Author: Various
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: No 105 in the series of anthologies of short stories in the Life+70 Public Domain, collected from magazines and newspapers and other sources. This issue includes a cumulative index to numbers 101-105. 1: Rajah of Hell Island / H. Bedford-Jones 2: The House Opposite / Anthony Hope 3: The Man Who Stole a Meeting-House / J. T. Trowbridge 4: The Sun and the Rain / Thomas Wolfe 5: The Barnfield Murder Case / Dick Donovan 6: My Mad Engineer / Sylvanus Cobb Jr 7: Strain / Albert Richard Wetjen 8: Count Antonio and the Wizard's Drug / Anthony Hope 9: The Mystery of the Steel Disk / Broughton Brandenbu

PAST MASTERS 105

Produced and Edited by Terry Walker ("Pulpmeister") from short stories in magazines, newspapers and other sources, and all in the Life + 70 years public domain.

10 November 2022

Contents

1: Rajah of Hell Island / H. Bedford-Jones

2: The House Opposite / Anthony Hope

3: The Man Who Stole a Meeting-House / J. T. Trowbridge

4: The Sun and the Rain / Thomas Wolfe

5: The Barnfield Murder Case / Dick Donovan

6: My Mad Engineer / Sylvanus Cobb Jr

7: Strain / Albert Richard Wetjen

8: Count Antonio and the Wizard's Drug / Anthony Hope

9: The Mystery of the Steel Disk / Broughton Brandenburg

10: The Stolen Ship / Anonymous

11: A Financial Failure / Sarah Orne Jewett

13: At the Crack o' Doom / James A. Beverly

14: Imagination / Henry Leverage

15: The Revolver / J. S. Fletcher

16: A Shot in the Night / J. S. Fletcher

17: The Philosopher in the Apple-Orchard / Anthony Hope

18: Dr. Heidegger's Experiment / Nathaniel Hawthorne

Cumulative Index  #101-105

___________________

1: Rajah of Hell Island

H. Bedford-Jones

1887–1949

All-Story Weekly, 24 March 1917

This story is not related to the four-part series "The Rajah From Hell" which appeared in Blue Book Magazine, Dec 1946-Mar 1947, as by "Gordon Keyne". Only parts 3 and 4 of that series seem to be available free on-line; Part 3 in Feb 47 issue of Blue Book Magazine, at Internet Archive; Part 4, March 47 on website Roy Glashan's Library.

1: A Fair Passenger

THE Penang crawled wearily and noisily up the sea; the day blazed crimson and then ended in purpled twilight, and the wine-dark waves were etched in faint phosphor. Stone, standing beside the quartermaster at the wheel, swore softly.

"That damned load of rails has shifted— feel her list to port?"

"Yes, tuan," replied the Malay quartermaster simply.

"Steel rails for the Sultan's railroad— well, I didn't stow 'em. Half point off!"

"Yes, tuan." The Malay shifted the wheel slightly.

Some time in the blackness of that night, they entered and left a port— a tangle of trees and platforms and concealed godowns on the bank, with flaring torches and shouting Malays, a stink of blended evils, vague shadows along the river-mouth. Not until they were standing out again did Stone learn that a passenger had come aboard.

"Skipper's happy now." Mickelson, second mate, was a burly brute and affected a coarseness which was working into his soul. His face looked like the face of the carven monsters on the Janpore joss-house. "Got a woman and arrack. White woman."

"Eh?" Stone stared at him. "That one of your lies?"

"Go see!" Mickelson chuckled evilly. "He's got the arrack now, and will have the woman later. Before she gets to the Sultan, at least. She's going up to join his harem. Dancer, she is! Out of a troupe stranded at Singapore last month. Go see."

"Beast," muttered Stone, and stumbled off the bridge, his watch over.

He reflected, however, that Mickelson, although in general a filthy liar, might in this instance be telling the truth. No white woman could have any business, except of an Oriental nature, with the crafty Sultan of Kuala Gajah— crafty Sultan Lumpur, who had been initiated by Montmartre and the hoydens of Bucharest into European vice, and who knew the vice of Asia by natural heritage.

No white woman, except under dire necessity, would have taken passage on the Penang— the dirty old coasting-wallah which was Sultan Lumpur's navy, supply barge, and pet pride. Certainly she was no one else's pride, unless that of Captain Benbow, who would never again hold a ticket from any civilized board of trade.

Stone picked his way aft, cursing the necessity which had forced him to sign on at the Straits. The Penang was a floating horror of smells, right enough. The rank stench of opium pointed to her Chinese passengers; then she boasted some holy pilgrims returning home after two years on the Mecca pilgrimage; her cargo was a fearful mess of odds and ends, from petrol for Sultan Lumpur's automobile to steel rails and a consignment of rotten, wormy copra which was being returned to the Sultan by an impolite agent who could not be bribed to accept it.

"It's no ship for a white woman," growled Stone. "Not even for a busted dancer selling her soul to Lumpur! And it's no ship for me once I can get out of her."

He coughed and cursed through a group of natives squatting in a circle and smoking vile Chinese tobacco. Then, at the companion, he heard the skipper's voice and halted.

"Take this to Mr. Mickelson with— with my compliments." Captain Benbow stood somewhere in the darkness farther aft, and was talking to Tan Tock, the steward. "Give this other bottle to that— hic!— that fool, Stone."

"Yes, tuan," murmured the soft voice of Tan Tock. Stone realized that Benbow was sending arrack to the bridge. In disgust he was turning down the ladder when the captain's voice once more caused him to pause.

"And— and— listen, Tan Tock! Where's that woman passenger? Speak up, ye yellow imp! I told ye to place— hic!— to place her in my cabin— and— and she's not there—"

"Tuan, she said there had been some mistake," explained Tan Tock. "So I left her in the Sultan's cabin, tuan."

A volley of amazed oaths broke from the skipper. Stone, frowning in black anger, slid swiftly down the companion. There was something very strange in this passenger business, he reflected. Mickelson had probably lied out of sheer deviltry, about the woman; not about Captain Benbow, however. Even now Benbow was well upon the drunken road, for arrack is swift and deadly.

"Something queer about it," muttered Stone, "if Tan Tock flinched at obeying the brute's order! The woman was wise, too. H-m! Let's see her."

He paused and knocked at the door of the Sultan's private and reserved cabin. A quiet, womanly voice answered him.

"Well? Who is it?"

"Mr. Stone, ma'am. Mate of this packet. I'd like to see you a moment, please."

Stone had expected argument and expostulation. To his surprise, a bolt was shot back at once, and the door swung open. He caught off his cap, staring silently. He was shocked by the greatness of Mickelson's lie.

"May I come in, please? There are— reasons—"

"Certainly, Mr. Stone."

Once inside, he shut the door behind him, shot the bolt, and also snapped home the Yale lock used by the cautious Sultan. Benbow would soon be along, he reflected. He turned and looked again at the woman, trying to find words. She was pale and slender; frail, but with stout-hearted courage in her eyes. Gray eyes they were, like his own. And she was not at all beautiful. Stone found himself wondering how, without beauty, her features could hold so much character, so much compellant friendliness—

"I beg your pardon," he said awkwardly. "Do not be afraid."

"I am not afraid." When she smiled, it seemed as, though a warm, desperate beauty flitted over her face. Her gaze dwelt upon Stone's yellow curls, crept down across his brown features, lingered an instant upon his rather harsh mouth and chin, and seemed to be forced away from sight of his wide shoulders. Stone remembered only now that the heat had stripped him to his undershirt. His cheeks reddened darkly.

"I am not afraid, thanks. Did you want to see my ticket? They told me—"

"Do you know where you're going?" he snapped.

"Of course! To Kuala Gajah."

"For Heaven's sake— Why?"

"You have named it. The Sultan wrote us that he would help if we opened a mission station there. He said this boat, the Penang, would pick me up—"

Stone nodded, afraid to speak. This woman had come down on a coaster, to be picked up by Benbow and taken on to Kuala Gajah— to open a mission station at the hell-hole of the east coast of the Malay States! And Sultan Lumpur, the crafty spider, had started it!

"You're a missionary, then?"

"This is to be my first effort. There are white men there, of course?"

"Yes," responded Stone absently.

"Some on this boat, too." Inwardly he was assuring himself that all mission managers were fools. What fool had sent this woman to Kuala Gajah?

"See here," he broke out, "it's none of my business, I suppose, but you're in a— a bad mess. This Sultan isn't going to help you or any one else. He's a fox! He wrote that letter in order to get you or some other white woman up to Kuala Gajah. You may as well face facts, miss. The captain of this boat is a rotter— there, I expect that's his gentle touch now. Keep quiet, please!"

The woman kept quiet, as he ordered. Her eyes fastened upon him.

A hand rattled the door, a foot shoved against it, a sullen curse followed. Then a fist banged against the panels, with more curses. The door was made of teak, and the drunken Benbow might as well have assaulted the pearly gates.

"All right. He's ambled off for another drink," said Stone, when the pounding had ceased. "You'd better keep the door locked, in case he comes back. You're determined to go on, of course; it stands out in your eyes. Who are you? Why are you here?"

He was forceful, not far short of brutal. She, who had not flinched from the oaths and blows at the door, colored faintly beneath his frowning gaze until her face was the delicate pink of Red Sea corals.

"There's very little to tell, Mr. Stone. I was sent out here to do this work, and of course I intend to do it. It's very good of you to warn me. My name is Agnes Bretton."

"And you're an American. Well, I'll not deny it's good to see an American girl again, Miss Bretton; you see, I'm from Maine State myself. Came out here sailoring, went into trading, went back to sailoring again after going broke. So I know the coast, and I know you're up against it. We reach Kuala Gajah tomorrow noon. If you need help, call on me. Good night! Keep your door locked."

"Good night, Mr. Stone. And— and— thank you so much!"

The Penang grunted into an oily sea before dawn, and two hours after dawn she was staggering into a sweet blow from the north. Then the wind hauled around to the east, and before noon promised to put a heavy crimp in the navy and finances of Sultan Lumpur.

The skipper was snoring with an empty arrack bottle in his fist. Mickelson had battened the passengers below and was striving desperately to retrieve his worthless job of cargo-stowing, for with each roll of the ship two hundred rusty, steel rails went banging and slamming into her rusty, steel plates.

Stone had the bridge. It was not his fault that the old engines were half impotent, and that the ancient tramp missed connections and went rolling up a gulf where she had no earthly or waterly business to be transacting. In fact, when the port bow plates began to loosen and drop from their rusty rivets, he thanked fortune that she was driving up into the Godung river-mouth instead of being flung on a lee shore.

In the midst of all this Agnes Bretton, ulstered against the spray, came up to the bridge. There was none to stay her, except Stone; he sent the quartermaster for hot coffee and took the wheel himself until the brown man returned.

"You're a good sailor, Miss Bretton," he observed smilingly. "All well below?"

"Yes, thank you. Are we nearly at Kuala Gajah?"

"No. We're not going there— not at all. That is, the Penang isn't. If we get to the head of this bight without foundering, we'll lay up the ship for repairs."

"Oh, there's a town there?"

"A city. One of the biggest in this part of the world. I figure on laying the hooker up against a wharf of solid stone two hundred yards long."

"Oh! What city is it?"

"I don't know." Stone smiled grimly. "No one knows. It's on an island, and it's been deserted for hundreds of years— perhaps thousands. It's one of the immense ancient cities you'll find in this part of the world, ruins of a forgotten civilization."

"And no one lives there at all?"

"No one lives within a hundred miles of it, except Malays and Dyak fishermen."

The quartermaster clambered up with a canister of coffee and two pannikins. Stone retired to the cushioned pilot seat with Miss Bretton and devoted himself to breakfast, while the Penang pounded and slashed and rolled along, with a decided list to port.

"You're not a common sailor, Mr. Stone." The girl looked suddenly at him, a glow creeping into her cheeks under the sting of the coffee. "Am I not right?"

"You are always right, Miss Bretton; I am not a common sailor, because I have a mate's ticket."

Her lips came firmly together, but she did not press the subject. Stone was just lighting his pipe when Mickelson came up the ladder. Even beneath his bristly stubble of beard, the second officer's face showed fright. Nor did Mickelson pay heed to the figure that sat beside Stone.

"We're gone, Stone!" he cried out, slamming the lee door and standing there with fear in his eyes. "Half her damned plates have cut loose—"

"Steam pumps going?"

"Sure. But we're takin' three for every two feet they pump out. Can't get a man into the hold to secure those cursed rails. The chinks an' pilgrims are raisin' hell down below. Like the old Huzur when she took that reef up beyond Jeddah. Reg'lar hell!"

"How long will she last?"

"An hour, at most."

Stone puffed at his pipe, and squinted ahead.

"All right," he nodded quietly. "Go lock the skipper in his cabin— we can't have that drunken swine giving fool orders out here. Then get the boats ready."

Mickelson stared at him, and grunted an oath. The burly second was no coward.

"Boats won't hold the half of 'em."

"I don't expect 'em to. You know that island city— the ruins? They're four miles from shore, up the lagoon; and they're also ten miles from here. We can't make the island in an hour, Mickelson, but we can make the bar, two miles from the island. I'll run her nose into the bar, and you take a load of pilgrims to the island; then come back here and get the rest of us."

"Lord! You're a cool 'un!" ejaculated Mickelson admiringly. "You know damned well this sea will break her back in ten minutes—"

"Don't swear. There's a lady present," snapped Stone. "Get the boats ready."

Mickelson looked at Miss Bretton, and grinned suddenly. His little pig-eyes lighted up with a most unholy gleam.

"Oh, beg pardon!" he exclaimed with an oily smirk. "I'll take you in my own boat, miss. It 'll be a pleasure—"

Stone laid aside his pipe.

"Mickelson, it looks to me as though Providence had taken the cleansing of this packet into its own hands. I'm going to give Providence a bit of assistance if you don't watch out! Go get the boats ready and let out enough pilgrims for your first load. Send me up another quartermaster, too."

The two men looked steadily at each other for a moment, while the old ship groaned and bucked like a crazy thing. Mickelson's hand hovered close to a bulging coat-pocket, but his canny Scot's brain was clear enough to sense infinite danger from this commanding American. The second officer turned and departed, stifling a curse.

"Have you a revolver?" Stone turned to the girl beside him.

"I? Of course not." A smile etched her lips as she met his eyes. "Why?"

"Because there's going to be rough water ahead. Have you any imagination? Then picture an island, that is one solid mass of ruinous stone-work, mostly covered by jungle, and upon this island a hundred-odd castaways, three of them white men and one a white woman— yourself. There will be ructions."

"I fail to see why," she returned, a faint frown rippling her brow.

Stone merely smiled grimly, and rose as the quartermaster sent up by Mickelson came into view. He was a lean, brown, salty Malay, and faced Stone with a steady eye.

"I am here, tuan."

"Good. Are you armed?"

"A knife, tuan."

"Here's a gun." Stone passed him the weapon. "Allow no one to enter this house— no one! You understand?"

"Tuan, Tan Tock the steward is on his way here now."

"If any one sets foot inside that door until I return, shoot."

"Very well, tuan."

Stone glanced at Miss Bretton. She said nothing, but her eyes followed him as if in puzzled wondering. He passed out to the ladder, thinking within himself that she seemed more girl than woman— a frail girl in a strange world.

Tan Tock was at the foot of the ladder, and stood aside as Stone went sliding down. He was a small man, this steward, bred between Chinese and Malay; because he had given Agnes Bretton the Sultan's cabin on the previous night. Stone liked him.

"You were seeking me, Tan Tock?"

"No, tuan. The lady, the white lady, is gone!"

"She is up in the bridge-house. Go and get your things together and meet me here, for we must take to the boats. The ship's sinking."

The steward's interest in the passenger did not seem odd to Stone at the moment.

As he made his way aft the American saw that Mickelson was not doing badly. The boats were being slung out and provisioned. A given number of pilgrims were being brought on deck, not without bloodshed, as the battened-down hatches were charged by those who remained; long howls of anguished fear pealed through the whole ship.

It was plain now to all on board that the Penang was doomed. She was listed to port, and she was also down by the head. Fortunately for Stone's plan, however, the fires would not be drowned yet a while, and she had a chance to reach the bar.

Getting aft, Stone found that Mickelson had not locked the skipper's door. He entered, found Benbow still stretched out in his bunk, and went through the captain's desk thoroughly. He emerged with the ship's papers and two revolvers, and visited his own cabin, also that of Mickelson. When at last he clawed his way forward to the bridge again he had four revolvers, plenty of cartridges, and a small but comprehensive supply of medicines. He found Tan Tock waiting outside the bridge-house with a crammed duffel-bag.

"Good boy, Tan Tock! I'll take your bag inside. You go down to my cabin, get my bag, and fill it with stores from the Sultan's private locker. No liquor— tinned goods. Savvy? Get out a case of his mineral water, too."

The steward nodded and made off. Stone turned into the bridge-house, and found Miss Bretton talking with the two quartermasters, trying vainly to understand their lingo.

"Now, Miss Bretton," said Stone as he went to the wheel, "you may do your share. If we pull through alive it will be a miracle, so pray for the miracle. Catch on, boys!"

The two Malays tailed on beside Stone, swung the bucking, frantic wheel around, and with it the head of the ship. Shrieking in every rivet, the old Penang began to quarter the seas and slowly drove toward the bar; she rolled less, for she was low in the water and impassive as a dead thing to the blows of the seas that battered her plates.

As Stone pointed out to Miss Bretton, once he had the ship on her new course, the only hope was the one he had chosen. Ahead was the opening into the lagoon which held the island-city— a wide lagoon, but well sheltered from the storm— and it was choked by the bar silted down by the Godung River, whose mouth lay miles away across the lagoon. To right and left were keys of low ground, no more than mangrove marshes, which would afford no landing places were he to beach the ship elsewhere.

"The island affords the one place of refuge," he concluded. "Especially as our boats will only take on half our crowd. I've never been there, but I've heard of it."

There seemed little of promise in that dark, low, storm-lashed mangrove coast. But Stone held the Penang steadily in, and when the lagoon entrance loomed close, Mickelson appeared with word that all was ready.

"All right— take charge!" cried Stone, driving his voice to the second officer. "Tell your engineer to shut 'em off when we strike. Break out the skipper and take him ashore with you." Mickelson nodded and departed. Stone turned to his two quartermasters.

"I'll handle her now, boys. You go down and watch the hatches when we strike. When Tuan Mickelson gets all the boats away, open up the hatches, but keep the crowd aft. Go!"

Stone rang for half-speed. The Penang lumbered on, threatening to founder at each burst of water over her bows; from the decks below came a storm of voices as Mickelson and the Malay crew got the boats and loads in readiness. There was a moment of tense silence— then a sodden shock that flung Miss Bretton headlong forward. Stone caught her and for an instant held her tightly, clinging with one hand to the helm.

"All right," he said quietly, releasing her. "We're on the bar. If we're not pounded to pieces before the boats get back we're safe enough. Better see about getting your things together— wait, I'll go with you."

2: Isle of Jehannum

RICHARD STONE had nothing in his past to shame his future. That he was no common sailor was true, in the sense that he had an education; he had gone to sea in the expectation of eventually managing his father's shipping business. But his father and the business had gone to wreck together on the shoals of a friend's note, duly indorsed, and the crash found Stone in Sydney, his only asset a mate's license in steam.

From Sydney he had worked north, with nothing in particular turning up, gaing a little reputation as a hard Yankee mate and ever looking out for some chance at fortune. Except for his Yankee conscience, Stone might have picked up many shekels.

When he had placed Agnes Bretton in her cabin to pack her necessities he returned to the deck. Mickelson had gotten safely away with all the boats, and was heading north across the comparatively quiet lagoon toward the island city, dimly visible under the gray skies. With Tan Tock and the two Malay quartermasters to aid him, Stone found himself in charge of the ship.

The remaining passengers— Chinese, Malays, and some mongrel ruffians— were wildly praying or stoically smoking opium. A dozen had flung themselves overboard after the boats and were lost. Stone moved among the rest, explaining matters, and in a few moments had them working cheerfully enough breaking out more stores.

"See here!" He took the two quartermasters aside. "What is that island named?"

"Tuan, it is called the Isle of Jehannum," returned one uneasily.

"Hell Island, eh? It 'll be well named. When the boats come back, keep one empty for ourselves and pick out for rowers four more men whom you can trust. We will be the last to leave. Tan Tock goes with us. You will not fail me in this?"

The eyes of the two stalwart seamen flickered over his shoulder. He turned to see the steward standing almost beside him.

"Hello there— you heard the orders? Everything ready?"

"Yes, tuan." Tan Tock assented respectfully, his yellow face impassive as a Buddha's.

"We obey you, tuan," said the quartermasters as one man.

Stone turned back to the Sultan's cabin and waited at the door until Miss Bretton appeared with a hand-bag.

"We may as well wait here," he said quietly. "Excuse me while I get a few of the Sultan's cigars. Might as well loot what I can."

He entered the cabin and filled his pockets from the locker, then rejoined her. She was pale, as ever, with the same hint of childlike wonder in her eyes. But Stone was not deceived by that look; it sprang, he knew well, from a virginity of soul which was rare in this corner of earth— a heart of steel, so finely tempered from within that no exterior force could threaten its resiliency. Stone wondered what had sent this child-woman into these lands, upon such an errand as hers. Surely a mischance of Fate!

"I'll take another look up the ladder. Sit down, Miss Bretton."

He ran lightly up the companionway and paused, head and shoulders above the coaming, for a glance around. The Penang was being driven more solidly into the bar by every following wave, and gave no immediate signs of breaking up. Mickelson's boats were lost to sight. The crowd on deck had relapsed into quietude.

As Stone took a step down to return, something flicked over his shoulder, and a knife slapped and quivered in the coaming; had he stayed where he was it would have gone through his heart.

He whirled and jerked out a revolver. But no one was in sight. The port-ladder had been lowered and the crowd was huddled there in the waist, waiting for the boats. The knife itself was an ugly little throwing-weapon. Stone shrugged his shoulders.

"Some Malay devil who wanted to kill an infidel," he thought. "And cursed near did it!"

Returning, he found Miss Bretton sitting in one of the Sultan's red-plush chairs— asleep! Stone eyed her with wonder; then he recalled that she must have been intensely wearied by lack of sleep and the strain of events, and now, with the ship motionless, she had given way. He saw that her hair was, like her face, unbeautiful, yet across its dull yellow ran a sheen of gold, like the smile that lighted her face into glory. He turned from gazing at her, with a vague sense of shame. She was like the Golden Virgin of Besut.

Fortunately, the Penang's supply of boats and pontoon-rafts was excellent, for the Sultan never took chances when traveling. Mickelson had towed away two rafts laden with pilgrims, and owing to this fact those who remained would be easily accommodated on the second trip, and Stone could have one boat for himself. The presence of Agnes Bretton had caused him to form a simple and definite plan for the use of that boat.

Stone had no intention of joining the main mass of castaways. The disaster was due wholly to Benbow and Mickelson, who could take their medicine. Stone intended to keep away from the crowd until the storm had blown itself out, then to set forth for Kuala Gajah in his own boat, with Miss Bretton, and he had made preparations accordingly. Unfortunately for all concerned, however, the American kept his intentions to himself.

Half an hour later, yells of joy from the deck apprised him that the boats were returning. He wakened Miss Bretton, and together they sought the deck. Stone kept his hand on a revolver, but was given no further sign of trouble. Joining Tan Tock, Stone contrived a sling with which to send down the cases of mineral water, and the boats came under the lee of the slowly-settling bows.

The two quartermasters did their work well. While Mickelson came aboard to superintend the loading of the remaining passengers, they brought one boat and four rowers around to the lowered gangway ladder; before the second officer realized what was forward, Stone had loaded his supplies aboard and was helping Miss Bretton down. He got her safely into the pitching boat, and returned to the deck to find Mickelson interrogating Tan Tock.

"What's all this?" The Scot turned angrily as Slone joined them. "You're—"

"I'm attending to business, Mickelson," cut in Stone evenly, his eyes narrowing. "You'd better finish the embarkation and look sharp about it. This junkpile will go to pieces under us in a few more minutes."

"What were you loading up with mast and sail for?" demanded Mickelson thickly, his jaw shoving forward in accusation. "Figurin' to run off with the woman, hey?"

Tan Tock stood to one side, hands in sleeves. That he had innocently told Mickelson of Stone's preparations was undoubted.

"I'm going to the island with all of you," said Stone quietly. "If you say one word more to me, Mickelson, I'll drill you. Mind— one word! Get to work, you filthy dog!"

A revolver flashed out in his hand. Mickelson's mouth opened, but before the look in Stone's eyes it closed with a snap. The second officer turned and strode away.

"Get down to the boat, Tan Tock. Mind how you jump!"

Stone followed the steward down the ladder, timed his jump as the boat lifted, and fell asprawl in the stern beside Miss Bretton. She pulled him up, and he gripped the tiller as the Malays gave way. Mickelson's work was done. The boats crowded under the port bow were filing off across the bar, loaded deep; the last man gone, Mickelson himself jumped, was hauled into one of the boats, and headed north.

"Now, boys," Stone smiled as he faced his men and lifted his voice down the wind to them, "I want you to work. We must get to the island before any of those other boats."

"Aye, tuan!" came the grunted chorus, and the long oars bent again.

The stroke was one of the Malay seamen who had made the first trip. From him Stone learned that the island city was very large, and that the Malays in general believed it to be the abode of evil spirits. Also he learned that between the Malays and Chinese was bad blood, and that so far as any one knew, there was no water on Hell Island.

Mickelson's boats were passed without effort, but still Stone urged his rowers ahead. In the lee of the mangrove swamps the surface of the lagoon was well protected, and gradually the gray mass of Hell Island drew into shape before them. A fantastic thing it was, and a fantastic city it must have been, connected by a causeway with the mainland in the ages before the coastline began to sink.

Like other such ancient cities of the jungle, it was too massively built to be ruined by anything less than an earthquake. The island, half a mile in length, was solidly covered with masonry— palaces and temples whose carven glories and obscenities were now masked by jungle vines and towering trees. Straight ahead was the great wharf of which Stone had heard tales, a mammoth platform of hewn stone; here the other boats had landed, as the crowd of natives testified. Stone caught sight of Captain Benbow watching.

"Sobered up, eh?" he reflected. "We'll not bother him for a while."

He turned the boat's head to the right, paid no heed to Benbow's waving arms, and the great wharf slid behind them.

"Look at the birds!" exclaimed Miss Bretton suddenly.

"Yes, the storm has driven them to shelter," assented Stone. The trees and vines seemed cloaked with birds, seabirds, and gay creatures of the jungle, and the carven edges of old temples were etched by them into color. "Ah, there's the place we want!"

A little promontory opened up ahead, upon which stood a fairy-land building— the pavilion of some forgotten Sultan's favorite, perhaps. A perfect example of the Indo-Burmese art it was, a tiny, two-storied, pagoda-like structure, masked by ornate carving into semblance of a much larger building, and connected with the maze of other ruins by a wide stone platform that was bare except for a spreading baobab tree in the center. The little building itself seemed untouched by the jungle growths, and was exactly suited to Stone's requirements.

"It's a dear little place!" said Miss Bretton.

Stone laughed. "It won't be very long. If it 'll hold us until to-night I'm satisfied."

"Until to-night?" Her eyes came to him questioningly. "Why?"

"Well, I'm greatly tempted to run away with you to-night!" Stone looked into her eyes and laughed again. "In fact, I think I shall. Will you mind? To be frank, this is not going to be a good place in which to stay, Miss Bretton."

"And we'll really run away together?" She colored slightly, merriment in her gaze.

"You bet we will!" rejoined Stone cheerfully. He turned to find Tan Tock, the steward, who was crouched beside the stroke oarsman, gazing at him fixedly. "All right, Tan Tock— hop ashore! We'll stop here, boys."

Tan Tock wrinkled his yellow face, as if in distaste of the orders, then jumped to the rocks against which Stone laid the boat. Five minutes later they were all ashore, and Stone set about inspecting his new quarters.

They found the pavilion free of snakes, being, in fact, a mere stone shell of the former grandeur. The lower and larger chamber opened directly upon the great platform and baobab tree; ascending by the stone stairs, they found the upper chamber to be intact and habitable.

"We'll pull out after dark for Kuala Gajah," he said to the girl at his side. "You had best stay up here until then. Benbow and Mickelson will be over here soon, and I want to know that you're out of danger."

"There'll be— danger? How?"

"Danger from unscrupulous men, my dear young lady. Please accept my dictum."

She assented meekly enough. Stone returned to the boat, got a portion of its load, ashore and up to the pavilion, and set Tan Tock to work getting them all a meal. He said nothing of his ulterior plans, however; nor did it occur to him that his half-jesting words to Miss Bretton in the boat might have fallen upon ears which would construe them as other than jest.

Stone's forebodings proved to be quite justified by events.

Tan Tock's meal was served and polished off. Half an hour afterward Stone, who was congratulating himself that the gale would be blown out before night, observed a boat coming along the island shore toward the pavilion. In the boat were seamen, with Captain Benbow and Mickelson. Stone joined his men, who were also watching the boat.

"Now, boys," he said quietly, hands in his jacket-pockets, "here come Tuan Benbow and Tuan Mickelson. Do you choose to obey me or obey them? If you obey me there may be some fighting before we go away."

The eyes of the Malays gleamed at the mention of fighting; your Malay is a man of peace, but his fathers were pirates and reivers. It was Tan Tock, however, who made reply.

"We obey you, tuan!"

"Aye! We obey you!" chorused the others quickly.

"Good," said Stone. "Then listen well to the talk, for in it you may learn that in following me you have done well for yourselves."

He strode down to the rocks above his boat, and stood there waiting. Although Miss Bretton remained in the upper chamber of the pavilion, he knew that she would hear all that passed. So, too, would the men behind him.

The other boat drew in slowly. A huge beef-eater was Captain Benbow, with a great, red face like the face of Borrow's apple-woman, a liar's soul behind his staring blue eyes, and the dangerous courage of a carrion rat in his heart. Beside him in the stern was the bulky, menacing figure of Mickelson. To all appearance neither man was armed, but Stone was not deceived by appearances.

"Way enough!" cried Stone when the skipper's boat was twenty feet out. "Back water, you men! What do you want, cap'n?"

The boat stopped. Benbow cursed, then tried wheedling.

"I say now, old chap! Don't be so bloomin' set up—"

"Stay where you are."

"But let us come in and stretch our legs a bit, you know—"

"Stay where you are. What do you want?"

Benbow's red face flushed purple; with an effort, he repressed his emotion.

"Come, now, Stone! Dashed bloomin' mess, old chap— all pull together, you know— in union strength— white men, eh, what?"

"What do you want?"

"Seamen in distress, old chap. No water on this bally island, except the few casks in our boats— cursed stinkin' stuff, and even the Chinks turn up their noses at it. So we've come over to join forces—"

"I don't want you."

"Eh?" Benbow's voice rose to a hoarse bellow. "No spoofin,' old boy! We want—"

"Your wants don't matter, cap'n," rejoined Stone imperturbably. "While you lay drunk in your berth, Mickelson's rotten stowing smashed the old Penang, and we'd all have gone down except for me. I have the ship's papers and the log, and it 'll be entered up just as it happened, so try that in your cuddy pipe, old chap!

"Now you're stranded with your passengers, so make the best of it. If you've no good water it's because you were too cursed drunk to get it— so make the best of it. If you don't like your company over yonder, skip out and leave 'em. But keep away from here!"

Mickelson remained dour, silent, a threatening light in his pig-eyes; but Benbow rose and shook his fist in wild rage.

"So that's it, eh, my bully?" he roared. "Thinkin' you'll sneak off wi' the woman, eh? Tell you what I'll do, lad— turn over the woman, and go your ways; refuse, and I'll set the whole bloomin' lot o' brown devils on your neck!"

Stone smiled.

"If you want the woman, why not come and take her?"

Benbow's hand went to his pocket; but he hesitated and weakened before the unmoving, inscrutable American. A torrid curse broke from him.

"Jump on him, you boys!" he cried out to the brown men behind Stone. "You, quartermaster, take him from behind—"

Stone caught a movement behind him, but dared not take his eyes from Benbow, nor his hand from the revolver in his pocket. Then, unexpectedly, the thin voice of Tan Tock, surcharged with anger, rose from beside him.

"You, Tuan Benbow, we are not your men! It is the white woman you want, then? Wait until the Sultan hears of this, dog of an infidel! May Allah take you alive to Jehannum!"

Now, as though at mention of the Sultan, Mickelson made a wry face and spoke out.

"Stone, don't be a fool! Throw in wi' white men, lad; have naught to do wi' them heathen or ye'll have a knife in the back one o' these days. Tan Tock there is the worst murderin' devil unhung—"

"Clear out," ordered Stone briefly. He saw that Tan Tock hated Benbow, and for some occult reason had chosen to protect Miss Bretton from the skipper; and he was now well satisfied that his men would stand behind him. That Benbow would set the Malays and Chinese upon him he did not doubt. In any case, they would be at his throat for the precious bottled water— if he remained here. But Stone did not intend to remain for long.

"Why don't you two precious ones pull for Kuala Gajah to-night when the wind goes down?" continued Stone, seeing that they hesitated before him. Mickelson responded with a black scowl, sweeping his hand toward the two rowers.

"There's not enough boats for all, and the brown devils smashed 'em and smashed all the oars but them two— if they can't get away, d'ye see, they mean to keep us, too! Fat chance we'd have wi' two oars! No, give us a lift in your craft, Stone— don't go back on your own color—"

"Get to hell out of here," cut in Stone calmly. "You're probably lying, but I don't care if you are or not— get out!"

"You'll sweat for this!" stormed Benbow. "It's mutiny, that's what!"

Still storming, he ordered his men to give way. Still smiling, Stone watched them go, then turned to Tan Tock and the seamen.

"Good! Tan Tock, remain here and watch along the shore for boats; the rest of you go over among those ruins, work your way along carefully, and bring in word when any comes. They may not wait until night before attacking."

"Yes, tuan," was the response.

Stone strode on to the pavilion. At the entrance he turned to look seaward; Benbow's boat was crawling away along the shore line, while Tan Tock was talking with the quartermasters. Then the latter turned with their men and departed across the open pavement to the jungled ruins beyond, and Tan Tock seated himself on a rock above the tethered boat.

Stone passed on into the pavilion. As he recalled the words of Mickelson, the tale of the smashed boats and oars began to appear less incredible; at first he had deemed it a lie, but now he believed it true. The Malays and Chinese, seeing themselves marooned and in sore straits, would without doubt have insured against the two white men leaving them, and they had apparently done so very promptly and efficiently. Such was their character. Mickelson and Benbow were alone with seven-score sharp krises of Trenganu steel, which would become sanctified by the blood of an infidel, and Stone was not in the least worried over their predicament.

He found Miss Bretton waiting for him, sitting under the ruined roof with a slight smile traced upon her pale features, her gray eyes gleaming at him like the fire-lit jade eyes of the god in the Yellow Temple.

"You heard?"

"Yes, Mr. Stone." That was all; a simple assent. No talk of her danger, no hysterical fear of lust and rapine, no overwhelming of soul before the unleashed and monstrous terror of the jungle world. Stone's eyes lightened with admiration. This girl plainly understood her position— and was not afraid!

"If they leave us alone we'll clear out of here a couple of hours after dark," he said quietly. "Tan Tock will stand by me—"

"Don't trust him too far."

"Eh? Why not? He saved you from Benbow when you came aboard."

"I understand that. Still, I have an instinctive fear of him."

Outwardly, Stone nodded assent. Inwardly, however, he laughed to himself; she was afraid of all these yellow-brown men, he thought, and it was only natural that her armor should give way at some point. To doubt Tan Tock was absurd, of course.

"If you don't mind, I'll stretch out here at the head of the stairs for an hour's nap." The American smiled wryly. "There are no snakes up here, and I'm afraid of 'em down below. You don't mind, I hope? I don't want to call in any of the men to watch over me—"

"Please don't be foolish!" A rippling smile stole across her pale face. "You know that it will be my privilege to be of any help. Aren't we partners in distress?"

"Sure! Want a gun, partner?"

She shook her head. Stone, with a great sigh of relief, stretched out on the flags.

3: Tan Tock's Story.

STONE wakened at the touch of a hand on his brow, to find the swift twilight of the Eastern lands already dusking everything.

"Come," said the quiet voice of Miss Bretton. "Supper is ready. Also, Tan Tock wants to speak with you. He is down below."

Yawning, thanking Heaven for the snatch of sleep which had so greatly refreshed him, the American descended the stairs. Instantly he sensed something antagonistic in the scene below, and halted, whipping out his revolver.

A candle burned in one corner, dimly lighting the meal which had been laid out on the two lower stairs. Tan Tock and the six Malays stood awaiting his descent, and vaguely Stone felt an unseen danger, although they smiled up at him.

"Any sign of trouble outside?" he demanded.

"None, tuan," returned the steward. "May I have speech with you in private?"

Stone glanced around. To his surprise he saw cases of mineral water and stores piled near the door.

"Why was the boat unloaded?" he questioned sharply. "I gave no orders—"

"Tuan, it leaked," spoke up one of the quartermasters. "We brought the things in here while we calked up a loose seam. If this was wrong, the fault is mine."

"No, no. You did well." Stone rather felt ashamed of his own half-sensed fears. "Run along outside, boys, and give Tan Tock a chance to speak with me in private, since that is his desire. Then come back and we'll dine."

For a moment no one moved. Tan Tock gazed up at the American with his yellow face wrinkled deeply until it looked like the face of the ancient monkey at the gate of the Hu Hsuan pagoda; then the steward's lips moved in soft Malay, and the six seamen turned and filed away. With something of a shock Stone realized that they were not obeying him after all. They were obeying Tan Tock— and all along they had been obeying Tan Tock!

"What do you want to say?" Stone demanded swiftly, suspicion in his eyes.

"Tuan, I wish to tell you a tale of my grandfather. Will you come down and listen?"

"Eh? Your grandfather? What has it to do with me?"

"Tuan, my grandfather was a fisherman and lived here near the Gudang River. He had been often at this Island of Jehannum and knew it well. His tale is of this building wherein we stand, and if Allah wills, that tale may yet save our lives."

So Tan Tock knew something about this place— something worth keeping secret! The American dismissed his suspicions altogether; but, remembering that the open doorway might well afford entry to a bullet from Benbow's boat, he leaped lightly to the flagged floor below, and, filling his pipe, sat down on a box at one side of the door.

"Come over here out of the candlelight and talk," he said. "Make the tale short."

"It is not long, tuan."

Tan Tock joined him, squatted down on the floor, and waited respectfully while Stone lighted his pipe. Then the yellow man began to speak, choosing his words carefully.

"Tuan, my grandfather was very brave and was not afraid of the devils who dwell upon this island, as men say. Also he was a large man, as large in his body as Lim Perak, the steelwright, who makes a kris of great worth. Once, as he told me, my grandfather came to this very pagoda in which we stand; he came because a yellow woman stood on the rocks and beckoned him, and he desired her even though she were a devil, as seemed likely."

"A yellow woman?" questioned Stone. "What mean you by that?"

"I know not," replied Tan Tock slowly. "My grandfather said she was a yellow woman, and no more. She beckoned, and he paddled his canoe to these rocks outside, and joined her. She led him into this place and made love to him after the fashion of all devils."

"Yes? What is that fashion?" said Stone amusedly.

"Allah knows it is not to be spoken of!" returned the steward, dropping his voice. "Yet it was this very place, for my grandfather described it exactly as it now is. He said that after a time she led him through an opening in the floor, from which they gained a passage-way; and this passage took them into a great underground room, greater even than the audience hall of the Sultan at Kuala Gajah, and the room was filled with all manner of precious things— aye, even unto tables of jade and cups of ruby and emerald! Other devils came and brought wondrous dishes, and my grandfather ate and drank without fear, because his heart was filled with love for the yellow woman."

Tan Tock paused and cocked his head to one side, as though listening. Stone also listened, but could hear nothing save the waves rippling on the shore in the darkness outside. Then the steward continued his tale.

"Presently my grandfather became drunk, and he wakened to find himself in his canoe, floating on the water, and that is all the story. But, tuan, it seems to me that we might turn this tale to our advantage, you and I. I fear the devils, but you are an infidel and do not; therefore, if we might find this passage together, you might carry off some of the wondrous things from that room, and we would both become wealthy by the will of Allah!"

Stone puffed at his pipe, scrutinizing the impassible yellow face of Tan Tock. The story was a common enough tale of devils, and Stone would have taken no heed had it not been for the attendant circumstances.

What if there were some truth at the bottom of it all? Stone knew that the secrets of these ancient ruined cities, dotting the jungle from the Straits to China, had never been probed to the depths. What if Tan Tock's grandfather had indeed stumbled upon some passage, some underground chamber of forgotten gods? The thought was enticing.

"But how to find the passage-way, Tan Tock?" asked Stone. "Did he tell you how it was gained?"

"Yes, tuan. There was a stone in the floor, a stone that turned when one corner was stepped heavily upon."

"And where was that stone?"

"Near the stairs, tuan. I do not know its exact position."

"Come, then."

Stone knocked out his pipe, pocketed the briar, and with the steward beside him crossed to the stairs. Forgotten was the danger, which at worst was only a possible one, in the wealth of surmise to which the steward's tale gave birth. What jewels of ancient days might lie buried here, who could say?

During perhaps five minutes the two men essayed the discovery of that passage, treading upon the corners of the hewn flags, examining each block for some sign of an opening. They found nothing until Stone discovered that the paving was set in some substance like concrete, or concrete itself; and he realized then that these blocks had never moved since this place had been built.

"I believe your tale held more invention than truth, Tan Tock!" Stone eyed the steward, who promptly squatted down and grinned. "Eh? Was it a lie?"

"Tuan, it was a lie, and a good one!"

At this astonishingly abrupt confession Stone stared amazingly. Tan Tock met his eye with ingenuous delight, as if expecting the white man to admire the jest.

"Why— confound you, what do you mean?" snapped Stone with rising anger.

"Tuan, it was necessary." Tan Tock shrugged his shoulders. He seemed to pay no heed to the figure of Miss Bretton, which appeared on the stairs above. Stone glanced up and made her a little sign of caution. She waited, listening.

"Necessary to lie in that fashion?" exclaimed the American. "Then I'll find it necessary to make you sweat for your lies, Tan Tock—"

"It is too late, tuan," broke in the other calmly, "although you will probably kill me now. Still, I have done my best, and the event is in the hand of Allah, and I have served my master faithfully."

Stone eyed him a moment in frankly puzzled surmise. The little yellow man had settled into fatalistic calm; a sudden inscrutable dignity had descended upon him, and now his features had the placid vacancy of the wooden Buddha of Rangoon.

"I shall not kill you," returned the perplexed American, "if you explain your lie."

"Well, tuan, it is quickly explained." Tan Tock took from his girdle some betel paste and filled his mouth. "This white woman came aboard us last night; my orders were to bring her safely to my master—"

"Your master? You mean— the Sultan?"

Tan Tock nodded. "Yes. Therefore I protected her from Tuan Benbow. Therefore, when this morning you took charge of her, I tried to kill you—"

"You! You flung that knife?" Stone cried out in utter surprise. "Why? Why did you—"

"The woman must come safe to my master," was the imperturbable response. "Later, as things fell out here, my plans changed. You wanted the woman yourself and intended to run away with her. Good! You would keep her safe against Tuan Benbow— good! So instead of killing you and taking the woman on to my master, I decided to let you protect her and to send for my master. When he comes he may punish or release you as he wills, and he will find the woman safe also—"

"What mad talk is all this?" exclaimed Stone, dimly comprehending and yet shrinking from belief in what he heard. "You have sent for the Sultan? How, in the name of Allah?"

Tan Tock grinned fleetingly. "Tuan, he will come to-morrow, if the waters are quiet. I have sent for him. Here is the water and food from the boat, and here we stay, you and I— unless you kill me, in which case I shall stay of a certainty. Yet you cannot get away with the woman—"

"How did you send for the Sultan?" demanded Stone, feeling bewildered and helpless before this guileful, inscrutable Oriental. "Why did you tell that lie about—"

"I told the lie to keep your thoughts busy, tuan, while my messengers departed."

With that a sudden curse broke from Stone, and he rushed to the door. He understood at last; he knew' now that he had been snared in a veritable net of words woven by this cunning yellow fox.

And, as he thought this, he found the six Malay seamen gone, for they had taken their orders from Tan Tock, the emissary of the Sultan. Gone, too, was the boat that had been tethered to the rocks. By now it was lost in the darkness, on the way to Kuala Gajah!

For a moment Stone felt madness bite at his brain— felt the impulse to rush back and throttle Tan Tock, the steward. Then he laughed harshly. A faithful steward indeed! The realization of the yellow man's greatness came gradually to him.

Tan Tock, expecting to be killed by Stone, had not deserted his charge, but was serving his master truly— a man true to his salt, even unto death.

Stone swung about, and, in the doorway, stood face to face with Miss Bretton.

"It would appear that I am of some consequence to the Sultan," said she, with a smile that made Stone's heart sink. He could dimly see her features, and knew that she was, in a manner of speaking, under a misapprehension.

"Yes," he said grimly, and gently urged her inside. He turned to the squatting Tan Tock. "Your master, the Sultan, wrote for this white woman to come. Why?"

"For what except to enter into his harem, tuan?"

A cry broke from Miss Bretton. "Not true— it's not true! I—"

"Quiet, please!" Stone hushed her imperatively; it was unpleasant work, but it had to be done. "Tan Tock, answer this question truly, and I will give you a revolver with which to fight; you are too brave a man to be slain for serving your master faithfully. Is a Christian mission to be established at Kuala Gajah? Is there to be a mosque of Christians built there?"

Tan Tock laughed, and his laugh was like the snick of a kris.

"Tuan, think you Sultan Lumpur is mad in the sight of Allah?" he said mockingly. "When an ulema of the Nazarenes sets up shop in Kuala Gajah, then will the Sultan be stricken with blindness and the infirmities of age."

"But so he wrote to the Christians at Singapore, Tan Tock."

"Very likely, tuan. And he has written also to the Raja of Besut that ere another month passed his harem would boast a white concubine who was neither a nautch girl nor an outcast woman of the white men. That is all, tuan."

It was enough, indeed. A little moan broke from Agnes Bretton; even in the dim candle-glow Stone could make out the horror of realization that filled her gray eyes and turned her face to a ghastly white. In the only possible way she had been apprised of the truth ere it was too late. Even now, as Stone reflected, it might be too late. Tan Tock seemed very sure of himself, and with reason.

"If the yellow monkey expects me to fight off Benbow and Mickelson, only to hand over Miss Bretton to the Sultan to-morrow— well, what else is there to do?" thought Stone. "Looks very much as though I were putty in his hands. H-m! I'm afraid Mr. Tan Tock is due to revise his theories of the white race, and Mr. Sultan Lumpur is going to meet with something of a shock to-morrow— if to-morrow comes!"

"Come," he said quietly to the girl, taking her hand and turning her to the stairs. "Come, let us be brave, for we must pull out of this to-morrow; and I think I shall have need of your courage. Trust me, and perhaps we shall find a new way out."

She forced herself to the task resolutely enough.

Realizing that Tan Tock was to be fully trusted so far as the defense of Agnes Bretton was concerned, which meant the defense of the pavilion, Stone did not hesitate to give the steward a revolver and to set him on guard duty outside. Then, over their sad meal, Stone compelled his companion to a frank discussion of her situation.

It was not, as they say in England, "nice"; yet, to his amazement, Stone discovered in her a twofold quality of character— a spirit virginal, untouched, shrinking; yet coupled with this a knowledge of the world from which her spirit, as it were, held aloof and afar.

It was his first experience with the bared soul of a woman, his first delving into the mysteries of things womanly. It frightened him.

Gradually she realized clearly that in this environment of savagery her character of missionary was not held sacred; no more was she sacrosanct than any nautch girl out of the Purple Pagoda under Paradise Hill. She was a woman, and therefore fair prey; a white woman, and therefore greatly to be desired— yea, even above pearls!

"But— but Captain Benbow!" she said, and paused. "I do not understand, Mr. Stone. Perhaps I was foolish to think that all white men—"

"You were," he assented bluntly. "Out here the chief code of ethics is strength to take and hold, because this end of creation is filled with wastrels from the other worlds. Good men— oh, plenty of them! But the good men don't command rotten ships like the old Penang. Benbow is in the depths. So is Mickelson— a surly brute who'd shoot Benbow in a minute to possess you."

Her gray eyes bored into him for a space.

"And Mr. Richard Stone?" she said gravely. "He, too, was an officer on the Penang."

"Sure." Stone looked away from her eyes swiftly. "He's a pretty bad lot, too, Miss Bretton; no doubt about it." Then his lips curved in a grim smile, and his eyes gripped again on hers. "You know that there are good and bad rulers, don't you?"

"How do you mean?"

"What I say, literally. Rulers, good and bad! Sultan Lumpur of Kuala Gajah is one of the bad kind. He runs the hellhole of this coast— English educated, Paris bred, Malay by instinct, he is, and Kuala Gajah is like unto him in viciousness. On the other hand, take the Raja of Hell Island, and he isn't a bad sort in his way; one of the good kind of rulers, in fact! If you'll trust to him, he'll see you through, by hook or crook."

The gray eyes widened. "Who is this raja? I never heard of him! Nor of— of Hell Island, either—"

Stone laughed the joyous laugh of a boy.

"The raja— behold him! Hell Island— behold it!" He swept out his hand. "That is the native name for this island. From this moment I am its ruler, I, Richard the First and Only! Sultan Lumpur is served by crafty dogs like Tan Tock, ministers of wickedness, ames damnés; but the Raja of Hell Island is served by— himself.

"Now, Miss Bretton," and the mirthful jesting passed from his eyes, to be replaced by a sudden deep and earnest grimness, "right does not make might, but might in this case makes right. I shall play raja clear up to the hilt, and save you if possible. There'll be a hot brush with Benbow and Mickelson, and men will die of the heat, but the real work comes about to-morrow noon, when the Sultan will probably arrive in his private barge. What I shall do then, I don't know; but I shall do my best not to fail. Failure means death for me, and for you— and I'm not ready to die. Are you?"

"No," she said, hesitant, compelled by the fire of his words.

"Good!" Stone sprang up and held out his hand. "The up-stairs room is yours— don't leave it until I call you, no matter what happens. Good night, little lady!"

"Good night— raja!" And with a brave smile curving her lips she passed up the broad stone stairs and out of his sight. If, in the upper darkness, the smile turned to quiet tears— how was he to know it?

Something new had entered into Richard Stone— something of his own brave boast, indeed. Raja of Hell Island! The words burned into him, swept through his blood like wine. As he strode out and came upon Tan Tock, sitting upon a rock above the liquid waves and watching a faint glow along the shoreline, there was a new virility in his bearing, a sudden acquisition of power and self-surety which brought the yellow man to his feet, astounded, at Stone's first words.

"Tan Tock! Give me your attention. Is there danger from sharks in this lagoon?"

"No, tuan." The cloudy sky overcast all things, but even in the obscurity Stone could not [miss] the staring eyes of the Sultan's steward. "There are small sharks, perhaps, but large ones do not cross the bar, and the small ones are easily frightened in these waters." A wave of the hand pointed to the faintly phosphorescent waves limned against the night.

"Good! Can you swim?"

"Yes, tuan."

"Come, then. We go to a killing, you and I, for the sake of her in yonder. Go eat, then come swiftly."

"Swimming is best with an empty belly, tuan!"

"Then follow me." Stone swiftly began to strip. "Tie your revolver over your head, and do as I bid. What is that glow against the shore?"

"It is where a fire burns, tuan."

"Come."

Tan Tock followed him into the water, like a man dazed.

4: The Sultan Comes.

WHILE these things were passing at the pagoda-pavilion, Benbow and Mickelson were not without some trouble on their hands. The ancient wharf of this forgotten city was a gigantic thing— a platform of hewn stone blocks, which stretched unbroken under the jungle growths.

Ten feet above the water's edge it stood; from the water ran up a short flight of wide stairs, at the bottom of which was tethered the single boat remaining to Benbow. Up above were the castaways.

A circle of the great wharf around the stairs had been cleared of vines and creepers, and was now lighted by a dozen fires. The Malays, by far the most numerous, had taken possession of the water-casks and bags of biscuit, and doled out a stingy portion to the sullen Chinese. This had not been peacefully adjusted, for every man had knife or kris, and not a few of the pilgrims from Mecca bore pistols; it was not to be wondered at that a dozen bodies littered the edge of the shadows.

Supper, however meager, had contrived to quiet the unruly spirits, and now Benbow and Mickelson were threading among the groups of smoking men, upon an errand all their own.

"The rewards," Benbow was careful to explain in fluent dialect, "will be many and great! This fool of an infidel wrecked the ship, and the Sultan will reward whoever punishes him. In his boat he has great store of sweet water, liquor and food, which will be a very immediate and needful reward to whoever slays him. Also, there is the white woman who belonged to the Sultan, and whom he stole from my care; whoever returns her to me shall have great reward from the Sultan!"

"Aye, tuan," argued one of the holy pilgrims, clutching his pistol, "but how to get away from here? How shall we come to the Sultan?"

"By sending either me or Tuan Mickelson in the boat, with a few of you and a few of the seamen," rejoined Benbow promptly. "The Sultan will then send to rescue all of us."

"By Allah, that is a good plan!" the murmur passed around, and they fell into talk, until the great landing buzzed like the bee-caves of Angkor.

Something of this talk came to the ears of Stone and Tan Tock, who silently swam to the stairway that cleft down through the hewn stones, and drew themselves out of the water on the lowermost step, beyond the sight of those on the wharves above. For a space they lay motionless, resting and listening to what passed overhead.

Stone saw that Benbow had told the truth about the boats, for there was but the one remaining. He lay on the slimy stone step, and Tan Tock lay beside him. Suddenly the yellow man spoke very softly.

"Tuan, what thought is in your mind?"

The American started. But the other continued speaking.

"It is in your mind to take this boat and go away with the white woman? This you cannot do, tuan."

"No?" Stone glanced at the little man. "You think I cannot kill you?"

