Author: Various
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: Another collection of short stories in the Life+70 Years public domain, an eclectic assortment of genres from dime magazine crime through fantasy, literary and action. This is the last issue for 2022. On 1 January, 2023, Volume 111 will appear with all the stories by authors who died in 1952 and whose works enter the public domain on the first day of the new year. 1: The Lady Ermetta / Ernest Favenc 2: The Western Way / Fred Merrick White 3: The Voice in the Fog / Henry Leverage 4: The Man the Law Forgot / Walter Noble Burns 5: Wine on the Desert / Max Brand 6: The Grove of Ashtaroth / John Bu

PAST MASTERS 110

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.

30 December 2022

Contents

1: The Lady Ermetta / Ernest Favenc

2: The Western Way / Fred Merrick White

3: The Voice in the Fog / Henry Leverage

4: The Man the Law Forgot / Walter Noble Burns

5: Wine on the Desert / Max Brand

6: The Grove of Ashtaroth / John Buchan

7: A Case Without a Clew / Joseph Gollomb

8: Seed To The Sower / Sewell Ford

9: Sing a Song of Sixpence / James Norman Hall

10: Balkameh / William Waldorf Astor

11: The Pipe / Richard Marsh

12: The Nudist Gym Death Riddle / Jack Gray

13: As Told To The Children / Owen Oliver

14: A Girl Who Was Afraid / Charles Wesley Sanders

15: When Brasset Forgot / Harcourt Farmer

16: Smoky Skies / Raoul  Whitfield

17: In The Fourth Dimension / Richard Dehan

18: The Woman Who Sat Still / Parry Truscott

Cumulative Index # 101-110

__________________

1: The Lady Ermetta; or, The Sleeping Secret
A Sensational Novelette in Three Parts,

With an Orthodox Christmas Introduction
Ernest Favenc

1845-1908 (as by "Dramingo")

Queenslander, 25 Dec 1875

Introduction

IT WAS Christmas Day, and I, the wearied super of a cattle station far out in the back country, was swinging idly in a hammock, in an iron-roofed verandah, where the thermometer stood at a hundred and ten; and imagining that I was keeping a merry Christmas. Not a sound, save the indistinct hum of insect life, was to be heard; all hands on the station, having succumbed to the influence of colonial rum and pudding, were asleep; and I lay and perspired, and smoked, and thought— of what? That is a question that will be answered directly. With my hands clasped under the back of my head, one foot projecting over the side of the hammock, and occasionally touching the verandah post in order to keep myself swinging, I began gradually to lose full consciousness of surrounding objects. I knew that it seemed to be getting hotter and hotter, that the iron roof overhead appeared to be assuming a molten appearance; that I was getting too lazy to keep myself rocking, that my eyelids were growing heavy, and that I should soon give it up and fall asleep, when I heard a deep, deep sigh close to me. I turned—

Saw throned on a flowery rise,

One sitting on a crimson scarf unrolled.

Well, not exactly.

This was a man, and he was sitting in one of the squatter chairs leaning against the slabs, and a curious looking figure he was to see in such a situation. I knew him at once; he was the Genius of Christmas. There he was, holly wreath, white beard, laughing countenance, and all the attributes complete. I said, "Good day, old man— how are you?" for I felt astonishingly bold somehow. He was reading in a large book, the print of which seemed possessed with life, and to be constantly moving and changing; but when I made this remark he raised his head, and gazed at me with "a countenance more in sorrow than in anger," but did not speak.

"I know who you are," I went on; "you're the Genius of Christmas."

"I am," he said.

"And you're going to show me all manner of pictures and scenes of human life, and I shall awake by-and-by and find that it has all been a dream; and I shall be very good and charitable all the rest of my life."

"Not you," said the Spirit; "you couldn't be charitable if you tried."

"Spirit," I said, "that's very hard, why could I not be charitable if I tried?"

"When you couldn't show mercy to a poor old ghost who's been harped upon, and written about, and carolled over,— there, I'll say no more; but man's inhumanity to me makes a Christmas Spirit mourn."

"Spirit," I said, "you mistake, surely, I who esteem and venerate the Christmas season."

"You do, do you? Now, answer me truly, were you not trying to compose a Christmas tale as you lay in that hammock?"

"I confess it, I was."

"And you say you venerate me; pretty veneration I call that, but I'll be revenged. I'll stand it no longer. I'll read Christmas poetry to you for the next three hundred and sixty-five days."

"Spirit, do not judge me unheard; be calm."

"Be calm! Who could be calm under such provocation? Listen! We are seven,—that's Wordsworth isn't it,— never mind, as I said before, we are seven; seven spirits, one for each day in the week. I'm Saturday. When Christmas Day falls on a Saturday, as it does this year, I have to attend to it. Now every leap year one of us has to do double duty, and as next year is a leap year I am told off for the extra day's work; but there is a chance for any of us to get out of this extra work, thus,"— he went on as though quoting from some rule or regulation,— "If a Spirit when in the execution of its duty, can find a place upon earth inhabited by Christian, or supposedly Christian people, where no Christmas Literature is to be found upon Christmas Day, he shall be able to claim exemption from extra duty on leap-year, and the Spirit following him shall do his work."

"Spend your Christmas here," I cried, starting from the hammock. "Search the house from garret to basement (it was only a two-roomed hut), and see if you can find a Christmas magazine or paper."

"That Christmas story," the Spirit sternly replied, "That Christmas story, which shall never see the light, by its mere presence in your idiotic skull has spoilt my chance of a holiday, and I wanted to put Sunday into it"— the long faced sanctimonious hypocrite. "But I will be revenged, revenged!"

"Spirit," I cried, casting myself at its feet and clutching its robe, "have mercy; I am not strong-nerved. I could not bear to be transported to regions of ice and snow, and see poor people kind and generous to one another, and pretty girls playing at blindman's-buff, and all the many signs you would show me— have mercy!"

"Can you ask it knowing that during the whole of the past year I have wandered to and fro seeking for a place wherein to rest on this twenty fifth day of December? I marked this spot, noted the dense stolidity, not to say stupidity, visible in your face, and I said here is a place where I shall be safe; nicely situated in a warm comfortable climate, mails always a month late; here I am secure for my holiday. This morning I took a turn through Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, just to see that everything was going on all right, come here to finish my day quietly and peace fully, in the virtuous frame of mind that a Spirit feels in who has done his duty, and I find, what! That you—a being than whom a generation of apes could not produce a greater fool—have dared to compose a Christmas Story; that you have committed two pages of it to paper, and it is even now lying there in your bedroom. Can you deny it?"

I could only bow my head in guilty assent.

"But vengeance can still be mine— yes, Vengeance! Vengeance!! Vengeance!!!" Here his voice rose to such a shriek that I expected to see the stockman and cook come rushing in to see what was up; but no help came to me, and he raged on.

"I will read to you, commencing with your own wretched two pages, all the Christmas literature that has been published in the world this season!" Uttering this awful sentence he leaned back in the chair, and glared furiously at me.

"Mercy, mercy," I said faintly.

"No mercy, I know it not; I reckon it will just comfortably occupy us until the end of next year to get through it all."

"Spirit!" I cried, "I have sinned, but I repent; I will be a new man, Christmas shall be to me a season of mourning and desolation; spare me." Its only answer was to open its book and commence reading.

As though its first word was a blow, I fell back spell-bound and motionless, and there I lay whilst the Genius began to read my now detested production of two pages. First he read it in an ordinary colloquial tone, then he gabbled it over, next he sung it, then he tried to chant it. Then he read it in a facetious manner, stopping to laugh every now and then; then he read it in a dismal manner, pretending to cry; then he tried to make blank verse of it, and I tried to stop my ears, but all in vain; over and over again he read the horrid sentences I knew so well, until at last he seemed out of breath, and stopped.

"How do you like it," he said, "will you ever do it again?"

"Never, never," I groaned. He chuckled, and turning again to his book, the pages of which produced anything he liked without his having to turn over the leaves, he inflicted the following story upon me:—

The Lady Ermetta; or, the Sleeping Secret—Prologue

CALM in the serene solemnity of their solitude; grand in the outstretched vastness of their extent, and golden in the Pactolean wealth of their beauty, lie the sands of Plimlivon. But what huge, gloomy object is that, the rugged outlines of which mar the tranquil beauty of their level expanse? Like the fossilised form of some gigantic inhabitant of a world long forgotten, or like a Brobdignagian bandbox labelled, "This side up, with care," stands a mighty isolated rock, and casts upon the otherwise unflecked extent of stainless sand around it, a shadow, weird, gloomy, and mysterious. Why does that rock— that grim, portentous sentinel, challenging the gladsome sunlight, with its ominous "Qui vive," stand there and throw its gruesome shade over sand-grain and pebble that would else be revelling in the glorious radiance of day? Say, why does the shadow of some awful secret crime fall across the otherwise unblotted course of a fair, fresh life, and turn the rich colors of the flowers of life into the sombre hues and tints of death? I know not, gentle reader, but that rock stands there because I intend to use it in the third and last chapter.

1:  The Secret

"MY DAUGHTER," said the Marquis of Marborough.

"Yes, my father," replied the Lady Ermetta, who was of a most dutiful disposition, and when she did not say 'No said 'Yes' with undeviating regularity.

"The hour has now arrived when I feel it incumbent on me to reveal to you the secret— the secret upon which hinges your future welfare and happiness, and is also the central point of interest in this story in which we are two of the principal characters. Therefore, arm yourself with fortitude, and prepare to hear it as becomes a heroine."

"Very well, my father," returned the dutiful girl, "but will you kindly tell me exactly what to do."

"Clasp your hands convulsively, lean forwards attentively, and with an expression of anxious horror on your beautiful features, exclaim, 'Speak, speak, my father; I can bear the worst!'"

The Lady Ermetta followed his directions to the eighth part of an affygraffy.

"You know, my child, that in the third and last chapter you are to be married, as becomes a heroine; and you also know that Baron Gadzooks is the bridegroom elect. But you do not know that a dark secret hangs over his birth, a secret which I am now about to reveal, therefore listen attentively."

"I am all ears," said the lovely girl.

"My dearest, that is a most irrational remark; now, really, how can you be all ears?"

The Lady Ermetta blushed to the tips of the articles in question, and muttered something that sounded like a request for her father to go and put his boots on.

"Silence, Ermetta!" said her father sternly, "such conduct is unbecoming in the heroine of a novel. Now, listen to me— The Baron was changed at birth."

"Then Baron Gadzooks—"

"Is somebody else."

"And somebody else?"

"Is the Baron. You now comprehend the situation."

"Not altogether, my father, you have neglected to inform me who somebody else is."

"That, my dear child, is a question that even the author could not answer."

"Then supposing that I marry the Baron, I in fact marry 'somebody else,' and as you say that 'somebody else' is the Baron, why of course my husband will be the Baron."

"How the deuce is that?" said the Marquis; "let's see. If you marry the Baron— but you can't marry the Baron, because he's not the Baron—he was changed at birth."

"He's somebody else."

"Yes, exactly."

"Then, as he is not the Baron, somebody else is the Baron."

"Well, yes, I suppose so."

"Then, again, if I marry Gadzooks, I marry 'somebody else,' and somebody else, you say, papa, is the Baron," said the Lady Ermetta, triumphantly. "Come now," she added rather maliciously, "I think you are a little irrational now."

"Really Ermetta, you will look at the matter from only one point of view; don't you see that he's not the right somebody else. There are any amount of somebodies else; but let me tell you all about it. This important secret came out in a conversation that was overheard to pass between two servants. One was the nurse of the then infant Gadzooks, the other was a fellow servant. The nurse was heard to make the following remark about her youthful charge:— 'The blessed dear was a layin in my arms as quiet as a lamb, and smiling like a cherrup, when he changed all of a sudden, and has been that cross and frakshus ever since that I ain't had a minnit's peace with him.' The person who overheard this startling disclosure was a devoted friend of the family; he acted with decision and promptitude. The servants were first got rid of—one was strangled, the other hung. He then took the secret, hushed it into a sound sleep, wrapped it carefully in tissue paper, and put it into a box."

"Then where is the danger to come from?"

"Here lies the danger. When that devoted friend put the secret into the box he made a fatal mistake— he put it into the wrong box, and the secret might awake and find itself."

"In the wrong box! How truly awful."

"It is indeed; it might awake at the very moment of your marriage, and forbid the ceremony to proceed. There's no knowing to what lengths a secret that's been kept asleep, in the wrong box for many years might proceed when once awakened."

The Lady Ermetta sobbed deeply. "I can never give up Gadzooks," she said, "I have never seen him, for he has not been introduced personally into this story yet, but I feel that he has my poor heart."

"Restrain your feelings, my child; picture to yourself what would be the result if the secret should awake after your marriage, and announce to an astonished world that you had married somebody else; why you might almost be tried for bigamy."

"Have you the secret, my lord?"

"I have; the two boxes are in my study, but calm your agitation, for you know that Squire Hardpuller will soon be here, and should you bring yourself to think of giving up Gadzooks, why, he is rich, and I do not object to the idea of having him for a son-in-law." So saying, the Marquis left Ermetta to her tears and lamentations.

2: The Secret Dies

NOW that she was alone, Lady Ermetta gave full vent to her grief. "I can never give him up," she murmured, between her convulsive sobs; "I feel that he is entwined around the very tendrils of my existence. We were to have been married in the third chapter, and now— this is the second, and we are to be separated. And what separates us? A secret! A secret that sleeps. Sleeps, why should it awake, why should it not die:" and uttering these last words in the strange hissing tone used by people who have determined on perpetrating some crime, Ermetta raised her head and stared into vacancy, with a cold hard look stealing over her sweet face.

The tears soon ceased to flow, her hands clenched themselves tightly, and she who might but just now have stood for a statue of the weeping daughter of Tantalus, was transformed into Lady Macbeth, demanding the daggers.

Muttering sternly, "It shall be so," she left the apartment with a step befitting a representative of that strong-minded woman.

Let us watch her as she enters her father's study, where the light falls but dimly through the deep-set windows, as though winking at the deed about to be done. Watch her as she kneels before two quaintly carved ebony boxes, and applies her ear to the keyhole of each in turn. Watch her as the look of gratification steals over her face on detecting, in one, a low but perfectly distinct and regular respiration, the ghost of a feeble snore. Watch her as she applies the key to the lock, lifts the lid, and takes out the secret— takes it out gently and carefully, with the tender touch of a woman, so as not to disturb the slumber that has lasted now so long. Watch her, the guilty thing, as she starts at hearing the sound of voices in the hall, and, concealing the secret in her pocket, passes from the room to hasten to receive her expected visitor. As yet the deed is not done. As yet she can gaze out of those clear blue eyes with a soul unstained by actual murder. But how long will her innocence last; even now as she stands by the window in the morning room where she intends to receive her would-be suitor, the weird, wild look that must have been ever on the faces of the Di Medici and Brinvilliers is visible. She has deposited the secret (still asleep) on a chair, and she abides her time.

He comes. The door opens, and Squire Hardpuller is announced. She greets him with a winning smile that makes his heart bound again; poor man, he little thinks that she is bent upon making him accessory to her deed of death. Skillfully she backs him on to the chair of doom. Blandly she bids him be seated. Cordially she welcomes him. Will he look behind him? Will he apologise, and remove the innocent secret slumbering upon the seat of the chair? No, Ermetta, your eyes have him spell bound. What man could look away when you smilingly desired him to take a seat? You have— alas! for beauty, for youth, for guileless innocence, and sweet simplicity— you have made a murderer of him. He is a heavy man, and he sits down on the secret. It is done, and fiends may chuckle ha! ha! Now to keep him there.

Squire Hardpuller was a sporting character; he had been introduced into a great many novels, and was always looked upon as a great bore by the other characters, on account of his endless stories of horses, dogs, runs, and other sporting anecdotes. In the present case nobody could have answered Ermetta's purpose better; once fairly started upon his favorite and only topics, he prosed on contentedly for over two hours; then, blushing to find that his visit had trespassed on her time to such a length, he rose and made his adieux. She beamed on him to the last with her siren-like smile, and then, when he had gone, the re-action set in, and she who had listened unmoved for two mortal hours to a lot of sporting anecdotes, quailed before a dead secret. But such is human nature. She went to the chair in which he had sat; she lifted up the tissue paper containing the secret; with one white hand she held it to her ear, and with the other held her breath.

Not a sound, not the faintest suspicion of sound was to be heard. For nearly ten minutes did that high-bred resolute girl strain every nerve tighter than wire in a sheep-fence, but all was still. The secret, then, was dead. For a moment the rush of feeling overpowered her, then curiosity came to her aid; she would open the paper and see the secret. She had never seen a secret; she had often heard one. Nay, she had read a book called the "Dead Secret;" now she held one in her hand, she would see it.

She was about to unfold the covering of tissue paper, when a shadow fell across her, and somebody knocked at the window. She looked up startled. The car of a balloon was dangling in front of the glass, and seated in it was her father. She went to the window and opened it.

"Come, my child," he said, "the third chapter is at hand, and we must be at the appointed place. Step in." Putting her hand on the sill, Ermetta sprang lightly into the car of the balloon, which immediately commenced to ascend. She at once communicated the important event that had just taken place to her father, and carrying them with it the balloon soon became a mere speck in the blue regions of the infinite.

But a close observer, one of unequalled vision, might have detected a small minute object come fluttering down from the empyreal vastness. Down it descended, gyrating hither and thither, the sport of every wandering zephyr. They tossed it mockingly about, played with it, then let it fall lower and lower, until the broad bosom of the pitying earth received and sheltered it. It was the corpse of the poor murdered secret. And the shadow of the rock, on the sands of Plimlivon, is darker, and deeper than ever.

3: Baron Gadzooks

BARON GADZOOKS was walking up and down on the sands of Plimlivon. He looked out to sea, and tapped his teeth with the top of his pencil; in his hand he held a note-book. He was composing a poem. Presently he commenced to read it over.

Exsuffolating memory, get thee hence,

Nor seek to melodise the scathful past;

When rampant Ruin, drunk at my expense,

Rose, and the empty bottle at me cast.

"That's rather good," he said, thoughtfully; "the simile in the last line particularly, the empty bottle, stands for the dregs of life."

That rounded throat, that wealth of tumbled hair: That mouth so rose-like, kissable, and tender, She'd glue to mine, as if she didn't care If suffocation should ensue and end her.

"Hem! that ought to fetch her," he went on; "quite in the modern style; now for some thing hot and strong."

Must I forget all these; if so, then let me Be chained within a sea of fire volcanic.

"What will rhyme with 'let me?' Let's see. Wet me, pet me, bet me, get me, net me;" and the Baron cast his eyes upwards, for inspiration, and caught sight of a speck in the canopy of heaven overhead that made him shout "Ball-o-o-n!" Then suddenly remembering that he was one of the principal characters in a novel, and as such bound to act with propriety, he blushed, sat down, and commenced to pick his teeth with one of his gilt spurs. On second thought, however, he started up again, frowned fiercely, and in deep tragedy tones said:— "Ha! ha! they come." Then he picked up a telescope that had been left behind by a party of excursionists, because they knew that it would be wanted for my plot, and, applying it to his eye, gazed at the rapidly increasing speck.

"Ah!" he muttered, "I see her, there— now she winks; now— yes, she's about to blow her nose. Angelic being! But hold! What's this?"

The noise of horses galloping at top speed had struck upon his listening ear. Nearer they came, and two horsemen appeared tearing along the level sand. And hark! the beat of paddles. Over the surface of the hitherto tenantless deep glided a mighty steamer, with crowded decks, the captain standing on the bridge, and shouting, "Full speed ahead! full speed astern!" alternately. A shrill whistle drew the Baron's attention again inland. A traction engine, dragging a long string of carriages, appeared, full of characters out of all sorts of novels, who had got in for the sake of a ride. Amazement held the Baron dumb, so he said nothing.

Nearer and nearer everything came, everybody cheering and waving another man's hat. At once the occupants of the balloon stepped upon terra firma; the two horsemen, one being Squire Hardpuller, alighted from their panting steeds; the train disgorged its occupants, and the people from the steamer sprang into the sea and waded on shore.

They all approached and surrounded the Baron; they waited for him to speak, but he was silent.

"Read the will," said a tall man who looked like a lawyer.

"I have no will," said the Baron, "or I should not be here."

"Then reveal the secret," said another.

"Unfold the plot," exclaimed a third.

"Open the red box," said a fourth.

"Produce the real heir," said a fifth.

"Bless you, my children," said a sixth.

"Last dying speech and confession," said a seventh.

Then spake the Lady Ermetta: "Baron, papa has consented; the Bishop is ready, and here are the witnesses."

"Hurrah for the witnesses!" shouted everybody.

"Good heavens!" said the astounded Baron, "I know now what you mean. I was only introduced in this chapter; how the deuce am I to know what's been done in the other two chapters?"

"He jibs!" said the Lady Ermetta, "and I have sinned in vain." She would have fainted, but nobody seemed inclined to catch her, so she didn't.

The Marquis then advanced, and in his usual dignified tone said, "Are there any bad characters present?"

Nobody was fool enough to answer yes.

"Then," said the Marquis, turning to the Baron, "I am afraid that you must be the bad character of this story, and if so, Poetical Justice demands that you must be punished."

"This is hard," said the Baron, whose high bred composure did not desert him under these trying circumstances. "I came out here simply because I was informed that I was wanted for the proper completion of the plot, and now I am to be made a scapegoat of."

"There is some show of reason in what you say," said the Marquis; "so one more chance shall be given you."

"Are there any bad characters present?" he again asked in a louder voice. As before, nobody was fool enough to answer yea.

"If there are any bad characters present," he went on, "let them step forward and be hung instead of this innocent nobleman."

At these awful words three bad characters, who had been hiding behind the big rock, waiting for a chance to commit a murder, or some thing of that sort, tried to sneak away unseen.

Squire Hardpuller, who had been anxiously looking out for an opportunity to cry tally-ho! and thereby identify himself as a sporting character, saw them, and immediately cried, "Stole away! yoicks! yoicks! away!"

With one consent the whole assemblage joined in the cry, and rushed in pursuit, with the exception of the Marquis and his daughter.

The Lady Ermetta had big feet and thick ankles, which she was frightened of showing if she ran, and the Marquis thought it beneath his dignity to go out of a walk.

"Ermetta," said the Marquis gravely; "we are flummoxed."

"Perhaps they'll come back," said Ermetta.

"I'm afraid not," said the Marquis, looking after the fast vanishing multitude. He was deceived, however. Nerved by despair, the three bad characters ran well, and now doubled back and came once more to the isolated rock on the sands.

Instantly new life seemed to enter into Ermetta; she whispered something to her father, who shook his head, and said, "too late," but suffered his daughter to lead him behind the rock.

Breathing heavily— with their pursuers, headed by Hardpuller and Gadzooks, close upon their heels— the three bad characters approached;— they passed and made for the sea. As Gadzooks, in hot haste, pressed after them, running close by the fatal rock, a foot clad in a French kid boot, and a very substantial whitestockinged ankle, was thrust forth from behind it, right in front of him; he tripped, he fell; and the next moment the Marquis was holding him down.

"Poetical Justice!" he cried. "Poetical Justice!" echoed Ermetta, who limped a little, for the Baron in falling had inadvertently kicked her on the shin, and she didn't like to rub it before so many people.

Everybody halted, glad of a spell, and the bad characters swam out to sea.

"Where's the Bishop?" said the Marquis.

"Here," cried his lordship, coming forward hot and perspiring. "Look sharp, or the end of the chapter will be here," said the Marquis. Gadzooks was dragged to his feet, and held firmly, in spite of his struggles and protestations.

"Quick, or we shall be too late," reiterated the Marquis.

"Never mind, papa, we have got him fast, and I can be married in the Epilogue."

"Nonsense, my child, epilogues are only to tell the reader what he knows already."

The Bishop gabbled over the service— "keep-thee- only-unto- her-as- long-as-ye- both-shall-live?"

"I will!" yelled everybody, drowning the voice of the wretched Gadzooks, who said, "I won't."

Away went the Bishop again, etc, etc.

"I will!" said Ermetta; and she meant it

"Thank goodness!" said the Marquis; "she's off my hands!"

YEARS have passed, and the rising tide has washed away the footsteps that were imprinted that morning on the sands of Plimlivon. But that lonely rock still holds its steadfast watch, and the shadow it casts is deeper and darker than ever. But the shadow on the heart of the stricken Gadzooks is deeper and darker still.

Epilogue

NOW, during the reading of the latter portion of the foregoing story, a gleam of hope had shot across my brain. As soon, therefore, as the Spirit had finished, I proceeded to put it into practice.

"What do you think of that!" said the Spirit.

"I like it immensely," I replied; "really you can't think what a jolly year I anticipate; it will be all beer and skittles."

The Spirit, I thought, looked slightly crestfallen.

"You've no idea," I went on, "how dull it is up here; and now to have you to read these charming little stories to me— really, old fellow, it will be delightful."

"Don't be so sure of that," he answered. But I fancied that he seemed staggered.

"Now," he said, opening his book again; "for the next, one of the real old sort— 'How the King got his own again.'"

"'Twas Christmas Eve, and a bitter cold one to boot. What of that? It but made the crackling log fire seem the warmer and snugger. 'Be-shrew me!' said mine host of the Holly Bush, as he stood with his back to it, warming his portly calves; 'but if sad-colored garments and cropped heads are to be the fashion of the day, we shall scarce know Merry England.'"

He had got thus far before I could well stop him; then I interrupted him as blandly and politely as I could, "Excuse me; one moment. That promises to be a most interesting tale, but you will be tired and hoarse if you go on reading without pause. Now just to give you a spell I'll sing you a song."

"A what!" he said.

"A song— a carol. A Christmas carol."

"You daren't," he said; but the blow had gone home I could see.

"No trouble at all, my dear fellow, just the reverse, and it's one of my own composing too," I added boldly, for I thought that I could see victory ahead. I have no more voice than an alligator with a cold in its head, and scarcely know one tune from another, but without more ado I struck up:—

Come, your hands entwine, for this toast is mine,

A health to Christmas bold.

Round his head the leaves of the holly shine,

In his arms he does earth enfold.

"Patience! Grant me patience," muttered the Spirit; but he seemed to clench his teeth firmly, as if with a determination to sit it out. I went on, and hurled the next verse at him like a boomerang:—

When over the ground he spreads around The snow that he so does love, The robin comes out, and he looks about—

With one wild yell of anguish that made every sheet of iron in the roof ring like a bullock bell, the Spirit of Christmas started from the chair.

"Man! man! You have conquered. I forego my revenge. That robin is too much for me. Live unharmed by me; but," and here his voice softened into a tone of beseeching pathos, "as you have some charity in your disposition, as you may stand in need of consideration and forbearance yourself some day, do not add to the heavy woes of a tortured Spirit by casting your additional stone. Do not ever again attempt to write a Christmas story."

I was deeply touched, there was such a look of heartfelt anguish on his face.

"You promise?" he asked.

"I do."

"Then, we part friends; but, ah! that robin," and, waving me a parting salute, he stepped out into the glaring sunshine, and passed away.

___________________

2: The Western Way

Fred Merrick White

1859-1935

The Daily News, West Aust, 16 Aug 1913

LORRIMER caught sight of his man in a corner of the big reception room and lounged over in his direction. The other appeared to be discussing some abstruse semi-colon which might or might not add a significant flavor to the last thing in the way of Shavian comedies. Evidently, Mr. Ned Smith was a versatile person, for the last time that Lorrimer had met him was in the Persian Gulf in the midst of a technical discussion on gun-running and the best small arms weapon to place in the hands of raw troops.

Who Mr. Ned Smith was or where he came from Lorrimer had not the smallest idea. Nor was it an easy matter to place his nationality. He did not look like a Chinaman nor yet a Jap, still the Tartar blood was in his body somewhere. It was his rippling fair hair that added to Lorrimer's mental confusion. There were other people interested in Ned Smith besides Lorrimer, and amongst these was a no less distinguished person than the Mongolese Ambassador. That same person came up to Lorrimer now and entered easily into conversation with him. His Excellency Sing Li was a polished man of the world, with a perfect command of excellent English.

"You are a remarkable man, Lorrimer," he said. "And in your time appear to have met some remarkable people. Now, do you happen to know the picturesque- looking person who is at present discussing theatrical matters with Lady Sheraton?"

Lorrimer shrugged his shoulders a little impatiently. As an old diplomatist himself, he had very little sympathy with the supersubtlety of the Oriental mind.

"Considering that you saw us together in Paris two years ago, the question is rather superfluous," he said. "You want me to do something for you. What is it?"

"Well, I want you to bring me in contact with Mr. Ned Smith. I have an idea he may be useful to me just now. As you know, Mongolese affairs are not too rosy; in fact,—"

"You are on the verge of a revolution."

"Well, let it go at that," the Ambassador admitted. "And I believe that Mr. Ned Smith can give me some valuable information. Do you happen to. know who he really is?"

"Mr. Ned Smith, I suppose," Lorrimer said drily.

STRANGELY enough this answer did not appear displeasing to Sing Li. Half an hour later the three men were discussing matters generally, over cigarettes. On the whole, it was an entertaining conversation between three brilliantly intellectual men. Lorrimer said little— he was too intently engaged in watching the other two. It reminded him of a game of chess between two masters. Outwardly the two Orientals were friendly enough, much as if they were fencing in the dark. The Ambassador rose presently.

"I'm sorry to have to leave you," he said. "I shall be glad if you two gentlemen will do me a favor. I should like to carry this discussion a little further in another place. Will you both dine with me at the Embassy on Thursday night at eight o'clock. That will be this day week?"

"I shall be delighted," Ned Smith said. "I am sure that we could exchange valuable information. Only unfortunately I am engaged for days ahead. If you could say Thursday fortnight, it would afford me great pleasure to dine with you."

The Mongolese Ambassador said Thursday fortnight accordingly, and went his way. Ned Smith watched him with a certain suggestion of malicious mischief in his dark eyes.

"That will give another week," he said, speaking as if to himself. "I beg your pardon, Lorrimer— I forgot you were here for a minute. Whatever you do, don't forget to keep that appointment for this day fortnight. I can promise you a certain interesting evening. His Excellency is perhaps the most daring and audacious man in London at the present moment— with the possible exception of myself. And, by the way, when I was here two years ago, there were strange stories afloat in connection with the kidnapping of the revolutionary leader, San Te. They said that he was last seen alive in a cab outside the Embassy. Several questions were asked about it, I remember. Did anything ever come of it?"

Lorrimer shook his head. He remembered the circumstances distinctly enough. And he had little doubt in his mind that the rumors were true. Still, nothing had been proved, and the story had been gradually forgotten.

"I shall be there," Lorrimer said. "Good night."

For the next few days Lorrimer saw nothing of Ned Smith. He saw little or nothing of the Mongolese Ambassador either, for that shining light of diplomacy had his hands full just now. There was no doubt of the fact that the reigning dynasty was trembling to its fall. The great rebellion roared over the face of the land like a yellow flood. On every hand the revolutionaries were progressing. The good work done by that famous refugee, Hi See, was bearing abundant fruits now, and it only needed his presence to carry the new flag to victory.

Of Hi See the most extraordinary stories were told. He seemed to bear a charmed life, he had had many a hairs-breadth escape, and the mere rumor of his being seen in one province was certain proof that he was somewhere else fanning the flame of revolution. For the last twelve months he seemed to have disappeared altogether. He had been heard of in Paris and Berlin, and wherever he had been seen there came arms and money and abundant assistance for the progressive party. The mere fact that his personality was so shadowy only tended to render him more God-like and heroic in the eyes of his followers. He was known to be a man of education, too, a gifted linguist, and it only needed his presence in the Mongolese Empire now to complete the victory. Like most men of his class, he had his enemies, and there were scores of his countrymen in every capital in Europe who would have murdered him cheerfully out of pure patriotism, to say nothing of the desire to hypothecate the price of ten thousand pounds which had been placed upon his head.

Now, Hi See had recently issued a manifesto to his followers, in which he announced his intention of placing himself in command of the revolutionary movement within the next month. And this would have to be prevented at all costs, because, once it was accomplished, it would merely be a question of how long it was before the progressive party occupied the capital. And thus it was that every Chinese Embassy in Europe was straining its nervous system to lay hands on Hi See. Whether or not his premature taking off would have effectually stemmed the flowing tide was somewhat dubious. But it was held in high Mongolese diplomatic circles that the pleasing spectacle of Hi See's head on a pole might induce a reaction in favor of the reigning dynasty. In this year of grace the capital towns of Europe have reached a state of high refinement. But that proud boast would not have saved Hi See's skin once he had ventured across the threshold of the Mongolese Embassy.

Still, with all the cares of state upon his shoulders, his Excellency welcomed his guests with a charming smile and a manner which appeared to be free from trouble. He had put away his own gorgeous national dress for the nonce, and appeared in the conventional evening garb of an English gentleman. The dinner, too, was quite Occidental; in fact, but for the presence of three or four Mongolese servants, the Oriental atmosphere was entirely lacking.

The conversation was general enough for the time being, but as the meal drew to a close the inevitable politics came up for review. Here were three men of the world who had surveyed mankind from China to Peru, and to whom high diplomacy in most countries of the world was an open letter. They sat there over coffee and liqueur and cigarettes, for the conversation was growing interesting, and no one seemed disposed to move.

"SHALL we adjourn," the Ambassador suggested; "or would you prefer to continue the discussion here?"

"This is very delightful," Ned Smith murmured. "I always prefer to sip my coffee and smoke my cigarette when I am at the table. Moreover, we have not the charming sex to consider. It is sometimes an advantage for one's host to be a bachelor."

"The bachelor has no cares," Lorrimer said.

The Ambassador laughed none too pleasantly.

"Has he not?" he asked. "There are few men in London to-night who have more than I. But it is a great consolation to feel that I am going to get rid of one of them before daybreak."

"This sounds interesting," Lorrimer smiled. "Won't your Excellency be a little more explicit?"

The Ambassador smiled a curious smile as he reached for a fresh cigarette and poured out another liqueur.

"Why not?" he said. "Now, what would you consider to be my greatest anxiety for the moment?"

"I think I can guess the riddle," Ned Smith said quietly. "You are talking about the infamous rebel, Hi See."

"That is correct," the Ambassador laughed. "If we could get rid of him, most of my country's trouble would be over."

"Our friend would be flattered if he could only hear you," Ned Smith said. "I perceive that this would make an ideal prison-house for the moment. I notice that the shutters of this room are made of steel, and so, if I mistake not, is also the front door, judging by the way in which it closed behind us to- night. One would hardly dare in an atmosphere like this to say anything unflattering about the reigning Mongolese dynasty. Hi See would be equally impotent here once he was your prisoner. Not that you can ever hope for that."

"I'm not so sure," the Ambassador said softly. "I'm naturally of a sanguine temperament, and if the opportunity came, I should not hesitate. I should—"

A soft-footed servant came in at that moment with a telegram, which he handed to Lorrimer. As the latter took the orange-colored envelope from the salver, Ned Smith put a detaining hand and pitched the telegram carelessly into the centre of the table. His face had suddenly grown grim and set; there was a look of angry displeasure on the Ambassador's features.

"May I be permitted to be rude just for one moment?" Ned Smith said. "May I ask you to ignore that telegram for a time? I have reason to believe that the message is of no importance. At any rate, I know it was sent under a misapprehension. Now as to this Hi See. Suppose he were here at the present moment. You couldn't do anything with him so long as Mr. Lorrimer knew the circumstances in which he came. Now I happen to know a good deal about Hi See. He is the last man in the world to put his head in the net. And yet he would have not the slightest hesitation in coming here if he thought that it would serve his purpose to do so. I suppose you've never met him, Lorrimer?"

"I never had the good fortune," Lorrimer said.

"Oh, you will before long," Ned Smith went on. "No, please don't touch that telegram just yet. Let me tell you a little more about Hi See first. I won't go into a biographical sketch, because the papers have done all that more or less untruly. I do happen to know that every Mongolese Embassy in Europe has had a try for him. If only he had fallen into the trap he would have been a dead man long ago. He would have been murdered in London or Berlin or Paris, and not a soul been any the wiser. As a rule, the servants of the Embassy are to be trusted to keep silent. But, after all, there is even a better plan than a crude, vulgar murder. The man might be kidnapped here under the very eyes or the authorities, and taken back home without anybody being in the least the wiser. I know what I am talking about."

"Are you speaking from a brief?" the Ambassador sneered.

"No, from personal experience," Ned Smith said quietly. "As a matter of fact, I am Hi See."

LORRIMER started to his feet, then as suddenly sat down again. Here was drama red-hot to his hand. The face of the Ambassador paled a little, though his face was hard and resolute.

"I suppose I had better go on," Hi See said quietly. "Our host here has known for quite a month that I was in London. I don't know how he recognised me, neither does it in the least matter. And I knew that he knew me when you made us personally acquainted the other night. And I was quite aware, too, of the risk I was running in accepting the invitation to dinner this evening. The prison house is secure enough— I am here behind steel bars, and the servants for the most part are prepared to commit anything from arson to murder at the bidding of their master."

Lorrimer looked up, white, but determined.

"You seem to forget that I am here," he said quietly. "I am a British subject in my own capital—"

"Oh, quite so, quite so," Hi See went on. "But perhaps our host would like to take a hand. It seems to me that I am vulgarly monopolising the conversation."

