career raced past his inner vision. Suddenly he felt a real, a genuine yearning for a job— almost any kind of job. For something stable and regular and commonplace.

"All right, Billy, I'll take it," he said. And there was a note of something like gratitude in his voice. He didn't even ask what the salary would be— he could trust Billy to do the fair thing about that. What he was after was the feeling of solid ground under his feet again. Under his spiritual feet, if you get the idea.

"Well," he said to himself, "I guess I'll have to quit being a kid sometime."

It was in this sobered mood that he stood before Julia again, with the money to pay the bill.

"I'll pay the whole thing, Julia," he said.

"You don't need to, Dick, if it isn't convenient right now," said Julia. And then she laughed: "I held out on you— all your things— because I wanted to see you, and I thought you were too sore to come in unless you had to."

"It's all right, Julia— I'll pay it now, and take the big bundle there home with me."

"You'll need it; you'll need something clean to get married in," said Julia.

Dickie groaned. 'Who told you?" he asked.

"A little bird," replied Julia.

"I suppose it's all over town," said Dickie, in deep dejection.

"I haven't told anyone but you," said Julia.

"You haven't?" said Dickie, in genuine wonderment.

"Wake up, Stupid!" cried Julia. "I'm telling you that I'm going to marry you."

And she threw her arms around him.

What can a man do under such circumstances? What a man can do, that Richard did!

"We'll get married tomorrow," said Julia. 'And the day after that, you're going to work. I've got a job for you."

"I've got a job for myself, Julia," he said, "and I'm going to work this afternoon." He smiled at himself as he caught a note of pride in his announcement. "Before we get married!"

She looked at him almost as a mother might look at a son— and yet there was something more than that in her regard, too; something more and something vitally different.

"I— I— I love you, Dick!" she said. "And I want to live with you. I— I— I just couldn't keep my hands off you any longer!"

During the next two minutes he didn't try make her, either. And then he suddenly laughed. She looked her inquiry.

"I was just thinking of Madge Elder," he explained. "I got myself engaged to her, you know."

"You did?" Julia looked puzzled. From the counter she took an afternoon paper. "Then," she said, "she must have broken the engagement pretty quickly!"

He read the front-page story announcing that Madge Elder, the actress, had been united in the holy bonds of matrimony— her first venture— with Theodore Jarvis, the well known Wall Street operator, that morning.

"So that's the bird she was engaged to, and not me!" said Dickie.

"Richard! Richard! You certainly do need a boss!" cried Julia. And then, "This man Jarvis—" She paused; interrupted herself.

Dickie waited.

"Promise me that you'll marry me, no matter what I tell you," she said.

"I promise."

"Nothing can keep you from it?"

"Tomorrow, as sure as the sun rises," said Dickie.

"Even if I should turn out to have been a desperate adventurous gambler at one time in my career?"

"I'd like you the better for it."

"Even if I should turn out to be a wealthy woman?"

"Even then— I've got no pride any more, I'm licked."

"Well, then," said Julia, "I am a wealthy woman— and this man Jarvis has something to do with it." She reached under the counter and pulled out a soiled table-cloth and spread it before him.

"The steam laundry does a lot of business for the restaurant and tea-rooms in this neighborhood," she said, "and this table-cloth came in, with a lot of other things, the day after you were last here. I was over at the plant that day— where we do the washing— and as luck would have it I saw this table-cloth and got interested in it. Look!"

It was, in effect, a map of a pleasant hour, that table-cloth. It was stained with cigaret ashes, and it was stained with the marks of glasses, and part of it was a medley of pencil scrawls and sketches. One profile of a face stood out trenchantly, in soft black pencil strokes— Jarvis, unmistakably Theodore Jarvis, with his salient nose and narrow forehead and sleeked-back hair. And under it was written "Jarvis."

Dickie began to get excited; he began to remember— everything! "Jarvis says—Jarvis says"— he recognized his own handwriting—"Jarvis says— Midland Express— straight tip from Jarvis— buy Midland Ex.— straight tip— Jarvis says big deal— Mid. Ex.— let loose at— Mid. Ex. up— up— let loose at 110—Jarvis— straight tip—" Over and over.

This was it! Dickie looked at his own scrawls, speechless. Then he told her.

"Well," said Julia, "I played it! I hocked the laundry and shot the works! Margins! And I did what they call pyramiding— and I let loose at a hundred and ten! And we're worth a quarter of a million dollars today!"

He blessed her for the "we"— and he felt, all, things considered, entitled to a certain measure of inclusion.

"But just the same, Dick," she said, "you'll keep that job— and I'll keep the laundry."

But Richard was immersed in figures. He had drawn towards him a stiff-bosomed dress shirt that was lying on the counter, freshly and finely laundered, and with the stub of a soft pencil was busy organizing the Hand Steam Laundry Trust— a gigantic amalgamation!

"Millions in it— millions in it," he murmured happily.

But Julia took him tenderly and firmly by the ear and separated him from this sudden splendid dream.

"No, Richard," she said, "you're not going to spend this afternoon that way— you've got a job, and you're going out of here and get busy at it. Now!"

And Richard smiled and went.

_____________

16: Leopards

Don Marquis

Cosmopolitan June 1927

MISS LOLA GOLIGHTLY looked at the leopard; she looked long and she looked longingly. And Tamerlane, the leopard, looked long and longingly at Miss Lola Golightly— stared as steadily as a wild animal can stare at a human being without winking.

They were both of them gorgeous creatures, the most gorgeous, each, of her and his respective kind— opulent, colorful, luxurious beings; feline, carnivorous-looking beauties; warm-blooded, and lithe, and prone to sudden, vigorously graceful movements; subject to quick, overwhelming impulses and whims. One wondered how either of them had been lured into captivity. And yet both of them were, obviously, captives— Tamerlane in his in the menagerie tent of Driggins's Great Show, and Miss Lola Golightly hanging upon the arm of little Freddy Hawkster, her husband.

"Peachey," said Miss Golightly, "I want that leopard!"

She had been Miss Golightly on the screen before she married Freddy Hawkster, otherwise Peachey. And no matter how many husbands she might accumulate in the course of a career that was not by any means drawing towards its sunset— that was, indeed, still in its morning hours with noon a long way off— she would always be Miss Lola Golightly. A blazing personality such as Lola Golightly's cannot be overshadowed by a mere husband, whether he be a permanency or but a transient guest within her house of life. Peachey,  who was small and rotund and pink and had a downy blond beard and downy blond hair on his head, had been asked forgo many things— just like that!— in the two years since he had ceased to be Miss Golightly's manager and had become, as her husband, Miss Golightly's manager, that not one silken hair turned in surprise.

A woman who had made— or whose embattled press-agents said she made— a million dollars a year before she was married, and whose marriage had given her a reasonable interest in her husband's income without subtracting from her own, is entitled to mingle with her fancies and her notions a certain fiscal element, according to Peachey's way of thinking.

If Miss Golightly had asked for the Brooklyn Bridge, and had requested that the Woolworth Building be taken down and rebuilt in the middle of it, Peachey would merely have hemmed and hawed— and giggled a little and said that he would see what could be done about it, but he would not have been astonished or shocked. Peachey had done so exceedingly well in the moving- picture business himself that the only way he could tell what he was worth, at any given moment, was to ask Morty Thompson, the head of his publicity department, and, then divide Morty's answer by five.

But when asked for anything unusually spectacular, Peachey sometimes demurred a bit as a mere matter of form.

It had been that way when Morty Thompson had put into one of Lola's ads— Lola was then being shot in the rôle of Cleopatra, the well-known Egyptian vamp— the fiction that Cleopatra had bathed every morning in the milk of Abyssinian zebras, and that Miss Golightly, who studied every mood of the heroines she depicted, also bathed every morning in the milk of Abyssinian zebras while the great release was being filmed. Lola, upon reading the press notices, had demanded that Peachey get her some Abyssinian zebras; and it was only upon proving to her that no longer were any zebras in Abyssinia that Peachey got out of that situation.

Peachey stalled a bit now.

"Whatcha want with a leopard, Honey Bun?" If there was anyone in the world who should not have been described by the somewhat sticky, trickly appellation of "Honey Bun," it was the richly vital Lola; but love, and fatuity, are occasionally blind to incongruities.

"I don't want just any leopard, Peachey— I want this leopard," said Lola. And she continued staring at the wonderful Tamerlane, who blinked and looked away, and then looked again at her with an intensity that might have frightened a wiser or less courageous person.

"I want his hide! I want his fur!"

"His fur?" said Peachey stupidly.

"Uh-huh," purred Lola, with a feline vibration of her threat and chest. "I must have his fur! I must have his fur! It would make the most wonderful coat in the world!"

She purred, it has been said, and as if in answer to her purring the leopard, Tamerlane, couchant on the floor of his cage with his paws before him and his muzzle upon his paws, looking at her and looking away again when he could stand the human gaze no longer, began to emit a low, growling note, a kind of restrained, jarring breath that was like a 'cello accompaniment to the tones of the woman.

"I will have his fur!" purred the woman again, gazing as if fascinated on the terrible, animal beauty of the beast.

And the leopard, fascinated in his turn, unable permanently to withdraw his eyes, was saying so plainly that no one who understood animal talk could mistake it: "I will have that woman! I will eat that woman!" Tamerlane he was, and a conqueror, born a ranger of the wilds and a fierce and mighty :unter, but never before had his imagination, his latent instinct for preying upon living beings, received such an awakening fillip. He did not think or reflect any more than the woman herself thought or reflected; he looked at her and yearned, in the grip of a new and strange and overwhelming— was food for the kings of the wild and the gods of the wild!

And the woman, who had never denied herself anything she wanted, and the leopard, who had never wanted anything with such imperious intensity before, looked upon each other hypnotized, curiously alike in their trance of longing, and each vowed the other's death— the barbaric appetite for adornment facing the savage lust for food, life seeking to take life and add it unto itself.

MISS GOLIGHTLY and her husband had left the circus early, and were lingering in the animal tent on their way to their big purple-and-gold limousine outside, when the leopard and the lady caught sight of each other. Now Peachey, on his wife's reiteration of her wish, began to get active immediately, as was his wont.