"Oh, I am mortal, tuan!" Tan Tock chuckled. "But, remember, I, too, have a revolver, and a single shout or shot would bring these men about your heels. You might kill me, but a hundred of them would swim after you, and you could not escape with the boat."

The American gazed at the figure of the little steward for a long moment. He knew that Tan Tock was right, and he abandoned the plan that had flashed into his mind. He was quite willing to kill the steward, but he was unwilling to stake everything on a long chance. And Tan Tock, he realized, did not know how to bluff.

"Very well," he nodded acquiescence. "Then get into the boat, draw her plugs, and we will swim out with her and let her sink. Thus these men cannot reach us until dawn, for to thread the jungles after nightfall is impossible."

"Very well, tuan."

Tan Tock slipped off the step like an eel, and his kris sliced through the painter of the boat. He floated with it out into the darkness and vanished from sight.

Now, whether some ear above had caught their low voices, or whether things fell out by sheer chance, Stone never learned. For a moment he remained on the step, gathering his strength for the swim back to the pavilion; without warning a figure stepped naked-footed on the stairs above, and was followed by a second. The second was that of Mickelson, who bore a flaming brand from a fire.

"Stone!"

With the word, Mickelson plucked forth a revolver and fired— a fraction of an instant too late. Seeing the motion, Stone placed a bullet squarely between the second officer's eyes, and slid off into the water. The native beside Mickelson, like a flying jungle-bat, leaped high in air and dove out for the American, kris in hand.

The night became an inferno. Stone had anticipated no such scene as this when he had started over. The man who had leaped in almost on top of him came at him with a shrill cry of rage. Not daring to fire the water-choked revolver, Stone slashed across the Malay's face with the fore-sight, and the man sank. As Tan Tock had predicted, however, the American found himself hard put to it to escape from the horde who came plunging after.

The edge of the great stone wharf was lined with dancing, yelling shapes, torches in hand. In the weird light it seemed that scores of figures were "taking off" for the dive, krises clenched between white teeth, naked bodies flashing darkly. Of Tan Tock, Stone could see nothing, nor was the boat visible to his brief glance; seemingly the steward had gotten it beyond the radius of light.

"Here goes!" thought Stone grimly, taking in a long breath. "It's my only chance—"

Barely ten seconds had transpired since Mickelson's cry and shot, but already the water was foaming and splashing high with swimmers. Dropping his useless weapon, Stone plunged forward in a long, deep dive, hoping only to escape those murderous krises.

Under the water he swam until his lungs seemed bursting asunder, until his brain was aflame with more-coruscating lights than the Genji firefly-festival ever bore. Then, in desperation, he headed upward, and an instant later sobbed the cool night air into his fiery lungs.

"Wah! Allah!"

The yell streamed up beside him, and he turned barely in time to meet a steel-tipped swimmer. Just at the verge of the torch-light, ten feet farther would have carried Stone safely past the danger; but he wasted no time on "ifs." His fist smashed home on a brown face, and before the nearer Malays could come up Stone dived and was off again.

This time he expended his last ounce of staying power before coming up— and when he broke into the air again he was beyond sight of the wharves. Careless if he were seen by the swimmers, so that he could reach the pavilion and his weapons, he struck out in a swift and steady "crawl" down the shore-line. Yells from behind told him that his phosphorescent wake was observed, but he held onward without pause, confident in his speed.

When he seemed to have flung off pursuit he proceeded at a more sensible stroke. The hoarse bellow of Captain Benbow broke through the storm of voices behind, and Stone conjectured that, for lack of a boat, a swimming party was being sent to attack the pavilion. He laughed grimly at thought of the revolvers in his coat-pockets.

The minutes fled fast. He was beginning to scan the line of shore in the effort to make out some trace of the pagoda against the stars, when suddenly he came to an abrupt halt, and trod water, staring ahead in quick surprise.

A tiny tongue of flame was licking upward in the darkness— well out from shore and about fifty yards ahead of the American. It grew rapidly; a moment later Stone realized that it came not from the water, but from the little promontory upon which stood the pavilion. The flicker increased— the flame became a fire, cunningly builded against rocks, so that behind it was nothing visible, yet the water before and around it was plainly lighted.

"Damned clever beggar!" muttered Stone, as he struck out for the beacon.

It was the work of Tan Tock, of course. Somehow the yellow steward had won back to the pavilion— either in the boat, or else by abandoning the boat. He must have abandoned it promptly, to be sure, else he could not have swum back ahead of Stone and gotten this fire alight. It was excellently placed, thought the American. No swimming party could advance through its gleams while Tan Tock had a revolver and cartridges.

"With two of us to hold the fort," reflected Stone, "Benbow will be neatly euchered. The scurvy dog! I wish I'd gotten him along with Mickelson."

He made steady headway, anxious to get into his clothes again and meet the danger which threatened from the swimming Malays. Suddenly, when he was within thirty feet of the fire, the soft voice of Tan Tock lifted from the darkness.

"You stop, tuan! Go way."

"All right. Tan Tock— it's Tuan Stone!" rejoined the American cheerfully.

"You stop or I fire!"

"What!" Stone straightened up in amazement, treading water and trying to make out something in the blackness. "Are you crazy?"

Tan Tock's soft laugh answered him. Stone threw himself forward, but a revolver spat red in the night, and the bullet clipped the water an inch from his right ear.

"Do you want to die, tuan? Then come on!"

The American halted, cursing in swift realization. Too late he saw his folly in trusting the yellow steward; with true Oriental guile Tan Tock had twisted the situation to serve his own ends.

"By the lord, I'll wring your neck for this!" threatened Stone with cold rage. Tan Tock sent another taunting chuckle at him, which cooled the mad fury tugging at the American's heart.

The steward had the whip hand— had scented the possibilities of the situation, and had neatly gotten rid of Stone, eliminated him. Tan Tock, therefore, remained in charge of Miss Bretton and seemed quite confident of his ability to defend his position.

"Go 'way quick!" came the soft order. "Or shall I kill you?"

Stone began to swim again. He saw that Tan Tock's fire was built at the tip of the little promontory, baffling any circling movement. So, there being naught else to do, the American swam past the promontory and wearily dragged himself into shore fifty yards farther on. He emerged from a tangle of mangrove roots, struggled up to masonry above, and, careless of snakes, flung himself down to rest.

"Can he fight off the Malays?" he reflected. "If he can, I'll get to him in the morning— I can reach him then by land, and I'll wring his cursed neck!"

He lay quiescent, watching, unable to see the promontory, but listening intently. After a space he heard yells, and then shots, coming quick and fast. These gave place to silence, then the laugh of Tan Tock quivered through the night. The Malays were repulsed.

Stone stretched out, nearly naked and quite weaponless. With the morning he would get the yellow steward, for the Sultan could not get here before noon, he reflected. So he fell asleep, biding his time and determined that with the morning he would make Tan Tock drain the cup of bitterness. He was defeated, but not conquered.

One thing, however. Stone forgot. This was the luck which had been fighting against him.

Stiff and sore in every limb, he was wakened to find early sunlight sifting down through the trees above him. A sound of high-pitched voices brought him into startled alertness; he sprang up, held aside the trailing vines and branches, and peered forth at the water.

The silence of blank, astounded dismay settled upon his soul.

Anchored fifty feet off the promontory was a bedecked, bedizened Malay proa, lateen sail furled high— the Sultan's state barge. And, leaving the promontory, was a boat in the stern of which sat Agnes Bretton, with Tan Tock beside her!

The Sultan had come with the dawn! The white woman was his!

The blow was overwhelming. As the boat drew under the opposite side of the proa, Stone dropped the vines and sat down, feeling as though a hard fist had hit him under the ear. For a moment he was knocked out.

"Damn!" he said slowly. "Those quartermasters found the Sultan somewhere down the coast— they didn't have to make Kuala Gajah itself. They probably found him during the night— and now he's here. And Agnes Bretton's aboard that cursed barge of his!"

He realized to the full his own position— unarmed, naked except for his cotton trousers, and ashore. What must Agnes Bretton think now of his boasts and vaunted efficiency? He groaned at the thought.

Recollection, however, spurred into him. Under the sting of defeat arose the man, insuperable, his vitality but quickened by the bitterness of his position. After all, was he not the Raja of Hell Island— had he not named himself thus to Miss Bretton? And was that to be an empty and fruitless boast?

"No!" Stone leaped up again, the numbing power of the blow broken upon his resilient spirit. "No! I'll play the game to the end, by the Lord— I'll be the raja, right enough! Let them only give me a chance!"

He parted the vines, cautiously, and settled himself to watch events. Had he but wakened a half-hour earlier!

Plainly, the proa had just arrived; as plainly, Tan Tock had signaled to her from the promontory. Another boat was setting off toward the great wharves farther along the shore of the island, where Benbow and the castaways awaited rescue.

Upon the deck of the barge an awning was being run up. Beneath this, Stone could make out the figure of Sultan Lumpur— small, frock-coated, fezzed. Miss Bretton came to the deck, and the Sultan bowed many times. Stone saw that the girl's head was bare, her golden hair flashing in the morning sun; she seemed to be glancing around, as if seeking some one— then she allowed the Sultan to lead her below.

After a moment the Sultan reappeared, seated himself, lighted a cigar, and with every appearance of purring contentment engaged Tan Tock in a very long conversation.

"What next?" thought Stone, frowning. "If I could get aboard that craft there 'd be something doing! How long will she stay at anchor? If the crafty devil pulls out now it's all off! I suppose he'd pick me up if I signaled— and throw me in irons on general principles. Thank you, I'll go aboard as the Raja of Hell Island, not as a stranded seaman!"

His chief worry was quite speedily settled.

The boat returned from the ancient wharves, bearing Captain Benbow and two of the Mecca pilgrims, green turbans and all. They were taken to the barge, and there shortly ensued a stormy scene between Benbow and Sultan Lumpur. Between Tan Tock and the pilgrims, to say nothing of the quartermasters, the blame for the loss of the Penang must have been definitely placed on the shoulders of Benbow, for the little Sultan flew into furious rage, and the beefy, truculent skipper appeared very glad indeed to go below in evident disgrace.

So much for Benbow. The boat presently set out again for shore. With it was a second boat, that in which the quartermasters had departed the previous evening. Both were loaded deep with water casks, and at sight of them Stone drew back with a dancing light in his steely eyes.

"Good! He's going to victual and water those beggars until he can send for 'em, or until fishing boats can take 'em up the coast. He'll be here for an hour yet, and doubtless he'll search for me— or again, he may choose to leave me to starve. Very well, Mr. Sultan! I think your unknown friend the raja will now take a hand in the game. Wish I had a smoke!"

He had already solved in mind his chief problem— to get aboard the proa. Once he was there he could let matters take their course. Stone was a man who solved one puzzle at a time and left the rest to Providence.

Working swiftly, he tore loose vine after vine from the knotted tangles around him— great, piled shreds of wood, thick-leaved, and with lesser vines bound them so that they would not lightly drift apart. These he edged into the water under a mango tree, and shortly afterward followed the mass of seeming flotsam.

As the morning waxed and the boats continued taking supplies ashore, the tangled mass of drifted creepers worked out slowly but certainly toward the gaily bedizened proa, under whose awning Sultan Lumpur was smoking and, in very heathen fashion, mixing strong coffee with brandy-and-sodas. A nautch-girl had appeared like some gilded snake, and was smoking a white cheroot beside him on the cushions.

"Tell me," said the Sultan to Tan Tock, in English— partly because he affected the language and partly in order that the girl might not understand, "about this new man, Stone. Shall we pick him up and silence his mouth regarding this woman?"

"Favored of Allah, he is very well where he is," and Tan Tock grinned faintly. "From this place he cannot escape, and it is better to let him perish miserably here than to run any risks by slaying him outright. Why trouble, when God can do the work for us?"

"Very true," assented Lumpur sagely. "At least, he seems to be a man among men."

Tan Tock cast a troubled glance at the shore, not observing the tangle of vines that floated under the counter below.

"Aye, a man indeed! He would slay me as he slew Tuan Mickelson, were he here. However," and the steward brightened perceptibly, "he is unarmed and ashore. It might be well to bid these Malays hunt him down, while boats are coming for them."

"I will do it." His highness nodded, a trifle drowsily. "Do you go and lay out a very fine luncheon in the private suite— do not waken the woman, however; let her sleep until I am ready. Champagne, caviar, and all that sort of thing."

The port side of the boat, swinging lazily to her anchor, was deserted. The starboard side buzzed with activity as the brown seamen broke out the casks and provisions for the crowd ashore.

Down the starboard side floated the tangle of vines. Floating beneath them with his head only half-submerged, Richard Stone grinned cheerfully to himself as he caught the conversation overhead, and gradually worked his way along to the stern of the proa. He dared not make haste, and the thought of possible nips from small sharks was a continual torment; none the less, he grinned. Things were not going so badly, after all! What had seemed a calamity, now in the light of events began to appear very much like good fortune after all— he would have had to face the Sultan in any event!

"All's for the best," thought Stone cheerily, "and the 'best' refers to one Dick Stone, Esq. What first seems misfortune proves to be good hap, so press on, O raja!"

Now, Stone's mental pose as the Raja of Hell Island was no mere jest. He strove to impress that pose upon himself sternly, without compromise, for his position and that of Agnes Bretton were desperate in the extreme. The only law was the will of Sultan Lumpus, who was well served, as Stone had found to his cost. Half-measures, consular appeals, empty threats, would effect nothing. Agnes Bretton could be saved only by the death of men— she could be saved only by one who would act in true Oriental fashion, high-handed and ruthless— the Raja of Hell Island. So this word, first spoken in jest, became deadly earnest, and Stone knew well that he himself would be erased like a Dongrek cobra in case he failed. Therefore, he had not the slightest intention of failure.

Reaching the stern of the proa, Stone found a broad, open window above him. The barge had been built for luxury, and was a floating palace of iniquity rather than a ship; the American conjectured that the private suite of which Sultan Lumpur had spoken was here in the stern.

Being quite hidden from any observation, Stone evaded his leafy screen, gripped the gilded carving above him, and drew himself out of the water. He found himself gazing into a dining-room fitted in European style, and quite empty.

Five seconds later he was aboard.

5: A Glass of Water

TAN TOCK came into the dining-room and glanced about him. With two opium pellets at work inside of him, his yellow features gave no sign of weariness after a sleepless night. Instead, he was very cheerful, and chattered aloud as he worked.

"Truly the things of a Sultan!" he observed as he took silver-gilt utensils from a cupboard and began to set the table— for two. "Very beautiful. As beautiful as that white woman's hair. Perhaps the Sultan will give her to me when he is tired of her— I must not forget to mention it to him. He will have her dressed like the women statues on the temple of Angkor Wat— ai, by Allah!"

He opened the wine locker and drew out champagne bottles. There was no ice, but Tan Tock had a simpler cooling system; he drew forth a bucket with long rope attached, put the bottles in the bucket, and lowered it from the stern window. The depths of the lagoon were hardly cold, but would serve at a pinch.

"Now we must have tinned meats. First, however, I must make ready her water— the woman must be made agreeable to the Sultan's wishes, of course!"

He set out glasses, filled them with mineral water, and into one glass put a drop of colorless fluid from a tiny vial, which he replaced in his belt. He chuckled evilly, and proceeded to get out the tins of meat and caviar.

"So she is sleeping, eh?" His furtive eyes flitted to a doorway before which hung a covering of broad-striped crimson silk, such as they weave in Kelantan. " Perhaps it might be permitted to look upon her, since she is an infidel woman and without shame—"

Tan Tock wiped his hands on his sarong and stepped to the doorway, his yellow face suddenly wrinkled in evil lines. On either side of the door were pillars of carven teakwood, heavily gilded. His hand went out and caught the silken curtain to draw it aside—

But the silken curtain moved of itself. A long, naked white arm shot forth, and iron fingers clenched upon the throat of Tan Tock; behind the arm emerged the figure of Stone, grimly silent.

That first instant of surprise and terror was enough to give the American's terrible fingers a firm grip on the yellow man's throat. Unable to cry out or get help, seeing death leaping at him from those hard gray eyes, Tan Tock's hand flashed down and whipped for a knife, flame-bladed like a kris. So swift was the motion that Stone did not see the weapon until it seared across his naked breast, barely slitting the skin.

Then, wild rage upon him, surging with anger at this man who had balked him during the night, he swung up Tan Tock by the neck, one-handed, and dashed the steward's head against one of the carven teakwood pillars. There was a sound like an egg breaking, and the body of Tan Tock hung limp. The knife tinkled on the deck.

"Well," ejaculated Stone, surprised at the access of strength which had come upon him, and staring at the draggling figure, "what d'you know about that? Ugh— the beast must have had a skull like paper!"

Glancing around swiftly, Stone took a gold-mounted phonograph from a table in the corner, tied it to the feet of the body, and a moment later the steward was lowered from the stern window and disappeared in the lagoon.

Stone fingered the revolver he had found in the man's pocket, and shivered a little.

"Deadly work, this raja business!" he muttered. "Still, there's no help for it. It's not for yourself, Dick lad— it's for the little woman in yonder. So let her sleep, poor soul, while you have a look around. Raja against Sultan, by the Lord!"

Whereupon, regarding all within reach as lawful loot, Stone proceeded to look around.

Sultan Lumpur was wealthy, and, like all Oriental rulers, desired to have evidences of his wealth about him in intrinsic shape. Thus his private suite was rich in gold mountings and costly things of all sorts; and set in the teak wall was a small but excellent safe. These things Stone disdained for the moment, settling himself at the table with a great sigh of contentment,, for he was hungry. Of clothes there were none in sight, but food was in plenty, and the American determined to make the most of it.

Half an hour later he lighted a superfine cheroot from the Sultan's silver humidor, and with Tan Tock's knife absent-mindedly picked three superb rubies from the chased lid of the humidor itself.

"Now," he reflected, staring at the three blood-red flames on the table-cloth, "it is quite right that our petty Sultan should pay, and pay well, for the trouble which he causes the Raja of Hell Island, to say nothing of Miss Bretton! These are nice rubies, but I have no pockets to put them in—"

He came to his feet suddenly, listening. Then his lips curved grimly.

"Ah! Here come your pockets, Mr. Raja! I hope it's the Sultan himself."

He moved over to the door— not that covered by the silk hanging, but the one that led into the passageway without— and stood behind the teak door, revolver reversed in his hand. From the passage came a shuffle of steps, which paused at the door.

"Tan Tock?" spoke a voice. Stone grimaced. This was not the Sultan, but one of the two quartermasters who had come ashore with him from the Penang.

"Enter!" Stone muffled his voice; and the door, which boasted an excellent English lock, swung open.

The quartermaster appeared, staring about the room in search of Tan Tock. Whatever his errand might have been, it remained undelivered, for Stone's revolver-butt struck him behind the ear, and the American's long arm caught him as he fell senseless.

"All things come to him who waits!" chuckled Stone.

Five minutes caused an appreciable alteration in appearances. The quartermaster sat, bound and gagged, in a corner, concealed but not stifled by a spare table-cloth. Clad in the neat blue uniform, Stone looked very much himself again, and carefully pocketed the three rubies. As he stood rubbing the stubble on his chin and gazing at the unconscious seaman, the very sunburst of an idea shot athwart his mind.

"Eh— by the Lord Harry!" he ejaculated admiringly. "I must have a genius for intrigue! If it could be done, now, it'd solve a whole lot of my troubles."

He turned to the table, quickly rid it of the remains of his own meal, then set it anew, opening the meats and making all ready that he could. The two glasses of water he transposed in place. Then, assuring himself that all looked fairly well, he pulled aside the curtain of crimson silk and knocked lightly at the door behind. There was a moment of silence— then came the response, as upon that first occasion which now seemed a century ago, when he had knocked at her door aboard the Penang.

"Yes? Who is there?"

"His excellency the Raja of Hell Island, ma'am," returned Stone gaily but guardedly. "Sorry to break into your nap, but—"

"Oh!" In her one word were expressed amazement, delighted recognition, and hasty greeting. Then: "Wait just a moment, please!"

"No hurry," Stone assured her. "Don't make much noise, though!"

"I sha'n't."

The word drew a little laugh from him, yet it was a laugh partially of shame. He himself would have said "won't," he reflected; in the past year he had fallen much away from the niceties of speech and action.

"Well, there's some excuse for it!" he muttered, glancing at the quartermaster and thinking of Tan Tock. "These brown beggars are used to monkeying with French and Britishers; now they've tackled Americans, they 'll find out a few things, grammar or not. If we pull out of this mess, they 'll remember one raja, anyhow!"

He slipped the lock of the door leading to the passage. A moment later the other door opened and showed Miss Bretton, slightly disheveled, her pale cheeks tinged with rich color, her deep-gray eyes alight.

"Oh!" she said, smiling. "I thought— Tan Tock told me you had gone away!"

"Sure! But I came back. Tan Tock's gone away this time. Here, come in and sit down. How'd you like the Sultan?"

"He— he seemed very polite." She sank into the chair Stone placed for her. "Really, it is very hard to think that there is anything wrong—"

"Still doubting, eh?" Stone chuckled, and pointed to the glasses of water. "Tan Tock came in and laid this table a few minutes ago. In one of those glasses— this one at the seat by the window— he put a drop of liquid, intending it for you. Had you taken luncheon with the Sultan, you would have been drugged before you knew it. Now, then, I'll proceed to give you ample proof of what I say, Miss Bretton. Get the Sultan to drink that glass of water!"

"What?" She stared at him, frowning slightly. "I don't see how—"

"Oh, I'll show you how!" cut in Stone cheerfully, taking another cheroot from the humidor. "I've an almighty good little scheme cooked up, if we can put it over. You must remember that Sultan Lumpur comes of a long line of piratical ancestors, and you must pay attention to his admissions; then you'll have no further scruples, I hope. Also, I must depend entirely upon you to keep his attention occupied while I think up some plan for getting away from this craft."

She made a helpless gesture.

"I'm afraid I don't understand you very clearly, Mr. Stone."

"Sure you don't!" Stone laughed. "Please tuck up that curling strand of hair that hangs over your ear— it's the most distractingly attractive thing I ever saw in my life! Well, now, I'll explain."

Her slim hands went to her hair; her pale cheeks reddened again in a blush that was half a smile. Stone explained.

The original proprietors of Hell Island, as Stone reflected, were undoubtedly pirates and freebooters; for after this manner lived all Malays in the old days. So, once in the bedroom of the private suite, he looted a fine silk shirt of the Sultan's, split it a little in getting it over his shoulders, knotted a loud scarlet scarf about his throat, opened the door that led into the dining-room behind the silk curtain, and then sat down to think. While he thought, Miss Bretton acted.

The morning was drawing well on toward noon as she emerged on deck and stood looking about her. Where the lagoon had been gray with stormy fear on the previous day, it was now glittering with tropic warmth; even the gray stones of Hell Island were jeweled with scarlet flowers and flashing parrakeets. The boats had ceased work and now hung listless at the gangway ladder, and the crew were idly draped about the deck forward.

Beneath the awning, Sultan Lumpur had just wakened. At sight of Miss Bretton he sent the nautch-girl away with a snarling oath; but if Miss Bretton had been convinced of the Sultan's entirely civilized state, that conviction was sadly shaken. The nautch-girl was not naked, in a technical sense; yet it was with some reason that the lips of Agnes Bretton were firmly compressed.

The ruler of Kuala Gajah hastened to make amends.

"Eh, up already, Miss Bretton? You're looking perfectly ripping, if I may say so!" The Sultan's English was pronouncedly English. Beneath his fez his small-boned, preternaturally aged brown features looked like weathered rosewood studded with white ivories. "Take this chair— let me sit at your feet and smoke, if I may."

"No, I won't sit down, thank you." Miss Bretton delicately stifled a yawn. "I looked in on your dining-room, and it positively made me ravenous! By the way, Sultan, have you made any plans as to a mission station at Kuala Gajah?"

Sultan Lumpur looked slightly taken aback.

"My word! Aren't you awfully keen on business, eh?" He grinned disagreeably. "Come, let us go down and assuage our hunger, and over the table we will discuss the mission. I hope Tan Tock did not waken you?"

"No."

Refusing his proffered arm, Miss Bretton returned down the companionway, Lumpur at her heels. At the bottom, she turned as if she had forgotten something.

"Oh— when are you going to leave here, Sultan? Soon, I hope?"

"In an hour, Miss Bretton." He bowed, bobbing absurdly in his frock coat. "Some of my crew are going ashore immediately to find a fishing village, in order that the castaways on the island may secure boats at once. Upon their return we leave for Kuala Gajah."

She nodded and passed on into the dining-room.

Stone, in the bedroom off the private suite, stuffed some small plush boxes into his jacket pockets and, upon hearing the Sultan's explanation of their continued stay, went to the door that opened on the passage. Miss Bretton and the Sultan entered the dining-room.

Here, opening on the passage, there were four other cabins, the doors closed. Stone concluded they were occupied by Benbow and the nautch-girls, and he slipped softly down to the companion. Very cautiously venturing up the ladder, he heard the rattle of oars, and after a moment raised his head sufficiently to see that a boat had set off, not toward the island, but toward the river-mouth across the lagoon. The boat was of the Penang, with ten men in her, and was commanded by the other quartermaster who had come ashore with Stone.

"Good!" The American returned up the passage and softly regained the bedroom of the private suite. "Counting the Penang's men who slipped away from me last night, there were only a dozen aboard here this morning. Ten gone leaves two, and Benbow will snore until night if he's left alone. Now let's see how things are going next door."

He sank into a gilded Empire chair and listened, chuckling a little to himself.

Being so far accustomed to titles that they bored him, Sultan Lumpur appeared to be keenly enjoying Miss Bretton's absence of formality and quietly poised bearing. Indeed, he was so interested that so far he had failed to remark the absence either of Tan Tock or the gold-mounted phonograph.

From the sound of voices, Stone gathered that Miss Bretton sat near the door, while the Sultan sat by the stern window; thus all presaged well regarding the glasses of water. A moment later, indeed, Stone knew that the deed was done.

"My word, this water tastes warm!" exclaimed the Sultan. "It's beastly odd where Tan Tock can be. Would you mind pressing that bell at your hand, Miss Bretton—"

"Then you don't care for a tête-à-tête?" she inquired, the slightest hint of reproach in her voice. Stone swore admiringly to himself; he had not dreamed that she held such qualities of an actress! The Sultan did not dream so, either, and fell at once to the lure.

"By all means, my dear lady. Now let us have a bottle of this wine. Do you know, Miss Bretton, it makes me very happy indeed to be thus dining with you— to have been the means of rescuing you from an unhappy predicament! It is a great honor, indeed—"

"Thank you," broke in the girl quietly. "What kind of a mission church did you think of erecting, Sultan Lumpur?"

"Any kind you prefer, dear lady!" retorted the Sultan gaily. "And it shall contain a shrine with a statue of yourself done in gold and jewels, eh? Oh, yes! I am not too orthodox a Mohammedan, you see; nor do I deny myself the beautiful things that nature craves, whether it be wine— or— or hair more beautiful than gold!"

It was self-evident that the words of his highness were no idle compliments. With every instant the man was letting his inner self crack through the veneer of politeness and civilization, and Stone could imagine the leer upon the brown features.

There now came the signal for which the American had been waiting— the signal that the drugged glass of water was gone.

"I met a very interesting man on this island," observed Miss Bretton, her tone a trifle unsteady despite her self-control.

"Yes?" returned the oily voice of the other. "Not so interesting as I, perhaps."

"Possibly you know him, Sultan Lumpur. He called himself the raja of this island here— he was a very interesting man, indeed—"

"Raja? Raja of Jehannum Island?" broke out Sultan Lumpur, between surprise and rage. Stone softly rose and stepped to the curtain at the door. "My word! What bally impudence was the beggar handing you?"

"None, I assure you! He was a very nice man, and he was very kind to me."

"Oh, was he?" An ugly note surcharged the Sultan's voice— perhaps he was tiring of the game, thought Stone with a grin. "Well, he'll not be so nice to you as I'll be, my dear young lady! How would it suit you to be a Sultana— eh, what? With women to wait upon you, and diamonds to wear, and all Kuala Gajah at your beck and call, eh?"

He was giving himself away very nicely now. Then, to Stone's surprise, Miss Bretton made reply with an icy firmness.

"You forget yourself! Sit down in that chair and stop leering across the table— just remember that you're speaking to a white woman, Mr. Sultan!"

"Indeed?" Sultan Lumpur gave vent to a cackle of evil mirth. "Did that glass of water taste odd to you, Miss Bretton? There was a drop of liquid in it— and in a very few minutes you will be sound, asleep. And what then, eh? Perhaps to-morrow you'll forget you're a boasted white woman, eh? Perhaps you'll be glad to be a Sultana, eh, what? My word! Does it surprise you to find all the refinements of civilization here in the Malay States, eh?"

"You vile beast!" bit out the girl's voice. "Don't you dare use such words to me—"

"Ho! And why not, my dear?" said the Sultan thickly. "Why not? Who'll stop me?"

"The Raja of Hell Island," said Stone. "Consider yourself stopped, Sultan!"

6: Merely a Little Present

"LAY 'em flat out on the table," continued the American pleasantly. "Yes, that's right. Very pretty hands, Sultan! Keep 'em there. Satan will find mischief still— eh?"

Stone came to the table edge, his revolver staring at the Sultan, who was stupefied by this unexpected apparition. Miss Bretton sat stiffly in her chair, her face very white and her gray eyes blazing with anger.

"I hope you're satisfied about your host, Miss Bretton?"

"Oh!" She flushed deeply. "I— I didn't know there could be such men in the world!"

"No, he isn't a man at all." Stone inspected the staring brown face curiously. "He's merely a snake— or a spider, if you like. This pretty boat seems to be a regular parlor, but this time he's caught a wasp instead of a fly; a wasp, Genus Americanus. Feeling better, Sultan? Let's have a chat."

"Damn you!" Sultan Lumpur's voice lashed out venomously. "How dare you—"

"I dare do all that may become a man!" chuckled Stone. "If I press this trigger, you'll be sorry; so keep your voice down. There's no one aboard to help you, anyway, since that boat pulled off. Give me half a chance and I'll put a bullet in you, Sultan!"

Lumpur, for all the foaming rage that possessed him, seemed unaccountably lethargic. He peered at Stone from bloodshot eyes; his brown fingers clawed at the table-cloth convulsively; and when he spoke again, a moment later, his voice was thick and blurred.

"Oh! You're the man Stone, eh, what? I say, don't be a bally ass, old chap!"

Stone grinned. "Just at present I'm a bloomin' raja, old top— and you mind your eye! No, I'll not hurt you unless you make me; so rest easy. That's right; if you feel sleepy, go right ahead; never mind us—"

"Oh, what's the matter with him?" cried Miss Bretton sharply, her voice thin with swift alarm and anxiety.

For Sultan Lumpur had suddenly bowed his head as though a heavy weight were forcing him down; his cheek went to the table-cloth between his outstretched arms, and with closed eyes he lay motionless, save for the stertorous breathing that heaved his slight frame.

"H-m! He drank that glass of water meant for you, and it works mighty fast," explained Stone dryly. "Still, he may be shamming. You sit still for a moment—"

He stepped around the table, shoved his revolver into Sultan Lumpur's ribs, and with his left hand drew back the royal eyelid. There was no doubt whatever about it. His highness was drugged to sleep, and was quite beyond any immediate awakening.

"Safe in the arms of Murphy, as the Dutchman said," observed Stone, stowing away his revolver with a sigh of relief. He leaned over the table, and from various parts of the frock-coated person removed an ivory-handled knife and a beautiful little gold-mounted revolver. This last he shoved across to Miss Bretton.

"Take this and stow it away— you may need it, and if not, it 'll be a souvenir of the happy occasion. Here, take this glass of wine; you really do need that, Miss Bretton, and some food, too. The excitement's all over, 'pon my word!"

She obeyed him, smiling faintly. The American again leaned over the Sultan and deftly removed two blazing diamonds from scarf and finger, correctly adjusting them upon his own person. Then, drawing up a chair, he dumped from the pocket some small plush cases.

"What on earth are those?" inquired the watching girl curiously.

"Souvenirs." Stone grinned and opened the cases, to display a collection of jeweled orders and decorations. With a knife he began to dig methodically at the jewels, littering the table with yellow and red and green spots of flame.

"Fine stones, too, Miss Bretton! He should have kept them in the safe—"

"You're— why, Mr. Stone, you're not stealing them?"

"Eh— stealing them?" Stone glanced at her in surprise. "Not on your life! See here, do you actually imagine— could you imagine— that I'm a thief?"

"No," she returned, hesitant, her deep-gray eyes searching his. "But—"

"No buts at all. Right!" broke in Stone cheerfully. "I'll explain, Miss Bretton. There's a poor, no-account American whom I know— a decent fellow in his way, but who's had a string of hard luck lately. In fact, he's down and out financially. Now, then, this Sultan Lumpur has done him a very scurvy trick indeed; has forced him to starve and fight and do a whole lot of things he doesn't like, and finally decided, only a little while ago, to maroon this American chap and set a bunch of crazy Malays on him— in short, to murder him. Well, I have saved the American, and I'm going to turn over these jewels as a little present from Sultan Lumpur, to repay him in part and to set him on his feet again. Don't you think it's right?"

"Why— yes, perhaps it is," she admitted slowly. "Who's this American?"

"A fellow named Dick Stone. And I'm the Raja of Hell Island!" said Stone calmly. "Now please go on and eat something, Miss Bretton. We're not out of the woods yet, and no matter whether or not you want to eat, it's a physical necessity."

At his words she flushed, eyed him a moment in indecision, and then obeyed.

Whistling between his teeth, Stone finished his task, tossed the silver and gold settings out of the stern window, and swept the little pile of jewels into his pocket. Then he rose and stretched himself, yawning.

"I beg your pardon— a raja sometimes forgets himself, Miss Bretton! Now, I've a bit of work for you to do in my absence, if you don't mind."

Her eyes leaped to him, suddenly startled.

"You— you are going away?"

"Just out on deck." Stone nodded reassurance, took from the humidor another cheroot and lighted it. "You see, we have to make arrangements to get safely away from here, Miss Bretton, and we have just so much time in which to get away."

"But—"

The girl's eyes went to the figure of Sultan Lumpur in mute remonstrance.

"Don't worry about him. He'll not wake up for an hour or two at least, and I have reasons for leaving him just where he is. In case anything unexpected happens, remember the neat little revolver I handed you. While I'm gone, now, I'd be greatly obliged if you'd get all the provisions out of these lockers you can find, and pile 'em up under that stern window. A dozen bottles of mineral water, too, and a couple of whisky against emergencies. Can you do this for me?"

"Of course!" she answered quietly. "I only wish I could do more, Mr. Stone. It's terrible to realize all that's happened, and to know that— that you have done so much beyond words to thank you for—"

Stone leaned across the table, and she put her hand in his. For a moment he gazed down at her slender, lightly tanned fingers, and the harshness died out of his features, and when he lifted his eyes to hers the steely depths of them were humid.

"God knows I want no thanks, Agnes Bretton! " he said huskily. "Just to have known you— I never met a woman like you before in the world—"

He rose suddenly and strode from the cabin, went out into the passageway and shut the door behind him. For a space he stood there, striving to get himself in hand once more. He was seething with a riot of emotions— emotions that gripped and whirled him off his secure pedestal of poise. Agnes Bretton seemed to have twined among his very heart-strings, tugging at them with a great grief and sweetness and wonderful surge of feeling which was unnameable.

Two days previously he had never dreamed of such a thing as this— such love as this! It was love, he admitted savagely to himself. Although it might seem incredible, he felt that in these scant two days he had lived a century with this gray-eyed girl; she had entered into his life suddenly, completely, sweeping him away like a withered leaf in the blast. And Dick Stone was not a man easily swept away.

"And think what she's just been through, with never a sign of break!"

He swore softly in sheer admiration. "A girl facing veritable hell, escaping it by an eyelash, and keeping just as cool as I am—"

He did not know that at this very moment Agnes Bretton was emptying the locker with tears streaming down her cheeks, with a desperate little prayer for strength on her lips.

Then, swiftly, Stone's iron will swept all thought of her out of his mind, and grimly tensed himself to the work in hand. It was nearly done now, he reflected; the worst of the work lay behind, and if the Raja of Hell Island could play out the game sans faiblesse, Dick Stone would yet win clear. But there must be no false move, no trifling!

Before him Stone eyed the four cabin doors, two on either hand— the entire after-space of the proa aside from the Sultan's private suite. Jerking out his revolver, the American stepped to the nearest door and shoved it open. The cabin was empty.

He passed on to the next. Under his grip the handle refused to give— the door was locked! A soft voice sounded in Malay, and Stone remembered the nautchgirl.

"Open!" he snapped.

The catch snicked back, and the door swung open. To his surprise, Stone saw two of the girls facing him— two slim brown things, fright in their eyes, gazing out at him as a trapped nilgai deer gazes upon the hunters.

"You understand English?" said Stone. "Then be quiet. Lock your door until the Sultan calls for you, and keep quiet! That's all."

He drew the door to, and heard the lock click.

But, at the same moment, as though the sound of his voice had caused the movement, Stone heard the creak of hinges behind. He whirled, catlike. In the cabin door directly opposite that of the two girls, standing staring at him like a fat and surprised elephant, was Captain Benbow of the Penang!

Instantly, Stone's revolver bored into Benbow's fat pauch, and Stone's eyes shone into those of the Englishman like gray agates.

"You fat fool! This boat's in my hands. D' you want to die in a hurry?"

"Oh, come, Stone!" exclaimed the astounded Benbow, who had seemingly just weakened from sleep, and was but half-dressed. "Let by-gones be by-gones, eh, what? You did for poor Mickelson— well, that was his own fault, I take it." Benbow licked his fat lips, and fear sat in his roving eyes. "Come, Stone, chuck it! No hard feelings—"

"Oh, shut up!" snarled the American harshly. "I'll do you like I did Mickelson if you don't keep your fat head where it belongs. But I don't want any more fighting. By the Lord Harry, I've had my bellyful this trip! This craft belongs to me, savvy? Have you any objections to proffer?"

"Here, you can't come that over me—" Stone's finger moved on the trigger, and the bluster of Benbow died abruptly into nothing. "No, of course not, Stone! You— you're able to handle her, of course. Deuced good chap— no hard feelings, eh, what?"

Stone's eyes spat forth contempt.

"You're a damned dirty scoundrel, Benbow, and I ought to put a bullet into you. But that's more than I can stomach. Get into your cabin and stay there. Mind, stay there! If you come poking out, you'll stop lead. I'm running this hooker— get!"

Benbow vanished hastily and slammed the door. Having no means of fastening it, Stone trusted that the skipper's amazement and fear would hold him prisoner, and passed on to the fourth door. That cabin proved to be empty.

Turning, Stone sought the companionway.

"Expecting to take Miss Bretton aboard, Sultan Lumpur stowed his girls in that cabin— and they'll stay there safe enough," he reflected. "Well, it looks as if all was secure below, granted Benbow lies perdu for a while. The next question is about the boats. Which of the two Penang boats did those fellows take when they went across the lagoon to the river mouth? If my boat's here, the one that slipped off and brought Sultan Lumpur, then luck is with me for once."

Unhesitant now, sure that all was clear, he advanced up the ladder and sprang to the deck above.

It seemed that he had been below decks for hours unnumbered; yet now he realized that it had been only a matter of minutes since his last look above— not an hour in all. The boat had vanished in the mainland marshes at the mouth of the river. Along the ancient island wharves the pilgrim castaways were chanting their noonday prayer, their singsong voices lifting the sura vibrantly over the water and the old ruins.

The two men who had been left aboard the proa were seamen from the Penang. Brazenly neglectful of prayers, they were sitting on the bulwarks amidships, eagerly watching two fishing lines which they had put over into the water. Stone grinned at sight of them.

"Di sini, lu!" His voice bit out like a whiplash. "Here, you! Marilah! Come!"

They jumped as though a veritable whip had flecked across their brown backs. Leaping up, they stood in amaze at sight of the American, whose revolver covered them.

"Tuan Stone!"

"Tuan Stone, you bet. Get over to the mast— jump, you dogs! Lakas! Throw your knives on the deck— that's very good. One of you put your arms around the mast— no, clear around— that's it! Now, you other boy, tie his wrists."

With the wrists of one Malay securely bound together, Stone made the second seaman embrace the mast likewise, sitting on the deck, and lashed the brown wrists in turn. Then he pocketed his revolver,- chuckling grimly.

"When that boat comes back, boys, tell 'em that the Raja of Hell Island captured you. Savvy? I'm going to take Sultan Lumpur away on a little trip, so don't worry about him. This is what you get for forgetting your noonday prayers— eh?"

He crossed the deck to the gangway ladder, where a boat swung by its painter. Leaning over, Stone saw to his delight that it was the same boat he had prepared on the Penang— the same in which he had come ashore. Lashed to the thwarts was the mast with the sail wrapped around it, two oars atop of all.

"Good!" exclaimed Stone exultantly. "The game's won!"

The painter in his hand, he towed the boat aft to the high, carved stern of the proa. There, because of the gilded carving that jutted out, he was unable to see the stern window below, but sent his voice ringing down in a cheerful hail.

"Miss Bretton! All well?"

"Yes!" The answer floated up. "Where are you?"

"On deck above. Try and catch this line, will you?"

Leaning far over, he swung the loose end of the painter in below him. At the third attempt it was caught and held.

"All right. I have it!"

"Hang on to it until I get down, then," responded the American.

He swiftly regained the companionway and slipped below. The doors of the passage were closed, and Stone did not think it worth while to intimidate Benbow further. He hastened on to the end door, flung it open— and at sight of Miss Bretton at the stern window, quite forgot to lock the door after him.

"Bully for you!" Smiling, Stone took the painter from her and hooked the knotted end in the gilded carving. "Now, let's get our freight in. You're willing to take a little boat ride, I hope? Back to civilization?"

"Willing!" She laughed, a trifle hysterically. "Oh, can we?"

"Upon the honor of a raja, ma'am! In ten minutes this breeze will be sending us over the bar, and in twenty minutes we'll be spanking south on the briny deep! Here goes."

He lifted the limp figure of Sultan Lumpur by the collar, shoved the body royal through the window, and dropped it pitilessly into the bow of the boat below.

"Taking him as a hostage for a while," he explained briefly. "Now, if you'll get down into the boat yourself, I'll pass you the provisions."

"Thank you," she said simply, taking his hand.

Very carefully Stone helped her through the window and lowered her into the wide stern-sheets of the boat. Then he handed down the bottled water and provisions, directing her how to stow them in the boat locker and between the thwarts, and last of all sent down the Sultan's humidor of fine cheroots.

"Just a minute, now!"

Darting into the royal bedroom, Stone seized whatever pillows and quilts came to hand, and sent them down to make a comfortable nest for the girl behind the after-thwart. Then, bidding her unlash the mast and oars, Stone turned about for his final move.

Crossing to the door, he uncovered the knocked-out quartermaster and dragged the bound and gagged man to the stern window, bidding him stand upright and look down at the boat underneath.

"Now, then," he said, turning the Malay toward himself again, "you see that I am going away, and that Sultan Lumpur is in my power?"

The quartermaster nodded.

"Good. You'll be released in an hour, when the other quartermaster comes back with that boat. You tell him, and tell Tuan Benbow likewise, that if you attempt to pursue us, I'll shoot Sultan Lumpur at first sight of you— savvy? Good. Stay here until sunset, then go on south with the proa and put in at Kuala Trengore; you ought to reach it early in the morning. You'll find Sultan Lumpur there waiting for you, safe and unhurt— I give you my word as to that. But if you try to follow, he'll be the first to die. All set?"

The Malay nodded. Stone knew that in their implicit loyalty these men would not risk the threat carried into effect, and that they would not allow Benbow to overrule them. The proa would remain where she was until evening.

"Here, sit down and be out of my way—"

Stone was just pushing the bound Malay into the nearest chair, to clear his own way through the window, when he saw the man's eyes dart suddenly to the door of the passage behind him. Almost subconsciously, he sensed danger— and dropped to the floor like a plummet, gripping at his revolver.

As he dropped, the deafening burst of a revolver-shot filled the cabin. Twisting about on the floor, Stone saw the portly figure of Benbow in the doorway, weapon in hand. The wily skipper had slipped unobserved to the door, and his deliberate attempt at murder had been thwarted only by the startled glance of the bound quartermaster.

Even as these thoughts flitted through Stone's brain, his finger pressed the trigger of his own revolver. Benbow, who had been peering forward for a second shot, dropped his weapon and clapped both hands to his chest; then, the life stricken mutely out of him, his knees loosened and he sank to the deck.

"Inefficient— inefficient to the last!" muttered Stone, rising and frowning at the skipper's body in sudden cold anger. "You couldn't even shoot me down from behind— Lord knows I tried to keep from this—"

He whirled, slipped lithely through the window, jerked loose the painter, and dropped down into the boat. Miss Bretton caught and steadied him, staring at him from a pallid face.

"What— what was that shooting? No trouble, surely?"

"No, no trouble." Stone laughed grimly and stepped across the thwarts to the mast. "It was merely an accident."

And, under his breath he added, "An accident of inefficiency!"

7: Exit the Raja

THE Penang's boat was dancing merrily to the south, Stone at the tiller. Beside him was Agnes Bretton, freshly wakened from her nap on the pillows, and now engaged in pinning up her hair against the breeze.

Just abaft the mast sat Sultan Lumpur, the greenish hue that mottled his brown face making him look very much like the great jade Hanuman that sits in the Meilmun shrine. He had never been abroad in an open ship's boat before, and felt extremely uncomfortable.

Off to the right was the line of coast mountains, purple as royal amethyst under the setting sun that was lowering itself behind their crests. The rest was wind and sea— sea that slavered blood-scarlet under the sunset skies, the white-tipped waves combing up at the flying boat like the water-fingers of an Hiroshige print.

Stone looked into the girl eyes and laughed.

"Going home! Feeling better, eh? This wind is whipping color into your cheeks, and no mistake! Where 'll I drop you— New York, Boston, Chicago, Frisco—"

"Nowhere at all!" cried the girl gaily. "This is wonderful, wonderful! Oh, that lagoon seems like an evil dream—"

"Look here!" Stone's left hand crept over the tiller and caught hers, compelling her eyes to lift to his. "Look here, Agnes! I don't know anything about you— except you; and that's enough. The past two days have been like a thousand years to me, girl— but tell me one thing, please. Is— is there any one waiting for you at home, or out here?"

"Any one waiting?" She gazed into his eyes for a moment, uncomprehending; then her eyes widened suddenly. "Oh! You mean like that— no, no!" In her gray eyes was alarm, yet she did not try to free herself from Stone's grip.

"Then I can tell you that I want you— that I love you!" he said almost fiercely. "Will you marry me? After we get out of all this, after we get back to civilization and the prosaic ways of our own kind— after all this, will you marry me? God knows I love you with all my heart, little woman! I believe I've loved you from that first moment I stepped into your cabin on the Penang and looked into your eyes! Can you give up the missionary work and all that— can you go home with me, Dick Stone? Or can't you?"

She gazed into his eyes, paling. She seemed unable to speak. Then suddenly her eyes flitted forward, and color surged again into her cheeks.

"Not— not with him— there!" She nodded toward the drooping figure of Sultan Lumpur. "If he were out of sight— it would be so different—"

"Oh— him!" In contempt Stone swung his voice forward. "You— Sultan! Crawl back here. I want to speak with you. Move lively, you swine! Crawl!"

Lumpur crawled, in terrible fright. Stone reached forward a moment later and with one hand perked the man partially upright on the thwart.

"Now listen well, Sultan Lumpur! We'll be in Kuala Trengore before dawn to-morrow— with the British resident, savvy? Your cursed barge will call for you there to-morrow, and the best thing you can do is to wait for it and go away from there in a confounded hurry, keeping your mouth shut. Understand? You'd better! Once let the story get out about how Miss Bretton came at your urging, and what happened betwixt you and her— and the British would put a new Sultan at Kuala Gajah. Eh? You're darned right they would!

"Well, no British are handling this. You keep your mouth shut and you'll get out scot free. This time, my bucko, you've tried to dance a jig with the American eagle, haven't you?" Stone shook the little man savagely. "Huh! Well, you've learned something about Americans that 'll hold you for some while, I guess. You'd better be blamed grateful that I, the Raja of Hell Island, don't sling you overboard and let you swim to perdition. I ought to do it, by the Lord Harry!"

Sultan Lumpur looked at the cresting waves and uttered a prayer to Allah.

"Now get for'ard and stay there— plumb up in the bow!" commanded Stone, releasing him. "When I get ready I'll pass you up some biscuit and water. Stay up there, and stay shut up, and if you dare make any complaint when we get to Kuala Trengore I'll take the hide off your measly body and make it into a snare-drum. Hike!"

Sultan Lumpur limply made his way forward of the mast. Once in the bows, he collapsed, and stayed collapsed. His ancestors had been pirates, but the active motion of a small boat in a brisk sea will cause even piratical blood to become squeamish. Sultan Lumpur was decidedly squeamish— very seasick indeed, to put it bluntly. He was also very sick of mind, because he knew that this infidel spoke the truth; there would be a new Sultan in Kuala Gajah if the British heard the story of Miss Bretton.

"Now," said Stone briefly, "he's out of sight."

"You're exceedingly ferocious— sometimes!" observed Miss Bretton. "Wouldn't you hate to have a wife who would be so terribly afraid of you all the time— as I am?"

The words drove fear into Stone's heart.

"No," he responded thickly. "No. That was the Raja of Hell Island speaking to the Sultan. The raja's dead, Miss Bretton— Dick Stone isn't that sort at all, not with— with you—"

He turned then and looked into her laughing, flushed face, and finally understood.

Then the boat almost jibed, and rushed on into the tropic night with the happiness of souls at her tiller; and with Kama, the god of love, watching over her as she fled into the south.

_______________

2: The House Opposite

Anthony Hope

Anthony Hope Hawkins, 1863-1933

The Golden Book Magazine,  March 1929

Best known for his Ruritanian romances Prisoner of Zenda and Rupert of Hentzau, he also wrote many short stories, which are more or less forgotten.

WE were talking over the sad case of young Algy Groom; I was explaining to Mrs. Hilary exactly what had happened.

"His father gave him," said I, "a hundred pounds, to keep him for three months in Paris while he learnt French."

"And very liberal too," said Mrs. Hilary.

"It depends where you dine," said I. "However, that question did not arise, for Aley, went to the Grand Prix the day after he arrived—"

"A horse-race?" asked Mrs. Hilary, with great contempt.

"Certainly the competitors are horses," I rejoined. "And there he, most unfortunately, lost the whole sum, without learning any French to speak of."

"How disgusting!" exclaimed Mrs. Hilary, and little Miss Phyllis gasped in horror.

"Oh, well," said Hilary, with much bravery (as it struck me), "his father's very well off."

"That doesn't make it a bit better," declared his wife.

"There's no mortal sin in a little betting, my dear. Boys will be boys—"

"And even that," I interposed, ''wouldn't matter if we could only prevent girls from being girls."

Mrs. Hilary, taking no notice whatever of me, pronounced sentence.

"He grossly deceived his father," she said, and took up her embroidery.

"Most of us have grossly deceived our parents before now," said I. 'We should all have to confess to something of the sort."

"I hope you're speaking for your own sex," observed Mrs. Hilary.

"Not more than yours," said I. "You used to meet Hilary on the pier when your father wasn't there— you told me so."

"Father had authorized my acquaintance with Hilary."

"I hate quibbles," said I.

There was a pause. Mrs. Hilary stitched: Hilary observed that the day was fine.

"Now," I pursued carelessly, "even Miss Phyllis here has been known to deceive her parents."

"Oh, let the poor child alone, anyhow," said Mrs. Hilary.

"Haven't you?" said I to Miss Phyllis.

I expected an indignant denial. So did Mrs. Hilary, for she remarked with a sympathetic air:

"Never mind his folly, Phyllis dear."

"Haven't you, Miss Phyllis?" said I.

Miss Phyllis grew very red. Fearing that I was causing her pain, I was about to observe on the prospects of a Dissolution when a shy smile spread over Miss Phyllis's face.

"Yes, once," said she, with a timid glance at Mrs. Hilary, who immediately laid down her embroidery.

"Out with it!" I cried triumphantly. "Come along, Miss Phyllis. We won't tell, honor bright!"

Miss Phyllis looked again at Mrs. Hilary. Mrs. Hilary is human.

"Well, Phyllis dear," said she, "after all this time I shouldn't think it my duty—"

"lt only happened last summer," said Miss Phyllis.

Mrs. Hilary looked rather put out.

"Still," she began.

"We must have the story," said I. Little Miss Phyllis put down the sock she had been knitting.

"I was very naughty," she remarked. "It was my last term at school."

"I know that age," said I to Hilary.

"My window looked out toward the street. You're sure you won't tell? Well, there was a house opposite—"

"And a young man in it," said I.

"How did you know that?" asked Miss Phyllis, blushing immensely.

"No girls' school can keep up its numbers without one," I explained.

"Well, there was, anyhow," said Miss Phyllis: "And I and two other girls went to a course of lectures at the Town Hall on literature or something of that kind. We used to have a shilling given us for our tickets."

"Precisely," said I. "A hundred pounds!"

"No, a shilling," corrected Miss Phyllis. "A hundred pounds! How absurd, Mr. Carter!"

"Well, one day I— I—"

"You're sure you wish to go on, Phyllis?" asked. Mrs. Hilary.

"You're afraid, Mrs. Hilary," said I, severely.

"Nonsense, Mr. Carter. I thought Phyllis might—"

"I don't mind going on," said Miss Phyllis, smiling.

"One day I— I lost the other girls."'

"The other girls are always easy to lose," I observed. "And on the way there,— oh, you know, he went to the lectures."

"The young dog," said I, nudging Hillary. "I should think he did!"

"On the way there it became rather— rather foggy."

"Blessings on it!" I cried; for little Miss Phyllis's demure but roguish expression delighted me.

"And he— he found me in the fog."

"What are you doing, Mr. Carter?" cried Mrs. Hilary, angrily.

"Nothing, nothing," said I. I believe I had winked at Hilary.

" And— and we couldn't find the Town Hall."

"Oh, Phyllis!" groaned Mrs. Hilary.