His Excellency shook his head sulkily.

"My turn will come— presently," he said sullenly.

"Then I am to proceed," Hi See smiled. "You were not to be here at all, Lorrimer. The ingenious idea was that you should leave before me and proof would have been given you to-morrow that I did not remain many minutes after you left. You would never have troubled if you had never seen me again. I am a wanderer who comes and goes; nobody knows anything about me, and no questions would have been asked. And now, if you please, you can open that telegram. You will find in it an urgent message asking you to return to your chambers at once. If you don't find the message as I say it is I am greatly mistaken."

Lorrimer tore open the envelope and ran his eye rapidly over the contents. He smiled grimly.

"The tricks are all yours up to now," he said.

"If you call up your flat on the telephone," Hi See went on, "you will find that no such message was sent. The simple scheme was merely to get you out of the way and leave me here alone. It was an excellent idea to invite you to dine here as well as me to-night, and was calculated to allay any suspicions as to my welcome. But that is not the whole of the plot. A day or two ago a Chinaman of low caste was brought here practically on his death bed. He died in the course of time, and a medical certificate was given by the doctor who was called in. The dead Chinaman was smuggled away somehow, but this coffin still remains in the house. It may interest you to know that I was destined to occupy that coffin. I should have been drugged directly you had gone, and to-morrow I should have been taken down to Southampton and placed on board a steam yacht there already, waiting to convey me to my native land. What would have happened afterwards I leave you to guess. And now, seeing that I have said so much, I will leave it to his Excellency to continue. My story is finished."

But his Excellency sat there, saying nothing. An awkward silence followed for a minute or two. Lorrimer would have spoken, but Hi See raised a hand as a signal for him to stop.

"Come, I am waiting," Hi See commanded in a grating voice. "It is for me to command, you understand."

"There is nothing to be said," the Ambassador muttered. "My hands are tied. The presence of Mr. Lorrimer here renders me powerless. But if you are waiting for any apology I have none to make. I can only regret my failure. You, Hi See, are a fellow-countryman of mine, and you understand. If the circumstances were reversed you would take my life with as little compunction as I would take yours. The time may come yet. Gentlemen, you are free to go."

THE AMBASSADOR rose from the table and bowed in the direction of the door. Lorrimer half rose to his feet, but Hi See never moved. He looked up grimly.

"Sit down," he commanded. "Don't dare to move till I tell you. It is your belief that you are the master in this house. For the moment you are mistaken. Mine is the voice of authority. Your Excellency will give me your watch-chain. I desire to borrow from it the key which opens the safe in your study."

Something, like an oath came from the Ambassador's lips. As he rose to his feet again two silent forms came apparently from nowhere and stood on either side of him. Two chill blue circles pressed on his temple, and from under his scowling lids he recognised a pair of the servants who had been waiting on the party during dinner. At a curt command from Hi See he snatched the chain angrily from his pocket and threw it angrily upon the table.

"I thought you would appreciate the argument," Hi See said. "These servants are not yours, but mine. There are four of them here who have been in our pay for years. Two of them are guarding you, and the other two are looking after the rest of the household. By this time I suppose the rest of the servants are peacefully sleeping under the influence of the same drug that would have been administered to me. You will remain here while I spend a few minutes in searching your safe. There I shall find papers and documents of the utmost importance to us. I am sorry to detain you, Mr. Lorrimer; but all is fair in love and war, and it will be necessary, if only for your sake, that I should make good my retreat. Circumstances will prevent me meeting you again in London, but if in the course of time you should ever visit Aria again, I shall be glad to make you the honored guest of the Mongolese Republic. And I should not be surprised to find his Excellency holding office under the Progressive party."

It was a quaint, queer silence that followed. The Ambassador sat there downcast and ill at ease, with the two sentries standing on either side of him. Then Hi See returned, carrying a mass of papers in his hands. He waved the servants aside, and stood there grim and smiling in the doorway.

"I am going now," he said. "The steel shutters are made fast, and I propose to lock this door from the outside. You may find it a little monotonous, but the servants will release you in the morning. And, my dear Lorrimer, I am not behaving so badly to you as you imagine. I know what your Western civilisation calls for, and it would be a great regret to me if I left anybody a chance of saying that you were my confederate in this matter. I wish you good night, gentlemen, and, oh, yes— what was I going to say? I have it— there is something in the Western Method after all!"

_______________

3: The Voice in the Fog

Henry Leverage

David Carroll Henry, 1879-1931

Weird Tales, June, 1923

THE SERIPHUS WAS a ten thousand ton, straight bow ocean tanker, and her history was the common one of Clyde-built ships— a voyage here and a passage there, charters by strange oil companies, petrol for Brazil, crude petroleum that went to Asia (for anointment purposes among the heathen) and once there was a hurried call to some unpronounceable Aegean port where the Seriphus acted against the Turks in their flare-up after the Great War.

The ordinary and usual— the up and down the trade routes— passed away from the Seriphus when Ezra Morgan, senior captain in the service of William Henningay and Son, took over the tanker and drove her bow into strange Eastern seas, loading with oil at California and discharging cargo in a hundred unknown ports.

Of Ezra Morgan it was said that he had the daring of a Norseman and the thrift of a Maine Yankee; he worked the Seriphus for everything the tanker could give William Henningay and Son; he ranted against the outlandish people of the Orient and traded with them, on the side, for all that he could gain for his own personal benefit.

Trading skippers and engineers with an inclination toward increasing wage by rum-running and smuggling were common in the Eastern service. Ezra Morgan's rival in that direction aboard the Seriphus ruled the engine-room and took pride in declaring that every passage was a gold mine for the skipper and himself.

The chief engineer of the Seriphus saw no glory in steam, save dollars; he mopped up oil to save money. His name was Paul Richter— a brutal-featured man given to boasting about his daughter, ashore, and what a lady he was making of her.

Paul Richter— whom Morgan hated and watched—was far too skilled in anything pertaining to steam and its ramifications to be removed from his position aboard the Seriphus. Henningay, Senior, believed in opposing forces on his many tankers—it led to rivalry and efficiency, instead of closeheadedness and scheming against owners.

The Seriphus, after a round passage to Laichau Bay, which is in the Gulf of Pechili, returned to San Francisco and was dry-docked near Oakland, for general overhauling.

Richter, after making an exact and detailed report to Henningay, Jr., visited the opera, banked certain money he had made on the round-passage, then went south to his daughter's home. He found trouble in the house; Hylda, his daughter, had a heart affair with a marine electrician, Gathright by name, a young man with a meager wage and unbounded ambition.

Through the Seven Seas, from the time of his Bavarian wife's death, from cancer of the breast, Richter, chief engineer of the Seriphus, had sweated, slaved, saved and smuggled contraband from port in order to say:

"This is my daughter! Look at her!"

Now, as Richter discovered, Hylda, twenty-seven years of age, somewhat prim and musical, had given her promise to an electrician whom the engineer believed was not fit to dust her shoes. Richter, used to breaking and thrashing coolie oilers, ordered Gathright from the house and locked up his daughter.

She cried for seven days. Gathright was seen in town. Richter's rage gave way to an engineer's calculation.

"What for I study in University and college? Why do I hold certificates? I fix Gathright!"

No oil was smoother than Richter's well-laid plan; he sent Hylda away and met Gathright.

"All right about my daughter," he told the electrician. "You go one voyage with me— we'll see Henningay— I'll fix you up so that you can draw one hundred and fifty dollars in wage, with a rating as electrician aboard the Seriphus."

Gathright went with Richter to San Francisco. They recrossed the Bay, without seeing Henningay, Jr., and, at dusk, climbed over the shoring timbers and went aboard the Seriphus. Richter's voice awoke echoes in the deserted ship and dry-dock:

"Come, I show you my dynamo and motors. We go to the boiler-room first, where the pumps are."

The boiler-room, forward the engine-room of the tanker, was a place of many snakelike pipes, valves, sea-plates and oily seepage from the feedtanks. The Seriphus was a converted oil-burner, having been built before crude petroleum was used for steaming purposes. Three double-end Scotch boilers made the steam that drove the tanker's triple-expansion engine.

Richter knew the way down to the boiler-room, blindfolded. He struck matches, however, to guide Gathright, and remarked that the newer ships of Henningay's fleet had a storage-battery reserve for lighting purposes when the dynamo ceased running.

Gathright, somewhat suspicious of Hylda's father, took care to keep two steps behind the chief-engineer. They reached and ducked under the bulkhead beam where the door connected the engine-room with the boiler-room. Richter found a flashlamp, snapped it on, swung its rays around and about as if showing Gathright his new duties.

"There's a motor-driven feed-pump," he said. "Something's the matter with the motor's commutator. It sparks under load—can you fix it up?"

There was a professional challenge in the chief engineer's voice; Gathright forgot caution, got down on his knees, leaned toward the motor and ran one finger over the commutator bars. They seemed polished and free from carbon.

Richter reversed his grip on the flashlamp, swung once, twice, and smashed the battery-end of the lamp down on Gathright's head, just over the top of the electrician's right ear.

Gathright fell as if pole-axed and dropped with his hands twitching on a metal plate.

Striking a match, Richter surveyed the electrical engineer.

"Good!" he grunted. "Now I put you where nobody'll ever look— unless I give the order."

A STUMP of candle, stuck by wax to a feed-pipe, allowed Richter illumination sufficient to work by. Swearing, sweating, listening once, he fitted a spanner to bolt-heads on a man-plate in the spare boiler and removed the stubborn bolts until the plate clanged at his feet.

Gathright was a slender man, easy to insert through the man-hole; Richter had no trouble at all lifting the electrician and thrusting him out of sight.

It seemed to the engineer, as he hesitated, that Hylda's lover moaned once and filled the boiler with a hollow sound.

Hesitation passed; and Richter swallowed his superstitious fears, put back the man-hole plate, bolted it tighter than it ever was before, almost stripping the threads, and stepped back, mopping his brow with the sleeve of a shore-coat.

There was nothing very unusual in Richter's further actions that evening. The ship-keeper, who came aboard at daylight, long before the dry-dock men began work, noticed a wet shore-hose, a thin plume of steam aft the tanker's squat funnel, and there was a trailing line of smoke drifting aslant the Seriphus' littered deck.

"Been testing that spare boiler," explained Richter, when the ship-keeper ducked through the bulkhead door. "I think it's tight an' unscaled, but th' starboard one will need new tubes and general cleaning. Get me some soap— I want to wash up."

Richter dried his hands on a towel, tossed it toward the motor-driven feed-pump, then, when he left the boiler-room, his glance ranged from the tightly-bolted man-hole cover up to a gauge on a steam-pipe. The gauge read seventy-pounds— sufficient to parboil a heavier man than Hylda's lover.

"I think that was a good job," concluded the first engineer of the Seriphus.

The second engineer of the tanker, a Scot with a burr on his voice like a file rasping the edge of a plate, stood watching Richter balance himself as the stout chief came along a shoring-beam.

"I mark ye ha' steam up," commented the Scotchman, when Richter climbed over the dry dock's wall.

"Yes, in the spareboiler."

Mr. S. V. Fergerson tapped a pipe on his heel.

"I made an inspection, myself, of that, not later than yesterday forenoon. She was tight as a drum an' free from scale. I left th' man-hole—"

"Damn badly gasketed!" growled Richter.

Fergerson started to explain something; but the chief was in a hurry to get away from sight of the Seriphus. There was a memory on the tanker that required a drink or two in order to bring forgetfulness. Richter gave the Scot an order that admitted of no answering back.

"Go aboard an' blow off steam! That boiler's all right!"

A roar, when Richter strode past the dry-dock's sheds, caused him to wheel around and listen. Fergerson, according to orders, was blowing off the steam from the spare boiler.

Something, perhaps water or waste, clogged the pipe; and the escaping vapor whistled, sputtered, and rose to a high piercing note that sounded to the chief's irritated nerves like the cry of a soul in agony. The note died, resumed its piercing screeching. Richter's arm and hand shook when he mopped his brow and drew a wet sleeve down with an angry motion.

In fancy the noise that came from the Seriphus' starboard side, echoed and deflated by the hollow dock, was Gathright calling for Hylda. Richter covered his ears and staggered away.

EZRA MORGAN hastened such repairs as were required for making the Seriphus ready for sea; the tanker left the dry-dock, steamed out the Golden Gate, and took aboard oil at a Southern California port.

All tanks, a well-lashed deck load of cased-lubricant— consigned to a railroad in Manchuria— petroleum for the furnaces, brought the Seriphus down to the Plimsoll Mark; she drove from shore and crossed the Pacific where, at three God-forsaken Eastern roadsteads, she unloaded and made agents for the oil-purchasers happy with shipments delivered on time.

The romance of caravan routes, and pale kerosene lamps burning in Tartar tents, escaped both Ezra Morgan and Richter; they went about their business of changing American and English minted gold for certain contrabands much wanted in the States. The chief engineer favored gum-opium as a road to riches; Ezra dealt in liquors and silks, uncut gems and rare laces.

Fortunately for the chief engineer's peace of mind, the spare, double-end Scotch boiler was not used on the Russian voyage. Gathright was forgotten and Hylda, safe in an eastern music school, was not likely to take up with another objectionable lover. Richter, relieved of a weight, went about the engine-room and boiler-room humming a score of tunes, all set to purring dynamos, clanking pumps, and musical cross-heads.

At mid-Pacific, on a second voyage— this time to an oilless country, if ever there were one, Mindanao— a frightened water-tender came through the bulkhead door propelled by scalding steam, and there was much to do aboard the Seriphus. The port boiler had blown out a tube; the spare, midship boiler was filled with fresh water and the oil-jets started.

Richter, stripped to the waist, it being one hundred and seventeen degrees hot on deck, drove his force to superhuman effort. Ezra Morgan, seven hours after the accident, had the steam and speed he ordered, in no uncertain tones, through the bridge speaking-tube.

Fergerson, a quiet man always, had occasion, the next day, to enter the chief's cabin, where Richter sat writing a letter to Hylda, which he expected to post via a homeward bound ship. Richter glared at the second engineer.

"That spare boiler—" began Fergerson.

"What of it?"

"Well, mon, it's been foamin' an' a gauge-glass broke, an' there's something wrong wi' it."

"We can't repair th' port boiler until we reach Mindanao."

Fergerson turned to go.

"Ye have m' report," he said acidly. "That boiler's bewitched, or somethin'."

"Go aft!" snarled Richter, who resumed writing his letter.

He hesitated once, chewed on the end of the pen, tried to frame the words he wanted to say to Hylda. Then he went on:

"—expect to return to San Francisco within thirty-five days. Keep up your music— forget Gathright— I'll get you a good man, with straight shoulders and a big fortune, when I come back and have time to look around."

Richter succeeded in posting the letter, along with the Captain's mail, when the Seriphus spoke a Government collier that afternoon and sheered close enough to toss a package aboard. Ezra Morgan leaned over the bridge-rail and eyed the smudge of smoke and plume of steam that came from the tanker's squat funnel. He called for Richter, who climbed the bridge-ladder to the captain's side.

"We're only logging nine, point five knots," said Ezra Morgan. "Your steam is low— it's getting lower. What's th' matter? Saving oil?"

"That spare boiler is foaming," the chief explained.

"Damn you and your spare boiler! What business had you leaving San Francisco with a defective boiler? Your report to Mr. Henningay stated that everything was all right in engine-room and boiler-room."

"Foam comes from soap or— something else in the water."

"Something else—"

Richter got away from Ezra Morgan on a pretense of going below to the boiler-room. Instead of going below, however, he went aft and leaned over the taffrail. Somehow or other, he feared that spare boiler and the consequence of conscience.

Limping, with three-quarters of the necessary steam pressure, the Seriphus reached Mindanao and was forced to return to California without repairs to the port boiler. While repairs, new tubes and tube-sheet were put in place by boilersmiths, Richter saw his daughter, who had come west from music school.

The change in her was pronounced; she spoke not at all of Gathright, whose disappearance she could not understand; and Richter, keen where his daughter was concerned, realized that her thinness and preoccupation was on account of the missing electrician.

"I get you a fine fellow," he promised Hylda.

He brought several eligible marine engineers to the house. Hylda snubbed them and cried in secret.

An urgent telegram called Richter back to the Seriphus. He made two long voyages, one down Chili-way, the other half around the world, before the tanker's bow was turned toward California. Much time had elapsed from the night he had thrust Gathright into the spare boiler and turned on the oil-jets beneath its many tubes. Once, in Valparaiso, an under engineer pointed out red rust leaking from the gauge-glass of the spare boiler.

"Looks like blood," commented this engineer.

Richter scoffed, but that afternoon he drank himself stupid on kummel, obtained from an engineer's club ashore. Another time, just after the tanker left the port of Aden on her homebound passage, a stowaway crawled out from beneath the cold boiler and gave Richter the fright of his life.

"Why, mon," said Fergerson, who was present in the boiler-room, "that's only a poor wisp o' an Arab."

"I thought it was a ghost," blabbered Richter.

Barometer pressure rose when the Seriphus neared mid-Pacific. Ezra Morgan predicted a typhoon before the tanker was on the longitude of Guam. Long rollers came slicing across the Seriphus' bow, drenched the forecastle, filled the ventilators and flooded the boiler-room.

Richter went below, braced himself in the rolling engine-room, listened to his engines clanking their sturdy song, then waddled over the gratings and ducked below the beam that marked the bulkhead door. An oiler in high rubber-boots lunged toward the chief engineer.

"There's something inside th' spare boiler!" shouted the man. "Th' boiler-room crew won't work, sir."

Richter waded toward a frightened group all of whom were staring at the spare boiler. A hollow rattling sounded when the tanker heaved and pitched—as if some one were knocking bony knuckles against the stubborn iron plates.

"A loose bolt," whispered Richter. "Keep th' steam to th' mark, or I'll wipe a Stillson across th' backs of all of you," he added in a voice that they could hear and understand.

Superstition, due to the menacing storm and high barometer, the uncanny noises in the racked boiler-room, Richter's bullying manner, put fear in the hearts of the deck crew. Oil-pipes clogged, pumps refused to work, valves stuck and could scarcely be moved.

"I've noo doot," Fergerson told his Chief, "there's a ghost taken up its abode wi' us."

Richter drank quart after quart of trade-gin.

THE BAROMETER became unsteady, the sky hazy, the air melting hot, and a low, rugged cloud bank appeared over the Seriphus' port bow.

Down fell the barometer, a half-inch, almost, and the avalanche of rain and wind that struck the freighter was as if Thor was hammering her iron plates.

Ezra Morgan, unable to escape from the typhoon's center, prepared to ride out the storm by bringing the Seriphus up until she had the sea on the bow, and he had held her there by going half speed ahead. A night of terror ruled the tanker; the decks were awash, stays snapped, spume rose and dashed over the squat funnel aft the bridge.

Morning, red-hued, with greenish patches, revealed a harrowed ocean, waves of tidal height, and astern lay a battered hulk—a freighter, dismasted, smashed, going down slowly by the bow.

"A Japanese tramp," said Ezra Morgan. "Some Marau or other, out of the Carolines bound for Yokohama."

Richter, stupid from trade-gin, was on the bridge with the Yankee skipper.

"We can't help her," the engineer said heavily. "I think we got all we can do to save ourselves."

Ezra Morgan entertained another opinion. The storm had somewhat subsided, and the wind was lighter, but the waves were higher than ever he had known them. They broke over the doomed freighter like surf on a reef.

"Yon's a distress signal flying," said Ezra Morgan. "There's a few seamen aft that look like drowned rats. We'll go before th' sea— I'll put th' sea abart th' beam, an' we'll outboard oil enough to lower a small-boat an' take those men off that freighter."

The maneuver was executed, the screw turned slowly, oil was poured through the waste-pipes and spread magically down the wind until the freighter's deck, from aft the forehouse, could be seen above the waves.

Over the patch of comparative calm oars dipped, and a mate, in charge of the small boat lowered from the Seriphus, succeeded in getting off the survivors who were clinging to the freighter's taffrail.

The small boat lived in a sea that had foundered big ships. It returned to the tanker's bow; and the four men, bruised, broken, all half-dead from immersion, were hoisted to the forepeak and taken aft. Two were Japanese sailors and two were Americans— a wireless operator and an engineer. The engineer had a broken leg which required setting, and the wireless operator was in a bad fix; wreckage had stove in his features, and twisted his limbs.

Ezra Morgan was a rough and ready surgeon-doctor; he turned the Seriphus over to the first-mate and made a sick room out of Richter's cabin. The chief protested.

"Get below to your damn steam!" roared Ezra Morgan. "You hated to see me bring aboard these poor seamen; you said I wasted fuel oil; your breath smells like a gin-mill. Below with you, sir!"

The engine-room and boiler-room of the tanker, she being in water ballast, was not unlike an inferno; the first-mate, acting on Ezra Morgan's instructions, drove the Seriphus at three-quarter speed into a series of head-on waves; the ship rolled and yawed, tossed, settled down astern, then her screw raced in mingled foam and brine.

Richter's stomach belched gas; he became sea-sick, climbed into a foul-smelling "ditty-box" of a cabin, aft the engine-room, and attempted to sleep off the effect of the gin. Picture-post-cards, mostly of actresses, a glaring electric over the bunk, oil and water swishing the metal deck below, and the irritating clank of irregular-running engines drove sleep away from him.

Fergerson, the silent second-engineer, came into the "ditty-box" at eight bells, or four o'clock. Fergerson's thumb jerked forward.

"I'll have t' use that spare boiler," said he.

"What's th' matter, now?"

"Feed-pipes clogged in starb'ard one, sir."

"Use it," said Richter.

Steam was gotten up on the spare, double-end Scotch boiler; the starboard boiler was allowed to cool; Fergerson, despite the tanker's rolling motion, succeeded in satisfying Ezra Morgan by keeping up the three-quarter speed set by the skipper.

Richter sobered when the last of the trade-gin was gone; the Seriphus was between Guam and 'Frisco; the heavy seas encountered were the afterkick of the simoon.

Rolling drunkenly, from habit, the chief went on the bridge and asked about getting back his comfortable cabin aft. Ezra Morgan gave him no satisfaction.

"Better stay near your boilers," advised the captain. "Everything's gone to hell, sir, since you changed from kummel to gin!"

"Are not th' injured seamen well yet?"

"Th' wireless chap's doing all right— but th' engineer of that Japanese freighter is hurt internally. You can't have that cabin, this side of San Francisco."

"What were two Americans doing in that cheap service?"

Ezra Morgan glanced sharply at Richter.

"Everybody isn't money mad— like you. There's many a good engineer, and mate, too, in th' Japanese Merchant Marine. Nippon can teach us a thing or two— particularly about keeping Scotch boilers up to th' steaming point."

This cut direct sent Richter off the bridge; he encountered a bandaged and goggled survivor of the freighter's wreck at the head of the engine-room ladder. The wireless operator, leaning on a crutch whittled by a bo'sain, avoided Richter, who pushed him roughly aside and descended the ladder, backward.

White steam, lurid oaths, Scotch anathema from the direction of the boiler-room, indicated more trouble. Fergerson came from forward and bumped into Richter, so thick was the escaping vapor.

"Out o' my way, mon," the second engineer started to say, then clamped his teeth on his tongue.

"What's happened, now!" queried Richter.

"It's that wicked spare boiler— she's aleak an' foamin', an' there's water in th' fire-boxes."

Richter inclined his bullet shaped head; he heard steam hissing and oilers cursing the day they had signed on the Seriphus. A blast when a gasket gave way, hurtled scorched men between Richter and Fergerson; a whine sounded from the direction of the boiler-room, the whine rose to an unearthly roar: Richter saw a blanket of white vapor floating about the engine's cylinders. This vapor, to his muddled fancy, seemed to contain the figure of a man wrapped in a winding shroud.

He clapped both hands over his eyes, hearing above the noise of escaping steam a call so distinct it chilled his blood.

"Hylda!"

NOW THERE was that in the ghostly voice that brought Richter's gin-swollen brain to the realization of the thing he had done in disposing of Gathright by bolting him in the spare boiler.

No good luck had followed that action; Hylda was still disconsolate; trade and smuggling was at a low ebb; there was talk, aboard and ashore, of reducing engineers' and skippers' wage to the bone.

Richter had a Teutonic stubbornness; Ezra Morgan had certainly turned against his chief engineer; the thing to do was to lay the ghostly voice, make what repairs were necessary in the boiler-room, and give the tanker's engines the steam they needed in order to make a quick return passage to San Francisco and please the Henningays.

An insane rage mastered Richter— the same red-vision he had experienced when he threw Gathright out of his daughter's house. He lowered his bullet head, brushed the curling vapors from his eyes, and plunged through the bulkhead door, bringing up in scalding steam before the after end of the midship, or spare boiler.

Grotesquely loomed all three boilers. They resembled humped-camels kneeling in a narrow shed by some misty river. Steam in quantity came hissing from the central camel; out of the furnace-doors, from a feed-pipe's packing, around a flange where the gauge-glass was riveted.

The Seriphus climbed a long Pacific roller, steadied, then rocked in the trough between seas; iron plates, gratings, flue-cleaners, scrapers, clattered around Richter who felt the flesh on neck and wrist rising into water blisters.

No one had thought to close the globe-valve in the oil supply line, or to extinguish the fires beneath the spare and leaking boiler. Richter groped through a steam cloud, searching for the hand-wheel on the pipe line. All the metal he touched was simmering hot.

A breath of sea air came down a ventilator; Richter gulped this air and tried to locate the globe-valve with the iron wheel. Vision cleared, he saw the red and open mouth of the central camel— the flannel-like flames and he heard through toothed-bars a voice calling, "Hylda!"

Fergerson and a water tender dragged their chief from the boiler room by the heels; blistered, with the skin peeled from his features, Richter's eyes resembled hot coals in their madness. Blabbering nonsense, the engineer gave one understandable order:

"Put out th' fire, draw th' water, search inside th' spare boiler—there's something there, damit!"

Ezra Morgan came below, while the spare boiler was cooling, and entered Richter's temporary cabin— the "ditty-box" with the play actresses' pictures glued everywhere. Fergerson had applied rude doctoring— gauze bandages soaked in petroleum— on face and arms.

"What's th' matter, man?" asked Ezra Morgan. "Have you gone mad?"

"I heard some one calling my daughter, Hylda."

"Where do you keep your gin?"

"It's gone! Th' voice was there inside th' spare boiler. Did Fergerson look; did he find a skeleton, or—"

Ezra Morgan pinched Richter's left arm, jabbed home a hypodermic containing morphine, and left the chief engineer to sleep out his delusions. Fergerson came to the "ditty-box" some watches later. Richter sat up.

"What was in th' spare boiler?" asked the chief.

"Scale, soda, a soapy substance."

"Nothing else?"

"Why, mon, that's enough to make her foam."

Richter dropped back on the bunk and closed his lashless eyes.

"Suppose a man, a stowaway, had crawled through th' aft man-hole, an' died inside th' boiler? Would that make it foam— make th' soapy substance?"

"When could any stowaway do that?"

Richter framed his answer craftily: "Say it was done when th' Seriphus was at Oakland that time th' boilers were repaired in dry-dock."

Fergerson drew on his memory. "Th' time, mon, ye went aboard an' tested th' spare boiler? Th' occasion when ye took th' trouble to rig up a shore-hose in order to fill th' boiler wi' water?"

"Yes."

"Did ye ha' a man-hole plate off th' boiler?"

"I removed th' after-end plate, then went for th' hose. We had no steam up, you remember, and our feed-pumps are motor-driven."

"Ye think a mon might ha' crawled through to th' boiler during your absence?"

"Yes!"

"Ye may b' right— but if one did he could ha' escaped by th' fore man-hole plate. I had that off, an' wondered who put it back again so carelessly. Ye know th' boiler is a double-ender— wi' twa man-holes."

Richter was too numbed to show surprise. Fergerson left the "ditty-box" and pulled shut the door. The tanker, under reduced steam, made slow headway toward San Francisco.

One morning, a day out from soundings, the chief engineer awoke, felt around in the gloom, and attempted to switch on the electric light.

He got up and threw his legs over the edge of the bunk. A man sat leaning against the after plate. Richter blinked; the man, from the goggles on him and the crutch that lay across his knees, was the wireless operator who had been rescued from a sea grave.

"No need for light," said the visitor in a familiar voice. "You can guess who I am, Richter."

"A ghost!" said the chief. "Gathright's ghost! Come to haunt me!"

"Not exactly to haunt you. I assure you I am living flesh— somewhat twisted, but living. I got out of that midship boiler, while you were bolting me in so securely. I waited until you went on deck for a hose, and replaced the after man-hole cover. I was stunned and lay hidden aboard for two days. Then I looked for Hylda. She was gone. I shipped as electrician for a port in Japan. I knocked around a bit— at radio work for the Japanese. It was chance that the Seriphus should have picked me up from the Nippon Maru."

"That voice calling for Hylda," cried Richter.

"Was a little reminder that I sent through the boiler-room ventilator; I knew you were down there, Richter."

The marine engineer switched on the electric light.

"What do you want?" he whined to Gathright.

"Hylda— your daughter!"

Paul Richter covered his eyes.

"If she will atone for the harm I have done you, Gathright, she is yours with her father's blessing."

___________________

4: The Man the Law Forgot

Walter Noble Burns

1872-1932

Weird Tales, June, 1923

THE JAIL was silent. Boisterous incoherencies that in the day made the vast gloomy pile of stone and iron a bedlam— talk, curses, laughter— were stilled.

The prisoners were asleep in their cells. Dusty electric bulbs at sparse intervals made a dusky twilight in the long, hushed corridors. Moonlight, shimmering through the tall, narrow windows, laid barred, luminous lozenges on the stone floors.

From the death cell in "Murderers' Row," the voice of Guisseppi rose in the still night watches in the Miserere. Its first mellow notes broke the slumberous silence with dulcet crashes like the breaking of ice crystals beneath a silver hammer. Vibrating through the cavernous spaces of the sleeping prison, the clear boyish voice lifting the burden of the solemn hymn was by turns a tender caress, a flight of white wings up into sunny skies, a silver whisper stealing through the glimmering aisles, a swift stream of plashing melody, a flaming rush of music.

"A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." The prayer in its draperies of melody filled the cells like a shining presence and laid its blessing of hope upon hopeless hearts. From the shadow of the gallows, Guisseppi poured forth his soul in music that was benediction and farewell.

Bitter memories, like sneering ghosts that elbow one another, crowd the road to Gallows Hill. In swift retrospect, Guisseppi reviewed his life's last tragic phase. Young, with healthy blood dancing gay dances through his veins, sunny-spirited, spilling over with the happiness and hopefulness of irresponsibility, he had not despaired when the death sentence was pronounced.

The court's denial of his lawyer's motion for a new trial left him with undiminished optimism. Yet a while longer hope sustained him when his old father and mother kissed him good-by through the bars and set off for the state capital to intercede with the governor.

Bowed with years and broken with sorrow, they had pleaded in tears and on their knees. The venerable father, lost for words, helplessly inarticulate, the mother with her black shawl over her head, white-faced, hysterical, both praying for the life of their only son, were a picture to melt a heart of stone.

The pathos of it stirred the governor to the depths, but could not make him forget that for the moment he stood as the incarnation of the law and the inexorable justice that is the theory of the law. With heavy heart and misty eyes, he turned away.

So hope at last had died. And between the death of hope and the death that awaited him, Guisseppi brooded in the death-cell, bitterly counting his numbered days as they slipped one by one into the past, each day bringing him that much nearer to certain annihilation. Round and round the dial, the hands of the clock on the prison wall went in a never-ending funeral march; the tick-tock, tick-tock of the pendulum, measuring off the fateful seconds, echoed in his heart like a death knell.

Times without number he repeated to himself that he was not afraid to die. Nevertheless the inevitability of death tortured him. At times, in sheer terror, he seized the rigid bars of his cell, pounded his fists against the iron walls, till the blood spurted from his knuckles. He was like a sparrow charmed by a serpent, fluttering vainly to escape, but drawing ever nearer to certain death. Black walls of death kept closing in upon him inexorably, like a mediaeval torture chamber.

Some men, the experts say, are born criminals; other are made criminals by some fortuity or crisis of circumstances. Guisseppi had been a happy, healthy, careless boy. His father was a small shopkeeper of the Italian quarter who had achieved a certain prosperity. His mother was a typical Italian mother, meek, long-suffering, tender, her whole life wrapped up in her boy, her husband and her home.

Guisseppi had received a good common school education. He had been a choir boy in Santa Michaela Church, and the range and beauty of his voice had won him fame even beyond the borders of the colony; musicians for whom he had sung had grown enthusiastic over his promise and had encouraged him to study for the operatic stage.

The exuberance of youth, and love of gayety and adventure, had been responsible for his first misstep. His companions of the streets had enticed him into Cardello's pool room. Cardello, known to the police as "The Devil," had noted with a crafty eye the lively youth's possibilities as a useful member of his gang. His approaches were subtle—genial patronage, the pretense of goodfellowship, an intimate glass across a table. The descent to Avernus was facile.

Almost before he knew it, Guisseppi was a sworn member of Cardello's gang of reckless young daredevils and a participant in their thrilling nightly adventures. Home lessons were forgotten. His mother lost her influence over the boy. Even Rosina Stefano, the little beauty of the quarter, who had claimed all his boyish devotion since school days, had no power to turn him from his downward course.

He had been taken by the police after a robbery in which a citizen had been killed. He was condemned to death.

"I forgive everybody," Guisseppi told his death-watch. "Everybody but 'Devil' Cardello. If it had not been for him, I would be free and happy today. He made me a thief. That is his business— teaching young fools to rob for him. He did the planning; we did the jobs. We took the chances, he took the money. I was in the hold-up when the gang committed murder, but I myself killed no man.

"And now the gallows is waiting for me, while Cardello sits in his pool room, immune, prosperous, still planning crimes for other young fools. If I could sink my fingers in his throat and choke his life out, I could die happy. One thing I promise him— if my ghost can come back, I will haunt him to his dying day."

Morning dawned. Father and mother arrived for a final embrace. Rosina gave him a last kiss. A priest administered consolation. The sheriff came and read the death warrant.

Light, flooding through the barred windows from the newly-risen sun, filled the jail with golden radiance as, through the iron corridors, feet shuffling drearily, the death march moved in solemn silence toward the gallows....

DOCTORS WITH stethoscopes watched the final pulsations of ebbing life. They pronounced him dead.

The body was wheeled off on a tumbril into the jail morgue and turned over to assistants of an undertaker employed by the family. Placing it on a stretcher and covering it with a mantle, these hurried it to a motor ambulance waiting in the alley. They slid the stretcher into the vehicle and slammed the doors. The machine got quickly under way, gathered speed, began to fly through the streets.

No sooner had the doors of the ambulance slammed shut than strange things began to happen inside. A physician and a nurse who had been secreted in the car, fell upon the body with feverish haste, stripped it of clothing, dashed alcohol over it from head to foot, began to massage the still warm flesh, chafing the wrists, slapping limbs and torso with smart, stinging thumps.

Then, to conserve what little heat remained, they bundled the body in heavy blankets kept warm in a fireless contrivance. And all the while the ambulance, its gong clanging madly, was plunging at wild speed across the city, swaying from side to side, turning corners on two wheels.

It drew up at last in front of a small undertaking shop on a back street, and the body was hurried inside. Laid upon a table, it looked as if carved from ivory. The coal-black hair curled about the white brow in glossy abandon. The long black lashes of the nearly-shut eyes left deep shadows on the cold pallor of the cheeks. No tint of blood, no sign of life appeared.

Quickly a pulmotor was applied. Oxygen was pumped into the lungs while the body was again vigorously rubbed with alcohol. Guisseppi's father and mother and close relatives stood about in an excited group, eyes wide with feverish interest, their hearts in their mouths. Doctors and nurses worked with dynamic energy.

No sign of rekindled life rewarded them. Their drastic efforts seemed lost labor. The boy's soul, apparently, had journeyed far into the dark places beyond life's pale and was not to be lured back to its fleshly habitation.

Still they persisted, hoping against hope.

"Per dio!" suddenly exclaimed a physician. "Do you see that?"

A faint flush appeared in Guisseppi's cheek.

"He lives again!" burst in a tense whisper from the bloodless lips of the father.

The tiny stain spread, tinging the marble flesh.

"My boy, my darling boy!" cried the mother, wringing her hands in delirious joy.

Guisseppi's chest began to rise and fall slowly, with an almost imperceptible movement of respiration. The suspicion of a smile hovered for a moment at the corners of his mouth.

He opened his eyes. He lived!

ii

"DEVIL" Cardello sat at his desk in a corner of his pool room. The morning was young; no customers had yet arrived to play pool or billiards. Basco, the porter, pail and mop in hand, stood for a moment gossiping.

"They say he died game," remarked Basco.

"They all do," sneered Cardello.

"And kept his mouth shut."

"No; he spilled everything. But the police didn't believe him. That's all that saved me."

"I heard he said his ghost would come back to haunt you."

"Ho! That's a good one," laughed Cardello. "The devil has got him on a spit over the fire and will keep him turning. I should worry about the little fool's ghost!"

A whisper of sound from the direction of the billiard tables caused both men to glance up.

There stood Guisseppi a few paces away, surveying them in silence, a blue-steel revolver in his hand!