"Would you mind," he asked a clown, off duty, who was idling near by, "asking Mr. Exeter Dallis to come here, if he is anywhere about the grounds? Tell him that Freddy Hawkster wants to see him—"

Mr. Exeter Dallis is the press-agent of Driggins's Great Show.

When an elephant swims down the Hudson and is rescued by a battleship, when a giraffe steps out of the parade and restores a baby to a lady who has carelessly dropped it from a second-story window, when a faithful seal sacrifices his life to save a beloved trainer from the onslaughts of a maddened ostrich whom someone has given a cigaret to eat, Mr. Exeter Dallis is the poet who has dreamed these things first and has sung them to the strafing of his wild harp in the ears of the reporters of the daily press. Mr. Dallis has the air of not expecting anyone to believe anything. he says, but for all that he is one of the best fellows in the world.

"Ex," said. Peachey when Mr. Dallis arrived, with his ever-genial smile, and with the gold-headed cane, made out of a bone from an elephant's tail, which once was the property of Phineas Taylor Barnum himself, and which Mr. Dallis always carries, "Ex, Lola wants that leopard."

Mr. Dallis began to say, quite by force of habit, "It's the easiest thing you know " but, as the demand penetrated to his understanding, he checked himself and asked instead: "Which leopard, Lola? Not that leopard?"

"Yes, that leopard, Ex," said Lola. "Tamerlane."

And Tamerlane, watching her every moment, purred again: "I want that woman! I will have that woman!"

A cloud passed over the face of  Mr. Dallis, usually so genial and open. He hated to deny anyone anything. Finally he said:

"Lola, I know you won't believe me, but that leopard's the only animal in this whole show that the Old Man wouldn't part with. Wouldn't some other leopard do?"

"No leopard in the world, Ex, but that leopard! I want his hide for a coat! Look how he watches me!"

Mr. Dallis looked at her vivid coloring, at her warm golden eyes with the changing lights in them, at the luxuriance and magnificence of her hair, and he looked at the wild beauty of the gorgeous, spotted Tamerlane. He spoke with a sudden enthusiasm:

"By gad, Lola! You two are affinities! I'll tell the world so!"

"I will have his coat!' purred the woman.

"I will have that woman to eat!" purred the leopard.

"You oughta have him!" said Dallis, "but as I said, it's the one thing the Old Man owns that he won't sell."

"Why not, Ex?" said Peachey, who was willing to buy Lola a leopard if possible, but more than willing not to see the money spent if it were really impossible.

"It's a matter of sentiment, Peachey."

"Sentiment? Is he so attached to it?" asked Lola.

"I know you won't believe me," said Mr. Dallis, "for it's a funny yarn. You've got to understand that these circus people, especially the old-timers, are the most sentimental people on earth, or you won't get me.

"The old man had a daughter. Beautiful girl. Fine girl. Looked a good deal like you, Lola, only she wasn't as big. Brought her up away from the circus. Girl's college, and all that sort of thing. But circus was in the blood. Her mother had done a turn herself under the big top, twenty years ago. The Old Man him- self was born with the smell of sawdust in his nostrils. What's born in you has to come out.

"The Old Man had planned a society life for that girl, but when she got out of her college, you couldn't club her away from the big top. Where she learned to ride the way she did, I don't know— in the blood, I guess. But she surprises the Old Man one day by turning up as a lady bareback rider in his own show. Collusion amongst his underlings, he said, but he wasn't really as mad as he made out to be.

"And animals! Animal was that kid's middle name. Her and Tamerlane here struck up a special friendship. He was captured when he was almost full-grown, and he had the reputation of being a tricky beast and hard to handle. But he did follow her. For she had the nerve to let him out of his cage one day— and lead him around the tent here and you'd have thought he was a tame tom-cat.

"Well, the kid died about two years ago. It broke the Old Man all up. He hasn't got over it, and he never will get over it. But that's the reason he won't part with that leopard."

"But he's really a dangerous beast, isn't he?" said Lola.

"They're all dangerous, all these wild animals," said Mr. Dallis soberly. "Any time you are told they aren't, it's all bunk. They're never really tamed. Tamerlane, here, would eat you in a minute if he took a fancy to."

"I want that woman! I will eat that woman!" purred the great beast, in his own language, as if confirming Mr. Dallis.

"I want that fur!" said Lola, the compunction that she had felt for a moment vanishing under Mr. Dallis's information that all wild animals, no matter how seemingly docile, are dangerous.

"You're going to have a deuce of a time getting him," said Mr. Dallis, "unless you buy the circus outright, and him with it."

"Oh, Peachey, couldn't we?' cried the spoiled beauty.

Peachey came nearer to giving a gasp of surprise than ever before. But he choked it back. His training conquered.

"We'll see about it, Honey Bun, we'll see."

"Would it cost such an awful lot of money?" asked Lola, innocently, of Mr. Dallis.

"It would if you could buy it," said Mr. Dallis. "But I doubt if the Old Man would sell it at all. He likes to think it's his."

"Honey Bun, I'm afraid we're gonna have to give it up," mildly offered Peachey.

"I want that fur!" said Lola.

"I want that woman!" purred Tamerlane. "I'm going to eat that woman!"

"Exie, where is Old Man Driggins now?"

"He's at Bridgeport, Connecticut, today," said Mr. Dallis.

"Come on Peachey," said Lola, "'we'll get into the car and go to Bridgeport."

They were then in Brooklyn, where the circus was showing for a week after its early season engagement at the new Madison Square Garden, New York. Lola spoke of going to Bridgeport to buy the circus as casually as another person might have suggested going to the corner drug store for a chocolate sundae.

"Why not wait until tomorrow, and he'll be here?" suggested Mr. Dallis.

"Why not, Honey Bun?" pleaded Peachey.

"No," Honey Bun said with finality. "He might be considering an offer from somebody else right now, for all you men know. That's the way with men! Women have all the business sense, really. We'll go to Bridgeport right away. It's only fifty or sixty miles."

And as they started out of the tent she castWith one final lingering look at Tamerlane. "I going to have that fur!" she murmured.

"I'm going to eat that woman!" answered Tamerlane, returning her gaze.

"Now aren't women hades on wheels!" said Mr. Exeter Dallis, not without admiration.

THAT NIGHT, during the show, and after the show, and well on towards morning, there was uneasiness in the animal tent, the sort of tension that the old timers know how to appraise, and which they fear. The lions gave voice from time to time, the elephants grumbled and trumpeted, and a polar bear made oration to the world. There was a feeling of hysteria in the enclosure, which communicated itself to keepers and trainers and attendants; the beasts were on edge.

There was no storm on the way, no electrical tingling and prickling in the air, no unusual and unseasonable heat to excite the brutes, but excited they were, and the men in charge experienced little waves of unacknowledged fear.

There was a night watchman who felt that he might have cleared up the mystery of this agitation, which had in it a vague sense of menace towards man and all his works. This was old Jim Hagerty, who had been a trainer in his prime. Now his daughter was a trainer— Florence was her name, and she was billed as Fearless Flo— and he was merely a helper in the menagerie.

Old Jim had lived all his life among animals in many parts of the world, and even claimed that he could understand their talk. He used to report long conversations to his daughter, things that he heard o' nights, and they were so nearly like what the animals might have said that he often left Florence gaping in amazement, almost wondering if, indeed, her father really could understand animal talk. She was convinced that he at least thought he could.

Old Jim had been an eye-and-ear witness of the mutual fascination of Miss Golightly and Tamerlane; and his daughter had been indignant at the possiblity of a moving-picture actress aspiring to own the great show.

"What could she do with animals?" said Florence contemptuously. She walked among them herself, with pistol and whip, as confidently as if they were puppies.

"Never fear, Old Man Driggins won't sell it to her," said Jim. "The animals were all worked up last night," he continued presently. "They were all talking about Tamerlane and his wanting to make a meal from that woman."

It is a version of Jim's report that is given here.

"I WILL HAVE that woman! I will eat that woman!" Tamerlane told the leopard in the next cage again and again.

"What is the matter with that fool leopard that he will let nobody sleep?" complained a two-humped camel, who desired nothing better than to continue in the way of placidity which had been marked out for him by his gods.

"He is a fool, indeed! A fool! A fool! A fool!" gibbered a malicious little monkey.

"If I were out of this cage," muttered Tamer- lane, "that monkey would soon see whether he or I is the bigger fool! I could kill six monkeys with one blow of my paw."

"I wish you were out of your cage, then," said a polar bear. "I have undergone many indignities and discomforts in my life, and much suffering, but my chief sorrow is that I must listen all day long and sometimes all night long to the mouthings of these accursed monkeys. A monkey is neither a man nor a beast, but something between the two, and to be despised by both, for he has the faults of both."

"Oh, be silent, you!" interrupted a zebra. "You grumble eternally and you are worse than the monkeys."

"Lie down upon your ice," another monkey advised the bear.

"Silence!" roared a lion. "All of you!" And he shook his bars.

The monkeys giggled and mimicked him, and then fell into discussion again.

"Why is it," said one of them, "that the foolish leopard wishes to devour this particuiar woman? I had rather have an orange."

A tiger, who had been listening, and who had said nothing hitherto, stirred with a recollec- tion of an incident that had occurred in his youth in Bengal, and sniffed the air. And then there leaped into this tiger's heart a reawaken- ing of an old desire, and he gave a sudden loud cry of such ferocity that all the men and monkeys and all the herbivorous animals shuddered with terror. And all the carnivorous beasts cried out, while the tent shook with a naked blood-lust and the fear of it.

"I will have that woman! I will eat that woman!"' said Tamerlane, the leopard.

A wise old elephant then lifted up his voice and spoke solemnly and seriously.

"Listen to me," said the elephant. "I am old and I have seen many things, in many parts of the earth, and I tell you, my friend, as one animal to another, beware of women!

"Up and down the world have I traveled, upon my own legs, and in many trains and ships, and I have seen troubles here and troubles there, troubles by land and sea, troubles in the jungle and in cities, and I tell you, my friend, that the greater part of these troubles were due to women. My friend, beware of women!