Little Miss Phyllis looked alarmed for a moment. Then she smiled.

"But we found the confectioner's," said she.

"The Grand Prix," said I, pointing my forefinger at Hilary.

"He had no money at all," said Miss Phyllis.

"It's ideal!" said I.

" And— and we had tea on— on—"

"The shilling?" I cried in rapture.

"Yes," said little Miss Phyllis, ''on the shilling. And he saw me home."

"Details, please," said I.

Little Miss Phyllis shook her head.

"And left me at the door."

"Was it still foggy?" I asked.

"Yes. Or he wouldn't have—"

"Now what did he—?"

"Come to the door, Mr. Carter," said Miss Phyllis, with obvious wariness. "Oh, it was such fun!"

"I'm sure it was."

"No, I mean when we were examined in the lectures. I bought the local paper, you know, and read it up, and I got top marks easily, and Miss Green wrote to mother to say how well I had done."

"It all ends most satisfactorily," I observed.

"Yes, didn't it?" said little Miss Phyllis.

Mrs. Hilary was grave again.

"And you never told your mother, Phyllis!' she asked.

"N-no, Cousin Mary," said Miss Phyllis.

I rose and stood with my back to the fire. Little Miss Phyllis took up her sock again, but a smile still played about the corners of her mouth.

"I wonder," said I, looking up at the ceiling, "what happened at the door." Then, as no one spoke, I added:

"Pooh! I know what happened at the door."

"I'm not going to tell you anything more," said Miss Phyllis.

"But I should like to hear it in your own—"

Miss Phyllis was gone! She had suddenly risen and run from the room.

"It did happen at the door," said I.

"Fancy Phyllis!" mused Mrs. Hilary.

"I hope," said I, "that it will be a lesson to you."

"I shall have to keep my eye on her," said Mrs. Hilary.

"You can't do it," said I, in easy confidence. I had no fear of little Miss Phyllis being done out of her recreations. "Meanwhile," I pursued, "the important thing is this: my parallel is obvious and complete."

"There's not the least likeness," said Mrs. Hilary, sharply.

"As a hundred pounds are to a shilling, so is the Grand Prix to the young man opposite," I observed, taking my hat, and holding out my hand to Mrs. Hilary.

"I am very angry with you," she said. "You've made the child think there was nothing wrong in it."

"Oh! nonsense," said I. "Look how she enjoyed telling it."

Then, not heeding Mrs. Hilary, I launched into an apostrophe.

"O divine House Opposite!" I cried. "Charming House Opposite! What is a man's own dull uneventful home compared with that Glorious House Opposite! If only I might dwell forever in the House Opposite!"

"I haven't the least notion what you mean,' remarked Mrs. Hilary, stiffly. 'I suppose it's something silly— or worse."

I looked at her in some puzzle.

"Have you no longing for the House Opposite?" I asked.

Mrs. Hilary looked at me. Her eyes ceased to be absolutely blank. She put her arm through Hilary's and answered gently:

"I don't want the House Opposite."

"Ah," said I, giving my hat a brush, "but maybe you remember the House— when it was Opposite?"

Mrs. Hilary, one arm still in Hilary's, gave me her hand.

She blushed and smiled.

"Well," said she, "it was your fault: so I won't scold Phyllis."

"No, don't, my dear," said Hilary, with a laugh.

As for me, I went downstairs, and, in absence of mind, bade my cabman drive to the House Opposite. But I have never got there.

______________

3: The Man Who Stole a Meeting-House

J. T. Trowbridge

1827-1916

The Atlantic Monthly, January 1867

A prolific American short story writer in the late 19th century.  This story was reprinted once, in 1915.

ON a recent journey to the Pennsylvania oil regions, I stopped one evening with a fellow-traveler at a village which had just been thrown into a turmoil of excitement by the exploits of a horse-thief. As we sat around the tavern hearth, after supper, we heard the particulars of the rogue's capture and escape fully discussed; then followed many another tale of theft and robbery, told amid curling puffs of tobacco-smoke; until, at the close of an exciting story, one of the natives turned to my traveling acquaintance, and, with a broad laugh, said, "Kin ye beat that, stranger?"

"Well, I don't know— maybe I could if I should try. I never happened to fall in with any such tall horse-stealing as you tell of, but I knew a man who stole a meeting-house once."

"Stole a meetin'-housel That goes a little beyant anything yit,'' remarked another of the honest villagers. "Ye don't mean he stole it and carried it away?"

"Stole it and carried it away," repeated my traveling companion, seriously, crossing his legs, and resting his arm on the hack of his chair. "And, more than all that, I helped him."

"How happened that?— for you don't look much like a thief yourself."  All eyes were now turned upon my friend, a plain New England farmer, whose honest homespun appearance and candid speech commanded respect.

"I was his hired man, and I acted imder orders. His name was Jedwort— Old Jedwort, the boys called him, although he wasn't above fifty when the crooked little circumstance happened which I'll make as straight a story of as I can, if the company would like to hear it."

"Sartin, stranger! sartin! about stealin' the meetin'-house!" chimed in two or three voices.

My friend cleared his throat, put his hair behind his ears, and with a grave, smooth face, but with a merry twinkle in his shrewd gray eye, began as follows:

"Jedwort I said his name was; and I shall never forget how he looked one particular morning. He stood leaning on the front gate— or rather on the post, for the gate itself was sudi a shackling concern a child couldn't have leaned on't without breaking it down. And Jedwort was no child. Think of a stoutish, stooping, duck-legged man, with a mountainous back, strongly suggestive of a bag of grist under his shirt, and you have him. That imaginary grist had been growing heavier and heavier, and he more and more bent under it, for the last fifteen years and more, until his head and neck juSt came forward out from between his shoulders like a turtle's from its shell. His arms hung, as he walked, almost to the ground. Being curved with the elbows outward, he looked for all the world, in a front view, like a waddling interrogation-point indosed in a parenthesis. If man was ever a quadruped as I've heard some folks tell, and rose gradually from four legs to two, there must have been a time, very early in his history, when he went about like Old Jedworl.

"The gate had been a very good gate in its day. It had even been a genteel gate when Jedwort came into possession of the place by marrying his wife, who inherited it from her uncle. That was some twenty years before, and everything had been going to rack and ruin ever since.

"Jedwort himself had been going to rack and ruin, morally speaking. He was a middling decent sort of man whetf I first knew him; and I judge there must have been something about him more than common, or he never could have got such a wife. But then women do marry, sometimes, unaccountably. IVe known downright ugly and disagreeable fellows to work around, till by and by they would get a pretty girl fascinated by something in them which nobody else could see, and then marry her in spite of everything; — ^just as you may have seen a magnetizer on the stage make his subjects do just what he pleased, or a black snake charm a bird. Talk about women marrying with their eyes open, under such circumstances! They don't marry with iheir eyes open: they are put to sleep, in one sense, and a'n't more than half responsible for what they do, if they are that. Then rises the question that has puzzled wiser heads than any of ours here, and will puzzle more yet, till society is dijfferent from what it is now— how much a refined and sttisitive woman is bound to suffer from a coarse and disgusting master, legally called her husband, before she is entitled to break off a bad bargain she scarce had a hand in making. I've sat here to-night and heard about men getting goods under false pretences; youVe told some astonishing big stories, gentlemen, about rogues stealing horses and sleighs; and I'm going to tell you about the man who stole a meeting-house; but, when all is said, I guess it will be found that more extraordinary thieving than all that often goes on under our own eyes, and nobody takes any notice of it. There's such a thing, gentlemen, as getting hearts under false pretences. There's such a thing as a man's stealing a wife.

"I speak with feeling on this subject, for I had an opportunity of seeing what Mrs. Jedwort had to put up with from a man no woman of her stamp could do anjrthing but detest. She was the patientest creature you ever saw. She was even too patieiit. If I had been tied to such a cub, I think I should have cultivated the beautiful and benignant qualities of a wildcat; there would have been one good fight, and one of us would have been living, and the other would have been dead, and that would have been the end of it. But Mrs. Jedwort bore and bore untold miseries and a large number of children. She had had nine of these, and three were under the sod and six above it when Jedwort ran off with the meeting-house in the way I am going on to tell you. There was Maria, the oldest girl, a perfect picture of what her mother had been at nineteen. Then there were the two boys, Dave and Dan, fine young fellows, spite of their father. Then came Lottie, and Susie, and then Willie, a little four-year-old.

"It was amazing to see what the mother would do to keep her family looking decent with the little means she had. For Jedwort was the tightest screw ever you saw. It was avarice that had spoiled him, and came so near turning him into a beast. The boys used to say he grew so bent looking in the dirt for pennies. That was true of his mind, if not of his body. He was a poor man, and a pretty respectable man, when he married his wife; but he had no sooner come into possession of a little property than he grew crazy for more.

There are a good many men in the world, that nobody looks upon as monomaniacs, who are crazy in just that sort of way. They are all for laying up money, depriving themselves of comforts, and their families of the advantages of society aAd education, just to add a few dollars to their hoard every year; and so they keep on till they die and leave it to their children, who would be much better off if a little more had been invested in the cultivation of their minds and manners, and less in stocks and bonds.

"Jedwort was just one of that class of men, although perhaps he carried the fault I speak of a little to excess. A dollar looked so big to him, and he held it so close, that at last he couldn't see much of anything else. By degrees he lost all regard for decency and his neighbor's opinions. His children went barefoot, even after they got to be great boys and girls, because he was too mean to buy them shoes. It was pitiful to see a nice, interesting girl, like Maria, go about looking as she did, while her father was piling his money into the bank. She wanted to go to school and learn music, and be somebody; but he wouldn't keep a hired girl, and so she was obliged to stay at home and do housework; and she could no more have got a dollar out of him to pay for clothes and tuition than you could squeeze sap out of a hoe-handle.

"The only way his wife could ever get anything new for the family was by stealing butter from her own dairy, and selling it behind his back. 'You needn't say anything to Mr. Jedwort about this batch of butter,' she would hint to the storekeeper; 'but you may hand the money to me, or I will take my pay in goods.' In this way a new gown, or a piece of cloth for the boys' coats, or something else the family needed, would be smuggled into the house, with fear and trembling lest old Jedwort should make a row and find where the money came from.

"The house inside was kept neat as a pin; but everything around it looked terribly shiftless. It was built originally in an ambitious style, and painted white. It had four tall front pillars, supporting the portion of the roof that came over the porch— lifting up the eyebrows of the house, if I may so express myself, and making it look as if it was going to sneeze. Half the blinds were off their hinges, and the rest flapped in the wind. The front doorstep had rotted away. The porch had once a good floor, but for years Jedwort had been in the habit of going to it whenever he wanted a board for the pig-pen, until not a bit of floor was left.

"But I began to tell about Jedwort leaning on the gate that morning. We had all noticed him; and as Dave and I brought in the milk, his mother asked, 'What is your father planning now? Half the time he stands there, looking up the road; or else he's walking up that way in a brown study.'

" 'He's got his eye on the old meeting-house,'  says Dave, setting down his pail. 'He has been watching it and walking round it, off and on for a week.'

"That was the first intimation I had of what the old fellow was up to. But after breakfast he followed me out of the house, as if he had something on his mind to say to me.

" 'Stark,' says he, at last, 'you've always insisted on't that I wasn't an enterprisin' man.'

" 'I insist on't still,' says I; for I was in the habit of talking mighty plain to him, and joking him pretty hard sometimes. 'If I had this farm, I'd show you enterprise. You wouldn't see the hogs in the garden half the time, just for want of a good fence to keep 'em out. You wouldn't see the very best strip of land lying waste, just for want of a ditch. You wouldn't see that stone wall by the road tumbling down year after year, till by and by you won't be able to see it for the weeds and thistles.'

" 'Yes,' says he, sarcastically, 'ye'd layout ten times as much money on the place as ye'd ever git back agin, I've no doubt. But I believe in economy.'

"That provoked me a little, and I said, 'Economy! You're one of the kind of men that'll skin a flint for sixpence and spoil a jack-knife worth a shilling. You waste fodder and grain enough every three years to pay for a bigger barn— to say nothing of the inconvenience.'

" 'Wal, Stark,' says he, grinning and scratching his head, 'I've made up my mind to have a bigger barn, if I have to steal one.'

" 'That won't be the first thing youVe stole, neither/ says I.

"He flared up at that. 'Stole?' says he. 'What did I ever steal?'

" 'Well, for one thing, the rails the freshet last spring drifted off from Talcott's land onto yours, and you grabbed: what was that but stealing?'

" 'That was luck. He couldn't swear to his rails. By the way, they'll jest come in play now.'

" 'They've come in play already,' says I. 'They've gone on to the old fences all over the farm, and I could use a thousand more without making much show.'

" 'That's 'cause you're so dumbed extravagant with rails, as you are with everything else.' A few loads can be spared from the fences here and there, as well as not. Harness up the team, boys, and git together enough to make about ten rods o' zigzag, two rails high.'

" 'Two rails?' says Dave, who had a healthy contempt for the old man's narrow, contracted way of doing things. 'What's the good of such a fence as that?'

" 'It'll be,' says I, 'like the single bar in music. When our old singing master asked his class once what a single bar was. Bill Wilkins spoke up and said, "It's a bar that horses and cattle jump over, and pigs and sheep run under."

What do you expect to keep out with two rails?'

" 'The law, boys, the law,' says Jedwort. 'I know what I'm about. I'll make a fence the law can't run under nor jump over; and I don't care a cuss for the cattle and pigs. You git the rails, and I'll rip some boards off'n the pig-pen to make stakes.'

" 'Boards a'n't good for nothin' for stakes, says Dave. 'Besides, none can't be spared from the pig-pen.'

" 'I'll have boards enough in a day or two for forty pig-pens,' says Jedwort. '' Bring along the rails and dump 'em out in the road for the present, and say nothin' to nobody.'

"We got the rails, and he made his stakes; and right away after dinner he called us out. 'Come, boys,' says he, 'now we'll astonish the natives.'

"The wagon stood in the road, ^th the last jag of rails still on it. Jedwort piled on his stakes, and threw on the crowbar and axe, while we were hitching up the team.

" 'Now, drive on. Stark,' says he.

" 'Yes; but where shall I drive to?'

"'To the old meetin'-house,' says Jedwort, trudging on ahead.

"The old meeting-house stood on an open common, at the northeast corner of his farm. A couple of cross-roads bounded it on two sides; and it was bounded on the other two by Jedwort's overgrown stone wall. It was a square, old-fashioned building, with a low steeple, that had a belfry, but no bell in it, and with a high, square pulpit and high, straight-backed pews inside. It was now some time since meetings had been held there; the old society that used to meet there having separated, one division of it building a fashionable chapel in the North Village, and the other a fine new church at the Centre.

"Now, the peculiarity about the old church property was, that nobody had any legal title to it. A log meeting-house had been built there when the country was first settled and the land was of no account. In the course of time that was torn down, and a good frame house put up in its place. As it belonged to the whole community, no title, either to the house or land, was ever recorded ; and it wasn't until after the society dissolved that the question came up as to how the property was to be disposed of. While the old deacons were carefully thinking it over, Jedwort was on hand, to settle it by putting in his claim.

" 'Now, boys,' says he, 'ye see what I'm up to.'

" 'Yes,' says I, provoked as I could be at the mean trick, 'and I knew it was some such mischief all along. You never show any enterprise, as you call it, unless it is to get the start of a neighbor. Then you are wide awake; then you are busy as the Devil in a gale of wind.'

" 'But what are you up to, pa?' says Dan, who didn't see the trick yet.

"The old man says, 'I'm goin' to fence in the rest part of my farm.'

" 'What rest part?'

" 'This part that never was fenced; the old meetin'-house common.'

" 'But, pa,' says Dave, disgusted as I was, 'you've no claim on that.'

" 'Wal, if I ha'n't, I'll make a claim. Give me the crowbar. Now, here's the comer, nigh as I can squint' ; and he stuck the bar into the ground. 'Make a fence to here from the wall, both sides.'

" 'Sho, pal' says Dan, looking bewildered; 'ye a'n't goin' to fence in the old meetin'-house, be ye?'

" That's jest what I'm goin' to do. Go and git some big stuns from the wall— the biggest ye can find, to rest the comers of the fence on. String the rails along by the road. Stark, and go for another load. Don't stand gawpin' therel'

'' 'Gawpin'?' says I; 'it's enough to make anybody gawp. You do beat all the critters I ever had to deal with. Haven't ye disgraced your family enough already, without stealing a meeting-house?'

" 'How have I disgraced my family?' says he.

"Then I put it to him. 'Look at your children; it's all your wife can do to prevent 'em from growing up in rags and dirt and ignorance, because you are too close-fisted to clothe 'em decently or send 'em to school. Look at your house and yard. To see an Irishman's shanty in such a condition seems appropriate enough, but a genteel place, a house with pillars, run down and gone to seed like that, is an eyesore to the community. Then look at your wife. You never would have had any property to mismanage if it hadn't been for her; and see the way you show your gratitude for it. You won't let her go into company, nor have company at home; you won't allow a hired girl in the house, but she and Maria have to do all the drudgery. You make perfect slaves of 'em. I swear, if it wa'n't for your wife, I wouldn't work for you an hour longer; but she's the best woman in the world, after all you've done to break her spirit, and I hate to leave her.'

"The old fellow squirmed, and wrenched the crowbar in the ground, then snarled back: 'Yes! you're waitin' for me to die; then you mean to step into my shoes.'

" 'I hope you'll have a decenter pair than them you've got on, if I'm to step into 'em,' says I.

" 'One thing about it,' says he, 'she won't have ye.'

" 'I should think,' says I, 'a woman that would marry you would have 'most anybody.'

"So we had it back and forth, till by and by he left me to throw off the rails, and went to show the boys how to build the fence.

" 'Look here,' says he; 'jest put a thunderin' big stun to each corner; then lay your rail on; then drive your pair of stakes over it like a letter X.' He drove a pair. 'Now put on your rider. There's your letter X, ridin' one length of rails and carryin' another. That's what I call puttin' yer alphabet to a practical use; and I say there a'n't no sense in havin' any more edication than ye can put to a practical use. I've larnin' enough to git along in the world; and if my boys have as much as I've got, they'll git along. Now work spry, for there comes Deacon Talcott.'

" 'Wal, wal!' says the Deacon, coming up, puffing with excitement; Vhat ye doin' to the old meetin'-house?'

" 'Wal,' says Jedwort, driving away at his stakes, and never looking up, 'I've been considerin' some time what I should do with't, and I've concluded to make a barn on't.'

" 'Make a barn! make a barn!' cries the Deacon. 'Who give ye liberty to make a barn of the house of God?'

" 'Nobody; I take the liberty. Why shouldn't I do what I please with my own prop'ty?'

" 'Your own property— what do you mean? 'Ta'n't your meetin'-house.'

" 'Whose is't, if 'ta'n't mine?' says Jedwort, lifting his turtle's head from between his horizontal shoulders, and grinning in the Deacon's face.

" 'It belongs to the society,' says the Deacon.'

" 'But the s'ciety's pulled up stakes and gone off.'

" 'It belongs to individooals of the society — to individooals.'

" 'Wal, I'm an individooal,' says Jedwort.

" 'Youl you never went to meetin' here a dozen times in your lifel'

" 'I never did have my share of the old meetin'-house, that's a fact' says Jedwort; 'but I'll make it up now.'

" 'But what are ye fencin' up the common for?' says the Deacon.

" 'It'll make a good calf-pastur'. I've never had my share o' the vally o' that, either. I've let my neighbors' pigs and critters run on't long enough; and now I'm jest goin' to take possession o' my own.'

" 'Your own!' says the Deacon, in perfect consternation. 'You've no deed on't.'

" 'Wal, have you?'

" 'No— but— the society—'

" 'The s'ciety, I tell ye,' says Jedwort, holding his head up longer than I ever knew him to hold it up at a time and grinning all the while in Talcott's face— 'the s'ciety is split to pieces. There a'n't no s'ciety now— any more'n a pig's a pig arter you've butchered and e't it. You've e't the pig amongst ye, and left me the pen. The s'ciety never had a deed o' this 'ere prop'ty; and no man never had a deed o' this e're prop'ty. My wife's gran'daddy, when he took up the land here, was a good-natered sort of man, and he allowed a corner on't for his neighbors to put up a tem pVary meetin'-house. That was finally used up— the kind o' preachin' they had them days was enough to use up in a little time any house that wa'n't fire-proof; and when that was preached to pieces, they put up another shelter in its place. This is it. And now't the land a'n't used no more for the puppose 'twas lent for, it goes back nat'rally to the estate 'twas took from, and the buildin's along with it.'

" 'That's all a sheer fabrication,' says the Deacon. 'This land was never a part of what's now your farm, any more than it was a part of mine.'

" 'Wal,' says Jedwort, 'I look at it in my way, and you've a perfect right to look at it in your way. But I'm goin' to make sure o' my way, by puttin' a fence round the hull concern.'

" 'And you're usin' some of my rails for to do it with!' says the Deacon.

" 'Can you swear they're your rails?'

"'Yes, I can; they're the rails the freshet carried off from my farm last spring, and landed on to youm.'

" 'So I've heard ye say. But can you swear to the partic'lar rails? Can you swear, for instance, 't this 'ere is your rail? or this 'ere one?'

" 'No; I can't swear to precisely them two— but—'

" 'Can you swear to these two? or to any one or two? says Jedwort. "No, ye can't. Ye can swear to the lot in general, but you can't swear to any partielar rail, and that kind o' swearin' won't stand law. Deacon Talcott. I don't boast of bein' an edicated man, but I know suthin' o' what law is, and when I know it, I dror a line there, and I toe that line, and I make my neighbors toe that line. Deacon Talcott, Nine p'ints o' the law is possession, and I'll have possession o' this 'ere house and land by fencin' on't in; and though every man 't comes along should say these 'ere rails belong to them, I'll fence it in with these 'ere very rails.'

" 'Jedwort said this, wagging his obstinate old head, and grinning with his face turned up pugnaciously at the Deacon; then went to work again as if he had settled the question, and didn't wish to discuss it any further.

"As for Talcott, he was too full of wrath and boiling indignation to answer such a speech. He knew that Jedwort had managed to get the start of him with regard to the rails, by mixing a few of his own with those he had stolen, so that nobody could tell 'em apart; and he saw at once that the meeting-house was in danger of going the same way, just for want of an owner to swear out a clear title to the property. He did just the wisest thing when he swallowed his vexation, and hurried off to alarm the leading men of the two societies, and to consult a lawyer.

" 'He'll stir up the old town like a bumblebee's nest,' says Jedwort. 'Hurry up, boys, or there'll be a buzzin' round our ears 'fore we git through!'

" 'I wish ye wouldn't, pal' says Dave. 'Why don't we 'tend to our own business, and be decent, like other folks? I'm sick of this kind of life.'

" 'Quit it, then,' says Jedwort.

" 'Do you tell me to quit it?' says Dave, dropping the end of a rail he was handling.

" 'Yes, I do; and do it dumbed quick, if ye can't show a proper respect to your father!"

"Dave turned white as a sheet, and he trembled as he answered back, 'I should be glad to show you respect, if you was a man I could feel any respect for.'

"At that Jedwort caught hold of the iron bar that was sticking in the ground, where he had been making a hole for a stake, and pulled away at it. "I'll make a stake-hole in you!' says he, 'It's enough to have a sassy hired man round, without bein' jawed by one's own children!'

"Dave was out of reach by the time the bar came out of the ground.

" 'Come here, you villain!' says the old man,

" 'I'd rather be excused,' says Dave, backing off. 'I don't want any stake-holes made in me to-day. You told me to quit, and I'm going to. You may steal your own meeting-houses in future; I won't help.'

"There was a short race. Dave's young legs proved altogether too smart for the old waddler's, and he got off. Then Jedwort, coming back, wheezing and sweating, with his iron bar, turned savagely on me.

" 'I've a good notion to tell you to go too!'

" 'Very well, why don't ye?' says I. 'I'm ready.'

" 'There's no livin' with ye, ye're gettin' so dumbed sassy! What I keep ye for is a mystery to me.'

" 'No, it a'n't; you keep me because you can't get another man to fill my place. You put up with my sass for the money I bring ye in.'

" 'Hold your yawp,' says he, 'and go and git another load of rails. If ye see Dave, tell him to come back to work.'

"I did see Dave, but, instead of telling him to go back, I advised him to put out from the old home and get his living somewhere else. His mother and Maria agreed with me; and when the old man came home that night Dave was gone.

"When I got back with my second load, I found the neighbors assembling to witness the stealing of the old meeting-house, and Jedwort was answering their remonstrances.

" 'A meetin'-house is a respectable kind o' prop'ty to have round,' says he. 'The steeple'll make a good show behind my house. When folks ride by, they'll stop and look, and say, "There's a man keeps a private meetin'-house of his own." I can have preachin' in't, too, if I want. I'm able to hire a preacher of my own, or I can preach myself and save the expense.'

"Of course, neither sarcasm nor argument could have any effect on such a man. As the neighbors were going away, Jedwort shouted after 'em: 'Call agin. Glad to see ye. There'll be more sport in a few days, when I take the dumbed thing away.' (The dumbed thing was the meeting-house.) 'I invite ye all to see the show. Free gratis. It'll be good as a circus, and a 'tarnal sight cheaper. The women can bring their knittin', and the gals their everlastin' tattin'. As it'll be a pious kind o' show, bein' it's a meetin'-house, guess I'll have notices gi'n out from the pulpits the Sunday afore.'

"The common was fenced in by sundown; and the next day Jedwort had over a house-mover from the North Village to look and see what could be done with the building. 'Can ye snake it over, and drop it back of my house?' says he.

"It'll be a hard job,' says old Bob, 'without you tear down the steeple fust.'

"But Jedwort said, 'What's a meetin'-house 'thout a steeple? I've got my heart kind o' set on that steeple, and I'm bound to go the hull hog on this 'ere concern, now I've begun.'

" 'I vow,' says Bob, examining the timbers, 'I won't warrant but the old thing'll all tumble down.'

" 'I'll resk it.'

" 'Yes; but who'll resk the lives of me and my men?'

" 'O, you'll see if it's re'ly goin' to tumble, and look out. I'll engage 't me and my boys'll do the most dangerous part of the work. Dumbed if I wouldn't agree to ride in the steeple and ring the bell if there was one,'

"I've never heard that the promised notices were read from the pulpits; but it wasn't many days before Bob came over again, bringing with him this time his screws and ropes and rollers, his men and timbers, horse and capstan; and at last the old house might have been seen on its travels.

"It was an exciting time all around. The societies found that Jedwort's fence gave him the first claim to house and land unless a regular siege of the law was gone through to beat him off— and then it might turn out that he would beat them. Some said fight him; some said let him be— the thing a'n't worth going to law for; and so, as the leading men couldn't agree as to what should be done, nothing was done. That was just what Jedwort had expected, and he laughed in his sleeve while Bob and his boys screwed up the old meeting-house, and got their beams under it, and set it on rollers, and slued it around, and slid it on the timbers laid for it across into Jedwort's field, steeple foremost, like a locomotive on a track.

"It was a trying time for the women folks at home. Maria had declared that, if her father did persist in stealing the meeting-house, she would not stay a single day after it, but would follow Dave.

"That touched me pretty close, for, to tell the truth, it was rather more Maria than her mother that kept me at work for the old man. 'If you go,' says I, 'then there is no object for me to stay; I shall go too.'

" 'That's what I supposed,' says she; 'for there's no reason in the world why you should stay. But then Dan will go; and who'll be left to take sides with mother? That's what troubles me. Oh, if she could only go too! But she won't; and she couldn't if she would, with the other children depending on her. Dear, dear! what shall we do?'

"The poor girl put her head on my shoulder, and cried; and if I should own up to the truth, I suppose I cried a little too. For where's the man that can hold a sweet woman's head on his shoulder, while she sobs out her trouble, and he hasn't any power to help her— who, I say, can do any less, under such circumstances, than drop a tear or two for company?

" 'Never mind; don't hurry,' says Mrs. Jedwort. 'Be patient, and wait a while, and it'll all turn out right, I'm sure.'

" 'Yes, you always say, "Be patient, and wait!" ' says Maria, brushing back her hair. 'But, for my part, I'm tired of waiting, and my patience has given out long ago. We can't always live in this way, and we may as well make a change now as ever. But I can't bear the thought of going and leaving you.'

"Here the two younger girls came in; and, seeing that crying was the order of the day, they began to cry; and when they heard Maria talk of going, they declared they would go; and even little Willie, the four-year-old, began to howl.

" 'There, there! Maria! Lottie! Susie!' said Mrs. Jedwort, in her calm way; 'Willie, hush upl I don't know what we are to do; but I feel that something is going to happen that will show us the right way, and we are to wait. Now go and wash the dishes, and set the cheese.'

"That was just after breakfast, the second day of the moving; and sure enough, something like what she prophesied did happen before an- other sun.

"The old frame held together pretty well till along toward night, when the steeple showed signs of seceding. 'There she goes! She'd falling now!' sung out the boys, who had been hanging around all day in hopes of seeing the thing tumble.

"The house was then within a few rods of where Jedwort wanted it; but Bob stopped right there, and said it wasn't safe to haul it another inch. 'That steeple's bound to come down, if we do,' says he.

" 'Not by a dumbed sight, it a'n't,' says Jedwort. 'Them cracks a'n't nothin'; the joints is all firm yit.' He wanted Bob to go up and examine; but Bob shook his head— the concern looked too shaky. Then he told me to go up; but I said I hadn't lived quite long enough, and had a little rather be smoking my pipe on terra firma. Then the boys began to hoot. 'Dumbed if ye a'n't all a set of cowards,' says he. 'I'll go up myself.'

"We waited outside while he climbed up inside. The boys jumped on the ground to jar the steeple, and make it fall. One of them blew a horn— as he said, to bring down the old Jericho— and another thought he'd help things along by starting up the horse, and giving the building a little wrench. But Bob put a stop to that; and finally out came a head from the belfry window; It was Jedwort, who shouted down to us: 'There ain't a j'int or brace gi'n out. Start the boss, and I'll ride. Pass me up that 'ere horn, and—'

"Just then there came a cracking and loosening of timbers; and we that stood nearest had only time to jump out of the way, when down came the steeple crashing to the ground, with Jedwort in it."

"I hope it killed the cuss," said one of the village story-tellers.

"Worse than that," replied my friend; "it just, cracked his skull— not enough to put an end to his miserable life, but only to take away what little sense he had. We got the doctors to him, and they patched up his broken head; and, by George, it made me mad to see the fuss the women folks made over him. It would have been my way to let him die; but they were as anxious and attentive to him as if he had been the kindest husband and most indulgent father that ever lived; for that's women's style: they're unreasoning creatures.

"Along toward morning, we persuaded Mrs. Jedwort, who had been up all night, to lie down a spell and catch a little rest, while Maria and I sat up and watched with the old man. All was still except our whispers and his heavy breathing; there was a lamp burning in the next room; when all of a sudden a light shone into the windows, and about the same time we heard a roaring and crackling sound. We looked out, and saw the night all lighted up, as if by some great fire. As it appeared to be on the other side of the house, we ran to the door, and there what did we see but the old meeting-house all in flames! Some fellows had set fire to it to spite Jedwort. It must have been burning some time inside; for when we looked out the flames had burst through the roof.

"As the night was perfectly still, except a light wind blowing away from the other buildings on the place, we raised no alarm, but just stood in the door and saw it burn. And a glad sight it was to us, you may be sure. I just held Maria close to my side, and told her that all was well— it was the best thing that could happen. 'O yes,' says she, 'it seems to me as though a kind Providence was burning up his sin and home out of our sight.

"I had never yet said anything to her about marriage— for the time to come at that had never seemed to arrive; but there's nothing like a little excitement to bring things to a focus. You've seen water in a tumbler just at the freezing-point, but not exactly able to make up its mind to freeze, when a little jar will set the crystals forming, and in a minute what was liquid is ice. It was the shock of events that night that touched my life into crystals— not of ice, gentlemen, by any manner of means.

"After the fire had got along so far that the meeting-house was a gone case, an alarm was given probably by the very fellows that set it, and a hundred people were on the spot before the thing had done burning.

"Of course these circumstances put an end to the breaking up of the family. Dave was sent for, and came home. Then, as soon as we saw that the old man's brain was injured so that he wasn't likely to recover his mind, the boys and I went to work and put that farm through a course of improvement it would have done your eyes good to see. The children were sent to school, and Mrs. Jedwort had all the money she wanted now to clothe them, and to provide the house with comforts, without stealing her own butter. Jedwort was a burden; but, in spite of him, that was just about the happiest family, for the next four years, that ever lived on this planet.

"Jedwort soon got his bodily health, but I don't think he knew one of us again after his hurt. As near as I could get at his state of mind, he thought he had been changed into some sort of animal. He seemed inclined to take me for a master, and for four years he followed me around like a dog. During that time he never spoke, but only whined and growled. When I said, 'Lie down,' he'd lie down; and when I whistled he'd come.

"I used sometimes to make him work; and certain simple things he would do very well, as long as I was by. One day I had a jag of hay to get in; and, as the boys were away, I thought I'd have him load it. I pitched it on to the wagon about where it ought to lie, and looked to him only to pack it down. There turned out to be a bigger load than I had expected, and the higher it got, the worse the shape of it, till finally, as I was starting it toward the barn, off it rolled, and the old man with it, head foremost.

"He struck a stone heap, and for a moment I thought he was killed. But he jumped up and spoke for the first time. 'I'll blow it,' says he, finishing the sentence he had begun four years before, when he called for the horn to be passed up to him.

"I couldn't have been much more astonished if one of the horses had spoken. But I saw at once that there was an expression in Jedwort's face that hadn't been there since his tumble in the belfry; and I knew that, as his wits had been knocked out of him by one blow on the head, so another blow had knocked 'em in again.

" 'Where's Bob?' says he, looking all roimd.

"'Bob?' says I, not thinking at first who he meant. 'Oh, Bob is dead— he has been dead these three years.'

"Without noticing my reply, he exclaimed: 'Where did all that hay come from? Where's the old meetin'-house?'

" 'Don't you know?' says I. 'Some rogues set fire to it the night after you got hurt, and burnt it up.'

"He seemed then just beginning to realize that something extraordinary had happened.

" 'Stark,' says he, 'what's the matter with ye? You're changed.'

" 'Yes,' say I, 'I wear my beard now, and I've grown older!'

" 'Dumbed if 'ta'n't odd!' says he. 'Stark, what in thunder's the matter with me?'

" 'You've had meeting-house on the brain for the past four years,' says I; 'that's what's the matter.'

"It was some time before I could make him understand that he had been out of his head, and that so long a time had been a blank to him.

"Then he said, 'Is this my farm?'

" 'Don't you know it?' says I.

" 'It looks more slicked up than ever it used to,' says he.

" 'Yes,' says I; 'and you'll find everything else on the place slicked up in about the same way.'

" 'Where's Dave?' says he.

" 'Dave has gone to town to see about selling the wool.'

" 'Where's Dan?'

" 'Dan's in college. He takes a great notion to medicine; and we're going to make a doctor of him.'

" 'Whose house is that?' says he, as I was taking him home.

" 'No wonder you don't know it,' says I. 'It has been painted, and shingled, and had new blinds put on; the gates and fences are all in prime condition; and that's a new barn we put up a couple of years ago.'

" 'Where does the money come from, to make all these improvements?'

" 'It comes off the place,' says I. 'We haven't run in debt the first cent for anything, but we've made the farm more profitable than it ever was before.'

" 'That my house?' he repeated wonderingly, as we approached it. 'What sound is that?'

" 'That's Lottie practicing her lesson on the piano.'

" 'A pianer in my house," he muttered. 'I can't stand that!' He listened. 'It soimds pooty, though!'

" 'Yes, it does sound pretty, and I guess you'll like it How does the place suit you?'

" 'It looks pooty.' He started. 'What young lady is that?'

"It was Lottie, who had left her music and stood by the window.

" 'My dahter! ye don't say! Dumbed if she a'n't a mighty nice gal.'

" 'Yes,' says I; 'she takes after her mother.'

"'Just then Susie, who heard talking, ran to the door.

" 'Who's that agin?' says Jedwort.

"I told him.

" 'Wal, she's a mighty nice-lookin' gal!'

" 'Yes,' says I, she takes after her mother.'

"Little Willie, now eight years old, came out of the woodshed with a bow-and-arrow in his hand, and stared like an owl, hearing his father talk.

" 'What boy is that?' says Jedwort. And when I told him, he muttered, 'He's an ugly-looking brat I'

" 'He's more like his father,' says I.

"The truth is, Willie was such a fine boy the old man was afraid to praise him, for fear I'd say of him, as I'd said of the girls, that he favored his mother.

"Susie ran back and gave the alarm; and then out came mother, and Maria with her baby in her arms, for I forgot to tell you that we had been married now nigh on to two years.

"Well, the women folks were as much astonished as I had been when Jedwort first spoke, and a good deal more delighted. They drew him into the house; and I am bound to say he behaved remarkably well. He kept looking at his wife, and his children, and his grandchild, and the new paper on the walls, and the new furniture, and now and then asking a question or making a remark.

" 'It all comes back to me now,' says he at last. 'I thought I was living in the moon, with a superior race of human bein's; and this is the place, and you are the people.'

"It wasn't more than a couple of days before he began to pry around, and find fault, and grumble at the expense; and I saw there was danger of things relapsing into something like their former condition. So I took him one side, and talked to him.

" 'Jedwort,' says I, 'you're like a man raised from the grave. You was the same as buried to your neighbors, and now they come and look at you as they would at a dead man come to life. To you, it's like coming into a new world, and I'll leave it to you now, if you don't rather like the change from the old state of things to what you see around you to-day. You've seen how the family affairs go on— how pleasant everything is, and how we all enjoy ourselves. You hear the piano, and like it; you see your children sought after and respected, your wife in finer health and spirits than you've ever known her since the day she was married; you see industry and neatness everywhere on the premises; and you're a beast if you don't like all that. In short, you see that our management is a great deal better than yours; and that we beat you even in the matter of economy. Now, what I want to know is this: whether you think you'd like to fall into our way of living, or return like a hog to your wallow.'

" 'I don't say but what I like your way of livin' very well,' he grumbled.

" 'Then,' says I, 'you must just let us go ahead, as we have been going ahead. Now's the time for you to turn about and be a respectable man, like your neighbors. Just own up, and say you've not only been out of your head the past four years, but that you've been more or less out of your head the last four-and-twenty years. But say you're in your right mind now, and prove it by acting like a man in his right mind. Do that, and I'm with you; we're all with you. But go back to your old dirty ways, and you go alone. Now I sha'n't let you off till you tell me what you mean to do.'

"He hesitated some time, then said, 'Maybe you're about right. Stark; you and Dave and the old woman seem to be doin' pooty well, and I guess I'll let you go on.' "

Here my friend paused, as if his story was done; when one of the villagers asked, "About the land where the old meetin'-house stood— what ever was done with that?"

"That was appropriated for a new school-house; and there my little shavers go to school.'

"And old Jedwort, is he alive yet?"

"Both Jedwort and his wife have gone to that country where meanness and dishonesty have a mighty poor chance— where the only investments worth much are those recorded in the Book of Life. Mrs. Jedwort was rich in that kind of stock; and Jedwort's account, I guess, will compare favorably with that of some respectable people, such as we all know. I tell ye, my friends," continued my fellow-traveler, "there's many a man, both in the higher and lower ranks of life, that 't would do a deal of good, say nothing of the mercy 'twould be to their families, just to knock 'em on the head, and make Nebuchadnezzars of 'em— then, after they'd been turned out to grass a few years, let 'em come back again, and see how happy folks have been, and how well they have got along without 'em.

"I carry on the old place now," he added. "The younger girls are married off; Dan's a doctor in the North Village; and as for Dave, he and I have struck ile. I'm going out to look at our property now."

__________________

4: The Sun and the Rain

Thomas Wolfe

1900-1938

Scribner's Magazine, May 1934

Nash's Pall Mall Magazine, Sep 1934

American novelist, best known as author of "Look Homeward, Angel," (1927) and "You can't Go Home Again" (1940), but also author of many short stories.

WHEN he awoke he was filled with a numb excitement. It was a grey wintry day with snow in the air, and he expected something to happen. He had this feeling often in the country in France: it was a strange mixed feeling of desolation and homelessness, of wondering with a ghostly emptiness why he was there— and a momentary feeling of joy, and hope, and expectancy, without knowing what it was he was going to find.

In the afternoon he went down to the station and took a train that was going to Orleans. He did not know where Orleans was. The train was a mixed train, made up of goods-cars and passenger compartments. He bought a third-class ticket and got into one of the compartments. Then the shrill little whistle blew, and the train rattled out of Chartres into the countryside, in the abrupt and casual way a little French train has, and that was disquieting to him.

There was a light mask of snow on the fields, and the air was smoky: the whole earth seemed to smoke and steam and from the windows of the train one could see the wet earth and the striped cultivated pattern of the fields, and now and then some farm buildings. It did not look like America: the land looked fat and well kept, and even the smoky wintry woods had this well-kept appearance. Far off sometimes one could see tall lines of poplars and knew that there was water there.

In the compartment he found three people— an old peasant and his wife and his daughter. The old peasant had sprouting moustaches, a seamed and weather-beaten face, and small rheumy-looking eyes. His hands had a rock-like heaviness and solidity, and he kept them clasped upon his knees. His wife's face was smooth and brown, there were fine webs of wrinkles around her eyes, and her face was like an old brown bowl. The daughter had a dark sullen face and sat away from them next the window as if she were ashamed of them From time to time when they spoke to her she would answer them in an infuriated kind of voice without looking at them

The peasant began to speak amiably to him when he entered the compartment. He smiled and grinned back at the man, although he did not understand a word the man was saying, and the peasant kept on talking then, thinking he understood

The peasant took from his coat a package of the cheap powerful tobacco— the 'bleu— which the French Government provides for a few cents for the poor, and prepared to stuff his pipe. The young man pulled a package of American cigarettes from his pocket and offered them to the peasant.

'Will you have one?'

'My faith, yes,' said the peasant

He took a cigarette clumsily from the package and held it between his great stiff fingers, then he held it to the flame the young man offered, puffing at it in an unaccustomed way. Then he fell to examining it curiously, revolving it in his hands to read the label. He turned to his wife, who had followed every movement of this simple transaction with the glittering intent eyes of an animal, and began a rapid and excited discussion with her.

'It's American— this.'

'Is it good?'

'My faith, yes— it's of good quality '

'Here, let me see! What does it call itself?'

They stared dumbly at the label

'What do you call this?' said the peasant to the young man.

'Licky Streek,' said the youth, dutifully phonetical.

'L-L-Leck-ee?' they stared doubtfully 'What does that wish to say in French?'

'Je ne sais pas,' he answered.

'Where are you going?' the peasant said, staring at the youth with rheumy little eyes of fascinated curiosity.

'Orleans '

'How?' the peasant asked with a puzzled look on his face.

'Orleans '

'I do not understand,' the peasant said 'Orleans! Orleans!' the girl shouted in a furious tone 'The gentleman says he is going to Orleans '

'Ah!' the peasant cried with an air of sudden illumination. 'Orleans?'

It seemed to the youth that he had said the word just the same way the peasant said it, but he repealed again. 'Yes, Orleans '

'He is going to Orleans,' the peasant said, turning to his wife

'Ah-h!' she cried knowingly, with a great air of illumination, then both fell silent, and began to stare at the youth with curious eyes again

'What region are you from?' the peasant asked presently, still intent and puzzled, staring at him with his small eyes.

'How's that? I don't understand?'

'I say— what region are you from?'

'The gentleman is not French,' the girl shouted, as if exasperated by their stupidity. 'He is a foreigner. Can't you see that?'

'Ah-h!' the peasant cried, after a moment, with an air of astounded enlightenment Then turning to his wife he said briefly, 'He is not French. He is a stranger.'

'Ah-h!'

And then they both turned their small round eyes on him and regarded him with a fixed, animal-like attentiveness 'From what country are you?' the peasant asked presently. 'What are you?'

'I am an American '

'Ah-h! An American... He is an American,' he said, turning to his wife.

'Ah-h!'

The girl made an impatient movement, and continued to stare sullenly out the window.

Then the peasant, with the intent curiosity of an animal, began to examine his companion carefully from head to foot He looked at his shoes, his clothes, his overcoat, and finally lifted his eyes to stare at the young man's valise on the rack above his head He nudged his wife and pointed to the valise 'That's good stuff, eh?' he said in a low voice. It's real leather '

'Yes, it's good, that '

And both of them looked at the valise for some time and then turned their curious gaze upon the youth again He offered the peasant another cigarette, and the old man took one, thanking him

'It's very fine, this,' he said, indicating the cigarette. 'That costs dear, eh?'

'Six francs.'

'Ah-h! That's very dear,' and he began to look at the cigarette with increased respect,

'Why are you going to Orleans?' he asked presently 'Do you know someone there?'

'No, I am just going there to see the town '

'How?' The peasant blinked at him uncomprehendingly. 'You have business there?'

'No I am going just to visit— to see the place.'

'How?' the peasant said stupidly in a moment, looking at him 'I do not understand '

'The gentleman says he is going to see the town,' the girl broke in furiously 'Can't you understand anything?'

'I do not understand what he is saying,' the old man said to her. 'He does not speak French.'

'He speaks very well,' the girl said angrily 'I understand him very well. It is you who are stupid— that's all!'

The peasant was silent for some time now, puffing at his cigarette and looking at the young man with friendly eyes.

'America is very large— eh?' he said at length— making a wide gesture with his hands.

'Yes, it is very large. Much larger than France '

'How?' the peasant said again with a puzzled, patient look. 'I do not understand.'

'He says America is much larger than France,' the girl cried in an exasperated tone 'I understand all he says '

Then for several minutes, there was an awkward silence nothing was said The peasant smoked his cigarette, seemed on the point of speaking several times, looked bewildered and said nothing. Outside, rain had begun to fall in long slanting lines across the fields, and beyond, m the grey blown sky, there was a milky radiance where the sun should be, as if It were trying to break through When the peasant saw this, he brightened, and leaning forward to the young man in a friendly manner, he tapped him on the knee with one of his great stiff fingers, and then pointing toward the sun, he said very slowly and distinctly, as one might instruct a child,

'Le so-leil.'

And the young man obediently repeated the word as the peasant had said it.

'Le so-leil.'

The old man and his wife beamed delightedly and nodded their approval, saying, 'Yes. Yes. Good. Very good ' Turning to his wife for confirmation the old man said.

'He said it very well, didn't he?'

'But, yes! It was perfect!'

Then pointing to the rain, and making a down-slanting movement with his great hands, he said again, very slowly and patiently,

'La pluie '

'La pluie,' the young man repeated dutifully, and the peasant nodded vigorously, saying.

'Good, good You are speaking very well. In a little time you will speak good French.' Then pointing to the fields outside the train, he said gently,

'La terre '

'La terre,' the young man answered.

'I tell you,' the girl cried angrily from her seat by the window, 'he knows all these words. He speaks French very well. You are too stupid to understand them— that is all.'

The old man made no reply to her, but sat looking at the young man with a kind, approving face. Then more rapidly than before, and in succession, he pointed to the sun, the rain, the earth, saying:

'Le so-leil... la pluie... la terre.'

The young man repeated the words after him, and the peasant nodded with satisfaction. Then for a long time no one spoke, there was no sound except for the uneven rackety-clack of the little train, and the girl continued to look sullenly out the window. Outside, the rain fell across the fertile fields in long slanting lines.

Late in the afternoon, the train stopped at a little station, and everyone rose to get out. This was as far as the train went: to reach Orleans it was necessary to change to another train.

The peasant, his wife and his daughter collected their bundles, and got out of the train. On another track, another little train was waiting, and the peasant pointed to this with his great stiff finger, and said to the young man:

'Orleans. That's your train there.'

The youth thanked him, and gave the old man the remainder of the package of cigarettes. The peasant thanked him effusively and before they parted he pointed again rapidly toward the sun, the rain, and the earth, saying with a kind and friendly smile:

'Le so-leil... la pluie... la terre.'

And the young man nodded to show that he understood, repeated what the old man had said. And the peasant shook his head with vigorous approval, saying:

'Yes, yes. It's very good. You will learn fast.'

At these words, the girl, who with the same sullen, aloof, and ashamed look had walked on ahead of her parents, now turned, and cried out in a furious and exasperated tone:

'I tell you, the gentleman knows all that!... Will you leave him alone now?  You are only making a fool of yourself!'

But the old man and old woman paid no attention to her, but stood looking at the young man with a friendly smile and shook hands warmly and cordially with him as he said good-bye

Then he walked on across the tracks and got up into a compartment of the other tram When he looked out the window again, the peasant and his wife were standing on the platform looking toward him with kind and eager looks on their old faces. When the peasant caught his eye, he pointed his great finger toward the sun again, and called out,

'Le so-leil '

'Le so-leil,' the young man answered

'Yes, yes!' the old man shouted, with a laugh. 'It's very good.'

Then the daughter looked toward the young man sullenly, gave a short and impatient laugh of exasperation, and turned angrily away. The train began to move, then, but the old man and woman stood looking after him as long as they could. He waved to them, and the old man waved his great hand in answer, and, laughing, pointed toward the sun. And the young man nodded his head, and shouted, to show that he had understood. Meanwhile, the girl had turned her back with an angry shrug and was walking away around the station.

THEN they were lost from sight, the train swiftly left the little town behind, and now there was nothing but the fields, the earth, the smoky and mysterious distances. The rain fell steadily.

________________

5: The Barnfield Murder Case

Dick Donovan

J.E. Muddock, 1843-1934

From Wanted!, 1893

IF ANYONE looks on a map, or in a railway guide, under the expectation of finding Barnfield, he will certainly be disappointed, for Barnfield is not a station, a town, a village, nor a hamlet. But those people who are old enough to let their memories travel back a generation ago will remember how prominently at that time Barnfield figured before the public eye as being the scene of a somewhat mysterious tragedy, which proved something more than a nine days' wonder. Barnfield, in short, was and is an extensive farm situated in Hampshire on the confines of the New Forest, and commanding from the elevated parts of the grounds that truly magnificent panorama which embraces on the one hand the far distant Needles, on the other the picturesque shores and town of Southampton, and opposite that beautiful stretch of delightful country where, embosomed amongst stately trees, is the grand old ruin of Netley Abbey. Thirty years back Barnfield was a lonely and isolated spot, and though at the present day it is within earshot of the railway whistle, and a new highway runs within a quarter of a mile of it, an air of solitude and loneliness still hangs over it. It was but last summer, while wandering in the neighbourhood on pleasure bent, that I renewed my acquaintance with the spot, where so long ago I was engaged in investigating the dark crime which seemed to bring a blight upon the place. For it is a singular fact that since the murder the farm has never prospered. Bad season after bad season has served to ruin the unfortunate tenants who have tried to turn its luck. Since the tragedy the place has been in possession of three different families. The present tenant has been almost ruined by pleuro amongst his cattle, and twice in succession he has suffered very heavy loss owing to the destruction by fire of a large number of valuable stacks of hay. And last summer he told me, with tears in his eyes, that though getting an old man, he intended to emigrate with his family and try his luck in far distant New Zealand. "For you know, mister," he added pathetically, "there be blood on this place, and nowt that I can do will get rid on it. It's loike as if th' plaice wur curst, and it will have to be razed to th' ground wi' fire before th' evil spirit leaves it."

As I glanced round and noted the changed appearance of everything since I first knew Barnfield, I could not help feeling that something had certainly affected it, and it was painfully obvious that the sun of prosperity had failed to shine upon it for a very long time.

The story of the murder is this. The farm at the time was in the occupation of Oliver Cudthorpe, who in many respects was a typical Hampshire yeoman—Hampshire yeomen have ever been noted for their sturdiness, their independence, and that generous and true-hearted hospitality which is part of the nature of the English South-countrymen. Oliver came from a race of yeomen, and Barnfield had been farmed by three generations of his family. At the period of his occupation, Barnfield embraced an area of close on 1,00 acres, and it was accounted one of the most prosperous farms in that part of the kingdom. The land was singularly rich, and a succession of bounteous harvests filled the tenants' coffers, and gladdened the ground landlord's heart; while the Barnfield cattle and sheep always fetched the top price in the market.

Oliver Cudthorpe's life had been uneventful in the sense that is generally understood by the expression. But he had had his little romance, which I must tell, as it has a bearing on the tragedy. As a young man he had wooed and won the youngest daughter of a well-to-do Southampton tradesman, by the name of Linton, who had a large family. Fanny, who became Cudthorpe's wife, had the misfortune to be a remarkably pretty girl. It would not have been a misfortune if she had possessed brains, but she was a fickle, flighty girl, too fond of pleasure and homage, and impressed apparently with the idea that she ought to be a great lady. Having regard to this, it may seem strange that she consented to become the wife of a farmer. But it is highly probable that she was entirely ignorant of what her position as a farmer's wife would be; and, knowing that Cudthorpe was prosperous, she may have supposed she would have a fine time of it, and do as she liked.

From all that I have been able to gather, her dream was soon dispelled, and she began to find the isolation of a country life intolerable. She took no interest in her husband's affairs, and was constantly grumbling and sighing for the gaiety of town existence. Cudthorpe, it would seem, was very fond of her, and tried all in his power to make her happy. The marriage proved a childless one, and after four years of wedded life no offspring had come to bless the union. It may be that this fact tended to make the young wife more restless and dissatisfied with her lot, and it became notorious around the country side that domestic affairs up at Barnfield did not flow smoothly.

It chanced one summer that some military operations were being carried on in the neighbourhood in connection with the ordnance survey, and Cudthorpe was asked to afford accommodation for a few weeks to two young officers engaged in the survey, one of them being a lieutenant. In an evil moment the farmer consented to this, thinking it would afford a change for his wife. And at first all seemed to go well. But when six weeks had passed the farmer had reason to think that his wife and the lieutenant had become too familiar, and he ordered him to leave the house. This caused a scene between the wife and her husband, and about the end of the summer the young wife disappeared from her home. At first Cudthorpe was bowed down with grief, but when in the course of time things came to his knowledge which made it too evident that the guilty woman had gone off with her soldier lover, the deceived husband is said to have become furious, and uttered maledictions upon her. Then for over two years her name was a dead letter in his family, and no one would have dared to utter it in his hearing for fear of incurring his wrath.