"Mother of God!" screamed Basco, dropping his pail and mop, and dashing into the street.

Cardello's eyes bulged from their sockets. His face went as white as paper. Panic, terror, pulled his lips back in a ghastly grin from his chattering teeth. He rose heavily to his feet and stood swaying.

"Guisseppi!" he breathed scarcely above a whisper. "Guisseppi!"

Guisseppi's lips curled.

"Yes," he replied. "The boy you ruined, betrayed, sent to death on the gallows."

"No, no, Guisseppi. The police got you. I was your friend."

"Liar! But for you, I would be happy; my father and mother would not bear the black disgrace of a son hanged on the gallows."

"Why have you come back from the dead, Guisseppi? Why should you haunt your old pal?"

"I have a score to settle with you."

"In the name of God the Father, go back to the grave! Leave me in peace."

Guisseppi raised his weapon.

"I have come to kill you," he said.

Cardello fell upon his knees.

"Spare me, Guisseppi!" he screamed, stretching out imploring arms. "Mercy, Guisseppi, mercy! Don't—"

There was a crash—a leap of fire.

A wisp of blue smoke drifted above a billiard table.

iii

THE POLICE dragnet for the slayer of Cardello was far flung, and zest was added to the man hunt by the offer of $1,000 reward. Throughout the Italian quarter, Basco spread the story of Guisseppi's recrudescence and his ghostly revenge.

The superstitious residents accepted the weird tale with simple faith. Fear of the phantom became rife. Children remained indoors after dark. Pedestrians quickened their pace when passing lonely spots at night. Turning a corner suddenly, they half-expected to come face to face with Guisseppi's ghost, wry-necked from the hangman's noose.

Policeman Rafferty, traveling beat in the neighborhood of Death Corners, was told time and again that Guisseppi's ghost had murdered Cardello. Yes, it was true. Basco had seen the phantom. Others in the colony had seen it slipping like a shadow through some deserted street at night. There was no doubt that Guisseppi had come back from the dead.

Policeman Rafferty laughed. When had ghosts started in bumping off live folks? That was what he would like to know. How could the poor simpletons believe such stuff? Funny lot of jobbies, these dagoes!

But when Policeman Rafferty had heard the story of Guisseppi's ghost for the thousandth time, he scratched his head and did a little thinking, not forgetting the $1,000 reward. Guisseppi was dead. Of course. He had been hanged, and the newspapers had been full of the stories of his execution. So Guisseppi couldn't have killed Cardello. That was out of the question. But could it be possible that dead Guisseppi had a living double? Hah!

Policeman Rafferty got in touch with his favorite stool-pigeon without delay. Shortly thereafter, that worthy laid before him a piece of information which Policeman Rafferty was welcome to for just what it was worth and no more. Guisseppi's ghost had been seen oftenest in the immediate neighborhood of Guisseppi's father's residence. If the fool copper thought he could put a pinch over on a ghost, he might do well to search Guisseppi's old home.

So Policeman Rafferty eased himself one day through a narrow passageway, burst in suddenly at the kitchen door and started to search the premises.

He found Guisseppi whiffing a cigaret in a front room.

"YES, I killed Cardello," said Guisseppi quietly. "I'll go with you."

"But who are you?" asked the policeman. "You can't be Guisseppi. They topped that boy on the gallows."

"I'm Guisseppi, all right. They brought me back to life with a pulmotor."

Policeman Rafferty's jaw dropped.

"Back to life?"

"Yes. I was as dead as stone. I was gone absolutely for an hour."

"Gone? Gone where?"

"I don't know. Somewhere. I remember standing on the trap. Then it seemed I was falling for a long time, falling— from a star— or a high mountain top— through miles of emptiness into midnight blackness. There wasn't any pain. I seemed to land on a deep soft cushion of feathers. I could feel the darkness. It seemed to whirl and billow round me. I couldn't see myself— or feel myself. But I knew, somehow, I was there in the heart of the darkness. I suddenly found myself on a broad road stretching away into night."

"Must ha' been the road to hell," remarked Policeman Rafferty.

"Maybe so. Along this road, I glided with the swiftness of a bird on the wing. I didn't know where I was going—"

"You were bound for hell," said Rafferty.

"I heard music away off in the dark; wonderful orchestra music, violins, 'cellos, wind pipes. It grew louder. I never heard such beautiful music. Through the solid blackness ahead, I saw a great mountain peak standing up, red and shining, against the sky.

"Around me came a glare of bright lights. I was blinded by streaks and splashes of color, darting, rolling, weaving into each other, changing all the time. Reds, purples, greens, blues, rolled over me in great, flashing waves. Flaring colors swirled around me in blazing whirlwinds. I was drowned in gorgeousness. It was as if a cyclone had wrecked a thousand rainbows and buried me beneath their ruins."

"What were these lights?"

"Search me. I don't know. I heard a loud, clear call out of the distance. I pushed through the storm of colors. Across a dark plain, I reached the shining, red mountain. I climbed up until I stood on the peak. I felt fine. Something struck me as a joke. I began laughing. Then, bending close above me, I saw the faces of my mother and father and the doctors."

"Well, Guisseppi," said Policeman Rafferty, "gettin' hung once would ha' been an elegant sufficiency for most men. They'd be leery about takin' a second chance. You must be stuck on dropping through a trap— eh?"

"Yes, they'll hang me again, all right. That's a cinch. You might think me a fool for walking with my eyes open right into this second scrape—"

"A hog," corrected Rafferty.

"I don't know. I came back from the dead to kill Cardello. And I killed him. I hated that fellow. I'd like to have tortured the life out of him, killed him by inches. His cries of agony would have been wine to me. It's hell to be hanged. I ought to know. But I can go back to the gallows now with a light heart. I got Cardello, and I'm ready to take my medicine."

Policeman Rafferty bit a generous chew from his plug of tobacco.

"You Eye-talians," he remarked reflectively, "are a nutty bunch."

iv

THE COURT ROOM was crowded. Guisseppi's strange story had been spread to the four winds by the newspapers, and everybody was eager to see this man who had passed through the mystic portals of death.

"My client will plead guilty to the Cardello murder," said Guisseppi's lawyer. "I take it your honor will agree with me that having paid the penalty of the law for his former crime, he can not again be hanged for that old offense."

"I do agree with you," replied the judge. "The sentence was that on a certain day at a certain hour, he be hanged by the neck until dead. This sentence was carried out. He was hanged. He was officially pronounced dead. It is not for me to say whether death was absolute. Perhaps a spark of life remained which was fanned back to full flame. Possibly his soul actually left the body and was recalled by some cryptic means we do not fully understand.

"But, whatever the truth, his return to life creates a unique situation. I know of no precedent of which the law ever has taken cognizance. So far as I know, this case is the first of its kind in history. Since the sentence pronounced upon this man has been carried out legally in every detail, it is my decision that he can not again be hanged for the crime for which he already has paid the penalty."

"There is one other point which your honor failed to consider," said Guisseppi's lawyer. "It is an axiom of law that a man can not, for the same crime, be placed in jeopardy twice. A man can be placed in no greater jeopardy than when, with a hangman's noose around his neck, he is dropped through the trap-door of a gallows. So, whether Guisseppi was actually dead or whether a faint flicker of life remained, he is forever immune from further punishment for the crime for which he was placed in this great jeopardy."

"Your point may be well taken," replied the judge.

"Now, your honor, we come to the Cardello murder charge. It is at the prisoner's own desire and against my better judgment that I enter a plea of guilty and throw him upon the mercy of the court. There are perhaps some extenuating circumstances. But he is willing to take whatever punishment the court may see fit to inflict. In view of all the circumstances of this extraordinary case, I make a special plea for mercy."

"I will answer your plea," returned the judge, "by ordering the case stricken from the docket and the prisoner discharged from custody."

A murmur of amazement broke the tense hush of the crowded chamber. Guisseppi's lawyer gasped.

"Am I to understand, your honor—"

"This is not mercy but law," the judge continued. "This man is legally dead. He is without the pale of all law. A dead man can commit no crime. No provision in the whole range of jurisprudence recognizes the possibility of a dead man's committing a crime. No man, in the purview of the law, can return from the dead. If we assume that this man was dead, he will remain dead forever in the eyes of the law. If by a miracle he has returned to life and committed murder, there is no punishment within the scope of the statutes that can be decreed against him.

"He is the super-outlaw of all history. Forever beyond the reach of law, the statutes are powerless to deal with him or punish him in any way. If he should shoot down every member of the jury that convicted him, if he should walk into court and kill the judge before whom his case was tried, the law could do nothing to him. He could spend his days as a bandit, robbing, plundering, murdering, and the law could not touch him. Legally he is a ghost, a shadow, an apparition, with no more reality than the beings in a dream. So far as the law is concerned, he does not exist. He can no more be imprisoned, hanged, punished or restricted in his actions than a phantom that exists only in the imagination."

"A most wonderful construction of the law," declared Guisseppi's attorney in happy bewilderment at the turn of events.

"It is less a construction of law as it exists than an admission there is no law applicable to a man legally dead yet actually alive, a man who under the law does not exist. This boy, physically alive but legally dead, has murdered a man with deliberate purpose and malice aforethought. There is no doubt about that. If the law recognized his existence, he should be hanged. Justice demands that he be executed. But he is in some fourth-dimensional legal state beyond the reach of justice. The law is powerless to deal with him. As the administrator of the law, my hands are tied. There is nothing left for me but to set him at liberty."

Despite the decision of the court that under the law he had no existence, Guisseppi left the chamber smiling and happy, acutely conscious of joyous life in every fibre of his being.

POLICEMAN Rafferty was filled with righteous anger when he learned that he could not collect the $1,000 reward. In answer to his indignant questions, he was told the reward was offered for the arrest of "the person or persons guilty of the murder of Cardello," and since Guisseppi was neither a person or anything else that the law recognized as existing, he was not guilty of the crime.

Moreover, it was hinted to him that in capturing Guisseppi, he had arrested nobody. In the end, Policeman Rafferty had to laugh in spite of himself.

"The money's mine, all right," he said philosophically. "Only I don't get it."

v

ROSINA STEFANO sat alone in the little parlor of her home in one of the quaint side-streets of the Italian quarters, picturesque with its jumble of weather-stained frame dwellings and exotic little shops.

It was a chill, dreary night outside. A piping wind made fantastic noises about eaves and gables, and shook the windows as with ghostly hands. A lamp, burning under a blue shade, filled the chamber with eerie shadows. A coal fire was dying to embers in the open grate. There was a knock at the door.

"Entre!"

Guisseppi threw open the door and stood upon the threshold smiling.

"Rosina!"

The girl rose from her chair and stared fixedly at him out of frightened eyes. With a quick gesture, as if for protection against some supernatural menace, she made the sign of the cross.

"I have come back to you, Rosina." Guisseppi took a step toward her and threw open his arms.

Rosina shrank back.

"Do you not still love me?"

Her lips framed a "No" for answer in a terror-stricken whisper.

"Come, my little sweetheart, embrace me."

"No, no, Guisseppi!" Her voice was a tremulous cry. "You are dead!"

"Dead? Certainly I am not dead. I am alive and well, and I love you just as I always loved you."

"You are only a ghost."

"Don't be foolish, little one. Do I look like a ghost? Me? Come into my arms and see how strong they are. Lay your head on my breast and feel the beating of my heart. And every beat of my heart is for you."

Rosina stood motionless. There flashed through her mind old grewsome stories of vampires that lured their victims into their power with love traps and sucked their blood. Momentary horror froze her blood.

"O Guisseppi," she exclaimed, "why have you risen from the dead? Why do you come back to haunt me?"

"Poor girl, do not talk like that. I tell you I am alive—tingling to my finger tips with life and love for you. If I were dead, I should still love you. Death could not kill my love for you. Have you forgotten everything? I thought you loved me. You have often told me so. I believed you would always love me, be true to me forever. Now I find you changed and cold."

"I did love you, Guisseppi. To the depths of my being I loved you." Her words came in a passionate torrent in her liquid native tongue. "You were my earth and heaven, my life, my soul's salvation. All day my thoughts were of you. I dreamed of you at night. There was nothing I would not have done for you. There was nothing I would not have given you. I could have lived for you always. I could have died for you. Did I not come to see you every day in jail? Did I not bring you constantly dishes I had cooked myself with utmost care? Was not I close beside you in the court room every day of the long trial?

"I did everything to soothe and comfort you through all those terrible days. Was it nothing that I remained constant when you were locked in a cell condemned to death? I was true to the very trap-door of the hangman. What greater proof could a woman give of her love than to remain true to a man sentenced as a felon to the eternal disgrace of the gallows?"

She paused for a moment, erect, motionless, her face aflame, seemingly transfigured like the wonder woman of a vision.

"Ah, yes," she went on; "then there was no one like my Guisseppi; no eyes so bright, no lips so tender, no face so dear. You were my god. Can I ever forget the songs you used to sing to me in the happy days before 'Devil' Cardello crossed your life. Your voice was divine. Every note thrilled me. I loved it. To me it was the music of the stars. Nothing in all the world was so beautiful as your voice. But now your voice has changed. There is no longer any music in it. As you speak to me, it seems a voice from the sepulchre."

Guisseppi raised an arresting hand. He threw back his head. He smiled again.

"My voice has changed? Listen, cara mia."

Slowly he began to sing an old Italian serenade. The ballad told of a knight of old who had bade a lily-white maid farewell and gone off to the wars and who, wounded and left for dead on the battlefield, was nursed back to life and returned to find his lady unchanged in her devotion against rivals and temptations.

Soft in the opening cadences, Guisseppi's voice grew in volume and power. It brought out in shades and nuances of wonderful beauty all the charm and romance of the ancient tale—the sadness of farewell, the clash of battle, the wounded soldier's dreams of his sweetheart as life seemed ebbing, the gladness of his homecoming, his happiness in reunited love.

Into the music, Guisseppi threw all the ardor and passion of his own love. There were notes like tears in his voice when, in minor strain, he sang the sorrows and dreams of the soldier; and the final crescendo passage, vivid with renewed love, was a burst of joyous melody straight from his heart.

"And you loved me still the same!" The words rose like incense from an altar. They fluttered about Rosina's ears like a shower of rose leaves.

The girl listened, spellbound. Never in happier days had she heard Guisseppi sing with such compelling sweetness. There seemed a new and wonderful quality in his voice. With his magical music, he was like a conjurer bending her spirit to his subtle enchantments.

On a golden cloud, she was transported to the sunny shores of Italy. A cavalier sang the serenade in the moonlight to his mandolin and, leaning from her latticed balcony, she dropped a rose to him. The bay of Naples spread its crinkled azure before her. Against the dark, star-spangled crystal of the night, sculptured Vesuvius upheld its canopy of smoke.

As the music steeped her senses, she fancied she could feel its golden filaments being drawn about her, binding her more and more closely in a fairy chain. As if under the charm of melodious hypnotism, her old love returned. All the tenderness and passion of her heart went out again to Guisseppi. The siren influence of his voice was transforming her. Her strength of will was crumbling. She stood swaying, helpless, her eyes glowing with rekindled love.

Suddenly the song ended. The spell was broken. Rosina passed a languid hand over her eyes as if to brush away a film of sleep. She seemed to wake from a trance. Guisseppi stood before her radiant, smiling.

"Now will you believe I am alive? Could a dead man sing like that?"

A look of awe overspread Rosina's face.

"You never sang like that before."

"This is the first time my life and happiness were ever at stake on a song."

"The Guisseppi I used to know could not sing like that. You are not Guisseppi. You are a spirit. Some demon has taught you how to sing so beautifully. You have come back with this new devil's voice of yours to lure my soul to hell."

"Ah, Rosina, how can you delude yourself with such foolish fancies. Do you not see me here solid in flesh and blood?"

"I see you, but I know you are only a shadow from the grave."

"If your eyes deceive you, your ears can not. You have heard me sing."

"That was some devil's necromancy."

Guisseppi fell on his knees before her and stretched out his arms in supplication.

"I love you, Rosina. That is all I can say. The hangman's noose was not able to strangle my love for you. Your love is more to me now than it ever was before. The world has turned cold to me. You are my only hope, my refuge. I need you. I want you with all my soul."

The girl shook her head sorrowfully. Her eyes rested upon him with sadness that was touched with renunciation.

"It can never be," she said firmly. "How you are here, I do not know. You are dead; of that I am sure. My love for you was buried in the grave that was dug for you. You are not the boy I once loved. You are something strange and different. I am afraid of you. It is only with horror that I could fancy the kisses of a dead man on my lips. The thought of a ghost's endearments fills me with loathing. Go back to the dead. I can love and reverence those who are gone, but there is no love anywhere in all the world for the dead returned from the grave."

She turned away and stood with her head bowed in her hands.

Slowly Guisseppi struggled to his feet. He staggered weakly against the wall and buried his face in his arms.

"And you, Rosina!" he sobbed.

This was the final, crushing blow. He felt now that he was indeed dead—dead at the grave of his lost love.

vi

A TAXICAB stood in the narrow street near Rosina's home, its driver ready at the wheel, its engine purring. Behind the drawn blinds, sat Guisseppi, aflame with excitement, peering eagerly through the curtains from time to time.

Guisseppi was desperate. There was no place for the dead among the living. He had learned that clearly. As a "living dead man," all his experiences had been tragic. He regretted his resuscitation. He longed for the peace of the grave.

His old friends had fallen away from him. Many believed him a spirit damned, who, by some strange dispensation, was spared to life for yet a little while to make more exquisite the final agony reserved for him. Others were intelligent enough to know the truth, but even these were repelled by a certain unwholesomeness, a savor of the sepulchre, that seemed to cling about him.

The girls he had known in his old, gay days would have nothing to do with him. As handsome as ever, as romantic, with a voice as musical and appealing, he was in their imagination enveloped in an atmosphere of the charnel-house, and the curse of hell was branded on his brow.

His relatives held aloof. Between him and even his mother and father he was conscious that a thin shadow had gradually crept, and the tenderness of their love had been cooled by a ghostly fear of this eerie son who had been down among the dead and read with dead eyes the mysteries beyond the tomb.

He had been unable to find employment. It was as if every business house had up a sign, "No dead men need apply."

In despair and desperation, he fell into his old ways of banditry. He soon had placed to his record a long series of bold robberies. For several of his first lawless exploits, the police arrested him. But invariably the judges before whom he was arraigned set him at liberty.

So after a while the police refused to arrest him. What was the use? This ghost-man would only be set free again.

...While Guisseppi sat hidden from view behind the curtains of his taxicab, ruminating upon the bitterness of his fate, Rosina emerged from her home. Trim and dainty with pink cheeks and sparkling eyes, the young beauty was subtly suggestive of flowers and fragrance as she tripped along the street in the warm sunshine.

As she came abreast of the taxicab, Guisseppi stepped out, caught her in his arms, and swung her into the car. The girl's wild screams shrilled through the slumberous stillness of the quarter and filled the streets with excited throngs as the cab plunged madly forward, dashed around a corner and was soon lost to sight. In a distant part of the city, the car halted before a weather-stained building. Within the dingy doorway Guisseppi disappeared, bearing the kidnapped maiden in his arms.

A little later, Guisseppi appeared before the marriage license clerk in the city hall.

"I'm sorry," said the clerk, "but I can not give you a marriage license."

"Why not?"

"You are dead. You can not marry."

"But I'm going to marry!" shouted Guisseppi defiantly.

"Impossible. If I went through the formality of filling out a license for you, no minister or priest would perform the wedding service. The marriage altar, orange blossoms, the happiness of domestic love are not for the dead."

"But I'm alive! I am only legally dead."

The clerk smiled tolerantly. With a pencil he drew a circle on a sheet of paper.

"Here," said he, "is a cipher. It is the symbol of nothing, but, as a circular pencil mark, it is still something."

He erased every trace of the pencil and exhibited the blank piece of paper.

"This," he explained, "illustrates your status. In human affairs, you are a cipher with the rim rubbed out. A man legally dead is less than nothing."

vii

LUIGI ROMANO, who had succeeded Guisseppi in Rosina's affections, was among the first to hear of the abduction.

Blazing with passion, he laid his plans with quick decision and took the trail. Without great difficulty, he traced the route of the taxicab, block by block, to its destination.

Depressed by his fruitless mission in search of a marriage license, Guisseppi was hurrying toward the building in which Rosina was imprisoned. His eyes were bent upon the ground in deep thought. His face was white and drawn.

Luigi stepped from the shelter of a doorway with a sawed-off shotgun in his hands....

WHEN the police arrived, a little crowd of Italians had gathered.

They shrugged their shoulders and spread their palms. Nobody had seen anything; nobody had heard anything; nobody knew anything. But one thing was plain—the dead man, sprawled on the sidewalk, was dead this time to stay dead.

"O yes," said Attorney Malato, who had looked after Luigi's case, "they arrested Luigi all right. But they turned him loose. Why not? This boy Guisseppi could not be punished by the law, but neither could he claim in the slightest degree the protection of the law. Since he had no legal life, it was no crime to kill him. He was a legal problem, and Luigi solved it in about the only way it could be solved— with a sawed-off shotgun.

___________________

5: Wine on the Desert

Max Brand

Frederick Faust, 1892-1944

Western Roundup, Bantam, 1948

This Week, 7 June 1936

THERE was no hurry, except for the thirst, like clotted salt, in the back of his throat, and Durante rode on slowly, rather enjoying the last moments of dryness before he reached the cold water in Tony's house. There was really no hurry at all. He had almost twenty-four hours' head start, for they would not find his dead man until this morning. After that, there would be perhaps several hours of delay before the sheriff gathered a sufficient posse and started on his trail. Or perhaps the sheriff would be fool enough to come alone.

Durante had been able to see the wheel and fan of Tony's windmill for more than an hour, but he could not make out the ten acres of the vineyard until he had topped the last rise, for the vines had been planted in a hollow. The lowness of the ground, Tony used to say, accounted for the water that gathered in the well during the wet season. The rains sank through the desert sand, through the gravels beneath, and gathered in a bowl of clay hardpan far below.

In the middle of the rainless season the well ran dry but, long before that, Tony had every drop of the water pumped up into a score of tanks made of cheap corrugated iron. Slender pipe lines carried the water from the tanks to the vines and from time to time let them sip enough life to keep them until the winter darkened overhead suddenly, one November day, and the rain came down, and all the earth made a great hushing sound as it drank. Durante had heard that whisper of drinking when he was here before; but he never had seen the place in the middle of the long drought.

The windmill looked like a sacred emblem to Durante, and the twenty stodgy, tar-painted tanks blessed his eyes; but a heavy sweat broke out at once from his body. For the air of the hollow, unstirred by wind, was hot and still as a bowl of soup. A reddish soup. The vines were powdered with thin red dust, also. They were wretched, dying things to look at, for the grapes had been gathered, the new wine had been made, and now the leaves hung in ragged tatters.

Durante rode up to the squat adobe house and right through the entrance into the patio. A flowering vine clothed three sides on the little court. Durante did not know the name of the plant, but it had large white blossoms with golden hearts that poured sweetness on the air. Durante hated the sweetness. It made him more thirsty.

He threw the reins of his mule and strode into the house. The water cooler stood in the hall outside the kitchen. There were two jars made of a porous stone, very ancient things, and the liquid which distilled through the pores kept the contents cool. The jar on the left held water; that on the right contained wine. There was a big tin dipper hanging on a peg beside each jar. Durante tossed off the cover of the vase on the left and plunged it in until the delicious coolness closed well above his wrist.

"Hey, Tony," he called. Out of his dusty throat the cry was a mere groaning. He drank and called again, clearly, "Tony!"

A voice pealed from the distance.

Durante, pouring down the second dipper of water, smelled the alkali dust which had shaken off his own clothes. It seemed to him that heat was radiating like light from his clothes, from his body, and the cool dimness of the house was soaking it up. He heard the wooden leg of Tony bumping on the ground, and Durante grinned; then Tony came in with that hitch and sideswing with which he accommodated the stiffness of his artificial leg. His brown face shone with sweat as though a special ray of light were focused on it.

"Ah, Dick!" he said. "Good old Dick!... How long since you came last!... Wouldn't Julia be glad! Wouldn't she be glad!'

"Ain't she here?" asked Durante, jerking his head suddenly away from the dripping dipper.

"She's away at Nogalez," said Tony. "It gets so hot. I said, 'You go up to Nogalez, Julia, where the wind don't forget to blow.' She cried, but I made her go."

"Did she cry?" asked Durante.

"Julia... that's a good girl," said Tony.

"Yeah. You bet she's good," said Durante. He put the dipper quickly to his lips but did not swallow for a moment; he was grinning too widely. Afterward he said: "You wouldn't throw some water into that mule of mine, would you, Tony?"

Tony went out with his wooden leg clumping loud on the wooden floor, softly in the patio dust. Durante found the hammock in the corner of the patio. He lay down in it and watched the color of sunset flush the mists of desert dust that rose to the zenith. The water was soaking through his body; hunger began, and then the rattling of pans in the kitchen and the cheerful cry of Tony's voice:

"What you want, Dick? I got some pork. You don't want pork. I'll make you some good Mexican beans. Hot. Ah ha, I know that old Dick. I have plenty of good wine for you, Dick. Tortillas. Even Julia can't make tortillas like me... And what about a nice young rabbit?"

"All blowed full of buckshot?" growled Durante.

"No, no. I kill them with the rifle."

"You kill rabbits with a rifle?" repeated Durante, with a quick interest.

"It's the only gun I have," said Tony. "If I catch them in the sights, they are dead... A wooden leg cannot walk very far... I must kill them quick. You see? They come close to the house about sunrise and flop their ears. I shoot through the head."

"Yeah? Yeah?" muttered Durante. "Through the head?" He relaxed, scowling. He passed his hand over his face, over his head.

Then Tony began to bring the food out into the patio and lay it on a small wooden table; a lantern hanging against the wall of the house included the table in a dim half circle of light. They sat there and ate. Tony had scrubbed himself for the meal. His hair was soaked in water and sleeked back over his round skull. A man in the desert might be willing to pay five dollars for as much water as went to the soaking of that hair.

Everything was good. Tony knew how to cook, and he knew how to keep the glasses filled with his wine.

"This is old wine. This is my father's wine. Eleven years old," said Tony. "You look at the light through it. You see that brown in the red? That's the soft that time puts in good wine, my father always said."

"What killed your father?" asked Durante.

Tony lifted his hand as though he were listening or as though he were pointing out a thought.

"The desert killed him. I found his mule. It was dead, too. There was a leak in the canteen. My father was only five miles away when the buzzards showed him to me."

"Five miles? Just an hour... Good Lord!" said Durante. He stared with big eyes. "Just dropped down and died?" he asked.

"No," said Tony. "When you die of thirst, you always die just one way... First you tear off your shirt, then your undershirt. That's to be cooler... And the sun comes and cooks your bare skin... And then you think... there is water everywhere, if you dig down far enough. You begin to dig. The dust comes up your nose. You start screaming. You break your nails in the sand. You wear the flesh off the tips of your fingers, to the bone." He took a quick swallow of wine.

"Without you seen a man die of thirst, how d'you know they start to screaming?" asked Durante.

"They got a screaming look when you find them," said Tony. "Take some more wine. The desert never can get to you here. My father showed me the way to keep the desert away from the hollow. We live pretty good here? No?"

"Yeah," said Durante, loosening his shirt collar. "Yeah, pretty good."

Afterward he slept well in the hammock until the report of a rifle waked him and he saw the color of dawn in the sky. It was such a great, round bowl that for a moment he felt as though he were above, looking down into it.

He got up and saw Tony coming in holding a rabbit by the ears, the rifle in his other hand.

"You see?" said Tony. "Breakfast came and called on us!" He laughed.

Durante examined the rabbit with care. It was nice and fat and it had been shot through the head. Through the middle of the head. Such a shudder went down the back of Durante that he washed gingerly before breakfast; he felt that his blood was cooled for the entire day.

It was a good breakfast, too, with flapjacks and stewed rabbit with green peppers, and a quart of strong coffee. Before they had finished, the sun struck through the east window and started them sweating.

"Gimme a look at that rifle of yours, Tony, will you?" Durante asked.

"You take a look at my rifle, but don't you steal the luck that's in it," laughed Tony. He brought the fifteen-shot Winchester.

"Loaded right to the brim?" asked Durante.

"I always load it full the minute I get back home," said Tony.

"Tony, come outside with me," commanded Durante.

They went out from the house. The sun turned the sweat of Durante to hot water and then dried his skin so that his clothes felt transparent.

"Tony, I gotta be damn mean," said Durante. "Stand right there where I can see you. Don't try to get close... Now listen... The sheriff's gunna be along this trail sometime today, looking for me. He'll load up himself and all his gang with water out of your tanks. Then he'll follow my sign across the desert. Get me? He'll follow if he finds water on the place. But he's not gunna find water."

"What you done, poor Dick?" said Tony. "Now look... I could hide you in the old wine cellar where nobody..."

"The sheriff's not gunna find any water," said Durante. "It's gunna be like this."

He put the rifle to his shoulder, aimed, fired. The shot struck the base of the nearest tank, ranging down through the bottom. A semicircle of darkness began to stain the soil near the edge of the iron wall.

Tony fell on his knees. "No, no, Dick! Good Dick!" he said. "Look! All the vineyard. It will die. It will turn into old, dead wood. Dick..."

"Shut your face," said Durante. "Now I've started, I kinda like the job."

Tony fell on his face and put his hands over his ears. Durante drilled a bullet hole through the tanks, one after another. Afterward, he leaned on the rifle.

"Take my canteen and go in and fill it with water out of the cooling jar," he said. "Snap into it, Tony!"

Tony got up. He raised the canteen and looked around him, not at the tanks from which the water was pouring so that the noise of the earth drinking was audible, but at the rows of his vineyard. Then he went into the house.

Durante mounted his mule. He shifted the rifle to his left hand and drew out the heavy Colt from its holster. Tony came dragging back to him, his head down. Durante watched Tony with a careful revolver but he gave up the canteen without lifting his eyes.

"The trouble with you, Tony," said Durante, "is you're yellow. I'd of fought a tribe of wildcats with my bare hands before I'd let 'em do what I'm doin' to you. But you sit back and take it."

Tony did not seem to hear. He stretched out his hands to the vines.

"Ah, my God," said Tony. "Will you let them all die?"

Durante shrugged his shoulders. He shook the canteen to make sure that it was full. It was so brimming that there was hardly room for the liquid to make a sloshing sound. Then he turned the mule and kicked it into a dogtrot.

Half a mile from the house of Tony, he threw the empty rifle to the ground. There was no sense packing that useless weight, and Tony with his peg leg would hardly come this far.

Durante looked back, a mile or so later, and saw the little image of Tony picking up the rifle from the dust, then staring earnestly after his guest. Durante remembered the neat little hole clipped through the head of the rabbit. Wherever he went, his trail never could return again to the vineyard in the desert. But then, commencing to picture to himself the arrival of the sweating sheriff and his posse at the house of Tony, Durante laughed heartily.

The sheriff's posse could get plenty of wine, of course, but without water a man could not hope to make the desert voyage, even with a mule or a horse to help him on the way. Durante patted the full, rounding side of his canteen. He might even now begin with the first sip but it was a luxury to postpone pleasure until desire became greater.

He raised his eyes along the trail. Close by, it was merely dotted with occasional bones, but distance joined the dots into an unbroken chalk line which wavered with a strange leisure across the Apache Desert, pointing toward the cool blue promise of the mountains. The next morning he would be among them.

A coyote whisked out of a gully and ran like a gray puff of dust on the wind. His tongue hung out like a little red rag from the side of his mouth; and suddenly Durante was dry to the marrow. He uncorked and lifted his canteen. It had a slightly sour smell; perhaps the sacking which covered it had grown a trifle old. And then he poured a great mouthful of lukewarm liquid. He had swallowed it before his senses could give him warning.

It was wine.

He looked first of all toward the mountains. They were as calmly blue, as distant as when he had started that morning. Twenty-four hours not on water, but on wine.

"I deserve it," said Durante. "I trusted him to fill the canteen... I deserve it. Curse him!"

With a mighty resolution, he quieted the panic in his soul. He would not touch the stuff until noon. Then he would take one discreet sip. He would win through.

Hours went by. He looked at his watch and found it was only ten o'clock. And he had thought that it was on the verge of noon! He uncorked the wine and drank freely and, corking the canteen, felt almost as though he needed a drink of water more than before. He sloshed the contents of the canteen. Already it was horribly light.

Once, he turned the mule and considered the return trip; but he could remember the head of the rabbit too clearly, drilled right through the center. The vineyard, the rows of old twisted, gnarled little trunks with the bark peeling off... every vine was to Tony like a human life. And Durante had condemned them all to death.

He faced the blue of the mountains again. His heart raced in his breast with terror. Perhaps it was fear and not the suction of that dry and deadly air that made his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth.

The day grew old. Nausea began to work in his stomach, nausea alternating with sharp pains. When he looked down, he saw that there was blood on his boots. He had been spurring the mule until the red ran down from its flanks. It went with a curious stagger, like a rocking horse with a broken rocker; and Durante grew aware that he had been keeping the mule at a gallop for a long time. He pulled it to a halt. It stood with wide-braced legs. Its head was down. When he leaned from the saddle, he saw that its mouth was open.

"It's gunna die," said Durante. "It's gunna die... what a fool I been..."

The mule did not die until after sunset. Durante left everything except his revolver. He packed the weight of that for an hour and discarded it, in turn. His knees were growing weak. When he looked up at the stars, they shone white and clear for a moment only, and then whirled into little racing circles and scrawls of red.

He lay down. He kept his eyes closed and waited for the shaking to go out of his body, but it would not stop. And every breath of darkness was like an inhalation of black dust.

He got up and went on, staggering. Sometimes he found himself running.

Before you die of thirst, you go mad. He kept remembering that. His tongue had swollen big. Before it choked him, if he lanced it with his knife the blood would help him; he would be able to swallow. Then he remembered that the taste of blood is salty.

Once, in his boyhood, he had ridden through a pass with his father and they had looked down on the sapphire of a mountain lake, a hundred thousand million tons of water as cold as snow...

When he looked up, now, there were no stars; and this frightened him terribly. He never had seen a desert night so dark. His eyes were failing, he was being blinded. When the morning came, he would not be able to see the mountains, and he would walk around and around in a circle until he dropped and died.

No stars, no wind; the air as still as the waters of a stale pool, and he in the dregs at the bottom...

He seized his shirt at the throat and tore it away so that it hung in two rags from his hips.

He could see the earth only well enough to stumble on the rocks. But there were no stars in the heavens. He was blind: he had no more hope than a rat in a well. Ah, but Italian devils know how to put poison in wine that steal all the senses or any one of them: and Tony had chosen to blind Durante.

He heard a sound like water. It was the swishing of the soft deep sand through which he was treading; sand so soft that a man could dig it away with his bare hands...

AFTERWARD, after many hours, out of the blind face of that sky the rain began to fall. It made first a whispering and then a delicate murmur like voices conversing, but after that, just at the dawn, it roared like the hoofs of ten thousand charging horses. Even through that thundering confusion the big birds with naked heads and red, raw necks found their way down to one place in the Apache Desert.

____________________

6: The Grove of Ashtaroth

John Buchan

1875-1940

Blackwood's Magazine, June 1910

C'est enfin que dans leurs prunelles

Rit et pleure— fastidieux—

L'amour des choses éternelles,

Des vieux morts et des anciens dieux!

—Paul Verlaine.

WE WERE sitting around the camp fire, some thirty miles north of a place called Taqui, when Lawson announced his intention of finding a home. He had spoken little the last day or two, and I guessed that he had struck a vein of private reflection. I thought it might be a new mine or irrigation scheme, and I was surprised to find that it was a country-house.

'I don't think I shall go back to England,' he said, kicking a sputtering log into place. 'I don't see why I should. For business purposes I am far more useful to the firm in South Africa than in Throgmorton Street. I have no relations left except a third cousin, and I have never cared a rush for living in town. That beastly house of mine in Hill Street will fetch what I gave for it— Isaacson cabled about it the other day, offering for furniture and all. I don't want to go into Parliament, and I hate shooting little birds and tame deer. I am one of those fellows who are born colonial at heart, and I don't see why I shouldn't arrange my life as I please. Besides, for ten years I have been falling in love with this country, and now I am up to the neck.'

He flung himself back in the camp-chair till the canvas creaked, and looked at me below his eyelids. I remember glancing at the lines of him, and thinking what a fine make of a man he was. In his untanned field-boots, breeches, and grey shirt he looked the born wilderness-hunter, though less than two months before he had been driving down to the City every morning in the sombre regimentals of his class. Being a fair man, he was gloriously tanned, and there was a clear line at his shirt-collar to mark the limits of his sunburn. I had first known him years ago, when he was a broker's clerk working on half-commission. Then he had gone to South Africa, and soon I heard he was a partner in a mining house which was doing wonders with some gold areas in the North. The next step was his return to London as the new millionaire— young, good-looking, wholesome in mind and body, and much sought after by the mothers of marriageable girls. We played polo together, and hunted a little in the season, but there were signs that he did not propose to become a conventional English gentleman. He refused to buy a place in the country, though half the Homes of England were at his disposal. He was a very busy man, he declared, and had not time to be a squire. Besides, every few months he used to rush out to South Africa. I saw that he was restless, for he was always badgering me to go big game hunting with him in some remote part of the earth. There was that in his eyes, too, which marked him out from the ordinary blond type of our countrymen. They were large and brown and mysterious, and the light of another race was in their odd depths.