"This is not my wisdom alone, although my wisdom is great, but it is also the wisdom of men, who have made themselves our masters. And they are wiser than we, because although their strength is less than our strength—"

"We obey them too much!" roared the old lion.

"Too much!" cried the tiger.

And the word went around the tent, until one of the great lethargic snakes, behind his glass plate and his bars, uncoiled and took it up, and said it over and over again.

"I will have that woman! I must eat that woman!" moaned Tamerlane the leopard.

But when all was quiet again the elephant went on with his tale.

"I have been with white men and with brown men," said the elephant. "I have worked with them, piling logs and pulling stumps, and I have hunted with them. And I have listened to them, while they talked about their camp-fires. And the boldest hunters and the greatest workers had ever this to say to one another, as the moral and the warning of the tales they told: Beware of women!

"I have seen much, and I warn you from what I have seen. I have heard much, and I warn you from what I have heard: Beware, my friend, beware of women! Put this yearning from you, for it will lead to trouble."

"I will have that woman! That woman I will eat," said Tamerlane, fierce and sick with the intensity of his longing.

"I will have that peanut! I must eat that peanut!" mimicked a monkey, safe behind his bars, and all there who were of the simian species giggled until the lion roared them to silence again.

So passed the night in the animal tent, but towards morning the noise died down and only the old elephant and Tamerlane the leopard talked with one another.

"Beware," said the elephant, "of women. Let me tell you a story of a woman who was aboard a ship on which I was brought to this country. It was because of her that the ship was very nearly lost at sea. It happened in this way." And the elephant told the leopard that story.

"I will have that woman," answered Tamerlane, at the conclusion of the tale.

But towards dawn the leopard began to listen to the elephant more quietly, and about the time of sunrise a sagacious orang-utan, who had said nothing before, joined in the discussion and supported the elephant. A toucan bird, a camel and a sad giraffe spoke also to the leopard, laboring for his conversion through the hour before the dawn. And then a cobra allied himself with them.

"Listen," said the cobra, "listen! I once lived near the bungalow of a Christian missionary in Burma. And because I heeded his precepts, my life has become a different thing, Listen, and I will tell you a story."

"MR. DRIGGINS, if you were going to sell your circus, how much would you take for it?"

Mr. Driggins named a figure that might have given pause to anyone but Miss Lola Golightly. But Lola's idea of money had always been that it was something to be spent, and figures did not mean as much to her as they might have done to a woman who had not seen press-agents toss millions about.

"But what on earth do you want with a circus?" asked Mr. Driggins.

"It's Peachey, here, that wants it," said Miss Golightly, with feminine guile. She had a habit of saying that Peachey wanted things, and she had the gift of almost making Peachey believe that he wanted them.

"Yes, Sir," said Peachey loyally, playing to Lola's lead, "I've wanted a circus all my life —ever since I was a kid. And now that I've got money enough to buy one, I'm gonna doit, if the price is reasonable."  Then he added vaguely: "It'll work in with my moving-picture business, you know."

Mr. Driggins was sympathetic, but not quite convinced. He could understand a person wanting a circus very badly, but somehow it didn't seem to him that Peachey was quite spontaneous. Peachey and Lola had found him at his Bridgeport home shortly before dinner, and had dined with him there, broach- ing the object of their visit at once. He had been a trifle puzzled to make them out; but he knew who Peachey and Lola were, he had confidence in their financial responsibility, and they evidently meant business. He was convinced that it was Lola who really wanted the show, and not Peachey, and he was piqued because he could not find out just what her sudden, overwhelming desire was due to; he felt sure that it was sudden and it seemed to be overwhelming.

He had told them at the beginning, automatically, as he told everybody, that Driggins's Great Show, which he owned outright, just as he owned the hat upon his head, was not for sale to anyone at any figure. But that had not jarred Lola. She had treated it as an entirely irrelevant statement. And as he talked to them there recurred to hima feeling that he had experienced several times since his daughter's death— the feeling that it was about time for him to retire. Before dinner was over, he had made up his mind to sell. But he wished to draw the transaction out until he discovered Lola's real motive.

Lola had no intention of telling. She had been too wise to mention Tamerlane.

Finally Mr. Driggins put it to her directly. "Mrs. Hawkster, I know it is you who want the show. Tell me why— and maybe I'll sell."

"You'll think I'm silly, maybe," she said, not troubling to make any further denials, "but it's because— well, I love animals!"'

Driggins looked at her, and believed her, and fell into a muse, thinking of his daughter. "I'll sell it to you," he said finally.

Lola also thought of his daughter— and of why she was really buying the circus— and had the grace to feel ashamed, for a moment.

But only for a moment. All the way from Bridgeport back to New York she talked of little else than that gorgeous coat, that wonderful coat which now rested upon the back of Tamerlane and would one day clothe herself.

"Peachey," she said, reproaching him for a lack of enthusiasm, "you don't seem to see the business possibilities in this deal!"

"Honey Bun, I don't," Peachey confessed.

"You men never do," said Lola. "It's a good thing you have me to look after you, Peachey, or your old moving-picture business would go to pieces in no time."

"Maybe you're right, Honey Bun," said Peachey submissively. But inside of him Peachey was saying, numbly and dumbly: "My Lord! A circus! I've bought a circus to get a coat for her!' My Lord! A circus!"

"If I wasn't a practical business woman, Peachey," continued Lola, "there's no telling how much money you'd lose in your ventures."

"Yes, Honey Bun," said Peachey.

"You're too good-natured with people, Peachey. You let 'em do you all the time."

Peachey flushed to a deeper peach-blow pink, and was silent. He had been thinking something of the sort himself.

"Now, honest, Peachey," Lola went on, "you haven't seen where this deal is good business. 'Fess up! Have you, now?"

"I ain't," said Peachey, losing his hold on grammar completely.

"Why, Stupid," said his loving spouse, "don't you see the idea? Lola Golightly buys a circus just to get a wonderful coat! Just think what Morty Thompson can do with that for a starter! With Exie Dallis to help! Why, Peachey, the ad from that will more than pay for the old circus, and you'll have the circus besides. Now, is your little Lola clever, or isn't she?"

"She is," responded Peachey dutifully. But he added, with a sigh: "It's gonna take quite a lot of reading matter, Honey Bun, to be worth as much as that circus costs us!"

"Don't you be a spoil-sport, Peachey," said his spouse, conveying her affection in a caress.

The caress was the sort of caress that also conveys something very like a warning. Peachey felt it so, at any rate. He made no further, feeble struggle. The die was cast so far as Peachey was concerned. He wouldn't be a spoil-sport. He was even grateful that Lola hadn't made it stronger, as she sometimes did. Sometimes she said, witheringly: "I hate a spoil-sport!"

IT WAS a week later, after all the formalities of the purchase had been concluded, that Lola stood before Tamerlane's cage again; and again that strange fascination seemed to possess both creatures. It was late in the afternoon, "between shows," as the profession terms that particular part of the day.

"I'll have a hard time with that leopard tonight."

Lola turned and saw Fearless Flo at her elbow; she recognized Florence, from her costume, as the woman who had put two lions and a leopard— Tamerlane himself— through their stunts at the afternoon performance. And she was conscious of a certain hostility in Florence's speech and manner. She looked her interrogation.

"When you were here before,"' said Florence, answering the look, "you got him so excited that it was two days before I could get him in hand again."

"Is he so dangerous?" asked Lola.

"All the big cats are dangerous," said Florence, "unless you keep your nerve."

Lola turned back towards the cage, and she and Tamerlane stared at each other once more. Florence broke the silence with a cool interrogation, which she was at no pains to render inoffensive.

"Who is going to kill him for you?" she said. "You haven't got the nerve to do it yourself."

Lola felt the girl's antagonism unmistakably now, and in spite of herself she flushed. "I suppose," she said quietly, "that you have?"

There was a brief pause, and then Florence replied: "Yes, I could kill him. But I wouldn't kill him. I'd be ashamed of myself to kill an animal like that just for a whim— just because I'd got stuck on his coat."

Florence was a slender brunette, and there was fire in her eyes as the two women faced each other. The idea that Driggins's Show was now the property of someone who cared nothing for circuses— the thought that the great, beautiful beast was to be slain to satisfy the frivolity of someone who had not the slightest interest in animals— was too much for her; she was outraged, personally and in her inherited traditions. She continued, letting her honest contempt take command of her voice:

"If I wore a tiger's coat, or a leopard's, it would be because I'd killed him myself— and I'd kill him only because I had to kill him. And it would only be an animal that had had his fair chance to kill me! But you wouldn't give him his chance! Everybody knows you have doubles for all the dangerous stunts in your pictures."

This was a home thrust, this latter sentence— the one thing calculated to make Lola more furious than any other insult in the world. For when she had first gone into the moving-pictures there had been none so daring as she. Later, when her fame and salary grew, it was her employers who had insisted that she give up risking herself personally; she was too valuable. And Lola had yielded reluctantly. But she was too proud to explain to this circus woman who so evidently hated her.

"I'll do anything that you'll do," said Lola evenly. "I'll go in the cage with you tonight and help you with your act."

"You won't be allowed," said Florence.

"I won't!'' blazed Lola. "We'll see! I own this circus!"

Florence laughed: "You haven't got the nerve!"

"Get me a costume like yours," said Lola.

Florence saw she meant it; she weakened; she thought swiftly of the possible consequences of an amateur in the arena among the big beasts. She paled a little, courageous as she was. "You mustn't do it!" she cried.

"Get me a costume like yours," repeated Lola. And she clutched the girl fiercely by the shoulder. "Or shall I rip this one off of you?"' she said.

Florence led her to the dressing tent.

And that night, when she faced the three great cats and watched Florence put them through their paces, she was not in the least afraid. For Lola was used to facing crowds and cameras, and this thing seemed to her, at first, no more connected with the realities and dangers of existence than just another appearance on "location." She stood quietly in a corner, observing the other woman and her marvelous handling of the animals; and once her reluctant admiration uttered itself:

"I've got to hand it to you!"