Time at last brought him his revenge. Cast off by her faithless and worthless lover, she crept back to her husband's home penitent and broken-hearted, but the man was stern and unforgiving. She had had no pity for him; why should he have any for her? He had clone everything he could to make her happy, and she had repaid him with baseness, and had dishonoured his name and bed. Why, then, should he show her mercy? Such would seem to have been his feelings, for he turned her from his door with a curse. She wandered away, and two days later her dead body was found in a pond in one of the fields in Barnfield. She had committed suicide. Lying on a flat stone near the pond, with another stone on the top to keep it from blowing away, was a half-sheet of paper, on which the unhappy woman had written in pencil:

"My death shall be avenged."

She must have died with strange notions as to what she was entitled to if she thought that the taking of her own life, which she had blighted and blasted, was to be signalized by an act of vengeance.

From the time that the body was discovered Mr. Cudthorpe became a changed man. He grew morose and sullen, and seemed to take no interest in anything. The sunshine of his life had been darkened for ever, and it was said about the country that he was never again known to smile. He had been badly treated, cruelly deceived, and shamefully wronged; but there was good reason to believe that he was strongly impressed with the idea that he had been harsh to his erring wife, whom he had doted upon; and folk said they were sure if she had not destroyed herself, but had gone to him a second time, he would have taken her to his heart again and have forgiven her. Be that as it may, he sorrowed in silence and became a gloomy man. Such was the sorrowful story, and it begot him the sympathy of every one who knew him, for it was a tradition that he had been an exceptionally tender and devoted husband, and the wife had repaid it all by inflicting upon him the cruellest and deadliest wrong a woman can put upon a man; and even those who were disposed to be most lenient found little to say in extenuation of her fault, or in her favour.

From that dark day when the frail woman's body was dragged from the pond to the tragedy that made me acquainted with the story fifteen years elapsed. Harvest time came and went. The autumns smiled with their wealth of fruit, prosperity shone on Cudthorpe, and he was said to be growing rich. But he still externally remained the same gloomy man. He had, however, found some compensation for his wrong and loss. Three years after his wife's death he had adopted the orphan lad of a neighbouring farmer, who had met with a sudden end through being gored by a bull. Cudthorpe had taken the youth— then eleven years of age— and the young fellow, whose name was William, and who, by his foster-father's request, adopted the name of Cudthorpe, honoured him as a father, and returned him all the affection of a true son. Of course it was generally understood that on the old man's death William would succeed to the property; and as he was known to be a very steady and praiseworthy young fellow, a bright and happy future was predicted for him, notwithstanding that it was an open secret that Cudthorpe had made him vow that he would never marry.

One day Oliver Cudthorpe crossed over to Southampton, to attend a cattle show that was being held in the town. He had distinctly stated, on leaving his home in the morning, that he would be back in the evening; but night came, and he had not returned. No uneasiness, however, was felt, although it was unusual for him to remain away all night. But early the next morning, when the farm hands rose to go to their labours, they were amazed to observe Cudthorpe's horse, which he had ridden the day before, standing at the gate that led into the stable yard. It was covered with mud, as if it had been galloping across the country It had been raining for some days, and the roads and fields were swampy. The horse had been a favourite one of Cudthorpe's, he had ridden it for years, and it seemed to express, by its looks and manner, that something terrible had happened.

An alarm was at once raised, and search parties set off to look for the missing man. It was a natural thought that an accident had happened. Perhaps the farmer had been seized with a fit, and had died on the way. And from the fact of the horse having returned, it was concluded that Mr. Cudthorpe's body, if he were dead, would be found not far away. From the farm, a path ran for nearly half a mile, first through a field, then through a copse, finally through a lane to an oak fence that was the boundary line of the farm estate on that side, and the lane was entered by a gateway from the high road.

The whole of this route was gone over without any discovery being made. Then information was carried about the country side, and inquiries instituted, with the result that the news spread like wild-fire, and neighbours gathered from far and near. At last some one sharper than the rest occupied himself with examining the ground between the gateway and the farm; because, he argued, the horse could not have got in if the gate had been shut; and as it was found shut on the first search, the inference was that Mr. Cudthorpe had passed through the gateway from the high road. The examination resulted in finding what was unmistakably a little pool of blood on the turfy pathway that ran through the copse. This put a new complexion on the affair, and pointed to a crime rather than an accident; because, if an accident, where was Cudthorpe?

Presently indications were observed that something heavy had been dragged from where the blood was through the ferns and moss of the copse. There was a distinct trail, and blood was noticed on some of the ferns. The trail was followed until a pond was reached— the very pond in which the erring Mrs. Cudthorpe had committed suicide fifteen years before. Appliances were at once procured for dragging the pond, which was deep and rather large, and in a short time, to the horror of every one present, Farmer Cudthorpe's body was brought to the surface. The simple country folk were puzzled to understand what this meant. It was clear enough, of course, that poor Cudthorpe was dead; but if his horse had thrown him in the copse, or he had tumbled off through being seized with a fit, how did his body come into the water?

A consideration of this fact needed no very erudite power of reasoning to determine that the man's death was the result of crime, not accident.

Amidst deep expressions of regret the body was borne to the farm, and carried in the first instance into an outbuilding till the sodden and muddy garments could be removed. It was then noted that the heavy and antiquated repeater watch, with its massive seals and pendants, which Cudthorpe always wore, was still on the body, and when his pockets were searched a considerable sum of money in bank-notes, preserved from the wet by a leather case, was found, but not a coin of any kind was in his pockets. The notes and the watch being there seemed to indicate that he had not been robbed. A little later, when his clothes were being removed, it was observed with horror that there was a wound from which blood was still oozing on the top of the chest, just where it joins the lower part of the throat. There could now no longer be a doubt that a crime had been committed, and William Cudthorpe immediately despatched messengers for a doctor and the police.

The doctor came, and, after a careful examination of the body, he announced that death was due to a gunshot wound. The bullet had entered the gullet, cutting through the upper branches of the bronchial tube and some of the large veins, and had then passed out through the left side of the back part of the neck. The unfortunate man must have died very quickly, and had bled a great deal. The doctor also stated that Cudthorpe was dead before he was thrown into the water.

It was now painfully evident that a strange and mysterious crime had been committed. But they had the deed before them, and who had done it? It was hardly likely it was any one in the neighbourhood, for the farmer had been universally respected, and not a soul could be pointed to as having borne him any ill- will.

It chanced that at this time a relative of mine was connected in an official capacity with the county police, and he requested that I should be asked to go down from London, and see if I could unravel the apparent mystery. I readily complied with the request, and on my arrival I felt it necessary to inquire into Mr. Cudthorpe's mode of life and antecedents. Of course I soon learnt the story of his wife's frailty and self-sought death. It was common property in the district, and every one knew it. But it did not seem to me then to have the slightest bearing on Cudthorpe's violent death.

Pursuing my inquiries farther afield, I ascertained that when he left Southampton for his house he was known to have a considerable sum of money in gold and silver on his person. Several witnesses testified to this, including the keeper of a tavern who knew him well, and at whose house he had partaken of some bread and cheese and ale preparatory to leaving for Barnfield. This fact seemed to point to robbery as the motive for the crime. The murderer had taken the coin, but had left the watch and notes as being likely to betray him.

After this, my next move was to try and find out if any one had been known to purchase a gun in Southampton about the time of the murder. But I could not get any information to that effect. Then it occurred to me to search about the scene of the crime, as there was a probability that the murderer might have thrown the weapon away. Nothing resulted from the search, however, and then I thought I would have the pond dragged. And after two days' work we fished up an old musket bearing the Tower mark, and date 1836. This, then, was the weapon with which the foul deed had been done; and in it I was sanguine I had a powerful clue that would enable me to run the criminal down.

The possession of a gun of that kind must have been known to others besides the possessor himself, and so I had a strong belief that it would prove the key to solving the mystery. Week after week, however, went by, and brought us no nearer the solution. But at last it came to my knowledge that the gun had been stolen from the armoury of a militia regiment in Southampton, though up to then it had not been missed. My next course was to try and find out who was likely to have opportunities of stealing the gun, and suspicion fastened on a young man who for some days had been seen hanging about the dépôt of the regiment. He was described as being about seventeen or eighteen years of age, rather tall, thin and sickly in appearance, and looking as if he had gone through a great deal of hardship. An old army pensioner was in charge of the place, and to him the young fellow had stated that he was in great poverty, whereupon the pensioner had given him food and allowed him to sleep a couple of nights on the premises.

Even with this information to go upon, it seemed reasonable to assume that the young man was the criminal.

Then a curious question suggested itself to me.

Why did he select Mr. Cudthorpe as his victim, and shoot him down on his own estate? This question brought to my mind the story I had heard about Mrs. Cudthorpe having left a piece of paper behind her when she committed suicide, on which she had written, "My death shall be avenged." Was this crime an act of vengeance? Somehow it seemed to me, when I considered all the circumstances, that it was.

Following up the clue I had got, I succeeded in tracing the young man to Salisbury, where a fair was being held. And I found him at last in company with some soldiers, drinking in a tavern. He was a wretched, starved, miserable-looking creature, with a hunted, scared look in his pale face. As I arrested him he sighed and murmured:

"I am glad."

"Of what?" I asked.

"That you have taken me, for I was going mad with the burden of my secret. But I killed him in order to avenge my mother, and because he would not help me."

These words were a revelation, and soon the sad truth was known. The murderer was the illegitimate son of Mrs. Cudthorpe, his father being the lover with whom she fled. The lad had been brought up by a female relative of Mrs. Cudthorpe, who had preserved the secret of his existence, but she was weak enough to tell him the story of his mother's shame and suicide, and how she had left a paper saying her death would be avenged. That seems to have sunk into the boy's mind, and he dwelt upon it night and day. At last his guardian died, and he was left to his own resources. But he could get no one to own him and no one to help him. Then it occurred to him to write to Mr. Cudthorpe, making known who he was, and solicit help from him. Cudthorpe, however, took no notice of the letters, and kept the existence of his guilty wife's son a secret from every one as far as he was concerned. At last the wretched youth resolved to kill him. He stole the gun, and lay in wait for his victim in the copse, where he shot him down, and, by dint of extraordinary physical exertion, dragged the dead man to the pond, as he wished to throw his body into the same place where his mother had committed suicide.

Such was the sad and pitiable story of sorrow and shame which a woman's frailty was responsible for. Little could Fanny Cudthorpe have dreamed what the result would be when she listened to the lying words of her false and villainous lover, for whose sake she had abandoned home, friends, honour, husband— everything that an upright woman should most treasure.

The unhappy youth, who had thus deprived his mother's husband of his life, was duly tried and sentenced to death. But an agitation was got up in his favour, and his sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. It would have been more merciful, however, to have carried out the original sentence of the law, for at his age penal servitude for life was fraught with horrors, compared with which death would have been a merciful release.

__________________

6: My Mad Engineer

Sylvanus Cobb Jr

1823-1887

The Morning Bulletin (Qld.), 1 April, 1885

Prolific American writer of popular fiction, who began producing stories in about 1850, publishing some 150 novels and over 800 short stories.

MY ROUTE was west from Milan, two hundred miles to Magnolia; my usual time for starting, at eight o'clock in the morning; but on two mornings in the week I might wait one hour for the steamer from Cairo. It was one of these mornings that I came down from my boarding-place, finding my train ready for running out, but no engineer. My regular engineer had been taken down with fever. I was in a world of trouble, when Charles Millett— Major Charles, the mail-agent of my train— came down and informed me that Mr. Booth, one of our directors, had gone off to hunt up Tom Ryerson, who he believed, was in town.

Yes, it flashed upon me then that I had seen Tom on Sunday evening, reeling drunk, with two of our men trying to get him away from the engine-house. He had come down, crazy drunk, with the idea firmly fixed in his mind that he must run out. He fancied that a new locomotive had been built on purpose for him, and he wanted it fired up and a train shackled on at once. But the Major thought he might be sober by this time, and if he was he would answer.

At twenty minutes past eight the signals was hoisted on Boone's Hill, informing us that the Cairo steamer was in sight, coming up, and ten minutes later my heart was made glad by the appearance of Mr. Booth with Tom Ryerson in tow.

Tom was one of the best locomotive engineers I ever knew; a strong, well-built handsome fellow, five-and-thirty years of age, reared from his youth in the midst of steam and machinery. He had one failing— that of drink— which had grown upon him to such an extent that no company dared to give him an engine, and for three months he had been lying idle. On the present occasion he had been on the spree two weeks, but had drunk nothing since the previous Saturday evening; and Mr. Booth had found him utterly unable to drink, and in care of a brother, who was one of the best physicians in that region.

"Mr. Rogers," said the director, addressing myself, "I think we'll help you out of your difficulty. Tom is certainly good for the run and his brother, the doctor, assures me that he will not touch a drop of liquor for a week, at least. He has been in constant attendance upon him since Saturday night and this morning he got him to eat a very fair breakfast. Here he is, to speak for himself."

At that juncture Tom Ryerson himself came up. He greeted me pleasantly and cheerfuly, and his hand grasp was hearty.

There was a peculiar gleaming in the man's eyes that struck me as not exactly right, but when I had talked with him a space, and had found him calmly rational as ever a man was, I put away my fears, and felt thankful for his aid. I say he was calmly rational and so, at the time, I thought him. There were flashes of light in the eye, an occasional twitching of the lips which did not strike me as being dangerously significant. I told him where he would find the engine, and then turned my attention to my train and to my passengers.

My train consisted of six passenger coaches! It was before the days of the Pullman and Wagner palaces on wheels. Three of them were large, new cars; two very good ones, ranking as first-class; while the forward was a second-hand affair, brought from an Eastern road, and put on for second-class passengers. Next came a heavy baggage and freight car, and ahead of that car given to the express and post-office. Mine was the through mail.

The steamer had brought to me over a hundred passengers, so that I started out with a full load. I think there were not more than twenty or thirty seats vacant on the train. At 8.40 Tom backed up his engine and shackled on and as I went forward to assure myself that all was right I found him happy and jubilant. "Aint she a beauty?" he exclaimed, with his hand on the lever of the throttle-valve, as though eager to let on steam. "I'll show you some running. Did you know the machine was made on purpose for me!"

I laughed, and made a light, pleasant response, and then went back to my train. The agent of the express had everything aboard, and the mails were safety housed. "All aboard!" A signal to the engineer and off we went.

A run of thirty miles to Clinton, and I made my first stop. An accommodation train from Milan to Harwich had gone out at seven o'clock, and another would go over the same route at noon so my express made only four stops in the two hundred miles. At Rossville sixty miles from Milan, I met the northern train from Gainsville, generally with a heavy mail, and there we usually made a free exchange of passengers. Then a run of forty miles, to Finley, and thence, forty miles further, to Harwich, where I met a train from the South with another exchange of passengers, and a considerable change of mail and express matter. From Harwich to Magnolia, sixty miles, we ran without a stop, saving fuel and water. The Western Queen was a coal-burner, and we had the best of bituminous coal for use.

The run to Clinton, thirty miles, was made rapidly, yet smoothly. Never had my train glided over the rails more easily. Thirty miles further, to Rossville, with the same easy motion, and yet at a speed that brought us in only fifteen minutes behind the Gainsville train— and we had started forty-five minutes behind time.

The run from here to Harwich, where we should meet the Lebanon train, was eighty miles, with a stop midway at Finley. "All aboard?"

"All aboard for the Moon," I heard Tom shout, in repose to my call.

I stepped upon the rear platform of the second car from the baggage, and the train started with a leap that came near throwing me over. Evidently Tom had pulled his throttle-valve wide open at the word, go! And it then struck me that Zach had been throwing an unusual quantity of coal into the coal-box. Still, I did not borrow trouble at the moment. Tom had said he would be at Harwich on time, and I suppose be was eager to show what he could do. No man living was more thoroughly acquainted with all powers and possibilities— the ins and outs— of a locomotive, than was Tom Ryerson; I knew, moreover, that he was perfectly sober,— for he had not left the engine since starting— so, what had I to fear?

I had entered the car— one of the new ones— and passed half way through, when I became aware that we were going at an unusual speed, and the speed was increasing. By the time I had reached the far end of the car I realized that my train was running wild. The heavy cars were rocking to and fro; literally thundering over the rails, the noise of the swiftly revolving wheels sounding like a continuous crash. And we were going faster and faster.

I gained the platform outside, and grasped the iron railing for support. The rushing of the wind was like a tornado. The trees, the rocks, and then the posts of the fences, flew past like lighting, and all the while the fearful rocking and swaying of the ponderous cars increased. We were going much faster than a mile a minute. With a dreadful sinking of the heart I started for the head of my train.

"Conductor," said a passenger, as I entered the car where he sat, "your engineer must be mad!"

And then, for the first time, the terrible truth, in all its nakedness, burst upon me, Tom had the delirium tremens. And I knew from the nature of the man— from the intensity of his nervous organization, and from the length and depth of the debauch through which he had just passed, that his mania would be frightful. It would be madness indeed if madness of the most demoniac kind.

In the forward car— the second-class— I met Major Millet, the mail-agent, on his way in search of me. The moment he saw me, he made a simple sign for me to follow, and then turned, without speaking. From a score of passengers came the cry: "What is the matter?" I told them, nothing. "My engineer is trying to make up for the lost time, but I am going to stop it," and with this I passed on.

"Good heavens! Bill," said the major, as soon as we had reached the baggage car, "Tom is as mad as a March hare. He's got poor Zach, tied hand and foot, he has jammed the fire-box full, the throttle-valve is wide open, and he's got a big revolver with which he threatens to shoot the first man that comes near him."

I hurried forward, with the Major and Moses Gould in company. Gould was the express agent. Upon reaching the forward platform of the express and mail car, only the tender was between me and the engine; and I saw it all, at a glance, as Millet had said. Poor little Zach had been bound, hand and foot, and jammed up into the corner of the cab under his own seat; the fire under the boiler was at white heat, and roaring; and there stood Tom, his head bare, his flaxen hair flying in the wind, his eyes emitting fiery light, and in his right hand he held a heavy army revolver, cocked and in our direction. He saw me the moment I stepped out upon the platform, and at once yelled, in horrible tones, with a wild maniac laugh:

"Oho! All aboard for the moon; Its my engine— my Queen of the West! And the moon's in the west to-night! Take care! William! If you put a foot upon my tender, I'll send a bullet through your brain! Look sharp!— and look to your passengers! I've got six bullets in this pistol; and you know I never miss my mark. Ho! ho! We're off for the moon!"

And then followed a laugh, long and loud, and far from horrible than the words he had spoken— a laugh that rang in my ears, and sank with horror into my quaking heart.

"Merciful heavens! Look!" cried the major, at the same time, with blanched face and horrified look, pointing ahead.

"Aye,— look! look!" shouted the maniac, whose quick ear had heard the terror-laden cry. "It is the gateway of the moon; but, we don't stop there. William— remember;— we don't stop at that place, No, no. Oh! No! no! For the moon! for the moon! Away! away!"

I looked where the major had pointed, and there was Finley, not a mile distant ahead! There was no time for thought— no time for any thing, O! if I could have laid a hand upon that throttle! But I could not; and no power under the sun could stop the mad engine that side of Finley. The thought flashes across me to sound an alarm, and on the instant I reached up, and caught the cord that opened the valve of the alarm whistle, which cord, fortunately, was let into the forward cars. I gave a long jerking pull, and a wild demoniac scream from the rushing steam followed. Evidently, the men at the Finley Station heard, and feared danger. I saw them flying to and fro. Certainly, they could see that the train was not to stop.

With my heart in my mouth, I stood and looked at the line of rail ahead! but only for a seeming moment; on the next we thundered by the water-tank, the small freight-house, then by other buildings; flew with a speed that I had never dreamed of— flew and thundered on reeling and rocking, swaying and heaving, the cars threatening every moment to leave the rails.

For a wonder— as by a miracle— we passed the Finley Station in safety. I caught the wondering frightened looks upon the line of human faces as we shot past, and in a moment more we were away; but we had left an anxious, horrified multitude behind; for the wild maniac yelling and gesticulations of our engineer had told them that he was hopelessly mad.

And while we had been flying through Finley, Tom had cunningly watched his opportunity and hurled on more coal on the fire; and as I saw the Tartarean box, I knew there was heat enough for another hour, even supposing he should put on more coal.

Suddenly as we left Finley behind, a cry of horror from the major caused me to look into his face, and, before he spoke, I knew what he meant. Twenty miles from Finley Station was a sharp bend in the road, called Garrick's Bow, where the rails ran around an enormous mass, or hill, of native rock. It was a point where we always slowed up for an even mile, the pointed rules of the road telling us that we must come down to a speed of six miles an hour; we usually took ten to twelve minutes to that mile. What would become of us at that point? We might hope to do something before reaching Harwich; the water might give out, or the fire go down; but what should save us from death at Garrick's Bow?

For the first time since the horror had come upon us, I began to think— to think calmly and rationally. The train was mine. The lives of almost four hundred passengers were in my hands for me to answer for. There were fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and children, large and small, and then the hundreds of relatives and friends, in distant places, anxiously awaiting the coming of loved ones! I thought— thought quickly and clearly. I leaped back into the car, and caught up a heavy iron shackling-pin, which I had seen lying on the floor. Then I said to the major and to Gould:

"Look you, boys, I have a wife and children in Milan. If anything should happen to me, remember them. The road must care for then!"

Then, before either of them could speak, I had leaped back upon the platform, and with another bound I was upon the box of the tender. Bang! went Tom's pistol, and the bullet whistled close to my ear. Another shot, and I felt a sharp snap of fire in my left shoulder. On the next instant, while Tom was cocking his pistol for the third shot, I brought the iron pin down, with crashing force, upon his bare head, and he sank upon the floor of the cab like a dead man.

My first movement after that was to shut the throttle-valve, and in a moment more the major and Moses Gould were by my side, while the platform of the forward car was crowded by anxious passengers.

We cast off the old waste robes which Tom had bound upon the legs and arms of poor Zach Eberly, and bound them securely upon his own limbs. I had pressed my fingers upon the spot where my blow had fallen and assured myself that the skull had not been broken. The brake-men had responded to my signal of 'on brakes!' and as we were taking the lost turn upon Tom's ankles the train came to a stop; and not forty rods away looming up directly across the line of our course, arose Garrick's Rock! My feelings as I looked can be imagined better than I can describe them.

Also you can imagine between three and four hundred passengers crowding forward on both sides eager to know what in the world had happened. And perhaps you can imagine the gratitude of many when they had learned the whole truth. Some there were who took it all as a matter of course, and who saw nothing in what I had done for their saving more than they would have expected to see done by a man to whom they had paid their money for certain services to be rendered.

But some there were on the train who had hearts of gold. The major and the express agent took it upon themselves to tell how I had taken my life in my hand and faced the madman's pistol; and how I had flinched not even after a bullet had struck me. And they repeated the speech I had made to them about my wife and children before setting forth upon my hazardous expedition.

Let me say here, that the wound in my shoulder was but a simple affair, which did not keep me from my duty an hour; and when, that evening at Magnolia, a gentlemen brought me an envelope, which he gave me as a 'slight token of grateful appreciation from numerous passengers who felt that I had saved their lives'— and when I found therein between five and six hundred dollars you can imagine that my wound gave me no more thought of pain.

I took charge of the locomotive and ran it to Harwich, and as we looked down into the deep chasm which yawned upon our left hand as we rounded the giant rock, you can further imagine whether we shuddered or not. At Harwich Tom Ryerson awoke, but not to a recollection of his journey on our engine. And even after he had entirely recovered, that wild, mad run of his upon the Western Queen was as a blank page in the story of his life.

But it was not a blank in the story of my life, nor yet in that of poor Zach Eberly. We both of us came to the conclusion on that day— a  conclusion from which we have never departed— that, if we must have a madman for a companion, we would be delivered from a railway train over the destinies of which he might be called to preside as engineer.

__________________

7: Strain

Albert Richard Wetjen

1900-1948

Everybody's, Dec 1923

A STRONG WIND blew over the sand-dunes from sea-ward and crisped the dull water of the bay. Right across the gap through the dunes, where the sea entered, the breakers roared white and high. When each brake, a chaos of foam spread into the bay and drifted well-nigh to the wharves of the little port on the farther shore. The sky was dull and cloudy. The sun came out at rare intervals and then disappeared. Occasionally a slight drizzle whisked down wind and then ceased. Beyond the white breakers came the muffled cry of a whistling buoy.

Dotted here and there over the bay, like great unshapely cakes, sand-banks lifted their smooth sides from the swirl of the outgoing tide. A tiny ferry wended a snorting way across the water. A small barkentine was anchored between two wet sand-banks, a lean rusty- gray barkentine. Her canvas hung in bights from her foremast yards. Her main and mizzen canvas was heaped up on the midship and after-deck. Her fore-deck was a clutter of cargo. Desolate she looked in the rain.

Alongside the rickety pile-built wharves of the town lay three ships. Two were steam schooners, built of steel, loading lumber for coastal ports. The officers of these small vessels were busy at work with the seamen loading slings, driving winches, unrecognizable to a stranger as officers.

The third ship was of wood. Her squat hull had been painted so often, layer over layer, that the plank edges could hardly be seen. Her two masts were stumpy and thick. It was apparent, from the two metal hoops that remained at their trucks, that they had been built to carry topmasts, built for the strain of canvas and criss-crossed rigging. Now they were bare, save for derrick falls. Instead of canvas, steam turned a screw and drove her. She was a converted "wind- jammer."

Her bridge was midships, unlike those on the schooners whose bridges were aft, a long flat bridge. The fore-deck was enormously deep below the iron bulwarks. Cargo cluttered it. Many hatches broke it up. The fo'c'sle-head, whereunder the small crew existed, was very tiny, as the builders begrudged the space for the seaman to live in. New paint, shining and bright, covered the ship's age. It saved her from the desolate appearance of the anchored barkentine.

A few coastal passengers, men and women, lounged over the for'ard bridge-rail and watched the men busy in the holds below. The winches rattled monotonously, mingling with the winches from the steam schooners and the noise of the elements. The cargo waiting on the ancient wharf was lifted, sling-load by sling-load, into the ship's gaping stomach. Men swore as they worked.

The predominating thing was noise. Men shouted. The ship's officers— they could be distinguished by their uniform suits and gold braid— did not work with the seamen. They superintended, as officers should. Because their ship had been remodelled from a pure freighter to accommodate passengers, it was deemed that the officers must be in future always officers, in dress and deportment, a very faint echo of the super- smartness of the officers who cluttered the bridges of transatlantic packets.

Up the nearly level gangway the agent for the company who owned the ship pushed his way. He was a tall man, dressed in tweeds. He looked neat and prosperous. His face was thin; so were his lips. In his right hand he carried a packet of papers. With his left he thrust aside seamen and passengers as he made for the bridge. He found the captain in his room laboriously writing a letter. He entered without knocking, arrogantly. Bitter lines creased his face from nose to mouth corners.

"Captain," he said sharply, "you'll have to move to wharf three right away."

The captain laid down his pen deliberately and swung round in his swivel-chair.

"Good morning, Mr. Agent. Sit down," he said. He waved to the faded red settee that stood against the bulkhead near the door.

"Haven't time!" The agent's voice was irritable. "Right away, captain," he repeated.

The captain grunted. He was a stout man with a face like a full moon. His complexion was a deep red, a dusky red, a red that had taken the sun and wind many years to produce. The captain's eye was small and somewhat dull, yellowish as to white. His mouth was big-lipped, protruding His shoulders were vast, seeming to tighten the threadbare serge jacket he wore. His hair was sparse and gray; his red neck showed, vividly clear and criss-crossed with clefts, against the fringe of bristles that ran beneath his coat-collar. His voice was deep and even, husky somewhat, but with a hint of unbelievable power. You could never imagine any noise occurring that would drown out his voice.

"Sit down," he repeated, then grumbled, "I never knew a time I come to this port but what I don't have to shift ship about every other day."

"That's not my fault," the agent shrilled. "I have to get you loaded with all speed. I have to cut cost. It's cheaper to move ship than to move cargo from one wharf to another."

"Eh, I suppose." The captain sighed and frowned. His face went a little redder. "For the sake of five dollars owners'll do anything. They seem to think a ship's like a motor-truck, to be taken anywhere at any time."

"Well, what about it?" the agent's reedy voice persisted. He snarled a little. "I can't help that. You've got to move. What you got to kick about, anyway? You ain't doing nothing."

The captain's face set. "Oh, no," he admitted. "I never do anything. Soft life I've got. Two hundred a month and no work. Easy life.... I wish some of you fellers's take a ship over this bar, f'r instance. No work. Oh, no. Seems simple, don't it, t' stand on the bridge and give orders? Oh, yes."

"Well," shrilled the agent, "there's plenty of captains who'd be only too glad of your job. If you want to quit, just say so."

"That's so." The captain sighed. "But I've a wife and children.... When do I have to move?"

"Right away. The sooner the better. Don't think you can wait. I want the ship moved now."

"And I suppose after I've moved I'll have to move back, eh, same as usual?"

"I don't know. What if you do? Am I the agent or are you? It's up to me to get the cargo aboard. I get the blame if it isn't all aboard. What's it to you, heh, so long as you get paid and fed?"

"All right. But I'm the one who gets blamed for slow voyages and injuries to my ship. Have you thought it's low tide now? How do I know there's water enough for me to shift? You know these sand banks are always changing. Have you thought of this blasted wind blowing from seaward, and the tide sweeping out?... You fellers always come at the worst time to move a ship."

"You'll do as you're told, captain, or I'll report you to the owners. I want the ship moved now. Why, wharf three is only a hundred yards down. I'm not asking you to cross the bay."

"Oh, no." The captain rose wearily from his chair, and put his uniform cap on his head. He sighed. It was so useless to make a landsman see the difficulties. And it was true there were so many master mariners out of work. Any of them would be glad of a job. Preceding the captain, the agent went out on deck whining complaints and threats.

The captain ascended the tiny navigation-bridge and, crossing to the brass speaking-tube to the engine-room, whistled down. The engineer on watch answered.

"How soon can you give me steam?" asked the captain. The engineer grew profane. He wanted to know what was the matter with several things.

"I've got to move ship," the captain explained wearily. "The agent's here stewing about...."

"That's right, blame it on me," whined the agent.

who had followed the captain on to the bridge. "I'll send m a report to the owners."

The captain growled, "Oh, shut up," as he jammed back the plug in the tube mouthpiece.

He leaned over the bridge-rail and bawled down to the fore-deck.

"Mr. Leach!"

The mate looked up. He was standing by the coaming of number three hatch and intently watching to see that none of the stevedores below broached the incoming cargo. "Sir?" he shouted back.

The captain cupped his hands round his mouth, for the derricks were rattling fearsomely.

"Swing those booms inboard! We've got to move ship!"

The mate shouted, "Again! G'damn!" and then turned away and shouted to his seaman for'ard. The captain called a steward from the bridge-deck below.

"Get hold of the second mate," he said.

"He's ashore," said the steward.

"Where's the third mate?"

"He's ashore too, sir "

"Confound! Can't they stay aboard five minutes in port? That's the worst of young officers when you're carrying wimmin passengers.... All right, steward, that'll do.... See here, Mr. Agent, the sort of jam you run me into? I haven't an officer aboard saving the mate."

The agent sneered. He shrilled triumphantly, "Well, you ought to have. What do you let them go ashore for? The ship's got to be moved, and that's all there is to it."

The captain turned deliberately. His eyes blazed.

"See here, Mr. Agent. When my officers are at sea they stand their watch, four-on and eight-off. And they do their duty. When they're in port they stand  the same watches. Do you expect them to be with the damned ship night and day? Keep your mouth shut or I kick you ashore. My mates are off watch and they've every right to go ashore unless I tell 'em not to."

The agent exploded. He waved his fists aloft. "Keep my mouth shut? Confound you, captain. Don't you talk to me like that. I'll report..."

"Oh, shut up!" the captain said wearily, and turned away. His hands gripped the bridge-rail before him. Often he had a hard job at control. Many were the times he would be willing to give a month's pay to hit a ship's agent or owner for stupid pigheadedness. But he had a wife and a family. He turned after a while and faced the fuming agent.

"Would you mind going below while we shift ship?" he inquired with elaborate politeness. The agent muttered sullenly and, without answering, strode towards the bridge-companion and went down.

The captain grunted, muttered an oath, and then crossed to where the siren lanyard hung alongside the little closed-in chart-house. He jerked angrily on the cord and the siren boomed, drowning all other noise and echoing back and forth across the bay. If either the second or the third mate was in hearing, he would return to the ship at that signal.

The mate came on the bridge swearing profusely. He had left the bos'n on the fore-deck below to see to the derricks. The rattle of the winches was now less frequent as the great booms were swung inboard and their guys drawn taut.

"What's the big idea?" the mate inquired. The captain jammed Ms hands into his side pockets and shook his head.

"Search me," he said. "But you know what it is in this blamed port. We always move about twice a day. Trouble is, the agent hasn't enough savvey to gather all cargo on one wharf before we arrive. Pah! Make? me sick."

"Where we going, sir?"

"Wharf three "

"Guess the second and third are ashore too, eh?"

"So the steward said."

"Why the devil couldn't that agent have let us know last night or something?" the mate grumbled. He lit a cigaret and sulked. The captain pulled out his pipe and cleaned the bowl noisily with his knife. "Damn!" he said, scowling, and then for a while both men were silent.

One of the loading steam schooners lay ahead of the ship, between her and wharf three. Had the schooner not been there, it would have been merely a matter of the ship being pulled along to the desired wharf by means of hawsers attached to the shore bollards and shifted as the ship hauled up on them. But with the schooner in the way, the ship would have to cast free from the wharf entirely and steam round the schooner. Then she would have to haul in to number three wharf and make fast.

At high tide and in normal weather, the maneuver would not have presented much difficulty. But with low tide and in a bay where the water depths varied and no sand-bank was stationary, the task was one full of anxiety. Also the wind blew ever stronger from seaward. Also the outrunning tide created a rip that  sagged heavily at anything afloat that left the shelter of the wharf.

"Stand by," rang the captain on the brass telegraphs to the engine-room. The answering jangle came back. The captain leaned over the bridge and shouted down to the mate, who was on the fo'c'sle-head with the port watch.

"Man at the wheel!"

The mate lifted his hand to show he had heard.

"Man at the wheel," he said to the bos'n.

"Man at the wheel," repeated the bos'n to the three men of the watch The men looked at each other.

"Your wheel, Shorty," said one, spitting tobacco- juice overside with a swift turn of ids head.

"Guess that's so," mumbled Shorty, and he waddled down the ladder from the fo'c'sle-head to the fore-deck and so to the bridge. When he was finally ensconced on the grating in the wheel-house, the captain peered down at him through the open for'ard window of the chart-house and through the aperture in the house-floor.

"All ready?" said the captain.

"All ready, sir," Shorty assured him. The captain grunted.

"Then put your helm midships."

"Midship helm," repeated Shorty. He turned the wheel-spokes.

The captain went to the bridge-rail and peered aft.

"Let go, Mr. Murphy! Hold her with the spring!" he shouted to the third mate, who had come aboard in response to the siren's summons and had taken the place aft that the second mate should rightfully have occupied had he been on the ship.

For hundreds of years, since the first sailors sailed the sea, it has been the custom to repeat orders. It prevents mistakes. It was adopted for that reason. There can be no mistakes at sea. The sea itself watches out for that.

So Mr. Murphy shouted back, repeating the command, "Let go aft, sir! Hold her with the spring!" And automatically checking the order in his mind, the captain mumbled "Aye, aye" as he went to the for'ard dodger and shouted to the mate.

A jangle of telegraphs, and the engine commenced pulsing like a great heart. Slowly the ship moved. The stevedores on the wharf gaped as tho they had never seen a ship move before. A few loafers spat tobacco into the bay from where they sat on the piles and registered interest. Three men ran from bollard to bollard and threw off hawsers as the ship's officers directed.

"Starboard a bit!" the captain called deeply.

Shorty sniffed as he turned the wheel. "Starboard a bit," he said. His little eyes were intent on the quadrant before him where a tell-tale registered the movements of the rudder. He checked the wheel when the tell-tale had gone far enough.

The ship's bow edged out from the wharf.

"Slack away for'ard!" shouted the captain. The mate repeated the order. Then he yelled to the seaman who was holding the turns of the only hawser still fast to the wharf, the breast-rope, on the windlass drum.

The man "surged," that is, let a little of the hawser slide through his hands. The steam hissed as the drum, relieved momentarily of the strain, clanked round a turn or two. The carpenter, at the throttle, shut off the steam altogether and the drum stopped. The sea- man slacked still further, watching the mate.

The wire spring, the only rope now out astern, began to slacken as the after end of the ship came in and. rubbed along the wharf. Slowly the bows cleared the stem of the steam schooner ahead whose captain was leaning over the bridge-rail and hungrily watching that no damage was done to his vessel.

The telegraphs jangled again. The engines stopped.

"Slack away aft," called the captain. He was handicapped, being on the bridge by himself. When he had all officers on board, the third mate was supposed to stand by the telegraphs and to repeat orders to the helmsman. That prevented the captain running all over' the bridge and enabled him to give his fixed attention to plotting his next move.

As it was, he peered first for'ard, gaging distances, anxiously eyeing the rip of the outgoing tide, watching the nearing sand-bank on his port bow. Again he paced aft and peered to see his ship's stem was not being chafed too much against the wharf-piling. He measured the force of the wind, trying to estimate just how much it would start the ship drifting. Back again he swung, fearful lest he should smash into the stem of the steam schooner and incur a damage suit. He was worried about the water. Was there enough to float his ship? The tide was still falling.

"Let go for'ard!" he shouted suddenly. The mate yelled the order to the seaman at the windlass. The man hastily flung off two of the three turns of the hawser he had round the drum. Another seaman as hastily flung clear several bights of the hawser from the great coil against the ship's rail. When there was only one turn on the drum, the seaman "laid back" on the rope and let it run quickly through his fingers till all strain was gone and the hawser sagged to the deck of the fo'c'sle-head and again to the water beyond the ship. Then the seaman flung off the last turn and stood clear while the hawser slicked out through the fair-leads, slower and slower, and finally ceased moving.

"Let go ashore!" yelled the mate, standing on the fair-leads and holding to the rail with one hand. The three stevedores casting off lines from the bollards waved and raced for the eye of the slack hawser. They heaved up on it and slipped it clear. It fell with a tremendous splash into the dull swirling waters.

"Pick up yer slack!" yelled the mate, twisting his head to the windlass. The two seamen handling the hawser jumped for the thick rope and, lifting it, took a couple of turns round the windlass drum as the bos'n, coiling up a heaving line, repeated the order.

"Let 'er buck, chips!" called one of the seamen to the carpenter. That worthy turned the throttle and the windlass clanked and raced, the drum rolled around and the hawser came dripping up through the fair-leads, slimy with bay mud. One seaman took it hand-over- hand off the racing drum. The other seaman coiled it profanely on top of the coils that had not been used so far and were dry but for the dampening drizzle.

"All gone for'ard, sir!" cried the mate, stepping back on to the deck from the fair-leads and facing the bridge.

"Aye, aye," responded the captain. Hastily he faced aft. The ship was now moving away and ahead from the wharf at an angle of about forty-five degrees. Anxiously the captain eyed the swirling water overside. His face was drawn with the tension of responsibility. How fast was the water running?

"Let go aft!" he shouted suddenly. The third mate echoed the order.

The seaman holding the double wire round the starboard winch drum "surged," or slacked, away. The wire kinked behind him and the third mate himself cleared it. The telegraphs jangled on the bridge, "Half ahead." The engine started beating like a great heart again. The ship moved.

Her bow was now well past the stem of the steam schooner. On the wharf the three stevedores stood by the after bollard and waited for the wire to slack so that they could throw the bight clear. The after winch rattled. The wire had jammed, one turn over another, and the third mate was trying to clear it by backing up with the drum. It was bad wire, old and cheap. It kinked very easily. The delay allowed the ship to get ahead of the slack. The wire tautened, sang with the tension.

The third mate swore viciously. The seaman holding the slack end of the wire grew nervous. In some way the turns were twisted so that they would not clear readily.

"Hold on!" the officer shouted hastily to the bridge. The captain spun on his heel to see what was the matter. He jumped for the telegraph.

Whang! went the wire as it parted. It broke between ship and wharf. It curled back like a vicious snake, smashed against the poop-rail. A great kink caught in the fair-leads. The third mate reversed the winch desperately to see if, now the wire had gone, he could not snatch it inboard and clear the twisted turns. He didn't know the kink was in the fair-leads. The winch drum strained. There was another whang! The wire between the winch and the rail broke, the frayed end -curled over, like a spring, and smashed the seaman at the drum across the chest. He went over backwards with a cry. He rolled on the deck and moaned. Blood came from his mouth. The third mate sprang to him, shutting off the winch steam.

"All gone aft, sir!" he shouted, white-faced, as he bent down. The captain, aware that something had happened, faced the bows. He desperately wanted to see what was wrong aft. He knew, whatever it was, he could straighten it out with a few cool orders. But the third mate was a youngster, not used to handling a watch when shifting ship. Lines appeared on the captain's brow. He grew uneasy. But he daren't pay too much attention astern. His ship was swinging free in the river. A steam schooner crowded her on the starboard beam, a sand-bank on the port. Two hundred feet wide was the channel. The fate of thousands of dollars' worth of property, lives, his own job, hung between his lips.

Oh, what was the water depth? And how fast was the tide running? Was it fast enough to affect the ship? And the wind? Why couldn't the fool agent wait?

The tide rips caught the ship as she swung clear of the steam schooner. She started to swing rapidly, bow on to the sand-bank.

"Hard a-port!" shouted the captain. Shorty at the wheel repeated the command quite unperturbed. It didn't matter to him if the ship sank even.

"Full ahead!" rang the telegraphs; came their answering jangle. The captain ran to the starboard side of the bridge and eyed the steam schooner. Would his stem clear?

On the fo'c'sle-head the mate anxiously watched the nearing sand-bank.

The ship still swung, the screw being slow to take up power. Her stem grazed the stem of the steam schooner. But the steam schooner's captain already had a man holding a cork fender overside at the point of contact. There was a shuddering rasp. Came the point of strain for the stout man on the bridge.

"Blankety- blankety- blank- blank- blank!" yelled the steam schooner captain. "Get that barge of yours away from my ship!"

An old bay seaman shouted from the wharf, "Look out for shoal-water, skipper."

"Ten fathoms' clearance yet, sir!" called the mate from the cat-heads for'ard. He was speaking of the sand-bank.

"My God, get a doctor!" the third mate was crying hysterically from aft.

The captain's jaw tightened. The little muscles stood out near his ears. He thrust his hands into his side, pockets and kept his gaze fixed rigidly ahead. His eyes wore a bleak, cold look. He seemed to be listening for a message that came from far away. His head was Inclined slightly to the wind. Watching him then, you could understand why he was one of the most reliable sailors on that wild coast.

It was a matter of chance and moments whether the ship would answer her helm before she hit the sand- bank. Or she might ground in the very channel. If she had not enough power to breast the rips at all, she might sweep far out into the bay, her swiftly let-go anchors dragging up the mud.

"Ease the helm," said the captain at last, suddenly, evenly. The helm was beginning to answer. Scarce six fathoms, thirty-six feet, separated the bow from the edge of the bank.

Shorty in the wheel-house spat aside calmly. "Ease the helm," he said. Looking aft for a brief moment, the captain saw a group of men carrying an inert form towards the saloon. He noted the third mate had had sense enough not to leave his post.

There was a hoarse whistle on the port beam. The captain twisted abruptly and saw a little ferry-boat breasting the rips and crowding for the scant channel between the ship's bow and the sand-bank. The ferry whistled again. Like a nervous woman screaming, the captain thought grimly. He took no notice.

The ferry captain shouted frantically. The few passengers on the little craft's upper deck shouted. Again the whistle screamed. The captain stared ahead and said nothing His ship was swinging clear. To the other captain his own vessel.

The mate on the fo'c'sle-head sighed as the sand-bank started to recede. "Close," he mumbled.

"Good heavens," said the tall agent on the lower bridge, sneeringly watching all things, "the captain is the most careless man I ever saw. Takes a lot of time to shift a small ship a hundred yards."

"Good man, Cap'n Roscoe," commented the old bay-sailor who had shouted from the wharf about shoal- water. "Notice he knows what he's doing?"

"You're all right now," sang out the captain of the steam schooner good-naturedly as he waved his hand, "Water's pretty shallow just off my beam, though."

The captain on the ship's bridge merely nodded and lifted a hand in greeting. It seemed neither man remembered the language the one had used not five minutes previously.

The ferry shot under the ship's bows still screaming with her whistle. Her passengers had quit shouting, there being nothing now to shout for. For a minute they had expected to get caught between the ship an£ the sand-bank. Strain had overwhelmed them.

Said the mate, a little testily, "Bos'n, get a line ready to send ashore."

"Aye, aye, sir," called the bos'n, and he stooped and bent a heaving line on to the spliced eye of a great eight-inch hawser.

"Port a bit more," said the captain evenly. Shorty mumbled the order, for he was taking a fresh chew of tobacco, and spun the wheel with one hand.

On the wharf the second mate of the ship, just hurriedly arrived from uptown, stood and anxiously watched proceedings. He wondered whether he would get called down by the captain for not being on hand to shift ship. He noticed a broken wire dangling from the after-leads and swore. He supposed some other] man had taken his place and made a mess of things. He was alternately sulky and apprehensive.

Parallel now with the steam schooner the ship slid. Her speed was very slow because of the rips. The wind caught her and veered her dangerously close to the schooner's side. The captain spoke to the helmsman, the wheel turned quickly, the error was corrected.

There was a slight bump and the ship went still slower, threatening to stop. The captain peered to port and starboard. The screw threshed evenly. Mud and water boiled on the surface. A foul smell tainted the air.

"Stop," rang the telegraphs. The captain shouted for'ard.

"Take a cast, Mr. Leach!"

"Aye, aye, sir," said the mate, and he spoke to the bos'n, who took the matter in hand personally and swung the sounding-lead. The depth was shouted.

"Ought to make it," the captain muttered. "Full $stem," jangled the telegraphs. The ship moved back, jerkily. Shorty was kept busy at the wheel holding the bow straight against rips and the wind.

"Full ahead," went the telegraphs. The ship jerked forward. She struck the mud once more, hesitated a bit, and then plowed slowly on. Her keel furrowed several inches in the bay-floor. But the obstruction was only a narrow ridge. And the ship was half over already. Deep water was a fathom or so away. So the lead said and the lead never lied.

"Get a line ashore, Mr. Leach!" called the captain, for now the ship was past the steam schooner, over the ridge of mud and sand.

"Line ashore, sir," shouted back the mate, and he spoke to the bos'n, who was coiling away the hand-lead. ^The bos'n spoke to a seaman and the man picked up a heaving-line and waited.

"Port a bit!" said the captain, and Shorty in the wheel-house below responded. The ship's bow swung slightly towards number three wharf.

The three stevedores who had shifted the lines on the other wharf waited the incoming ship. The marooned second mate waited. The old bay-seaman watched with critical eyes how the ship was handled.

"Get a line ashore aft!" shouted the captain.

"Line ashore aft, sir," the third mate acknowledged. He picked up a heaving-line himself and coiled it. He wondered as he did so how the injured seaman was getting on.

The seaman on the foc'sle-head cast his line. It fell short. He coiled it in, hand-over-hand, and cast again. One of the stevedores on the wharf puts his foot hastily on the "monkey's knot" on the end before it could slip back into the water. It was hauled ashore. The bight of the hawser followed.

The third mate cast from aft and another stevedore caught his line. Another hawser was hauled ashore.

"Starboard a bit," said Shorty as he spun the wheel. The ship straightened out. She was parallel with the wharf, her stern about five fathoms from the steam schooner's bow. The tide-rips eased up as slack water approached. The wind could do only good now, blowing the ship on to her berth.

"Slow," rang the engine-room telegraphs under the captain's hand.

"Good work!" muttered the old seaman on the wharf.

"My God, he's slow!" grumbled the tweed-clad agent on the lower bridge, impatiently fingering his watch-chain.

"Take in your slack!" called the captain, first for'ard and then aft. Twice the repeated call came to him. He nodded and walked across the bridge to look at the wharf.

"Some fenders midships, Mr. Leach!" he called. The mate waved his hand. He spoke to the bos'n, who spoke to a seaman. The man hurried below under the fo'c'sle-head, and appeared after a while staggering under three cork fenders. These he tied by their lanyards to the rail midships so that the actual fender-ball hung well down the ship's side and would ward off direct impact with the nearing wharf.

"Vast heaving for'ard!" said the captain.

"Vast heaving," replied the mate. He held up his hand and the seaman holding the rope on the windlass-drum "surged" a little but still kept the strain.

"Heave away aft!" the captain shouted. The third mate repeated and quickened the speed of the winch-drum so that the hawser came in faster. The ship had been slipping off the parallel again. Now she straightened out once more as the after hawser slicked in.

"Heave away for'ard'" said the captain. The mate called back and the windlass resumed its clanking hiss.

"Stop," rang the telegraphs. The answering jangle mingled with the captain's shout, "Get a spring out aft!"

"Get a spring out, sir," responded the third mate. Leaving a seaman to haul away on the hawser, he took one man and uncoiled another wire from a reel, sna kin g it along the deck ready for running. Anothei heaving- line was brought and attached to the bight of the wire.

"Easy," the mate said to his men. The windlass turned slower The ship was well-nigh on the wharf.

"Slow astern," went the engine-room telegraphs, for the ship was sliding ahead too much.

"Shift your line for-ard a bit!" roared the captain to the third mate. The third mate shouted to the stevedores on the wharf and then snapped a command back at the winch-crew. The hawser was "surged", drooped, slacked right off, and the stevedores on the wharf lifted the bight from the bollard it was on and carried it farther for'ard.

"Stop," rang the telegraphs noisily. Then, "Finished! with Engines."

"Make fast fore and aft!" shouted the captain.

"Make fast, sir," the mate and the third called back. a wire spring was got out for'ard. Another hawser served as a breast rope. Two more ropes went aft After a while, "All fast, sir," came from aft "All fast, sir," came from for'ard.

"Swing the derricks out, Mr. Leach," said the captain, leaning over the bridge-rail.

"Aye, aye, sir. Swing the derricks out," said the mate.

"Get the gangway overside, Mr. Murphy!" called the captain to the young officer aft.

"The gangway? Aye, aye, sir," returned the third mate. He finished taking turns with the hawsers round the bitts. He watched a seaman frap a seizing of marlin round double wire where it was on the bitts near the mainmast, and then he took two men to where the gangway rested on number three hatch.

The captain grunted, took his hands from his side pockets, and filled his pipe. As he struck a match and lit it, he paused by the chart-house.

"That'll do the wheel!" he called to the helmsman. Shorty grunted, spat tobacco-juice aside, and looked up.

"That'll do the wheel!" he called to the helmsman, put his helm amidships, swinging the spokes till the brass tell-tale of the quadrant ran straight fore and aft. Then he stepped off the grating and made his way for'ard.

The derrick-booms swung overside. Guys were slackened and tautened. Stevedores swarmed aboard. The captain came down from the navigation-bridge and made his way to his room. He flung himself into a chair and sighed.

"Damn fool," he said at last to the inkwell. Then he removed his uniform-cap and laid it on his desk. He took up his pen and went on writing his unfinished letter.

"Say, captain, d'you know it's taken you nearly an hour to shift? My Gawd, you're so slow! You forget about docking-dues and all that. I... "

"Oh, yes," said the captain wearily as he laid down his pen and looked up into the agent's sour face. "I suppose I did take a long time. There were many things to be considered But I wish you'd leave me run my ship in my own way."

"Telegram, sir," said the steward, pushing contemptuously by the agent in the doorway and approaching the captain. "Just came "

"Thanks." The captain took the telegram. "And, by the way, steward!" The white- jacketed steward paused.

"Yes, sir?" he said.

The captain frowned. "Was anyone hurt aft when that wire broke?"

The steward grinned.

"No, sir. A sailor got a crack in the chest, but the doctor says he'll be all right in a day or so."

"I see. Ah, you might send the third mate to me."

"The third mate? Yes, sir. At once, sir." The steward pushed past the agent again and vanished. The captain slit open the telegram and scanned the message it contained. His eyes twinkled. He even laughed a little.

"I'll report this to the owners," nagged the agent, waving his hand in the air. "I suppose there'll be a damage suit for scraping that blasted steam schooner's stern. Why don't you be more careful? I can't understand..."

"Oh, shut up!" growled the captain, looking up, his smile disappearing. "Shut up, for heaven's sake! Do you think I scrape other ships on purpose? I told you it was awkward to handle a craft right now. I did my best and the ship's safe. Go away and leave me in peace."

"That's all right to talk. What about the time yoti took? I tell you Jack Esmer of the Wallaby shifted his ship in half an hour last Wednesday."

The captain rose to his feet.

"Maybe," he said. "I happen to know he shifted at high tide and on a fine day. Now don't you stand there and try to tell me my business. I've spent thirty years at sea learning it. See this wire?"

He held out the telegram he had received and the agent took it with a scowl.

"It says," went on the captain, "that I've got five thousand dollars coming to me as salvage-money on the towing of the Nonet to safety last year. It's just been awarded. The case has been in court for twelve months. Now do you know what that five thousand dollars means to me?"

"No. Can't say I do. Anyway..." The agent made to hand the telegram back.

"Shut up!" roared the captain. "I'll tell you what it means! It means that I can be independent of scum like you! It means that I can smash you on the nose and get fired and still laugh, see? Well, take it!"

His great fist swung viciously up and the agent sat down on the deck outside the cabin with remarkable suddenness.

"Oh!" he gurgled. "Oh!"

"And if you want any more, stand up," grunted the captain. Then he went inside the cabin and slammed the door shut.

"What's the matter?" asked the third mate of the groaning tweed-clad figure as he came along the deck a few moments later. But the agent did not answer. He only glared.

The third mate grinned as he knocked on the door of the captain's cabin. He went in as a deep voice called an invitation. Weakly the agent rose to his feet and staggered away.