To hint such a thing would have meant a breach of his friendship, for Lawson was very proud of his birth. When he first made his fortune he had gone to the Heralds to discover his family, and these obliging gentlemen had provided a pedigree. It appeared that he was a scion of the house of Lowson or Lowieson, an ancient and rather disreputable clan on the Scottish side of the Border. He took a shooting in Teviotdale on the strength of it, and used to commit lengthy Border ballads to memory. But I had known his father, a financial journalist who never quite succeeded, and I had heard of a grandfather who sold antiques in a back street in Brighton. The latter, I think, had not changed his name, and still frequented the synagogue. The father was a progressive Christian, and the mother had been a blond Saxon from the Midlands. In my mind there was no doubt, as I caught Lawson's heavy-lidded eyes fixed on me. My friend was of a more ancient race than the Lowsons of the Border.

'Where are you thinking of looking for your house?' I asked. 'In Natal or in the Cape Peninsula? You might get the Fishers' place if you paid a price.'

'The Fishers' place be hanged!' he said crossly. 'I don't want any stuccoed, overgrown Dutch farm. I might as well be at Roehampton as in the Cape.'

He got up and walked to the far side of the fire, where a lane ran down through thorn-scrub to a gully of the hills. The moon was silvering the bush of the plains, forty miles off and three thousand feet below us.

'I am going to live somewhere hereabouts,' he answered at last.

I whistled. 'Then you've got to put your hand in your pocket, old man. You'll have to make everything, including a map of the countryside.'

'I know,' he said; 'that's where the fun comes. Hang it all, why shouldn't I indulge my fancy? I'm uncommonly well off, and I haven't chick or child to leave it to. Supposing I'm a hundred miles from rail-head, what about it? I'll make a motor-road and fix up a telephone. I'll grow most of my supplies, and start a colony to provide labour. When you come and stay with me, you'll get the best food and drink on earth, and sport that will make your mouth water. I'll put Lochleven trout in these streams— at 6000 feet you can do anything. We'll have a pack of hounds, too, and we can drive pig in the woods, and if we want big game there are the Mangwe flats at our feet. I tell you I'll make such a country-house as nobody ever dreamed of. A man will come plumb out of stark savagery into lawns and rose-gardens.' Lawson flung himself into his chair again and smiled dreamily at the fire.

'But why here, of all places?' I persisted. I was not feeling very well and did not care for the country.

'I can't quite explain. I think it's the sort of land I have always been looking for. I always fancied a house on a green plateau in a decent climate looking down on the tropics. I like heat and colour, you know, but I like hills too, and greenery, and the things that bring back Scotland. Give me a cross between Teviotdale and the Orinoco, and, by Gad! I think I've got it here.'

I watched my friend curiously, as with bright eyes and eager voice he talked of his new fad. The two races were very clear in him— the one desiring gorgeousness, and other athirst for the soothing spaces of the North. He began to plan out the house. He would get Adamson to design it, and it was to grow out of the landscape like a stone on the hillside. There would be wide verandas and cool halls, but great fireplaces against winter time. It would all be very simple and fresh— 'clean as morning' was his odd phrase; but then another idea supervened, and he talked of bringing the Tintorets from Hill Street. 'I want it to be a civilised house, you know. No silly luxury, but the best pictures and china and books...I'll have all the furniture made after the old plain English models out of native woods. I don't want second-hand sticks in a new country. Yes, by Jove, the Tintorets are a great idea, and all those Ming pots I bought. I had meant to sell them, but I'll have them out here.'

He talked for a good hour of what he would do, and his dream grew richer as he talked, till by the time he went to bed he had sketched something more like a palace than a country-house. Lawson was by no means a luxurious man. At present he was well content with a Wolseley valise, and shaved cheerfully out of a tin mug. It struck me as odd that a man so simple in his habits should have so sumptuous a taste in bric-a-brac. I told myself, as I turned in, that the Saxon mother from the Midlands had done little to dilute the strong wine of the East.

It drizzled next morning when we inspanned, and I mounted my horse in a bad temper. I had some fever on me, I think, and I hated this lush yet frigid tableland, where all the winds on earth lay in wait for one's marrow. Lawson was, as usual, in great spirits. We were not hunting, but shifting our hunting ground, so all morning we travelled fast to the north along the rim of the uplands.

At midday it cleared, and the afternoon was a pageant of pure colour. The wind sank to a low breeze; the sun lit the infinite green spaces, and kindled the wet forest to a jewelled coronal. Lawson gaspingly admired it all, as he cantered bareheaded up a bracken-clad slope. 'God's country,' he said twenty times. 'I've found it.' Take a piece of Sussex downland; put a stream in every hollow and a patch of wood; and at the edge, where the cliffs at home would fall to the sea, put a cloak of forest muffling the scarp and dropping thousands of feet to the blue plains. Take the diamond air of the Gornergrat, and the riot of colour which you get by a West Highland lochside in late September. Put flowers everywhere, the things we grow in hothouses, geraniums like sun-shades and arums like trumpets. That will give you a notion of the countryside we were in. I began to see that after all it was out of the common.

And just before sunset we came over a ridge and found something better. It was a shallow glen, half a mile wide, down which ran a blue-grey stream in linns like the Spean, till at the edge of the plateau it leaped into the dim forest in a snowy cascade. The opposite side ran up in gentle slopes to a rocky knoll, from which the eye had a noble prospect of the plains. All down the glen were little copses, half-moons of green edging some silvery shore of the burn, or delicate clusters of tall trees nodding on the hill-brow. The place so satisfied the eye that for the sheer wonder of its perfection we stopped and stared in silence for many minutes.

Then 'The House,' I said, and Lawson replied softly, 'The House!'

We rode slowly into the glen in the mulberry gloaming. Our transport wagons were half an hour behind, so we had time to explore. Lawson dismounted and plucked handfuls of flowers from the water-meadows. He was singing to himself all the time— an old French catch about Cade Roussell and his trois maisons.

'Who owns it?' I asked.

'My firm, as like as not. We have miles of land about here. But whoever the man is, he has got to sell. Here I build my tabernacle, old man. Here, and nowhere else!'

In the very centre of the glen, in a loop of the stream, was one copse which even in that half light struck me as different from the others. It was of tall, slim, fairy-like trees, the kind of wood the monks painted in old missals. No, I rejected the thought. It was no Christian wood. It was not a copse, but a 'grove'— one such as Artemis may have flitted through in the moonlight. It was small, forty or fifty yards in diameter, and there was a dark something at the heart of it which for a second I thought was a house.

We turned between the slender trees, and— was it fancy?— an odd tremor went through me. I felt as if I were penetrating the temenos of some strange and lovely divinity, the goddess of this pleasant vale. There was a spell in the air, it seemed, and an odd dead silence.

Suddenly my horse started at a flutter of light wings. A flock of doves rose from the branches, and I saw the burnished green of their plumes against the opal sky. Lawson did not seem to notice them. I saw his keen eyes staring at the centre of the grove and what stood there.

It was a little conical tower, ancient and lichened, but, so far as I could judge, quite flawless. You know the famous Conical Temple at Zimbabwe, of which prints are in every guide-book. This was of the same type, but a thousandfold more perfect. It stood about thirty feet high, of solid masonry, without door or window or cranny, as shapely as when it first came from the hands of the old builders. Again I had the sense of breaking in on a sanctuary. What right had I, a common vulgar modern, to be looking at this fair thing, among these delicate trees, which some white goddess had once taken for her shrine?

Lawson broke in on my absorption. 'Let's get out of this,' he said hoarsely, and he took my horse's bridle (he had left his own beast at the edge) and led him back to the open. But I noticed that his eyes were always turning back, and that his hand trembled.

'That settles it,' I said after supper. 'What do you want with your mediaeval Venetians and your Chinese pots now? You will have the finest antique in the world in your garden— a temple as old as time, and in a land which they say has no history. You had the right inspiration this time.'

I think I have said that Lawson had hungry eyes. In his enthusiasm they used to glow and brighten; but now, as he sat looking down at the olive shades of the glen, they seemed ravenous in their fire. He had hardly spoken a word since we left the wood.

'Where can I read about these things?' he asked, and I gave him the names of books.

Then, an hour later, he asked me who were the builders. I told him the little I knew about Phoenician and Sabaean wanderings, and the ritual of Sidon and Tyre. He repeated some names to himself and went soon to bed.

As I turned in, I had one last look over the glen, which lay ivory and black in the moon. I seemed to hear a faint echo of wings, and to see over the little grove a cloud of light visitants. 'The Doves of Ashtaroth have come back,' I said to myself. 'It is a good omen. They accept the new tenant.' But as I fell asleep I had a sudden thought that I was saying something rather terrible.

ii

THREE YEARS later, pretty nearly to a day, I came back to see what Lawson had made of his hobby. He had bidden me often to Welgevonden, as he chose to call it— though I do not know why he should have fixed a Dutch name to a countryside where Boer never trod. At the last there had been some confusion about dates, and I wired the time of my arrival, and set off without an answer. A motor met me at the queer little wayside station of Taqui, and after many miles on a doubtful highway I came to the gates of the park, and a road on which it was a delight to move. Three years had wrought little difference in the land-scape. Lawson had done some planting— conifers and flowering shrubs and such-like— but wisely he had resolved that Nature had for the most part forestalled him. All the same, he must have spent a mint of money. The drive could not have been beaten in England, and fringes of mown turf on either hand had been pared out of the lush meadows. When we came over the edge of the hill and looked down on the secret glen, I could not repress a cry of pleasure. The house stood on the farther ridge, the viewpoint of the whole neighbourhood; and its dark timbers and white rough-cast walls melted into the hillside as if it had been there from the beginning of things. The vale below was ordered in lawns and gardens. A blue lake received the rapids of the stream, and its banks were a maze of green shades and glorious masses of blossom. I noticed, too, that the little grove we had explored on our first visit stood alone in a big stretch of lawn, so that its perfection might be clearly seen. Lawson had excellent taste, or he had had the best advice.

The butler told me that his master was expected home shortly, and took me into the library for tea. Lawson had left his Tintorets and Ming pots at home after all. It was a long, low room, panelled in teak half-way up the walls, and the shelves held a multitude of fine bindings. There were good rugs on the parquet floor, but no ornaments anywhere, save three. On the carved mantelpiece stood two of the old soapstone birds which they used to find at Zimbabwe, and between, on an ebony stand, a half moon of alabaster, curiously carved with zodiacal figures. My host had altered his scheme of furnishing, but I approved the change.

He came in about half-past six, after I had consumed two cigars and all but fallen asleep. Three years make a difference in most men, but I was not prepared for the change in Lawson. For one thing, he had grown fat. In place of the lean young man I had known, I saw heavy, flaccid being, who shuffled in his gait, and seemed tired and listless. His sunburn had gone, and his face was as pasty as a city clerk's. He had been walking, and wore shapeless flannel clothes, which hung loose even on his enlarged figure. And the worst of it was, that he did not seem over-pleased to see me. He murmured something about my journey, and then flung himself into an arm-chair and looked out of the window.

I asked him if he had been ill.

'Ill! No!' he said crossly. 'Nothing of the kind. I'm perfectly well.'

'You don't look as fit as this place should make you. What do you do with yourself? Is the shooting as good as you hoped?'

He did not answer, but I thought I heard him mutter something like 'shooting be damned.'

Then I tried the subject of the house. I praised it extravagantly, but with conviction. 'There can be no place like it in the world,' I said.

He turned his eyes on me at last, and I saw that they were as deep and restless as ever. With his pallid face they made him look curiously Semitic. I had been right in my view about his ancestry.

'Yes,'he said slowly, 'there is no place like it— in the world.'

Then he pulled himself to his feet. 'I'm going to change,' he said. 'Dinner is at eight. Ring for Travers, and he'll show you your room.'

I dressed in a noble bedroom, with an outlook over the garden-vale and the escarpment to the far line of the plains, now blue and saffron in the sunset. I dressed in an ill temper, for I was seriously offended with Lawson, and also seriously alarmed. He was either very unwell or going out of his mind, and it was clear, too, that he would resent any anxiety on his account. I ransacked my memory for rumours, but found none. I had heard nothing of him except that he had been extraordinarily successful in his speculations, and that from his hill-top he directed his firm's operations with uncommon skill. If Lawson was sick or mad, nobody knew of it.

Dinner was a trying ceremony. Lawson, who used to be rather particular in his dress, appeared in a kind of smoking suit and a flannel collar. He spoke scarcely a word to me, but cursed the servants with a brutality which left me aghast. A wretched footman in his nervousness spilt some sauce over his sleeve. Lawson dashed the dish from his hand, and volleyed abuse with a sort of epileptic fury. Also he, who had been the most abstemious of men, swallowed disgusting quantities of champagne and old brandy.

He had given up smoking, and half an hour after we left the dining-room he announced his intention of going to bed. I watched him as he waddled upstairs with a feeling of angry bewilderment. Then I went to the library and lit a pipe. I would leave first thing in the morning— on that I was determined. But as I sat gazing at the moon of alabaster and the soapstone birds my anger evaporated, and concern took its place. I remembered what a fine fellow Lawson had been, what good times we had had together. I remembered especially that evening when we had found this valley and given rein to our fancies. What horrid alchemy in the place had turned a gentleman into a brute? I thought of drink and drugs and madness and insomnia, but I could fit none of them into my conception of my friend. I did not consciously rescind my resolve to depart, but I had a notion that I would not act on it.

The sleepy butler met me as I went to bed. 'Mr Lawson's room is at the end of your corridor, sir,' he said. 'He don't sleep over well, so you may hear him stirring in the night. At what hour would you like breakfast, sir? Mr Lawson mostly has his in bed.'

My room opened from the great corridor, which ran the full length of the front of the house. So far as I could make out, Lawson was three rooms off, a vacant bedroom and his servant's room being between us. I felt tired and cross, and tumbled into bed as fast as possible. Usually I sleep well, but now I was soon conscious that my drowsiness was wearing off and that I was in for a restless night. I got up and laved my face, turned the pillows, thought of sheep coming over a hill and clouds crossing the sky; but none of the old devices were of any use. After about an hour of make-believe I surrendered myself to facts, and, lying on my back, stared at the white ceiling and the patches of moonshine on the walls.

It certainly was an amazing night. I got up, put on a dressing-gown, and drew a chair to the window. The moon was almost at its full, and the whole plateau swam in a radiance of ivory and silver. The banks of the stream were black, but the lake had a great belt of light athwart it, which made it seem like a horizon, and the rim of land beyond like a contorted cloud. Far to the right I saw the delicate outlines of the little wood which I had come to think of as the Grove of Ashtaroth. I listened. There was not a sound in the air. The land seemed to sleep peacefully beneath the moon, and yet I had a sense that the peace was an illusion. The place was feverishly restless.

I could have given no reason for my impression, but there it was. Something was stirring in the wide moonlit landscape under its deep mask of silence. I felt as I had felt on the evening three years ago when I had ridden into the grove. I did not think that the influence, whatever it was, was maleficent. I only knew that it was very strange, and kept me wakeful.

By and by I bethought me of a book. There was no lamp in the corridor save the moon, but the whole house was bright as I slipped down the great staircase and across the hall to the library. I switched on the lights and then switched them off. They seemed a profanation, and I did not need them.

I found a French novel, but the place held me and I stayed. I sat down in an armchair before the fireplace and the stone birds. Very odd those gawky things, like prehistoric Great Auks, looked in the moonlight. I remember that the alabaster moon shimmered like translucent pearl, and I fell to wondering about its history. Had the old Sabaeans used such a jewel in their rites in the Grove of Ashtaroth?

Then I heard footsteps pass the window. A great house like this would have a watchman, but these quick shuffling footsteps were surely not the dull plod of a servant. They passed on to the grass and died away. I began to think of getting back to my room.

In the corridor, I noticed that Lawson's door was ajar, and that a light had been left burning. I had the unpardonable curiosity to peep in. The room was empty, and the bed had not been slept in. Now I knew whose were the footsteps outside the library window.

I lit a reading-lamp and tried to interest myself in Cruelle Enigme. But my wits were restless, and I could not keep my eyes on the page. I flung the book aside and sat down again by the window. The feeling came over me that I was sitting in a box at some play. The glen was a huge stage, and at any moment the players might appear on it. My attention was strung as high as if I had been waiting for the advent of some world-famous actress. But nothing came. Only the shadows shifted and lengthened as the moon moved across the sky.

Then quite suddenly the restlessness left me, and at the same moment the silence was broken by the crow of a cock and the rustling of trees in a light wind. I felt very sleepy, and was turning to bed when again I heard footsteps without. From the window I could see a figure moving across the garden towards the house. It was Lawson, got up in the sort of towel dressing-gown that one wears on board ship. He was walking slowly and painfully, as if very weary. I did not see his face, but the man's whole air was that of extreme fatigue and dejection.

I tumbled into bed and slept profoundly till long after daylight.

iii

THE MAN who valeted me was Lawson's own servant. As he was laying out my clothes I asked after the health of his master, and was told that he had slept ill and would not rise till late. Then the man, an anxious-faced Englishman, gave me some information on his own account. Mr Lawson was having one of his bad turns. It would pass away in a day or two, but till it had gone he was fit for nothing. He advised me to see Mr Jobson, the factor, who would look to my entertainment in his master's absence.

Jobson arrived before luncheon, and the sight of him was the first satisfactory thing about Welgevonden. He was a big, gruff Scot from Roxburghshire, engaged, no doubt, by Lawson as a duty to his Border ancestry. He had short grizzled whiskers, a weather-worn face, and a shrewd, calm blue eye. I knew now why the place was in such perfect order.

We began with sport, and Jobson explained what I could have in the way of fishing and shooting. His exposition was brief and business-like, and all the while I could see his eye searching me. It was clear that he had much to say on other matters than sport.

I told him that I had come here with Lawson three years before, when he chose the site. Jobson continued to regard me curiously. 'I've heard tell of ye from Mr Lawson. Ye're an old friend of his, I understand.'

'The oldest,' I said. 'And I am sorry to find that the place does not agree with him. Why it doesn't I cannot imagine, for you look fit enough. Has he been seedy for long?'

'It comes and goes,' said Mr Jobson. 'Maybe once a month he has a bad turn. But on the whole it agrees with him badly. He's no' the man he was when I first came here.'

Jobson was looking at me very seriously and frankly. I risked a question. 'What do you suppose is the matter?'

He did not reply at once, but leaned forward and tapped my knee.

'I think it's something that doctors canna cure. Look at me, sir. I've always been counted a sensible man, but if I told you what was in my head you would think me daft. But I have one word for you. Bide till tonight is past and then speir your question. Maybe you and me will be agreed.'

The factor rose to go. As he left the room he flung me back a remark over his shoulder— 'Read the eleventh chapter of the First Book of Kings.'

After luncheon I went for a walk. First I mounted to the crown of the hill and feasted my eyes on the unequalled loveliness of the view. I saw the far hills in Portuguese territory, a hundred miles away, lifting up thin blue fingers into the sky. The wind blew light and fresh, and the place was fragrant with a thousand delicate scents. Then I descended to the vale, and followed the stream up through the garden. Poinsettias and oleanders were blazing in coverts, and there was a paradise of tinted water-lilies in the slacker reaches. I saw good trout rise at the fly, but I did not think about fishing. I was searching my memory for a recollection which would not come. By and by I found myself beyond the garden, where the lawns ran to the fringe of Ashtaroth's Grove.

It was like something I remembered in an old Italian picture. Only, as my memory drew it, it should have been peopled with strange figures— nymphs dancing on the sward, and a prick-eared faun peeping from the covert. In the warm afternoon sunlight it stood, ineffably gracious and beautiful, tantalising with a sense of some deep hidden loveliness. Very reverently I walked between the slim trees, to where the little conical tower stood half in the sun and half in shadow. Then I noticed something new. Round the tower ran a narrow path, worn in the grass by human feet. There had been no such path on my first visit, for I remembered the grass growing tall to the edge of the stone. Had the Kaffirs made a shrine of it, or were there other and stranger votaries?

When I returned to the house I found Travers with a message for me. Mr Lawson was still in bed, but he would like me to go to him. I found my friend sitting up and drinking strong tea— a bad thing, I should have thought, for a man in his condition. I remember that I looked about the room for some sign of the pernicious habit of which I believed him a victim. But the place was fresh and clean, with the windows wide open, and, though I could not have given my reasons, I was convinced that drugs or drink had nothing to do with the sickness.

He received me more civilly, but I was shocked by his looks. There were great bags below his eyes, and his skin had the wrinkled puffy appearance of a man in dropsy. His voice, too, was reedy and thin. Only his great eyes burned with some feverish life.

'I am a shocking bad host,' he said, 'but I'm going to be still more inhospitable. I want you to go away. I hate anybody here when I'm off colour.'

'Nonsense,' I said; 'you want looking after. I want to know about this sickness. Have you had a doctor?'

He smiled wearily. 'Doctors are no earthly use to me. There's nothing much the matter, I tell you. I'll be all right in a day or two, and then you can come back. I want you to go off with Jobson and hunt in the plains till the end of the week. It will be better fun for you, and I'll feel less guilty.'

Of course I pooh-poohed the idea, and Lawson got angry. 'Damn it, man,' he cried, 'why do you force yourself on me when I don't want you? I tell you your presence here makes me worse. In a week I'll be as right as the mail, and then I'll be thankful for you. But get away now; get away, I tell you.'

I saw that he was fretting himself into a passion. 'All right,' I said soothingly; 'Jobson and I will go off hunting. But I am horribly anxious about you, old man.'

He lay back on his pillows. 'You needn't trouble. I only want a little rest. Jobson will make all arrangements, and Travers will get you anything you want. Good-bye.'

I saw it was useless to stay longer, so I left the room. Outside I found the anxious-faced servant. 'Look here,' I said, 'Mr Lawson thinks I ought to go, but I mean to stay. Tell him I'm gone if he asks you. And for Heaven's sake keep him in bed.'

The man promised, and I thought I saw some relief in his face.

I went to the library, and on the way remembered Jobson's remark about First Kings. With some searching I found a Bible and turned up the passage. It was a long screed about the misdeeds of Solomon, and I read it through without enlightenment. I began to re-read it, and a word suddenly caught my attention—

For Solomon went after Ashtaroth, the goddess of the Zidonians.

That was all, but it was like a key to a cipher. Instantly there flashed over my mind all that I had heard or read of that strange ritual which seduced Israel to sin. I saw a sunburnt land and a people vowed to the stern service of Jehovah. But I saw, too, eyes turning from the austere sacrifice to lonely hill-top groves and towers and images, where dwelt some subtle and evil mystery. I saw the fierce prophets, scourging the votaries with rods, and a nation penitent before the Lord; but always the backsliding again, and the hankering after forbidden joys. Ashtaroth was the old goddess of the East. Was it not possible that in all Semitic blood there remained, transmitted through the dim generations, some craving for her spell? I thought of the grandfather in the back street at Brighton and of those burning eyes upstairs.

As I sat and mused my glance fell on the inscrutable stone birds. They knew those old secrets of joy and terror. And that moon of alabaster! Some dark priest had worn it on his forehead when he worshipped, like Ahab, 'all the host of Heaven'. And then I honestly began to be afraid. I, a prosaic, modern Christian gentleman, a half-believer in casual faiths, was in the presence of some hoary mystery of sin far older than creeds or Christendom. There was fear in my heart— a kind of uneasy disgust, and above all a nervous eerie disquiet. Now I wanted to go away, and yet I was ashamed of the cowardly thought. I pictured Ashtaroth's Grove with sheer horror. What tragedy was in the air? What secret awaited twilight? For the night was coming, the night of the Full Moon, the season of ecstasy and sacrifice.

I do not know how I got through that evening. I was disinclined for dinner, so I had a cutlet in the library, and sat smoking till my tongue ached. But as the hours passed a more manly resolution grew up in my mind. I owed it to old friendship to stand by Lawson in this extremity. I could not interfere— God knows, his reason seemed already rocking— but I could be at hand in case my chance came. I determined not to undress, but to watch through the night. I had a bath, and changed into light flannels and slippers. Then I took up my position in a corner of the library close to the window, so that I could not fall to hear Lawson's footsteps if he passed.

Fortunately I left the lights unlit, for as I waited I grew drowsy, and fell asleep. When I woke the moon had risen, and I knew from the feel of the air that the hour was late. I sat very still, straining my ears, and as I listened I caught the sound of steps. They were crossing the hall stealthily, and nearing the library door. I huddled into my corner as Lawson entered.

He wore the same towel dressing-gown, and he moved swiftly and silently as if in a trance. I watched him take the alabaster moon from the mantelpiece and drop it in his pocket. A glimpse of white skin showed that the gown was his only clothing. Then he moved past me to the window, opened it, and went out. Without any conscious purpose I rose and followed, kicking off my slippers that I might go quietly. He was running, running fast, across the lawns in the direction of the Grove— an odd shapeless antic in the moonlight. I stopped, for there was no cover, and I feared for his reason if he saw me. When I looked again he had disappeared among the trees.

I saw nothing for it but to crawl, so on my belly I wormed my way over the dripping sward. There was a ridiculous suggestion of deer-stalking about the game which tickled me and dispelled my uneasiness. Almost I persuaded myself I was tracking an ordinary sleep-walker. The lawns were broader than I imagined, and it seemed an age before I reached the edge of the Grove. The world was so still that I appeared to be making a most ghastly amount of noise. I remember that once I heard a rustling in the air, and looked up to see the green doves circling about the tree-tops.

There was no sign of Lawson. On the edge of the Grove I think that all my assurance vanished. I could see between the trunks to the little tower, but it was quiet as the grave, save for the wings above. Once more there came over me the unbearable sense of anticipation I had felt the night before. My nerves tingled with mingled expectation and dread. I did not think that any harm would come to me, for the powers of the air seemed not malignant. But I knew them for powers, and felt awed and abased. I was in the presence of the 'host of Heaven', and I was no stern Israelitish prophet to prevail against them.

I must have lain for hours waiting in that spectral place, my eyes riveted on the tower and its golden cap of moonshine. I remember that my head felt void and light, as if my spirit were becoming disembodied and leaving its dew-drenched sheath far below. But the most curious sensation was of something drawing me to the tower, something mild and kindly and rather feeble, for there was some other and stronger force keeping me back. I yearned to move nearer, but I could not drag my limbs an inch. There was a spell somewhere which I could not break. I do not think I was an any way frightened now. The starry influence was playing tricks with me, but my mind was half asleep. Only I never took my eyes from the little tower. I think I could not, if I had wanted to.

Then suddenly from the shadows came Lawson. He was stark-naked, and he wore, bound across his brow, the half-moon of alabaster. He had something, too, in his hand— something which glittered.

He ran round the tower, crooning to himself, and flinging wild arms to the skies. Sometimes the crooning changed to a shrill cry of passion, such as a maenad may have uttered in the train of Bacchus. I could make out no words, but the sound told its own tale. He was absorbed in some infernal ecstasy. And as he ran, he drew his right hand across his breast and arms, and I saw that it held a knife.

I grew sick with disgust— not terror, but honest physical loathing. Lawson, gashing his fat body, affected me with an overpowering repugnance. I wanted to go forward and stop him, and I wanted, too, to be a hundred miles away. And the result was that I stayed still. I believe my own will held me there, but I doubt if in any case I could have moved my legs.

The dance grew swifter and fiercer. I saw the blood dripping from Lawson's body, and his face ghastly white above his scarred breast. And then suddenly the horror left me; my head swam; and for one second— one brief second— I peered into a new world. A strange passion surged up in my heart. I seemed to see the earth peopled with forms not human, scarcely divine, but more desirable than man or god. The calm face of Nature broke up for me into wrinkles of wild knowledge. I saw the things which brush against the soul in dreams, and found them lovely. There seemed no cruelty in the knife or the blood. It was a delicate mystery of worship, as wholesome as the morning song of birds. I do not know how the Semites found Ashtaroth's ritual; to them it may well have been more rapt and passionate than it seemed to me. For I saw in it only the sweet simplicity of Nature, and all riddles of lust and terror soothed away as a child's nightmares are calmed by a mother. I found my legs able to move, and I think I took two steps through the dusk towards the tower.

And then it all ended. A cock crew, and the homely noises of earth were renewed. While I stood dazed and shivering Lawson plunged through the Grove towards me. The impetus carried him to the edge, and he fell fainting just outside the shade.

My wits and common-sense came back to me with my bodily strength. I got my friend on my back, and staggered with him towards the house. I was afraid in real earnest now, and what frightened me most was the thought that I had not been afraid sooner. I had come very near the 'abomination of the Zidonians'.

At the door I found the scared valet waiting. He had apparently done this sort of thing before.

'Your master has been sleep-walking, and has had a fall,' I said. 'We must get him to bed at once.'

We bathed the wounds as he lay in a deep stupor, and I dressed them as well as I could. The only danger lay in his utter exhaustion, for happily the gashes were not serious, and no artery had been touched. Sleep and rest would make him well, for he had the constitution of a strong man. I was leaving the room when he opened his eyes and spoke. He did not recognise me, but I noticed that his face had lost its strangeness, and was once more that of the friend I had known. Then I suddenly bethought me of an old hunting remedy which he and I always carried on our expeditions. It is a pill made up from an ancient Portuguese prescription. One is an excellent specific for fever. Two are invaluable if you are lost in the bush, for they send a man for many hours into a deep sleep, which prevents suffering and madness, till help comes. Three give a painless death. I went to my room and found the little box in my jewel-case. Lawson swallowed two, and turned wearily on his side. I bade his man let him sleep till he woke, and went off in search of food.

iv

I HAD BUSINESS on hand which would not wait. By seven, Jobson, who had been sent for, was waiting for me in the library. I knew by his grim face that here I had a very good substitute for a prophet of the Lord.

'You were right,' I said. 'I have read the 11th chapter of First Kings, and I have spent such a night as I pray God I shall never spend again.'

'I thought you would,' he replied. 'I've had the same experience myself.'

'The Grove?' I said.

'Ay, the wud,' was the answer in broad Scots.

I wanted to see how much he understood.

'Mr Lawson's family is from the Scottish Border?'

'Ay. I understand they come off Borthwick Water side,' he replied, but I saw by his eyes that he knew what I meant.

'Mr Lawson is my oldest friend,' I went on, 'and I am going to take measures to cure him. For what I am going to do I take the sole responsibility. I will make that plain to your master. But if I am to succeed I want your help. Will you give it me? It sounds like madness, and you are a sensible man and may like to keep out of it. I leave it to your discretion.'

Jobson looked me straight in the face. 'Have no fear for me,' he said; 'there is an unholy thing in that place, and if I have the strength in me I will destroy it. He has been a good master to me, and, forbye, I am a believing Christian. So say on, sir.'

There was no mistaking the air. I had found my Tishbite.

'I want men,' I said— 'as many as we can get.'

Jobson mused. 'The Kaffirs will no' gang near the place, but there's some thirty white men on the tobacco farm. They'll do your will, if you give them an indemnity in writing.'

'Good,' said I. 'Then we will take our instructions from the only authority which meets the case. We will follow the example of King Josiah.' I turned up the 3rd chapter of Second Kings, and read—

'And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the Mount of Corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had builded for Ashtaroth the abomination of the Zidomans...did the king defile.

'And he braise in pieces the images, and cut down the groves, and filled their places with the bones of men,

'Moreover the altar that was at Bethel, and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made, both that altar and the high place he brake down, and burned the high place, and stamped it small to powder, and burned the grove.'

Jobson nodded. 'It'll need dinnymite. But I've plenty of yon down at the workshops. I'll be off to collect the lads.'

Before nine the men had assembled at Jobson's house. They were a hardy lot of young farmers from home, who took their instructions docilely from the masterful factor. On my orders they had brought their shot-guns. We armed them with spades and woodmen's axes, and one man wheeled some coils of rope in a handcart.

In the clear, windless air of morning the Grove, set amid its lawns, looked too innocent and exquisite for evil. I had a pang of regret that a thing so fair should suffer; nay, if I had come alone, I think I might have repented. But the men were there, and the grim-faced Jobson was waiting for orders. I placed the guns, and sent beaters to the far side. I told them that every dove must be shot.

It was only a small flock, and we killed fifteen at the first drive. The poor birds flew over the glen to another spinney, but we brought them back over the guns and seven fell. Four more were got in the trees, and the last I killed myself with a long shot. In half an hour there was a pile of little green bodies on the sward.

Then we went to work to cut down the trees. The slim stems were an easy task to a good woodman, and one after another they toppled to the ground. And meantime, as I watched, I became conscious of a strange emotion.

It was as if some one were pleading with me. A gentle voice, not threatening, but pleading— something too fine for the sensual ear, but touching inner chords of the spirit. So tenuous it was and distant that I could think of no personality behind it. Rather it was the viewless, bodiless grace of this delectable vale, some old exquisite divinity of the groves. There was the heart of all sorrow in it, and the soul of all loveliness. It seemed a woman's voice, some lost lady who had brought nothing but goodness unrepaid to the world. And what the voice told me was, that I was destroying her last shelter.

That was the pathos of it— the voice was homeless. As the axes flashed in the sunlight and the wood grew thin, that gentle spirit was pleading with me for mercy and a brief respite. It seemed to be telling of a world for centuries grown coarse and pitiless, of long sad wanderings, of hardly-won shelter, and a peace which was the little all she sought from men. There was nothing terrible in it. No thought of wrongdoing. The spell, which to Semitic blood held the mystery of evil, was to me, of a different race, only delicate and rare and beautiful. Jobson and the rest did not feel it, I with my finer senses caught nothing but the hopeless sadness of it. That which had stirred the passion in Lawson was only wringing my heart. It was almost too pitiful to bear. As the trees crashed down and the men wiped the sweat from their brows, I seemed to myself like the murderer of fair women and innocent children. I remember that the tears were running over my cheeks. More than once I opened my mouth to countermand the work, but the face of Jobson, that grim Tishbite, held me back.

I knew now what gave the Prophets of the Lord their mastery, and I knew also why the people sometimes stoned them.

The last tree fell, and the little tower stood like a ravished shrine, stripped of all defences against the world. I heard Jobson's voice speaking. 'We'd better blast that stane thing now. We'll trench on four sides and lay the dinnymite. Ye're no' looking weel, sir. Ye'd better go and sit down on the brae-face.'

I went up the hillside and lay down. Below me, in the waste of shorn trunks, men were running about, and I saw the mining begin. It all seemed like an aimless dream in which I had no part. The voice of that homeless goddess was still pleading. It was the innocence of it that tortured me. Even so must a merciful Inquisitor have suffered from the plea of some fair girl with the aureole of death on her hair. I knew I was killing rare and unrecoverable beauty. As I sat dazed and heartsick, the whole loveliness of Nature seemed to plead for its divinity. The sun in the heavens, the mellow lines of upland, the blue mystery of the far plains, were all part of that soft voice. I felt bitter scorn for myself. I was guilty of blood; nay, I was guilty of the sin against light which knows no forgiveness. I was murdering innocent gentleness, and there would be no peace on earth for me. Yet I sat helpless. The power of a sterner will constrained me. And all the while the voice was growing fainter and dying away into unutterable sorrow.

Suddenly a great flame sprang to heaven, and a pall of smoke. I heard men crying out, and fragments of stone fell around the ruins of the grove. When the air cleared, the little tower had gone out of sight.

The voice had ceased, and there seemed to me to be a bereaved silence in the world. The shock moved me to my feet, and I ran down the slope to where Jobson stood rubbing his eyes.

'That's done the job. Now we maun get up the tree roots. We've no time to howk. We'll just blast the feck o' them.'

The work of destruction went on, but I was coming back to my senses. I forced myself to be practical and reasonable. I thought of the night's experience and Lawson's haggard eyes, and I screwed myself into a determination to see the thing through. I had done the deed; it was my business to make it complete. A text in Jeremiah came into my head: 'Their children remember their altars and their groves by the green trees upon the high hills.' I would see to it that this grove should be utterly forgotten.

We blasted the tree roots, and, yoking oxen, dragged the debris into a great heap. Then the men set to work with their spades, and roughly levelled the ground. I was getting back to my old self, and Jobson's spirit was becoming mine.

'There is one thing more,' I told him. 'Get ready a couple of ploughs. We will improve upon King Josiah.' My brain was a medley of Scripture precedents, and I was determined that no safeguard should be wanting.

We yoked the oxen again and drove the ploughs over the site of the grove. It was rough ploughing, for the place was thick with bits of stone from the tower, but the slow Afrikander oxen plodded on, and sometime in the afternoon the work was finished. Then I sent down to the farm for bags of rock-salt, such as they use for cattle. Jobson and I took a sack apiece, and walked up and down the furrows, sowing them with salt.

The last act was to set fire to the pile of tree trunks. They burned well, and on the top we flung the bodies of the green doves. The birds of Ashtaroth had an honourable pyre.

Then I dismissed the much-perplexed men, and gravely shook hands with Jobson. Black with dust and smoke I went back to the house, where I bade Travers pack my bags and order the motor. I found Lawson's servant, and heard from him that his master was sleeping peacefully. I gave him some directions, and then went to wash and change.