Florence gave her a quick glance and went on with her job. Presently she murmured:

"There's only a moment more of the act now.. You'd better beat it."

And she motioned towards the back of the steel-barred enclosure, sitting on its platform, in which the performance had taken place. The helpers were already there, with the portable steel chutes which connect the performing arena with the vans in which the animals live and travel, ready if necessary to assist in that transition from the door of the arena back to the cage which is the really ticklish business of most animal acts.

Lola, her whip and her pistol still in her hand, stepped out of the door of the arena and stood a moment on the margin of the platform beside it, looking at the crowd.

And even as she looked, she was aware that something had happened. A single spasm went over that great mass of faces before her as if it were one face— a spasm of fear. There was a gasp, a great involuntary whisper with the wind of terror in it; and then a hush.

Turning, she faced Tamerlane.

What had gone wrong, she never knew; whether the great silent cat had bounded after her with one leap before the door could be shut, or whether the helpers with the chute had hesitated and somehow bungled— but there he was, couched, as if for a spring, motionless, except for that slight twitching of the tail which showed the blood-lust trembling through the feline nerves.

"Don't move, for the love of God, don't move!" whispered Florence, through the bars.

But the leopard moved first— as you have seen a cat move before it leaps; a movement slight as the caress of a breeze upon the water, a ripple that started at his claws and shivered through his body; an undulation that was less physical action than the shuddering expression of a fatal idea. It was neither experience nor conscious thought which bade Lola be beforehand with the animal, when she perceived this movement; it was an instinct as primal as his own.

She struck first; again and again she lashed him, with a flailing whirlwind of blows across his muzzle and his head; blows that beat down the rising hell in him just before it reached its flaming crest and leaped; slashes edged with surprise that threw the beast off his psychic balance; blows that carried consternation, for an instant, from the stricken nerves to the brute soul; and Tamerlane the mighty crouched— and backed and snarled and tried to box with the flying whip itself, and failed to gather himself for the swift spring that meant death. Twice Lola desisted, and then at a renewal of movement in the beast lashed and lashed again.

And then there fell a pause, while the forces wrapped in these two savage beings struggled with each other in naked daring, without the aid of whirling whip or bared claw; a pause wherein they seemed to hang together, grappling, in a hypnotic trance. That courage which is more primal and deeper than anything that can be expressed in action glowed from the woman and seized upon and wrestled with the essential wildness of the stark brute before her.

And she was conscious of a great exultation. Here was the real thing, the woman told herself—the thing she was born for! Here was what she had been searching for, what she had been thirsty for; here was the strong drink of peril to slake the restlessness that had expressed itself in a hundred whims and escapades. All her other hunting had been for small game! She did not reason this, but in the dangerous trance that held them both she knew it.

To be conscious of peril, and not conscious of fear— that is something that is given to but few people; but her emotions were deeper than fear. They were deeper than thought; deeper than consciousness itself; they were deep as the stream of primal life that flowed through both the pagan woman and the savage cat, the stream which had shaped them both and borne them on and flung them both together. And in some strange way, which she could never express, the woman felt herself and this leopard blended together in their sources; he was she and she was he; a sensation too profound and overwhelming for fright, and which comes mystically to every handler of snakes and feline animals and is precedent to the mastery over them.

It was the woman who broke this spell. She stepped forward and raised her whip again. The great cat turned and glided into his cage, her slave. And five thousand people burst forth into a roar of applause.

"I got to hand it to you!" said Florence.

It was tribute from a professional which Lola knew how to value. She smiled and put her arm over the girl's shoulder for a moment. And then the smile faded. She gazed after the cage of Tamerlane, which was being wheeled from the tent, and said, almost somberly for Lola Golightly:

"I don't think I want his coat." She struggled, but in vain, to express some slight hint of the great joy that had possessed her, and of the strange trance that had held her. "I sort of like that leopard," was the best she could do. And then: "I think he's going to like me."

He did. In three months he followed her like a dog. Some of his friends in the animal tent said sneeringly that he had changed his spots and become a moral leopard; but Tamerlane did not waver in his devotion. When she was filmed as Semiramis, as the Queen of Sheba, as Zenobia, Queen of the Desert, Tamerlane figured as the leading feline.

Somehow her conquest of Tamerlane got into the papers.

"You see, Peachey," said Lola, looking at the clippings, "your old circus has almost paid for itself already! Now, who's a good business woman?"

"You are, Honey Bun," said the little pink man.

________________

17: The Dragon of St. Paul's

C. Ranger Gull and Reginald Bacchus

The Ludgate, April 1899

First Episode

"IT is certainly a wonderful yarn," said Trant. "and excellent copy. My only regret is that I didn't think of it myself in the first instance."

"But, Tom, why shouldn't it be true ? It's incredible enough for any one to believe. I'm sure I believe it, don't you, Guy?"

Guy Descaves laughed.

"Perhaps, dear. I don't know and I don't much care, but I did a good little leaderette on it this morning. Have you done anything, Tom?"

"I did a whole buck middle an hour ago at very short notice. That's why I'm a little late. I had finished all my work for the night, and I was just washing my hands when Fleming came in with the make-up. We didn't expect him at all to-night, and the paper certainly was rather dull. He'd been dining somewhere, and I think he was a little bit cocked. Anyhow he was nasty, and kept the presses back while I did a 'special' on some information he brought with him."

While he was talking, Beatrice Descaves, his fiancée, began to lay the table for supper, and in a minute she called them to sit down. The room was very large, with cool white-papered walls, and the pictures, chiefly original black and white sketches, were all framed in passe pas Tout frames, which gave the place an air of serene but welcome simplicity.

At one end of it was a great window which came almost to the floor, and in front of the window there was a low, cushioned seat. The night was very hot, and the window was wide open. It was late— nearly half-past one, and London was quite silent. Indeed the only sound that they could hear was an occasional faint burst of song and the tinkling of a piano, which seemed to come from the neighbourhood of Fountain Court.

Guy Descaves was a writer, and he lived with his sister Beatrice in the Temple. Trant, who was also a journalist on the staff of a daily paper, and who was soon going to marry Beatrice, often came to them there after his work was done. The three young people lived very much together, and were very happy in a delightful unfettered way. The Temple was quiet and close to their work, and they found it in these summer days a most peaceful place when night had come to the town.

They were very gay at supper in the big, cool room. Trant was a clever young man and very much in love, and the presence of Beatrice always inspired him to talk. It was wonderful to sit by her, and to watch her radiant face, or to listen to the music of her laugh which rippled like water falling into water. Guy, who was more than thirty, and was sure that he was very old, liked to watch his sister and his friend together, and to call them "you children."

"What is the special information that the editor brought, dear?" Beatrice asked Trant, as soon as they were seated round the table.

"Well," he answered. "It seems that he managed to get hold of young Egerton Cotton, Professor Glazebrook's assistant, who is staying at the Metropole. Of course various rumours have got about from the crew of the ship, but nothing will be definitely known till the inquest to-morrow'. Cotton's story is really too absurd, but Fleming insisted on its going in."

"Did he give him much for his information?" Descaves asked.

"Pretty stiff, I think. I know the Courier offered fifty, but he stuck out. Fleming only got it just at the last moment. It's silly nonsense, of course, but it'll send the sales up to-morrow."

"What is the whole thing exactly?" Beatrice asked. "All that I've heard is that Professor Glazebrook brought back some enormous bird from the Arctics, and that just off the Nore the thing escaped and killed him. I'm sure that sounds quite sufficiently extraordinary for anything; but I suppose it's all a lie."

"Well," said Trant. "What Egerton Cotton says is the most extraordinary thing I have ever heard— it's simply laughable— but it will sell three hundred thousand extra copies. I'll tell you. I've got the whole thing fresh in my brain. You know that Professor Glazebrook was one of the biggest biologists who have ever lived, and he's been doing a great, tedious, monumental book on prehistoric animals, the mammoth and all that sort of thing that E. T. Reid draws in Punch. Some old scientific Johnny in Wales used to find all the money, and he fitted out the Professor's exploration ship, the Henry Sandys, to go and find these mammoths and beasts which have got frozen up in the ice. Don't you remember about two years ago when they started from Tilbury? They got the Lord Mayor down, and a whole host of celebrities, to see them go. I was there reporting, I remember it well, and Reggie Lance did an awfully funny article about it, which he called 'The hunting of the Snark.' Well, Egerton Cotton tells Fleming— the man must be mad— that they found a whole lot of queer bears and things frozen up, but no very great find until well on into the second year, when they were turning to come back. Fleming says he's seen all the diaries and photographs and everything; they had a frightfully hard time. At last one day they came across a great block of ice, and inside it, looking as natural as you please, was a huge winged sort of dragon creature, as big as a cart horse. Fleming saw a photograph. I don't know how they faked it up, and he says it was the most horrid cruel sort of thing you ever dreamt of after lobster salad. It had big, heavy wings, and a beak like a parrot, little flabby paws all down its body like a caterpillar, and a great bare, pink, wrinkled belly. Oh, the most filthy-looking brute! They cut down the ice till it was some decent size, and they hauled the whole thing chock-a-block, like a prune in jelly, into the hold. The ice was frightfully hard, and one of the chains of the donkey engine broke once, and the whole thing fell, but even then the block held firm. It took them three weeks to get it on board. Well, they sailed away with their beastly Snark as jolly as sandboys, and Cotton says the Professor was nearly out of his mind with joy— used to talk and mumble to himself all day. They put the thing in a huge refrigerator like the ones the Australian mutton comes over in, and Glazebrook used to turn on the electric lights and sit muffled up in furs watching his precious beast for hours."

He stopped for a moment to light a cigarette, noticing with amusement that Guy and Beatrice were becoming tremendously interested. He made Beatrice pour him out a great tankard of beer before he would go on, and he moved to the window-seat, where it was cooler, and he could sit just outside the brilliant circle of light thrown by the tall shaded lamp. The other two listened motionless, and as he unfolded the grisly story, his voice coming to them out of the darkness became infinitely more dramatic and impressive.