"Oh!" he groaned again. "Oh!"

"This way," said the mate firmly, as he caught the agent's arm on the main-deck and guided the man to the gangway. He had seen the captain's blow from where he had stood by number two hatch. He was pleased. While he did not dare to insult the agent, he could make his feelings plain. He gave the agent a sharp push when he was started down the shallow steps.

"Good-by, sir." The mate chuckled. "Hope you come again." But the agent, fondling his face, had only time to get home and to a mirror at the earliest possible moment, and to grope through his astonished mind for a reason for what had occurred.

______________

8: Count Antonio and the Wizard's Drug

Anthony Hope

Short Stories, Jan 1909

NOW towards the close of the third year of his outlawry the heart of Count Antonio of Monte Velluto had grown very sad. For it was above the space of a year since he had heard news of the Lady Lucia, and hard upon two since he had seen her face; so closely did Duke Valentine hold her prisoner in Firmola. And as he walked to and fro among his men in their hiding place in the hills, his face was sorrowful. Yet, coming where Tommasino and Bena sat together, he stopped and listened to their talk with a smile. For Bena cried to Tommasino, "By the saints, my lord, it is even so! My father himself had a philtre from him thirty years ago; and though, before, my mother had loathed to look on my father, yet now here am I, nine-and-twenty years of age and a child born in holy wedlock. Never tell me that it is foolishness, my lord!"

"Of whom do you speak, Bena?" asked Antonio.

"Of the Wizard of Baratesta, my lord. Aye, and he can do more than make a love-potion. He can show you all that shall come to you in a mirror, and make the girl you love rise before your eyes as though the shape were good flesh and blood."

"All this is foolishness, Bena," said Count Antonio.

"Well, God knows that," said Bena. "But he did it for my father; and as he is thirty years older, he will be wiser still by now"; and Bena strode off to tend his horse, somewhat angry that Antonio paid so little heed to his words.

"It is all foolishness, Tommasino," said Antonio.

"They say that of many a thing which gives a man pleasure," said Tommasino.

"I have heard of this man before," continued the Count, "and marvellous stories are told of him. Now I leave what shall come to me in the hands of Heaven; for to know is not to alter, and knowledge without pojwer is but fretting of the heart; but " And Antonio broke off.

"Ride, then, if you can safely, and beg him to show you Lucia's face," said Tommasino. "For to that I think you are making."

"In truth I was, fool that I am," said Antonio.

"But be wary; for Baratesta is but ten miles from the city, and His Highness sleeps with an open eye."

So Antonio, albeit that he was in part ashamed, learnt from Bena where the wizard dwelt on the bridge that is outside the gate of Baratesta— for the Syndic would not suffer such folk to live inside the wall— and one evening he saddled his horse and rode alone to seek the wizard, leaving Tommasino in charge of the band. And as he went, he pondered, saying, "I am a fool, yet I would see her face"; and thus, still dubbing himselt fool, yet still persisting, he came to the bridge of Baratesta; and the wizard, who was a very old man and tall and marvellously lean, met him at the door of the house, crying, "I looked for your coming, my lord." And he took Antonio's horse from him and stood it in a stable beside the house, and led Antonio in, saying again, "Your coming was known to me, my lord"; and he brought Antonio to a chamber at the back of the house, having one window, past which the river, being then in flood, rushed with noise and fury. There were many strange things in the chamber, skulls and the forms of animals from far-off countries, great jars, basins, and retorts, and in one corner a mirror half-draped in a black cloth.

"You know who I am?" asked Antonio.

"That needs no art," answered the wizard, "and I pretend to none in it. Your face, my lord, was known to me as to any other man, from seeing you ride with the Duke before your banishment."

"And you knew that I rode hither to-night?"

"Aye," said the wizard. "For the stars told of the coming of some great man; and I turned from my toil and watched for you."

"What toil?" asked Antonio. "See, here is money, and I have a quiet tongue. What toil?"

The wizard pointed to a heap of broken and bent pieces of base metal. "I was turning dross to gold," said he, in a fearful whisper.

"Can you do that?" asked Antonio, smiling.

"I can, my lord, though but slowly."

"And hate to love?" asked Count Antonio.

The wizard laughed harshly. "Let them that prize love, seek that," said he. "It is not for me."

"I would it had been; then had my errand here been a better one. For I am come to see the semblance of a maiden's face."

The wizard frowned as he said, "I had looked for a greater matter. For you have a mighty enemy, my lord, and I have means of power for freeing men of their enemies."

But Count Antonio, knowing that he spoke of some dark device of spell or poison, answered, "Enough! enough! For I am a man of quick temper, and it is not well to tell me of wicked things, lest I be tempted to anticipate Heaven's punishment."

"I shall not die at your hands, my lord," said the wizard. "Come, will you see what shall befall you?"

"Nay, I would but see my lady's face; a great yearning for that has come over me, and, although I take shame in it, yet it has brought me here."

"You shall see it then; and if you see more, it is not by my will," said the wizard; and he quenched the lamp that burned on the table, and flung a handful of some powder on the charcoal in the stove; and the room was filled with a thick sweet-smelling vapor. And the wizard tore the black cloth off the face of the mirror and bade Antonio look steadily in the mirror. Antonio looked till the vapor that enveloped all the room cleared off from the face of the mirror, and the wizard, laying his hand on Antonio's shoulder, said, "Cry her name thrice." And Antonio thrice cried "Lucia!" and again waited. Then something came on the polished surface of the mirror; but the wizard muttered low and angrily, for it was not the form of Lucia nor of any maiden; yet presently he cried low, "Look, my lord, look!" and Antonio, looking, saw a dim, and shadowy face in the mirror; and the wizard began to fling his body to and fro, uttering strange whispered words; and the sweat stood in beads on his forehead. "Now, now!" he cried; and Antonio, with beating heart, fastened his gaze on the mirror. And as the story goes (I vouch not for it) he saw, though very dimly, the face of Lucia; but more he saw also; for beside the face was his own face, and there was a rope about his neck, and the half-shaped arm of a gibbet seemed to hover above him. And he shrank back for an instant.

"What more you see is not by my will," said the wizard.

"What shall come is only by God's will," said Antonio. "I have seen her face. It is enough."

But the wizard clutched him by the arm, whispering in terror, "It is a gibbet; and the rope is about your neck."

"Indeed, I seem to have worn it there these three years, and it is not drawn tight yet; nor is it drawn in the mirror."

"You have a good courage," said the wizard with a grim smile. "I will show you more"; and he flung another powder on the charcoal; and the shapes passed from the mirror. But another came; and the wizard, with a great cry, fell suddenly on his knees, exclaiming, "They mock me, they mock me! They show what they will, not what I will. Ah, my lord, whose is the face in the mirror?" And he seized Antonio again by the arm.

"It is your face," said Antonio; "and it is the face of a dead man, for his jaw his dropped, and his features are drawn and wrung."

The wizard buried his face in his hands; and so they rested awhile till the glass of the mirror cleared; and Antonio felt the body of the wizard shaking against his knee.

"You are old," said Antonio, "and death must come to all. Maybe it is a lie of the devil; but if not, face it as a man should."

But the wizard trembled still; and Antonio, casting a pitiful glance on him, rose to depart. But on the instant as he moved, there came a sudden loud knocking at the door of the house, and he stood still. The wizard lifted his head to listen.

"Have you had warning of more visitors to-night?" asked Antonio.

"I know not what happens to-night," muttered the wizard. "My power, is gone to-night."

The knocking at the door came again, loud and impatient.

"They will beat the door down if you do not open," said Antonio. "I will hide myself here behind the mirror; for I cannot pass them without being seen; and if I am seen here, it is like enough that the mirror will be proved right both for you and me."

So Antonio hid himself, crouching down behind the mirror; and the wizard, having lit a small dim lamp, went on trembling feet to the door. And presently he came back, followed by two men whose faces were hid in their cloaks. One of them sat down, but the other stood and flung his cloak back over his shoulders; and Antonio, observing him from behind the mirror, saw that he was Lorenzo, the Duke's favorite^

Then Lorenzo spoke to the wizard saying, "Why did you not come sooner to open the door?"

"There was one here with me," said the wizard, whose air had become again composed.

"And he is gone? For we would be alone."

"He is not to be seen," answered the wizard. "Utterly alone here you cannot be."

When he heard this, Lorenzo turned pale, for he did not love this midnight errand to the wizard's chamber.

"But no man is here," said the wizard.

A low hoarse laugh came from the man who sat. "Tricks of the trade, tricks of the trade!" said he; and Antonio started to hear his voice. "Be sure that where a prince, a courtier, and a cheat are together, the devil makes a fourth. But there is no need to turn pale over it, Lorenzo."

When the wizard heard, he fell on his knees; for he knew that it was Duke Valentine who spoke.

"Look you, fellow," pursued His Highness, "you owe me much thanks that you are not hanged already; for by putting an end to you I should please my clergy much and the Syndic of Baratesta not a little. But if you do not obey me to-night, you shall be dead before morning."

"I shall not die unless it be written in the stars," said the wizard, but his voice trembled.

"I know nothing of the stars," said the Duke, "but I know the mind of the Duke of Firmola, and that is enough for my purpose." And he rose and began to walk about the chamber, examining the strange objects that were there; and thus he came in front of the mirror, and stood within half a yard of Antonio. But Lorenzo stood where he was, and once he crossed himself secretly and unobserved.

"What would my lord the Duke?" asked the wizard.

"There is a certain drug," said the Duke, turning round towards the wizard, "which if a man drink— or a woman, Lorenzo— he can walk on his legs and use his arms, and seem to be waking and in his right mind; yet is his mind a nothing, for he knows not what he does, but does everything that one, being with him, may command, and without seeming reluctance; and again, when bidden, he will seem to lose all power of movement, and to lack his senses. I saw the tKing once when I sojourned with the Lord of Florence; for a wizard there, having given the drug to a certain man, put him through strange antics, and he performed them all willingly."

"Aye, there is such a drug," said the wizard.

"Then give it me," said the Duke; "and I give you your life and fifty pieces of gold. For I have great need of it."

Now when Antonio heard the Duke's words, he was seized with great fear; for he surmised that it was against Lucia that the Duke meant to use this drug; and noiselessly he loosened his sword in its sheath and bent forward again to listen.

"And though my purpose is nothing to you, yet it is a benevolent purpose. Is it not, Lorenzo?"

"It is your will, not mine, my lord," said Lorenzo in a troubled voice.

"Mine shall be the crime, then, and yours the reward," laughed the Duke. "For I will give her the drug, and she shall wed you."

Then Antonio doubted no longer of what was afoot, nor that a plot was laid whereby Lucia should be entrapped into marriage with Lorenzo, since she could not be openly forced. And anger burned hotly in him. And he swore that, sooner than suffer the thing to be done, he would kill the Duke there with his own hand or himself be slain.

"And you alone know of this drug now, they say," the Duke went on. "For the wizard of Florence is dead. Therefore give it me quickly."

But the wizard answered, "It will not serve, my lord, that I give you the drug. With my own hand I must give it to the persons whom you would thus affect, and I must tell them what they should do."

"More tricks!" said the Duke scornfully. "I know your ways. Give me the drug." And he would not believe what the wizard said.

"It is even as I say," said the wizard. "And if Your Highness will carry the drug yourself, I will not vouch its operation."

"Give it me; for I know the appearance of it," said the Duke.

Then the wizard, having again protested, went to a certain shelf and from some hidden recess took a small phial, and came with it to the Duke, saying, "Blame me not, if its operation fail."

The Duke examined the phial closely, and also smelt its smell. "It is the same," said he. "It will do its work."

Then Count Antonio, who believed no more than the Duke what the wizard had said concerning the need of his own presence for the working of the drug, was very sorely put to it to stay quietly where he was; for if the Duke rode away now with the phial, he might well find means to give it to the Lady Lucia before any warning could be conveyed to her. And, although the danger was great, yet his love for Lucia and his fear for her overcame his prudence, and suddenly he sprang from behind the mirror, drawing his sword and crying, "Give me that drug, my lord, or your life must answer for it."

But fortune served him ill; for as the Duke and Lorenzo shrank back at his sudden appearance, and he was about to spring on them, behold, his foot caught in the folds of the black cloth that had been over the mirror and now lay on the ground, and, falling forward, he struck his head on the marble rim that ran round the charcoal stove, and, having fallen with great force, lay there like a man dead. With loud cries of triumph, the Duke and Lorenzo, having drawn their swords, ran upon him; and the Duke planted his foot upon his neck, crying, "Heaven sends a greater prize! At last, at last I have him! Bind his hands, Lorenzo."

Lorenzo bound Antonio's hands as he lay there, a log for stillness. The Duke turned to the wizard and a smile bent his lips. "O faithful subject and servant!" said he. "Well do you require my mercy and forbearance, by harboring my bitterest enemies and suffering them to hear my secret counsels. Had not Antonio chanced to trip, it is like enough he would have slain Lorenzo and me also. What shall be your reward, O faithful servant?"

When the Wizard of Baratesta beheld the look that was on Duke Valentine's face, he suddenly cried aloud, "The mirror, the mirror!" and sank in a heap on the floor, trembling in every limb; for he remembered the aspect of his own face in the mirror and knew that the hour of his death had come. And he feared mightily to die; therefore he besought the Duke very piteously, and told him again that from his hand alone could the drug receive its potency. And so earnest was he in this, that at last he half-won upon the Duke, so that the Duke wavered. And as he doubted, his eye fell on Antonio; and he perceived that Antonio was recovering from his swoon.

"There is enough for two," said he, "in the phial; and we will put this thing to the test. But if you speak or move or make any sign, forthwith in that moment you shall die." Then the Duke poured half the contents of the phial into a glass and came to Lorenzo and whispered to him, "If the drug works on him, and the wizard is proved a lie, the wizard shall die; but we will carry Antonio with us; and when I have mustered my guard, I will hang him in the square as I have sworn. But if the drug does not work, then we must kill him here; for I fear to carry him against his will; for he is a wonderful man, full of resource, and the people also love him. Therefore, if the operation of the drug fail, run him through with your sword when I give the signal."

Now Antonio was recovering from his swoon, and he overheard part of what the Duke said, but not all. As to the death of the wizard he did not hear, but he understood that the Duke was about to test the effect of the drug on him, and that if it had no effect, he was to die; whereas, if its operation proved sufficient, he should go alive; and he saw here a chance for his life in case what the wizard had said should prove true.

"Drink, Antonio," said the Duke softly. "No harm comes to you. Drink: it is a refreshing draught."

And Antonio drank the draught, the wizard looking on with parted lips and with great drops of sweat running from his forehead and thence down his cheeks to his mouth, so that his lips were salt when he licked them. And the Duke, having seen that Lorenzo had his sword ready for Antonio, took his stand by the wizard with the dagger from his belt in his hand. And he cried to Antonio, "Rise." And Antonio rose up. The wizard started a step towards him; but the Duke showed his dagger, and said to Antonio, "Will you go with me to Firmalo, Antonio?"

And Antonio answered, "I will go."

"Do you love me, Antonio?" asked the Duke.

"Aye, my lord," answered Antonio.

"Yet you have done many wicked things against me."

"True, my lord," said Antonio.

"Is your mind then changed?"

"It is, my lord," said Antonio.

"Then leap two paces into the air," said the Duke; and Antonio straightway obeyed.

"Go down on your knees and crawl"; and Antonio crawled, smiling secretly to himself.

Then the Duke bade Lorenzo mount Antonio on his horse; and he commanded the wizard to follow him; and they all went out where the horses were; and the three mounted, and the wizard followed; and they came to the end of the bridge. There the Duke turned sharp round and rode by the side of the rushing river. And, suddenly pausing, he said to Antonio, "Commend thy soul to God and leap in."

And Antonio commended his soul to God, and would have leapt in; but the Duke caught him by the arm even as he set spurs to his horse, saying, "Do not leap." And Antonio stayed his leap. Then the Duke turned his face on the wizard, saying, "The potion works, wizard. Why did you lie?"

Then the wizard fell on his knees, cursing hell and heaven; for he could not see how he should escape. For the potion worked. And Antonio wondered what should fall out next. But Duke Valentine leapt down from his horse and approached the wizard, while Lorenzo set his sword against Antonio's breast. And the Duke, desirous to make a final trial, called again to Antonio, "Fling yourself from your horse." And Antonio, having his arms bound, yet flung himself from his horse, and fell prone to the ground, and lay there sorely bruised,

"It is enough," said the Duke. "You lied, wizard."

But the wizard cried, "I lied not, I lied not, my lord. Slay me not, my lord! For I dare not die."

But the Duke caught him by the throat and drove his dagger into his breast till the fingers that held the dagger were buried in the folds of the wizard's doublet; and the Duke pulled out the dagger, and, when the wizard fell, he pushed him with his foot over the brink, and the body fell with a loud splash into the river below.

THUS DIED the Wizard of Baratesta, who was famed above all of his day for the hidden knowledge that he had; yet he served not God, but Satan, and his end was the end of a sinner. And, many days after, his body was found a hundred miles from that place; and certain charitable men gave it burial. So that he died that same night in which the mirror had shown him his face as the face of a dead man; but whence came the vision I know not.

Then the Duke set Antonio again on his horse, and the three rode together towards Firmola, and as they went, again and again the Duke tested the operation of the drug, setting Antonio many strange, ludicrous, and unseemly things to do and to say; and Antonio did and said them all. But he wondered greatly that the drug had no power over him, and that his brain was dear and his senses all his own; nor did he then believe that the Duke had, in truth, slain the wizard for any reason save that the wizard had harbored him, an outlaw, and suffered him to hear the Duke's counsels; and he was grieved at the wizard's death.

Thus they rode through the night; and it was the hour of dawn when they came to the gates of Firmola. Now Antonio was puzzled what he should do; for having been in a swoon, he knew not whether the Duke had more of the potion; nor could he tell with certainty whether the potion would be powerless against the senses of a weak girl as it had proved against his own. Therefore he said to the Duke, "I pray you, my lord, give me more of that sweet drink. For it has refreshed me and set my mind at rest from all trouble."

"Nay, Antonio, you have had enough," said the Duke, bantering him. "I have another use for the rest." And they were now nearing the gates of Firmola. Then Antonio began to moan pitifully, saying, "These bonds hurt my hands"; and he whined and did as a child would do, feigning to cry. The Duke laughed in bitter triumph, saying to Lorenzo, "Indeed it is a princely drug that makes Antonio of Monte Velluto like a peevish child!" And being now very secure of the power of the drug, he bade Lorenzo loosen the bonds, saying to Antonio, "Take the reins, Antonio, and ride with us into the city."

And Antonio answered "I will, my good lord."

"It is even as I saw when I was with the Lord of Florence," whispered the Duke in exultation.

"Yet I will still have my sword ready," said Lorenzo.

"There is no need; he is like a tame dog," said the Duke carelessly.

But the Duke was not minded to produce Antonio to the people till all his Guards were collected and under arms, and the people thus restrained by a great show of force. Therefore he bade Antonio cover his face with his cloak; and Antonio, Lorenzo's sword being still at his breast, obeyed; and thus they three rode through the gates of Firmola and came to the Duke's palace; and Antonio did all that the Duke ordered, and babbled foolishly like a bewildered child when the Duke asked him questions, so that His Highness laughed mightily, and, coming into the garden sat down in his favorite place by the fish-pond, causing Antonio to stand over against him.

"Indeed, Antonio," said he, "I can do no other than hang you."

"If it be your pleasure, my lord."

"And then Lucia shall drink of this wonderful drug also, and she will be content and obedient, and will gladly wed Lorenzo. Let us have her here now, and give it to her without delay. You do not fret at that, Antonio? You love not the obstinate girl?"

"In truth, no," laughed Antonio. "She is naught to me!" And he put his hand to his head, saying perplexedly, "Lucia? Yes, I remember that name. Who was she? Was she aught to me, my lord?"

Then Lorenzo wondered greatly, and the doubts that he iiad held concerning the power of the wizard's drug melted' away; yet he did not laugh like the Duke, but looked on Antonio and said sadly to the Duke sinking his voice, "Not thus should Antonio of Monte Velluto have died."

"So he dies, I care not how," answered the Duke. "Indeed, I love to see him a witless fool even while his body is yet alive. O rare wizard, I go near to repenting having done justice on you! Go, Lorenzo, to the officer of the Guard and bid him fetch hither the Lady Lucia, and we will play the pretty comedy to the end."

"Will you be alone with him?" asked Lorenzo.

"Aye; why not? See! he is tame enough," and he buffeted Antonio in the face with his riding-glove. And Antonio whimpered and whined.

Now the officer of the Guard was in his lodge at the entrance of the palace, on the other side of the great hall; and Lorenzo turned and went, and presently the sound of his feet on the marble floor of the hall grew faint and distant. The Duke sat with the phial in his hand, smiling at Antonio who crouched at his feet. And Antonio drew himself on his knees quite close to the Duke, and looked up in his face with a foolish empty smile. And the Duke, laughing, buffeted him again. Then, with a sudden spring, like the spring of that Indian tiger which the Mogul of Delhi sent lately as a gift to the Most Christian King, and the king, for his diversion, made to slay deer before him at the chateau of Blois ('which I myself saw, being there on a certain mission, and wonderful was the sight), Count Antonio, leaping, was upon the Duke; and he snatched the philtre from the Duke's hand and seized the Duke's head in his hands and wrenched his jaw open, and he poured the contents of the phial down the Duke's throat, and the Duke swallowed the potion. Then Antonio fixed a stern and imperious glance on the Duke, nailing his eyes to the Duke's and the Duke's to his, and he said in a voice of command, "Obey! You have drunk the potion!" And still he kept his eyes on the Duke's. And the Duke, amazed, suddenly began to tremble, and sought to rise; and Antonio took his hands off him, but said, "Sit there, and move not." Then, although Antonio's hands were no longer upon him, yet His Highness did not rise, but after a short struggle with himself sank back in his seat, and stared at Antonio like a bird fascinated by a snake. And he moaned, "Take away your eyes; they burn my brain. Take them away." But Antonio gazed all the more intently at him, saying, "Be still, be still!" and holding up his arm in enforcement of his command. And Antonio took from the Duke the sword that he wore and the dagger wherewith the Duke had killed the Wizard of Baratesta, he making no resistance, but sitting motionless with bewildered stare. Then Antonio looked round, for he knew that Lorenzo would soon come. And for the last time he bent his eyes again on the Duke's eyes in a very long gaze and the Duke cowered and shivered, moaning, "You hurt me, you hurt me."

Then Antonio said, "Be still and speak not till I return and bid you"; and he suddenly left the Duke and ran at the top of his speed along under the wall of the garden, and came where the wall ended; and there was a flight of steps leading up on to the top of the wall. Running up it, Antonio stood for a moment on the wall; and the river ran fifty feet below. But he heard a cry from the garden, and beheld Lorenzo rushing up to the Duke, and behind Lorenzo, the Captain of the Guard and, two men who led a maiden in white. Then Count Antonio, having commended himself to the keeping of God, leaped from the top of the wall into the river, and his body clove the water as an arrow cleaves the wand.

Now Lorenzo marvelled greatly at what he saw, and came to the Duke crying, "My lord, what does this mean? Antonio flies!" But the Duke answered nothing, sitting with empty eyes and lips set in a rigid smile; nor did he move. "My lord, what ails you?" cried Lorenzo. Yet the Duke did not answer. Then Lorenzo's eye fell on the fragments of the phial which lay broken on the rim of the fish-pond where Antonio had flung it; and he cried out in great alarm, "The potion! Where is the potion?" But the Duke did not answer. And Lorenzo was much bewildered and in sore fear; for it seemed as though His Highness's senses were gone; and Lorenzo said, "By some means he has drunk the potion!" And he ran up to the Duke, and caught him by the arm and shook him violently, seeking to rouse him from his stupor, and calling his name with entreaties, and crying, "He escapes, my lord; Antonio escapes! Rouse yourself, my lord, he escapes!" But the Duke did no more than lift heavy dull eyes to Lorenzo's face in puzzled inquiry.

And, seeing the strange thing, the Captain of the Guard hurried up, and with him the Lady Lucia, and she said, "Alas, my lord is ill!" and coming to His Highness she set her cool soft hand on his hot throbbing brow, and took perfume from a silver flask that hung at her girdle, and wetted her handkerchief with it and bathed his brow, whispering soft soothing words to him, as though he had been a sick woman. For let a woman have what grudge she may against a man, yet he gains pardon for all so soon as he becomes sick enough to let her nurse and comfort him; and Lucia was as tender to the Duke as to the Count Antonio himself, and forgot all save the need of giving him ease and rousing him from his stupor.

But Lorenzo cried angrily, "I at least have my senses!" And he said to the Captain of the Guard, "I must needs stay with His Highness; but Antonio of Monte Velluto has leapt from the wall into the river. Go and bring him here, dead or alive, and I will be your warrant to the Duke. But if he be as when I saw him last, he will give you small trouble. For he was like a child for weakness and folly." And having said this, he turned to the Duke again, and gave his aid to Lucia's ministrations.

Now the gentleman who commanded the Duke's Guard at this time was a Spaniard, by name Corogna, and he was young, of high courage, and burning to do some great deed. Therefore he said, "I pray he be as he is wont to be : yet I will bring him to the feet of my lord the Duke." And he ran swiftly through the hall and called for his horse, and drawing his sword, rode alone out of the city and across the bridge, seeking Antonio, and saying to himself, "What a thing if I take him! And if he slay me, why, I will show that a gentleman of Andalusia can die"; yet he thought for an instant of the house where his mother lived. Then he scanned the plain, and he beheld a man running some half-mile away; and the man seemed to be making for the hill on which stood the ruins of Antonio's house that the Duke had burnt. Then Corogna set spurs to his horse; but the maij, whom by his stature and gait Corogna knew to be Antonio, ran very swiftly, and was not overtaken before he came to the hill; and he began to mount by a very steep rugged path, and he was out of sight in the trees when Corogna came to the foot. And Corogna's horse stumbled among the stones, and could not mount the path; so Corogna sprang off his back and ran on foot up the path, sword in hand. And he came in sight of Antonio round a curve of the path three parts of the way up the hill. Antonio was leaning against the trunk of a tree and wringing the water out of his cloak. Corogna drew near, sword in hand, and with a prayer to the Holy Virgin on his lips. And he trembled, not with fear, but because fate offered a great prize, and his name would be famed throughout Italy if he slew or took Antonio of Monte Velluto; and for fame, even as for a woman's smile, a young man will tremble as a coward quakes with fear.

The Count Antonio stood as though sunk in a reverie; yet, presently, Corogna s tread, he raised his eyes, and smiling kindly on the young man, he said, "Very strange are the ways of Heaven, sir. I think that the Wizard of Baratesta spoke truth, and did not lie to the Duke. Yet I had that same power which the wizard claimed, although the Duke had none over me. We are children, sir, and our game is blind-man's buff; but all are blinded, and it is but the narrowest glimpse that we obtain now and again by some clever shifting of the handkerchief. Yet there are some things clear enough; as that a man should do his work, and be clean and true. What would you with me, sir? For I do not think I know you."

"I am of Andalusia, and my name is Corogna. I am Captain of His Highnesses Guard, and I come to bring you, alive or dead, to his presence.''

"And are you come alone on that errand, sir?" asked Antonio with a smile that he strove to smother, lest it should wound the young man's honor.

"David slew Goliath, my lord," said the Spaniard with a bow.

Then Count Antonio held out his hand to the young man and said courteously, "Sir, your valor needs no proof and fears no reproach. I pray you suffer me to go in peace. I would not fight with you, if I may avoid it honorably. For what has happened has left me more in the mood for thinking than for fighting. Besides, sir, you are young, and, far off in Andalusia, loving eyes, and maybe sparkling eyes, are strained to the horizon, seeking your face as you return."

"What is all that, my lord?" asked Corogna. "I am a man, though a young one; and I am here to carry you to the Duke." And he touched Antonio's sword with his, saying, "Guard yourself."

"It is with great pain and reluctance that I take my sword, and I call you to witness of it; but if I must, I must"; and the Count took up his position and they crossed swords.

Now Corogna was well-taught and skilful, but he did not know the cunning which Antonio had learned in the school of Giacomo in Padua, nor had he the strength and endurance of the Count. Antonio would fain have wearied him out, and then, giving him some slight wound to cover his honor, have left him and escaped; but the young man came at him impetuously, and neglected to guard himself while he thrust at his enemy: once and again the Count spared him; but he did not know that he had received the courtesy, and taking heart from his immunity came at Antonio more fiercely again; until at last Antonio, breathing a sigh, stiffened his arm, and, waiting warily for the young man again to uncover himself, thrust at his breast, and the sword's point entered hard by the young man's heart; and the young man staggered, and would have fallen, dropping his sword; but Antonio cast away his own sword and supported him, stanching the blood from the wound and crying, "God send I have not killed him!"

And on his speech came the voice of Tommasino, saying carelessly, "Here, in truth, cousin, is a good prayer wasted on a Spaniard!"

Antonio, looking up, saw Tommasino and Bena. And Tommasino said, "When you did not come back, we set out to seek you, fearing that you were fallen into some snare and danger. And behold, we find you nursing this young spark; and how you missed his heart, Antonio, I know not, nor what Giacomo of Padua would say to such bungling."

But Antonio cared not for his cousin's words, which were spoken in a banter that a man uses to hide his true feelings; and they three set themselves to save the young man's life; for Tommasino and Bena had seen the better part of the fight and perceived that he was a gallant youth. But as they tended him, there came shouts and the sound of horses' hoofs mounting the hill by the winding road that led past Antonio's house. And Tommasino touched Antonio on the shoulder, saying, "We can do no more for him; and if we linger, we must fight again."

Then they laid the young man down, Antonio stripping off his cloak and making a pillow of it; and Bena brought the horses, for they had led one with them for Antonio, in case there should be need of it; and they were but mounted when twenty of the Duke's Guard appeared three hundred yards away, ascending the crest of the hill.

"Thank Heaven there are so many," said Antonio, "for now we can flee without shame"; and they set spurs to their horses and fled. And certain of the Duke's Guard pursued, but only two or three were so well mounted as to be able to come near them; and these two or three, finding that they would be man to man, had no liking for the business, and each called out that his horse was foundered; and thus it was that none of them came up with Count Antonio, but all, after a while, returned together to the city, carrying the young Spaniard Corogna, their captain. But as they drew near to the gates, Corogna opened his eyes and murmured some soft-syllabled name that they could not hear, and, having with failing fingers signed the cross, turned on his side and died. And they brought his body to the great hall of the Duke's palace.

There in the great hall sat Duke Valentine; his face was pale and his frown heavy, and he gazed on the dead body of the young man and spoke no word. Yet he had loved Corogna, and out of love for him had made him Captain of his Guard. And he passed his hand wearily across his brow, murmuring, "I cannot think, I cannot think." And the Lady Lucia stood by him, her hand resting on his shoulder and her eyes full of tears. But at last the strange spell which lay on the senses of the Duke passed away; his eyes again had the light of reason in them, and he listened while they told him how Antonio had himself escaped, and had afterwards slain Corogna on the top of the hill where Antonio's house had stood. And the Duke was very sorry for Corogna's death; and he looked round on them all, saying, "He made of me a log of wood, and not a man. For when I had drunk and looked in his eyes, it seemed to me that my eyes were bound to his, and that I looked to him for command, and to know what I should do, and that he was my God, and without his will I could not move. Yes, I was then to him even as he had seemed to be to me as we rode from Baratesta. And even now I am not free from this strange affection; for he seems still to be by me, and if his voice came now bidding me to do anything, by St. Frisian, I should arise and do it! Send my physician to me. And let this young man lie in the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin in the Cathedral, and to-morrow he shall be buried. But when I am well, and this strange affection is passed from me, and hangs no more like a fog over my brain, then I will exact the price of his death from Antonio, together with the reckoning of all else in respect of which he stands in my debt."

But the Lady Lucia, hearing this, said boldly, "My lord, it is by your deed and through your devices that this gentleman has met his death, and the blame of it is yours, and not my lord Antonio's."

At her bold and angry words Duke Valentine was aroused, and the last of his languor left him; and he glared at her in wrath, crying "Go to your house"; and he rose up suddenly from where he sat and went into his cabinet, Lorenzo attending him. And on the day after he walked first behind the bier of Corogna, and his face was very pale, but his air composed and his manner as it was wont to be. For the spell had passed and he was his own man again.

But Count Antonio heard with great grief of the death of the young man, and was very sorry that he had been constrained to kill him, and took great blame to himself for seeking counsel of the Wizard of Baratesta, whence had come death to the young man no less than to the wizard himself.

SUCH IS the story of the drug which the Wizard of Baratesta gave to Duke Valentine of Firmola. To me it seems a strange tale, but yet it is well attested and stands on as strong a rock of testimony as anything which is told concerning the Count. The truth of it I do not understand, and often I ponder of it, wondering whether the Wizard of Baratesta spoke truth, and why the drug which had no power over Count Antonio bound the senses and limbs of the Duke in utter stupor and helplessness.

But Count Antonio being by his guile and adroitness, and by that strange power which he had from the drug or whence I know not delivered out of the hands of the Duke Valentine, abode with his company on the hills throughout the cold of winter, expecting the day when he might win the hand of the Lady Lucia; and she returned to her house, and said nothing of what had befallen the Duke. Yet the Duke showed her no tenderness, but rather used more severity with her. It is an evil service to a proud man to aid him in his day of humiliation.

___________________

9: The Mystery of the Steel Disk

Broughton Brandenburg
fl 1900-1933

Metropolitan Magazine, April 1905

One of the many writers of this period whose work disappeared with little trace.

THE telephone bell in the outer office rang, and opening the switch at the side of my desk I took up my stand-'phone and answered:

"Hello. Well?"

"Hello, is this Duncan & Betts?" inquired a man's voice with a slight foreign accent.

"Yes."

"I want to speak wit' Mister Lawrence Duncan."

"This is Mr. Duncan. What can I do for you?"

"T'is is Mr. Martin Anderson of 196 Gramercy Park. Just now while I was eating my breakfast in my rooms over my real estate office, I was called to my telephone by Mr. George Rhodes, who is in t'e Municipal Bank. He is a young man who wants to marry my daughter Marie, and he called me up to tell me that when he opened t'e vault a little while ago he found that since he closed it the night before a package with more than a million dollars in bonds was gone. He is responsible for t'e vault and no one else, and he called me up to tell me, and say he did not take it, to tell Marie t'at, but he withdrew his request for her hand. Now, then, Mr. Duncan, I don't care one t'am about him, but my daughter must not be made to come in in this case with t'e noos-papers or t'e gossip, so I want you to go over to t'e bank and see him and help him out in every way, yust so he keep his mout' shut about Marie, and if t'ey lock him up I want t'at she don't get to see him or no such foolishness. I send you my check for five hundred t'is morning, and I want to know all about what you do, at my house to-night. Will you do it?"

"Yes, I will go over at once," I answered.

"T'at is all. Good-by—"

"Thank you. Good-by. I will call this evening."

"Good-by, Mr. Duncan."

My first impression as I hung up the receiver was a thrill at being thus thrust into the centre of what appeared to be one of the biggest cases which had transpired in years. My second was a pleasurable recognition of the crisp, direct, clear, and ample statement of the matter which the old real estate man had made. It had all been done in two minutes or less. It is not often that we lawyers encounter people outside of our own and the newspaper profession who can state anything so concisely and not lose any value in it.

At this moment, Betts, my partner, and the stenographer came in, so I hurried over to the Municipal Bank.

Business was just beginning for the day. I could see at a glance over the men behind the brass screens that they as a whole did not as yet know that the bank was a loser by a million. The cashier's door was open, and he was just smoothing out his morning mail in the calmest of manners. No one looked up as I entered; that showed normal state of mind among the clerks.

I asked for Mr. George Rhodes, and a tall, broad shouldered, clean-cut young chap came forward from a desk in the extreme rear of the place and took my card through the bars. Even with the slight view I could get of his face. I perceived he was pale and haggard. He opened a side door and admitted me to the anteroom of the directors' diamber. I told him I had come in his interest; retained by Mr. Anderson, and stated my client's reason for sending me, namely, to prevent his daughter's name from being mentioned in this matter at any or all times, and asked the young man what I could do for him.

He had been sitting running his thumb-nail predselsp along the edge of my card, and now he looked up and said, in a dull, expressionless way:

"Really, Mr. Duncan, I have thought the matter over carefully, and there is nothing to do."

He seemed so numbed and hopeless that I was amused.

''You surprise me, Mr. Rhodes," I said. "Surely a thing like this can not in itself shut off any action. In the first place, give me the facts. We will see what can be done."

"The facts are few enough," he answered, simply. "The bonds were in a package four inches thick. They were '90 government fours, clipped and worth one million two hundred thousand when entered the first of the month, three weeks ago. They were marked with a typewritten slip on the end and lay in the securities compartment of the vault. Last night, with the assistant cashier and the receiving teller, as is our rule here, I checked the cash and books going in. We together do not check securities in that compartment except once every month, but I go over them every night and morning in the way that I was instructed by the cashier; that is, the packets are piled in alphabetical classification, and the piling is done so that if a packet were taken out it would make a hole which I should see at a glance, and by reference to my list see what it was. Last night there was nothing missing, for the pile was perfectly even across the top, and we closed the vault and set the time-lock. This morning the time-lock was still running when I arrived and the safe was absolutely just as I left it. When I opened the vault, I went over the securities as usual, and, observing a slight depression in the rear tier, put my hand on it It gave way enough to show something was missing, and I checked off the packets and found the '90 governments gone. I checked them over three times, and then, when I had got over the shock, went into the booth outside and telephoned Mr. Anderson just what I have told you. Having asked him for his daughter, I felt I owed that to them and to myself. The assistant cashier and the assistant receivings teller were with me when I opened the vault, and I checked out the books and cash so that they know the safe had not been touched overnight; now you see it is up to me to account for those bonds. Mr. Anderson asked me to wait and see you before I told the cashier. The president is not down yet."

I had been watching him covertly as he spoke, and the instant that he had given me the case I felt the conviction stealing over me that he had the bonds, or had had them. The case of a small-salaried trust company clerk, who put our hundred thousand dollars of his employer's money into Wall Street in four weeks, rose in my mind. No matter, however, whether he had taken them or not a fifteen or twenty years' term stared him in the face. Perhaps he thought that worth the gain. I supposed that, of course,he was bonded for one or two hundred thousand hy some one of the fidelity companies, so I did not trouble to ask him as to that. I merely remarked, drawing on my gloves:

''Well, Mr. Rhodes, I would advise you to put back the bonds if you can do it without detection, or else— slide."

A red flush crept up. to his temples. It was either anger or guilt, probably both, but he controlled himself and said almost between his teeth, rising and turning away:

''I wish to bid you good-morning, Mr. Duncan. You can go back to Mr. Anderson and tell him Marie will receive a last note from me in an hour, and now, if you will excuse me, I shall inform the cashier."

Something in his manner and the remembrance of his quixotic haste in calling up his sweetheart's father caused a pang of remorse to shoot through me and I put out my hand and stopped him.

"I beg your pardon, Rhodes. I did not mean to be brutal, but the facts—"

The tense line of his white lips relaxed into a sickly smile.

''Yes, the facts, I know. I am not in a position to resent being reminded of them. But, I have made up my mind to tell the cashier."

We left the room together, and I walked with him along the outer corridor to the cashier's door, vrhtrt the stenographer said he had gone out, and we found the president would not be down until one o'clock.

"See here, Rhodes," I said with sudden determination, "I'm going to do what I can in this matter. ls there any reason why it will become known as a matter of course?"

"The first of the month, a week from to-morrow, will be the triple checking-up time."

"Very well, just you hold off this morning, anyhow. You you probably have three-quarters of an hour for lunch; meet me at Haan's at 12:15."

"All right. Good-morning."

After I had gone twenty yards from the bank I was sorry that I had made the engagement. It was not in the line of my duty to my client, Mr. Anderson, and I was likely to become unprofitably involved with young Rhodes. I saw, even without thought, that there were two alternatives. Either he had taken the bonds or they had been removed overnight from the vault, and I believed he was telling the truth when he said the vault was all right in the morning, for if it had not been, he would have eagerly seized on the circumstance; and furthermore, the fact would have been known by the other officials and the state of peace which I had found on entering would not have existed. There was but one thing to think: Rhodes had taken the bonds, or was shielding the thief.

I related the case to Betts when I reached the office, and he laughed incredulously:

"Say, Duncan," he said, "that is a bit too wild a tale for me. Twelve hundred thousand dollars gone from a time-locked bank vault overnight without opening it! Gee! Why don't you consult that man Rand, Lawrence Rand, the fellow who has been untying some of those hard knots out West? Don't you remember the Johnstone mirror poisoning case and the Rebstock mines affair?"

"Yes, I do. Is Rand his name? Where is he to be found?"

"Jordan went up to his place one night— I think it is in Fifty-seventh Street, in some apartment house. Here, look him up in the telephone book."

I found him entered there.  "Lawrence Rand, Special Agent. 32088 Plaza." And calling him up made an engagement for an hour later.

I was ushered into the reception-room of his apartment by a dark-skinned young giant, whom I at first thought a negro, but as I saw him in the full light and noted his straight hair, and heavy coppery features, I was surprised to find he was a full-blooded Indian. He was dressed in clothes that did not seem compatible with the rank of a servant.

Rand entered with a brisk step, a frank smile on his keen face. As he gripped my hand I realized that far more physical power was in his possession than one would think by his frame, of medium height and slender almost to thinness. It was afterward that I found every inch of him was whipcord and steel.

We sat down in the inner room and I told him the story of Rhodes and the bonds. When I had finished he frowned ever so slightly and said, "Is that all?"

I thought I had been rather explicit. So I replied with a little rigor: "That seems to cover the case."

"Do you know whether there is one night-watchman or two? What is the make of the safe? Have there ever been any attempts at robbery of the bank? Are all of the members of the bank staff present this morning? Has the president been on the right side of the market for the past year?"

The questions came like shots from a rapid-fire gun.* He did not wait for me to answer.

"I see you do not know. We will waste no time. You are to meet young Rhodes at lunch. I want you to invite me, too, for I want to see him."

We took a Sixth Avenue train to Rector Street, and at 12:15 chose our seats in a corner compartment in Haan's. We had been at the table a moment when Rhodes, still very pale, entered and looked around for me. As I introduced him to Rand, I noticed that the latter, after looking the bank clerk full in the eyes a second, let his gaze play like lightning over Rhodes's head and features, and before we sat down he even sought a pretext to step behind Rhodes and look- at the back of his head.

Rhodes was subjected to a severe questioning at once, and some of the queries seemed to be anything but relevant, and in sum were meant to make sure that it was impossible for any one but Rhodes to take the bonds at any time the safe was open. After the books and cash had been checked out, Rhodes said, a sliding steel screen was drawn over the approach to the vault at audi times as he was not inside to get or replace papers or securities ordered out on written slip by some one of the officers. He was sure the bondd could not have been given out by mistake on a slip for other securities because the list tallied.

''Then either you took the bonds or they were extracted from the safe after the time-lock was set, and the time- lock being all right up to the present minute, you are facing toward Sing Sing," summarized Rand, tilting his cigar and spilling salt into his beer.

Rhodes looked down and swallowed hard at something in his throat, but could not answer.

"Who made the vault, when and where?" asked Rand.

"Mahler, in 1890, in Cincinnati."

''Hm, is that so— a Mahler vault, eh? Did I understand you to say the watchman is an old Irishman named Hanahan, has been at the bank twenty years and has considerable property? How do you know about his property?"

"When I was on accounts he always had fifteen or twenty thousand on time deposits, and drew some large checks or made heavy deposits when Mr. Anderson bought or sold property for him—"

"Whom did you say, Mr. Anderson? The real estate agent who sent Mr. Duncan to see you?"

"Yes, Mr. Martin Anderson. He is Hanahan's agent. They were old volunteer firemen together In Williamsburg diortly after they came to this country."

"Indeed! How do you know that?"

"Well, one evening shortly after I met Marie, I went to call on her and she said her father was not at home; that he was down at our bank chatting with Hanahan and having a smoke. Then she told me about their having belonged to the same fire company. After the old man had taken a dislike to me and threatened to shoot me if I came to the house again, I used to watch for Hanahan's check, for every time he drew, I knew he was expecting to see Mr. Anderson and I would go up to the house. I never missed it."

Rand smiled as if he enjoyed the humor in the instance. He thought a moment and then said:

"Well, now, if you will go back to the bank I will be over presently accompanied by a man from the Broadway office of Mahler's, and you will be asked to show us the vault. Please do not indicate that you know me."

When Rhodes was gone. Rand turned to me quickly and said: "Mr. Duncan, kindly go over to Mr. Robert Steele in Hargan's office in Wall Street and tell him I sent you. Ask him whether any government fours of '90 have been in evidence in the market recently. Meet me in half an hour at the telephone booth in the Park Row drug store."

I hurried to the office of the great firm of Hargan & Company and sent in my card to Mr. Steele with "through Mr. Rand" on the comer. I was ushered in immediately.

"Mr. Steele, I was sent here by Mr. Rand to inquire whether there have been any '90 government fours on the market in more than the usual quantity recently?"

At the question he started visibly and whirled abruptly around in his desk chair to face me. He stared at me a moment as if weighing his words forthcoming.

"Well— yes," he said slowly, dropping his eyes in a manner that was anything but frank. "Yes, there have been— some." He paused and looked up at me again, took off his glasses, and, wiping them tentatively, put them on and looked me full in the face as if decided on his course.

"Since Mr. Rand sent you, it must be all right, for we trust Mr. Rand thoroughly here. Tell him that a pile of them has been dumped into the market in the past week, not into the market exactly, but Strauss brokers had them and loans on them were used to buy Overland Pacific at an average of 87, and when it reached 161 last Thursday, who- ever was in this pool began to take profits as nearly as we can tell and closed out the line at an average of 157. Of course Overland went to 136, but she is— let me see— let me see—" he looked at the tape— "is 206, so whoever held these bonds must have been outside of Strauss's pool. It cost us about three million dollars, and if you can tell me any more about it I will be very grateful."

I told him there was absolutely nothing of which I knew personally.

Suddenly I remembered that I had not learned even the name of the president of the Municipal Bank, and if Rand had asked Rhodes at lunch I had let it slip by me. Inwardly ashamed of my loose methods, compared with Rand's thorough ones, I hastened to ask of Mr. Steele, as a by-matter, being sure that he would know. I was at the door ready to go out when the matter flashed into my mind.

"By the way, Mr. Steele," I said, "do you happen to know the president of the Municipal Bank—"

"J. R. Farrington Smith?" He jerked his head around sharply toward me as he interrupted me. "Indeed I do." Then he emitted a short, grating laugh, and continued, looking at me sharply all the while: "How odd I should be thinking of him also at that moment! Do you know, Mr. Duncan, that Strauss is or was his broker? Yet, he was on the short end of Overland very badly; that I know, to my sorrow."

He dropped his voice to a confidence-inviting tone, and said as he leaned forward, motioning me to a chair once more:

"Come now, Mr. Duncan, why should we dissemble? You are evidently very well informed in this matter. Did Smith flop and put up those bonds to go long on Overland? He made a pretty penny if he did. Honestly, is that the way he played fast and loose with us?"

I remained standing and put on my hat to further signify that I was about to go.

"Mr. Steele, to tell the truth, I did not know until a moment ago that J. R. Farrington Smith is president of the Municipal Bank. You have just informed me."

He became very stiff in his manner, and turned to his papers as if already thinking of them, and said quietly:

"Oh, then we are talking to no purpose. Good morning, Mr. Duncan."

By a short cut and a brisk walk up Nassau Street I reached the Park Row drug store on the minute of the half hour. A man was in the telephone booth talking, and just outside the half-open door was Rand, directing the queries that the man was making. The stranger was evidently the man from Mahler's. As I approached Rand motioned me to silence.

"Well, my books show the number is D186N," the safe man was saying; "We  have no record of complaints or repairs back to '94. Have you any before that?— All right, I'll hold the wire. — Hello, yes. You have none at all. Now, what is the pattern of the time-lock? — Neilson patent, yes.— Well, who superintended the Secret Construction Room when this one was made?— The old man himself, eh?— Where is Neilson now?— How long has he been dead? —Well, was his brother-in-law working with him in 1890?— Wait a moment—"

He kept the receiver to his ear and turned to Rand.

"Is there anything else you wish me to ask, Mr. Rand?"

"Inquire if there has ever been any trouble with any D class vaults. That will be all."

The safe man repeated the question into the 'phone; received the answer, hung up the receiver, turned around and said:

"None but an attempt to blow one open in the Produce Exchange in Springfield. It failed. He says the man who controlled the secret measurements on that set of vaults was the patentee of the time-lock, and he is dead. The measurements are sealed and filed. The patents went to his brother-in-law, who worked with him, who sold them outright to the company for a song."

"What was his name?" asked Rand, with disappointment in his voice and manner.

"They have no record and do not remember. He was Just a drunken thick-headed Swede."

When Rand was paying the telephone toll the derk figured on the rate to Cincinnati, so I knew they had been talking to the Mahler offices at the factory. I told Rand just what had happened in Steele's office, and he smiled slightly and said:

"Well, well, the lost bonds or others have been used as collateral for a week past, eh, and Farrington Smith was on the wrong side of the market? I do not think Rhodes will 'do any time' if he is clever. I have learned that he was a favorite employee of Smith's. Let us go over to the Municipal."

At the bank, the man from Mahler's spoke a moment to the cashier and received his permission to show the vault to "two prospective customers," and a boy was sent to tell Rhodes that the vimtors had been accorded the courtesy.

As we passed the president's inner ofiBce door, I saw Smith at his desk and noticed how pale and careworn he appeared. I saw that Rand observed it also.

Rhodes admitted us to the enclosure, and, according to Rand's previous instructions, gave us no sign of recognition. Rand and the man from Mahler's examined the interior of the electrically lighted vault. The safe man tapped the floor all around with the stick he carried, sounding for concealed tunneling, but the inspection was unfruitful. The place was in perfect order, and the lock responded repeatedly to the safe man's skilled touch in a way that showed it was in excellent condition. Rand had been standing still, looking carefully at eversrthing within range of his keen eyes, stroking his silver-touched hair lightly with one hand in a way I have observed many times since.

Suddenly he pulled out his watch, looked at the dial of the time-lock, then at his watch, then at the bank dock, an electrically regulated affair hung on the wall. The clock read a P.M. to the second.

''I beg pardon," said Rand to Rhodes. "'What time is it by your watch?"

Rhodes took out his timepiece, and said: "I have two o'clock flat."

I now noticed that the dial of the time-lock stood 1.58:30.

''When did you notice that the clock of the time-lock was slow?"

"It is slow, isn't it? Why, I had forgot that. It was last Monday morning, a week ago. I remember I was a little late," replied Rhodes.

"Has any one swept in here since?" Rand asked this with his eyes fixed on a dark corner at the heel of the right door.

"No, not in the vault."

Rand stooped and put his hand into the comer. For a moment I thought he was picking up something, but he straightened up and brushed his fingers one against the other as if ridding them of dust so I knew his hands were empty.

In a moment he signified he was through and we left the place, and at the corner parted with the man from Mahler's. We walked on toward my office.

"What do you make of that?" said Rand suddenly, and I saw that he was holding something toward me between his thumb and forefinger. I was sure he had put neither hand in his pockets since we had left the bank.

The small, bright object was merely a plain, smooth-worn bit of steel, thinner than a penny, and not as broad, with a small round hole in the centre. Just a tiny disk of steeL

"Did you pick that up in the vault?" I asked.

"Yes, out of that dark comer by the door."

"Why, how is that? I saw your hands as you rose and they were empty."

"Oh, no, you were mistaken, just as that man from Mahler's was. I merely palmed the disk, that is all, so he could not see it. There is no reason why he should be on the inside of this case. He thinks too much of his own cleverness as it is."

"Well, what is this thing?" I said, slightly irritated at having been so easily tricked.

"I wish I could answer that question as easily as you ask it," replied Rand, and relapsed into silence.

As we entered the building in which I had my office, there emerged from an elevator car that had just descended a girl, whose appearance caught my attention. She was attired, in a dark street suit that set her small, trim figure to advantage, but by contrast emphasized the pallor of her face. Her hair was of that abundant flaxen quality so often seen in Germans and Scandinavians, and her eyes were large and dark blue. They were very troubled and it was plain she had been crying. There was something bravely piteous in every line of her face. She paused a moment as if half expecting some one and hurried out as we entered the next up-bound car.

When I went into the office, Betts came in with a slip of paper in his hand. After I had introduced him to Rand, he said:

''Duncan, for shame not to be in when nice young ladies call on you. The pretty daughter of your old real estate client, Anderson, was just here. She has received a letter from the young fellow who took those bonds in which he says he wishes her to forget him. She refuses to believe he is guilty, and has had a scene with her father, who must have told her that he has retained you, for she came down here demanding that you take her to see the young chap, wherever he is locked up. Has he been arrested yet?"

"No," I said, "he is over in the bank."

"I think he will be there for some time yet," observed Rand, looking out the window.

"Well, she will be back in half an hour," said Betts, laying down the strip of paper on my desk. "She did not have a card and wrote her name. Excuse me, Mr. Rand, I am not through with my correspondence yet, and it will soon be three o'clock."

As Betts went out Rand rose and looked at the strip with tiie name written in a tall, delicate hand, "Miss Marie Neilson Anderson."

In a short time Miss Anderson came into the outer office and I brought her in and closed the door. With trem- bling lips and tears constantly ready to fall, she repeated what she had already told Betts and demanded that I ar- range an interview with Rhodes at once.

I reassured her to the best of my ability. Rand sat quiet and said nothing. I thought he might at least have repeated to her what he had just said to Betts, though I could not exactly make out what were his grounds for the statement. Instead, just before she was leaving, much comforted and calmer, he said:

"Excuse me. Miss Anderson, when did you last see Mr. Rhodes?"

"Oh, I have had a letter from him nearly every day, but I have not talked with him since Sunday night a week ago^ when he came to see me at the house."

''How long have you known him?"

"Nearly two years."

''How did you meet him?"