Before I left I wrote a line to Lawson. I began by transcribing the verses from the 23rd chapter of Second Kings. I told him what I had done, and my reason. 'I take the whole responsibility upon myself,' I wrote. 'No man in the place had anything to do with it but me. I acted as I did for the sake of our old friendship, and you will believe it was no easy task for me. I hope you will understand. Whenever you are able to see me send me word, and I will come back and settle with you. But I think you will realise that I have saved your soul.'

The afternoon was merging into twilight as I left the house on the road to Taqui. The great fire, where the grove had been, was still blazing fiercely, and the smoke made a cloud over the upper glen, and filled all the air with a soft violet haze. I knew that I had done well for my friend, and that he would come to his senses and be grateful...But as the car reached the ridge I looked back to the vale I had outraged. The moon was rising and silvering the smoke, and through the gaps I could see the tongues of fire. Somehow, I know not why, the lake, the stream, the garden-coverts, even the green slopes of hill, wore an air of loneliness and desecration.

And then my heartache returned, and I knew that I had driven something lovely and adorable from its last refuge on earth.

__________________

7: A Case Without a Clew

Joseph Gollomb

1881-1950

Flynn's 25 April 1925

Born in St Petersburg, Russia, in 1881, but emigrated to the USA with his Jewish family in 1891. A prolific author of both fiction and non-fiction, he was an old-school radical involved with the I.W.W and the Socialist Party of America. He was very active in encouraging fellow Jewish refugees (escaping progroms in Russia), who now lived in the lower East Side of New York, to document their experiences for future generations.

GIVEN a machine that hunts criminals. Set it the task of weaving a rope wherewith to hang a man. But give it not the slightest bit of material wherewith to work, not the slenderest gossamer of a clew, nothing but its vast and complicated self, assisted by squads of mechanical men.

Captain it, however, by a few highly endowed men in charge of the machine, engineers endowed with the deadly machine-like logic of the German mind, and its genius for creation of marvelous machines. Given such a machine and nothing to work with, what could it do? Let us see.

Morenstrasse in Berlin is a residential street of well-to-do apartment homes. One of them, a ponderous seven story affair lorded the block on which it stood with its massive granite front, and housed people who belonged behind such a front— successful merchants, several bank directors, and the like.

The entrance to this house looked like the approach to a combination castle, armory, and safety vault. Two unfriendly looking lions of granite flanked the steps up to the front doors, which were ponderous affairs of carved oak, never by chance negligently open, not even unlocked. To enter the house, if you were a visitor, you had to press a button on the side of the door, a button, by the way, that looked like the knob of a rosette, exactly like the other rosettes that studded the side of the door.

So that if you did not know which of these knobs sounded the bell, you had to go around to the servants' entrance, where, before you were admitted, you had to pass the scrutiny of the janitor's family peering out from behind barred windows. It was not fear of the police, you may be sure, that made the house so cautious in ad- mitting the world.

For its tenants were of the ultra-respectable world, whom the police protect from those who prey on the well-to-do. No, this caution and exclusiveness was the expression of the same fear that makes banks put bars on its windows, guards at its entrances and patent locks on its doors.

Even if you knew which rosette knob pressed the bell you had to wait till a ponderous clicking opened the outer door by invisible hands. Then you stepped into a marble entrance hall and were confronted by a burly man in gray uniform who waited for you to state your errand.

This man, a former regimental blacksmith, or his colleague, who replaced him the other twelve hours of duty, then relayed your errand or name by telephone to the person you came to see. If upstairs sent down word that it was all right to admit you, the former blacksmith escorted you to the glass-walled electric elevator, where the runner of the cage took you up to the floor announced to him by the guard at the door.

Arrived at that floor the elevator runner, following strict instructions, escorted you to the door of your visit and waited till he heard your name taken in to the host of the house and also heard the host consent to receive the caller. Only then did the elevator runner go back to his cage. This was the practice every minute of the twenty-four hours of the day.

Among the tenants in that residential vault was a Dr. Kemstoff, a gem expert for one of the biggest jewelry houses in Germany. He was a bachelor and lived in a seven-room apartment alone. But a valet and a cook came every morning to attend to him and left only late at night when Dr. Kemstoff himself saw them out of the house. Then he would lock the only door to the apartment, shoot home two bolts on the massive oak door, reenforce this with a chain lock, and go to bed.

One morning the servants came as usual at the accus-omed hour and rang the bell. There was no answer. The servants rang again and again until there was no doubt that the Herr Doctor was either out or so deep in sleep that even the loud bell they could hear through the oaken door could not wake him. But were he out, both elevator runner and the guard downstairs would have told them so and would have admitted them— for the valet and the cook had reputations for unswerving honesty.

When they had been ringing for a quarter of an hour, the valet went downstairs and called up the apartment on the telephone. That bell rang, as he knew, at the master's bedside and had an insistent ring that would wake any but the dead. But since the Herr Doctor still did not answer, could he be anything but dead?

The servants then telephoned Dr. Kemstoff's place of business. No, he had not arrived, they were informed, and were sternly asked in turn what was keeping the Herr Doctor? The servants, by now thoroughly alarmed, told the senior partner of the jewelry house, who had taken up the receiver, that without doubt something was the matter. Would the Herr Senior Partner kindly advise them what to do?

The Herr Senior Partner not only told them what to do, but did it himself. He called up a friend of his, one of the engineers of the Berlin police machine, and consulted with him.

''The apartment must be entered!" said the police official when he heard the details. "I'll send some of my men to do it."

A skilled mechanic from the police department was sent to open the door without breaking it open, if possible. He managed to unlock everything that skeleton keys could open. But there were the bars and chain locks on the inside to deal with. They were all shot home as usual when the Herr Doctor retired.

There was no other entrance into the apartment— except the windows. But as there was no balcony or fire escapes to the apartment— Berlin apartment houses rarely have them— and as the roof was three stories above the apart-merit and the street four stories below, the only possible way the Herr Doctor could have left would be to lower himself with a rope or to jump out. So after consultation with his chiefs at police headquarters, the mechanic broke down the oak door to the apartment.

One glance into the living room and pandemonium broke loose. Dr. Kemstoff had been murdered! Clad in his night-gown he lay face down on the rug in the living room, and blood was on the rug where his head rested. He had been killed by a blow on his forehead with some blunt instrument that broke flesh and bone with a single stroke. The weapon that caused the death was gone.

And the one who dealt the blow, how had he entered the apartment? More mysterious still, how did he leave it? For the inside bars and chain locks, when the door was broken down, were found still shot home.

Obviously the murderer could not have left the apartment by the door and then slid the bolts and locks home again on the inside of the door. And the windows were closed, though not locked on the latch. For not even the tenants of that closely guarded house bothered locking windows four stories from the street and three below the roof.

Here, then, was a murder; and there was the machine in Alexanderplatz with its vast catalogue of twenty million cards, with its Meldwesen and its Razzia and its squads of mechanical men ready and eager to begin weaving the rope that would hang the murderer.

The machine demanded, "Under what category number does the mode of entry come?" And the answer was, "We don't know how the entry was made. The bars and locks on the inside of the door were still fastened. The chimney would hardly admit a cat. The windows were not locked, it is true.

"But the dust on their sills had not been disturbed, as we found on examination. One might, of course, have descended from the roof by means of a rope and entered by way of the windows. But the trapdoor leading to the roof is wired for burglar alarms and is still untouched.

"Some one could conceivably have hidden himself in the apartment during the day. But the servants had given the house their bi-weekly thorough cleaning yesterday afternoon late and would have come across any one hiding there. The question remained unanswered, how did the murderer get out?"

"Finger-prints!" clamored the machine. "Not a one," was the report from the experts.

"Then give me the names of all servants, house attendants, intimate friends of the doctor, his business asso- ciates, employes at his place of business, the names of every one he visited in the last few days, of every one who had visited him, even that of the policeman on beat. I must have something to start working with!" protested the machine.

So they fed it scores and scores of names. The main part of the machine, the Meldwesen, the card catalogue it takes one hundred and eighty rooms to house, ground out a vast deal of information on the scores of names. But when it got through working on the grist, it was found that nothing came of that. Like attracts like and the ultrarespectable Herr Doctor saw no one, had nothing to do with any one on whose record the Meldwesen could find the slightest flaw of irrespectability.

"What motive for the murder?" insisted the machine.

"We don't know," replied the experts. "Not a precious stone had been taken from the doctor's safe. Not a pfennig. Not a document touched. For the doctor, a methodical man, had a complete inventory of everything and everything checks up present. He had not an enemy we can learn of.

"In short, we have not a single clew as to the why or the how of the murder, or of the escape. Suicide is out of the question. The rug where the body was found shows that a violent struggle had taken place. The skull was smashed in by a blunt instrument. There has been found no such instrument. Not a single clew!"

Here is where merely human brains would have said, "Then there is nothing to be done in the case!"

But the man-hunting machine of the Berlin police said:

"Very well, then at least this one thing is clear. There is not a single clew. Then we shall start with this clew— that there is none!"

Whereupon the deadly machinelike German logic went to work on the case. "Since there are no clews it means that whoever killed Dr. Kemstoff was skilled in removing or avoiding clews. Only a skilled criminal, familiar with the technique of removing clews, would have made such a clean job of it. But not even such a man acquires his skill all at once.

"Therefore the man must have committed similar crimes before, or parts of such crimes, such as his amazingly mysterious mode of entry and exit. If so, he must be on record somewhere; or if he has been too skillful for the police to get him his crimes were surely reported. Dr. Schneikert, your Kriminal Archiv clipping collection had better get to work!"

Dr. Hans Schneikert, one of the world's greatest authorities on handwriting and the man who devised the famous clipping bureau in connection with the Kriminal Archiv of the Berlin police, thereupon touched a button and part of the big machine began to work.

Part of the machine is a collection of newspaper clippings from every part of Germany and even from newspapers abroad. In every one of them some crime is reported and described. Every crime and clipping is catalogued and indexed, so that word is all that is needed to set mechanical men searching in that remarkable record. What Dr. Schneikert looked for came under these headings:

Burglaries committed, with doors found locked on inside.

Burglaries committed, with no clews left behind.

Murders unmotivated.

Murders unmotivated, with blunt weapon on head.

—and several other similar subheads.

A diligent search finally narrowed Dr. Schneikert's interest to a clipping from a Darmstadt newspaper telling of a burglary committed in a strongly guarded apartment house. Entry had been made by means of a painter's scaffold, which had been put up that day and had remained overnight on the level of the roof. But the burglars had left no clew otherwise; no finger-prints, no foot-prints, no marks of any kind.

''Nothing, at least, that the police of a small town could discover!" decided the chief of the Berlin detective system. "Therefore, although this was committed three weeks ago, we shall send down our men to see if we can find any clews."

So a commission of experts went to Darmstadt to look into the three- weeks-old burglary. They found the mystery there was even greater than the Darmstadt police found it. For the Berlin detectives— not the mechanical rank and file detectives, but their expert heads— found that entry was not made by means of the painter's ladder primarily.

Whoever could have got access to the roof by means of the stairs could just as easily have entered the apartment by a rear balcony. Therefore some one must have got to the roof by some way other than the stairs. But as the roof was isolated from other buildings how did the burglars get up to the roof to use the painter's scaffold?

An examination of a chimney at the comer of the house and on the street front showed two of the corners frayed as by a rope. The painters had not used that chimney to anchor their scaffold. The only other way to get up on that roof would be to throw a rope up from the street— a prodigious feat to do with a rope heavy enough to support the weight of a man. But could it not be got up there some other way?

Yes, reasoned the Berlin detectives, if first a stone were tied to a long, light string, then so thrown that it would strike the steeply sloping roof behind the chimney and rolling down on the other side would drop over the edge of the roof and be let down. Then a sufficiently strong rope could be tied to the string and hauled up to the roof, around the chimney and so down again until some one on the ground held the two ends of a strong rope in his hands. To test their theory the Berlin detectives did just that thing, and one of them climbed by means of the rope up to the house.

It was then found that once on the roof with such a rope as aid, there was no need of the painter's scaffold. Therefore either the theory was wrong and no such rope had been used— or the painter's scaffold was only a blind. Investigation with this point in view showed that the latter theory was correct. The burglar had climbed the side of the house.

Word was flashed back to Berlin to look on the Kemstoff apartment house roof for such signs as might indicate that a similar device had been used there, too. Yes, the word came back, the chimney at one end of the roof bore such marks of rope.

Whereupon the theory was tested in the same way as in Darmstadt. A string was obtained, long enough to reach from the ground, around the chimney, on the roof, and down to the street again. A small stone was tied to one end. It was thrown up to the roof, landed on the sloping roof behind the chimney, rolled down the slope and around the other side of the chimney and so down to the street. Tying a rope to the string it was drawn up, around the chimney and down again. Then a detective climbed up the side of the house by the rope.

Once on the roof, however, it developed that a man would have a hard job to get to Dr. Kemstoff's window unless he could literally walk along the face of the house like a fly. So they went to work to And out how a man, hanging by a rope from the roof could yet "walk" along the face of a house.

They concluded finally that it could be done, if the climber, suspended by a rope, wore some such spur arrangement on his feet as workers on telegraph poles use when they climb wooden poles. On further examination, it was found that in the granite face of the house were scars such as might have been made by a sharp steel spur.

Dr. Schneikert then went over his collection of newspaper clippings again for burglaries that would indicate such a technique. He found a few worth looking into. From these, there began to emerge the shadowy theoretical figure of a burglar who had devised a technique of his own; who was used to working high in the air; who probably got his idea from some previous occupation.

"Previous occupation involving work in the air, such as that of a house painter, steeple jack, iron worker and the like," were now put into the maw of the big Meldwesen machine. Through the Kriminal Archiv, too, burrowed many spectacled, mechanical men, searching and searching in the records of a list of burglars for one who, in a more respectable past, had a previous occupation in- volving work up in the air, et cetera.

A dozen such were found, men who had been convicted as burglars and who had been house painters or iron workers. One was found who had been a steeple jack. Then began the process of winnowing the list. Two were dead; three in prison; five were at liberty.

On the five centered the hunt. Two were at once located, one in Hamburg, another in Essen. They were rounded up, examined, and found armed with perfect alibis. Three remained to be hunted down.

On the card of every one in the Meldwesen are names of relatives, friends, business associates; on the cards of those convicted of crime are names of accomplices, sweet-hearts and enemies of the person recorded on the card. Each of these names in turn has a card in the Meldwesen with information reaching out in different directions.

The whole catalogue can be likened to a series of webs, like a spider's, with each web a complete pattern of its own, but with each thread leading to another web, until the whole covers a vast area. The only difference between the Meldwesen and such a system of spiders' webs is that there is strength in the threads that bind the Meldwesen scheme— strength enough to make a rope wherewith to hang a man.

The Meldwesen was weaving such a strand now with new material that had been given it. It was now piecing together from its card catalogue the record of an individual, which was checking up nicely with the theories of what few findings they had.

"Johann Gutkind," it was saying, "alias Christopher Mannheim, alias several other names; nicknamed by his accomplices the 'Horse Fly'; twenty-nine years old; formerly employed as layer of roof tiles; later worked as steeple jack; served two years for burglary committed in Hamburg; mode of entry through window on third story of apartment house. He knocked householder unconscious when latter pursued him into the street; weapon, blackjack; light sentence, due to youth and first offense; but reported since liberation from prison associating with notorious burglars, namely—" Here followed a list of friends.

Johann Gutkind was nominated by the Meldwesen and the Berlin police, therefore, for further investigation. His whereabouts were unknown; for the reprehensible young man had not reported to the police his recent changes of address. He was already subject to arrest and punishment for this omission, irrespective of the Kemstoff murder.

Every name on Johann's card was taken out for further study and the individuals themselves placed under surveillance. A great deal of this work came to nothing. But on Gutkind's card appeared the name of a suspected receiver of stolen goods. This fence had an eighteen- year- old son, Fritz, whose name also appeared on the cards of several of Gutkind's associates.

On Fritz's own Meldwesen card it appeared that the worst thing in the youth's record was that he had been used as a sort of innocent errand boy in several burglaries and in the consequent disposition of stolen goods.

It was brought out in each case that the boy, while he may have had a suspicion of the character of some of the men for whom he performed services, he was really ignorant of the exact nature of each errand, and was therefore not liable to punishment as an accomplice. It would appear that the criminals employing him deliberately kept him from actual participation in crime so that he could continue to remain at large and be of service to them.

In investigating this youth it was found that at the time of the Kemstoff murder, he was employed by a large grocer as delivery boy. He had at his isposal a closed wagonette, propelled by himself seated on a tri- cycle arrangement on which the wagonette was mounted.

In following up the theory of a human fly climbing up the side of the Kemstoff house, the detective came up against this difficulty. A man cannot easily promenade about a city in the small hours of the night with coils of stout rope, without being seen by a policeman and hustled off to the station for examination.

And the policeman on the Kemstoff beat on the night of the murder was a man with a record for keeping his eyes open. He had seen no one carrying coils of rope that night. If he had, he would have stopped him.

But now the wagonette on the tricycle furnished the police machine a new line of inquiry. The policeman on the Kemstoff beat was asked if he had seen such a wagonette. The policeman racked his memory and consulted his memorandum book in which Berlin policemen, according to strict regulations, keep a detailed account of everything on their beat that departs in the least from routine occurrence.

Suddenly memoiy furnished what had been too insig- nificant for the policeman to enter in his memorandum. At about three o'clock of the morning of the murder, a tricycle wagonette, propelled by a young fellow, went through that street. The policeman, under general instructions, stopped him and made him identify himself.

The youth produced identification papers in good order and proved that he was a grocer's clerk. He also told the policeman that a cousin of his had a christening that night; and the grocer's clerk bad arranged with his employer to be allowed to use the tricycle wagonette wherein to deliver the extra table linens, dishes, and cutlery that had been hired for the occasion.

The youth had stayed till the party broke up, he said, and was now taking these things back to his home to save himself an extra trip next day. From his home he would return the things in the morning to the place whence they had been rented.

The policeman threw open the lid of the wagonette and found a lot of tumbled table linen on top. He did not dig deeper into the contents, but from a police box telephoned the grocer for whom the youth worked. From him he got confirmation of the boy's story. So the policeman let him go with his wagonette.

The detective machine did not quiz the youth. The possibilities were that he would betray more if he did not know he was being watched. He was discharging his duties as errand boy to the grocer apparently in good faith. But he was living with a degree of comfort rather beyond an errand boy's wages. Every step the boy made was followed.

It was thus found that he frequented a small weinstube or a kind of saloon near the police headquarters in Alexanderplatz. It had small windows giving on the street and looked not in the least attractive, though, neither did it look forbidding.

Its frequenters were studied and it was found that several pickpockets and strong-arm holdup men came there occasionally. The youth would come there, drink a glass of Rhine wine, chat with one or two men quietly, go into a back room for what looked like a conference with somebody; then come out and go home.

When this had been going on for some time, the detectives sent a stool pigeon, a trusted sneak of the underworld, to pretend drunkenness and blunder into that back room a few moments immediately after the youth had entered it one evening. As the supposed drunk put his hand on the knob, the owner of the wine, house called out:

"Where in hell are you going?"

But the man had already opened the door. To his astonishment he found the room empty. And there was no other door or window there to tell whither the youth had vanished. By then the proprietor had seized the man by the collar and hurled him back.

"You keep out of this place unless you want your neck broken!" he said furiously.

Half an hour later the youth came out again and went home.

That night several of the mechanical men of the Berlin police machine jimmied their way into the weinstube and noiselessly explored the room where the youth had vanished so mysteriously. As the stool pigeon had reported, there was but one door to the room, the one by which the mechanical men now stole in; and no other outlet, not even a window. With pocket flashes lighting their silent search, the detectives explored every inch of the room.

An hour spent thus brought no results. There was but one way left to conduct such a search— to tap and knock at every bit of floor and wall, which would of course alarm every one in the house. But there was no alternative.

One of the mechanical men went outside again and summoned the reserves waiting for word from them. A dozen detectives headed by a superior oflScer tramped into the wein stube, shouted for the landlord to appear and proceeded to explore the mysterious room, with all the noise in the world.

Pounding on the floor soon yielded for the detectives a hollow sound in the neighborhood of a chest of drawers standing on a bit of carpet. This was moved aside and a trapdoor discovered.

"Who's down there?" demanded the head of the police squad, of the landlord.

The man refused to speak. The trapdoor was raised by one of the mechanical men, while the others stood with revolvers cocked. No sound came from the dark cave. A ladder must have been the means of descending to it, for there were no stairs; nor was there any ladder visible.

Meanwhile the young grocer's clerk was brought to the scene.

"Who is down there?" he was asked.

He was beside himself with fear. "He will kill me if I tell. Or any of his friends will do it, if he doesn't! I'll go to jail first!"

He refused to say another word. The police finally decided there was nothing left but a frontal attack. A ladder was brought. The officer in charge of the attack shouted an order for his men to descend. He himself led them.

From below there came no sound. But suddenly the leader of the attacking party, a veteran of the great war, yelled to his men:

"Back! Upstairs!"

His men scrambled for the ladder, even before he had shouted. They were yelling, gasping, retching. Out of the well of darkness they tumbled one by one, contorted and choking. Those waiting outside were astounded.

"Gas! Chlorine!" the leader of the party gasped.

Then those who had been through the war fled outdoors. For the familiar, dreaded fumes of chlorine came out of the pit.

In the street was enacted a scene like a tiny corner of a battlefield in the early part of the great war. Several men were writhing with deadly nausea. Others were trying to administer first aid.

Meanwhile from a patrol box telephone went calls. They brought ambulances and a motor police patrol. From it poured another two squads of mechanical men. But these had gas masks with them. And from the patrol wagon they brought pickaxes and hatchets.

Donning masks, one squad began chopping open the floor above the hiding place. The other squad, also protected with masks, stood ready to shoot.

When half the floor was torn up, powerful electric torches were lowered to the cellar. When this brought no volley of revolver fire, at a motioned signal from the leader of the attacking party, six men, wearing gas masks, leaped down into the cellar ready for the fight of their lives.

But all that met their sight was a huddled figure on the floor, writhing in agony with a gas mask over his head. The man was seized and rushed through the opening in the floor.

In the fresh air, the mask was taken off the man's head. It was Johann Gutkind, the man the police were hunting in connection with the Kemstoff murder. He had prepared the gas defense; and a defect in the mask he depended upon betrayed him to death. For he died shortly after.

Before his death he confessed that he had used the grocer's clerk as a partly innocent accomplice in an attempt to rob Dr. Kemstoff. The wagonette held a long rope concealed under the soiled linen the policeman saw in Ms careless inspjection. Gutkind 's method of entry was exactly what the police had deduced it was— by means of rope and a pair of steel spurs.

He opened Dr. Kemstoff 's window and stepped across the sill without touching it, so as not to disturb the dust he knew theoretically was there. He was gloved, so he left no finger-prints.

He had barely entered the living room, however, when Dr. Kemstoff leaped upon him. In the struggle Gutkind crashed in the man's skull with his blackjack. But he was so frightened at having killed a man— his first and only murder— that he decided to take no loot with him that might furnish the police with the remotest clew. But in the crime museum in the great police headquarters on Alexanderplatz I saw the rope and spurs he had used— mute trophies of the battle between an original criminal and a German built impersonal, criminal-hunting machine.

________________

8: Seed To The Sower

Sewell Ford

1868-1946

The Atlantic Monthly November 1905

American newspaperman, novelist and short story writer. He is best known
for his "Shorty McCabe" and "Torchy" stories.

IT was going to be risky, unusually risky. Sam Trimble admitted as much to himself, and there was little timidity about Sam. He even speculated as to his chances if they should get him before a country grand jury. They would be hostile, those small taxpayers. They always were. Hint to them of a slight juggling with the county funds, and they buzzed like a lot of hornets. You would think each felt a hand on his own pocket' book.

This affair concerned a new courthouse at Cedarton. It had been an unpopular project from the first, and now some of the Freeholders who had voted for it wanted to back out. They looked to Proutt and waited. Proutt was their chairman. He had been the one who had first suggested that the old building ought to go. But now Proutt was non-committal.

Trimble knew the game. Proutt was in the market. After to-day things would be different, for Proutt and Trimble were to meet. Incidental to the meeting would be a little business transaction. Snugly stowed within a long envelope in Trimble's inside pocket were several yellowbacked banknotes of large denomination,— clean, uncreased banknotes, which rattled crisply as he pushed back his lapel to hunt for a cigar.

By to-morrow those crisp banknotes would have changed hands. Likewise Proutt's manner would have altered. Tomorrow he would stand for progression, for enterprise, for civic pride. And the county would follow Proutt as sheep follow a bell-wether. Why not? Chairman Proutt owned much real estate, he had a crop of highly respectable white whiskers, he was deacon of a church.

Yet Proutt was in the market, and Trimble was there to buy. It was the particular kind of business in which Sam Trimble was expert. The judicious distribution of yellow-backed banknotes brought him in a living, a very comfortable, silk-lined, down-padded, goldmounted living. That his business maneeuvres were often indictable troubled Sam Trimble not at all. It is one thing to do something indictable, and quite another to be indicted. As yet Mr. Trimble had never been indicted. He had skated over some very thin ice, to be sure. Twice he had "appeared;" but once the public prosecutor had experienced a change of heart at the eleventh hour, and once the chief witness had been sent to Europe on a pleasure trip.

Not that the mere handing over to Chairman Proutt of that long envelope would be risky. That was only a preliminary. It would be the things which must inevitably follow that might stir the hornets' nest, might bring that meddlesome grand jury on the scene.

If only that bridge job had been less recent. That had made the tax rate climb. The new courthouse would jump it up another peg or two. Would the taxpayers recognize in the methods of the Colonial Construction Company the methods of the Amalgamated Bridge Building Concern? Mr. Trimble hoped they would not. Chairman Proutt had come through that affair without a blemish. He would be sanguine about this one. Well he might. Who would attempt to accuse Proutt in his own county ?

Besides, Proutt covered his tracks like a fox. No checks for him. Catch him putting his name to anything which would not stand the light of day. Why, even this very meeting with Trimble was cloaked by a quarterly church conference. He was there now, probably leading in prayer, while Mr. Trimble, with the crisp banknotes in his pocket, awaited his pleasure. This would be Proutt's programme throughout. If things went wrong, if some meddler stumbled on the irregularities which were scheduled to follow, who would be the first to take up the hue and cry? Why, Proutt. Trimble, you see, knew the variety. But when it is your business to take chances, you take 'em. Still, Trimble wished that for this once the grand jury possibility might be a trifle more remote. Ordinarily he would have faced the risk smilingly. Here, however, were outside complications. If, for instance, he should find himself mixed up with a grand jury at any time during the next three or four months it would be confoundedly awkward. Edith would n't
like it. He was going to marry Edith. Honeymooning under bail was not a cheerful prospect, even to the exuberant soul of Sam Trimble.

With this reflection there recurred to him an unanswered proposal which the morning's mail had brought. Five years before he would have hailed it as manna from the sky, accepted it off-hand. But then he had not discovered the gentle art of raiding county treasuries through the medium of sub-let contracts. Now anything else would seem slow and tame to him. Even grand juries can lend a spice to life. What was ten thousand a year? Why, this courthouse job ought to be good for thirty, net. He and Edith would just about need that much, at the start; for Edith was quite used to the things which such sums could buy. Mr. Trimble was getting used to them, too. Yes, he must take the risk. He had set out to give Cedarton a brand new courthouse, and that was what Cedarton must have. The Colonial Construction Company needed the money. Mr. Trimble was positive about this, for he was the Company. Having disposed of his momentary hesitation, Mr. Trimble leaned luxuriously back in a wide-armed wicker chair, lighted a cigar, and allowed his dark, audacious eyes to wander approvingly around the palm-decked sun room of the enormous hostelry in which he found himself a guest. It was the most expensive hotel in this most expensive of pinebelt winter resorts. For this reason he had chosen it. Mr. Trimble had a comfortable, if not an original theory that the best was none too good for him.

Looking at him casually you would have said that Mr. Trimble was entirely in harmony with his present surroundings. It was not simply that he was a well-groomed, handsome fellow. He was more than decorative. To use a trite phrase, he had about him an air of distinction. Perhaps it was the liberal sprinkling of premature white in his otherwise black hair which added this last touch. Also, his figure was erect and his every pose was grace. His fresh colored, clean shaven face suggested wholesomeness. A very pleasant face it was.

Those dark, audacious eyes, however, were his strong point. They made the personality of Mr. Sam Trimble a complex problem. Women, seeing the gray hair above the youthful cheeks, concluded that he had known some great sorrow. After looking into his dark eyes they were certain that he had suffered some grave wrong. Feminine instinct led them to suspect their own sex. This won him much sympathy, too much. Mr. Trimble had been obliged to adopt the habit of declining to answer scented notes. The scores of embroidered things made for him he gave away or burned. He found life sufficiently complicated without avoidable entanglements. So it was not vanity which prompted the niceties of his apparel. These were indulgences to his well-developed sense of luxury.

Mr. Trimble was thinking of ordering a cocktail,— he had almost decided on a Manhattan, with a dash of absinthe in it,— when he became conscious that some one was looking intently at him from the door of the sun room. A moment later the person hesitatingly approached.

Trimble knew him at a glance. Yes, that pallid, ascetic face, the colorless hair, hose big, eager, faintly blue eyes, could belong to none other than "Whitey" Wright. His name was Upshur, but at school the boys had called him  "Whitey." He was probably the Reverend Upshur by this time. His clothes indicated as much; at least, they would had they been new. They were somewhat rusty now.

Trimble puffed a little blue ring of cigar smoke up at the tinted ceiling, watchingitabsorbingly. Perhaps Upshur would not recognize him. No such luck. Timorously, as a new boy in a strange neighborhood, he had crossed the rug-strewn expanse of waxed parquetry, and now he was standing tentatively at his elbow.

Without enthusiasm Trimble regarded the prospect of a reunion with this half-forgotten schoolmate. As a youth, Upshur had been rather a tiresome little prig. He doubted if being a minister had much improved him. The company of a minister he did not in the least desire at that moment, for several obvious reasons, of which the inclination to order a cocktail was not the major.

However, there was no escaping Upshur. He was there. He might as well be accepted cheerfully. In that bright, friendly way of his, a winning smile on his handsome face, a quizzical look in his fascinating eyes, Trimble glanced up.

"It— it's Mr. Trimble, isn't it?" There was a note of repressed eagerness in the soft, rich-toned voice.

"No, just Sam," said Trimble, with a laugh, his hand outstretched. "How are you, Upshur? Pull up a chair. You're the Reverend Upshur now, I expect."

A pleased flush flamed fitfully in the pale face. The faintly blue eyes lighted.

"Yes, I suppose I am. They call me Reverend. But I am most unworthy, Sam, most unworthy."

Trimble grinned appreciatively at the conventional wail. Evidently Upshur was not of the new school. He thought it necessary to lug his canting phrases around with him. Trimble told himself that he might have known "Whitey" Wright would grow into that kind of a preacher.

Well, the only thing to do was to humor him.

"Unworthy!"" exclaimed 'Trimble. "Nonsense! Absurdly modest, you mean. I'll bet there are mighty few wearing your cloth who are more of a credit to it."

"No, no, Samuel! You don't know."

"I knew you as a boy, didn't I?" demanded 'Trimble.

"Yes, but—"

"Oh, I'll back you, Upshur, against the best of them."

It was good fun for Trimble. Why, "Whitey "' was actually blushing. He was taking every word at its face value. What a gullible lot they were, these preachers! And how execrably they dressed! Trimble wondered if Upshur wore those trousers in the pulpit. It must have required years to bag them at the knees like that. Were frayed cuffs a part of the clerical outfit, too? Trimble was very near to feeling sorry for him when he saw those cuffs,

"How are you getting on, Upshur?" he asked.

He rose to this avidly. The eager, pale blue eyes beamed with gratitude and pleasure and kindred emotions, beamed on Mr. Trimble. He forgot to say how he was getting on, in his haste to voice his thankfulness. You might have thought Trimble had dragged him from a floating spar in mid-ocean.

Trimble hardly knew what to make of this gentle demonstration. It was a most unexpected response to his somewhat perfunctory show of interest. But then, Trimble never could quite account for the enthusiasm which he often inspired in his friends.

"Ah, Samuel!" sighed the Reverend Upshur, "you don't know how good it seems to me to meet an old friend at such a time."

"Me too," said Trimble easily. "I was wondering only the other day what had become of you. Have you struck a rich church yet, or are they trying to starve you?"

"The very topic that is uppermost in my mind, the very one!" promptly responded the Reverend Upshur, emphasizing his words by reaching out a thin hand and gently tapping Trimble's chair arm. "I have at last, as you put it, Sam, struck a rich church."'

"Why, that's good! Congratulations, old man! Let's— er— let's shake on it. Got the deal all cinched — that is, the arrangements are all made, are they?"

The Reverend Upshur sadly waved away the proffered hand.

"No," he sighed, "they are not."

"There's a hitch, eh?"'

The Reverend Upshur smiled, just the ghost of a weak little smile, and nodded his head.

"It's here," he said, pressing his hand to his left side, and eclipsing a raw metal button that had once been cloth covered.

Trimble stared. Heart trouble? That was bad.

"I wish I might tell you about it," resumed the Reverend Upshur. "It's a distressing situation, very distressing. I am at the forks of a road, and don't know which way to turn. I must decide to-day, within an hour, almost at once."

Then it was not heart trouble. Trimble felt relieved. Invalids were depressing.

"Wish I could be of some help to you," he returned. Surely, it was a safe enough thing to say.

"Do you? Oh, but you can, Sam. I am sure you can. You will know exactly what I ought to do. May I tell you about it? Do you mind if I do?"

Trimble was fairly caught. After what he had said, how could he refuse such a plea? He could not. He was in for it, that was plain. The grotesque irony of the situation appealed to his sense of humor. He had come down here to bribe a county official into winking at a crooked contract; he found himself asked to advise a minister.

Well, he had often thought he would like to give advice to some of them. Here was his chance. Mr. Trimble had his private opinion of clergymen. It was not flattering to them. Perhaps, after all, he could not spend a quarter of an hour more to his own satisfaction. So he settled himself comfortably in the big wicker chair, fixed his gaze on the lower branches of a pine tree just outside the sun room windows, and told the Reverend Upshur to blaze away.

The reverend gentleman did not do precisely that, but he came as near to it as he could. The recital was not one calculated to stir the blood. To Trimble it sounded petty and sordid. Briefly, Upshur had been called to a bigger church. He had been offered a salary three times as large as the one on which he had been trying to subsist ever since he had entered the ministry. The change would mean a larger field, more congenial surroundings, many material advantages. It would be a step forward in his career. It would mean more, oh, ever so much more than he could express.

"Well?" asked Trimble, faintly curious, "what stands in your way."

"I  don't know," said the Reverend Upshur wearily. "Sometimes I think it's my conscience, sometimes I think it's only my vanity. You would n't imagine, Sam, that I had much to be vain about, would you? It is my little church. I fear I'm tremendously conceited about that. You see, when I was first sent to the Junction, three years ago, the society had dwindled almost to nothing. There were only five names on the membership roll. How many do you suppose I preached to last Sunday morning ?"

Trimble did not hazard an estimate.

"Thirty-nine! Christmas Sunday we had a congregation of forty-five, counting children and the sexton. That's doing rather well at the Junction. And the church building looks different. It has been newly painted— I did most of that myself. It has a new roof— they gave me the shingles at the mill. Did you ever lay any shingles, Sam? It isn't such hard work. It's play compared to sawing cordwood for the stoves. That hurts my back. I must have a warm church, though. But the younger men are getting so that they help me a lot. They all help me, for that matter. They're all my people. Perhaps they are a little crude in their ways, being section hands and folks from the Pine Barrens, but I have learned to look below the surface. I know every one of them now, almost as well as if I had always lived there. They have been good enough to share all their troubles, all their joys with me. I have christened their babies, said the last words over their old folks as they dropped off, sat at their bedsides when they were ill, at their tables when they made merry. Some of them I have joined in marriage. They— they seem to like me. 'They say they don't want me to leave them just yet. They seem to feel that they need me. There are two or three young men who do need me, I am sure. They are just groping from darkness toward the light.

"I cannot help but think that if my place should be taken by a stranger, although he would probably be far abler than I, he might not get on so well with those young men. They understand me, and I understand them. We were a long time in getting acquainted. If I should leave them now, I fear they would slip back into darkness."

Abruptly the Reverend Upshur ceased talking. He had clasped his thin hands, there was a far-away look in his eager eyes. Trimble regarded him curiously, indulgently, mentally casting about for some common ground. Having found it, he asked,—

"What does it pay, this little church of yours?"

"With outside aid counted in, four hundred."

"A month?"

The Reverend Upshur gasped. "Four hundred a month! No, four hundred a year."

Trimble did not gasp. He whistled. The frayed cuffs were explained.

"But you can't live on that, Upshur!"

"I do, though. I have two nice little rooms. I have learned to cook fairly well, too."

"To cook! You're not married, then ?"'

The Reverend Upshur blushed. "No— not yet."

"Ah! You want to be?"

"We have agreed to put it off for two or three years more. You see, when this offer came, I could think of nothing but Grace. It seemed to put an end to our waiting. You remember Grace, Sam?"

Trimble did; the girl with the mass of brown hair and a face like St. Cecilia's; one of the sweet, serious kind. Yes, he remembered Grace.