"Well, Cotton says that this went on  for a long time. He had to do all the scientific work himself, writing up their journals and developing the photos, as the Professor was always mysteriously pottering about in the cellar place. At last, one day, Glazebrook came into the cabin at lunch or whatever they have, and said he was going to make a his experiment. He talked a lot of rot about toads and reptiles being imprisoned for thousands of years in stones and ice, and then coming to life, and he said he was going to try and melt out the dragon and tickle it into life with a swingeing current from the dynamo. Cotton laughed at him, but it wasn't any good, and they set to work to thaw the creature out with braziers. When they got close to it Cotton said that the water from the ice, as it melted, got quite brown and smelt! It wasn't till they were within almost a few hours from the Channel— you remember they put into some place in Norway for coal— and steaming for London River as hard as they could go, that they got it clear.

"While they were fixing the wires from the dynamo room, Cotton hurt his ankle and had to go to his bunk for some hours to rest. He begged Glazebrook to wait till he could help, for he had become insensibly interested in the whole uncanny thing, but it was no use. He says the fellow was like a madman, red eyes with wrinkles forming up all round them, and so excited that he was almost foaming at the mouth. He went to his cabin frightfully tired, and very soon fell asleep. One of the men woke him up by shaking him. The man was in a blue funk and told him something dreadful had happened in the hold. Cotton hobbled up to the big hatchway, which was open, and as he came near it with the mate and several of the men, he said he could hear a coughing choked-up kind of noise, and that there was a stench-like ten thousand monkey houses. They looked in and saw this great beast alive! and squatting over Glazebrook's body picking out his inside like a bird with a dead crab."

Beatrice jumped up with a scream.

" Oh Tom, Tom, don't, you horrid boy ! I won't hear another word. I shan't sleep a wink. Ugh! how disgusting and ridiculous. Do you mean to tell me that you've actually gone to press with all that ghastly nonsense? I'm going to bathe my face, you've made me feel quite hot and sticky. You can tell the rest to Guy, and if you haven't done by the time I come back, I won't say goodnight to you, there!"

She left the room, not a little disconcerted by the loathsome story which Trant, forgetting his listeners, had been telling with the true journalist's passion for sensational detail.

Guy knocked the ashes slowly out of his pipe.

"Well?" he said. " Oh, there isn't much more. He says they all ran away and watched from the companion steps, and presently the beast came flopping up on deck, with its beak all over blood, and its neck coughing and working. It got half across the hatchway and seemed dazed for about an hour. No one seemed to think of shooting it! Then Cotton says it crawled to the bulwarks coughing and grunting away, and after a few attempts actually flew up into the air. He said it flew unlike any creature he had ever seen, much higher than most birds fly, and very swiftly. The last they saw of it was a little thing like a crow hovering over the forts at Shoe'ness."

"Well, I'm damned," said Guy. " I never heard a better piece of yarning in my life. Do you actually mean to tell me that Fleming dares to print all that gaudy nonsense in the paper. He must certainly have been very drunk."

"Well, there it is, old man. I had to do what I was told, and I made a good piece of copy out of it. I am not responsible if Fleming does get his head laughed off, I don't edit his rag. Pass the beer."

"Is the ship here?"

"Yes it was docked about six this morning, and so far all the published news is what you had to-day in the Evening Post. It seems that something strange certainly did happen, though of course it wasn't that. They are going to hold an inquest, Fleming says. Something horribly beastly has happened to Glazebrook there's no doubt of that. Something has scooped the poor beggar out. Well, I must be going, it's nearly three, and more than a little towards dawning. Tell Bee I'm oft, will you?"

Beatrice came back in a minute like a fresh rose, and before he went she drew him on to the balcony outside the window. There was a wonderful view from the balcony. Looking over the great lawns far down below, they could just see the dim purple dome of St. Paul's which seemed to be floating in mist, its upper part stark and black against the sky. To the right was the silent river with innumerable patches of yellow light from the rows of gas lamps on Blackfriars bridge. A sweet scent from the boxes of mignonette floated on the dusky, heavy air. He put his arm round her and kissed her sweet, tremulous lips.

" My love, my love," she whispered, "oh, love you so!"

Her slender body clung to him. She was very sweet. The tall, strong young man leant over her and kissed her masses of dark, fragrant hair.

"My little girl, my little girl," he murmured with a wonderful tenderness in his voice, "there is nothing in the world but you, sweet little girl, dear, dear little girl, little wife."

She looked up at him at the word and there was a great light in her eyes, a thing inexpressibly beautiful for a man to see.

"Love, good-night," he whispered, and he kissed the tiny pink ear that heard him.

After the fantastic story he had been telling them, a story which, wild and grotesque as it was, had yet sufficient vraisemblance to make them feel uncomfortable, the majesty of the night gave the dim buildings of the town a restful and soothing effect, and as they stood on the balcony with their love surging over them, they forgot everything but that one glorious and radiant fact.

Beatrice went with him to the head of the staircase— They lived very high up in the buildings called "Temple Gardens"— and watched him as he descended. It was curious to look down the great well of the stone steps and to feel the hot air which rose up from the gas lamps beating on her face. She could only see Tom on each landing when he turned to look up at her— a tiny pink face perched on a little black fore-shortened body. When he got right down to the bottom he shouted up a "good night," his voice sounding strange and unnatural as the walls threw it back to each other.

In after years she always remembered the haunting sound of his voice as it came to her for the last time in this world.

Between seven and eight o'clock the next morning Guy, who was on the staff of the Evening Post, one of the leading lunch-time papers, left the Temple for the offices in the Strand. It was a beautiful day, and early as it was the streets were full of people going to their work. Even now the streets were full of colour and sunshine, and every little city clerk contributed to the gayness of the scene by wearing round his straw hat the bright ribbon of some club to which he did not belong.

Guy had been working for about an hour when Gobion, his assistant— the young man who afterwards made such a success with his book "Fenny Inventions,"— came in with a bunch of "flimsies," reports of events sent in by penny-a-liners who scoured London on bicycles, hoping for crime.

"There doesn't seem anything much," he said, "except one thing which is probably a fake. It was brought in by that man, Roberts, and he tried to borrow half a James from the commissionaire on the strength of it, which certainly looks like a fake. If it is true, though, it's good stuff. I've sent a reporter down to inquire."

"What is it?'' said Descaves, yawning.

"Reported murder of a journalist. The flimsy says he was found at four o'clock in the morning by a policeman, on the steps of St. Paul's absolutely broken up and mangled. Ah, here it is. 'The body, which presented a most extraordinary and unaccountable appearance, was at once removed to St. Bride's mortuary.' Further details later, Roberts says."

"It sounds all right; at any rate the reporter will be back soon, and we shall know. How did Roberts spot him as a journalist?"

"Don't know, suppose he hadn't shaved." While the youth was speaking, the reporter entered breathless.

"Column special," he gasped.

"Trant, a man on the Mercury, has been murdered, cut all to pieces. Good God! I forgot, Descaves. Oh, I am fearfully sorry!"

Guy rose quickly from his seat with a very white face, but without any sound. As he did so by some strange coincidence the tape machine on the little pedestal behind him began to print the first words of a despatch from the Exchange Telegraph Company. The message dealt with the tragedy that had taken immediate power of speech away from him. The familiar whirr of the type wheel made him turn from mere force of habit, and stunned as his brain was, he saw the dreadful words spelling themselves on the paper with no realisation of their meaning.

He stood swaying backwards and forwards, not knowing what he did, his eyes still resting on the broad sheet of white paper on which the little wheel sped ceaselessly, recording the dreadful thing in neat blue letters. Then suddenly his eyes flashed the meaning of the gathering words to his brain, and he leant over the glass with a sick eagerness. Gobion and the reporter stood together anxiously watching him. At length the wheel slid along the bar and came to rest with a sharp click.

Guy stood up again.

"Do my work to-day," he said quietly. "I must go to my sister," and taking his hat he left the room.

When he got out into the brilliant sunshine which flooded the Strand, his senses came back to him and he determined that obviously the first thing to be done was to make sure that the body at St. Bride's was really the body of his friend. Even in moments of deep horror and sorrow the mind of a strong, self-contained man does not entirely lose its power of concentration. The Telegraphic news had left very little doubt in his mind that the fact was true, but at the same time he could not conceive how such a ghastly thing could possibly have happened.

According to the information he had, it seemed the poor fellow had been struck dead only a few minutes after he had left the Temple the night before, and within a few yards of his chambers. "On the steps of St. Paul's" the wire ran, and Trant's rooms were not sixty yards away, in a little old-fashioned court behind the Deanery. It was incredible.

Owing to the great shops and warehouses all round, the neighbourhood was patrolled by a large number of policemen and watchmen. The space at the top of Ludgate Hill was, he knew, brilliantly lighted by the street lamps, and besides, about four it was almost daylight. It seemed impossible that Tom could have been done to death like this.

"It's a canard," he said to himself, "damned silly nonsense," but even as he tried to trick himself into disbelief, his sub-conscious brain told him unerringly that the horrid thing was true.

Five minutes later he walked out of the dead house knowing the worst. The horror of the thing he had just seen, the awful inexpressible horror of it, killed every other sensation. He had recognised his friend's right hand, for on the hand was a curious old ring of beaten gold which Beatrice used to wear.

Second Episode

MR. FRANK Fleming, the editor of the Daily Mercury, was usually an early riser. He never stopped at the office of the paper very late unless some important news was expected, or unless he had heard something in the House that he wished to write about himself. Now and then, however, when there was an all-night sitting, he would steal away from his bench below the gangway and pay a surprise visit before Trant and his colleagues had put the paper to bed. On these occasions, when he was kept away from his couch longer than was his wont, he always slept late into the morning. It was about twelve o'clock on the day of Trant's death that he rose up in bed and pressed the bell for his servant. The man brought his shaving water and the morning's copy of the Mercury, and retired.