"Why, he knew papa at the bank, and one day when papa was ill he sent for George to come up to the house to get some papers about his accounts and papa introduced us. When we were first engaged, he did not seem to dislike George, and often sat talking with him about matters in the bank and other things."

"By the way, how old are you, Miss Anderson?"

She did not seem to mind the blunt question and replied quickly;

"I am twenty-one."

"Were you born in this country?"

"Yes, I was born in New York."

"Thank you, kindly; that is all," said Rand, and was promptly so deep in thought that he barely rose and bowed as she left a few minutes later. He kept his feet and put on his hat as if he, too, were going.

"I believe you told me that you were to go to Anderson's house to-night and report, did you not?" he asked.

"Yes, I am sorry that I can not make a better showing both for my client and for Rhodes."

"I suppose you mean that you hoped a man of my reputation would have offered better support to you in yours," he observed with a quizzical smile that nettled me as he walked over to the door.

"I should like to go with you, Mr, Duncan," he continued, "I will meet you at the northwest comer of Gramercy Park at eight o'clock. Will you be so kind as to bring young Rhodes with you? 'Phone him at the bank, now, and you might come prepared for anything in the way of a fight for— we will close up the case to-night."

He shut the door and went out. I was wild to call him back and get an explanation, but pride restrained me.

That evening Rhodes met me by appointment at the Fifth Avenue Hotel and we walked over to the corner Rand had named. We had been standing there a moment when a carriage drove up, stopped, and Rand alighted, followed by J. R. Farrington Smith and the brawny Indian.

I could see by the street light that Smith was very white, and the Indian kept just at his elbow and a little behind him as they advanced to meet us. Rand presented me to Smith, who bowed coldly. If Smith and Rhodes exchanged salutations I did not notice it. Rand said to me as we walked along to the house after he had told the cabman to wait for him:

"Will you kindly ask Mr. Anderson to see Mr. Duncan and some gentlemen?"

I was angry with him for a number of small things which had occurred during the day, but more than ever now for bringing Smith into the case, and at Anderson's house, a proceeding which would be sure to involve Anderson and his daughter in the exposé that must occur in so short a time.

A little maid admitted us at a door beside Anderson's real estate office, and passed back along a narrow hall and up to a well-furnished apartment immediately over the offices. The maid vanished through portieres, and I judged by the sounds that she found Anderson in the third room to the rear. I could hear him clearing his throat as he came.

As he stepped through the portieres, I saw he was a man of fifty, of good appearance, short and heavy, with large hands and a massive jaw. His eyes were very small and nearly hidden by the overfolding wrinkles about them.

"Good-evening, gentlemen," he said cheerily, looking about in a pleasant though puzzled way. I rose and went forward, saying:

"I am Mr. Duncan, Mr. Anderson. I believe you know Mr. Smith and Mr. Rhodes. This is Mr. Lawrence Rand, with whom I have consulted in this matter."

The Indian, whom I scarcely knew how to consider, whether companion of Rand's or his servant, had stepped back into the shadow by the portieres, and I do not think Anderson saw him, so I made no reference to him whatever. I was very busy thinking just what to say and how to say It; for Rand's bringing Smith with him showed Smith was informed in part or wholly, and was so unexpected that I had had no chance to ask him aside just what the situation was. He left me in no uncertainty. He gracefully superseded me in the initiative by drawing back a chair at a small table in the centre of the room, in the full glow of the shaded light; and saying:

"Would you mind sitting here, please, Mr. Anderson? I shall want you to write something in a moment and it will be more convenient for you."

Anderson sat down, as requested, and turned his face toward Rand as if he knew where the power lay. I could see the arteries in his neck throbbing. I noticed that Rhodes was very pale, and the bank president was laboring under great excitement.

"Now, to be brief gentlemen, we are about to adjust this matter of the disappearance of twelve hundred thousand dollars' worth of bonds from the vault of the Municipal Bank."

Rand spoke in a soft even voice. I think I was the only man who moved a muscle. I could see that at least Anderson's blood did not quicken any. His eyes may have turned toward Rhodes. I could not tell. Rand went on:

''Before I say anything further, I wish to remind the interested parties that I have brought an officer with me and any violence would be inadvisable.

"Mr. Anderson, you will kindly turn over to Mr. Smith that packet of '90 government fours. Mr. Smith will give you a receipt in full. You will also give Mr. Smith your order on Strauss & Company for four hundred thousand dollars, which is approximately what Mr. Smith lost when caught short on Overland Pacific ten days ago, and also your order to Mr. George Rhodes for the remainder of your profits when you went long on Overland Pacific this last week by using the Municipal Bank as an involuntary partner. You will also give your consent to his marriage with your daughter. Mr. Duncan here will arrange the matter of fees and that will close the incident. If you do not, Mr. Smith will prosecute you and I will furnish the evidence. If Mr. Smith does not perform his share I will, in behalf of Mr Rhodes, inform the bank directors of his hand in Overland. Kindly do as I have requested, Mr. Anderson."

The old fellow never changed color one whit, nor did the throbbing of the arteries in his neck increase. They diminisahed, if anything. A bitter sneer came on his face, and as he spoke he dropped into very broken English.

''Vot iss diss nonsense, Meester, vot-efer-your nem-iss? Vot a ni'ice liddle scheme bote Ah don't ma'eke no mohney baycoss Ah aindt got dey bonts-s—"

Rand held up a forefinger and the old man stopped. He was now breathing hard and was flushed. Rand drew from his vest pocket and laid on the table before Anderson the mie steel disk.

Before Rand could speak, the portieres parted, and in the opening stood Marie Anderson, very white and drawn up to her full height. In one hand she extended the packet with the typewritten slip still on the end.

"Father," she said slowly, in a low, tense voice, "here are the bonds. By accident I just found them in a jar on the sideboard."

With surprising quickness Anderson drew out a drawer in tiie table at which he sat, snatched up a revolver, leaped to tiie doorway, thrusting his daughter aside, but as he turned and fired pointblank at Rand, who had vaulted the table to reach him, the Indian knocked up the muzzle of the revolver from behind. The bullet struck the ceiling and the next instant Anderson was on the floor, helpless in the bear-like dasp of the big red man.

The girl had reeled as if about to faint. Rhodes had sprung to her assistance, but she recovered herself and seemed to be anxious to get away from her father, as if from a reptile. Rhodes led her to the other side of the room.

"Take the gun away from him and set him on the chair again, Tom," said Rand, as if nothing had happened. He returned to his own seat, and we too sat down.

In fifteen seconds the smoke floating about the ceiling was the only sign of the crisis just passed. Rand began again:

''In order to give you an opportunity to recover your composure before you begin writing, Mr. Anderson, and to prevent your indulging in any more foolish lies, I will tell you the evidence against you. You helped your brother-in- law, Neilson, make the time-lock on the vault ordered for the Municipal Bank in xSgo. You inserted in the journal of the main standard of the clock works a steel disk instead of a brass one, knowing that the steel against steel would make a friction that would wear out both in several years' time. By means of a second time-lock accurately duplicated, and which, if I am not mistaken, is ticking away in that black box on the mantel behind you, you were able to tell very nearly the very hour when you could turn back the bolts of the Municipal vault without let or hindrance. When your brother-in-law died, you sold his patents to the company, returned to New York, and began to live for the hour when you could help yourself to whatever you wished. You stopped drinking and settled down. You went into the real estate business because you could obtain in that manner a permanent hold on Hanahan, the watchman at the Municipal, whom you already knew, and you drew him into the habit of seeing you on business regularly at the bank at night. You have his perfect confidence. When you found that about the time you were ready to make your haul George Rhodes would be the young man in charge of the vault; you called him to the house on a pretext and mada him acquainted with your daughter and encouraged his visits that you might get from him in your chats, bit by bit, knowledge of just what to put your hand on in the short time you were in tiie vaults and how to conceal the theft long enough for you to convert the securities. This is one of the deepest and cleverest criminal plots of which I have ever heard. Your life for all these years has been devoted to it. I am not surprised that you succeeded. Your one mistake was in giving so flimsy a pretext to Mr. Duncan for calling him up and retaining him. That attracted my attention to you. What yon really wanted was to be able to have constant information from Mr. Duncan when he should become Rhodes's counsel in the natural course of events in to efforts to explain the disappearance of the bonds in order to defend Rhodes. In that way you would always know how close he was on the track of the real thief: Mr. Martin Anderson. Few men pay attorneys $500 retaining fees to persuade yonng men who really love their daughters from dragging them into a scandal which does not essentially concern the daughters at best. You were surprised into tfiis mistake when Rhodes called you up and cryrstallized your plan to force your choice of counsel on him too hastily.

"On Sunday night a week ago you went to the bank, as your duplicate time-lock showed you the steel disk was worn so thin a jar on the door would cause the standard to drop and the lock to release. Hanahan, as he told me an hour ago, went across the street for some tobacco that Sunday nighty leaving you in the bank. In ninety seconds you had opened the vault, taken the right packet, opened the case of the time-lock, replaced the disk with a brass one, closed the case, and closed the vault, but— you carelessly dropped this worn disk on the floor.

''You used the bonds as collateral to buy stock, not as a speculation, but as an investment that would conceal the bonds, and by chance chose Overland Pacific at a low figure and it rose. You thought best to take your profits, and only your greed prevented you from returning the bonds to Rhodes by mail. As we have seen, you had not thought long enough or deeply enough what you would do with your lifetime harvest after you got it in your hands, and suddenly you found yourself out of your depth. You hid the bonds in a jar, just like a foolish old woman. But I must compliment you on your clear thinking and previous planning. I have never known of anything so deliberate, and only a phlegmatic Scandinavian would be capable of it; especially to end up with such good nerves as you have shown to-night. Mr. Smith does not wish to prosecute you and expose his speculations. Since Mr. Smith and Mr. Duncan doubtless have other engagements to-night, kindly write as I requested a few minutes ago."

Muttering objurgations in his native tongue, Anderson wrote the two drafts, Rhodes's being for more than one hundred thousand, and both Rhodes and Smith receipted. Smith took the bonds and thrust them into his overcoat pocket. Miss Anderson refused to remain an hour longer under her father's roof, and left the house to go to the home of a distant relative. I pocketed the odd little steel disk, which lies before me as I write, with a slip copied from a page of Rand's notebook that lays out so plainly and simply his quick, sure, and unerring processes in this remarkable case, that I can not refrain from giving it:

(1) Anderson's retaining Duncan very strange.

(2) Rhodes's cranium shows moral incapacity for theft— Innocent.

(3) Neilson's brother-in-law could know lock construction.

(4) Smith lost speculating. Thief won half million with bonds.

(5) Time-clock lost 90 sec Sunday night, week before discovery.

(6) Disk of steel instead of brass. Meant to wear out. Is discarded part of lock. Must be a new disk in lock. Work of expert. Prepared since making of lock.

(7) Marie Neilson Anderson.

(8) Anderson was alone in bank 3 min. Sunday night of robbery.

Anderson guilty. Proved and confessed. Adjusted, no proceedings by L. R.

______________________

10: The Stolen Ship

Anonymous

Short Stories, July 1891

IN the year 1860 I was one of the crew of the British survey brig Advance which was surveying the islands to the south of the Sandwich group. Kingman Shoal, Palmyra Island, and other shoals and islands had not been closely surveyed, and we were spending the summer in this work. The brig was a craft of two hundred tons, and being a government vessel was under strict discipline.

About the middle of September we were at Fanning Island, when a heavy gale came up from the west, and we had to run for the open sea to the east. The gale struck us about three o'clock in the afternoon and hung to us until noon the next day. During this time we were running a little east of north and having all we could do, and when the gale broke we were at least two hundred miles to the north-east of our island. It was mid-afternoon before we got the brig about, and she had scarcely been headed back when a whaleboat came down upon us from the north-west, and when we got her crew aboard we heard a very interesting story.

There were eight of them; a first mate, two harpooners, and five hands. All belonged to the British whaling bark Penrose, of Liverpool. Twenty days previously she had run into Honolulu and discharged half a cargo of oil and shipped three Portuguese sailors to replace hands who had been lost at sea. On leaving Honolulu she had cruised to the southward, taking a whale occasionally, and on the day the gale broke she lowered for whales about two hundred miles north of the group we had been surveying. Three boats were down at once as the bark ran into a school. As the breeze was light only a ship-keeper was left aboard, and he was a sailor who was just recovering from a hurt.

The three Portuguese were in the captain's boat, which made fast to a big bull whale within a quarter of a mile of the bark and was immediately struck and disabled, and the line had to be cut. Meanwhile the other two ooats had gone to the eastward after the school, and they had no sooner made fast than their victim ran off at full speed. Owing to the direction of the wind the ship-keeper could not work down to the captain. His boat was a wreck, but was acting as a float to sustain the crew. In this emergency the three Portuguese offered to swim to the bark and return with a spare boat, and they were told to go. They reached the craft in safety, but had no sooner got aboard than the yards were trimmed, her head was brought to the south, and she sailed within three hundred feet of the captain as she made off. The dark-skinned rascals made no bones of the fact that they were running away with the ship. Indeed, they boasted of it, and derided the men hanging to the stoven boat.

It was a heartless, cold-blooded thing to do. The two other boats were five miles to the eastward, and it was an hour after the bark made off before the men cut loose from their dead whales to fathom the mystery. They found the wreck of the captain's boat, to discover that only one single man remained with it, the others having been pulled down by the sharks. By the time they had heard his story the bark was more than hull-down, and just then the gale broke. The boats were laid head-on to the sea and drifted slowly to the east, dividing their men, so as to give each an equal show to live out the gale. During the night the second mate's boat was lost sight of, and as it was never heard of again it must have been swamped. Had we been running a course the surviving boat could not have fetched us, but as we brought about she got the chance to do so.

As soon as the story had been told our captain decided to go in search of the stolen bark. It was a question, however, whether she had outlived the gale. She must have received the full force of it, and being so short-handed she was liable to disaster. The main question was whether she would scud or drift. We had adopted the former course, as the brig had a habit of flooding her decks when lying head-on. The mate of the stolen bark, whose name was Cummings, felt certain that the Portuguese would let her drift. In that case we would have to cover a hundred miles of ocean to the westward before beginning to look for them. What did they want of the craft? What could they do with her? There was only one reasonable answer. They would run her down among the southern islands, find some safe spot to lay her away, and then "have a good time." This meant eating, drinking, smoking, and having no work to do. They would not dare to try a long voyage nor to put into any prominent port.

It was Mate Cummings' belief that the Portuguese would, head for Christmas Island, a hundred miles to the south of where we had been surveying, and the brig's course was accordingly laid. On the afternoon of the third day after picking up the boat, we sighted the bark dead ahead. We were then not over twenty-five miles from the island. The stolen craft had evidently been taking things pretty easy. She was under short sail when we first espied her, although the weather was fine and the breeze fair. The thieves had no fear of pursuit, and perhaps all were captains except the ship-keeper and would not obey each other's orders. We had her almost hull-up when the fellows became suspicious, then they set everything below and aloft, and to our intense chagrin we discovered that the bark was a faster sailer than the brig. It was four o'clock in the afternoon when we sighted her, and as darkness fell she had gained a couple of miles on us. Having got the alarm it was hard to tell what they would now do, but after a long consultation our captain decided to round Christmas Island and lay a course for Jarvis Island. The bark was headed directly south when we last saw her.

Next day at noon we were to the west of Christmas and running down on our course, when we suddenly discovered the bark on our starboard quarter, standing out from the south-east end of the island, where she had been in hiding to let us pass. She had not seen us on account of a wooded peninsula making out for several miles, and we felt sure we had her in a box. The wind was from the west, and it was a bit of a job to get the brig about, smart as we were. The bark was about five miles off as we headed for her. She couldn't go to the west; nor were there men enough aboard to turn her on her heel and beat her back to the north-east.

Her only recourse was to stand to the south-west, heading directly for us, or to fall off and run dead to the west. We all looked to see her head into the wind and wait to be boarded, but the rascal had not thought of it. She suddenly shifted her course to the west, and hoping to cut her off we shifted ours north-west. Each was now the leg of a triangle. It was plain from the start that we should be within a cable's length of her at the meeting-point, even if we did not cut her off. She would have shore on one side and us on the other.

Each craft had all sail set. When within three miles of the bark we fired a gun for her to heave to, but not the slightest notice was taken of it. Our two pieces of ordnance were then shifted over to the starboard side and loaded with solid shot. If the rascals refused to surrender they must take the consequences. Each craft held dead to its course, but again the bark proved her better sailing qualities. Instead of cutting her off as we hoped for, we were still a quarter of a mile away when she passed the point. The three Portuguese were shouting and cheering, while the white man was at the wheel. Orders were given to fire and two solid shots went whizzing at her, but to pass over her without damage. We then fell into her wake and could not bring a gun to bear, and we had the further mortification to see her walking away from us. The Portuguese ran up the American flag and dipped it three times, and our crew fairly danced in their indignation. The only thing we could do was to follow her, but we lost her early that evening and were all at sea again as to where we should set eyes on her again.

Three days later, having had only light breezes, we raised Enderbury Island, which is the easternmost island of the Phoenix group. The wind had been fair for the bark to lay this course, and this group also offered the. pirates a good refuge and a beautiful climate. We approached it from the west, ran in to within two miles of the beach, and then worked slowly along the southern shore. The charts showed no haven of refuge on either the south or west shore, but located a bay on the north. We hoped to trap them, if they were there, by making a circuit of the island and coming upon them from a different direction unexpectedly.

Next day we had to work up the west shore against a head wind, and night came again before we had fairly turned the corner and headed to the east. We came to anchor again, but such was the impatience of Mate Cummings and his men that they set off in their whaleboat to explore the coast in advance. Ten miles to the east they found the bark anchored in the bay laid down on the chart. She was within two hundred feet of the beach, her sails furled and stowed, and was heard of before she was seen. The Portuguese were drunk, as they were singing and shouting so they could be heard half a mile away.

The mate should have returned and reported the case, but he did not. He believed his party strong enough to recapture his craft, and he therefore pulled down to make the attempt. He did not surprise the pirates, as he hoped to, and go when he attempted to board was driven back to his boat in great disorder, nearly every man being hurt by blows of capstan-bars. It was nearly daylight before the boat returned to the brig, and as it was a perfect calm we decided to wait until daylight before making any further move. As day dawned there was every prospect of a continuance of the calm, and two boats, each containing eight armed men, were dispatched to get possession of the bark. Our first mate had charge of one and Cummings of the other, and I was in the first boat. Our instructions were to board at any sacrifice, but to spare the pirates for the gallows if possible.

After a row of two hours we came to the entrance of the bay, and there was the bark before us. She had a snug anchorage, and everything aloft was as tidy as you please. She wasn't over half a mile away, as it was not a deep bay, and we were no sooner in sight than we heard a cheer from her decks, followed by the boom of a cannon and the sound of a round shot over our heads. In rummaging the vessel the men had discovered an old six-pound cannon which had lain in the hold for many years. This they had hoisted out, loaded with a shot intended for the feet of a dead man, and fired from a carriage so poorly constructed that the gun dismounted itself. The bark lay stern toward us, as the tide was running out, and we pulled to board her on either bow.

Captain and mate had both left revolvers aboard, and these were now used by two of the pirates. While we were sweeping up they killed two men and wounded a third, and a fourth man was wounded as we boarded. The Portuguese ran to the cabin for shelter, and we found the white sailor dead at the foot of the mainmast, they having clubbed him to death the night before. While we were planning to attack them in the cabin, they dropped from the windows to swim ashore. The alarm was raised in time for the boats to overhaul them, but one resistd so desperately that he had to be killed.

The other two were brought aboard and made secure, and about noon the brig came down. They were transferred to her, and that evening, while in the cabin to be questioned, one of them attacked the captain and was shot by the second mate, who had them in charge. The other committed suicide, and thus the villains were got rid of without trial or expense.

_________________

11: A Financial Failure

Sarah Orne Jewett

1849-1909

Short Stories, Sep 1891

THE DAY'S business of the old County Savings Bank was nearly done. Mr. Pendell, the treasurer, and his three assistants, were busy making up their accounts. Mr. Pendell was a methodical, old-fashioned business man who did most of his writing at a plain high desk, where he stood leaning on one elbow hour after hour, with no apparent fatigue. As for the three younger men, they were seated at more or less ornate roll-top desks; two of these clerks were Mr. Downs and Mr. Hathaway, reliable at accounts and both in the later twenties of their age. At the least elegant of the desks, with his face toward the street, sat Jonas Dyer, a young, good- looking country fellow, whose round face had never known an anxious furrow until he came to his junior clerkship a few weeks before.

He was a poor lad himself as to this world's wealth, and of late had been forwarded in life by an old uncle who was senior director of the bank. Jonas Dyer's mother was perfectly confident that he would be this uncle's heir, but old Mr. Dyer was of that spirit and temper of mind which sometimes results in large gifts to impersonal Tract Societies, and Jonas knew that a great deal might depend upon his own diligence and accuracy in accounts. He was slow at figures and slow with his pen, and he had by nature no gift for saving. It was fortunate that he had little to spend, otherwise there might have been clearer revelations of his generous traits. Everybody gave him congratulations enough on his good chance in the County Savings Bank, but nobody wasted sympathy on the caged heart of poor Jonas, who loved a free life and out-of-door air; he sometimes felt as if the new bank fittings and especially the handsome iron fretwork behind which he stood, all savored of the prison, and that during bank hours at least, he was a sorrowful captive. The other clerks were fond of their surroundings, and recognized, as time went on, a different spirit in their young associate. By some mysterious insight they were aware of the tone that Jonas's mother always took in laying his duty before him. She was a devoted mother, but she loved the exhorting sound of her own voice, and had talked so much to her growing boy that he had become stolidly reticent. Perhaps Downs and Hathaway had found their example in one of Mrs. Dyer's rare visits to the bank, when it may be suspected that she had come in merely to look upon her only son at his desk, trusted as he was with untold gold and on the highroad to fortune. There was nobody else there that day on the customers' side when Jonas timidly presented his mother to his three; companions. Old Mr. Pendell behaved with courteous dignity, inviting Mrs. Dyer to come in and sit down, while Jonas unfastened the wicket gate for her, and blushing red gave her his own chair. How fast the good woman did talk without knowing it! Jonas went ostentatiously into the great safe to divert her mind and show her how completely he felt at home, trying by the way to escape a direct look at Downs and Hathaway. To tell the truth, he was just twenty years old and hardly felt as if he were sixteen.

"I tell Jonas," Mrs. Dyer was saying, "that there is a good deal to be proud of and grateful for in this situation. I know he's a good boy, if not so quick as some, and I advise him to be attentive and biddable to you, Mr. Pendell, and I want him to be constant at meetin' and to avoid worthless associates. I felt very anxious about him when he came away from home. He ain't no judgment what to eat—"

Jonas came bursting out of the safe with an expression of agony.

"I guess Mr. Pendell will let you come in and see where he keeps all his money," the poor boy told his mother, trying to behave as if there were a great joke going on. He did not look at the other fellows.

"I tell 'em up our way that there's nothing to prevent your filling your pockets unless 'tis your own honesty," the visitor said, and then happily became speechless as Jonas let her take one hurried look into the gold and silver drawers. He was fond of his mother, but she insisted upon treating him like a boy, and since he had lived in town among strangers he had begun to feel as if he were a man. The call was abruptly ended by the appearance of a friend who had brought Mrs. Dyer to town shopping. Downs and Hathaway shook hands politely with the good woman and seemed to take pleasure in accepting her kind invitation to come up with Jonas and stop awhile whenever they got leave. But alas! from this call much misery took rise; it was the delight of the elder clerks to treat Jonas as if he were both touchingly young and delicate of constitution. They never went so far as to show the slightest disrespect in allusion to or quotation from the anxious mother; they simply adopted her solicitude about Jonas, who was seldom allowed in their presence to put on manly behavior. But if they did not chaff him about this they would be sure to find something else, and so, as they explained his bank work with unfailing patience, our hero bore their chaffing and mockery as best he might and with whatever bravery and unconcern he could muster.

Jonas stood beside his desk, facing the street in a moment of idleness; he was so tall that he could see over the mahogany railing that screened the bank interior from the glance of passers-by. It was cold weather outside and he had a sense of snug warmth and his own privileged position, yet the thought crossed his mind that it would be a good day to go through a piece of woods and mark trees for chopping. There would be no wind in the woods; somehow he could not get over the habit of planning farm work. At this moment he noticed an ancient covered chaise which belonged to the elderly farmer who was just arranging his financial business. Mr. Pendell himself liked to attend to some of the old bank customers, for there had been days when the County Savings Bank depended upon his services alone, and he was consequently trusted by all the thrifty farmers of the region.

Under the cover of the carriage Jonas did not at first observe a fresh young country face; he looked at the shaggy, strong old horse, used for ploughing and as a roadster by turns, and calculated the probable age and worth of the good beast before he saw the bright eyes beyond. Then a little thrill of curiosity and pleasure, such as he had never felt before, pervaded his frame. He felt a new sense of wakefulness and cheerful alacrity. The girl in the buggy looked at him as he looked at her, and if the truth were known the eyes of Jonas were the first to turn away. Hathaway softly reminded him that it was business hours, and Jonas bent sideways limberly into the chair before his own desk. Hathaway rose for an instant to see what was interesting outside, but the pretty girl was in eclipse of the chaise top.

"Thinking of buying that colt?" inquired Hathaway, a good deal disappointed, and Jonas vaguely smiled.

The old farmer and Mr. Pendell were conversing sedately. "Ain't raised the rate o' interest, have they?" asked the depositor with a smile.

"Directors think of lowering it another year," reported the cashier. "We can't pay five per cent if we don't get but four. Savings-bank securities come higher every year. Why don't you buy some bonds, Mr. Hayland?''

"The Old County Savings Bank's always been good enough for me and my folks."

"You'd do better with your money by two per cent."

"Jim Hymore struck for eighteen and ain't got nothin' to show for't. I expect you've heard tell o' his venture?"

The cashier smiled and pushed the bank book in its much- thumbed envelope across the counter, and Mr. Hayland took some time to put it into a deep inner pocket and to button his coat over it. "Well, I've got my savin's where they'll be earnin' a little somethin'," he said, after his usual custom on such occasions. " There'd been more this time, but we've been fixin' up the meetin' house an' wife thought she ought to do same's others. Well, I do  know but I felt the pleasure o' bein' able to gratify her. Good-day."

"Good-day, sir," responded the cashier. "Give my respects to Mrs. Hayland."

Jonas longed to take another look before the buggy was driven away, perhaps forever, but he was afraid of Hathaway.

"Who was that old gentleman, Hathaway? " he made bold to inquire, but Hathaway only scuffed an angry foot for answer and began again at the foot of a long column of figures.

"That's Joel Hayland, he lives eight or nine miles down Oak Hill way; a good comfortable farmer, and as honest a man as I know." Mr. Pendell himself spoke warmly and Jonas felt as much pleased as if he were listening to the praise of one of his own family.

Just then old Mr. Hayland and his daughter were going out of town well wrapped against the chilly wind, which unluckily was well astern of the covered chaise.

"We shall have it nice an' comfortable goin' home, shan't we, Love? " asked the farmer. "Did you get all those things your mother wanted?"

"Yes, sir," said Love. "Seems to me there's something I haven't remembered, too. Who was it in the bank?" she added.

" Mr. Pendell the cashier— a nice, good man he is— wanted to be remembered to your mother."

"Oh, not Mr. Pendell; I know him," protested Love; "a younger man, I mean."

"I don't know's I really took notice. There's two or three of 'em, a young Downs has been there a number o' years. Mr. Pendell get's right up whatever he's doin' an' tends to me himself. They say he don't do it for everybody."

" 'Twas a tall, young-lookin' fellow," Love Hayland continued persuasively, but the old farmer shook his head. He had taken note of no one but his old friend, the cashier; and so home they went along the winding road through the snowless winter country. It was after Thanksgiving and Mr. Hayland was two or three weeks later than usual with his semi-annual deposit. Although the northwest wind was behind them, the father and daughter were glad to find themselves in their own warm kitchen again. It was almost night when they got home. The day had been short and bleak, but Love came in with rosy cheeks and dancing eyes and a heartfui of pleasure.

"I have had a real good ride," she said, "haven't you, father?"

" 'Twas pleasanter than goin' alone," said the plain man with unwonted gallantry. "I don't know but I like the road full as well in good weather. Mr. Pendell was civil and accommodatin' to me same's he always is, and sent his respects to you, mother. I see Abel Foster on the street, too, and he was glad to see me, and they meant to ride up to see us if that long spell o' rain hadn't hindered 'em. There wan't many on the street, 'twas a bad day."

Love looked at her father with surprise.

"I suppose you got me that set o' knittin' needles?" asked Mrs. Hayland after looking over the packages that had been brought in.

"I declare, I forgot all about 'em, mother," said Love. "I left them till the last thing because we had to come by the store again and father was in a hurry to get his bank business done. I got into the chaise after I did the other errands and—"

"Dear heart, 'tain't such a great matter," said the kind little mother, with a sigh that Love could not hear. "Somebody'll soon be going again."

Presently Love disappeared and took off her best woollen dress and came back in a comfortable old one, but she had lingered to tie in a piece of red ribbon for a cravat and she had looked out of the bedroom window toward town to see if she could discover the reflection of the new electric lights. The sky was very cloudy and dark, but she was pretty sure that a dim glow lighted the heavens in that direction. When she came down into the kitchen, her father and mother and Jacob Bean, the hired man, were already at supper. Love looked uncommonly pretty and they all noticed her; the father and mother stole a pleased glance at one another.

"Seems to me you've taken a good while to change your dress," said Mrs. Hayland, gently reproachful.

"It didn't seem long to me," answered Love honestly. "I didn't know how late 'twas when we got home, it gets dark so early now. Why, I forgot ever so many things I've thought of buyin'. I shall have to go again quick as I can" (with a little blush).

"Come, draw up and have some o' this good warm supper, child," said the father. "I think the road's too plaguey rough to drive over again until snow comes. If you'd bought much more I shouldn't had a cent left to leave with Mr. Pendell."

"They weren't all my things," said Love. "Mother, I don't know but I ought to have me a new winter suit. Mine seemed to look a little past when I got among folks."

"I thought it looked pretty when you come down ready to go. 'Tis the bother o' gettin' it made," said the busy little woman. Love was still young for her age, and had never settled down into careful womanly ways though she was already nineteen.

JONAS and Mr. Pendell were alone together in the bank one February morning. One of the other young men was away at his brother-in-law's funeral and Hathaway had been sent to Boston on a financial errand. Jonas wished that he could have had the variety of a journey to Boston. Sometimes he felt as if the irksome confinement of his business were telling upon his health and spirits, but he looked perfectly well, and unsympathetic friends still congratulated him on his excellent opportunity. The odor of bank bills became more and more unpleasant to him, and once or twice good Mr. Pendell had felt obliged to urge him to greater quickness— not accuracy, for our hero was much to be trusted in his figures. His patron, the rich uncle, looked at him approvingly from under his shaggy suspicious eyebrows, as he went and came about his business or the bank meetings. Jonas lived with this uncle, who was a bachelor, and there was always plenty to do night and morning in the matter of household work, the housekeeper being amiable but decrepit and the uncle held the opinion that a lad should be made to work as he had worked in his own youth. Jonas was naturally of a domestic turn, and only varied his life now and then by occupying a back seat at an evening meeting. In the bank he sometimes felt important and was upborne by the dignity of his position, but out of bank hours he was simply a clumsy, country fellow unused to town life. He often looked out of the bank window to see that old horse from Oak Hill but he was never fortunate, though the two bright eyes that looked from under the chaise top still shone like stars in his thoughts.

Mr. Pendell was very busy that morning, and when the door was opened he again nodded to Jonas, who had been busy paying and receiving all the morning. As the young man rose, he saw the same horse of his dreams fastened to a post in front of the window. There was an old high backed sleigh now, with two good buffalo robes and plenty of bright straw. Jonas recognized the quality of the straw and that a most uninteresting-looking man held the reins. But the bank door was open and when Jonas turned there stood his pretty girl. He blushed and she blushed, and they stood looking at each other, but Jonas's business habits stood him in good stead. He reached for the bank book, which was timidly proffered, but he dropped it twice and struck his head on the edge of the counter in trying to pick it up. Mr. Pendell looked up impatiently and that made things worse. The bank book was issued nineteen years before and the only amount credited was a sum placed to the owner's credit when she was a baby by the old aunt for whom she was named. Interest had been added from time to time so that the hundred dollars was now a comfortable little sum. Love pushed a small roll of bills under the grating. " I want to put this in, too," she said, and Jonas dipped his pen and made an entry of the date and counted the money afterward and set down the amount.

'There's some back interest due you, but Mr. Downs isn't here to-day," said Jonas.

" Father said I could leave the book and call for it some other time. I shall have more to put in next month. I'm keeping school. "

They blushed again. Hathaway had returned by an earlier train than was expected, and just then entered the bank, but nobody noticed him, though Hathaway was quick to see the blushes.

"Won't it put you out if I leave it?"

" Not at all," said Jonas with truly a grand air. " It's our business; much snow down your way?"

"A good deal," answered the pretty girl still blushing, and then they almost looked each other in the face again, but were happily saved the embarrassment.

"Is that all? " asked the girl with touching deference, and Jonas said that it was all, but they both felt as if they wished there were something more, and Love tiptoed out to the empty world of the side walk.

"You'd better go out an' untie her horse," suggested Hathaway, affectionately, but by means of this jeer Jonas gained one look after the fair depositor, and reassured him¬ self of her good looks, and that Jacob Bean, the elderly hired man, was not to be feared as a rival.

"That was old Mr. Hayland's girl that was here just before snow came," Jonas told his chief with great interest, for Mr. Pendell had spoken warmly of the farmer.

"Come, step round, Jonas, and get on with your work," urged the cashier. " Seems to me it's one of your numb days and we've got to drive work. It's a bad time to spare Downs." Even this rebuke did not destroy the junior clerk's sense of pleasure. He laid the clean bank book on Downs's desk with a lingering touch. He wished that the proper place for it was on his own desk. Bank books had seemed alike uninteresting until that moment.

As for Love Hayland she had forgotten two of her mother's commissions this time instead of one, and was jogging home speechless with delight.

There was stormy weather late that winter, and the roads were drifted, then there came a long season of rain and thaw, while Love's book lay unclaimed in the safe. At last she appeared one Saturday morning in March, when the sun was shining like May, and the crows were thick and the road nearly bare of ice and snow all the way to town. It was the first day that seemed like spring and winter clothes were already too heavy. Spring was in the air and spring was in Love Hayland's look as she rode in the old chaise at her father's side and waited while he tied the horse to a stone post in front of the bank. Then they went in together, the girl had no idea of letting any one else do her business there.

Jonas had seen them drive up and was in a flutter of anticipation. He had the bravery to elbow Hathaway aside from the counter. Mr. Pendell and Joel Hayland were exchanging their usual friendly jokes and compliments. Joel had sold some of his young stock and had come to town with the money. Mr. Pendell retreated presently to his high desk to make up an account of some sort, but active business still went on between Love and Jonas. It took a good while to credit her with that twenty dollars for her month's school-keeping, and to display and explain the unexpected amount of interest due her in arrears. Then there was a moment of silence except for the scratching of Hathaway's pen.

"Was you ever to Oak Hill?" Love asked Jonas sweetly, in the hearing of all present.

Joel Hayland turned with sudden alarm, and took a good look at the junior clerk before he had time to speak. "I expect you're old Jonas Dyer's nephew by your looks. I heard you were in the bank some time ago, favor your uncle some, I see. Yes, call in if you've over our way. 'Tain't so pleasant now as it will be later on, but the road's settlin' fast. Good-day, Mr. Pendell, much obleeged to you, sir." The father and daughter departed and Jonas was conscious of that within him which would oblige him to knock down anybody who presumed to smile. As he turned round, however, nobody was smiling, there was an aspect of self-restraint and pious gravity about both Hathaway and Downs; Mr. Pendell was in the safe, and if he openly laughed it was inaudible to the young men outside. Jonas knew that misery was in store for him and fairly writhed at having been supposed to resemble his uncle. That close-fisted gentleman was perfectly unendurable of late, and our hero determined not to live like a toad under a harrow any longer.

There were no end to the jokes that the two clerks made that day, but none of them had any reference to Oak Hill, or Jonas's journey in that direction. In one way the simplicity of Love's question had been a little painful, asked in public as it was, and yet he forgave the lack of maidenly reticence, for the sake of a delightful permission won from the father himself. Uncle Jonas was perfectly capable of leaving all his money to the cause of foreign missions and disappointing his poor and worthy relatives of various degrees, but Jonas was glad to have the endorsement of such relationship.

"Was you ever to Pelham Four Corners," Hathaway asked Jonas as he came in next morning, but Jonas answered yes so meekly as he hung up his coat, that the allusion was pressed no further.

"When I was up to my brother-in-law's funeral this winter I heard that there was a man by the name of Waters paying attention to the girl of Mr. Hayland's," said Downs, the head clerk. He was a soberer-minded man than Hathaway, and seemed to speak truthfully. Jonas's heart stood still.

"Was there? What kind of a man is he? She's a pretty girl," asked Hathaway.

"A kind of a seeking widower," answered Downs. "She's younger than he, about forty-five per cent, and didn't favor him at first, but he's well off and the old folks help it on. Their farms join, I believe, and 'twill be a good thing all round. I was kind of surprised when they asked a good- looking fellow like Jonas to call. You'd better not make any trouble, Jonas; but perhaps it's all settled and the old gentleman felt safe."

THE NEXT SUNDAY afternoon, Jonas, out of his limited means, hired the smartest single turnout at the best livery stable in Dartford and drove toward Oak Hill. It was like April overhead, but the mud was deep underfoot and he had to walk his impetuous steed the greater part of the way. The day seemed to him perfectly beautiful, and when he was directed to the Hayland farm nobody can describe how pleasant and comfortable it looked. It was joy enough to be out in the country after being cooped up so long in town. He had been promising to go to see his mother at the first good opportunity, but he did not feel the least shame at this selfish use of a holiday. The Hayland's best wagon was in the side yard, they had evidently been to church in the morning, and now for the first time Jonas's heart began to beat in an awful and even retarding manner. He could not tie his horse's hitch rein as it should be tied, the knot worked wrong, and he grew redder and redder and did not dare to look up at the house windows. Then the door opened and hospitable Joel Hayland came out and welcomed him and they went into the house together. There was Love in her Sunday dress as pretty as a pink, and Mrs. Hayland was motherly and good-natured. She had heard about Jonas from somebody who lived neighbor to his mother, and knew what a good steady boy he had always been, and that he was doing well in the bank now; nephew and namesake, too, of rich old Jonas Dyer of Dartford. "We should be pleased to have you stop to supper, Mr. Dyer." She invited him kindly, but Jonas thought he ought to get back early. When he turned and looked at Love, however, he forgot time and space, and though they proceeded to speak at length of the state of the roads; he felt himself to be entertained indeed, and the long spring afternoon flew by on fleetest wings.

There was a very fresh little fire in the prim best room. Others might have found the wide low-storied kitchen a pleasanter and more airy place to sit, but Jonas and Love had already reached that stage of interest which demands seclusion and there they sat until the sun was low. It was not art that allured them in the shape of a portrait of Daniel Webster and the Landing of the Pilgrims on the parlor walls; it was not luxury, for the hair-cloth sofa had stiff springs and sloped forward at a strange angle. What they talked about was also of secondary consideration, it was enough for Love that she talked to Jonas and for Jonas that Love listened to his words. When they came out, trying hard to appear as if it were an everyday visit, Mrs. Hayland stood at the side of the window after parting with the blushing young visitor, and remarked significantly to her husband:

"Joel, just as sure's you're born them two's goin' to keep company."

"Let 'em have it their own way, they're both good child'n," answered Joel with a sage smile.

Before the spring work began at Oak Hill Jonas announced to Mr. Pendell that he meant to resign his situation, and gave no reason for so doing. Mr. Pendell, who knew the reason from Joel Hayland himself, laid the serious matter before the directors on Monday morning. Jonas had not brooked his uncle's wrath at home by making a declaration of his ingratitude in proposing to leave so promising a financial career. The old man twisted himself about in his chair, and looked very black at the first moment of surprise. Then Mr. Pendell said that he had some sympathy with Jonas's decision. The boy was willing and honest and did the best he could, but he was not made for bank work. He was after Joel Hayland's girl over at Oak Hill, and the old folks needed a young smart man on the farm— it was a good thing all round.

"That's where the young dog's been going every Sunday then," said old Mr. Dyer, the uncle, with unexpected approval and sympathy. "They're good folks and he might have done worse for himself. If Joel favors the match, I'll take hold and give Jonas a little start. I won't have anybody saying that the favor was all on her folks' side. "

There was an amiable grumble of applause from the other directors, and the busy cashier at once proposed a sale of bonds which were reported shaky but rising in market value, and so the great question of the junior clerk's future was quickly solved. The young couple were married in early planting time and however it may have appeared to other people, for them it was ever a miraculous and wonderful thing that they had fallen in love at first sight, and that their thoughts had been always of one another even while one was in the bank at Dartford and the other far away at Oak Hill.

That autumn Mr. Joel Hayland dreaded the long cold drive to town, and sent the young people to that bank with his stout pocket-book. Jonas had persuaded his father-in- law to make a safe investment in some County bonds and went inside the bank railings, to do a bit of writing. As he rose from his old desk he caught sight of Love well wrapped and looking for him expectantly out of the old chaise. Their eyes met as they had met once before, and Jonas knew that she was his wife now, and yet he was still shy, she did look so pretty and so strange, not like anybody else. Perhaps the year was all a dream!

Hathaway was standing close by; Hathaway began to look a little old and blurred in the face, like a worn silver piece, and not so quick and gay as he used. He longed to say, "Was you ever to Oak Hill?" but Jonas had flocks and herds now, and wide acres were under his rule; though he was only twenty-one he was looked upon as a stable citizen and one of growing influence. Perhaps his size was in his favor, at any rate, the senior clerks had already more than once declared that his room was better than his company in the bank, he seemed some days to take up the whole floor.

" Call down ana see us, boys," said Jonas pulling on a new pair of great fur gloves. "You, too, Mr. Pendell; 'twould please Father Hayland right through; he was anxious I should make his respects to you. He's got some first-rate cider tapped. Well, come when you can, any of you. Good- day! "

"Clever boy," said Mr. Pendell; "feels more comfortable where he is, doesn't he?" and at this the two clerks smiled assent.

"Jonas was never cut out for anything but a farmer. He feels crowded anywhere except in an open field," said Hathaway, bending over the neat pages of his great ledger.

Jonas and Love were driving out of town with the new horse, as fast as the law allowed.

"My!" exclaimed Jonas, " it came over me when I was in the bank how I saw you setting out there that first day. I don't suppose you cared any to speak of about me, but I knew I hadn't got to look further."

"I'm not going to tell you again about that day," said Love laughing at him. "You know now just as well as I do. There never was two before that had less doubts, I feel sure of that! "

"Ain't it first rate that folks can get married," said Jonas soberly. " I never thought anything about it till I come to want you. Now just think o' there being a law o' the state that folks that wants each other can have each other for good an' all! It seemed queer when I began to think about that."

"Don't you remember how I forgot mother's knittin' needles that very first day?" asked Love shyly "I didn't even know what your name was and now here we are ridin' home together."

_________________

13: At the Crack o' Doom

James A. Beverly
fl 1910s

The Black Cat, Dec 1912

"YES, marm, it's just on top of the rise," the stage driver answered, cracking his whip over the back of the off-leader.

"But why is it called the Crack o' Doom?" the little woman with the pale face who was seated at his side asked.

" 'Cause it's set on the edge of the Crack. The canyon is over yonder where you see those high cliffs, and it's a blind, a crack in the hills, and runs a mile or more clear into the mountains, then comes to a full stop against a granite wall two thousand feet high. Now," he went on, "when you stand at the end window in the room overlooking the Crack, you can hardly see the bottom, it's that deep. Get up you lazy brutes, get up!"

"Why should one wish to build on the very edge of the canyon she questioned.

"Listen, marm," he grinned. "When you reach the Inn, you ask the reason of old John McCrea, and he'll 'most likely tell you nothing at all."

"It is a respectable place, is it not?"

"Huh, respectable! I stop there," he advanced as a conclusive argument. "Respectable," he repeated, "you can just bet, yes!"

Presently she asked: "I dare say you know a man hereabouts by the name of Ludington? He's often at the Inn I've been told."

"Maybe so; what's his particular looks?"

"I have not seen him for years," she said in a hesitating tone, "so my description may be faulty. He is, or was, rather slight in build, dark complexioned, and clean-shaven."

"Blessed if I know him," he returned. "But, if he's 'bout forty years old, lame in the nigh leg, face one mass of hair, then, to be sure, I do know him. It's Tom Ludington, and a thoroughbred at that," he laughed.

She gave the driver a sidewise glance as she half-questioned: "I do not quite understand, sir?"

"Bout his being a thoroughbred, eh? Oh, marm, that's a saying of mine, and it means that he's a dumned curious cuss."

"He is not always at the Inn?" she asked.

"Sometimes once and sometimes twice a month. You see,'' he explained, "he's mining in the Crooked Trail Country, thirty miles from the Doom. Kin of yours, perhaps?"

She appeared not to have heard for she did not reply but craned her neck in an endeavor to obtain a clearer view of tlie Inn which was now discernible ahead.

"You see the Doom, do you?" the driver asked. "That's it yonder. Don't you see the sign running across the front: 'Crack o' Doom, by John McCrea'?"

"Well," she commented, "so that's the Inn? What a small building for a hotel. I forgot to ask: Are there women at the Doom, sir?"

"Women!" he laughed boisterously. "Why, sure thing. There's Squeaky Sue, the squaw. Tantrum Kate, the cook, and little Hattie Cole. Why shouldn't there be women at the Doom, eh?"

By this time the stage was at the door of the building, a desolate, tumble-down affair. The stage's insides, two men and a boy, alighted, to be welcomed by a squat, one-time Scot, but now an American: the proprietor, John McCrea.

He offered a helping hand to the one outside, our lady of the pale face, who came down from her perch and was directly inside the I3oom, standing at the office desk.

"May I be assigned the room overlooking the Crack?" she asked of McCrea as she wrote her name on the page of the dilapidated register.

The bushy-eyed landlord looked at the woman critically.

"Madam," he said in a tone of decision, "it is occupied, but I will give you a room at the other end of the Doom. It's good enough for anyone," he half-growled.

Old John McCrea was somewhat given to crabbedness.

At McCrea's reply, she compressed her lips tightly; then she pulled the register toward her and glanced at the names of the recent arrivals. Shortly afterward she was shown to her room.

As she passed from the office McCrea went to the inn-yard where the stage driver was.

"I say, Coulson. who in the devil is the woman you brought up? We've not had one here since the gay widow. You remember?"

"How in Tophet should I know?" the man demanded. "Found her at the railroad station and that's all I am able to tell you except she asked did I know Ludington."

"Whew!" whistled McCrea. "The devil, she did! Asked for Tom Ludington?"

"That's what the court remarked."

"What did you tell her?"

"Oh, I just said that he was a thoroughbred."

"Nothing else, you're certain?''

"No, nothing else," he confirmed, scratching his scrubby chin as if to refresh his memory.

"Who do you reckon she is? She wanted the scenic parlor, and when I told her she couldn't have it she was damned pouty about it."

"I don't know who she is," the driver said; "but one thing I imagine I know."

"And that's this," returned the landlord: "she's going to cut quite a figure before we see the last of her!''

"You're head is level, John," the other grinned. "She knows her business better than we can guess."

"She's registered as Miss Susan Jones. Do you reckon that's her name ?"

"Well, I'll be switched," chuckled the driver. "Huh, more likely Miss Susan Got-it-in-for-you. Say," coming close, and lowering his voice, "Tom Ludington's going to meet his Waterloo, all right. You mark what your red-headed driver's telling you, John."

A scowl wrinkled the landlord's forehead as he idly bored his boot heel in the ground.

"By Godfrey," he belched forth, "then there will be hot times around these diggings! I won't have Ludington on the premises. Why, I think sometimes he's cousin to the devil!"

"Maybe, maybe," the other commented. "Better keep a tight hand on the reins, John," he advised as he opened the corral gate for the passing of the mules.

The newly-arrived guest impressed the inmates of the Inn as one fully able to care for herself. To none did she give her reason for being at the Inn, nor did she further question as to Ludington.

She registered the afternoon of June third. On the seventeenth of the month she settled her account, left her belongings with the landlord, and disappeared from the premises.

That night Ludington came in from his mine and occupied the room overlooking the Crack.

During the greater part of his stop at the Inn he was closeted in his room with John McCrea. He remained three days and then left, locking the door and pocketing the key.

Within two hours of his departure, the woman who had registered the third, returned; but she volunteered no reason for her going nor did she tell where she had been.

Later in the afternoon and on her entering the office from her room, she stepped to the desk where the landlord sat.

"Mr. McCrea," she said, "I wish to enter the front room: the one I have heard mentioned as. the 'scenic parlor,' '' she smiled.

"Ho, ho!" laughed John McCrea, winking slyly. "That's impossible, marm. Why, woman," he went on, "I rent it to Mr. Ludington by the year, and he has the key.''

"Nevertheless," she urged in a determined tone, "I must enter that room!"

"Must!" echoed the man behind the desk.

John McCrea raised his shaggy eyebrows and peered over the top of his steel-bowed spectacles at the woman making this insistent demand. He even ventured to mutter inaudibly: "Mad, damned mad."

"Oh, no, Mr. McCrea,'' she laughed, as she surmised his thoughts, "I am not mad. I am, however, very much in earnest and, moreover, I believe I have the right to enter that room."

"What are your credentials?" McCrea sneered.

"That I am more interested in Mr. Ludington than any other can possibly be?" she returned gravely.

"By Jerico, is that a fact, marm? None of his kin, eh?"

There was a slight tremor in the landlord's voice, and he moved nervously in his seat.

"It is not necessary that I tell you," she evaded. "But, listen, sir, I must and I shall enter that room, you willing or otherwise."

The combative blood of McCrea surged hotly through his veins as he denied her the right in words more expressive than polite. She should not cross the threshold of Ludington's room! Did she understand?

She gave him a searching look, turned on her heel and left the office.

The landlord thought he had "squelched" her effectually; but he reckoned unwisely for, as he was about to lock the outer door, preparatory to the night's closing, and as he turned to do so with his back toward the stairway, the cold muzzle of a revolver touched his neck.

"Now, Mr. McCrea," said a voice as calmly as one might ask a slight favor, "you will please open Mr. Ludington's door."

McCrea was nonplused. He was unarmed and could but comply and, therefore, he hesitated not an instant. He quickly produced a key and unlocked the door.

"Thank you, Mr. McCrea," she acknowledged coolly. "I regret that you compelled me to use drastic methods, and hereafter I am sure we shall better understand each other. Kindly enter the room, and light the lamp."

A revolver close to one's head is an incentive to quick action. McCrea hastened to do her bidding.

"So far, well and good," she remarked. "Sit in that chair," she directed, "and place your hands flat on the table with your arms extended. Yes, that is as I wish," she said as he followed her command.

With her revolver covering him, she locked the door and then drew a chair to the side of the table facing her prisoner.

"Reverend Donald McClaren."

She spoke very distinctly, so that her listener could not misunderstand.

As he regarded her with half-shut eyes, he continued in a more imperative tone:

"Do you hear me, sir? I repeat. Reverend Donald McClaren!"

"Who in the devil is he?" was his surly response.

"He is sitting opposite me."

"Tommyrot! What are you playing? Are you crazy, woman?" he cried, but in a voice which belied his words.

"I was once, I fully believe; but I am not now," she retorted bitterly. "It is useless dodging the issue. I am here for a definite purpose which you well know. You thought to disguise your identity when you changed your name; thought to hide by assuming the role of a mountain tavern keeper. My God!" she almost sobbed so great was her emotion. "What have I not suffered from you and from John Backing, he who poses as Thomas Ludington!"

She delivered her invective passionately, leaning forward toward the man, throwing her impulsive nature into her every movement.

"Who— in— the— devil— are— you?" the landlord finally found breath to stutter, the while working his fingers nervously.

"The girl you two swore into a madhouse!" she cried. "I am John Backing's wife!"

"Hell's furies!" he gasped, his lower jaw trembling. "What do you demand?"

"Justice!"

The word fairly sprung from her lips.

"Justice, justice?" he mumbled, his facial muscles twitching spasmodically.

"Restitution of all you two have stolen, everything you possess. The marriage license and the certificate, everything. The child you kidnapped I have recognized in the girl called Hattie Cole!"

How true her demand rang in his ears, he alone understood.

"You'll wait a long while," he snarled, with seeming bravado. "Do you imagine that you'll make me acknowledge your demands; acknowledge that which will make me a felon! What ?" '

She cried exultantly: "You confess your identity?"

"Never to the world, never!" he cried. "But to you, yes. I confess to you, for mark well my words, you hell-witch, you'll soon see your finish and not be able to tell tales," he hissed, as he gained temporary courage to combat her.

"Donald McClaren," she retorted, "do not be too self-confident. I have sent the stage driver for John Backing. Moreover, I have prevailed on the women and the girl to go to the dance at Crestin's Mill. You have no guests to-night, and you and I have the premises to ourselves. Ah, you change color? You do realize, do you not, that I have the upper hand?"

The man's face had blanched to the color of the whitened wall.

"I am a desperate woman," she went on, "else," tapping her hand bag significantly, "I would not carry that within this bag which can blow this building to atoms."

He caught her meaning quickly.

"Listen, for God's sake, listen!" he implored, his voice quivering as he realized the import of her words. "I am ten years older than I was at that time, and I have not long to live—"

"True, you have not unless you obey me," she broke in quietly.

"I was led astray," he pleaded weakly. "I was bribed to marry you to Backing, and to aid in your being placed in an asylum. I abducted your child; he stole the will and the other papers. Oh, my God, it was a miserable affair!" he moaned.

"On the other hand," she reminded him, "1 was duped to marry Backing. You were a justice of the peace, although posing as a minister; so my marriage was legal. You caused me to be placed in a madhouse. You wretch, I have lived for this night!"