"I was planning to go on after her as soon as the matter was settled. I meant to bring her back as a bride to my installation. I had the letter all written to tell her of our good fortune, when— when I met one of my boys coming to see me. He wanted help. It was then that I realized what it would mean if a stranger should take my place. He would not have come if it had n't been me.

"You can see, can't you, Sam, the things which make it difficult for me to decide? Which is the path of duty? Should I go to this new, this larger field where, as it has been urged, there will be more who need help just as badly; or should I let this opportunity pass and stand by the little band of good souls who would grieve to have me go?"

To say that Trimble was embarrassed hardly states the case accurately. His make-up did not allow such a sensation. He was surprised, perhaps perplexed. Why, in the name of all that was great, should Upshur Wright come to him with such a question? As if in answer to his question the Reverend Upshur immediately told why.

"You can see these things clearer than I, Samuel. You are a man of the highest moral standards, the nicest perceptions. I have only to look at you to know that. I should know it even if I did not remember what a manly, straightforward boy you were. You have followed the narrow path. Show it to me."

Mr. Trimble was undergoing a novel experience. He felt warmed and thrilled by a sudden inward glow. A subtle, soothing enthusiasm seemed to have arisen within him. It was new, unique. He had known the friendship of many men, had learned to cultivate it, had come to appraise his knack of making friends as a business asset.

But this was different. This was respect, esteem. Mr. Trimble could not recall having made a like impression on any one else. If he had done so it had not been acknowledged. Like a stray beggar in a banquet hall, he sniffed hungrily the unfamiliar incense.

For one precarious instant he poised exultingly on his pedestal before realizing that he could make no move without tumbling ignominiously off. It would be better to jump and land on one's feet.

"Haven't you drawn it a little strong, Upshur, about my high standards, and all that? I don't class myself as much of a moralist."

"Of course you don't, Sam. I can believe that you are entirely unconscious of your own strong integrity. You are one of those noble souls whose eyes are firmly fixed on the path of honor. I can read it in your face, as all men must."

Trimble winced. He cast a quick look of suspicion at the Reverend Upshur. No, he was sincere enough. He meant every word of it. There was that in the eyes which left no doubt of this.

In the rich-toned voice there was a little quaver as he continued: "It is a great privilege for me to meet you in this hour when I am so sadly in need of counsel. But do not allow me to importune you. Take your own good time, Samuel. I will wait until you have thoroughly considered my perplexity, for I have determined to abide by your decision."

"Eh! You have!" Sam Trimble straightened himself in his chair and gazed at this slender, white-faced young minister who beamed upon him with such implicit confidence. "You don't mean that you're going to put it all up to me to say whether you make the move or not ?"

"Yes, Samuel," said the Reverend Upshur, with complacent resignation. "You may think it mere chance which led me to wander in here and find you. I am convinced that my steps were directed by the great Intelligence. I shall rely absolutely on your advice."

"But, great Scott, man, I can't—"

With lifted hand the Reverend Upshur stilled his protest.

"I know, Samuel, I know. You hesitate to impose on another consequences which you yourself would so nobly face. But remember, I have prepared myself to pursue either course, cheerfully and gladly, so long as I know it to be the course of duty. Now I am going to leave you for half an hour, that alone you may fight out my battle in your own noble, generous way. Before I go, however, let me review for you, from my own selfish standpoint, the details of my perplexity. On the one hand is my little church, with the handful of loyal, struggling souls who cry out that they need me and wish me to stay. On the other there is my dear, patient Grace, there are the larger opportunities, the material advantages, everything for which I have so longed. You must make the choice for me, Samuel. My future is in your keeping. God bless you!"

Before Trimble could stop him he had wrung his hand, patted him fondly on the shoulder, and, his eager blue eyes blurred by tears, had swiftly quitted the sun room. Too late Trimble leaped to his feet to detain him. He caught only a glimpse of a time-glazed black overcoat and a rusty black derby disappearing behind a palm.

"Well, I'll be damned!" ejaculated Sam Trimble.

Instantly the words rang discordantly in his ears. What if he had let them slip a moment earlier! What would the Reverend Upshur Wright have thought of him if— Here Trimble laughed, a hard, cynical, mirthless little laugh. The Reverend Upshur, indeed! Why should he, Sam Trimble, bother his head with the absurd fantasies of this insignificant shabby, white-livered little Bible-pounder who could worry his picayune soul to a frazzle over such profitless hair-splitting ? Why had he allowed him to go on with all that drivel about his two-by-four church, his dear people, and his precious Gracie? Why hadn't he told him plumply to go to the devil ?

With angry strides Trimble measured the ample length of the deserted sun room, trying to shake from his aristocratic shoulders the preposterous load which had been so unceremoniously dumped thereon. The effort was in vain. Try as he might, he could not blot out from his mental vision the insistent confidence of those pale blue eyes. Never had man looked at him in that way before. It was nothing less than implicit trust. It invested him with all the virtues, made him the repository of all honor, the censor of all morals. It was utterly ridiculous, but it was almost sublime.

Yes, there was no evading Upshur. In less than half an hour he would be back, fatuously beaming with gratitude, expecting the oracle to speak. Nervously Trimble consulted his watch. Upshur had been gone ten minutes.

Well, he could n't tell him to go to the devil. Trimble could say hard things when necessary, but he was no boor. He shrunk from crushing this marvelous flower of faith, as he would have shrunk from planting his heel on a fresh-cut rose. No, he must play the part as best he could. He must tell the man something.

Examining Upshur's imagined dilemma with so much sincerity as hecould command, he attempted to see the affair as Upshur saw it. He found the task wholly beyond his power. Here the fellow was offered a living salary in exchange for a starving one; he was asked to leave his little dead-and-alive Junction for a town of some size where there were probably persons of intelligence and refinement, perhaps a library, more than one mail a day, and bathtubs. Then, too, there was the adorable Grace of the saintly face,— Grace, who counted time only by years as she waited.

There was all this, and Heavens only knew how much more; and yet the man backed and filled, hemmed and hawed, and got off rubbish about souls in darkness! He wanted him to decide, did he ? That was easy enough. He would tell the Reverend Upshur to jump at the chance, to grab it before it slipped by, to get his offer in black and white. Then he could chuck up his two-by-four church, pack his grip, and send for Gracie.

But how would Upshur take this? Would he expect any frills from the oracle? Trimble groaned. Of course he would. He would look for an ethical solution, for moral filigree. He would want to see just how the hair had been split by this marvel of uprightness, Samuel Trimble, whose eighteen-karat goodness was known of all men.

"Devil take the fellow!" muttered Trimble. 'I'm no Solomon."

Once more he tackled the job, pacing with quick, restless strides up and down, a smokeless cigar clenched between his white, even teeth.

No, that first solution wouldn't do. It was too easy. Besides, it could n't be explained. Whatever there was in that rubbish about souls slipping back into darkness, it was evidently very real to the Reverend Upshur Wright. It was more real to him than a decent salary, civilized comforts, books, friends,— than Gracie. It was the one important thing. Trimble could see that now.

It was the veriest bosh, of course; the distorted chimera of a religion-stuffed brain. But it was the thing. Upshur had as good as said so without knowing it.

Then he must give up Gracie, the decent salary, and all the rest. He must stick in the mud. He must cook and shingle and saw wood. He must stand by his two-by-four. It would be rather tough, especially on Gracie. It would be tough enough for Upshur, though. How he had wanted to take this new place! Why, he had trembled at the thought of it! But all the while, behind everything, was that unexplained, inexplicable maggot in his brain which would not let him, Would it not, though? How substantial, after all, were these bonds which chained him to the martyrdom of existence at this blessed Junction ? Wouldn't they snap rottenly when the real strain came? Of course they would.

Then this grand pow-wow of his was simply the back wave of joy spending itself against the rock of his determination. Keep him from taking this new church, which meant Gracie and all the rest? Why, you could n't drive him from it with a club! What he really needed was to have the hypocrisy shaken out of him. It would do him good. Trimble thought he saw a way to do it.

"Well, Samuel?"

There he was. Trimble raised his eyes from the polished floor to find Upshur standing before him, a tense expectancy in his pallid face.

"You have made your decision, Sam!" exclaimed the Reverend Upshur, a note of repressed excitement in his soft tones. "I can see it in your look, in your very manner. Iam ready. What is it to be; go or stay, Gracie or— or those needful ones ?"

He stood on tiptoe to put both of his white hands on the elegant shoulders of Sam Trimble. His very soul seemed to be listening just back of those eager eyes, so earnest was his gaze.

Calmly, judicially, Trimble looked down at him; not coldly, nor severely, but with an air of sorrowful benevolence. His habitually pleasant mouth lines, and the gray-sprinkled hair framing the warmly tinted face, carried out the effect. Yet this was histhought: "Now for it. Now to hold up to this simple fellow his shallow pretenses. Now to make him squirm."

"Are you quite sure that you ought to leave this thing to me, Wright?" he asked.

"Yes, yes; quite sure."

Trimble eyed him searchingly for a moment. "Let's see," he resumed, "you're getting four hundred at the Junction. The other folks offer twelve, do they ?"

"Yes, twelve hundred, and a parsonage. It is a very comfortable parsonage, too,— eight rooms, furnace-heated, gas. There's a climbing rose over the front door, and a big syringa bush under the study window." He repeated these details as glibly as a priest chanting a prayer.

Trimble smiled. "And you must take up the offer to-day or let it go?"

"Yes, I am to meet Mr. Proutt here, and—"

"Proutt! Proutt of Cedarton ?"

"Yes, that is where I have been called, you know. Mr. Proutt is the president of the trustees. He is attending our quarterly conference, and I am to give my decision to him. Do you know Mr. Proutt ?"'

"A little." Trimble smiled again. "So Proutt is the man you're dealing with, is he? That's nice. Proutt offers you twelve hundred and a parsonage thrown in. But they need you back at the Junction, don't they?"

"I fear they do, Sam."

"Couldn't find any one else who would do as much for them as you have, eh ?"'

"Oh, yes; but not at once. They are such poor folks, and there are so few ministers who can afford or who are willing to take such a pulpit, that it might be a long time before—"

"I see," said Trimble. "But there are a good many more folks in Cedarton, eh?"

"Oh, many more."

"I expect you could make some of them better, couldn't you?"

"I hope I could, Sam."

Once more Trimble paused. He seemed to be thinking intently.

"You have fully made up your mind to follow my advice, have you?"

"Absolutely." There was a ring of fanatic courage in the Reverend Upshur's voice as he said it.

"Then, Upshur," Trimble spoke with the measured deliberation of a judge pronouncing sentence, "I guess I shall have to tell you to go back to the Junction."

The tremor of the frail form before him Trimble felt on his shoulders. The eager look failed from the pale blue eyes. The Reverend Upshur's arms dropped limply to his side. For a moment he stood there with bowed head, a broken, forlorn, pathetic figure in rusty black; stood like one who has been turned away from a threshold, like one sent into exile.

Silently, impassively, Trimble waited for the inevitable result, as a student of chemistry watches the working out of a miniature miracle in a test tube. The wait was a brief one. Bravely throwing back his head, revealing the trembling lip, the swimming eyes, the Reverend Upshur grasped Trimble's hand.

"Thank you, Sam," he said huskily. "Thank you, old friend. I— I had sinfully hoped that it might be otherwise. But it could n't, could it ? You have kept me in the narrow path. I— I shall go back. God bless you and— and goodby."

Then he was gone.

Suppose the litmus paper should turn vividly green instead of red in the acid ? Suppose the oxygen bubbles should cluster at the bottom of the tube instead of rising? 'The chemistry student would stare. Sam Trimble stared. He even looked for him to turn at the door and come back to say that he could n't give up Grace, that he could n't return to the Junction.

But he did not come back. Gradually the full impertinence of his meddling dawned on Sam Trimble. The fellow meant to do it! He meant to throw away the chance for which he had waited years, for which he might wait other years before it would come again. And on whose word?

Ugh! Trimble tossed his unlighted cigar carelessly at a palm tub, and sank into a chair. He brushed an impatient hand across his fine, dark eyes. They were no longer audacious eyes. 'They were watching a forlorn figure in rusty black, a figure that walked with bravely held head toward an unspeakably wretched Junction somewhere off in the dreary waste of sand and pines.

Many minutes he sat there. Then he got up, crossed to a writing desk, and busied himself with pen and paper.

Trimble was still at the desk when the keen, bead-like eyes of Jeremiah Proutt, shooting wary glances from under bristly white brows, discovered him. The forward thrust head bobbing between the stooped shoulders wagged a salute.

"I am late, Mr. Trimble. I hope you haven't been waiting long." His words came with gurgling smoothness. He held forth a claw-like hand, which Trimble failed to see.

"You are late," said Trimble dryly.

"I was delayed by— er— a very foolish person." Proutt drew a chair to the side of the desk.

"Not a preacher ?" suggested 'Trimble.

"Yes, a preacher." He made a gesture of impatience. "They have no head for business, Trimble."

"Ah! I suppose they haven't." 'Trimble's gaze was seeking the wary eyes under the white brows. "You have had a lot of experience with all kinds of men, Proutt," he said abruptly. "What is your private opinion of me? Come now, out with it."

The forward thrust head ducked sinuously, and the beady little eyes snapped a swift glance of inquiry across the desk lid.

"Why— er— why, Mr. Trimble," gurgled Proutt oilily, "you don't need to ask that. I am sure we understand each other by this time. I think pretty well of you, of course."

"Do you? Then you're a mighty poor judge, Proutt. I'm a scoundrel, a mean-spirited, miserable scoundrel. I've just found it out, too."

Proutt responded only with another disturbed, darting glance.

"Do you know what I've been doing as I waited here for you?" continued Trimble. "I've been having sport, Proutt; having sport," he repeated bitterly, relentlessly, "with a human being. I didn't know that he was really human until afterwards. I thought he was just an imitation, a mannikin; a slimpsy, bloodless thing with no backbone and only half a mind. I played with him, Proutt, as a cub bear would play with a rag doll,— tossed him up, clawed him, trampled him under foot. And after all, Proutt, he was a man; a man with blood in his veins, with a brain in his head, with a heart under his ribs, and, somewhere about him, a something else,— a soul, I suppose it's called. I haven't one. But he has. I had a glimpse of it. Yet I played with him, and he a real man, ten times, yes, a hundred times more of a man than I ever was or will be. Now, Proutt, what do you think of that?"

Under the stern glitter of Trimble's dark eyes Mr. Proutt's head ducked and bobbed uneasily.

"Er—ahem!" The lean fingers of Proutt's clasped hands were working in and out like yellow shuttles. "It is— er— very interesting, this— er— parable of yours, Mr. Trimble. Quite entertaining. But really, my time is limited, and there is that— er— little matter of business, you know. Couldn't we—"

"Business, eh? Oh, yes." Trimble seemed to rouse himself as if waking from a dream. "Business, to be sure."' He pushed aside some of the desk furnishings, and tapped with his finger a long envelope which lay there. "What do you imagine is in that envelope, Proutt ?"

Proutt chuckled. "A donation, perhaps?"

"Excellent! It is a donation. Couldn't guess the amount, could you?"

The little eyes glistened greedily. "Fifteen hundred ?"

"Right again! All of which goes to prove that I am several kinds of a scoundrel. You know why I brought that down here, don't you, Proutt? I ought to be ashamed. You're a nice, respectable old gentleman. You've just come from a church conference. And here I am trying to bribe you— Oh, you needn't look frightened; no one's paying any attention to us— trying to bribe you, I say, into a scheme to plunder the public funds. And you're willing to be bribed. Proutt, you're something of a scoundrel yourself."

Mr. Proutt's sinuous neck stiffened. His little eyes stared stonily. "Mr. Trimble!"' he protested.

Trimble waved a careless hand at him. "Oh, that's all right, Proutt. I'll save you. You shall not be corrupted this time. I have decided to send that fifteen hundred to the Reverend Upshur Wright as a wedding present. See?"— and he turned over the envelope to show the address.

"Why— er— why, Mr. Trimble, I don't think I understand."

"Don't you?" said Trimble, rising and placing the envelope in his pocket. "Never mind; neither do I— quite. I am going to send it to him, though."

"But our— er— our little business arrangement ?"

"It's off," said Trimble briskly. "I'm taking up a new line."

___________________

9: Sing a Song of Sixpence

James Norman Hall

1887-1951

The Atlantic Monthly Dec 1925

SEVERAL years ago while living at Papeete, the capital of Tahiti in French Oceania, I found myself so low in funds that it seemed the part of wisdom to retire for a time to one of the remote country-districts until I could repair my fortunes. On the windward side of the island, thirty-five miles from the town, I found an attractive place about an acre in extent, with a one-room house on it precisely suited to my needs. My verandah overlooked the sea, and a clear mountain-stream flowed through my small domain, so that I had both freshand salt-water bathing; but a more important feature than either of these was the cheapness of the rental— $3.00 per month.

The land thereabout was so fertile that I decided to make a vegetable garden. In the tropics gardening would be a delightful occupation, and it might easily prove so profitable that I should never again need to resume my old trade of journalism. So I set to work, hopefully enough, glad of the necessity which had brought me to this decision.

The experience was disillusioning. Millions of tiny red ants carried away most of my seed, and, if any happened to be overlooked by the ants, the moment they sent forth green shoots these were sheared off by land crabs. After three months of patient effort all that I had to show for my toil was two ears of sweet corn (or, better, corncobs, for the rats had eaten off the kernels), three small tomatoes, and one squash. Having estimated my time as worth, at a modest figure, twenty cents an hour, and adding expenditures for seed, garden tools, and so forth, I found that these vegetables cost me $15.50 each.

Nevertheless I resolved to try once more, and ordered from America a fresh supply of seed— a small quantity this time, for my funds were getting low; and furthermore, because of my innumerable enemies I meant to garden on a reduced front. But when I had cleared away the weeds— how marvelously they had flourished meanwhile, without care!— and saw the hosts of ants drawn up in waiting battalions, and the ground perforated like a sieve with the holes of land crabs, and a crab at the entrance of each hole, waving his keen-edged nippers in the air, I lost heart. 'It is useless,' I thought. 'I'd better go back to journalism. Although not a lucrative profession, it is more profitable than gardening, and if I practise it faithfully I should be able to earn at least twenty cents an hour.' Therefore I put away my tools and left Nature to plant whatever she would in my garden plot. She chose, as before, lantana and false tobacco.

That afternoon I was oiling and cleaning my typewriter, which had long been rusting in disuse, when a Chinaman named Hop Sing drove past my door in his dilapidated spring-wagon. He lived a quarter of a mile down the lagoon beach from my place, in a house which he himself had built from the boards of old packing-cases and roofed over with flattened-out biscuit-tins. I knew that he had a vegetable garden, — although he raised only sweet potatoes, watermelons, and a very tough variety of field corn,—so I hailed him, thinking he might find use for my dollar's worth of seed. He stopped, willingly enough, and I brought out to him a small packet each of beans, sweet corn (Golden Bantam), squash, pumpkin, lettuce, and tomato seed, all of the best varieties. Hop grunted expressions of mild interest while I explained what the various packets contained, and, when I had finished, asked: 'How much?' 'Oh, nothing at all,' I replied. 'A little present for you.' He grasped the back of the seat to steady himself, perhaps, from the shock of receiving a present in that heathen land, and his black eyes glittered a trifle more brightly; but these were the only evidences of emotion— if it may be called emotion— that he displayed.

I forgot Hop Sing forthwith; there were other things to think of, chiefly the precarious state of my finances. Having counted on my garden to furnish food, I had spent my little capital all too freely. Luckily my rent was paid several months in advance, but I had left only 128 francs —a little more than $5.00 American, at the current rate of exchange — and not a penny coming in until I had written something, story, sketch, or what not. The manuscript would have to be sent to America, and even though it should be accepted at once— a remote possibility— I could not hope to receive a cheque for at least three months. How was I to live in the meantime? There were bananas on my place and about fifty coconut palms; but my landlord, a native, reserved the right to both the nuts and the fruit, which was no more than fair, considering the modest rental he asked for house and grounds. The nuts were gathered as they fell and the bananas picked green to send to the Papeete market. I thought of fishing, but, remembering past experiences, I knew it would be foolish to count on that. I had no better luck at fishing than at gardening. No, I should have to live, somehow, on my 128 francs. That, of course, was impossible, so I resolved not even to try. I kept 28 francs for incidental expenses, spent 25 francs for native tobacco,— if I was to write I should have to smoke,—and the remainder for sweet potatoes and tinned beef. When the food was gone— well, I should worry about that when the time came.

Three days later I was on page two of a sketch which I planned to call 'Settling Down in Polynesia,' a story of some experiences I had had the year before. It was Sunday, but necessity knows no holy days and I was doing my utmost to work. The mere fact of having to work seemed to make accomplishment impossible. I had written and rewritten the two pages of my story, vainly trying with each new draft to blacken page three. I was aroused from a mood of profound dejection by a knock at the back door. It was Hop Sing, and with him were his wife, their three small children, and a wizened little man with a scant beard and shaped like an interrogation point. Hop was dressed in a clean cotton undershirt and a pair of dungaree trousers. His wife wore a pyjamasuit of black silk, and her hair was elaborately dressed. She carried one child on her arm, led another by the hand, and had a third, the baby, in a sling at her back. The children were beautifully dressed, and each of them had on a little skullcap of blue silk with flowers and butterflies embroidered on it in gold thread. The ancient wore a coat like a dressing-gown. He was very feeble and got down from the wagon with difficulty. It was pathetic to see the effort it cost him to walk. He would advance his staff a few inches and, grasping it with both hands, make a shuffling hop up to it. Then he would rest for a moment while gathering strength for a new effort. We helped him up the steps and at length all were seated on the verandah, Mrs. Sing sitting sidewise on her chair because of the baby in the sling. My unwashed breakfast-dishes were on the kitchen table, and several slices of fried sweet potato on a greasy plate looked anything but appetizing. I was ashamed of the disorder of the place, the more so because this was the first visit I had ever had from the Sing family. Both Hop and his wife looked about in appraising fashion, but whether they approved or disapproved it was impossible to judge from their faces.

'My fadda-law,' said Sing, indicating the old man.

I smiled and nodded.

A rather long silence followed. I felt embarrassed and could think of nothing to say.

'What name you?' he then asked.

I told him. Another interval of silence. I gave my forefinger to the baby on Mrs. Sing's lap. It clasped it gravely and held on. Mrs. Sing smiled. Her father, too, smiled; at least his face wrinkled suddenly, like a pool into which a pebble has been thrown. The small baby in the sling was asleep, its chubby arms sticking straight out. It looked like a doll rather than a real baby. The oldest child, a boy of six or seven, had the curious mature look and the air of profound wisdom common to many Chinese children.

Sing took from his pocket one of the packets of seeds I had given him.

'What name this?' he asked.

'That? Corn, sweet corn— Golden Bantam. Very good. Tahiti corn no good— too tough. This corn fine.'

'Where you get?'

'From America,' I replied.

He brought forth the other packets.

'All this Melican seed?'

I told him that it was, and the best that could be bought.

He was silent for a moment. Then he said: 'Make fine garden now. No have good seed before. Make plenty big tomato now, plenty squash, plenty corn. Bimeby you see.'

Thinking of my three tomatoes, about the size of marbles, I was not sanguine about Sing's being plenty big. However, I expressed the hope that they might be. I brought out my seed catalogue and showed him pictures of the various vegetables. He was much interested and exchanged remarks in Chinese with his father-in-law. Meanwhile one of those heavy local showers common at Tahiti in the rainy season broke with violence. The thunder of water on my tin roof was deafening. Soon the cloud melted into pure sunlight, the last of it descending in a fine mist shot through with rainbow lights. Sing then went to his wagon and returned with three huge watermelons. He made a second excursion, bringing this time a live fowl, a bottle of Dubonnet (vin apéritif), and a basket containing seventeen eggs. All of these articles he placed on my kitchen table.

'Littly plesent, you,' he said with a deprecatory gesture. Mrs. Sing and her father then rose, and all three shook my hand, bidding me good-bye with smiles and nods. A moment later they drove off, leaving me astonished at this expression of Chinese friendliness.

IT WOULD BE difficult to exaggerate the value to me of their generous gift. Tinned beef is a nourishing food, but ad lost all relish for it during the Great War. As for sweet potatoes, I had eaten so many while knocking about the Pacific on trading schooners that I could hardly endure the sight of them. How welcome, then, was this more palatable food! I planned to have a chicken dinner at once, but on second thought decided not to kill my fowl. Perhaps she would lay, and if I could somehow procure a rooster I might, from that small beginning, raise enough chickens to provide for all my needs. So I staked the hen out in the dooryard, with a string tied to her leg; and, having found several coconuts partly eaten by rats, I broke these open and gave her a good meal. Then, having dined on a six-egg omelet with half a | watermelon for dessert, I resumed my work with interest and enthusiasm. All the afternoon the bell of my typewriter rang with the steady persistence of an alarm gong at a railroad crossing, and pages of manuscript fell from my hands like autumn leaves after a heavy frost. By six o'clock that evening I had reached the end of my 'Settling Down'  story.

I had no time to lose if I were to get it in the north-bound mail. The monthly steamer from New Zealand to San Francisco was due at Papeete on Monday. I decided to go into town to post the manuscript, not being willing to trust the native mail-carrier with so precious a document. A motor-bus ran daily between Papeete and Taravao, a village just beyond my place, but the fare for the round-trip was twenty-four francs. I should need at least ten francs for stamps and expenses in town, so I decided to walk in to Papeete and, if I had enough money left, to ride back. Therefore, having fortified myself with a small glass of Dubonnet and another six-egg omelet, I set out.

It was a beautiful night, dewy and still and fresh, with a full moon rising above the palm trees on the Taravao isthmus. The road wound this way and that around the shoulders of the hills, now skirting the sea, now crossing the mouths of broad valleys where the hupé— the night breeze from the interior— blew cool and refreshing. I had glimpses through the trees of lofty precipices festooned with the silvery smoke of waterfalls and, on the left hand, of the lagoon bordered by the barrier reef where great combers, rising to break on the coral, caught the moonlight in lines of white fire. From native houses along the road came snatches of song, a strange mixture of airs, part French, part Tahitian, to the accompaniment of guitars, accordions, and mouth-organs. On verandahs here and there women were busy with their ironing, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a lamp beside them, and far out on the lagoon the lights of the fishermen were already beginning to appear.

I walked briskly along the moonlit road, feeling at peace with the world and with myself. How pleasant it would be, I thought, really to settle down in this remote tropical paradise, to remain here for the rest of my life. Where could I find kindlier people, or a life more suited to one of my indolent habits? If it were true that a man's wealth may be estimated in terms of the things he can do without, then in that sense I might hope soon to achieve affluence. Material possessions added little to the sum of one's happiness, and I could always earn enough at writing to provide for the simple necessities of life. Whenever the mildeyed melancholy tropical wolves came sniffing apologetically at my door I could knock off a story of one sort or another; then I could live on the proceeds of the sale of it until it became necessary to write another.

So I mused, proceeding on my way: but at length, toward midnight, when I had covered about half the distance to Papeete, I found myself again thinking of food. The nourishment stored in my second six-egg omelet had already been absorbed and its energy expended. I had a drink of water from a mountain stream and tightened my belt a notch or two.

'I'll have a good breakfast when I get to town,' I thought. For three francs I could buy a large portion of chop suey at one of the Chinese restaurants; that would have to suffice until I returned to the country, which I meant to do at once, as soon as I had posted my manuscript.

At a place where the road followed a lonely strip of beach I came to a thatched hut, and sitting near it, by a fire of driftwood, were an old native man and woman. I stopped for a moment to enjoy the beauty of the scene. The stems of the palm trees were black against the firelight, which flickered over the faces of the old couple and cast huge shadows behind them. They saw me, and the old man called out, 'Haere mai ta maa! (Come and eat!)' This is merely a friendly greeting, and I replied in the usual way, 'Paia vau (I'm not hungry)'; but if my empty stomach could have spoken it would have made indignant denial of that statement. But evidently they really meant that I should partake of their midnight supper. They were roasting in the coals what appeared to be shellfish and some sort of native vegetable, and an appetizing fragrance filled the air. 'Come!' said the old woman in the native tongue. 'Try this, it is very good'— and putting several generous portions in a coconut shell she held it up to me.

Good? I should think it was! The meat of the shellfish was as delicately flavored as that of the finest lobster, and the vegetable had a mealy, nutlike taste. My hosts seemed delighted at my appetite and urged more food upon me. 'Eat! Eat!' said the old man. 'We have plenty —enough for a dozen,' and he pointed to several buckets filled with uncooked food; so I ate with a will.

'What kind of shellfish are these?' I asked. 'Did you get them on the reef?'

'Shellfish! These are not shellfish; they're tupas.'

'What!' I exclaimed. Tupas are land crabs, and those I was eating with such relish were members of the pestiferous family, countless in number, which had assisted the ants in ruining my garden. I didn't know they were edible, but the old man told me that Tahitians thought them a great delicacy, which they are, in truth. As for the vegetable, it was not a vegetable at all, but a nut, the fruit of the mapé, the Pacific chestnut-tree. These trees flourish at Tahiti. They are found along the banks of streams and in moist or swampy places. There was a grove of them on my place, and the ground beneath was littered with nuts that I had never bothered to examine, not knowing that they were of value. I was appalled at thought of the time and effort I had wasted trying to make a garden, when all the while there was an inexhaustible food-supply at hand, to be enjoyed without labor, to be had for the mere taking. But no; the taking of land crabs could not be such a simple matter. I remembered the wariness of those which infested my garden plot. They did all their damage in my absence. The moment they saw me coming they scurried to their holes and, if I made so much as a move in their direction, dodged down to safety. I had once caught one by digging him out, but that cost me two hours of hard work.

I asked the old man how he caught them and he showed me a method so simple and reasonable that I wondered I had not thought of it. He had a fishpole and line, but instead of a hook at the end of the line he tied there a bunch of green leaves from the hibiscus tree. These leaves and the blossoms of the hibiscus are the principal food of land crabs. We went a little way from the hut to a spot in full moonlight where there were many crab-holes. 'Now stand very still,' he said. In a moment the crabs, which had scurried away at our approach, came warily up again. He then cast his bait very much as one does in fly-fishing. Immediately several crabs came sidling toward it. They fastened their nippers in the leaves, each of them trying to drag the bundle to his hole. The old man then gave a deft jerk to the line, and the crabs, not being able to disengage their nippers quickly enough, were dragged to his feet. He pounced upon them and threw them into the bucket with the others. I then tried my hand, with such success that I was tempted to forgo my journey to town. I wanted to go home at once and begin fishing in my garden, but more prudent counsels prevailed. One's appetite for food so plentiful and so easily procured might become jaded in time; furthermore, I should need a certain amount of money for clothing, shaving materials, tobacco, and so forth. Therefore, having bade farewell to my kindly hosts, I proceeded on my way and reached Papeete at dawn, just as the steamer that was to carry my manuscript to America was entering the harbor. Stamps for the precious parcel cost three francs. I then breathed over it a silent prayer and slipped it into the letter-chute.

PAPEETE is a colorful town, particularly in the early morning when the inhabitants are going to and from the market. Everyone is in the streets then, and the French and Chinese restaurants are filled with people exchanging gossip over their morning coffee. I had an excellent breakfast at a cost of four francs, and then strolled here and there doubly enjoying the gayety of the scene after my long sojourn in the country. I was walking along the Quai de Commerce looking at the shipping when someone touched my shoulder. It was a bald fat little Chinaman who had evidently been running after me, for he was out of breath and could not speak for a moment. Then he began talking in Chinese-Tahitian, a sort of béche-de-mer that I don't understand. I shook my head. He renewed his efforts, speaking very earnestly and rapidly, and presently I caught the name 'Hop Sing.'

'Hop Sing?' I said.

'E! E! (Yes! Yes!)' he replied, and of a sudden he found some English words.

"You know Hop Sing? Hop Sing flen, you?'

'Yes,' I said. 'I know him. Sing live close me, Papeari.'

Papeari is the name of the district where I was living.

The Chinaman's face glowed with pleasure.

"Maitai! Maitai! (Good! Hop Sing send me letta. I know name, you. You give seed; put in gloun, make garden. Maitai! Maitai! Hop Sing glad. Me glad. Hop Sing brudda-law me.'

"What name you?' I asked.

'Lee Fat. Keep store over there,' and he pointed down the street. 'When you go back Papeari?'

'Go this morning on motor-bus.'

'Goo-bye,' the Chinaman said, and rushed away as though he had not a moment to lose. I was surprised at the abrupt leave-taking and stood looking after him, hardly knowing what to make of the encounter, touched at thought of this odd little man chasing me down the street to thank me for the trifling favor I had done his brotherin-law.

I sat on a bench near the post office to wait for the motor-bus. 'The Beachcombers' Bench' it was called, for it was usually occupied on steamer day by waifs and strays from all parts of the world, men who sat there waiting for the distribution of the monthly mail, always expecting letters containing money and nearly always disappointed. 'I'm in the same boat now,' I thought. 'Three months hence I'll be sitting here nursing the same forlorn hope.' It was possible, of course, that my manuscript would sell at once, but, remembering past experiences, I knew it would be foolish to count on it. Well, I still had twenty-one francs, and I should have nine left after paying my bus fare. Certainly I should not starve, with land crabs and mapé nuts to eat, and meanwhile I should work at the journalistic trade as never before, sending manuscripts north by every steamer as long as I had money for postage. Having made this resolve, I put my worries aside.

It was nearly midday when I arrived at Papeari. While I was paying my fare to the driver, the boy who attended to the distribution of parcels put a box down beside me.

'You 've made a mistake,' I said. 'That isn't mine.'

'Yes it is,' he replied.

'No, no. I didn't have a box and I've ordered nothing from town.'

He insisted, however, that it was mine. A Chinaman had brought it just before the bus left the market, he said, and had paid for its carriage to my place. I still thought there was some mistake, but upon prying off the lid I found a card with 'Lee Fat, No. 118' printed on it. (Every Chinaman at Tahiti has a number. This is for some governmental purpose; to keep track of them, perhaps.) Under the name was written, in pencil, 'Mr. Hall, for you.' The parcel contained the following articles: one two-pound box of New Zealand chocolates, a large paper bag of lichi nuts, one quart of champagne (Louis Roederer), and a beautiful lacquered box with a gold dragon on the lid. In this box were two silk handkerchiefs and a silk pyjama-suit.

I was tempted to open the champagne at once, that I might drink long life and abundant health to Hop Sing and his brother-in-law, Lee Fat, No. 118; but I had no ice, and I knew that I could not drink, alone, a quart of champagne without having a headache the following day. So I tied a string to the bottle and lowered it into the cistern to keep cool. Then I went out to attend to my chicken.

She was gone. The string was still tied to the stake, but she had worked her leg out of the noose and vanished. After a long search I found her under the back steps. I reached in, very cautiously, to grasp her. She pecked at my hand and, as I drew her forth, gave utterance to the indignant squawks common to hens when they are sitting. Surely enough, she had laid an egg and was sitting on it; evidently she had been ready to sit when Hop Sing brought her to me. The egg under her was unfertilized, of course, so I took that out. Then I made her a nest of excelsior out of Lee Fat's box, and placed in it the five eggs remaining of Hop Sing's gift. The hen settled down on them with contented cluckings and, when comfortable, closed her eyes as much as to say, 'Now then, all I ask is to be fed from time to time, and twenty-one days hence we shall see what we shall see.'

It seems to me now that the definite upward trend in the graph of my fortunes began that afternoon when I started land-crab fishing. The results not only flattered my vanity— sadly in need of flattery— but gave me renewed confidence. 'At last,' I thought, 'I am a success at something.' I could not eat a tenth of the crabs I had caught, so I made a pen of stakes set closely together and deeply into the ground, and turned the surplus loose inside it. They immediately dug new holes for themselves, but this did not disturb me, for I knew I could easily catch them again. I fished all over my two-acre estate with such success that I had to enlarge the pen several times, and even then, and despite the fact that some of the crabs dug their way out, there were so many inside that the ground was honeycombed with their burrows. It occurred to me that by feeding them regularly on hibiscus leaves and blossoms I might add to their size and increase the delicacy of their flavor. The experiment was highly successful. The crabs thrived upon the regular and abundant food and I thrived upon them. At the time of Hop Sing's visit, what through worry and an uncongenial diet, I was very thin, but within six weeks I had gained fourteen pounds.

Meanwhile, upon the appointed day, my hen stepped out of her nest, followed by five bits of animated fluff. I was quite as proud of them as she was, and doubtless took more credit to myself on that occasion than the facts warranted. I fed both the hen and her brood on a mixture of roasted land-crabs and mapé nuts, and never have I seen chickens grow so rapidly.

It may seem incredible that m bottle of champagne should have remained unbroached during this time, but such is the case. In my interest in crab and chicken farming I had quite forgotten it; but one day, when my landlord was gathering coconuts in a near-by grove, I asked him to share it with me. He was more than willing, and at the first glass his habitually reserved attitude toward me altered at once. I then learned the reason for this attitude. He told me that his last tenant, an Australian, had not only eaten bananas and coconuts to which he had no right, but had gone away without paying his rent. We drank confusion to this scurvy tenant wherever he might be. Several of my landlord's children had accompanied him to the house, and I shared with them the box of New Zealand chocolates. It was a merry little party, and after much pleasant talk my landlord left me with repeated expressions of good will. The following morning I found on my back verandah a large bunch of bananas and a gunny sack filled with oranges and mangoes, and thereafter I was never without these delicious fruits, gifts from my landlord and his family. Not infrequently Mata, his wife, would send me, by one of the children, baked fish, breadfruit, and mountain plantain wrapped in green leaves, fresh from her native oven. I was overwhelmed with benefits and remembered with deep gratitude that I owed them all to Hop Sing.