Fleming opened his paper and the black headline and leaded type of the article on Professor Glazebrook's death at once caught his eye. He read it with complacent satisfaction. Trant had done the thing very cleverly and the article was certainly most striking. Fleming, a shrewd man of the world and Parliamentary adventurer, had not for a moment dreamt of believing young Egerton Cotton, but he nevertheless knew his business. It had got about that there was something mysterious in the events that had occurred on board the  Henry Sandys, and it had also got about that the one man who could throw any authentic light on these events was Cotton. It was therefore the obvious policy to buy Cotton's information, and, while disclaiming any responsibility for his statements, to steal a march on his contemporaries by being the first to publish them.

As he walked into the pretty little dining-room of his flat, Mr. Fleming was in an excellent temper. He was dividing his attention between the kidneys and the Times, when his man came into the room and told him that Mr. Morgan, the news editor, must see him immediately. He could hear Morgan in the entresol, and he called out cheerily,

"Come in, Morgan; come in, you're just in time for some breakfast."

The news editor entered in a very agitated state.

When Fleming heard the undoubted fact of Trant's death he was genuinely moved, and Morgan, who had a very low opinion of his chiefs human impulses, was surprised and pleased. It seemed that Morgan had neither seen the body nor been to the scene of the crime, but had simply got his news from some men in the bar of the "Cheshire Cheese," in Fleet Street, who were discussing the event.

Trant had been a very popular man among his brethren, and many men were mourning for him as they went about their work.

"What you must do," said Fleming to his assistant," is this. Go down to the mortuary on my behalf, explain who Trant was, and gain every morsel of information you can. Go to the place where the body was found as well. Poor Tom Trant! He was a nice boy— a nice boy; he had a career before him. I shall walk down to the office. This has shaken me very much, and I think a walk will buck me up a little. If you get a fast cab and tell the man to go Hell for Leather, you will be back in Fleet Street by the time I arrive. I shall not walk fast."

He heaved a perfectly sincere sigh as he put on his gloves. As he left the mansions and walked past the Aquarium he remembered that a cigar was a soothing thing, and, lighting one, he enjoyed it to the full. The sunshine was so radiant that it was indeed difficult to withstand its influence. Palace Yard was a great sight, and all the gilding on the clock tower shone merrily. The pigeons, with their strange iridescent eyes, were sunning themselves on the hot stones. The editor forgot all about Trant for some minutes in the pure physical exhilaration of it all.

As he advanced up Parliament Street he saw Lord Salisbury, who was wearing an overcoat, despite the heat. Fleming turned up Whitehall Court and past the National Liberal Club to the Strand, which was very full of people. Fleming had always been a great patron of the stage. He knew, and was known to, many actors and actresses, and you would always see his name after a ten-guinea subscription on a benefit list. He liked the Strand, and he walked very slowly down the north side, nodding or speaking to some theatrical acquaintance every moment.

When he came to the bar where all the actors go, which is nearly opposite the Tivoli Music Hall, he saw Rustle Tapper, the famous comedian, standing on the steps wearing a new white hat and surveying the bright and animated scene with intense enjoyment. The two men were friends, and for a minute or two Fleming mounted the steps and stood by the other's side. It was now about half-past one.

"Well," said the actor, "and how are politics, very busy just now? What is this I see in the Pall Mall about the murder of one of your young men? It's not true, I hope."

"I am afraid it is only too true. He was the cleverest young fellow I have ever had on the paper. I got him straight from Baliol, and he would have been a very distinguished man. I don't know anything about it yet but just the bare facts; our news editor has gone down to find out all he can."

They moved through the swing doors into the bar, talking as they went. The Strand was full of all its regular frequenters, and in the peculiar fashion of this street every one seemed to know every one else intimately. Little groups of more or less well-known actors and journalists stood about the pavement or went noisily in and out of the bars, much impeding the progress of the ordinary passer-by. There was no sign or trace of anything out of the common to be seen. It was just the Strand on a bright summer's day, and the flower-girls were selling all their roses very fast to the pretty burlesque actresses and chorus girls who were going to and fro from the agents' offices.

About two o'clock— the evening papers said half-past two, but their information was faulty— the people in Bedford Street and the Strand heard a great noise of shouting, which, as far as they could judge, came from the direction of the Haymarket or Trafalgar Square. The noise sounded as if a crowd of people were shouting together, but whether in alarm or whether at the passing of some great person was not immediately apparent. It was obvious that something of importance was happening not very far away. After about a minute the shouting became very loud indeed, and a shrill note of alarm was plainly discernible.

In a few seconds the pavements were crowded with men, who came running out from the bars and restaurants to see what was happening. Many of them came out without their hats. Fleming and the actor hurried out with the rest, straining and pushing to get a clear view westwards. One tall, clean-shaven man, with a black patch on his eye, his face bearing obvious traces of grease paint, came out of the Bun Shop with his glass of brandy and water still in his hand.

It was a curious sight. Everyone was looking towards Trafalgar Square with mingled interest and uncertainty, and for the time all the business of the street was entirely suspended. The drivers of the omnibuses evidently thought that the shouting came from fire-engines which were trying to force their way eastwards through the traffic, for they drew up by the curbstone, momentarily expecting that the glistening helmets would swing round the corner of King William Street.

Fleming, from the raised platform at the door of Gatti's, could see right down past Charing Cross station, and as he was nearly six feet high, he could look well over the heads of the podgy little comedians who surrounded him.

Suddenly the noise grew in volume and rose several notes higher, and a black mass of people appeared running towards them. The next incident happened so rapidly that before any one had time for realisation it was over.

A huge black shadow sped along the dusty road, and, looking up, the terror-stricken crowd saw the incredible sight of a vast winged creature, as large as a dray-horse, gliding slowly over the street. The monster, which Fleming describes as something like an enormous bat with a curved bill like a bird of prey, began to hover, as if preparing to descend, when there was the sudden report of a gun.

An assistant at the hosier's shop at the corner of Southampton Street, who belonged to the Volunteers, happened to be going to do some range firing in the afternoon, and fetching his rifle from behind the counter, took a pot shot at the thing. His aim, from surprise and fear, was bad, and the bullet only chipped a piece of stone from the coping of the Tivoli. The shot, however, made the creature change its intentions, for it swerved suddenly to the right against some telegraph wires, and then, breaking through them, flew with extraordinary swiftness away over the river, making, it appeared, for the Crystal Palace upon Sydennam Hill.

A constable on Hungerford foot-bridge, who saw it as it went over the water, said that its hairless belly was all cut and bleeding from the impact of the wires. The excitement in the Strand became frantic. The windows of all the shops round the Tivoli were broken by the pressure of the crowd, who had instinctively got as near as possible to the houses.

The cab and omnibus horses, scenting the thing, were in that state of extreme terror which generally only an elephant has power to induce in them. The whole street was in terrible confusion. The only person who seemed calm, so a report ran in a smart evening paper, was a tall man who was standing at the door of a bar wearing a patch over one eye, and who had a glass of brandy in his hand.

A reporter who had been near him, said that as soon as the monster had disappeared over the house-tops, he quietly finished his glass of brandy, and straightway went inside to have it replenished.

Special editions of the evening papers were at once issued. The Globe, owing to the nearness of its offices, being first in the field. The sensational story of the Mercury, which had been the signal for increasing laughter all the morning, came at once into men's minds, and, incredible as it was, there could now be no doubt of the truth.

A creature which, in those dim ages when the world was young and humanity itself was slowly being evolved in obedience to an inevitable law, had winged its way over the mighty swamps and forests of the primeval world, was alive and preying among them. To those who thought, there was something sinister in such an incalculable age. The order of nature was disturbed.

The death of young Trant was immediately explained, and at dinner time the wildest rumours were going about the clubs, while in the theatres and music-halls people were saying that a whole foul brood of dragons had been let loose upon the town. The sensation was unique. Never before in all the history of the world had such a thing been heard of, and all night long the telegraphs sent conflicting rumours to the great centres of the earth. London was beside itself with excitement, and few people going about in the streets that night felt over secure, though everyone felt that the slaughter of the beast was only a matter of hours.

The very uneasiness that such a weird and unnatural appearance excited in the brains of the populace had its humorous side, and when that evening Mr. Dan Leno chose to appear upon the stage as a comic St. George, the laughter was Homeric.

Such was the state of the public opinion about the affair on the evening of the first day, but there was a good deal of anxiety felt at Scotland Yard, and Sir Edward Bradford was for some time at work organising and directing precautionary measures. A company of sharp-shooters was sent down to the Embankment from the Regent's Park Barrack, and waited in readiness for any news. Mounted police armed with carbines were patrolling the whole country round Sydenham, and even as far as Mitcham Common were on the alert. Two or three of them rode constantly up and down the Golf Links. A warning wire was despatched to Mr. Henry Gillman, the general manager of the Crystal Palace, for at this season of the year the grounds were always full of pleasure-seekers.

About nine o'clock the chief inspector on duty at the police headquarters received the following telegram.

"Animal appeared here 8.30, and unfortunately killed child. Despite volley got away apparently unharmed. Heading for London when last seen. Have closed Palace and cleared grounds."

It appears what actually happened was as follows:—

A Dr. David Pryce, a retired professor from one of the Scotch Universities, who lived in a house on Gipsy Hill, was taking a stroll down the central transept after dinner, when he was startled to hear the noise of breaking glass high up in the roof. Some large pieces of glass fell within a few yards of him into one of the ornamental fountains.

Running to one side, he looked up. and saw that some heavy body had fallen on to the roof and coming through the glass was so balanced upon an iron girder. Even as he looked, the object broke away and fell with a frightful splash into the basin among the gold-fish. Simultaneously he heard the crack of rifles firing in the grounds outside. He was the first of the people round to run to the fountain, where he found, to his unspeakable horror, the bleeding body of a child, a sweet little girl of six, still almost breathing.

The news of this second victim was in the streets about ten o'clock, and it was then that a real panic took possession of all the pleasure-seekers in Piccadilly and the Strand. The special descriptive writers from the great daily papers, who went about the principal centres of amusement, witnessed the most extraordinary sights. Now and again there would be a false alarm that the dragon— for that is what people were beginning to call it— was in the neighbourhood, and there would be a stampede of men and women into the nearest place of shelter. The proprietor of one of the big Strand bars, afterwards boasted that the panic had been worth an extra fifty pounds to him.