She arose from her chair, and commanded him to turn about and open the door leading to the room overlooking the Crack.

"I have no key," he lied weakly.

"I advise you to open that door, sir!" she cried, shoving her revolver closer to his head.

This was sufficient. He drew forth a key and unlocked the door, she pushing him before her into the room.

The apartment contained a fireproof safe, a table, chairs, and a coil of rope, one end of which was fastened to a half-inch iron ring screwed in the floor. The rope lay directly beneath the window, which was screened by a wooden shutter.

On the table was a candle, half burned. This she told him to light, and then ordered him to open the safe.

He protested that he did not know the combination; that Ludington, as he still designated Backing, kept the combination a secret.

For a brief moment, she looked at his lying face; then, with a meaning gesture of the gun, she bade him mark with his thumb nail a line on the candle a quarter of an inch from its burning end.

"I shall give you until the candle has burned to the thumb mark," she told liim. "If you have not opened the safe by that time I shall shoot, with your bald head as my target. Come, sir, do you value your life?"

Slowly the candle burned, steadily the man eyed it as he listened for the coming of his confederate; but as this did not eventuate, he knelt, worked the combination, and threw open the door.

While he was so doing, she, still keeping him covered, unliolted the shutter and rai.sed the sash.

As he resumed a standing posture, she told him to throw the rope out of the window. This he did.

"I have here," she said, as he turned toward her, "a bill of sale covering this building and all property which I know you hold. Also a confession. Seat yourself in that chair, and sign these papers with your legal name— Donald McClaren."

Like a snarling, angry cur, he sprang at her throat; but, quick as thought, she shot the ball, cutting his chin whiskers close to his face. He was tamed; he took her pen, and wrote where she indicated.

Motioning him to his feet, she pointed to the open window.

"You planned this room," she told him grimly, "with its window overlooking yonder grave-like canyon. You did it for an evil purpose. That rope was to send, perhaps has sent already, your victims to injury or to death. You shall meet a similar fate."

Thoroughly cowed, he blundered to the window and crawled outside, where he grasped the rope; then raised a pleading face to hers. Her response was to tap his forehead with her gun. He muttered incoherently and began his downward slide.

The light of a June full moon was flooding the canyon, throwing its rays over the black and rugged wall of the immense crack, thus rendering the landlord's descent plainly discernible.

She leaned far over the sill and saw him slip, inch by inch, two hundred odd feet until he alighted on a projecting ledge. As he loosened his hold of the rope, she jerked it from his hands and pulled it within the room.

Again she peered downward. Far, far beneath, clinging to his uncertain foothold, stood the wretch, his white, upturned face showing ghastly in the moonbeams.

The woman reeled backward, sank into a chair, and gave way to a flood of tears. Directly, however, the paroxysm passed, and she was again the stern, unrelenting avenger.

She examined the contents of the safe, and found the documents she sought. This finished, she glanced at her watch. It wanted but a few minutes of the time when she expected the return of the stage driver, and as she debated with herself she heard the rumble of the team.

Presently there came a confused clamor, the stamping of feet, and a rattling of the latch on the outer door.

She glided from the room, turned the key, and was back in the larger apartment with her revolver pointed toward the entrance.

This was the specter which confronted the man when he burst into the room, swearing angrily that he should be brought to the Inn at that hour.

With a sidewise lunge, he gasped:

"By the eternal Gods!''

"You see me, and seeing, realize that your game is finished; that your poor dupe now holds the winning hand!"

She whispered close to his ear. How he wished that she had screamed, shouted, laughed at his discomfiture— anything but that damning whisper.

"Yes, it is I,'' she said bitterly. "The landlord received me as a guest, not recognizing the girl of ten years back; but I believe I have convinced him of my identity. Your very manner shows that you understand. John Backing,'' she went on fiercely, "let me caution you not to try desperate measures; for if you do—" shrugging her shoulders meaningly— "Well," she paused, "I think you catch my meaning. You think me insane? Never was mortal more sane than I!"

She waved him toward the inner room. He eyed her closely as if seeking a means of escape; but that steadily held weapon, that pale, resolute face impelled him to obey. He entered the room.

"On the table," she said coolly, "lay two papers which you will sign with your legal name, directly beneath that of Donald McClaren."

As he signed, she continued; "I know these documents are legal, I saw to that fact before I came here. Hattie Cole is my child; but to make doubly sure, you will sign this paper," tossing another to him.

For the second time since coming into her presence, he strove to speak.

"I admit your charges," he whispered hoarsely, "but cannot we compromise?"

"Compromise!"

How sneering was the tone in which she repeated the word!

"Compromise, and I for ten long years confined to a living tomb! You forged my father's name to a bogus will, leaving his fortune to my girl; then stole her, so that you might profit thereby. Deny it if you can!" she challenged.

"At least," he whined, "let me leave the mountains; let me flee the country! I will never disturb you!"

She looked at him with half-closed eyes.

"You miserable wretch," she burst forth, "you ask this favor? Listen. I have my papers, yours and McClaren's signed confession; I have my girl, but," and she shook with suppressed passion, "I shall never regain the past. It is lost to me forever. I recall, oh, so vividly, that once you asked me sneeringly: 'what can a woman do?' It was when you had me pinioned, as it were, soon after my babe came," her voice trembled just a trifle; "but you now realize what one woman has done, do you not?"

The smile on her face was damning. He felt it.

Again did she wave her hand, indicating, as he well knew, that he was to descend into the canyon. He turned quickly, and sprang sidewise; but as quickly, he was met with a bullet in his forearm.

With terror written on his face, he turned at her very nod, and slowly, because of his maimed arm, grasped the rope and slid downward to the ledge.

When she saw him alight, she went to the office, where she procured a knife with which she cut the rope where it crossed the sill. It wavered and twisted, then went plunging into the depths of The Crack o' Doom.

_________________

14: Imagination

Henry Leverage

1879-1931

The Black Cat, Oct 1920

WHERE Hersey crosses State, in Doyertown— a Middle-Western city of good standing— far from the civic center and the trolley loop, at midnight, with a grayish mist rising from the suburban lots, a man stopped, lighted a cigarette, and examined the lock on a mail box.

This mail box was exactly like two hundred and seventy-three others in the postal zone of Doyertown. It had one advantage over the others, an advantage the man relied upon when he tossed away the cigarette, pulled a tempered-steel jimmy from his overcoat pocket, and pried the box from its post without detection.

Staggering under the weight of the box, the man went across lots to a frame building in course of erection, where, after making certain he had not been followed, he removed the lock with more than ordinary skill.

Leaving the vicinity of Hersey and State Streets, the man walked through dreaming avenues to his lodgings and, after bolting a door and pulling down a shade, he made a key that fitted the lock and every other mail box lock in Doyertown.

Imagination, the misused gift of a fairy godmother, stamped the man's features and large gray eyes. He saw, in the key he had fashioned out of dull brass, a means to a fortune measured in five, perhaps six figures.

Once or twice in his life he had done the same thing and gotten away with it. The police and plain-clothes men of Doyertown were easy. They had no  imagination. They worked by rule of thumb, plodding and watching and rounding up suspects.

Charles Ray rather thought he was a match for all the police of Doyertown. The act of taking the lock, simple in itself, was expected to lead to big results. There were precautions to be taken, however, which he set about to do.

The key would be safe in his pocket for the present. The tiny key-vise, the thin files, and scraps of brass were dangerous things to have around. The jimmy was an article to be hidden.

He secreted all these by unscrewing a radiator-plate from the wall, and lowering a small black bag at the end of a double loop of black thread, tested for its strength. He replaced the radiator-plate and rubbed the bright spots from the screws.

The lodging he had taken was only temporary. Pens, ink, blotters, a sheet of glass, three phials of acids, razor-sharp erasers and other implements of the penman's art were securely locked in a suitcase. The landlady was a peering soul with a kindly face. She believed Ray's story that he was a traveler for a publishing house, come to town to take orders for a line of boy's adventure books.

The gift of imagination had made Ray a loquacious talker, glib, convincing, direct. His mind worked by split seconds. He had already, in fancy, finished up his business in Doyertown and was on his way to New York.

There remained the details of carrying out his plan, all set down in his brain like a general's review of a battle. Ray left his lodgings on the morning after the rape of the mail box and visited a pawnshop where, by leaving a deposit, he secured a moth-eaten postman's uniform and a leather pouch,

"Wrap them up in double paper!" he ordered. "I'm going to a mask ball tonight."

Keen-glancing, alert, lanky and altogether like a mailman, Ray made the rounds of the office buildings late that afternoon. He collected a pouch full of letters. The key he had made fitted every lock. He was careful to leave a few letters in each box for the genuine collector whose schedule he had timed on the first day of his arrival at Doyertown.

He had a close call once when emerging from a revolving door of a building wherein was located the city's detective department.

A burly man, with sleuth written all over his big hands and square jaw, helped revolve the door.

Ray, on the alert and somewhat weighted down with the pouch-full of stolen letters, saw this detective's profile in the revolving glass. It was a man he knew, from former experiences— Calvin Grimm, a plodder, unimaginative, relentless, a detailist in a world of fancy and flight.

Grimm was going to headquarters. Ray wondered, as he hurried toward his lodgings, if the detective department had yet been notified of the theft of a mail box at the comer of Hersey and State Streets.

Doyertown was the second largest city in the state. The detective department consisted of seventy-five sergeants, who had much to do. Ray rather thought such a trifle as the purloining of a mail box would attract little, attention from the powers that ruled.

He locked his room door, unslung the mail pouch from his shoulder, pulled down the shade and removed the postman's uniform. This, with the empty pouch was laid in one corner of the room. The letters, to the number of a hundred or more, covered the red counterpane of the bed.

Ray opened these letters with a sharp knife, being careful not to cut their contents, which for the most part consisted of typewritten or scribbled letters of no consequence.

He found, out of the hundred odd letters, seven containing checks. It was shortly after the first of the month and these checks were attached to invoices.

Ray allowed his imagination to soar when he picked up one check, worth all his trouble. It was drawn on the First National Bank by a broker to a customer. There was a statement of account pinned to the check.

He gathered the useless letters into a wad, crammed them in the mail pouch, added the uniform and any scraps of paper he had dropped, and dressed in a neat-fitting black suit

Taking every precaution against being seen at his lodgings, he went to the river, weighted the pouch with a cobble stone, watched it sink in a concentric series of black ripples, and again allowed his imagination to soar. He had, securely buttoned in his inner coat pocket, seven checks which could be raised, altered, or washed by an acid which he had found remarkably effective in enterprises of a similar nature.

The art of forgery reached a high state under Ray's skillful fingers. He needed money and he had imagination. The checks, particularly the broker's, went through a magical transformation wherein oxalic acid, bleaching liquid, glass erasers, a perforating punch and transparent glue, each served its part.

One check was spoiled, another destroyed by burning it in a washbowl and crumbling the ashes to black powder. Five remained, all made out to James Cunningham and dated slightly ahead of the original date.

Ray corked his ink bottles, cleaned his pens, washed his hands and searched the room for possible clues. He had brought two suitcases to Doyertown with him. In one he packed all the paraphernalia of the forger's art, soiled linen, a cap and a few useless magazines, and checked this case at the check-room of the nearest railroad station. He concealed the claim-check in a washroom behind a small metal sign, where it could be obtained if necessary.

The imaginative gift, coupled with an open-handed generosity, had left him short of cash when the time had came to lay the checks.

He purchased, with his last dollar, a pair of tinted goggles and a soiled linen duster, left in a pawnshop by a motorist.

Working rapidly, despite the presence of the detectives and bank guards, he succeeded in obtaining a trifle over six thousand dollars on the raised and altered checks whose signatures were in each instance genuine.

He carried his operations with a high hand, waited once while a bank 'phoned the original drawee of the check, forged three indorsements when questioned by paying tellers, and was forced to leave one check, the largest one, behind while he fled through crowded streets, shedding his auto coat and goggles.

The six thousand dollars, although a considerable sum, was hardly worth the chances Ray had taken. He realized this when he reached his room, changed his suit, put on a high collar, and otherwise altered his appearance by pulling a lock of gray hair over his forehead and removing a conspicuous gold cap from a perfectly good tooth.

Doyertown, with its unimaginative police department, was still easy.

Ray believed that by taking precautions of the most ordinary kind, he could leave the Middle West with a man's sized fortune, perhaps fifty thousand dollars.

He switched from forgery, changed his lodgings, sought out a family hotel of the better order, and apparently settled down, as a manufacturer, ready and eager to open up a factory. '

"You see," Ray told a few spirits around the hotel, "I'm starting the National Sawpulp Company. There's no stock for sale but I want a few good directors."

He secured a letter from the hotel manager to a small bank, far from the locality of the larger ones that had cashed his raised and altered checks.

The president of this bank was perfectly willing to take five thousand cash on deposit from a gray haired stranger who talked understandingly of sawpulp and location sites and dockage on the river.

A corporation lawyer, located over the bank, drew up Ray's articles of incorporation, furnished the sesd, stock certificates and books for one hundred and seventy-three dollars.

Ray had reached a point in his flight of extended imagination where he needed a confederate or at least a willing dummy.

He considered the corporation lawyer, who was really a shyster of the first- water, and marked him from his list. The clerk at the hotel could not be expected to deceive anyone in Doyertown. The manager of the hostelry was a very sharp man. Ray dismissed him and found in Jones, a billiard player, card fiend, hanger-on about the hotel and golf course, a kindred spirit who was bubbling over with larceny.

Jones earned three thousand a year and spent seven or ten. He wore loud clothes and was well known in Doyertown. He had a moon-shaped face, small feet and a remarkably dainty pair of hands.

"It's this way, Mr. Jones," said Ray. "You and I are out to make a living, anywhere this side the law.''

Jones admitted that much.

"I've made out a few notes," continued Ray handing them over. "They are for money you advanced to the National Sawpulp Company. See, they're signed by myself as president and treasurer. I want you to hold them a while, then sell them."

Jones shook his head, although he clutched the notes in his tiny hands. "Old game," he said. "If I try to sell them, the would-be buyers will go to the bank and make inquiries."

"There's five thousand in the bank, now."

Jones saw a light. "You mean-the notes will apparently be met when they fall due."

"Yes. The bank will say the National Sawpulp Company is good for any one of those notes. Perhaps it will be good for them all, when they fall due. At any rate, Jones, it's a legitimate proposition."

Jones, who had no imagination, took time to think Ray's proposition over. The longer he thought, the better he liked the deal. It stood to reason that if buyers could be found for the notes, and the National Sawpulp Company was a legitimate corporation, there was no fraud, even if the notes were not met when due.

"Let the buyer beware," said Ray. "You loaned the company money on the notes. Now sell them."

Jones went forth and sold the notes, one at a time, and in some cases, at a discount. He explained to his friends that he had loaned the corporation money, and was a little short of cash. Would they help him carry the load until maturity day?

Ray received a report and whatever money Jones had obtained, each night. He gave Jones a percentage of the gains. He made out more notes and increased the National Sawpulp Company's account in the bank to ten thousand dollars.

Some inquiries had come in to the note teller about the notes. All he could say, after consulting the book^, was that the company had a large account, and the notes would probably be met.

Ray walked Doyertown's paved streets and allowed his fancies to soar. He had entered the city almost broke. Imagination had lifted him above the herd. He sensed, now and then, that old Calvin Grimm and others of the detective force, might be searching for a thin young man, wearing goggles and an auto duster. They would hardly suspect in him the object of their search. It took imagination to see a man in another guise, and Doyertown's detectives were all thick-looking family men who had risen from the police force.

Once he saw Grimm, when that detective strode past the hotel porch and went on toward the western division of town.

Ray threw his mind back to his other meetings with Grimm. Five years before he had wiggled out of the detective's clutches at a small junction near the railroad station. Again Grimm had seen him when he was guised as a postman. The third sight of the sleuth was a trifle disconcerting.

It came to Ray, as he rocked back and forth, and traced a circle with the ferrule of his cane on the porch, that the plodder sometimes caught the hare.

Grimm was certainly a plodder, thick-necked, beetle-browed, huge of hands and feet. He possessed, so far as outward manifestations showed, about as much brains as a wooden sign.

His record was good at headquarters. He brought in a suspect, now and then. He made up in perseverance what he lacked in imagination.

Ray dwelt on these facts and dismissed the detective from his mind. He dreamed of doubling up on the National Sawpulp deal, enlisting other dummies like Jones, and cleaning big— perhaps a half-million. There was another legitimate proposition which was within the law, a fake oil-well, salted with crude petroleum, and the land around this well closely held by a group of dummies who would part with their outside holdings without selling any of the fake well stock.

This idea needed smoothing over. Ray waited for Jones, who, when he came, gave the signal that he had sold another note and that his room door would be open.

"Tough stuff," declared the stout dummy, "but I put one over on a garage dealer. He called up the bank and they said that you had money enough on deposit to meet the note."

"Sure it's there now," said Ray, "but I'm not guaranteeing when that money will be drawn out."

"Neither does the bank."

Ray crammed his share of the proceeds from the sale of the note to the garage dealer in a leather pocketbook, already well-lined with bills of large denominations. It came to him, with an inspirational hash, that the time had arrived either to play a bigger game or to leave Doyertown forever.

There was a haw in Jones's operations which an energetic district attorney might get home to a jury. The stout dummy could not show an actual transfer of cash to the National Sawpulp Company. He had a right to buy notes at any price, but the day was coming when shrewd questions would be asked and the answers vcrihed.

Ray took stock of his cash, made out two more notes, for rather small amounts— five hundred dollars in each instance— gave these to Jones, and told him to sell them for whatever he could get.

"That finishes the deal," he said. "You loaned the National Sawpulp Company thirty-six thousand dollars. You secured short-time notes as your protection. Then, being caught in the market, or for any other reason whatsoever, you were forced to hypothecate the notes to your friends."

Jones had consulted his attorney. "Perfectly legitimate," he said. "I could have secured the notes from you for a dollar and other good and valuable consideration. I expect you to skip out and let me hold the bag. All right, skip!"

"You won't have as many friends as you had, Jones."

"To hell with friends! Money is the best friend!"

Ray had an inspiration that night. He saw a way to double the proceeds of the note deal by using Jones as a willing tool.

Dressing in the morning with more than ordinary care, he visited three minor banks outside the trolley-loop district of Doyertown, and rented, at each bank, a large safe-deposit box.

He had no trouble securing these by paying a year's rent in advance. The bank officials were glad to get his money. He left the last bank, looked around sharply, and started for the hotel.

A sense of danger came to him which was hard to throw off. He saw a fancied shadow dodging behind him. He rounded on this man and found he was a harmless citizen. Still the feeling of danger remained. It occurred to him suddenly, in one of those flash moments of depression, that he had gotten away with considerable in Doyertown.

The detectives had most certainly been looking for him. They were probably working on the series of mail box forgeries and searching for a tall young man wearing an auto coat. Perhaps they had left this description at every bank.

He had played them for wooden men, plodders who worked by rule of thumb. They might become inspired enough to widen their inquiries and search the hotels.

Ray waited for Jones, paced the porch, thrashed over the new scheme he had started in operation, and decided, before Jones arrived, that he would play double or quits with Doyertown and the detective department within two days.

To Jones he said when that individual puffed up the hotel's steps and mopped a smooth brow with a blue-bordered handkerchief

"Can you get me a man who will lend seventy-five thousand on good securities?"

"How good?" asked Jones

"U. . S. Bonds."

"Sure."

. "I'm going to buy thirty thousand dol¬ lars' worth to-morrow. Ill put them in a safe-deposit box. I'll introduce you to the banks where I have rented the boxes. You take the man who will loan the money and show him box number one with thirty thousand in Government Bonds laid away. Then I'll draw these bonds out, run to the next box, plant them there, and jrou bring on the man, and show him the same bonds. Do it at another place. He'll think you own m'nety thousand dollars worth of bonds."

Jones was willing after an hour's deep thought.

"Good idea," he said catching the idea.

Ray leaned over his stout dummy's shoulder.

"Did you cash those two notes?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Who bought them ?"

Jones chuckled deep in his throat. "I knew a couple of headquarters men who had saved some money. They're just as easy as anybody else. Told them I was short of cash. They took the notes to the bank. Note teller said National Sawpulp Company had ten thousand on deposit and looked like a going concern. So the two detectives bought the notes."

Ray experienced a slight feeling of dizziness. Jones had gone too far. There was danger in the notes when sold to a brace of detectives. The signature as cashier and treasurer might match some of the old endorsements on the checks Ray had cashed in his early operations at Doyertown.

"What's th' matter?" asked Jones.

Ray looked around the deserted porch of the hotel. Everybody was at dinner. Music floated out through the windows.

"Who were the detectives?" he queried.

"One was Flood and the other was a big boob named Grimm."

Ray dropped his cane and picked it up quickly. It came to him that Grimm was just the kind of man to buy a bogus note from a friend. Also Grimm might compare the signature on the bottom of the note with the forged checks which were probably on exhibit at detective headquarters."

"I'll trouble you for my end of the money you got," Ray said to Jones. "I'm going up to my room for a few minutes."

Jones handed Ray six hundred dollars. He kept four hundred for his share.

"How about that safety-box idea," he suggested when Ray showed signs of moving off.

"See you in the morning, Jones."

Ray lay across his bed, pressed his eyes tigjitly shut, and allowed his imagination to soar. He saw visions of Grimm taking the trail and making the arrest. Grimm's partner. Flood, might get suspicious at any moment. A score of trifles had been overlooked. The net seemed about to close. A man could not expect to get away with inspirational larceny always.

Panic of a serious kind swept over Ray. He hinged himself on the bed, looked at his suitcase, dothes, hat and overcoat, and sprang to the carpet where he hastily packed everything.

He went down stairs, leaned across the desk in the lobby, and said to the clerk:

"Called away over night. I may have to send for my things. If I do I'll notify you later."

Freed from the stifling menace of the hotel, Ray walked through dreaming streets until midnight. He was done with Doyertown. Jones had sounded the retreat when he sold the notes to the detectives. This action had carried matters too far.

Ray let his good judgment master his imagination. He found a small hotel where he secured a room for the night, awoke early, hurried to the bank and drew out all but one hundred dollars of the deposit to the credit of the National Sawpulp Company. He made no explanation to the paying teller.

Pocketing these bills after spreading them flat in a pocketbook, he circled the city and considered his getaway from every direction.

There were a few articles in his suitcase which he wanted. Also, Jones and the dummy directors of the National Sawpulp Company snould be appeased until the notes fell due and the crash came.

Ray decided to play safe in every direction. He waited until nightfall, entered a telephone booth, 'phoned Jones and one resident director of the company, told them he was going out of town, explained to Jones that he would let him know about the safe-deposit matter when he came back, then called the hotel clerk on the wire.

"Please send a messenger boy with my suitcase, cane and overcoat. I'm leaving the golf course in twenty minutes. Have the boy rush my things to the clubhouse. We're going to tour the northern part of the state."

Ray hung up the receiver and glided from the telephone booth. He reasoned that the clerk would afterward report to any inquiring detectives that he had left town via auto.

The golf clubhouse, where many autos always stood, was within short walking distance of the hotel. Ray strode down through an unlighted street, neared a comer, and, protecting himself by the trunk of an ancient elm, watched the front of the hotel.

He saw the messenger boy come down the steps and start toward the golf links. There was no shadow following the boy. Ray took every precaution, dodging, rounding blocks, falling in behind the boy, and waiting for a possible trailer.

"All right, boy," he said hurrying up. "My friends are waiting over there."

Ray pointed to an auto at a curb. The boy gave him the coat, cane, and suitcase, received a half-dollar, a sealed envelope for the hotel clerk, in which Ray had placed money for his bill, and went away whistling.

"Done!" said Ray watching the boy. "Now, here's where I leave Doyertown."

He had his plan mapped out in a general way. There remained an hour before he could catch the train he wanted, a local that stopped at a small suburban station and then.went on by easy steam to a junction point where a faster train could be taken to Warrensburg, a large city in the southern part of the state.,

Ray left the vicinity of the hotel and golf links, boarded a trolley, got off at a lighted comer, and entered a crowded motion-picture theatre where he elbowed his way to a dark, front seat, pushed his suitcase out of the way, hung his coat' and cane over the back of the seat and sat down.

He watched the picture and timed himself to catch the train, leaving a few minutes to spare. He rose from his seat, lifted the suitcase, slung the coat and cane over his arm and started for the entrance of the theatre. A throng of patrons surged through the turnstile. The light was dim. Ray felt himself, buffeted, pressed against a stout woman, grabbed by the arm, and finally propelled by a guard out through a narrow passage at the side of the ticket window.

He adjusted his hat, rehooked his cane, slung his overcoat over his arm and lifted the suitcase. He started walking rapidly through an imlighted street toward the railroad station where a red semaphore gleamed like an eye of fire.

The street was lonely, deserted. No cheering whistle came from the expected accomodation train. Ray paused, shifted the weight of the suitcase, glanced down.

He stiffened. The case fell from his fingers and upended in the muddy gutter. The cane slid along his arm and hooked at his wrist

Someone, a clever thief, had slit his coat with a sharp blade, extracted the wallet containing all the spoils he had amassed in Doyertown, and escaped without detection.

The theft had taken place in the dark aisle of the motion-picture theatre. There was no use going back and making inquiries. Ray knew professional work when he saw it.

He stood, cursed his lack of foresight, examined all his pockets, stared up and down the street, and felt his nerve and imagination ooze from his body.

There seemed nothing to do save take the train and leave Doyertown. He had eighteen dollars in small bills which the pickpocket had overlooked. This would buy a ticket to Warrensburg and leave him a few dollars over.

Ray picked up the suitcase, started in the direction of the small station, hesitated a stride, wheeled and went back toward the trolley-loop district.

Red rage swept over him. He was not yet done with the town. There was a chance that the pocketbook might be taken to police headquarters.

He made inquiries from the ticket seller at the motion-picture theatre, and cross-questioned a uniformed guard. They had seen no sign of pickpockets. "Gwan," said the guard; "we don't let them in our place!"

Ray pointed to the neat cut across his perfectly good coat. The lining showed through this cut. The guard squinted and shook his head. "Looks like a safety-razor blade did that," he commented dully.

Determined on a revenge of some kind, Ray considered Jones, the dummy directors of the National Sawpulp Company, and other men he had met in Doyertown. It was a strange thing if he could not carry some money out of the city.

He found a lodging house, went to bed, reviewed the course of events, and decided that it would be dangerous to see Jones and the other men he had done business with. The alarm might already be out, and his description known at headquarters.

There was one way to get back some of the lost money and salve his injured feelings. Ray decided to begin all over again. He slept late, rose, went into a section of the city, little known to him, and purchased a tire iron, files and a strip of brass from an auto dealer.

The tire iron would answer for a jimmy. The files and brass were necessary in order to make a key that would fit the mail boxes. Ray, overcautiously, had thrown away the first key.

His plan was ambitious enough. He discounted the detective force of the city, and decided to rob a score of mail boxes in the business district, lay one forged check for expense money, and flee with other checks to Warrensburg where he could begin operations on a larger scale.

He left his lodgings, pulled down his hat, buttoned up his coat, and started walking toward Hersey and State Streets where he had first stolen the mail box in order to get a lock and make a key.

It stood to reason that the stolen box had been replaced. The district was a lonely one, ideal for his purpose. He knew the way about that end of town. There were other mail boxes around.

Ray neared the junction of Hersey and State Streets, dodged behind a high fence, looked out, and, lowering the jimmy from his sleeve, strode toward the mail box which he could dimly see under a yellow lamp.

There came lunging across lots, like an enraged bear, at the first sound of Ray's jimmy prying the box from the post, a burly figure brandishing a police regulation revolver.

This figure was joined by a second sleuth. They surrounded Ray, who stepped in a puddle, slipped, and found himself pinioned by four strong arms.

Grimm's voice was totally unimaginative, when he slipped the handcuffs on Ray's slender wrists:

"We've been watchin' this mail box for a long time, young man. Kinda thought you'd be back after more junk."

____________________

15: The Revolver

J. S. Fletcher

1863-1935

From A Century of Love Stories, nd, circa 1935

AS I drew the revolver from my pocket the moon, then at its full, burst suddenly from behind a bank of cloud. Its light, sharp and brilliant in the clear atmosphere, smote out a spark of scintillating fire from the polished barrel. I gazed at it thoughtfully as it danced and coruscated like the white light of a diamond.

"I wonder," I said, half aloud, "I wonder."

A quick, light step on the gravelled walk behind me— a light, insistent hand on my arm, an equally light, but decidedly steel-like grip on the wrist of the hand which held the revolver— a girl's voice, frightened, reproachful and yet sympathetic.

"Oh, please, don't— please!"

I looked round, and down. A pair of anxious grey eyes, looking into mine with a pleading expression, a slim figure veiled in white draperies, a scent of violets.

"Please— please! Besides— it's so wicked."

I suppose we made a good stage picture; a man and a maid in sober black and white, outlined against an excellent setting. There was silver moonlight; there was the Mediterranean; there were the lights of Monte Carlo; there were palm trees, flowers, luxuriant plants. And, just as if we had been on a real stage, with real scenery, there was the proper accompaniment of the proper sort of music— soft, dreamy. Somewhere, not far off, a band was playing one of Strauss's most languorous waltzes.

I regarded my assailant in silence. Perhaps my mouth was wide open— I am sure I was sufficiently surprised to make it so. What a grip she kept on that right wrist of mine!

She shook me a little with the other hand.

"Do you hear?" she said. " You— you mustn't."

I found my tongue. "I beg your pardon," I said, with the greatest show of politeness which I could assume under the circumstances, being literally handcuffed. "Did— did you think I was going to— to shoot somebody?"

I saw the brows under the big, fleecy wrap draw them- selves together with a frown. The grey eyes regarded me with speculative wonder. But there was no relaxation of the firm hold on my wrist.

"To shoot somebody! Were you not going to shoot—"

Her eyes said the rest.

"Ah!" I exclaimed. "I begin to see why I am taken prisoner. You thought, madam, that I was about to shoot myself."

"Weren't you?" she asked faintly, and with palpable surprise.

"Not at present," I replied. "And, unless it is by accident, not at all, so far as I know."

She looked into my eyes very searchingly. I returned her gaze with an equally examining regard. She released me.

"Thank you," I said. "I congratulate you on the strength of your fingers and wrists. You had me there, without a doubt."

She had moved a step or two back, and now stood glancing alternately at me, and at the revolvet, which I had placed on the balustrade before us. There was a world of unvoiced curiosity in her eyes.

"Why did you pull it out of your pocket so suddenly?" she demanded, with something like asperity. "I believe you were going to— no, I don't, though, because you said you weren't. But—"

"Thank you," I said. "But why did I pull the revolver out of my pocket? Well, I pulled the revolver out of my pocket because I wanted to look at it."

"I said— why did you pull it out so suddenly?" she said, staccato fashion.

"Why did I pull it out so suddenly?" I repeated. "Oh, because I thought of it suddenly."

She regarded me with bent brows and a pursed mouth. It was a very pretty mouth, and from what I could see of a face that was closely wrapped about by a diaphanous cloud of white, its owner was very pretty too. But I thought she was somewhat angry, for she was beating a small pointed toe upon the gravel.

"That seems a lame sort of excuse," she said severely. "Is it a common thing for a man to pull a revolver out of his pocket very suddenly unless he is going to use it on himself or somebody else?"

"I should say not," I replied. "But I think I can give you an illustration which will make my meaning clear. Have you never, when going out shopping, for instance, suddenly said, 'By jove, where's my purse?' and stuck your hand in your pocket and pulled it out?— that is, if it was there?"

She smiled— then laughed softly.

"No," she said. "I don't think I can truthfully say that that particular experience has ever been mine— But your illustration is apt and explanatory— I am beginning to understand you. You pulled the revolver out because you suddenly thought of it— not because you were going to make use of it."

I shook my head,

"I didn't say that I wasn't going to make use of it," I replied. "I am hoping to make really good use of it—it is a beautiful weapon."

The clouds of suspicion descended upon her brow.

"I like people who say what they mean," she observed.

"Then you must like me tremendously," I returned, "because so far I have said exactly what I do mean."

"How can you make use of a revolver without shooting something?" she asked, with another touch of asperity. "Perhaps you were going to shoot— cats?"

"The revolver is unloaded," I replied. " There is not a cartridge in it. Yet I hope to put it to excellent use— to-morrow."

Her eyebrows arched themselves. I picked up the revolver, and laid it across the palm of my hand.

"Look at it," I said, extending it towards her. "It is of very beautiful workmanship, of the most perfect materials, and most exquisitely and extravagantly mounted. Take it in your hand. I give you my word it is not loaded."

She took the weapon in her hands, and examined it with some curiosity. And as she glanced it over, turning it this way and that in the mingled light of moon and lamps, I examined her. She was little more than a girl, twenty, I should think, at the outside; of a sufficient stature, slim, delicately and prettily proportioned. Her eyes, as I knew already, were grey; her hair, from what I could see of a stray lock or two that had escaped from her wrap, was of a delicate shade of gold.

Her eyebrows arched themselves again as she looked at the revolver.

"Jewelled!" she said.

"A piece of mad extravagance," I replied.

She handed it back to me.

"I wish I had known, five minutes ago, that it was not loaded," she said with emphasis. "I hate— scenes."

"They are—disconcerting," I said. '' Still I am sure that one was most effective."

She shot a swift glance at me from beneath suddenly lifted lashes.

"Now I want to know what it is that you are going to do with the revolver," she said.

I replaced the revolver in my pocket. Then looking at her with a shyness which was intended to express great confidence in her, I screwed the point of my shoe into the gravel.

"You see," I said, "it is this way. I am stumped up."

Her eyes grew round.

"That is, I am— well, I have lost nearly all my money."

She turned towards the Casino, and nodded her head at it.

"In there?" she inquired.

I, too, nodded my head.

She screwed her toe into the gravel. The band that was playing Strauss favoured us with a bar or two that fitted into the needs of the occasion most admirably.

"Of course," I said presently, having allowed a sufficient silence to elapse, "when one loses nearly all one's money one has to shift about for means to raise more. 'Let's see for means'— didn't Romeo say that?"

"He didn't say it about money, anyway," she remarked.

"I won't dispute with you, though I could prove that he did, because poison was the means he wanted, and he had to provide means, which is money, wherewith to buy the poison. But I was saying— when one has no money left one must find more. And my revolvers are valuable. Do I make my meaning plain?"

"I think I understand. You are going to pawn them?"

"Sell, I think, will be the ultimate word," I replied. "You see, when I came, almost bankrupt, from the tables to-night, I retired here— you will observe that I only took a few steps from the door— to think. I formed myself into a committee of ways and means. Suddenly I remembered the revolvers. I always carry one with me, and usually unloaded, to flourish in the faces of desperadoes who never turn up. I pulled it out, speculating on what I could get for the pair. I was just saying to myself, 'I wonder— I wonder,' when you took me into custody."

She drew her wraps more closely about her head and shoulders. She seemed to shiver slightly.

"Shall we walk about a little?" she said.

"With pleasure," I replied. "Do you mind if I smoke a cigarette?"

She nodded her permission. We walked up and down, in short turns, upon the terrace. The distant music was alluring: I began, half unconsciously, to hum a bar or two of it.

"For a man who has lost all his money, and must needs sell his pistols, for very want, you appear to be very happy," my companion observed. "Do you really feel so, or is it assumed?"

"I am quite happy just now," I answered. "It is a fine night; you, if I may say so with all courtesy, are an agreeable companion. I shall be certain to raise money on my beautiful revolvers to-morrow. There is a dealer in curios and odds and ends here— a Jew, Bernstein— who will delight to the uttermost in screwing me down to the lowest possible price. And yet they are well worth one hundred and fifty pounds to him. Alas! I may have to accept one-third of that. See the shifts to which the poor are reduced."

"Have you ever known what it was to be without money before?" she asked, with a rare note, almost an anxious note, of feminine curiosity. "Have you?"

I laughed.

"Often," I replied. "A hundred and one times— ever since I had pockets."

"I mean," she said, "as a man. To children a penniless condition is not a matter of moment."

"I am not so sure of that," I replied. "I have wanted pocket money when I was at school much more keenly than I want the money which I shall be literally obliged to raise on my revolvers to-morrow morning."

"And with that money," she said, something like a sigh escaping her, " you will, I suppose, return to the tables?"

"I am debating that point at present," I said. "No, I think I shall not. Fortune has not been kind— why try to cajole an indifferent mistress ? Much better cast about for a new one, more complaisant."

"Have you lost a lot of money at the tables?" she inquired, still inquisitive.

"A mere trifle in the eyes of a rich man—a fortune in the estimation of a beggar. But why speak of the past? Did it never strike you that the most sensible proverb in our language is that which points out to us the uselessness of crying over spilled milk? It has the genuine essence of wisdom."

"I thought," she said, with charming irrelevance, " that most gamblers when they lost their last penny at Monte Carlo were foolish enough to shoot themselves. That was why—"

"You took me into custody. And that reminds me that I have not yet thanked you for—"

"But there is nothing to thank me for, since your intention was niot what I hastily took it to be, and—"

"The important matter," I said gravely, "is the genuine nature of your intention. For you had good reason to believe that I was about to shoot myself, and you very bravely efideavouted to prevent me from the accomplishment of such a rash deed. I certainly think it my duty to thank you most sincerely and with gratitude."

She shot a quick glance at me.

"You have a half-mocking way of saying things," she said, and I think her lips assumed the prettiest of pouts. "I believe you are a cynic."

"On the contrary, I am the lightest-hearted philosopher under the sun. I am a true disciple of Omar Khayyam. If I seem to sneer it is that I may not laugh outright. To me, life is what the old tent-maker rightly termed it— a chequer- board. I am one of the chequers. Therefore—"

I opened my hands in an appropriate gesture. After all, there are worse things than talking philosophy, under a Mediterranean moon, with a pretty and unknown— young woman.

"I do not believe that you would be satisfied with a crust of btead in the wilderness," she said with some point.

"I would be satisfied with what the poet said would satisfy him," I replied. "You will remember that in addition to the bread there was wine, and women, and joyous verse— we will at any rate suppose that the verse was to be joyous. Women; wine and song— I wonder if Dr, Martin Luther ever read Omar?— he appears to have agreed with the Oriental. But that is a question for scholars, and I am not one."

My companion paused— I paused too.

"Since I am sure that you are safe," she said, with an inscrutable smile "and are not going to do any harm with your revolver, I will disappear as suddenly as I appeared. Good-night, sir."

I bowed low.

"I do thank you most sincerely for your kindness of intention," I said gravely. "If— if I really had contemplated shooting myself— I mean if I actually had been about to do so, it was a plucky thing of you to do. Thank you, once more."

She nodded her head, and she laughed a little.

"I hope you will have luck with the pistols," she said moving away. "Do not allow the Bernstein to beat you down. And don't go back to the tables."

She nodded, smiled, and turned away, Our interview, then, was at an end. Should I ever see her again?

I made a sudden step to her side.

"Madam!" I exclaimed.

She turned, glancing at me with some surprise. I bowed my head—contritely.

"I have been telling you fibs," I said, "Real genuine fibs. I was not going to shoot myself, nor anybody else, nor am I going to sell my beautiful pistols to Bernstein, The truth is that I am an expert shot with the revolver— I bought these weapons to-day— and I was just wondering when you came upon me if I could hit the ace of spades at thirty paces with my newly acquired possessions. The rest was— wicked invention."

She gazed at me with widening eyes and parted lips. At last she spoke.

"Why did you keep me talking— and waiting, all that time?" she asked, with a becoming indignation.

"Your voice is very—sweet," I said humbly, "and its owner is—very—shall I say, sympathetic."

She sighed— of the exact value and nature of the sigh I could not say anything definite.

"I am going home," she said, withdrawing a step of two. "I shall meditate."

"Yes?" I said. "On—?"

"On the craft and subtlety of man," she answered. "Good- night."

"But there is to-morrow," I urged. " May I not—?"

"Have the opportunity of telling me more fibs?" she questioned.

"I can speak the truth— admirably," I replied in my gravest tones. "It is my normal condition."

"I should like to hear you in your normal condition," she said with equal gravity.

"I trust that you will never hear me in anything but my normal condition," I said. "Though it is quite true that I have a pretty invention."

She laughed and moved away slowly. I followed.

"Before morning," I said, "I shall have invented a means whereby we can resume our discussions— having regard to strict propriety. But— your presence will be needed."

"Eleven o'clock is an hour of great convenience for many things," she murmured.

coe this," I said, glancing about me, " is an ideal meeting- Pp ane "

"But you must be in your normal condition," she said. "I shall be—inquisitive."

"I will be as an open book," I promised.

"I wonder what I shall read in it?" she said musingly.

"At any rate," I implored, "you will turn a page or two?"

She bowed her head very graciously, and favoured me with a curtsey that would have done credit to an eighteenth- century ancestor. I saluted her with becoming reverence. She flashed a demure farewell from her grey eyes—and was one.

"I should not wonder," said I to myself as I turned the corner of the Casino in the opposite direction— "I should not wonder at all if I discover myself to be in love. For she is certainly a fascinating and sweet personality. Heigho!— what it is to be impressionable."

As I put the revolver safely away in its case that night in my room at the Hotel de Paris I remembered that she had handled it. I am afraid that I saluted the place whereat her slim fingers had touched its shining surface. The glamour of the moonlight was still upon it— and also upon me.

NEXT MORNING I breakfasted in the salle à manger with Major Ponsonby of the Blues. He is a well-preserved gentleman of fifty who knows everybody, and much more about them than they know themselves. To breakfast with him is to learn many things which are not in the newspapers, daily or weekly.

In the midst of Ponsonby's chatter I chanced to look up from my studied contemplation of the table-cloth. A cold chill, followed by a hot flush, as of a summer wind blowing from the westward, shot over and through me. To my right, a dream of exquisite morning girlish perfection, she sat. She was more charming than ever. With her was an elderly, clean-shaven, gold-eye-glassed gentleman, and another lady, youthful, but of a discreet plainness. It flashed across me that all three might be Americans. Yet she had no Yankee twang in her pretty voice.

"Ponsonby," I said softly, "you know everybody and everything—who are those people at the table in the window on our right P "

Ponsonby by a strategic movement made an inspection.

"Oh, ah, yes," he said. "Americans, and arrived yesterday. Father, one Columbus O'Connell Mooney, Chicago, pork-packer and multi-millionaire. Pretty girl—Miss Diamond Mooney, daughter and sole heiress. Plain girl—Miss Sadie Grant, companion."

"I wish I was a pork-packer," I sighed.

"Excellent, if greasy business," said Ponsonby. "Lots of oof in it."

I looked her way— she, at last, looked mine. Our eyes met. We preserved a magnificent indifference. But I knew we should meet at eleven o'clock.

She was there to the minute—alone. She was prettier than ever, but there was a trace of sadness in her eyes.

"It is a long, long time since breakfast," I said, as we met.

"Exactly an hour and five minutes," she said.

We sat down, gazed at the blue of the Mediterranean, and the red brown of Monaco, and we were silent.

"Well? "' she said at last.

"Well?" said I.

"You appear," she remarked, "you appear to be— thoughtful."

"You," I said, "appear to be pensive."

"That perhaps is because we are not under the influence of the moon," she observed.

"This, however, is perfect sunlight," I said.

"In the rnoonlight we did not know each other," she said.

"Do we now?" I asked.

She sighed, and traced a pattern in the gravel with the tip of her tiny shoe.

"Major Ponsonby," she said, "has been smoking again with my papa— since breakfast."

"Ah," said I. "The deuce he has!"

"I am pleased," she continued, "to have saved the most noble the Marquis of Despard, in the Peerage of Ireland, from— selling his revolver. I wish I could cure him of telling fibs."

Then there was a long silence.

"Will you take me in hand— and have a good try?" I said at last.

Then there was a longer silence.

"Perhaps I may," she said eventually. "Meanwhile— come and be presented to my papa."

And so there is going to be another bond of union between the Ametican democracy and the British aristocracy— thanks to the revolver.

_________________

16: A Shot in the Night

J. S. Fletcher

Cosmopolitan, Sep 1924

AFTER some unseen hand had thumped loudly and steadily at the panels of his bedroom door for the better part of five minutes, Manson pulled himself out of the seductive embrace of his blankets to realize that the wintry dawn was at hand, and that the moon, just then at its full, was dipping towards the horizon beyond the pine woods in front of his uncurtained window. He slipped out of bed and switched on the electric light at its head all in one action, and as he crossed to the door glanced at the watch which lay on his dressing-table. Six forty-five— two hours and a quarter before his usual time! And who the devil could this be, thundering so persistently at his door?

A man he knew well enough stood there when he opened it— a young man of about his own age, who had evidently flung on his clothes in a tearing hurry, and showed signs of strange and unusual excitement. He thrust out both hands and shoved Manson back into the room, closed the door behind them, and began to blurt things out, staccato fashion.

"Thought I'd never wake you, by George!— bother about rousing your servants too! And by George, here's the very devil. I've run all the way from town."

Manson was wide awake by then, and his lawyer's brain was as cold as the wooden parquetry of the floor. He turned away, and thrusting his feet into a pair of wool-lined slippers, reached. for a dressing-gown.

"What's the trouble, Campion?" he asked in his most matter of fact tones. "Something unusual, of course—"

"Unusual!" groaned the other. "Good Heaven, I should say so. It's Leaver— Dick Leaver! He—"

"Take your time," said Manson. "What about Dick Leaver? Steady— if you want me to comprehend."

Campion dropped on the lounge at the foot of the bed. He puffed out his cheeks as if to blow something away from him. Then he shook himself.

"Comprehend, ah," he muttered. "Hanged if can comprehend! Dick Leaver's arrested! Midnight! He is in the lock-up at Southminster. That's where I've come from. He sent for me d'you see, Manson— about half-past five this morning. And it's murder— charge of murder, you know. You see—"

Manson motioned him to silence, opened the door, and went out on the landing. Campion caught a glimpse of a housemaid and her dustpan and brush.

"Jane," said Manson, "go down and tell the cook to make coffee at once.and to put it in the library with some biscuits. I shall be down there in ten minutes." He closed the door again, and passing Campion laid a hand on his clothes. "Now, Campion— clear talking, if you please. If you want to tell, begin at the beginning."

"If you knew the beginning," retorted Campion. He was recovering his wits and his breath, and his voice grew steadier. "And some tales begin in the middle, don't they?— this does, anyway! But I tell you, about five-thirty this morning a policeman came to tell me that Dick Leaver was detained at the lock-up and wanted to see me at once— of course I'm a pal of his and our house is near. I went there, quick as I could. And what I heard there, put briefly, amounts to this— and hanged if I can understand it. You know that piece of common, wild wasteland outside the town on the north side? The Warren, they call it. There's a wood runs along the east side of it, part of Sir John Bower's estate.

"Well, just before eleven o'clock last night Sir John's game-keeper, Richards, and a watcher who was with him, were in that wood on the look-out for poachers. They suddenly heard a couple of shots, fired almost simultaneously close by. They made in the direction of the sounds. On the Warren, just outside the wood, there's an old sand-pit, grown over with bramble mostly, but with a clear space in it. On this clear space— it was full moon remember— they saw a man lying and another man standing close by. They went up and found the standing figure to be Dick Leaver. He'd an automatic pistol in his hand which had just been fired. The man lying in the sand was his cousin, Gerald Paisley. He was dead."

"Quite dead," asked Manson.

"As a door-nail. And of course, Richards, who knew both Leaver and his cousin well enough, at once asked Dick what all this meant? What do you think he replied?"

"Tell me," said Manson.

"All he said was 'Good God, I believe this is my pistol.' That was all, and Richards told the police that as soon as he'd said it he turned straight away and marched off towards the town— never even looked round. What d'you make of that now?"

"What did Richards do?" asked Manson.

"Left his man with the body and went off to the police. He told them everything of course. And they fetched Dick Leaver to the police station and after questioning him, detained him. They came for me, at his request— but I told you that."

"Aye, but you haven't told me what he said to you. Now, what did he say?"

"To tell you the truth, next to nothing. I think he's mad! It was at his request that the police fetched me, but when I got there he'd nothing to say except that it was kind of me to come. The police had told me all about it by then, and I asked Dick if he hadn't better see a solicitor and suggested you. All he answered was that you would do as well as anybody else. So I ran out here."

Manson had finished dressing while Campion was talking, and he now motioned him to follow downstairs to the library. He had swallowed half a cup of coffee and munched a couple of biscuits before he spoke again; then he turned sharply on his companion, who, cup in hand, was staring at the fire which the housemaid had just lighted.

"What do you make of this, Campion?" he asked peremptorily. "You've formed some theory, of course."

Campion set down his cup, swallowed a mouthful of biscuit, and shook his head. And glancing at the door, he lowered his voice to a whisper, in spite of the fact that the door was shut.

"Manson— I don't think there's a doubt about it! It's the vicar's girl."

Manson picked up another biscuit and nodded as he put it to his lips.

"Nancy Millersley, eh? Very likely. Jealousy, you mean?"

"Everybody-in the town knows that she's turned the heads of both those two— Leaver and his cousin," assented Campion. "It's been talked about— no end. Leaver's been absolutely mad on her ever since she came home from school. Paisley's been pretty nearly as bad. It's known that they were jealous of each other. The wonder is that they continued to live together in those chambers they had in High Street. But that's it— no doubt of it. Of course, the girl is a born flirt— an arrant flirt."

"Do you know if she favored either of 'em more than the other?" asked Manson.

"I've seen her with Paisley and I've seen her with Leaver. So has everybody. Sometimes it was Dick; sometimes it was Gerry. I don't know who could know, that is, except themselves. But there's the fact. One thing, however, I do know. Both were in the club last night— billiard room, I saw 'em— and there was a marked coldness between them. They used to be inseparable— till this girl came on the scene. Well— there it is! Paisley found dead— shot!— and Leaver standing by with a pistol in his hand."

Manson helped himself to more coffee and pushed~the jug towards Campion.

"Just so," he remarked. "But you know, I don't think Leaver shot Paisley!"

"No," said Campion, "just why?"

"If he'd shot Paisley, it isn't likely he'd have said what he did— as you report it, 'Good God, I believe this is my pistol.' Do you think a man who'd just shot another would say that?"

"I don't know what to think, Manson! But I think— as I said upstairs— that Dick Leaver's— well, a bit off it. He looks it. Smiled— not quite sillily, but something very like it— at me when I went into the room-at the police station. His mind's affected I'm certain. And so—"

"That may be, and probably is, shock," said Manson. "Well, let's be off; what's it like outside? Cold?"

"Good Heavens, I never noticed!" exclaimed Campion. "I was too full of this. And I ran all the way."

A half an hour later, Manson walked, unaccompanied, into a dismal, badly lighted room in the police station, and found Dick Leaver sitting on a hard chair, his hands thrust into his pockets, his eyes staring straight and steady at a blank wall. He glanced at his visitor with lack-luster eyes, almost as if he wondered at his presence. Manson, pulling up another chair in front of him and sitting down on it, laid a hand on his knee.

"Look here, Dick," he said. "You didn't shoot Gerry Paisley, of course! Now, what were you doing there?"

Leaver transferred his steady gaze from the blank wall to Manson's searching eyes. He sighed deeply and shook his head.

"Doing— there?" he repeated. "Oh!— I— I suppose I'd just wandered there."

"From where?" asked Manson.

"Don't know, exactly. I'd been— wandering about."

"Since when? Come, now— you were at the club during the evening. Where did you go after that?"

Leaver made no answer. But his eyes began to shift and his right hand went up to his chin and began to rub it.

"Now, listen," continued Manson. "It's no use your trying to keep names out of it. They're bound to come out— as things are. Especially Nancy Millersley's! Make up your mind to that, Dick. Come now— when you left the club, you went to see her, didn't you?"

Leaver had winced at the girl's name, but he nodded his head in reply to the question.

"Just so," said Manson. "Where did you meet her?"

"Where we'd often met— at night," answered Leaver with a sudden change to readiness. "In the vicarage grounds— back of the house."

"What happened? Whatever it it was— something upsetting."

Leaver laughed harshly. A flush of color came into his face and his eye brightened.

"Out with it!" said Manson.

"Well, this," replied Leaver. "You see, she'd been— well, it seemed as if she'd been encouraging both Gerry and myself, We'd got jealous of each other— it was getting serious. Especially as we lived together. And— and last night I determined I'd settle it. So I went there— I knew how we could meet— we'd met before there at night— often. And I asked her straight out which it was going to be— Gerry or me?"

"Well?" asked Manson.

"Well, it was a job to get anything out of her. She— she didn't want to say. Then I said that if she wouldn't say, I should just clear out— Colonies, or somewhere— and I guessed Gerry would do the same. Things got a bit heated. And, at last, she said she hadn't the slightest intention of marrying either of us— not the very slightest in the world. I got a sort of look-in at her real self then— damn her."

"Just so," agreed Manson. "That sort deserve to be damned. Good— and what next?"

"She went off— and so did I. I was mad— angry. I don't know where I went, first. Wandering round— anywhere. Then I got to the Warren— maundering about there. I sat down, doing a think. I saw she'd been playing with us, and I made up my mind I'd have it out with Gerry if I saw him that night, or first thing next morning, and tell him all about it, and put it to him that she was heartless, and that it wasn't worth while letting her come between us. And then I heard either a shot, or two shots fired simultaneously, not far off. I ran in the direction of the sound and I found Gerry in that old sand-pit. He—"

"Be careful," interrupted Manson. "Tell me the exact details."

"As far as I can realize them, yes. He was dead, just dead, I should think. He'd a pistol, grasped in his right hand. I took it out, and I was examining it in the moon light— full moon, you know— when Sir John's gamekeeper, Richards, and another man hurried up. I left them with— him— and went home."

"Why?" asked Manson.

"For one thing, I don't think I quite knew what. I was doing; for the other, I wanted to know if it was my pistol that I'd picked up. I felt sure it was; I said so to Richards. It's an automatic that I've had since the war. I kept it in a bureau in my bedroom. Gerry knew I had it there."

"And was it your pistol?"

"Oh, yes, it's my pistol. It's got my initials on it. Oh, yes. He must have taken it out of my bureau— to shoot himself with."

"Suicide, eh?" suggested Manson.