His garden was flourishing; all of the seeds I had given him had sprouted and gave promise of a rich harvest under his patient, ceaseless care. He was always at work, and so too was Mrs. Sing, despite the demands on her time made by three small children. Sometimes of a late afternoon I walked down to their place, and usually found Mrs. Sing in a shed back of the house, where she sorted and cleaned bunches of lettuce and string beans for the market. All of her members were busy at once. She rocked the smallest baby, which hung in a little cradle from a rafter, by means of a cord attached to her foot. Every now and then she would pull another cord which hung just above her head, and this one ran, by a system of pulleys, to the garden, where there was a sort of jumpingjack scarecrow to frighten away the mynah birds; and meanwhile the fresh vegetables got themselves cleaned and deftly packed in little baskets. Sing was a baker as well as a gardener, and four times per week, after his long day's toil, he made the rounds of the district selling crisp loaves and pineapple tarts to the native population. Invariably, during these excursions, he left something at my gate, either a tart or a loaf of bread or a basket of vegetables, and to my great relief nothing I could do or say served to dry up his fountain of gratitude for my wretched little gift of seed.

Under these circumstances the weeks passed so pleasantly and quickly that steamer day— the third since the posting of my manuscript— was at hand before I realized it. I walked into town once more and waited on the familiar bench for the distribution of the mail. I waited all through the afternoon until everyone in Papeete and its environs had called for their letters. I waited until the sun was sinking behind the mountains of Moorea and the post office was about to close. Then, summoning all my resolution, I mounted the steps and walked toward the delivery window, saying inwardly, 'It's useless to ask; I'm quite certain to be disappointed.' The girl who presided there went hastily through a small heap of letters.

'No, there's nothing for you,' she said, smiling pleasantly.

I made a ghastly attempt to smile in return and was going toward the door when she called, 'Oh! Just a moment! What name did you say?'

I repeated it, enunciating the words with the utmost care.

'Yes, there's one letter, 'Fifty centimes postage due,' she said.

Having paid this, I had left only a twenty-five-centime piece, the smallest coin in use in French Oceania. But little that mattered. The letter contained a gracious note accepting my manuscript, and a cheque for five hundred dollars!

To those living luxurious lives in the high latitudes five hundred dollars may seem a trifling sum, but to me it was a fortune. With the half of it I could pay the rental for my house and grounds for a period of nearly seven years, and, provided I lived as modestly in the future as I had in the immediate past, the two hundred and fifty remaining would suffice for other expenses for a much longer time. But now, with bright vistas of ease and plenty and peace of mind opening out before me, I found myself perversely considering the possibility of leaving Tahiti. The north-bound steamer to San Francisco was expected in three days' time, and I fell to considering the varied experience I might now have by virtue of movement and my five hundred dollars. Remembering my past fortunes as a journalist, I knew that it was the part of wisdom to stay here where living was, for the first time, within my means; and yet, if I did not go now, I might never again have enough money for a steamship ticket. I walked the streets long after everyone else was in bed, in an agony of indecision, and at last, as the clock in the cathedral was striking two, the decision was made.

HOP SING was in town on the day of my departure. He had driven to market with garden produce, and both he and Lee Fat came to see me off. Fat insisted on my accepting a pair of Russian-leather bedroom-slippers and a Chinese fan of blue silk embroidered with gold butterflies. Sing's parting gift was a basket of tomatoes as large as oranges, and a dozen ears of sweet corn, Golden Bantam— the first fruits from the seeds I had given him. They smiled good-byes as the steamer backed away from the wharf; then I went at once to my cabin, in order that departure from that most beautiful of islands might be a little less poignant. While I was unpacking my bag the cabin steward looked in.

'You've been assigned to the doctor's table, sir,' he said. 'It's a table for four, but this trip there's only one other gentleman there besides the doctor.'

'All right,' I replied. 'And by the way, will you please have this corn prepared and served at luncheon? Take a couple of ears for yourself if you care to.'

'Thank you, sir. I guess the other gentleman at your table will be glad to see this. He ain't half complained about the food, and to tell you the truth, it's not what it might be.'

The doctor did not come down for luncheon. I had just seated myself when the other passenger at his table came in. He was a tall, spare man with a drooping white moustache and a bilious complexion. He was dressed in a baggy linen coat, knickerbockers, and low white shoes. He sat down without even a nod in my direction and, adjusting a pair of nose-glasses, picked up the menu card, puffing out his cheeks as he examined it, letting the air escape slowly through his lips. He struck me as being a man hard to please in the matter of food, no matter how good it might be. He was partaking of a fish course of creamed tinned salmon when the steward brought in a platter with ten splendid ears of Golden Bantam corn steaming on it. He gazed at it in astonishment.

'Take this away,' he said to the steward, pushing the dish of salmon to one side, 'and bring me a plate.'

Never have I seen a man give himself up to the enjoyment of food with such purely physical abandon. One would have thought he had not eaten for days. When he had finished his third ear he said, 'Steward, where does this corn come from? It's not on the card.'

'No, sir, it 's not on the regular bill. It's a gift to the table from the gentleman sitting opposite you.'

He gave me a quick glance as though he had just then become aware of my presence.

'Consider yourself thanked, sir,' he said brusquely.

I nodded.

'Is this corn of your own growing?'

'Well, yes, in a sense,' I replied.

He ploughed a hasty furrow along his fourth ear before speaking again. Then he said, 'What do you mean by "in a sense"? You either raised it or you didn't, I should think.'

He had a waspish, peppery way of speaking, as though he had been long accustomed to asking whomever whatever he liked with the certainty of a deferential reply. In view of the fact that he was eating my— or rather Hop Sing's— corn, I felt that he might have made an effort at least to be gracious. Therefore I merely said, as coldly as possible, 'Oh, you'd have to live at Tahiti to understand that.' Having finished my luncheon, I rose, bowed slightly, and left him there, still eating corn.

Half an hour later I was standing at the rail, aft, watching the peak of Orofena, the highest mountain at Tahiti, disappearing below the horizon. A hand was laid on my arm, and turning I found my luncheon companion.

'Well, young man,' he said, 'one would say you were thinking of jumping overboard.'

'I have been thinking of it,' I replied, 'but it's too far to swim back now.'

'You like Tahiti as much as that? Well, I don't wonder. An island where they grow such delicious corn must be a good place to live. I ate six of those ears— finished the lot, in fact.'

'I'm glad you enjoyed it,' I replied.

"See here! You mustn't mind my manner. I've got dyspepsia, and a wayward liver and an enlarged spleen— Lord knows what all else the matter with me. Gives mea sort of jaundiced outlook on life. But I want you to know that I'm grateful. Sweet corn is one of the few things I can eat without suffering afterward. Now then, tell me something about your island. I did n't go ashore. Useless trying to see a place in six hours. It's only an aggravation.'

I scarcely know how it came about, but within a few minutes I was talking as freely as to an old friend. I told him of the beauty of the islands, of the changing life, of the mingling races, of the strange outcroppings of savagery through the shale of what in those parts is called civilization. Presently I cut off short, thinking he might be bored.

'Not at all,' he said. 'Well, you've had an interesting time, evidently, and you seem to have made good use of your eyes and ears. Too bad you're not a journalist. I don't suppose you've ever tried your hand at writing?'

'Yes, occasionally,' I replied. 'In fact, journalism is my trade, if I may be said to have a trade.'

'Got any of your stuff with you?'

'A few sketches.'

'Do you mind letting me see them?'

'Not at all,' I said; and so, at his suggestion, I brought him a small sheaf of things, six slight papers on various subjects, each of them about two thousand words in length. He settled himself in his deck-chair and adjusted his glasses.

'Come back in an hour's time,' he said, 'and I'Il tell you what I think of them.'

He thought two of them worthless, and curiously enough they were the ones I thought best.

'But these four are not bad. What do you want for them?'

'Do you mean you would like to buy them?'

"Yes, of course. But I forgot to tell you— I'm manager of a newspaper syndicate in America. We can use these sketches. Tropical-island stuff is always popular. It's all bosh about the waning of interest in the South Seas. It never wanes and never will as long as life is what it is in America. Well, what do you want for them?'

'Oh, I don't know,' I said. I was about to add, 'Would one hundred dollars be too much?'— meaning one hundred for the four— when he interrupted me.

'Give you a hundred and fifty each for them. Is that satisfactory?'

I admitted that it was— quite satisfactory.

ADAM— 'Our General Ancestor,' as Milton calls him— was undoubtedly the first husbandman, and a highly successful one during the early part of his career. But, even under the exceptionally favorable conditions prevailing in the Garden of Eden before The Fall, I doubt whether he ever reaped a richer or more varied harvest than I did in my garden at Tahiti. And it all came from a dollar's worth of seed.

___________________

10: Balkameh

William Waldorf Astor

1848-1919

Pall Mall Magazine,  Aug 1901

A YEAR ago, in Paris, my attention was called to the irregular cutting of the ruby I wear as a ring. The setting had become loose, and the stone being shown to the manager of the Maison Rocque, he examined it with a minuteness that aroused my curiosity. In answer to a question he indicated certain characteristics in the shaping and disposition of its facets which might have escaped any but the expert eye, and spoke of what he declared to be well known among master diamond-cutters— that many antique gems bear mathematically expressed in the angle and proportion and conjunction of the figures which compose their surface, a date, a name, occasionally a word of philosophical import, which, if deciphered, proves the key to some weird enigma.

"Is it possible that some such phrase exists upon the face of my ruby?" I asked incredulously.

"There are a few Asiatics," was the answer, "who to this day practise a method of writing upon jade, lapis lazuli and cornelian, whereof the outlines shaped upon this ruby seem an exceptional specimen. The fact that such geometric symbols are rarely in modern use, is no proof that they have not existed for thousands of years."

Then, as though piqued by a scepticism which may have accented my query, or perhaps restrained by professional discretion, the representative of the Maison Rocque abruptly disclaimed more than the vaguest knowledge, and busied himself with my order.

There this odd matter might have rested, had it not been that last winter at Cairo, Monsieur Mégarde, the Curator of the Ghizeh Museum, evinced so extraordinary an interest in the aspect of my ruby that, placing the ring in his hand, I remarked, "It has been thought one of the message gems that have reached us from remote ages."

He scrutinised the stone intently, and asked that it might be left for comparison with the wax impressions of all the known message gems, of which the Museum possesses a collection. He returned it the following afternoon with the announcement that a careful examination enabled him to recognise the cutting as of Phoenician workmanship.

"It bears," he said, "the mystical number of seven significants. Of these, five are said to be significants in sequence, but I can only conjecture the meaning of three."

"The first," he added, "might be King, or Chief, or Prince."

"Prince of Wisdom," I ejaculated, "is suggestive of Solomon."

Monsieur Mégarde smiled at my haste as he replied,

"There are two independent emblems, the upper of which, called the crest, is clearly the equivalent of Baal, and hears a resemblance to the fifth significant, which probably is some unfamiliar name beginning or ending with the Phoenician 'bal.' "

"And what," I inquired, "is the seventh?''

"The seventh," he answered, "is that conjunction of facets, emblematic of the astronomical group we call the Southern Cross, which is considered by the half-dozen Europeans who understand the meaning of significants to be the essential characteristic of the dream-stones of antiquity."

"And what may dream-stones be?"

"Everyone knows," answered the curator, "that gems exert upon certain persons an almost supernatural influence. Individuals of exceptional sensibility— poets, musicians, students of occult science, often women of imaginative facultyare intensely moved and even inspired by holding a great jewel for an hour in the hand. A 'dream-stone' does far more than kindle such emotions. It directs the thoughts of whoever has the receptive capacity along given lines, presenting a train of facts or ideas and transmitting thus through the ages, from mind to mind, a recital which is always the same, varying only as a piece of music may vary in the execution according to the skill or expression of different performers."

My interest was now as thoroughly aroused as it could be in a subject which seemed little less than absurd. I resolved, upon leaving Egypt, to visit Rome and place the ring in the hands of a lifelong friend, Professor Vaini, whose attainments as a master of occult science are universally known. He received me with the grave kindliness of old, insisted upon my sharing his vegetarian breakfast, and scrutinised my ring in silence. It seemed superfluous to make any explanation of its supposed character, so I limited my statement to the peculiarities in its cutting, upon which I begged his opinion, and, leaving the ring, returned to my hotel.

Three days later, a note from the Professor summoned me. I was startled at the change the interval had wrought in his appearance. He looked like one who has passed through a severe illness, and suddenly aged half a dozen years.

"I have done with your ring," he began abruptly. "It had been so many centuries unused as a medium of communication that its accumulated power is almost killing. The peculiarities to which you refer are significant angles, the most accurate form of inscription known to man, in the present case easily read and to be freely rendered as follows:

THE DREAMSTONE OF LOVE

THE PRINCE OF WISDOM TO BALKAMEH

THE BEAUTIFUL, THE GLAD TIDINGS Of BAAL

The Professor laid his hand thoughtfully upon a roll of manuscript.

"While engaged in deciphering those significants," he said, "I took the ring to the window to calculate the angle at which the light is reflected through the stone from what are called its superior facets. Its contact exercised upon me an overmastering and not altogether agreeable effect. I feel so nervous and exhausted after the experience, that I am about to leave for Subiaco for a week's repose. I believe the ruby gave me its 'glad tidings' very fully, and I have spent an entire day in writing out the impression or series of pictures which flashed through my mind. I know not if I were asleep or awake during the hour the reverie lasted."

I thanked the Professor, took leave of him and on reaching my apartment read his manuscript twice with breathless interest. I publish it now, literally translated from his Italian, for the information of those few who know and love the curious arts. Having occupied two days of Professor Vaini's time, and obliged him to make a journey, I wrote him a day or two later in acknowledgment of his kindness, enclosing a cheque for ten thousand francs. I was inexpressibly shocked at receiving a reply from his secretary announcing the savant's death at Subiaco soon after his arrival. It was a case of collapse following upon interruption of the vital functions, as though, to use his words, "the brain had been struck by lightning."

. . . . . .

Professor Vaini's Manuscript

IN THE hundredth year of the Lion in Heaven, the bird Splendour of the Morning spread his wings, and mounted with tireless flight, saying to the Magicians in the realm of Sheba, "Declare ye unto the Queen that I salute her with the words, 'O Balkameh, thou art of perfect beauty.' Moreover, ye who understand the science of the seventh power, shall bid her know that the King whom soothsayers call Prince of Wisdom, and who is a refuge alike from storm and heat, awaits her." So at the voice of the bird the magicians rose to uncover their feet, and the daughters of music were silent.

At these words the Queen rejoiced, saying, "This is the messenger I have foreseen, who hath appeared in visions, who comprehends the meaning of the mystic number, who may not be caught with a net, neither fears the snare of the fowler." Wherefore she commanded that for the space of a year, through the coasts of Mariaba, provision of horses and camels be made, and gifts collected with guards and interpreters. Whereat the land of Sheba was glad, and the dreamer weaving a garland of dreams awoke, and far away a song was heard in the night, as of them going with pipes and tilled with joy.

When the caravan assembled in number as the friends of one giving gifts, she whose name is Glad Tidings of Baal, who in Ethiopia is the King's daughter of the South, the glorious land, made sacrifice, having in her hand the sceptre of the powerful one, and on her finger the signet of authority, and before her the cedar-boughs which Baalim loves.

From Hebron Balkameh beheld Jerusalem, as she had wished to see it from the south, even from the direction of the land of Sheba, its yellow rock walls rising athwart the palms. Her company likewise remembered no more the burden of their journey; and at the morning light they looked across poppy-strewn wheatfields, which make the young men cheerful, and vines that give new wine for the maids. Before them stood Zion, its crest touched as a burnished and glistening diadem, while poised upon outspread wings floated Splendour of the Morning, musing upon the secret of the presence and the dominion of the hills of dream.

Before the gate stood the King's bodyguard of six hundred lusty young men, whose delight is in arms. Whoso looks upon them— the imperturbable-silent and motionless, with short, glistening spears, thinks with compassion of such as shall come forth against them. Wherefore Balkameh smiled, saying, "I shall remember you as the radiantly calm." But when she asked that their chief officer might speak with her, their faces were troubled; nevertheless came Abishag the singer, who being set over the household, held in his hand the backbone of a giant. When the Queen asked, "Art thou captain over these fearless ones?" he answered, "Their captain is Methusael, who is under the King's displeasure."

Then Balkameh besought that the young men might that day be feasted from her stores, to every one a loaf of bread, a piece of flesh, even the meat of fatlings with choice bones, and a flagon of, wine, and baskets of first-ripe fruits.

All Jerusalem, even to the sons of the sorcerers, came forth, and the Queen cast silverlings by the way. First came the chief musician, and a great company making melody with mirth of tabrets, after whom followed maidens, dancing with tinkling feet. Last of all in his chariot appeared Solomon, followed by the elders, the scribes, and the prophets. He was of sunburnt complexion, with full flowing brown hair and beard, touched with a golden glow, and in his vigorous stature and strong hands and ruddy face one perceived the athlete and hunter. Yet more, as whoever considers a vineyard discerns the rich bunches of grapes, so in his meditative eye one reads the poet and lover of sun-flecked woods.. He leaped to earth, coming to greet Balkameh with gracious words, for his words are full of marrow, and his sayings like wine well refined. Then, raising her dark hand to his brow, he fixed his gaze upon her, murmuring, "How sweet is the hand-touch of a beautiful stranger!"

Then she answered, "O topmost branch of the tree, may my everlasting home be near thine amid the stars." And speaking with kindling eyes and brilliant face aglow she was, as Baalim is my judge, as splendid as one of the shining ships of Tarshish. Then they stood together in the chariot and drove by the brook of the willows amid the throng of people, and were saluted by the kings of the shore and the kings of the mingled nations that dwell in the desert, till skirting the city they came to the House of Ivory in the midst of the garden, called of Eden, where formerly dwelt Pharaoh's daughter, one of the King's first wives.

Here Bathsheba advanced to receive her son's visitor. Behind her followed three men, sons of Rehob, King of Zobah, whom David took and whom he made attendants upon the women, wherefore, even now in their old age, the slaves of the palace laugh them to scorn. So when Solomon had touched Balkameh's head with the ointment of joy he withdrew, and Bathsheba conducted her through a vestibule, where against the wall was fixed the yellowing skeleton of Goliah with outstretched hands, each bent for a torch; thence entering the Queen's bedroom, they seated themselves upon the cushion-strewn floor. Between the windows, near an ivory bed, stood a table of mother of pearl with water jars and flagons, and in the midst of the room a brazier, over which, on winter evenings, Pharaoh's daughter had been wont to bend her dusky body. The ceiling whereof is inlaid with the words:

" The sword for men, the lute for women, the pen for slaves."

Bathsheba's glory hath faded since David beheld her upon Uriah's roof. Fat from gross eating, wrinkled for want of love, reduced by sloth to the care of parrots— for her the rainbow lieth in the retrospect. In her age she hath returned to the gods of her youth, Berith, whose temple is at Shechem, Chemosh, and the gods of Hamath, Arphad, and Sepharvaim, and she paints her body with gaudy stripes as often as she dances before their altars in the groves.

Through an aroma of burning spice Balkameh asked, "Tell me, composer of songs, who was the man led in chains by the gate?" Whereat Bathsheba replied, "Sister, that is Methusael, captain of the body-guard, sentenced to be sawn asunder, and led thus collar-bound before his fellows that he may taste his fate to the bone."

From room to room they walked, beholding the gifts of Pharaoh, of Hiram King of Tyre, and of the lords of Cyprus, till from the roof they gazed upon pastures with bubbling springs as pure as the wells of Salvation, and marked the sunshine where the humming-birds flit, and the shade where the woodpecker taps on the tree.

The following morning came Abishag, the King's favourite wife, whom Solomon loveth as the signet upon his hand, resting not in his love but making great joy over her with voluptuous songs. Who having been brought when a girl to David's death-bed, remained in the palace when David was no more. In which days, when Solomon was ever inditing, she came to his closet, and casting aside her vestment, crept stealthily upon him, and laying a hand upon the scroll looked laughing in his eyes, whispering, "The knowledge of a woman, O Son of the Sun, is better than the wisdom of a man or than the promises of prophets." Wherefore because she was clean-limbed and magnificently poised, gave he her fair raiment with jewels of price and dream gowns curiously woven to wear at night, and dyed attire and badger-skin shoes to wear by day. She also was a lover of groves, sacrificing in gardens and burning incense upon altars, so that in high places the name of Baalim was upon her lips.

Then spake the Queen. "Tell me, Lily of speech, why heard I through the night, and in the morning when the watchmen sang at sight of the break of day, the sobbing of one that has drunk of the cup of trembling?" Whereto Abishag answered, "Bride whom the Gods desire, it is Adalia, a Bactrian, whom the King hath set here as a nail in a sure place." And with swift gesture she added, "I will strip her out of her clothes, and after her cheek-teeth are drawn, she shall he hound to a chariot-wheel with her feet in the ground, the wheel whereof shall be turned, and her body wrenched askew."

"Why is she set as a nail in a sure place?" murmured Balkameh. While they were served with salted locusts and stuffed fish, Abishag wiped her lips, answering, "O subtle charmer of men, be it likewise given thee to snare the dragon and the unicorn. Know that this Bactrian was to wed Methusael, the captain of the guard, who lies in a dungeon where his skin cleaveth to the bone for scorpions. And because Adalia is stiff-necked and would not how before the wishes of the King, neither listen to the voice of the interpreter, she hath been made like a young tree in the drought."

That day, when they came into the city of David, the King met them before the Temple. Beside him was Pharaoh's daughter, of lean, implacable face, her shaven head being covered with a wig. Whose voice is cold as the splash of a bucket when it falls in the well, neither takes she heed of aught save at a prospect of war, the thought whereof rejoices her. Nearby stood also Guni, the Ethiopian, who draws the how like a man and bestrides a horse like an Arab. Her delight is to point her body ring-streaked, and to sit watching in the fire the shapes that come and go. Likewise, she observeth times and useth enchantments, knowing both male and female night monsters. Whose gods are Misroch, god of the Assyrians, Dagon the fish god, and Milcom whom the Hebrews call the abomination of Moah; but the greatest of all she declares to be Moloch. So the virgins that come with Pharaoh's daughter snuffed at Guni because her hair curls crisp, and Bathsheba sprinkled her, whereat Guni was wroth and hissed.

Balkameh beheld Millo, the house called the forest of Lebanon, the holy house and the sanctuary of strength, over which silver lay like dust. She saw also Solomon's wives, of whom not one hath her deep-set eyes and clear-cut face, and her bosom veiled with a veil. They passed before the molten sea and the flowers of lilies, till, beholding the burn-offerings, the Queen gave to the priests a silver spit whereon to roast an ox. Likewise cast she into the chest wherein are cast the trespass money and the sin money which are the priests'.

And seeing the throng of prophets watching the great pot filled with seethe-pottage, she scattered drops of ointment upon the throne, breathing in silence a prayer to Baal, that her heart's desire he granted. Where also is the place of presentation of gifts she offered to Solomon gifts of Ophir gold, and they passed together into the inner court where is no noise, nor strident word, nor lamentation, but only a twittering of birds, like a voice of mirthful gladness, as it were the voice of the bridegroom and the bride.

But one of the prophets that watched the heaping-up of treasure, lifted his hands, saying: "The house that ye fill shall become an habitation of beasts, and the kings of Judea shall be as wandering birds cast out of the nest. Verily Millo shall be full of doleful creatures, and in the Gate Beautiful shall satyrs dance. And as for the queens of the ends of the earth, that pray to winged spirits that their hearts' desire be granted, they shall be drunk with the sweet wine and strange water forbidden to prophets."

Then answered Solomon, his face red with wrath, "Shall a Prophet live for ever, and doth not Scripture declare that a presumptuous Prophet shall die? Thou art no better than one that would plunder the tomb of a king. Of a truth I will roll thee in the dust, making thee a gazing-stock, and a hook shall he put in thy nose and thou shalt be wiped as a serving-man wiped a dish, turning it upside down."

Now this Prophet is the brother of Methusael.

So Balkameh returned to the House of Ivory to bathe in a cool tank in the midst of the garden of Eden. Here, in bygone days, in the midst of the seclusion she loved, came Pharaoh's daughter to listen to the musical inspiration of fountains by day, and read the message of the stars at night. Amid orange blossoms and wine-red oleanders, the trickling water touches the air with its whisper. Beneath clustering cypresses is a rock, where at noontide the sunshine spreads the moss with brilliance. A trellised way, heaped with roses, leads to the summer-house within whose roof is painted the Zodiac. Nearby, for a jest, Pharaoh's daughter caused to be graven by her Egyptian graver on a fragment of wall little seen, the figure of Rameses holding the Hebrews in bondage by the hair of their head. Before whom also she set an image of Hathor, the giver of joy, with hands overflowing with amaranths, that when goddesses and kings' daughters meet, her hands may still he filled with the bloom of immortal days.

When Sheba went to salute the Prince of Wisdom in his house, they left the multitude in the court and ascended to the roof, whence the eye ranges to the almond grove by the pool of Siloam, "here the daughters of pleasure dance. And Solomon laughed, saying: "Are not the side-lights often the happiest views?— from here David beheld Bathsheba!"

But she murmured, "Who can guess how far my fancy may stray, though I but walk to the nearest village? And because Baal hath granted me a corner-stone of knowledge have I learned to keep close to the simple things of life, be they no profounder than the reflection of a star."

As she spoke, she started away from the wall, stumbling over a basket of scrolls which was the King's business for the day; for fluttering before her in the breeze hung the skin of a man of stature, slain by David's son Jonathan, who in life had on each hand six fingers and on each foot six toes. Nevertheless the King bade her be seated, saying: "Let us dedicate an hour to calm." pointing as he spoke to the sky where, weaving its circling flight, floated the Hoopoo of the crimson wings, which dwells at the foot of the rainbow.

Then Balkameh blushed, for she is one to whom Splendour of the Morning hath spoken, saying: "For thee an adorable lover lingers in the darkness, in the depth of the garden, standing motionless and expectant as a phantom of the night!"

Her gaze rested upon a sundial, a figure of bronze with uplifted hands, the hand of Time and the hand of Destiny, the shadows whereof mark the lapse of day. Which was made by a Phoenician in the youthful semblance of Abishag when she cast aside her vestment to stand before the King. But Balkameh was jealous, because Abishag is beautiful, wherefore as Solomon turned aside she spat in the figure's face.

Then the King, seating himself near her, said: "I too love simple facts, nor am I content till I have tried to sound them as it were with line and plummet, even were they unfathomable as a ripple of the sea."

To which the Queen answered, "How shall we fare with our handcuffed hands and blinded eyes, if the wine of life become mixed with bitter water? Is anything really old, or wholly new?"

Whereat Solomon laughed, saying, "There are things which be old, yet always new— the lore of Egypt, which takes note of the flight of a bird; or where the river is deep knows what lies beneath the wave; or that enchanted circle, older than the Pyramids, at which wizards peep and mutter, wherein the earliest Pharaohs read the wisdom of superb repose."

After they had discoursed of many things, Balkameh asked, "Is a king a breeder of nettles in the way of a friend that seeketh a gift, or shall the door of hope be closed upon one whose heart is breaking?"

Then Solomon replied: "In every palace there be thieves waiting to penetrate the gold-worker's chamber. Nevertheless, say on."

The Queen continued: "There is a damsel called Adalia, to whom, if leave he granted, I will speak a word in season, bidding her hearken with her ears, that she may live and not die; and to me, if to none other, will she hearken, for her god is Baal-zebab. But first she and Methusael shall be set free to dwell at the House of Ivory, subject to my command."

Whereto the King answered: "O voice persuasive as the murmuring deep, be it done according to thy desire."

ON THE following day when they sat at meat, loaves and cracknels were set before them, and antelope collops roasted upon coals, with quails, partridges, and fowls of the air. Likewise, to each table an osier basket heaped with grapes and clumps of figs and strings of pomegranates, and a cruse of honey fresh from the comb. Then Solomon said: "Shall not the house give gifts to its lord? Call therefore the chief musician, that we may drink wine with a song."

So it was a day of feasting with laughter and clapping of hands. When the cupbearer had tasted, they drank to the lees, and no man's cup was empty, neither were the wine cups suffered to stand full. The chief musician also drew from his dulcimer a haunting melody so deftly touched that each reverberant string gave back the meaning of his spoken word as he told of the enchanted groves where the singing of unseen damsels is heard, even of them that sing for joy of heart when kings come to glory in the sun's rising. Whereat Balkameh looked towards the King with a yellow light kindling her black eyes; but Bathsheba sat cold and silent, raking over the ashes of her youth.

Of a sudden the King cried, "Bring hither Adalia." Then, when she was set in their midst, he said: "Is not new wine found in the clustre, and shall she not dance?"

But Adalia answered, "Great King, they that descend into the pit cannot hope for truth; must I therefore go all my years in the bitterness of my soul?"

Yet, though her words were soft, one could read in her blanched face that her heart was as adamant. Nevertheless, her head was faint, and her eyes overflowing with anguish. Then, forasmuch as she would not dance, the young men took her away, mocking, to thrust her head downward in a wine-butt. Now Sheba whispered to the King: "Are lilies gathered with a scythe, or do men make love with an axe? Surely a maiden will not confess before this throng, but to me hath she hearkened with her ears. By Lucifer, she is more pleasant than a garden of cucumbers. She but feared a king's love might pass as the early dew. This night, in the Garden of Eden, when stars climb in the sky, she shall wait in the dark, in the midst of the clustre of palms, and by her tinkling silver bells and the balsam with which she anoints herself shall she be known."

The King drank till he beheld the hollow of his golden cup ere, smiling, he said: "Who wants a grander tent than the dome of the starlit sky?" And after a thoughtful pause he added, "Hath not the Hoopoo said, The wise man findeth his love in the dark?" Moreover, of his choicest treasure, even of the uncut gems that he wore, gave he Balkameh a ruby which had never been graved by the graver's tool, saying— as a demon laughed and murmured in his ear— "Take this red drop of my blood for a token that thou shalt have thy heart's desire."

Then Sheba rose, and having cast aside her dream-gown of embroidered linen, stood before him, glistening in the torchlight, as one about to dance before the altar. And her waving hands and quivering finger-tips were like hovering butterflies. So as she danced barefoot up and down the alabaster pavement, her splendid body fine as the dash of spray that leaps where the salt wave strikes, they that looked were hushed, save for the sackbuts that filled the air with piping like the thrill of nightingales at night, till the soul of the listener whispered within him. And the Queen was as a proud standard-bearer that fainteth not, neither is trodden down. She seemed also an incarnation of the voluptuous South— a sinuous, pearl-girdled semblance of its suave and stately palms— a vision of tropic birds and fleet-winged sails touched by an after-sunset glow. More than all, she was the type of that race of dancers and musicians for whom the stars delight to shine. Whoso beheld her knew that this is the breeze-blown dance wherein the maidens of Babylon exult in the groves of betrothal, as the dance of them that prepare for the nuptials they desire. Wherefore in her swaying Balkameh interpreted the mystical meaning of the amorous shafts with which at his rising and setting the Sun-god pierces the depth of his groves; or the reflection, as of gems bestowed by a lover, which at Tyre he lifts from the sea upon the sun-browned wall of his house.

When the Queen, having made an end, put on again her dream-gown, a silence fell, like the hush that follows when the rhythm and emotion of prayer moisten the eyes. Till, as though touched by the hand of a listening god, a harpstring broke, whereby as she took her leave and the air resounded with the acclaim of many voices, we knew that a fateful instant had passed. So Sheba returned to the Ivory House, in whose garden the King that night waited and watched, silent as break of day, while stars climbed in the sky, till in the midst of the clustre of palms he became aware that a woman stood in the darkness, and by the tinkling silver bells and the fragrance of oleander balsam he knew that it was Adalia.

When the days of the Queen's sojourn were fulfilled, she stood with her company before the King at the oak of weeping. And she interrupted the long salutation of the prophets, and, turning to the Pearl of Wisdom, said, "Let our farewell be brief. When lengthening shadows slant through the Garden of Eden— forget not Adalia. In the deepest copse of Mariaba, in the midst of overleaning palms, will I build a Bower of Remembrance, where on starlit evenings, after  good-night or at break of day, before the bidding of good-morning the footsteps of thrilling memories shall rustle the leaves. Are there not things best understood in the darkness, and hath not the Hoopoo declared, A woman shall compass a man? Verily a woman's wit is no ill match for Solomon's wisdom. There be three wonderful riddles: the flight of a bird in the air, the course "of a ship in the sea, and the way of a man with a maid. Now this was the way of a queen with a king— and this also, my adorable lover, thou comprehendest not. Farewell. But to me, all the days of my life, whatever I see that is beautiful shall speak to me with thy voice. Yea, hereafter shall I care little for the blended meaning of the stars, if but a single point of radiance beckons me to thee."

The long caravan wound down the hills, till looking back, Balkameh beheld the Temple sparkling in the sunset as a flame of triumph. Then went the King into an high place, and with him were Jehosaphat, the recorder, and Benaiah, chief of the host. Thence his eyes followed the caravan till. through the pink haze it faded and was lost in violet darks. But they that were near understood not why he laughed, murmuring: "to think I knew not! As though one could take from a woman her heart's delight, mocking her borrowed balsam and her ankles hound with another's silver bells! Is not a tiger-lily more splendid than an amaranth— albeit both be fair? The wise man is he who knows enough not to know too much, and this, subtle maker of riddles, is the way of a King with a Queen."

It was an afternoon when mere consciousness of life brought perfect peace. Time's tender touch mellowed the battlements with russet that flushed or darkened between sunshine and shade. Sweet scent of perfumed gardens bore pulses that thrilled like a thought of fair women. The mountains veiled with opalescent hues the secret of their solitude sublime. Beyond them a cloud caught the fugitive sparkle of day, seeming a last fading glimpse of the bird that for ever had flown -the splendour and joy of the morning. But to this hour no man can tell aught of Methusael or Adalia, nor into what land they went when they fled from the House of Ivory.

. . . . . . .

THIS SINGULAR narrative speaks with a precision in marked contrast to the looseness and verbiage of Oriental recitals, whether ancient or modem. Its statements are not at variance with historical fact, so far as known. Had it been deciphered from a papyrus, its intimate details would suggest that it might have been written by one in attendance upon the Queen. It alludes to Balkameh as still living, and to the events it records as having recently transpired. It is noticeable that at that remote period the things of Egypt were a measure of antiquity. The reference to the Temple as an edifice just completed points approximately to the year 985 B.C. Curious to remark, there are in it several slight inaccuracies such as a transient visitor, unfamiliar with the country, might make. Far more startling is the extraordinary intimation that Abishag, was Solomon's first and favourite wife, and that the amorous phrases of his Song are an impassioned memorial of their love.

Professor Vaini's manuscript led me to the study of Phoenician civilisation and enterprise. In Solomon's time the South Arabian kingdom of Saba or Sabea, or Sheba, now known as Arabia Felix, controlled the East African coast, and its colonists had not only occupied Abyssinia, but had penetrated as far as the gold mines of Mashona. The Somali district was known to ancient Egypt as the Land of Punt. Portuguese explorers of the Massapa mines note the resemblance between the native name "Afur" and the Biblical "Ophir." It was from here that Balkameh obtained her gold, of which, if the Jewish gold talent is rightly calculated at £5475 her gift to Solomon must have amounted to over £600,000. The language and writing of Abyssinia indicate that it was peopled from South Arabia at a period of remote antiquity. Following upon this trace, the French explorer Arnaud discovered towards the middle of the nineteenth century the ruined walls and Temple of Mariaba, the royal city of Sheba, and obtained inscriptions of Phoenician derivation. An element of uncertainty will always attach to the Abyssinian tradition that the Royal family of that kingdom, whereof Menelik is the present representative, descends from a son of the Queen of Sheba. I have asked the opinion of Egyptologists, of Oriental scholars, and of eminent churchmen as to the existence of this child, and while the consensus of opinion rests upon inferential conclusions, there is in the surmise which attributes its paternity to Solomon nothing conflicting with our knowledge of the Prince of Wisdom.

I have frequently sought the confidence of the dream-stone by holding it for hours in meditative silence, but necessarily in vain. It is obviously unlikely that an unimaginative man of affairs could attune himself to mysteries so subtle and elusive. More than once I have invited a repetition of Professor Vaini's observations by offering to submit my ruby to the experiments of acquaintances whose sensitive mood might render them receptive subjects. On such occasions it has seemed an evident duty to mention the tragic fate of my Italian friend, to whom the "glad tidings of Baal" were as lightning. Then, to my chagrin, the listener's dashing interest invariably fades, and the dream-stone of Balkameh's love, which her lips may have touched and inspired— remains silent.

__________________

11: The Pipe

Richard Marsh

Richard Bernard Heldmann, 1857-1915

The Cornhill, March 1891

RANDOLPH Crescent, N.W.