The Commissioner of Police became so seriously alarmed, both at the disorderly state of the streets, and the possible chance of another fatality, that he thought it wiser to obtain military assistance, and about half-past eleven London was practically under arms. Two or three linesmen were stationed at central points in the main streets, and little groups of cavalry with unslung carbines patrolled from place to place.

Although the strictest watch was kept all night, nothing was seen of the monster, but in the morning a constable of the C Division, detailed for special duty, found traces at the top of Ludgate Hill which proved conclusively that the animal had been there sometime during the night.

The Third Episode

THE wide-spread news that the terror had been in the very heart of London during the night created tremendous excitement among the authorities and the public at large.

The City Police held a hurried consultation in Old Jewry about nine o'clock in the morning, and after hearing Sergeant Weatherley's account of his discovery, came to the conclusion that the dragon had probably made its lair on the top of St. Paul's Cathedral. A man was at once sent round to the Deanery, for a pass which should allow a force of police to search the roofs, and came back in half an hour with an order written by Dean Gregory himself, requesting the officials to give the police every facility for a thorough examination.

It was then that the fatal mistake was made which added a fourth victim to the death roll. About 9.30 a telegram was received at New Scotland Yard from a professional golfer at Mitcham, saying that some caddies on their way to the club-house had sighted the monster hovering over the Croydon road early in the morning. A wire was at once despatched to the local police station on the lower green, directing that strict inquiries should be made, and the result telegraphed at once.

Meanwhile Scotland Yard communicated with Old Jewry, and the City Police made the incredible blunder of putting off the search party till the Mitcham report was thoroughly investigated. It was not allowed to be known that the police had any suspicion that St. Paul's might harbour the dragon, and the fact of Sergeant Weatherley's discovery did not transpire till the second edition of the Star appeared, just about the time the final scene was being enacted on the south roof. Accordingly the omnibuses followed the usual Cannon Street route, and the City men from the suburbs crowded them as usual.

In the brilliant morning sunshine— for it was a perfect summer's day— it was extremely difficult to believe that anything untoward was afoot. The panic of the night before, the panic of the gas lamps and the uncertain mystery of night, had very largely subsided. Many a city man who the night before had come out of the Alhambra or the Empire seized with a genuine terror, now sat on the top of his City 'bus smoking the after-breakfast cigarette and almost joking about the whole extraordinary affair.

The fresh, new air was so delightful that it had its effect on everybody, and the police and soldiers who stood at ease round the statue of Queen Anne were saluted with a constant fire of chaff from the waggish young gentlemen of the Stock Exchange as they were carried to their daily work. "What price the Dragon!" and "Have you got a muzzle handy!" resounded in the precincts of the Cathedral, and the merry witticisms afforded intense enjoyment to the crowds of ragamuffins who lounged round the top of Ludgate Hill.

Then, quite suddenly, came the last act of the terrible drama. Just as a white Putney 'bus was slowly coming up the steep gradient of the hill, the horses straining and slipping on the road, a black object rose from behind the clock tower on the facade of the Cathedral, and with a long, easy dive the creature that was terrorising London came down upon the vehicle. It seemed to slide rapidly down the air with its wings poised and open, and it came straight at the omnibus.

The driver, with great presence of mind and not a moment too soon, pulled his horses suddenly to the right, and the giant enemy rushed past with a great disturbance of the air hardly a yard away from the conveyance. It sailed nearly down to the railway bridge before it was able to check its flight and turn. Then, with a slow flapping of its great leathery wings, it came back to where the omnibus was oscillating violently as the horses reared and plunged.

It was the most horrible sight in the world. Seen at close quarters the monstrous creature was indescribably loathsome, and the stench from its body was overpowering. Its great horny beak was covered with brown stains, and in its eagerness and anger it was foaming and slobbering at the mouth. Its eves, which were half-covered with a white scurf, had something of that malignant and horrible expression that one sometimes sees in the eyes of an evil-minded old man. In a moment the thing was right over the omnibus, and the people on the top were hidden from view by the beating of its mighty wings.

Three soldiers on the pavement in front of the Cathedral knelt down, and taking deliberate aim, fired almost simultaneously. A moment after the shots rang out, the horses, who had been squealing in an ecstasy of terror, overturned the vehicle. The dragon, which had been hit in the leather-like integument stretched between the rib-bones of its left wing, rose heavily and slowly, taking a little spring from the side of the omnibus, and giving utterance to a rapid choking sound, very like the gobbling of a turkey. Its wings beat the air with tremendous power, and with the regular sound of a pumping engine, and in its bill it held some bright red object, which was screaming in uncontrollable agony. In two seconds the creature had mounted above the houses, and all down Ludgate Hill the horror-bitten crowd could see that its writhing, screaming burden was a soldier of the line. The man, by some curious instinct, had kept tight hold of his little swagger-stick, and his whirling arms bore a grotesque resemblance to the conductor of an orchestra directing its movements with his baton.

Some more shots pealed out, and the screaming stopped with the suddenness of a steam whistle turned off, while the swagger-stick fell down into the street. Over the road, from house to house, was stretched a row of flags with a Union Jack in the centre, which had been put up earlier in the morning by an alderman who owned one of the shops, in order to signalise some important civic function. In mounting, the monster was caught by the line which supported the flags, and then with a tremendous effort it pulled the whole arrangement loose. Then, very slowly, and with the long row of gaudy flags streaming behind it, it rose high into the air and sank down behind the dome of St. Paul's. As it soared, regardless of the fusillade from below, it looked exactly like a fantastic Japanese kite.

The whole affair, from the time of the first swoop from St. Paul's until the monster sank again to its refuge, only took two or three seconds over the minute.

The news of this fresh and terrible disaster reached the waiting party in Old Jewry almost immediately, and they started for the Cathedral without a moment's delay. They found Ludgate Hill was almost empty, as the police under the railway bridge were deflecting the traffic into other routes. On each side of the street hundreds of white faces peered from doorways and windows towards St. Paul's.

The overturned omnibus still lay in the middle of the road, but the horses had been taken away. The party marched in through the west door, and the ineffable peace of the great church fell round them like a cloak and made their business seem fantastic and unreal. Mr. Harding, the permanent clerk of the works, met them in the nave, and held a consultation with Lieutenant Boyle and Inspector Nicholson, who commanded the men.

The clerk of the works produced a rough map of the various roofs, on any one of which the dragon might be. He suggested, and the lieutenant quite agreed, that two or three men should first be sent to try and locate the exact resting-place of the monster, and that afterwards the best shots should surround and attack it. The presence of a large number of men wandering about the extremely complicated system of approaches might well disturb the creature and send it abroad again. He himself, he added, would accompany the scouts. Three men were chosen for the job, a sergeant of police and two soldiers.

Mr. Harding took them into his office, and they removed their boots for greater convenience in climbing. They were conducted first of all into the low gallery hung with old frescoes which leads to the library, and then, opening a small door in the wall, Mr. Harding, beckoning the others to follow, disappeared into darkness. They ascended some narrow winding steps deep in the thickness of the masonry, until a gleam of light showed stealing down from above, making their faces pale and haggard. Their leader stopped, and there was a jingling of keys.

"It is unlikely it'll be here," he said in a low voice, "and anyway it can't get at us quickly, but be careful. Sergeant, you bring one man and come with me, and the last man stay behind and hold the door open in case we have to retreat."

He turned the key in the lock and opened the narrow door. For a moment the brilliant light of the sun blinded them, and then the two men who were yet a few steps down in the dark heard the other say, "Come on, it's all safe."

They came out into a large square court floored with lead. Great stone walls rose all around them, and the only outlet was the door by which they had come. It was exactly like a prison exercise yard, and towering away above their heads in front was the huge central dome. The dismal place was quite empty.

"The swine isn't here, that's certain," said one of the soldiers.

"No, we must go round to the south side," said the clerk of the works; "it's very much like this, only larger. But there's a better way to get to it. Let us go back at once."

They went down again to the library corridor, and turning by the archway debouching on the whispering gallery— they could hear the strains of the organ as they passed— went up another dark and narrow stairway. They came out onto a small ledge of stone, a kind of gutter, and there was very little room between the walls at their backs and the steep lead-covered side of the main roof which towered into the air straight in front.

"Now," said Mr. Harding, "we have got to climb up this slant and down the other side, and if he's anywhere about we shall see him there. At the bottom of the other slope is a gutter, like this, to stand in, but no wall, as it looks straight down into a big bear pit, like the one we went to first. We shall have to go right down the other slant, because if he's lying on the near side of the pit— and it's the shady side— we shan't be able to see him at all. You'll find it easy enough to get up, and if you should slip back this wall will bring you up short, but be very careful about going down. If you once begin to slide you'll toboggan right over the edge and on to the top of the beast, and even if he isn't there, it's a sixty foot drop."

As they climbed slowly up the steep roof, all London came into clear and lovely view— white, red, and purple in the sun. When at length they reached the top and clung there, for a moment, high in the air, like sparrows perching on the ridge of a house, they could only just see the mouth of the drop yawning down below them.

One of the soldiers, a lithe and athletic young fellow, was down at the bottom considerably before the others, and crouching in the broad gutter, he peered cautiously over the edge. They saw his shoulders heave with excitement, and in a moment he turned his head towards them. His face was white and his eyes full of loathing.

They joined him at once, and the horror of what they saw will never leave any of the four.

The Dragon was lying on its side against the wall. Its whole vast length was heaving as if in pain, while close by it lay the remains of what was once a soldier of the Queen.

It was soon killed. The marksmen were hurriedly brought up from below, and after a perilous climb, owing to the weight of their rifles, lined the edge of the pit. They fired repeated volleys into the vast groaning creature. After the first volley it began to cough and choke, and vainly trying to open its maimed wings, dragged itself into the centre of the place.

The mere sight of the malign thing gave a shock to the experience that was indescribable. It fulfilled no place in the order of life, and this fact induced a cold fear far more than its actual appearance.