"What else?" said Leaver.

"You thought you heard two shots, you know."

"That I can't be sure of. If there were two shots they were fired almost exactly together. But I think, on reflection, there can't have been two. There's a deep pine wood behind that sand-pit: what I took for a second shot may have been the immediate echo of the first."

Manson remained silent for a minute or two; then he got up and gave Leaver a friendly clap on the shoulder.

"All right, Dick," he said, cheerily. "Leave it to me— I'll see to things. You haven't said anything much to these police people yet, have you?"

"No more than I've said to you. That is, about the actual business at the sand-pit. I said nothing— nothing whatever about the— the girl."

"All right," repeated Manson. "Now I'll have a word with them." He nodded and walked out, and in the corridor met a couple of officials with whom he went into the office. "Pretty obvious, all this," he remarked in an off-hand manner. "Case of suicide. I see no reason for your detention of Mr. Leaver."

But the man at whom he looked smiled and shook his head.

"Don't you, Mr. Manson?" he said. "Well, we do. And we don't see that it's obviously a case of suicide. Whether you know it or not— and you must know something, for there's precious little secrecy in a small country town like this— it's well known that young Leaver and his cousin have both been running after that pretty daughter of the vicar's, and that, of late, they've been so madly jealous of each other that relations had become strained between them. Common talk, Mr. Manson, common talk. Leaver and his cousin were seen at the club last night to be on very bad terms— ignored each other's presence and that sort of thing."

"Do you think that a man who'd just shot another would make the remark that Leaver made to Richards and his companion?" asked Manson. "I mean— about the pistol?"

"I don't know, Mr. Manson, I don't know!" replied the official. "I'm not given to speculations. What I know is that young Paisley was found lying dead, shot through the heart, and that Leaver was standing by him with an automatic pistol in his hand. That's quite sufficient ground whereon to charge him—"

"Mr. Leaver acknowledges that the pistol is his," interrupted Manson. "And I suppose that when you fetched him from his room, he gave you the pistol— willingly?"

"Oh, certainly— he made no difficulty about that," asserted the official. "We have the pistol here, if you'd like to see it. Here it is," he continued, opening a drawer. "It has Leaver's initials on it. You see what it is— a Cotley's automatic, point 38 caliber, with a carrier which contained seven cartridges. One has been fired; there is one in the breech, and there are five left in the carrier. It is rifled you see, in three grooves."

Manson took the automatic pistol in his hand, and examined it carefully. If the two police officials had been more observant, they would have seen a sudden curiously abstracted look come over his face. But they were exchanging whispered remarks and did not look at the solicitor. And Manson handed the pistol back. "I suppose there'll be an autopsy carried out on Paisley's body?" he asked. "There should be."

"A post-mortem?— oh— yes," said the official. "That's been arranged for already. Some time today. Dr. Summers has it in hand."

"And you intend to detain Mr. Leaver?"

The official replaced the pistol in the drawer from which he had taken it, and turned the key with a decisive snap.

"We do, Mr. Manson," he replied. "And to be plain, we intend to charge him! There's sitting of the magistrates this afternoon at three o'clock, and we shall bring him up then. Of course there'll be little beside formal evidence of arrest, and an adjournment, but if you're going to represent him in this affair, I suppose you'll attend?"

"I shall be there," assented Manson. He left the police station without further remark, and once in the street began to murmur a formula to himself. "Cotley automatic. Point 38 caliber. Carrier had seven cartridges. One fired. One in breech. Five left in carrier. Rifled in three grooves. Three grooves. Therefore …" He stood thinking for a minute: then, as if he had suddenly seen his way across a hitherto darkened land, he turned back along the street and presently rang the bell at the door of a big house, on the panels of which was a brass plate bearing the name of Dr. Rupert Summers.

Manson usually went leisurely home to lunch about one o'clock, taking his time in going and returning. But on this day, routine and custom were thrown to the winds— he had his hands full. Still, a man who has broken his fast on coffee and biscuits at seven o'clock of a winter's morning, and has had nothing since, begins by noon to feel empty, and as the town clock} struck twelve Manson hurried to the Crown Hotel and fell upon hot soup and cold meat. He was wolfing chicken and ham at a prodigious rate when one of his clerks came in and made straight to his employer's elbow.

"Dr. Summers wants you to step round there at once, sir," said the clerk. "He says you'll know the reason."

Manson rose and raced out of the hotel and up the street. Within two minutes he was in Summer's surgery and Summers, seeing his eagerness, turned to a drawer, pulled out a small cardboard box, and held it out.

"This is the bullet, Manson. You see? Now, if what you told me this morning is correct— eh?"

Manson had the bullet in the palm of his hand by that time. He turned it over with the top of his index finger. And then he handed it back.

"Exactly!" he said. "Just what I thought. Well— you'll be at the police court at three. And now …"

Without another word he shot out of the house and went racing down the street to his own office.

During the next two and a half hours, Manson worked as he had rarely, if ever, worked in his life. There were people to see and to talk to whose attendance at court was absolutely necessary; in the case of one he left nothing to chance and took out a subpena. By five minutes to three he had perfected bis plans and went quietly round to the court-house. The news that young Leaver was to be brought before the magistrates on a charge of shooting his cousin had spread all over the town by that time, and Manson had to fight his way into court through a dense crowd. Once inside he was button-holed by the vicar, a limp, purposeless sort of man, who, it was well known, had no control over a large and headstrong family.

"Oh dear, Mr. Manson," he exclaimed, striving to draw the solicitor aside. "It is really most distressing that you should have felt it necessary to subpena my daughter— a mere child— in this unfortunate affair. I really think you might have had more consideration for me. Can't I persuade you to dispense with her evidence?— though what evidence she can give I can't think. It is most painful to me. Just consider, Mr. Manson, what people will say. And my position with the Bishop. Really, Mr. Manson—"

"Mr. Vicar," said Manson, in a tense whisper, "I've subpenaed your daughter, and she'll go into that box, and she'll answer my questions. There's a man's life at stake!

Then he pressed on to his seat at the solicitor's table, and beyond noticing that there was a full bench of magistrates and that the court, a big, somber hall, was packed to the doors, he seemed to those near him to be taking no particular interest in the preliminary stage of the proceedings; indeed, to all appearances, he might not have been in any way engaged in them. He had not come into court armed with any vestige of the usual paraphernalia; there was neither bag, book, nor bundle of papers before him on the table. He sat with his hands in his pockets, staring at the panels of the bench, apparently unconcerned and incurious where everybody else was excited and brimful of inquisitive speculation. But in reality Manson's mind was harder at work than it had ever been since he first started out on his professional career. He was obsessed by a notion. It shaped itself into definite words which rang over and over in the swiftly-moving evolutions of his active brain. Somewhere in that court was somebody who knew and could tell, if made, the precise truth!

Somebody!— somewhere! But where?— and who? Was it the girl? Probably not— the likelihood was that she knew most of the truth; that she could give a very clear indication of where the truth was to be found— but that she did not know everything. Yet Manson felt that the possessor of the whole truth was there— behind him, perhaps; at his side, perhaps, but there, hugging his secret.

The problem was how to get at him in swift and final fashion. For Manson had one object, and that was to settle this matter there and then. He knew what the police would want delay. But he wanted something sharp, rapid, decisive.

Just as the police had been speedy, too speedy, as he knew, in charging his client, so he wanted with equal swiftness to get the charge dismissed. He was certain of his own weapon; all he was uncertain about was the exact location of the vulnerable spot wherein to thrust it. And if he seemed apathetic and unconcerned it was all play-acting; in reality he was strung to the highest tension, and when the police after giving evidence of Leaver's arrest, asked for an immediate remand, he sprang into activity.

"You worships, I appear on behalf of the prisoner, Richard Leaver, and I oppose that application. I oppose it strenuously. The police authorities have acted in this matter with undue precipitancy. I am ready to prove, here and now, beyond doubt, that my client is absolutely innocent of the charge brought against him. I claim my right— his right— to have that evidence put before your worships at once."

The Chairman glanced at the Superintendent of Police; the Superintendent glanced uneasily and suspiciously at Manson.

"Of course, if Mr. Manson is in a position to produce this evidence—" the Superintendent said hesitatingly. "But if your worships are going to accede to his request I should like first to call a witness on behalf of the prosecution. Mr. Manson has just remarked that we have acted with undue precipitancy. I think that if your worships will hear our witness you will admit that we have good grounds for charging the prisoner. Do I understand that your worships decide to go on now?"

The Chairman whispered for a while with his brother magistrates and turned to the Superintendent.

"After what Mr. Manson has said," he announced, "we decide to go on."

The Superintendent looked round at the crowded benches. Then he called a name.

"Charles Richards!"

Manson sat drumming his fingers on the table while the gamekeeper gave his evidence— plain, matter-of-fact, straightforward evidence. But when it came to an end he was on his feet.

"How far away from the sand-pit were you, Richards, when you heard the shots you have just spoken of?" he asked.

"About two hundred yards, sir."

"In the wood behind the sand-pit"

"Just so, sir— in the wood."

"Was it a still night?"

"Very still, sir— quiet as the grave."

"Now tell me— did you hear one shot, or two?"

"Two, sir. Two shots distinctly. One fired immediately after the other."

"In rapid succession, eh?"

"They were fired one— two, sir, just like that. I should say the second one was fired the fraction of a second after the first."

"Tn fact, they were fired just about the same time?"

"Just about that, sir."

"When you got to the sand-pit, you found Mr. Leaver there standing by the dead man. Now what was your impression about him?"

"Well, sir— queer. He seemed— flabbergasted, sir, that's as near as I can put it. Astonished— bewildered."

"We've heard already what you say he said. Did he say nothing else?"

"Nothing, sir, but that. That he believed it was his pistol. Then he went off— sharp. I called to him— two or three times. He took no notice."

Manson nodded, waved his hand, and as the gamekeeper stepped down from the witness-box he said in quiet tones:

"Call Dr. Summers."

Summers carried into the box the small cardboard case which he had shown to Manson in his surgery. He laid it on the ledge, and it was at it that Manson appeared to be looking when he began to examine his witness.

"Dr. Summers, you were called by the police early this morning to examine the dead body of Gerald Paisley. What was the cause of death— briefly?"

"He had been shot. Shot through the heart."

"Since then, I believe, you have carried out a post-mortem examination."

"Yes— in company with Dr. Brown."

"Did you find the bullet which had killed Paisley?"

"We did. It had pierced the heart, traveled upward, and was embedded in the thick muscles of the shoulder."

"You have it there, I believe. Thank you— I wish their worships to examine it. But first I want to direct your worships' attention to the automatic pistol— now lying here on this table before the Superintendent— which is undoubtedly that which was in my client's hand when Richards came upon him in the sand-pit, and was handed to the police by my client when the police arrested him. There is the pistol with which, say the police, the shot was fired which killed Paisley. Here is the bullet which, according to the police was discharged from the pistol. Dr. Summers, look at that bullet. Is it the one that you and Dr. Brown found in Paisley's dead body?"

"Certainly. That is the bullet."

"Then that is all I want to ask you, doctor, thank you. Now call Stephen Ford. Mr. Ford, you are a gunsmith. Have you had experience, and done business as a gunsmith in this town for a great many years?"

"Twenty-five years, sir."

"You are an expert as regards fire-arms, I think?"

"Well, I believe I may justly say I am, sir."

"Take that pistol in hand, Mr. Ford; describe it to their worships."

"Well, sir— your worships— this is a Cotley's automatic; point 38 caliber, rifled in three grooves, with a carrier containing seven cartridges. I see that there are five cartridges now left in the carrier and there is one in the breech. So one has been discharged."

"Thank you, Mr. Ford. Put down the pistol. Now look at this bullet. And, Mr. Ford, be very careful about your:answer to my next question. It is this …"

Manson paused for a second, swept the court with one glance, and the bench of magistrates with another, and then bending toward the witness went on in tones of concentrated intensity.

"This, Mr. Ford! This! Has this bullet been fired from that pistol?"

A dead silence fell on the crowd. One of the magistrates, quicker of apprehension than his fellows, broke it with a sudden sharp sibilant purring of his lips— he saw Manson's point. And then came Ford's answer, quick but assured.

"No, sir! This bullet was never fired from that pistol."

"You're certain of that?"

"Stake my reputation on it, sir."

"Tell their worships how you know it was not fired from that pistol, Mr. Ford."

"The reason is simple, sir. This automatic pistol, the Cotley, is rifled with three grooves. But this bullet has been fired from an automatic pistol, rifled with four grooves. Here are the plain, unmistakable indications— for anybody to see."

"I see," muttered Manson. "I saw some hours ago. Now, Mr. Ford, can you say what sort of pistol that bullet was fired from?"

"Yes, sir. From a Robinson's automatic of the same caliber, and with the same features, but rifled in four grooves."

"You're familiar with the Robinson automatic, Mr. Ford?"

"Quite, sir. And with the Cotley, too; with both."

"Sold a Robinson lately to anybody, Mr. Ford— anybody hereabouts?"

"No, sir. But— I've repaired one."

Manson glanced at the magistrates. He kept silence for a moment; then, motioning the gunsmith to step aside, he turned to the officials and raised his voice.

"Call Nancy Millersley!"

In the midst of another dead silence, broken only by a half-suppressed murmur of protest from the vicar, a girl came forward and entering the witness-box looked stealthily around her. She was of middle height, a lissom-figured slip of a thing, some eighteen or nineteen years of age whose golden hair had a distinct tinge of red in it, whose nose was saucily tip-tilted, whose lips were full and red and inclined to curl upward at the corners. But they were firm enough and the somewhat sleepy violet eyes were steady enough when they presently faced Manson. And Manson, eyeing his witness just as steadily, went straight toward his point.

"I believe I am right in saying that of late you have been intimately acquainted with Gerald Paisley and with his cousin Richard Leaver? Am I right?"

The girl hesitated, seemed to consider, and finally nodded her head. "I knew them both very well," she replied. "Yes."

"Were they both paying their attentions to you?"

"I— I suppose so."

"Making love to you, in fact?"

"I— yes, I suppose they did."

"You went out with them, sometimes with one, sometimes with the other, a good deal didn't you?"

"I have gone out with them."

"And didn't you frequently meet, sometimes one, sometimes the other, secretly? To be precise, at night, in your father's grounds?"

"I— I have done that."

"When did you last see Gerald Paisley?"

"Night before last."

"Secret meeting?"

"Y— yes."

"What happened?"

"Nothing much."

"Did he ask you if you were going to decide between him and his cousin? I want a definite answer."

"Yes."

"What did you reply to him?"

"I said I wouldn't answer any question like that."

"Did that satisfy him?"

I don't know. He went away— he seemed angry."

"Very well. When did you last see Richard Leaver?"

"Last night."

"Same place? Back of the vicarage garden?"

"Yes."

"Did he, too, want a decision— between Paisley and himself?"

"Yes."

"Well— what did you say to him?"

"I told him I wasn't going to be engaged to either of them— definitely."

"You meant that?"

"Oh, yes, quite."

"Although you'd been accepting their attentions, going out with them, and, more than that, meeting them secretly for some time? Now isn't it a fact that you'd encouraged both these boys— for they were little more— ever since you came home last summer?"

"They— they were always— well, after me."

"We'll grant that— and you'll grant that up to within the last night or two, their pursuit of you was welcomed. But now— why did you suddenly throw cold water on them?"

"I— don't know. They— both of them— began to be— well, they wanted me to— to promise things."

"They wanted— being downright young men— to know where they were, eh? Didn't it come to this— that if you weren't going to make a decision, they were going to be off?"

The girl hesitated, and glanced timidly toward the dock.

"Dick Leaver said that," she answered, "but Gerry didn't."

"Gerry didn't, didn't he? Now which did you really like best? Dick Leaver or Gerry Paisley? Come, now!"

"Well— Gerry."

Manson leaned forward across the table looking sternly at the witness. "Then why didn't you accept him?" he asked. "Answer."

But the girl made no answer. The color began to come and go in her cheeks; her fingers, resting on the ledge of the box, began to work nervously.

"Listen," said Manson, in tense accents, "You had been carrying on with these two youngsters, clandestinely as well as openly, for some time, and suddenly when they want to know which is going to be the favored one you dismiss both, though you now admit that you had a preference— for Gerry. Now, why did you dismiss them? Was it— attend to me— was it because there was a third lover, a rival? Answer."

The girl's agitation increased: she looked from left to right. But her eyes came back to Manson's, and Manson's grew more insistent.

"I say— answer," he repeated sternly. "Had you a third lover?"

The answer came— in a whisper.

"There— there was somebody else."

"Who was he? Who is he? I want his name! Tell—"

The vicar was on his legs by that time, lifting a shaking hand towards the bench.

"Your worships, I protest!" he began. Manson has no right—"

"I have my right," thundered Manson. "Sit down, sir. I demand an answer to my question." He faced the witness again, almost threateningly. "Who is this man— or boy, which is much more likely? His name."

The girl hesitated, trembled, made as if to speak, hesitated again, and suddenly burst into tears. And on the instant, from among the crowd behind the solicitor's table, a young man, little more than a mere lad, started up, striving to force his way towards the front. He was flushed, sullen, defiant, and he lifted a clenched fist as he faced Manson.

"Here, stop that, you," he vociferated, "Leave her alone, damn you. I am not going to sit here and listen to your damned bullying. You swine! I shot Gerry Paisley!— and I'd damn well shoot him again! Fair doings, too— a duel. He— he'd said things about her, and I called him out. Now you know— and you leave her alone." Manson stood staring at his interrupter for the fraction of a minute after the last word. Then he suddenly made a formal bow to the startled magistrates and, with a sigh of satisfaction, dropped back into his seat.

_______________

17: The Philosopher in the Apple-Orchard

Anthony Hope

The English Illustrated Magazine, Jan 1894

IT was a charmingly mild and balmy day. The sim shone beyond the orchard, and the shade was cool inside. A light breeze stirred the boughs of the old apple tree, under which the philosopher sat. None of these things did the philosopher notice, unless it might be when the wind blew about the leaves of the large volume on his knees, and he had to find his place again. Then he would exclaim against the wind, shuffle the leaves till he got the right page, and settle to his reading. The book was a treatise on ontology; it was written by another philosopher, a friend of this philosopher's; it bristled with fallacies, and this philosopher was discovering them all, and noting them on the fly-leaf at the end. He was not going to review the book (as some might have thought from his behavior), or even to answer it in a work of his own. It was just that he found a pleasure in stripping any poor fallacy naked and crucifying it.

Presently a girl in a white frock came into the orchard. She picked up an apple, bit it, and found it ripe. Holding it in her hand she walked up to where the philosopher sat, and looked at him. He did not stir. She took a bite out of the apple, munched it, and swallowed it The philosopher crucified a fallacy on the fly-leaf. The girl flung the apple away.

"Mr. Jerningham," said she, "are you very busy?"

The philosopher, pencil in hand, looked up.

"No, Miss May," said he, "not very."

"Because I want your opinion."

"In one moment," said the philosopher, apologetically.

He turned back to the fly-leaf and began to nail the last fallacy a little tighter to the cross. The girl regarded him, first with amused impatience, then with a vexed frown, finally with a wistful regret. He was so very old for his age, she thought; he could not be much beyond thirty; his hair was thick and full of waves, his eyes bright and clear, his complexion not yet divested of all youth's relics.

"Now, Miss May, I'm at your service," said the philosopher, with a lingering look at his impaled fallacy. And he closed the book, keeping it, however, on his knee.

The girl sat down just opposite to him.

"It's a very important thing I want to ask you," she began, tugging at a tuft of grass, "and it's very— difficult, and you mustn't tell any one I asked you; at least, I'd rather you didn't."

"I shall not speak of it; indeed, I shall probably not remember it," said the philosopher.

"And you mustn't look at me, please, while I'm asking you."

"I don't think I was looking at you, but if I was I beg your pardon," said the philosopher, apologetically.

She pulled the tuft of grass right out of the groimd and flung it from her with all her force.

"Suppose a man—" she began. "No, that's not right."

"You can take any hypothesis you please," observed the philosopher, "but you must verify it afterwards, of course."

"Oh, do let me go on. Suppose a girl, Mr. Jerningham— I wish you wouldn't nod."

"It was only to show that I followed you."

"Oh, of course you 'follow me,' as you call it Suppose a girl had two lovers— you're nodding again I— or, I ought to say, suppose there were two men who might be in love with a girl."

"Only two ? " asked the philosopher. "You see, any number of men might be in love with—"

"Oh, we can leave the rest out," said Miss May, with a sudden dimple; "they don't matter."

"Very well," said the philosopher. "If they are irrelevant, we will put them aside."

"Suppose then that one of these men was, oh, awfully in love with the girl, and— and proposed, you know—"

"A moment!" said the philosopher, opening a note-book. "Let me take down his proposition. What was it?"

"That simplifies the problem," said the philosopher, nodding again.

"But she's not in— in love with him, you know. She doesn't really care for him— much. Do you understand?"

"Perfectly. It is a most natural state of mind."

"Well, then, suppose that there's another man— what are you writing?"

"I only put down (B)— like that," pleaded the philosopher, meekly exhibiting his note-book.

She looked at him in a sort of helpless exasperation, with just a smile somewhere in the background of it.

"Oh, you really are—" she exclaimed. "But let me go on.

"The other man is a friend of the girl's: he's very clever— oh, fearfully clever; and he's rather handsome. You needn't put that down."

"It is certainly not very material," admitted the philosopher, and he crossed out "handsome." "Clever" he left.

"And the girl is most awfully— she admires him tremendously; she thinks him just the greatest man that ever lived, you know. And she— she—" The girl paused.

"I'm following," said the philosopher, with pencil poised.

"She'd think it better than the whole world if— if she could be anything to him, you know."

"You mean become his wife?"

"Well, of course I do— at least, I suppose I do."

"You spoke rather vaguely, you know."

The girl cast one glance at the philosopher as she replied :

"Well, yes. I did mean become his wife."

"Yes. Well?"

"But," continued the girl, starting on another tuft of grass, "he doesn't think much about those things. He likes her. I think he likes her "

"Well, doesn't dislike her?" suggested the philosopher. "Shall we call him indifferent?"

"I don't know. Yes, rather indifferent. I don't think he thinks about it, you know. But she— she's pretty. You needn't put that down."

"I was not about to do so," observed the philosopher.

"She thinks life with him would be just heaven; and— and she thinks she would make him awfully happy. She would— would be so proud of him, you see."

"I see. Yes?"

"And— I don't know how to put it, quite— she thinks that if he ever thought about it at all, he might care for her; because he doesn't care for anybody else; and she's pretty—"

"You said that before."

"Oh, dear, I dare say I did. And most men care for somebody, don't they? some girl, I mean."

"Most men, no doubt," conceded the philosopher.

"Well, then, what ought she to do? It's not a real thing, you know, Mr. Jemingham. It's in— in a novel I was reading." She said this hastily, and blushed as she spoke.

"Dear me ! And it's quite an interesting case! Yes, I see. The question is. Will she act most wisely in accepting the offer of the man who loves her exceedingly, but for whom she entertains only a moderate affection—"

"Yes. Just a liking. He's just a friend."

"Exactly. Or in marrying the other whom she loves ex—"

"That's not it. How can she marry him? He hasn't— he hasn't asked her, you see."

"True. I forgot. Let us assume, though, for the moment, that he has asked her. She would then have to consider which marriage would probably be productive of the greater sum total of—"

"Oh, but you needn't consider that."

"But it seems the best logical order. We can afterwards make allowance for the element of imcertainty caused by "

"Oh, no. I don't want it like that. I know perfectly well which she'd do if he— the other man, you know— asked her."

"You apprehend that "

"Never mind what I 'apprehend.' Take it just as I told you."

"Very good. A has asked her hand, B has not—"

"Yes."

"May I take it that, but for the disturbing influence of B, A would be a satisfactory— er— candidate?"

"Ye— es. I think so."

"She, therefore, enjoys a certainty of considerable happiness if she marries A?"

"Ye—es. Not perfect, because of— B, you know."

"Quite so, quite so; but still a fair amount of happiness. Is it not so?"

"I don't— well, perhaps,"

"On the other hand, if B did ask her, we are to postulate a higher degree of happiness for her?"

"Yes, please, Mr. Jerningham— much higher."

"For both of them?"

"For her. Never mind him."

"Very well. That again simplifies the problem. But his asking her is a contingency only?"

"Yes, that's all."

The philosopher spread out his hands.

"My dear young lady," he said, "it becomes a question of degree. How probable or improbable is it?"

"I don't know. Not very probable— unless—"

"Well?"

"Unless he did happen to notice, you know."

"Ah, yes. We supposed that, if he thought of it, he would probably take the desired step— at least, that he might be led to do so. Could she not— er— indicate her preference?"

"She might try— no, she couldn't do much. You see, he— he doesn't think about such things."

"I understand precisely. And it seems to me, Miss May, that in that very fact we find our solution."

"Do we?" she asked.

"I think so. He has evidently no natural inclination towards her— perhaps not towards marriage at all. Any feeling aroused in him would be necessarily shallow and, in a measure, artificial— and in all likelihood purely temporary. Moreover, if she took steps to arouse his attention, one of two things would be likely to happen. Are you following me?"

"Yes, Mr. Jerningham."

"Either he would be repelled by her overtures— which you must admit is not improbable— and then the position would be unpleasant, and even degrading, for her. Or, on the other hand, he might, through a misplaced feeling of gallantry—"

"Through what?"

"Through a mistaken idea of politeness, or a mistaken view of what was kind, allow himself to be drawn into a connection for which he had no genuine liking. You agree with me that one or other of these things would be likely?"

"Yes, I suppose they would, unless he did come to care for her."

"Ah, you return to that hypothesis. I think it's an extremely fanciful one. No. She needn't marry A, but she must let B alone."

The philosopher closed his book, took off his glasses, wiped them, replaced them, and leaned back against the trunk of the apple tree. The girl picked a dandelion in pieces. After a long pause she asked:

"You think B's feelings wouldn't be at all likely to— to change?"

"That depends on the sort of man he is. But if he is an able man, with intellectual interests which engross him— a man who has chosen his path in life— a man to whom women's society is not a necessity—"

"He's just like that," said the girl, and she bit the head off a daisy.

"Then," said the philosopher, "I see not the least reason for supposing that his feelings will change."

"And would you advise her to marry the other— A?"

"Well, on the whole, I should. A is a good fellow (I think we made A a good fellow): he is a suitable match, his love for her is true and genuine—"

"It's tremendous!"

"Yes— and— er— extreme. She likes him. There is every reason to hope that her liking will develop into a sufficiently deep and stable affection. She will get rid of her folly about B and make A a good wife. Yes, Miss May, if I were the author of your novel, I should make her marry A, and I should call that a happy ending."

A silence followed. It was broken by the philosopher.

"Is that all you wanted my opinion about. Miss May?" he asked, with his finger between the leaves of the treatise on ontology.

"Yes, I think so. I hope I haven't bored you?"

"I've enjoyed the discussion extremely. I had no idea that novels raised points of such psychological interest. I must find time to read one."

The girl had shifted her position till, instead of her full face, her profile was turned towards him. Looking away towards the paddock that lay brilliant in simshine on the skirts of the apple-orchard, she asked, in low slow tones, twisting her hands in her lap :

"Don't you think that perhaps if B found out afterwards— when she had married A, you know— that she had cared for him so very, very much, he might be a little sorry?"

"If he were a gentleman, he would regret it deeply."

"I mean— sorry on his own account; that— that he had thrown away all that, you know?"

The Professor looked meditative.

"I think," he pronounced, "that it is very possible he would. I can well imagine it."

"He might never find anybody to love him like that again," she said, gazing on the gleaming paddock.

"He probably would not," agreed the philosopher.

"And— and most people like being loved, don't they?"

"To crave for love is an almost universal instinct, Miss May."

"Yes, almost," she said, with a dreary little smile. "You see, he'll get old and— and have no one to look after him."

"He will."

"And no home."

"Well, in a sense, none," corrected the philosopher, smiling. "But really you'll frighten me. I'm a bachelor myself, you know, Miss May."

"Yes," she whispered, just audibly.

"And all your terrors are before me."

"Well, unless—"

"Oh, we needn't have that 'unless,' " laughed the philosopher, cheerfully. "There's no 'unless' about it. Miss May."

The girl jumped to her feet ; for an instant she looked at the philosopher. She opened her lips as if to speak, and, at the thought of what lay at her tongue's tip, her face grew red. But the philosopher was gazing past her, and his eyes rested in calm contemplation on the gleaming paddock.

"A beautiful thing, sunshine, to be sure," said he.

Her blush faded away into paleness; her lips closed. Without speaking she turned and walked slowly away, her head drooping. The philosopher heard the rustle of her skirt in the long grass of the orchard; he watched her for a few moments.

"A pretty, graceful creature," said he, with a smile. Then he opened his book, took his pencil in his hand, and slipped in a careful forefinger to mark the fly-leaf.

The sun had passed midheaven, and began to decline westwards before he finished the book. Then he stretched himself and looked at his watch.

"Good gracious, two o'clock! I shall be late for lunch!" and he hurried to his feet.

He was very late for lunch.

"Everything's cold," wailed his hostess. "Where have you been, Mr. Jemingham?"

"Only in the orchard— reading."

"And you've missed May!"

"Missed Miss May? How do you mean? I had a long talk with her this morning— a most interesting talk."

"But you weren't here to say good-bye. Now, you don't mean to say that you forgot that she was leaving by the two o'clock train? What a man you are!"

"Dear me ! To think of my forgetting it! " said the philosopher, shamefacedly.

"She told me to say good-bye to you for her."

"She's very kind. I can't forgive myself."

His hostess looked at him for a moment; then she sighed, and smiled, and sighed again.

"Have you everything you want?" she asked.

"Everything, thank you," said he, sitting down opposite the cheese, and propping his book (he thought he would just run through the last chapter again) against the loaf; "everything in the world that I want, thanks."

His hostess did not tell him that the girl had come in from the apple-orchard, and run hastily upstairs, lest her friend should see what her friend did see in her eyes. So that he had no suspicion at all that he had received an offer of marriage— and refused it. And he did not refer to anything of that sort when he paused once in his reading and exclaimed:

"I'm really sorry I missed Miss May. That was an interesting case of hers. But I gave the right answer. The girl ought to marry A."

And so the girl did.

___________________

18: Dr. Heidegger's Experiment

Nathaniel Hawthorne

1804-1864

The Knickerbocker, Jan 1837

Original title "The Fountain of Youth"

THAT very singular man, old Dr. Heidegger, once invited four venerable friends to meet him in his study. There were three white-bearded gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew and Mr. Gascoigne, and a withered gentlewoman, whose name was the Widow Wycherly. They were all melancholy old creatures, who had been unfortunate in life, and whose greatest misfortune it was that they were not long ago in their graves. Mr. Medbourne, in the vigor of his age, had been a prosperous merchant, and had lost his all by a frantic speculation, and was now little better than a mendicant. Colonel Killigrew had wasted his best years, and his health and substance, in the pursuit of sinful pleasures, which had given birth to a brood of pains, such as the gout, and divers other torments of soul and body. Mr. Gascoigne was a ruined politicians, a man of evil fame, or at least had been so, till time had buried him from the knowledge of the present generation, and made him obscure instead of infamous. As for the Widow Wycherly, tradition tells us that she was a great beauty in her day; but, for a long while past, she had lived in deep seclusion, on account of certain scandalous stories, which had prejudiced the gentry of the town against her. It is a circumstance worth mentioning, that each of these three old gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew and Mr. Gascoigne, were early lovers of the Widow Wycherly, and had once been on the point of cutting each other's throats for her sake. And, before proceeding farther, I will merely hint that Dr. Heidegger and all his four guests were sometimes thought to be a little beside themselves, as is not unfrequently the case with old people when worried either with present troubles or woeful recollections.

"My dear old friends," said Dr. Heidegger, motioning them to be seated, "I am desirous of your assistance in one of those little experiments with which I amuse myself here in my study."

If all stories were true. Dr. Heidegger's study must have been a very curious place. It was a dim, old-fashioned chamber, festooned with cobwebs and besprinkled with antique dust. Around the walls stood several oaken bookcases, the lower shelves of which were filled with rows of gigantic folios and black-letter quartos, and the upper with little parchment-covered duodecimos. Over the central bookcase was a bronze bust of Hippocrates, with which, according to some authorities, Dr. Heidegger was accustomed to hold consultations in all difficult cases of his practice. In the obscurest corner of the room stood a tall and narrow oaken closet, with its door ajar, within which doubtfully appeared a skeleton. Between two of the bookcases hung a looking-glass, presenting its high and dusty plate within a tarnished gilt frame. Among many wonderful stories related of this mirror, it was fabled that the spirits of all the doctor's deceased patients dwelt within its verge, and would stare him in the face whenever he looked thitherward. The opposite side of the chamber was ornamented with the full-length portrait of a young lady, arrayed in the faded magnificence of silk, satin and brocade, and with a visage as faded as her dress. Above half a century ago Dr. Heidegger had been on the point of marriage with this young lady, but being affected with some slight disorder she had swallowed one of her lover's prescriptions and died on the bridal evening. The greatest curiosity of the study remains to be mentioned. It was a ponderous folio volume, bound in black leather, with massive silver clasps. There were no letters on the back, and nobody could tell the title of the book. But it was well known to be a book of magic, and once, when a chambermaid had lifted it, merely to brush away the dust, the skeleton had rattled in its closet, the picture of the young lady had stepped one foot upon the floor, and several ghastly faces had peeped forth from the mirror, while the brazen head of Hippocrates frowned and said, "Forbear!"

Such was Dr. Heidegger's study. On the summer afternoon of our tale, a small round table, as black as ebony, stood in the centre of the room, sustaining a cut-glass vase, of beautiful form and elaborate workmanship. The sunshine came through the window, between the heavy festoons of two faded damask curtains, and fell directly across this vase, so that a mild splendor was reflected from it on the ashen visages of the five old people who sat around. Four champagne glasses were also on the table.

"My dear old friends," repeated Dr. Heidegger, "may I reckon on your aid in performing an exceedingly curious experiment?"

Now Dr. Heidegger was a very strange old gentleman, whose eccentricity had become the nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories. Some of these fables, to my shame be it spoken, might possibly be traced back to mine own veracious self, and if any passages of the present tale should startle the reader's faith, I must be content to bear the stigma of a fiction-monger.

When the doctor's four guests heard him talk of his proposed experiment, they anticipated nothing more wonderful than the murder of a mouse in an air-pump, or the examination of a cobweb by the microscope, or some similar nonsense, with which he was constantly in the habit of pestering his intimates. But without waiting for a reply. Dr. Heidegger hobbled across the chamber, and returned with the same ponderous folio, bound in black leather, which common report af- firmed to be a book of magic. Undoing the silver clasps, he opened the volume, and took from among its black-letter pages a rose, or what was once a rose, though now the green leaves and crimson petals had assumed one brownish hue, and the ancient flower seemed ready to crumble to dust in the doctor's hands.

"This rose," said Dr. Heidegger, with a sigh, "this same withered and crumbling flower, blossomed five and fifty years ago. It was given me by Sylvia Ward, whose portrait hangs yonder; and I meant to wear it in my bosom at our wedding. Five-and-fifty years it has been treasured between the leaves of this old volume. Now, would you deem it possible that this rose of half a century could ever bloom again?"

"Nonsense!" said the Widow Wycherly, with a peevish toss of her head. "You might as well ask whether an old woman's wrinkled face could ever bloom again."

"See!" answered Dr. Heidegger.

He uncovered the vase and threw the faded rose into the water which it contained. At first it lay lightly on the surface of the fluid, appearing to imbibe none of its moisture. Soon, however, a singular change began to be visible. The crushed and dried petals stirred, and assumed a deepening tinge of crimson, as if the flower were reviving from a death-like slumber; the slender stalk and twigs of foliage became green, and there was the rose of half a century, looking as fresh as when Sylvia Ward had first given it to her lover. It was scarcely full-blown, for some of its delicate red leaves curled modestly around its moist bosom, within which two or three dewdrops were sparkling.

"That is certainly a very pretty deception," said the doctor's friends, carelessly, however, for they had witnessed greater miracles at a conjurer's show. "Pray, how was it effected?"

"Did you never hear of the 'Fountain of Youth'?" asked Dr. Heidegger, "which Ponce de Leon, the Spanish adventurer, went in search of two or three centuries ago?"

"But did Ponce de Leon ever find it?" said the Widow Wycherly.

"No," answered Dr. Heidegger, "for he never sought it in the right place. The famous Fountain of Youth, if I am rightly informed, is situated in the southern part of the Floridian peninsula, not far from Lake Macaco. Its source is overshadowed by several gigantic magnolias, which, though num berless centuries old, have been kept as fresh as violets by the virtues of this wonderful water. An acquaintance of mine, knowing my curiosity in such matters, has sent me what you see in the vase."

"Ahem!" said Colonel Killigrew, who believed not a word of the doctor's story; "and what may be the effect of this fluid on the human frame?"

"You shall judge for yourself, my dear Colonel," replied Dr Heidegger; "and all of you, my respected friends, are welcome to so much of this admirable fluid as may restore to you the bloom of youth. For my own part, having had much trouble in growing old, I am in no hurry to grow young again. With your permission, therefore, I will merely watch the progress of the experiment."

While he spoke Dr. Heidegger had been filling the four champagne glasses with the water of the Fountain of Youth. It was apparently impregnated with an effervescent gas, for little bubbles were continually ascending from the depths of the glasses, and bursting in silvery spray at the surface. As the liquor diffused a pleasant perfume, the old people doubted not that it possessed cordial and comfortable properties; and though utterly skeptics as to its rejuvenescent power, they were inclined to swallow it at once. But Dr. Heidegger besought them to stay a moment.

"Before you drink, my respectable old friends," said he, "it would be well that, with the experience of a lifetime to direct you, you should draw up a few general rules for your guidance in passing a second time through the perils of youth. Think what a sin and shame it would be if, with your peculiar advantages, you should not become patterns of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age."

The doctor's four venerable friends made him no answer, except by a feeble and tremulous laugh, so very ridiculous was the idea, that, knowing how closely repentance treads behind the steps of error, they should ever go astray again.

"Drink, then," said the doctor, bowing. "I rejoice that I have so well selected the subjects of my experiment."

With palsied hands they raised the glasses to their lips. The liquor, if it really possessed such virtues as Dr. Heidegger imputed to it, could not have been bestowed on four human beings who needed it more wofuUy. They looked as if they had never known what youth or pleasure was, but had been the offspring of Nature's dotage, and always the gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures who now sat stooping round the doctor's table, without life enough in their souls or bodies to be animated even by the prospect of growing young again. They drank off the water, and replaced their glasses on the table.

Assuredly there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspect of the party, not unlike what might have been produced by a glass of generous wine, together with a sudden glow of cheerful sunshine, brightening over all their visages at once. There was a healthful suffusion on their cheeks, instead of the ashen hue that had made them look so corspe-like. They gazed at one another, and fancied that some magic power had really begun to smooth away the deep and sad inscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving on their brows. Tlie Widow Wycherly adjusted her cap, for she felt almost like a young woman again.

"Give us more of this wondrous water!" cried they eagerly. "We are younger, but we are still too old! Quick, give us more!"

"Patience, patience!" quoth Dr. Heidegger, who sat watching the experiment, with philosophic coolness. "You have been a long time growing old. Surely, you might be content to grow young in half an hour! But the water is at your service."

Again he filled their glasses with the liquor of youth, enough of which still remained in the vase to turn half the old people in the city to the age of their own grandchildren. While the bubbles were yet sparkling on the brim the doctor's four guests snatched their glasses from the table, and swallowed the contents at a single gulp. Was it delusion? Even while the draught was passing down their throats it seemed to have wrought a change on their whole systems. Their eyes grew clear and bright, a dark shade deepened among their silvery locks. They sat around the table, three gentlemen of middle age, and a woman, hardly beyond her buxom prime.

"My dear widow, you are charming!" cried Colonel Killigrew, whose eyes had been fixed upon her face, while the shadows of age were flitting from it like darkness from the crimson daybreak.

The fair widow knew, of old, that Colonel Killigrew's com- pliments were not aways measured by sober truth, so she started up and ran to the mirror, still dreading that the ugly visage of an old woman would meet her gaze. Meanwhile, the three gentlemen behaved in such a manner as proved that the water of the Fountain of Youth possessed some intoxicating qualities, unless, indeed, their exhilaration of spirits were merely a lightsome dizziness, caused by the sudden removal of the weight of years. Mr. Gascoigne's mind seemed to run on political topics, but whether relating to the past, present or future, could not easily be determined, since the same ideas and phrases have been in vogue these fifty years. Now he rattled forth full-throated sentences about patriotism, national glory, and the people's right; now he muttered some perilous stuff or other, in a sly and doubtful whisper, so cautiously that even his own conscience could scarcely catch the secret; and now again he spoke in measured accents, and a deeply deferential tone, as if a royal ear were listening to his well-turned periods. Colonel Killigrew all this time had been trolling forth a jolly bottle song, and ringing his glass in symphony with the chorus, while his eyes wandered toward the buxom figure of the Widow Wycherly. On the other side of the table, Mr. Medbourne was involved in a calculation of dollars and cents, with which was strangely intermingled a project for supplying the East Indies with ice, by harnessing a team of whales to the Polar icebergs.

As for the Widow Wycherly, she stood before the mirror courtesying and simpering to her own image, and greeting it as the friend whom she loved better than all the world beside. She thrust her face close to the glass to see whether some long-remembered wrinkle or crow's-foot had indeed vanished. She examined whether the snow had so entirely melted from her hair, that the venerable cap could be safely thrown aside. At last, turning briskly away, she came with a sort of dancing step to the table.

"My dear old doctor," cried she, "pray favor me with another glass!"

"Certainly, my dear madam, certainly!" replied the complaisant doctor. "See, I have already filled the glasses."

There, in fact, stood the four glasses, brimful of this wonderful water, the delicate spray of which, as it effervesced from the surface, resembled the tremulous glitter of diamonds. It was now so nearly sunset that the chamber had grown duskier than ever, but a mild and moonlike splendor gleamed from within the vase, and rested ahke on the four guests, and on the doctor's venerable figure. He sat in a high-backed, elaborately carved oaken armchair, with a gray dignity of aspect that might have well befitted that very Father Time, whose power had never been disputed save by this fortunate company. Even while quaffing the third draught of the Fountain of Youth they were almost awed by the expression of his mysterious visage.

But the next moment the exhilarating gush of young life shot through their veins. They were now in the happy prime of youth. Age, with its miserable train of cares and sorrows and disease, was remembered only as the trouble of a dream, from which they had joyously awoke. The fresh gloss of the soul, so early lost, and without which the world's successive scenes had been but a gallery of faded pictures, again threw its enchanment over all their prospects. They felt like new-created beings, in a new-created universe.

"We are young! we are young!" they cried exultingly.

Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly marked characteristics of middle life, and mutually assimilated them all. They were a group of merry youngsters, almost maddened with the exuberant frolicsomeness of their years. The most singular effect of their gaiety was an impulse to mock the infirmity and decrepitude of which they had so lately been the victims. They laughed loudly at their old-fashioned attire, the wide-skirted coats and flapped waistcoats of the young men, and the ancient cap and gown of the blooming girl. One limped across the floor, like a gouty grandfather; one set a pair of spectacles astride of his nose, and pretended to pore over the black-letter pages of the book of magic; a third seated himself in an armchair, and strove to imitate the venerable dignity of Dr. Heidegger. Then all shouted mirthfully, and leaped about the room. The Widow Wycherly— if so fresh a damsel could be called a widow— tripped up to the doctor's chair, with a mischievous merriment in her rosy face.

"Doctor, you dear old soul," cried she, "get up and dance with me!" And then the four young people laughed louder than ever, to think what a queer figure the poor old doctor would cut.

"Pray excuse me," answered the doctor quietly. "I am old and rheumatic, and my dancing days were over long ago. But either of these gay young gentlemen will be glad of so pretty a partner."

"Dance with me, Clara!" cried Colonel Killigrew.

"No, no, I will be her partner!" shouted Mr. Gascoigne.

"She promised me her hand fifty years ago!" exclaimed Mr. Medbourne.

They all gathered round her. One caught both her hands in his passionate grasp, another threw his arm about her waist, the third buried his hand among the glossy curls that clustered beneath the widow's cap. Blushing, panting, struggling, chiding, laughing, her warm breath fanning each of their faces by turns, she strove to disengage herself, yet still remained in their triple embrace. Never was there a livelier picture of youthful rivalship, with bewitching beauty for the prize. Yet, by a strange deception, owing to the duskiness of the chamber, and the antique dresses which they still wore, the tall mirror is said to have reflected the figures of the three old, gray, withered grandsires, ridiculously contending for the old skinny ugliness of a shriveled grandma.

But they were young. Their burning passions proved them so. Inflamed to madness by the coquetry of the girl-widow, who neither granted nor quite withheld her favors, the three rivals began to interchange threatening glances. Still keeping hold of the fair prize, they grappled fiercely at one anothers' throats. As they struggled to and fro, the table was overturned, and the vase dashed into a thousand fragments. The precious water of youth flowed in a bright stream across the floor, moistening the wings of a butterfly, which, grown old in the decline of summer, had alighted there to die. The insect fluttered lightly through the chamber, and settled on the snowy head of Dr. Heidegger.

"Come, come, gentlemen— come, Madam Wycherly," exclaimed the doctor, "I really must protest against this riot."

They stood still and shivered, for it seemed as if gray Time were calling them back from their sunny youth, far down into the chill and darksome vale of years. They looked at old Dr. Heidegger, who sat in his carved armchair, holding the rose of half a century, which he had rescued from among the fragments of the shattered vase. At the motion of his hand the four rioters resumed their seats, the more readily because their violent exertions had wearied them, youthful though they were.

"My poor Sylvia's rose!" ejaculated Dr. Heidegger, holding it in the light of the sunset clouds, "it appears to be fading again."

And so it was. Even while the party were looking at it the flower continued to shrivel up, till it became as dry and fragile as when the doctor had first thrown it into the vase. He shook off the few drops of moisture which clung to its petals.

"I love it as well thus as in its dewy freshness," observed he, pressing the withered rose to his withered lips. While he spoke the butterfly fluttered down from the doctor's snowy head, and fell upon the floor.

His guests shivered again. A strange chillness, whether of the body or spirit they could not tell, was creeping gradually over them all. They gazed at one another, and fancied that each fleeting moment snatched away a charm, and left a deepening furrow where none had been before. Was it an illusion? Had the changes of a lifetime been crowded into so brief a space, and were they now four aged people, sitting with their old friend. Dr. Heidegger?

"Are we grown old again, so soon?" cried they dolefully.

In truth they had. The water of youth possessed merely a virtue more transient than that of wine. The delirium which it created had effervesced away. Yes, they were old again. With a shuddering impulse, that showed her a woman still, the widow clasped her skinny hands before her face and wished that the coffin-lid were over it, since it could be no longer beautiful.

"Yes, friends, ye are old again," said Dr. Heidegger; "and lo! the water of youth is all lavished on the ground. Well, I bemoan it not, for if the fountain gushed at my very doorstep I would not stoop to bathe my lips in it; no, though its delirium were for years instead of moments. Such is the lesson ye have taught me!"

But the doctor's four friends had taught no such lesson to themselves. They resolved forthwith to make a pilgrimage to Florida, and quaff at morning, noon and night from the Fountain of Youth.

_______________

PAST MASTERS

Cumulative Index  #101 to 105

Grant ALLEN (1848-1899)

—Fra Benedetto's Medal 102

ANONYMOUS

—The Garage Crime  103

—The Phantom of Castle Ballyran 102

—The Stolen Ship 105

John Kendrick BANGS (1862-1922)

—The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall 103

H. BEDFORD-JONES (1887-1949)

—The Dance of Life  101

—Rajah of Hell Island 105

Francis BEEDING (1898-1951 & 1885-1944)

—The Woman He Had to Kill 104

Robert BENCHLEY (1889-1945)

—How to Get Things Done 103

A. C. BENSON (1862-1925)

—Out of the Sea 104

James A. BEVERLY  (fl 1910s)

— At the Crack o' Doom 105

Eugene Shade BISBEE (1864-1933)

—The Compass of Fortune 101

—A Hundred Thousand Dollar Trance 101

Max BRAND (1892-1944)

—The Small World 104

—Spy! 101

Broughton BRANDENBURG (fl 1900-1933)

—The Mystery of the Steel Disk 105

Willis BRINDLEY (fl 1920s)

—The Strike at Too Dry 102

Willa CATHER (1873-1947)

—The Garden Lodge 104

—Paul's Case  103

Peter CHEYNEY (1896-1951)

—Dance Without Music 102

—La Belle Dame Sans Souci  103

F. E. CLAYTON (fl 1890s)

—Woman Proposes  104

Irvin S. COBB (1876-1944)

—The Gallowsmith 104

—Just a Friendly Game 104

Sylvanus COBB Jr (1823-1887)

—My Mad Engineer 105

Richard CONNELL (1893-1949)

—The Prince Has the Mumps 104

Arthur Morris CROSBY (fl 1930s)

—The Little Affair of the Eiffel Tower 101

Carlton DAWE (1865-1935)

—Why Mrs. Wetherton Went Home 101

Richard DEHAN (1863-1932)

—The Man Who Lost Himself  104

—The Motor-Burglar 103

C. J. DENNIS (1876-1938)

—The Mother 101

—While Jerry was Away 102

Dick DONOVAN (1843-1934)

—The Barnfield Murder Case 105

J. Allan DUNN (1872-1941)

—The Flying Skull 102

Cyril ETHERIDGE (fl 1907)

—The Death of Kalu's Hand 102

H. Havelock ETTRICK (fl 1899-1902)

—The Red and Black Death 101

Ernest FAVENC (1845-1908)

—A Haunt of the Jinkarras  104

—My Only Murder 103

—Spirit-Led 103

F. Scott FITZGERALD (1896-1940)

—Financing Finnegan  104

J. S. FLETCHER (1863-1935)

—The Revolver 105

—A Shot in the Night 105

Hulbert FOOTNER (1879-1944 )

—Four o'Clock in the Morning 102

Mary Helena FORTUNE (1833-1911), as by"Waif Wander"

—The Greenstone Graves  102

—The Red Room 103

C. Ranger GULL (1876-1923)

—The Ordeal By Fire 101

—A Regent of Love Rhymes 102 (as by Guy Thorne)

Nathaniel HAWTHORNE  (1804-1864)

—Dr. Heidegger's Experiment 105

Anthony HOPE (1863-1933)

—Count Antonio and the Wizard's Drug 105

—The House Opposite 105

—The Philosopher in the Apple-Orchard 105

E. W. HORNUNG (1866-1921)

—The Magic Cigar 104

Washington IRVING (1783-1859)

—Rip Van Winkle 102

Richard Ashe KING (1839-1932)

—Disinherited  130

—Trapped 130

Sarah Orne JEWETT (1849-1909)

—The Green Bowl  102

—A Financial Failure 105

Henry LAWSON (1867-1922)

—The Mystery of Dave Regan 101

—On The Tucker Track 101

Henry LEVERAGE (Carl Henry, 1879-1931)

—Imagination 105

—Two Aces 103

Jack LONDON (1876-1916)

—The Pearls of Parlay 102

Fred MacISAAC (1886-1940)

—The Ghost City 101

Lucas MALET (1852-1931)

—The Birth of a Masterpiece 103

Cleveland MOFFETT (1863-1926)

—On the Turn of a Coin 101

Charles G. NORRIS (1881-1945)

—The Beach  103

"OUIDA" (Louise Rame, 1839-1908)

—A Lemon Tree 102

G. G. PENDARVES (1885-1938)

—The Djinnee of El Sheyb 101

Austin PHILIPS (1875-1947)

—Sailors' Luck 102

Ernest M. POATE (1884-1935)

—Mirage 101

Edgar Allan POE (1809-1849)

—The Cask of Amontillado 104

Mearle PROUT (fl mid-1930s)

—The House of the Worm 130

W. Pett RIDGE (1859-1930)

—Mr. Barling's Income 101

Arthur Somers ROCHE (1883-1935)

—Alicia goes a-Burgling 101

"SAPPER" (H C McNeile): (1888-1937)

—Uncle James's Golf Match 103

Dan L. SILVERLING (fl 1913)

—Hard Harman 104

Helen SIMPSON (1897-1940)

—Young Magic 101

Frederick Dorr STEELE (1873-1944)

—The Adventure of the Murdered Art Editor 104

William Makepeace THACKERAY (1811-1863)

—The Devil's Wager 103

Guy THORNE (C Ranger Gull, 1876-1923)

—A Desperate Choice  103

Roger TORREY (1901-1946)

—Mansion of Death 102

J. T. TROWBRIDGE (1827-1916)

—The Man Who Stole a Meeting-House 105

W. B. WALLACE  (fl 1900s)

—The Demon of the Opal 101

"Waif Wander" (See Mary Helena FORTUNE) 1833-1911)

Henry S. WHITEHEAD (1882-1932)

—No Eye-Witnesses 102

—West India Lights 102

Albert Richard WETJEN (1900-1948)

—Strain 105

Thomas WOLFE (1900-1938)

—The Sun and the Rain 105

________________

Table of Contents

- 1: Rajah of Hell Island / H. Bedford-Jones

- 2: The House Opposite / Anthony Hope

- 3: The Man Who Stole a Meeting-House / J. T. Trowbridge

- 4: The Sun and the Rain / Thomas Wolfe
- 5: The Barnfield Murder Case / Dick Donovan
- 7: Strain / Albert Richard Wetjen

- 8: Count Antonio and the Wizard's Drug / Anthony Hope

- 9: The Mystery of the Steel Disk / Broughton Brandenburg

- 10: The Stolen Ship / Anonymous
- 11: A Financial Failure / Sarah Orne Jewett
- 13: At the Crack o' Doom / James A. Beverly
- 14: Imagination / Henry Leverage
- 15: The Revolver / J. S. Fletcher
- 16: A Shot in the Night / J. S. Fletcher

- 17: The Philosopher in the Apple-Orchard / Anthony Hope

- 18: Dr. Heidegger's Experiment / Nathaniel Hawthorne

- Cumulative Index  #101-105