A psychologist who talked to one of the soldiers afterwards, got near to some fundamental truths dealing with the natural limits of sensation, in a brilliant article published in Cosmopolis. In its death agonies, agonies which were awful to look at, it crawled right across the floor of the court, and it moved the line of flags, which still remained fixed to one paw, in such a way that when they got down to it they found that, by a strange and pathetic coincidence, the Union Jack was covering the body of the dead soldier.

In this way the oldest living thing in the world was destroyed, and London breathed freely again.

________________

18: The White Lady of the Snow

An Irish Legend

Richard Dowling

1846-1898

The Ludgate Magazine, Sept 1894

ON a lonely plain, skirting the river Suir, about two miles from the town of Clonmel, stand the ruins of Rathmore Castle. Of the four round towers and four walls which had formed the castle, only half one tower and mounds and banks remain to indicate the spot where the once powerful structure rose against the sky. There are no more careful hoarders of tradition than the Irish; and yet you may ask in vain for the most shadowy outlines of that castle’s history. When and by whom it was built, and how it came into decay, have no resting-place in the memory of man. The army of Cromwell passed close to its walls; but if you ask the people, are its misfortunes to be laid at his door? they will shake their heads and tell you Rathmore was an ivied ruin long before the curse of Cromwell fell upon Ireland. Further, they will add that the place is under a ban, the night airs around it are not wholesome, and those who, passing it in the snow, see the White Lady may take the vision as a summons of death; for the White Lady was the victim of a terrible crime, and is never seen by honest folk. She is revealed only to those whose career of vice or crime in this world is about to conclude, and who, out of the unfathomable ocean of Mercy, are vouchsafed this warning to prepare them for the life to come. In the dim haze of the past and in the horror of the people the names of all the actors in that drama have been lost. The history of that castle and the chronicles of the noble line which held it are preserved in only one story, the story of a crime.

The last owner of Rath more was a young, strong and brave man, who married the only daughter of another great man of the County Waterford. This lady had two brothers, whose conduct to both father and sister had been so bad that the father resolved they should not have his land, and that it should go to his son-in-law and the children of his daughter. The disinherited sons, who were inseparable, received their father’s decision with apparent indifference. They made neither outcry nor threat, and continued to live in their father's castle, although denied the confidence or affection of the old man.

In due time an heir was born to Rathmore and Rathbeg. Not only has the castle of the father-in-law wholly disappeared from the slope of the Waterford hill on which it stood, but its name is now forgotten. Convenience demands that it shall have a name, and, although it may have been much more spacious and splendid than Rathmore. it may be known as Rathbeg Castle. There were great rejoicings at Rathmore and Rathbeg; the old man’s intentions were well known, and the people belonging to Rathbeg knew, sooner or later, they should pass under the rule of Rathmore. Among those who seemed to enter most ardently into the celebrations of the hour were the uncles of the heir. But they did not deceive the master of Rathbeg or the master of Rathmore, and made no progress towards reinstating themselves in the favour of their father. Time went on, and it came to be the young heir’s first birthday. All the family, with the exception of the two uncles (who had gone to the remote county Roscommon and were not expected back for a month), were to meet at Rathbeg. It was midwinter, close upon Christmas, when the owner of Rathmore, accompanied by his lady, his heir and retinue, set out from his castle for his father-in-law’s home. The snow was deep upon the ground, and the party made slow progress. In the end the journey was accomplished, and the old man came, with his people and his dogs, to receive the travellers at the courtyard gate. The day following was fixed for the great events of the merry-making. All the neighbours and following and friends of the great Lord of Rathbeg were bidden, and, although the weather was severe beyond the remembrance of living men, hundreds of guests and followers were crowded into the castle. A whole ox hung on the great pole that did duty for a spit; flagons and cups of heating and exhilarating drinks were handed round. There were music and dancing and all kinds of revelry becoming such an occasion, and those present declared that a finer birthday feast had never been since the present lord of Rathbeg came of age.

When the festivities were at the highest, all at once there arose a woman’s scream followed by the cursing and swearing of the men. Some rushed for horses and some for weapons, and all was disorder. The heir to Rathmore and Rathbeg had been stolen. The short light of the December day had not quite faded before men were in their saddles scouring the country this way and that, searching for the young lord. When the moon came up over the frozen snow, three hours after sundown, the boy was missing still. Suspicion held up her finger at the two dishonoured sons of Rathbeg. All said, “This is the work of the boy’s uncles. Death to the sons of Rathbeg!”

For days the counties of Waterford and Tipperary (the latter lies over the Suir) were searched in vain. The guests of Rathbeg departed, and the two houses mourned the heir as dead. One afternoon, when all hope had left, a man came to the Castle of Rathbeg and said he had tidings of the boy. They were about to ill-use him for lying when his persistence induced them to hear him further. He told them the boy had been stolen for the sake of ransom, and if a certain sum were brought to the Gap of Ardcrea, he would be restored. In addition to the ransom two other conditions were imposed: first, that he who had brought news of the young lord should be allowed to go free of Rathbeg Castle unharmed; second, that the father and grandfather, and they alone and unarmed, should carry the ransom to Ardcrea.

The terms of the stranger were gladly agreed to, and a day fixed for paying the gold. The sum was large, and could not be obtained by the two lords for a few days. To the relief of finding the heir was now added the satisfaction of feeling that the sons of Rathbeg had no hand in the abduction. Not only was this plain from the offer to restore the boy, but from the word of mouth of the messenger also. On the day appointed the father and grandfather set out for Ardcrea with the mother of the boy. She would not be denied, but would go with them and take back into her arms the son who had been dead to her. The snow was still on the ground, and the air numbing with frost. The mother often shuddered, but consoled herself with think ing how soon she should have her son back again to warm her aching breast. At the foot of Ardcrea the party was obliged to dismount, for the place is too broken for horses. Then the three went forward on foot, the two men helping the woman over the frozen snow. Slowly and laboriously they approached the trysting place. They could see no one near. Yet, undoubtedly, this was the spot. Could that messenger have been deceiving them? No. There could be no object in such deception.

As they were saying these things among themselves, a voice shouted out, “Our object is attained!” and, before either of the lords could stir, they fell, murdered by the sons of Rathbeg. The parricides and fratricides then turned to the widow, and said, “You came to recover the heir of Rathbeg and Rathmore. He is of no further use to us. Take him,” and they placed the boy in the mother's arms— dead.

Since that time the mother ever wanders over the snow around Rathmore with her boy, the young lord, at her breast. The sighs and moans you hear when there is no wind are hers. Her voice only is not portentous, but sight of her carries m essages condemning your past and foretelling your future. The lovers of the place shun those ruins by day and night. Bats and owls make their home in what still stands of Rathmore Castle, and all around it clings the air of mystery that covers its history and the desolation born of the one recorded event of its history, out of whose grave has risen a ghost of ill omen, The White Lady of the Snow.

_______________

Index to Past Masters Nos 61-91

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

—Home Wind  91

—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

—Polly's Favorite 91

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 House of Many Mansions 91

—The Signed Masterpiece  82

Leonid Andreyeff

—Lazarus  91

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

—A Dramatic Point 91

—The Great Mogul 91

—Lady Letty's Literary Lesson 91

—The Last Straw 72

—Marcella's Intervention 91

—A Sweet Thing in Trusts 91

—An Unjust Accusation 91

—The Doom of London 92

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

George Barton

—The Burglar That Failed 91

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

Farnham Bishop

—Ten Thousand Hectáreas  91

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

—His Better Half 91

—The Treasure of Sacramento Nick 91

—Uncle Joe's Legacy 91

—Obituary: Mr. Guy Boothby (Anonymous)

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

—Hole-in-the-Wall Barrett 92

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

—The Green-eyed Remedy  82

—The Man Who Over-Reached Himself 91

—On the 6.15  80

—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

William Caine

—Bread Upon The Waters 91

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

Sam Davis

—Bigler's Barometer

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

—Murder Tees Off  92

—Not Quite Dead 92

—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

—The White Lady of the Snow 92

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

Ernest Favenc

—The Murder of Tom Bates 91

—A Hypnotic Experiment 91

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

—The Judge's Secret 92

—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

—Blind Man's Buff  92

—Not Down on the Bill  82

—The Wicked Flea 92

—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

C. Ranger Gull and Reginald Bacchus

—The Adventure of the Whisting Omelette  92

—The Dragon of St. Paul's 92

Walter Hackett

—The Gazebrook Necklace 91

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

—The Oubliette Cryptogram  92

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

Clifford Howard

—The Levitation of Jacob   92

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

Bruno Lessing

—The Party Line 91

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

—Leopards 92

—The Love of a Loafer 92

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

C. C. Newkirk

—The Scientific Circle  92

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

Miles  Overholt

—Wrong Number 75

Thomas Nelson Page

—What was the Lady's Choice? 62

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

—Before and After 91

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

Marie B. Schrader

—Stranded in a Street Car 91

Chris Sewell

—The Intruder 82

Marion Shaler

—The Court of the Wicked Queen 87

Sandy Sharp

—The Diamond Bracelet 89

Lurana W. Sheldon

12: The Ghost and the Jewels   92

Helen Simpson

—Hotel Evidence 89

—At the Mickleham Arms 92

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 Doom of London / Robert Barr

2: The Wicked Flea / J. U. Giesy

3: Blind Man's Buff / J. U. Giesy

4: Not Quite Dead / Laurence Donovan

5: The Judge's Secret / Arthur Gask

6: Murder Tees Off / Laurence Donovan

7: The Oubliette Cryptogram / Julian Hawthorne

8: Bigler's Barometer / Sam Davis

9: At the Mickleham Arms / Helen Simpson

10: The Levitation of Jacob / Clifford Howard

11: The Adventure of the Whisting Omelette /

12: The Ghost and the Jewels / Lurana W. Sheldon

13: The Scientific Circle / C. C. Newkirk

14: Hole-in-the-Wall Barrett / Max Brand

15: The Love of a Loafer / Don Marquis

16: Leopards / Don Marquis

17: The Dragon of St. Paul's / C. Ranger Gull and Reginald Bacchus

18: The White Lady of the Snow / Richard Dowling

Cumulative Index #61-92