My dear Pugh,

I hope you will like the pipe which I send with this. It is rather a curious example of a certain school of Indian carving. And is a present from

Yours truly,

Joseph Tress.

IT WAS really very handsome of Tress— very handsome! The more especially as I was aware that to give presents was not exactly in Tress's line. The truth is that when I saw what manner of pipe it was I was amazed. It was contained in a sandalwood box, which was itself illustrated with some remarkable specimens of carving. I use the word 'remarkable' advisedly, because although the workmanship was undoubtedly, in its way, artistic, the result could not be described as beautiful. The carver had thought proper to ornament the box with some of the ugliest figures I remember to have seen. They appeared to me to be devils. Or perhaps, they were intended to represent deities appertaining to some mythological system with which, thank goodness, I am unacquainted. The pipe itself was worthy of the case in which it was contained. It was of meerschaum, with an amber mouthpiece. It was rather too large for ordinary smoking. But then, of course, one doesn't smoke a pipe like that. There are pipes in my collection which I should as soon think of smoking as I should of eating. Ask a china maniac to let you have afternoon tea out of his Old Chelsea, and you will learn some home truths as to the durability of human friendships. The glory of the pipe, as Tress had suggested, lay in its carving. Not that I claim that it was beautiful, any more than I make such a claim for the carving on the box, but, as Tress said in his note, it was curious.

The stem and the bowl were quite plain, but on the edge of the bowl was perched some kind of lizard. I told myself it was an octopus when I first saw it, but I have since had reason to believe that it was some almost unique member of the lizard tribe. The creature was represented as climbing over the edge of the bowl down towards the stem, and its legs, or feelers, or tentacula, or whatever the things are called, were, if I may use a vulgarism, sprawling about 'all over the place.' For instance, two or three of them were twined about the bowl, two or three of them were twisted round the stem, and one, a particularly horrible one, was uplifted in the air, so that if you put the pipe in your mouth the thing was pointing straight at your nose.

Not the least agreeable feature about the creature was that it was hideously lifelike. It appeared to have been carved in amber, but some colouring matter must have been introduced, for inside the amber the creature was of a peculiarly ghastly green. The more I examined the pipe the more amazed I was at Tress's generosity. He and I are rival collectors. I am not going to say, in so many words, that his collection of pipes contains nothing but rubbish, because, as a matter of fact, he has two or three rather decent specimens. But to compare his collection to mine would be absurd. Tress is conscious of this, and be resents it. He resents it to such an extent that he has been known at least on one occasion to declare that one single pipe of his— I believe he alluded to the Brummagem relic preposterously attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh— was worth the whole of my collection put together. Although I have forgiven this, as I hope I always shall forgive remarks made when envious passions get the better of our nobler nature, even of a Joseph Tress, it is not to be supposed that I have forgotten it. He was, therefore, not at all the sort of person from whom I expected to receive a present. And such a present! I do not believe that he himself had a finer pipe in his collection. And to have given it me! I had misjudged the man. I wondered where he had got it from. I had seen his pipes; I knew them off by heart— and some nice trumpery he has among them, too!— but I had never seen that pipe before. The more I looked at it, the more my amazement grew. The beast perched upon the edge of the bowl was so like life. Its two bead-like eyes seemed to gleam at me with positively human intelligence. The pipe fascinated me to such an extent that I actually resolved to— smoke it!

I filled it with Perique. Ordinarily I use Birdseye, but on those very rare occasions on which I use a specimen I smoke Perique. I lit up with quite a small sensation of excitement. As I did so I kept my eyes perforce fixed upon the beast. The beast pointed its upraised tentacle directly at me. As I inhaled the pungent tobacco that tentacle impressed me with a feeling of actual uncanniness. It was broad daylight, and I was smoking in front of the window, yet to such an extent was I affected that it seemed to me that the tentacle was not only vibrating, which, owing to the peculiarity of its position, was quite within the range of probability, but actually moving, elongating— stretching forward, that is, further towards me, and towards the tip of my nose. So impressed was I by this idea that I took the pipe out of my mouth, and minutely examined the beast. Really, the delusion was excusable. So cunningly had the artist wrought that he had succeeded in producing a creature which, such was its uncanniness, I could only hope had no original in nature.

Replacing the pipe between my lips I took several whiffs. Never had smoking had such an effect on me before. Either the pipe, or the creature on it, exercised some singular fascination. I seemed, without an instant's warning, to be passing into some land of dreams. I saw the beast, which was perched upon the bowl, writhe and twist. I saw it lift itself bodily from the meerschaum...

ii

'FEELING better now?'

I looked up. Joseph Tress was speaking.

'What's the matter? Have I been ill?'

'You appear to have been in some kind of swoon.' Tress's tone was peculiar, even a little dry.

'Swoon! I never was guilty of such a thing in my life.'

'Nor was I, until I smoked that pipe.'

I sat up. The act of sitting up made me conscious of the fact that I had been lying down. Conscious, too, that I was feeling more than a little dazed. It seemed as though I was waking out of some strange, lethargic sleep— a kind of feeling which I have read of and heard about, but never before experienced.

'Where am I?'

'You're on the couch in your own room. You were on the floor; but I thought it would be better to pick you up and place you on the couch— though no one performed the same kind office to me when I was on the floor.' Again Tress's tone was distinctly dry.

'How came you here?'

'Ah, that's the question.' He rubbed his chin-a habit of his which has annoyed me more than once before. 'Do you think you're sufficiently recovered to enable you to understand a little simple explanation?'

I stared at him, amazed. He went on stroking his chin.

'The truth is that when I sent you the pipe I made a slight omission.'

'An omission?'

'I omitted to advise you not to smoke it.'

'And why?'

'Because— well, I've reason to believe the thing is drugged.'

'Drugged!'

'Or poisoned.'

'Poisoned!'

I was wide awake enough then. I jumped off the couch with a celerity which proved it.

'It is this way. I became its owner in rather a singular manner.' He paused, as if for me to make a remark ; but I was silent.

'It is not often that I smoke a specimen, but, for some reason, I did smoke this. I commenced to smoke it, that is. How long I continued to smoke it is more than I can say. It had on me the same peculiar effect which it appears to have had on you. When I recovered consciousness I was lying on the floor.'

'On the floor?'

'On the floor. In about as uncomfortable position as you can easily conceive. I was lying face downwards, with my legs bent under me. I was never so surprised in my life as I was when I found myself where I was. At first I supposed that I had had a stroke. But by degrees it dawned upon me that I didn't feel as though I had had a stroke.'

Tress, by the way, has been an army surgeon.

'I was conscious of distinct nausea. Looking about, I saw the pipe. With me it had fallen on to the floor. I took it for granted, considering the delicacy of the carving, that the fall had broken it. But when I picked it up I found it quite uninjured. While I was examining it a thought flashed to my brain. Might it not be answerable for what had happened to me? Suppose, for instance, it was drugged ? I had heard of such things. Besides, in my case were present all the symptoms of drug-poisoning, though what drug had been used I couldn't in the least conceive. I resolved that I would give the pipe another trial.'

'On yourself? Or on another party, meaning me?'

'On myself, my dear Pugh— on myself! At that point of my investigations I had not begun to think of you. I lit up and had another smoke.'

'With what result?'

'Well, that depends on the standpoint from which you regard the thing. From one point of view the result was wholly satisfactory— I proved that the thing was drugged, and more.'

'Did you have another fall?'

'I did. And something else besides.'

'On that account, I presume, you resolved to pass the treasure on to me?'

'Partly on that account, and partly on another.'

'On my word, I appreciate your generosity. You might have labelled the thing as poison.'

'Exactly. But then you must remember how often you have told me that you never smoke your specimens.'

'That was no reason why you shouldn't have given me a hint that the thing was more dangerous than dynamite.'

'That did occur to me afterwards. Therefore I called to supply the slight omission.'

'Slight omission, you call it! I wonder what you would have called it if you had found me dead.'

'If I had known that you intended smoking it I should not have been at all surprised if I had.'

' Really, Tress, I appreciate your kindness more and more! And where is this example of your splendid benevolence? Have you pocketed it, regretting your lapse into the unaccustomed paths of generosity? Or is it smashed to atoms?'

'Neither the one nor the other. You will find the pipe upon the table. I neither desire its restoration nor is it in any way injured. It is merely an expression of personal opinion when I say that I don't believe that it could be injured. Of course, having discovered its deleterious properties, you will not want to smoke it again. You will therefore be able to enjoy the consciousness of being the possessor of what I honestly believe to be the most remarkable pipe in existence. Good-day, Pugh.'

He was gone before I could say a word. I immediately concluded, from the precipitancy of his flight, that the pipe was injured. But when I subjected it to close examination I could discover no signs of damage. While I was still eyeing it with jealous scrutiny the door reopened, and Tress came in again.

'By the way, Pugh, there is one thing I might mention, especially as I know it won't make any difference to you.'

'That depends on what it is. If you have changed your mind, and want the pipe back again, I tell you frankly that it won't. In my opinion, a thing once given is given for good.'

'Quite so; I don't want it back again. You may make your mind easy upon that point. I merely wanted to tell you why I gave it you.'

'You have told me that already.'

'Only partly, my dear Pugh— only partly. You don't suppose I should have given you such a pipe as that merely because it happened to be drugged? Scarcely! I gave it you because I discovered from indisputable evidence, and to my cost, that it was haunted.'

'Haunted?'

'Yes, haunted. Good-day.' He was gone again. I ran out of the room, and shouted after him down the stairs. He was already at the bottom of the flight.

'Tress! Come back ! What do you mean by talking such nonsense?'

'Of course it's only nonsense. We know that that sort of thing always is nonsense. But if you should have reason to suppose that there is something in it besides nonsense, you may think it worth your while to make inquiries of me. But I won't have that pipe back again in my possession on any terms— mind that!'

The bang of the front door told me that he had gone out into the street. I let him go. I laughed to myself as I re-entered the room. Haunted! That was not a bad idea of his. I saw the whole position at a glance. The truth of the matter was that he did regret his generosity, and he was ready to go any lengths if he could only succeed in cajoling me into restoring his gift. He was aware that I have views upon certain matters which are not wholly in accordance with those which are popularly supposed to be the views of the day, and particularly that on the question of what are commonly called supernatural visitations I have a standpoint of my own. Therefore it was not a bad move on his part to try to make me believe that about the pipe on which he knew I had set my heart there was something which could not be accounted for by ordinary laws. Yet, as his own sense would have told him it would do, if he had only allowed himself to reflect for a moment, the move failed. Because I am not yet so far gone as to suppose that a pipe, a thing of meerschaum and of amber, in the sense in which I understand the word, could be haunted— a pipe, a mere pipe.

'Hollo! I thought the creature's legs were twined right round the bowl!'

I was holding the pipe in my hand, regarding it with the affectionate eyes with which a connoisseur does regard a curio, when I was induced to make this exclamation. I was certainly under the impression that, when I first took the pipe out of the box, two, if not three, of the feelers had been twined about the bowl— twined tightly, so that you could not see daylight between them and it. Now they were almost entirely detached, only the tips touching the meerschaum, and those particular feelers were gathered up as though the creature were in the act of taking a spring. Of course I was under a misapprehension: the feelers couldn't have been twined, though, a moment before, I should have been ready to bet a thousand to one that they were. Still, one does make mistakes, and very egregious mistakes, at times. At the same time, I confess that when I saw that dreadful-looking animal poised on the extreme edge of the bowl, for all the world as though it were· just going to spring at me, I was a little startled. I remembered that when I was smoking the pipe I did think I saw the uplifted tentacle moving, as though it were reaching out at me. And I had a clear recollection that just as I had been sinking into that strange state of unconsciousness, I had been under the impression that the creature was writhing and twisting as though it had suddenly become instinct with life. Under the circumstances, these reflections were not pleasant. I wished Tress had not talked that nonsense about the thing being haunted. It was surely sufficient to know that it was drugged and poisonous, without anything else.

I replaced it in the sandalwood box. I locked the box in a cabinet. Quite apart from the question as to whether that pipe was or was not haunted, I know it haunted me. It was with me, in a figurative-which was worse than an actual-sense, all the day. Still worse, it was with me all the night. It was with me in my dreams. Such dreams! Possibly I had not yet wholly recovered from the effects of that insidious drug, but, whether or no, it was very wrong of Tress to set my thoughts into such a channel. He knows that I am of a highly imaginative temperament, and that it is easier to get morbid thoughts into my mind than to get them out again. Before that night was through I wished very heartily that I had never seen the pipe f I woke from one nightmare to fall into another. One dreadful dream was with me all the time-of a hideous, green reptile which advanced towards me out of some awful darkness, slowly, inch by inch, until it clutched me round the neck, and, gluing its lips to mine, sucked the life's blood out of my veins as it embraced me with a slimy hiss. Such dreams are not restful. I woke anything but refreshed when the morning came. And when I got up and dressed I felt that, on the whole, it would perhaps have been better if I never had gone to bed. My nerves were unstrung, and I had that generally tremulous feeling which is, I believe, an inseparable companion of the more advanced stages of dipsomania. I ate no breakfast. I am no breakfast-eater as a rule, but that morning I ate absolutely nothing.

'If this sort of thing is to continue, I will let Tress have his pipe again. He may have the laugh of me, but anything is better than this.'

It was with almost funereal forebodings that I went to the cabinet in which I had placed the sandalwood box. But when I opened it my feelings of gloom partially vanished. Of what phantasies had I been guilty ! It must have been an entire delusion on my part to have supposed that those tentacula had ever been twined about the bowl. The creature was in exactly the same position in which I had left it the day before— as, of course, I knew it would be poised, as if about to spring. I was telling myself how foolish I had been to allow myself to dwell for a moment on Tress' words, when Martin Brasher was shown in. Brasher is an old friend of mine. We have a common groundghosts. Only we approach them from different points of view. He takes the scientific- psychological- inquiry side. He is always anxious to hear of a ghost, so that he may have an opportunity of 'showing it up.'

'I've something in your line here,' I observed, as he came in.

'In my line? How so? I'm not pipe mad.'

'No, but you're ghost mad. And this is a haunted pipe.'

'A haunted pipe! I think you're rather more mad about ghosts, my dear Pugh, than I am.'

Then I told him all about it. He was deeply interested, especially when I told him that the pipe was drugged. But when I repeated Tress's words about its being haunted, and mentioned my own delusion about the creature moving, he took a more serious view of the case than I had expected he would do.

'I propose that we act on Tress's suggestion, and go and make inquiries of him.'

'But you don't really think that there is anything in it?'

'On these subjects I never allow myself to think at all. There are Tress's words, and there is your story. It is agreed on all hands that the pipe has peculiar properties. It seems to me that there is a sufficient case here to merit inquiry.'

He persuaded me. I went with him. The pipe, in the sandalwood box, went too.

Tress received us with a grin-a grin which was accentuated when I placed the sandalwood box upon the table.

'You understand,' he said, 'that a gift is a gift. On no terms will I consent to receive that pipe back in my possession.'

I was rather nettled by his tone.

'You need be under no alarm. I have no intention of suggesting anything of the kind.'

'Our business here,' began Brasher— I must own that his manner is a little ponderous— 'is of a scientific, I may say also, and at the same time, of a judicial nature. Our object is the Pursuit of Truth and the Advancement of Inquiry.'

'Have you been trying another smoke?' inquired Tress, nodding his head towards me. Before I had time to answer, Brasher went droning on:—

'Our friend here tells me that you say this pipe is haunted.'

'I say it is haunted because it is haunted.'

I looked at Tress. I half suspected that he was poking fun at us. But he appeared to be serious enough.

'In these matters,' remarked Brasher, as though he were giving utterance to a new and important truth, 'there is a scientific and a non-scientific method of inquiry. The scientific method is to begin at the beginning. May I ask how this pipe came into your possession?'

Tress paused before he answered.

'You may ask.' He paused again. 'Oh, you certainly may ask. But it doesn't follow that I shall tell you.'

'Surely your object, like ours, can be but the Spreading About of the Truth?'

'I don't see it at all. It is possible to imagine a case in which the spreading about of the truth might make me look a little awkward.'

'Indeed!' Brasher pursed up his lips. 'Your words would almost lead one to suppose that there was something about your method of acquiring the pipe which you have good and weighty reasons for concealing.'

'I don't know why I should conceal the thing from you. I don't suppose either of you is any better than I am. I don't mind telling you how I got the pipe. I stole it.'

'Stole it?' Brasher seemed both amazed and shocked. But I, who had had previous experience of Tress's methods of adding to his collection, was not at all surprised. Some of the pipes which he calls his, if only the whole truth about them were publicly known, would send him to gaol.

'That's nothing!' he continued. 'All collectors steal. The eighth commandment was not intended to apply to them. Why, Pugh there has "conveyed " three-fourths of the pipes which he flatters himself are his.'

I was so dumbfounded by the charge that it took my breath away. I sat in astounded silence. Tress went raving on:—

'I was so shy of this particular pipe when I had obtained it, that I put it away for quite three months. When I took it out to have a look at it something about the thing so tickled me that I resolved to smoke it. Owing to peculiar circumstances attending the manner in which the thing came into my possession, and on which I need not dwell— you don't like to dwell on those sort of things, do you, Pugh?— I knew really nothing about the pipe. As was the case with Pugh, one peculiarity I learned from actual experience. It was also from actual experience that I learned that the thing was-well, I said haunted, but you may use any other word you like.'

'Tell us, as briefly as possible, what it was you really did discover.'

'Take the pipe out of the box!'

Brasher took the pipe out of the box, and held it in his hand.

'You see that creature on it. Well, when! first had it, it was underneath the pipe.'

'How do you mean that it was underneath the pipe?'

'It was bunched together underneath the stem, just at the end of the mouthpiece, in the same way in which a fly might be suspended from the ceiling. When I began to smoke the pipe I saw the creature move.'

'But I thought that unconsciousness immediately followed.'

'It did follow, but not before I saw that the thing was moving. It was because I thought that I had been, in a way, a victim of delirium that I tried the second smoke. Suspecting that the thing was drugged I swallowed what I believed would prove a powerful antidote. It enabled me to resist the influence of the narcotic much longer than before, and while I still retained my senses I saw the creature crawl along under the stem, and over the bowl. It was that sight, I believe, as much as anything else, which sent me silly. When I came to again I then and there decided to present the pipe to Pugh. There is one more thing I would remark. When the pipe left me the creature's legs were twined about the bowl. Now they are withdrawn. Possibly you, Pugh, are able to cap my story with a little one which is all your own.'

'I certainly did imagine that I saw the creature move. But I supposed that while I was under the influence of the drug imagination had played me a trick.'

'Not a bit of it! Depend upon it, the beast is bewitched. Even to my eye it looks as though it were, and to a trained eye like yours, Pugh! You've been looking for the devil a long time, and you've got him at last.'

'I— I wish you wouldn't make those remarks, Tress. They jar on me.'

'I confess,' interpolated Brasher— I noticed that he had put the pipe down on the table as though he were tired of holding it— 'that, to my thinking, such remarks are not appropriate. At the same time, what you have told us is, I am bound to allow, a little curious. But of course what I require is ocular demonstration. I haven't seen the movement myself.'

'No, but you very soon will do if you care to have a pull at the pipe on your own account. Do, Brasher, to oblige me! There's a dear!'

'It appears, then, that the movement is only observable when the pipe is smoked. We have at least arrived at step No. 1!

'Here's a match, Brasher! Light up, and we shall have arrived at step No. 2.'

Tress lit a match, and held it out to Brasher. Brasher retreated from his neighbourhood.

'Thank you, Mr. Tress, I am no smoker, as you are aware. And I have no desire to acquire the art of smoking by means of a poisoned pipe.'

Tress laughed. He blew out the match and threw it into the grate.

'Then I tell you what I'll do— I'll have up Bob.'

'Bob? Why Bob?'

'Bob'— whose real name was Robert Haines, though I should think he must have forgotten the fact, so seldom was he addressed by it— was Tress's servant. He had been an old soldier, and had accompanied his master when he left the service. He was as depraved a character as Tress himself. I am not sure even that he was not worse than his master. I shall never forget how he once behaved towards myself. He actually had the assurance to accuse me of attempting to steal the Wardour Street relic which Tress fondly deludes himself was once the property of Sir Walter Raleigh. The truth is that I had slipped it with my pocket handkerchief into my pocket in a fit of absence of mind. A man who could accuse me of such a thing would be guilty of anything. I was therefore quite at one with Brasher when he asked what Bob could possibly be wanted for.

Tress explained. 'I'll get him to smoke the pipe,' he said. Brasher and I exchanged glances, but we refrained from speech. 'It won't do him any harm,' said Tress.

'What— not a poisoned pipe?' asked Brasher.

'It's not poisoned— it's only drugged.'

'Only drugged !'

'Nothing hurts Bob. He is like an ostrich. He has digestive organs which are peculiarly his own. It will only serve him as it served me— and Pugh— it will knock him over. It is all done in the Pursuit of Truth and for the Advancement of Inquiry.'

I could see that Brasher did not altogether like the tone in which Tress repeated his words. As for me, it was not to be supposed that I should put myself out in a matter which in no way concerned me. If Tress chose to poison the man, it was his affair, not mine. He went to the door, and shouted:— 'Bob! Come here, you scoundrel!'

That is the way in which he speaks to him. No really decent servant would stand it. I shouldn't dare to address Nalder, my servant, in such a way. He would give me notice on the spot.

Bob came in. He is a great hulking fellow who is always on the grin. Tress had a decanter of brandy in his hand. He filled a tumbler with the neat spirit.

'Bob, what would you say to a glassful of brandy— the real thing— my boy?'

'Thank you, sir.'

'And what would you say to a pull at a pipe when the brandy is drunk !'

'A pipe?'

The fellow is sharp enough when he likes. I saw him look at the pipe upon the table, and then at us, and then a gleam of intelligence came into his eyes.

'I'd do it for a dollar, sir.'

'A dollar, you thief? '

'I meant ten shillings, sir.'

'Ten shillings, you brazen vagabond?'

'I should have said a pound.'

'A pound I Was ever the like of that! Do I understand you to ask a pound for taking a pull at your master's pipe?'

'I'm thinking that I'll have to make it two.'

'The deuce you are! Here, Pugh, lend me a pound.'

'I'm afraid I've left my purse behind.'

'Then lend me ten shillings— Ananias!'

'I doubt if I have more than five.'

'Then give me the five. And, Brasher, lend me the other fifteen.'

Brasher lent him the fifteen. I doubt if we shall either of us ever see our money again. He handed the pound to Bob.

'Here's the brandy-drink it up!' Bob drank it without a word, draining the glass of every drop.

'And here's the pipe.'

'Is it poisoned, sir?'

'Poisoned, you villain! What do you mean?'

'It isn't the first time I've seen your tricks, sir— is it now? And you're not the one to give a pound for nothing at all. If it kills me you'll send my body to my mother— she'd like to know that I was dead.'

'Send your body to your grandmother! You idiot, sit down and smoke!'

Bob sat down. Tress had filled the pipe, and handed it, with a lighted match, to Bob. The fellow declined the match. He handled the pipe very gingerly, turning it over and over, eyeing it with all his eyes.

'Thank you, sir— I'll light up myself if it's the same to you. I carry matches or my own. It's a beautiful pipe, entirely. I never see the like of it for ugliness. And what's the slimy-looking varmint that looks as though it would like to have my life? Is it living, or is it dead?'

'Come, we don't want to sit here all day, my man!'

'Well, sir, the look of this here pipe has quite upset my stomach. I'd like another drop of liquor, if it's the same to you.'

'Another drop! Why, you've had a tumblerful already! Here's another tumblerful to put on top of that. You won't want the pipe to kill you— you'll be killed before you get to it.'

'And isn't it better to die a natural death?'

Bob emptied the second tumbler of brandy as though it were water. I believe he would empty a hogshead without turning a hair! Then he gave another look at the pipe. Then, taking a match from his waistcoat-pocket, he drew a long breath, as though he were resigning himself to fate. Striking the match on the seat of his trousers, while, shaded by his hand, the flame was gathering strength, he looked at each one of us in turn. When he looked at Tress I distinctly saw him wink his eye. What my feelings would have been if a servant of mine had winked his eye at me I am unable to imagine! The match was applied to the tobacco, a puff of smoke came through his lips— the pipe was alight! During this process or lighting the pipe we had sat— I do not wish to use exaggerated language, but we had sat and watched that alcoholic scamp's proceedings as though we were witnessing an action which would leave its mark upon the age, when we saw that the pipe was lighted we gave a simultaneous start. Brasher put his hands under his coat-tails and gave a kind of hop. I raised myself a good six inches from my chair, and Tress rubbed his palms together with a chuckle. Bob alone was calm.

'Now,' cried Tress, 'you'll see the devil moving.'

Bob took the pipe from between his lips.

'See what? ' he said.

'Bob, you rascal, put that pipe back into your mouth, and smoke it for your life!'

Bob was eyeing the pipe askance.

'I dare say, but what I want to know is whether this here varmint's dead or whether he isn't. I don't want to have him flying at my nose— and he looks vicious enough for anything.'

'Give me back that pound, you thief, and get out of my house, and bundle.'

'I ain't going to give you back no pound.'

'Then smoke that pipe!'

'I am smoking it, ain't I?' With the utmost deliberation Bob returned the pipe to his mouth. He emitted another whiff or two of smoke.

'Now— now!' cried Tress, all excitement, and wagging his hand in the air.

We gathered round. As we did so Bob again withdrew the pipe.

'What is the meaning of all this here? I ain't going to have you playing none of your larks on me. I know there's something up, but I ain't going to throw my life away for twenty shillingsnot quite I ain't.'

Tress, whose temper is not at any time one of the best, was seized with quite a spasm of rage.

'As I live, my lad, if you try to cheat me by taking that pipe from between your lips until I tell you, you leave this room that instant, never again to be a servant of mine.'

I presume the fellow knew from long experience when his master meant what he said, and when he didn't. Without an attempt at remonstrance he replaced the pipe. He continued stolidly to puff away. Tress caught me by the arm.

'What did I tell you? There— there! That tentacle is moving.'

The uplifted tentacle was moving. It was doing what I had seen it do, as I supposed, in my distorted imagination— it was reaching forward. Undoubtedly Bob saw what it was doing; but, whether in obedience to his master's commands, or whether because the drug was already beginning to take effect, he made no movement to withdraw the pipe. He watched the slowly advancing tentacle, coming closer and closer towards his nose, with an expression of such intense horror on his countenance that it became quite shocking. Further and further the creature reached forward, until on a sudden, with a sort of jerk, the movement assumed a downward direction, and the tentacle was slowly lowered until the tip rested on the stem of the pipe. For a moment the creature remained motionless. I was quieting my nerves with the reflection that this thing was but some trick of the carver's art, and that what we had seen we had seen in a sort of nightmare, when the whole hideous reptile was seized with what seemed to be a fit of convulsive shuddering. It seemed to be in agony. It trembled so violently that I expected to see it loosen its hold of the stem and fall to the ground. I was sufficiently master of myself to steal a glance at Bob. We had had an inkling of what might happen. He was wholly unprepared. As he saw that dreadful, inhuman-looking creature, coming to life, as it seemed, within an inch or two of his nose, his eyes dilated to twice their usual size. I hoped, for his sake, that unconsciousness would supervene, through the action of the drug, before, through sheer fright, his senses left him. Perhaps mechanically, he puffed steadily on.

The creature's shuddering became more violent. It appeared to swell before our eyes. Then, just as suddenly as it began, the shuddering ceased. There was another instant of quiescence. Then-the creature began to crawl along the stem of the pipe! It moved with marvellous caution, the merest fraction of an inch at a time. But still it moved! Our eyes were riveted on it with a fascination which was absolutely nauseous. I am unpleasantly affected even as I think of it now. My dreams of the night before had been nothing to this.

Slowly, slowly, it went, nearer and nearer to the smoker's nose. Its mode of progression was in the highest degree unsightly. It glided, never, so far as I could see, removing its tentacles from the stem of the pipe. It slipped its hindmost feelers onward, until they came up to those which were in advance. Then, in their turn, it advanced those which were in front. It seemed, too, to move with the utmost labour, shuddering as though it were in pain.

We were all, for our parts, speechless. I was momentarily hoping that the drug would take effect on Bob. Either his constitution enabled him to offer a strong resistance to narcotics, or else the large quantity of neat spirit which he had drunk acted— as Tress had malevolently intended that it should do— as an antidote. It seemed to me that he would never succumb. On went the creature— on, and on, in its infinitesimal progression. I was spellbound. I would have given the world to scream, to have been able to utter a sound. I could do nothing else but watch.

The creature had reached the end of the stem. It had gained the amber mouthpiece. It was within an inch of the smoker's nose. Still on it went. It seemed to move with greater freedom on the amber. It increased its rate of progress. It was actually touching the foremost feature on the smoker's countenance. I expected to see it grip the wretched Bob, when it began to oscillate from side to side. Its oscillations increased in violence. It fell to the floor. That same instant the narcotic prevailed. Bob slipped sideways from the chair, the pipe still held tightly between his rigid jaws.

We were silent. There lay Bob. Close beside him lay the creature. A few more inches to the left, and he would have fallen on and squashed it flat. It had fallen on its back. Its feelers were extended upwards. They were writhing and twisting and turning in the air. Tress was the first to speak.

'I think a little brandy wouldn't be amiss.'

Emptying the remainder of the brandy into a glass, he swallowed it at a draught.

'Now for a closer examination of our friend.'

Taking a pair of tongs from the grate he nipped the creature between them. He deposited it upon the table.

'I rather fancy that this is a case for dissection.'

He took a penknife from his waistcoat-pocket. Opening the large blade, he thrust its point into the object on the table. Little or no resistance seemed to be offered to the passage of the blade, but as it was inserted, the tentacula simultaneously began to writhe and twist. Tress withdrew the knife.

'I thought so!'

He held the blade out for our inspection. The point was covered with some viscid-looking matter.

'That's blood! The thing's alive!'

'Alive!'

'Alive! That's the secret of the whole performance!'

'But—'

'But me no buts, my Pugh! The mystery's exploded! One more ghost is lost to the world! The person from whom I obtained that pipe was an Indian juggler— up to many tricks of the trade. He, or someone for him, got hold of this sweet thing in reptiles— and a sweeter thing would, I imagine, be hard to find— and covered it with some preparation of, possibly, gum arabic. He allowed this to harden. Then he stuck the thing— still living, for those sort of gentry are hard to kill— to the pipe. The consequence was that when anyone lit up the warmth was communicated to the adhesive agent— again some preparation of gum, no doubt— it moistened it, and the creature, with infinite difficulty, was able to move. But I am open to lay odds with any gentleman of sporting tastes that this time the creature's travelling days are done. It has given me rather a larger taste of the horrors than is good for my digestion.'

With the aid of the tongs he removed the creature from the table. He placed it on the hearth. Before Brasher or I had a notion of what it was he intended to do he covered it with a heavy marble paper-weight. Then he stood upon the weight, and between the marble and the hearth he ground the creature flat. While the execution was still proceeding, Bob sat up upon the floor.

'Hollo!' he asked— 'what's happened?'

'We've emptied the bottle, Bob,' said Tress. 'But there's another where that came from. Perhaps you could drink another tumblerful, my boy?'

Bob drank it!

_________________

12: The Nudist Gym Death Riddle

Jack Gray
fl 1930s

Vice Squad Detective vol 1 No 1, 1935

Probably a pseudonym; I can find only two stories by him, this story and another in 1938. Nothing else is known.

THE telephone in the Lansing Detective Agency shrilled commandingly, shattering the late afternoon silence of the little office with its strident clatter. Stifling a yawn, Ace Lansing put down the Chronicle pink sheet, lifted the French phone from its cradle and answered with a lazy, "Yeah?"

"That you, Ace?" came a voice over the wire. Greeted with another languid, "Yeah," the voice went on in curt, clipped accents.

"This is Sam Andrews at the Chronicle. I gotta job for you!"

Lansing swung upright in his swivel chair, dropped his feet from the cigarette-scarred oak desk and glanced toward the luscious redhead who was displaying a generous expanse of silk-sheathed leg at the other desk. As Ace gave her an exaggerated wink she lifted the extension phone, placed the receiver to her ear.

"I want the dope on a nudist racket that's been playing high, wide and naked in this man's town," Andrews went on. "A lug named Lestro— he's some kind of Spik— is running a gyp nudist gym on the South Side, on Eighty-ninth just off the Avenue. Makes a play for business and professional men. Has plenty dames in the house, day and night. There's talk of blackmail. Can you hit it?"

"I'm your monkey, Sam," Ace Lansing grinned. "What's the play?"

"You join the club, or whatever it is. Get the inside. This rag is going after the administration— but that's on the Q.T. I want evidence on this Lestro mug— stuff that will stand in court. Find who's backing him, how the racket works. The sky's the limit. Get going, kid, and report as soon as you have anything. Okay?"

"Okay, Sam. I'm practically undressed."

Ace was grinning as he turned from the phone.

"Well, sweetheart," he addressed Mary Gaynes, "that guy has ideas. Sam Andrews wants I should join a nudist club. Like to come along?"

"Nix, mug," the red-haired assistant grimaced. "I'm not above doing a strip act for the sake of a wealthy client who wants divorce evidence, but when it comes to displaying my feminine charms to a bunch of potbellied pappies who are nudists for what they can see, I draw the G-string. I'll stick and answer the phone."

"Okay, kid, but you'll be missing something. I isn't every young gal who gets an invitation to lamp the famous Ace Lansing in the altogether."

And Ace, as a parting gesture, walked across the room, took the redhead in his arms and pulled her close. The nearness of her intoxicated him, as it always did. He could feel the round firmness of her pert young breasts as they crushed against him, could sense the quickened beat of her heart as she raised her lips to his. Eagerly he pressed those ripe, moist lips, crushing her closer, ever closer, to him. Little shivers of delight, of ecstasy, ran up and down his spine. His hands strayed down her straight young back, caressed her smooth, rounded thighs. Suddenly she pushed him away, drew beyond the reach of those exploring hands.

"That's all for you, mug," she smiled, straightening her hair and patting her dress back in shape. "Now it's you that's getting ideas. If I'm not mistaken, you're supposed to be on your way right now to a nudist joint on the South Side to do a job for Sam Andrews. Playtime's over, and if you expect us to eat in the next few days I'd suggest you get going."

"Okay, sweetheart. I'll phone you at nine tonight."

Ace grabbed his hat and topcoat, made a face at his luscious assistant and swung out the door. At the corner he hesitated at a newsstand as he caught a glimpse of a flaming headline in the late edition of the Gazette, chief rival and sworn enemy of the paper on which Andrews cracked the whip as city editor. He grabbed the green sheet with its vivid red streamer:

MORTON ORDERS VICE CLEANUP!

Stuffing the paper in his pocket, Ace Lansing rounded the corner to a parking lot. Seated in his trim coupe, he pulled out the Gazette and gave page one a quick once-over. The lead story, trailing under lurid headlines beneath the screaming banner, declared that Police Commissioner Morton was on the warpath! In the middle of the sheet was a box containing the Commissioner's own statement:

"Organized vice must go!" the statement thundered. "There can be no compromise with the lecherous vultures of the underworld who, by preying on our girls and young women, are blackening the name of our fair city. The Vice Squad, under Lieutenant Swanson, is charged with the duty of cleaning out the brothels, the houses of assignation, and every other den of vice in the metropolis. I demand action!"

"Whoops!" Ace chuckled to himself. "That puts my old pal, Swanson, on the spot. That dumb dick's clock would stop if he ran into anything more vicious than a two-bit streetwalker. I got a hunch the old town's due to see some fun!"

BACKING his car from its stall, he swung into the Avenue. He turned the picture over in his mind as he wheeled toward the South Side.

"A thin dime gets you a sawbuck that Sam Andrews smells a mouse in this cleanup order," Ace Lansing told himself. "The Gazette spreads the Commissioner's stuff all over the page in studhorse type. The Gazette helped appoint Morton, of course. But Sam's rag doesn't give this cleanup thing more than a few paragraphs. Something's up, Ace, old sock, and you're gonna have a front row seat. I've got one of my hunches... I wonder where in hell a nudist carries his gun?"

Threading his way through the heavy afternoon traffic, the detective parked his car on the Avenue, near Eighty-ninth. As he sauntered down the street he caught a glimpse of a trim figure just ahead in the gathering gloom. The girl, a striking blonde, hesitated before a lingerie shop, inspecting the display of filmy underthings in the window. Ace stopped beside her, glanced sharply at the full-bosomed loveliness revealed by the stylish coat which fell away from her throat. Touching his hat, he spoke.

"Pardon me, Miss, but can you tell me where Lestro's gymnasium is located?"

The blonde faced him, smiling.

"I can," she said. "Why?"

"Well, it's like this. I'm one of these nudists. My home's in Indiana. I belong to a summer colony out there. I just came to town and heard that Lestro runs a nice indoor spot during the winter season. I thought I'd like to join."

"That's fine," the blonde vision replied with breathtaking swiftness. "I'm a member myself. I'll take you in and introduce you. I'm June Marson."

"My name's John Butler," Ace said, bowing.

Together they walked down the street. Arriving at a doorway, June guided her companion into a long, dark entrance-way. Shortly they were before a door over which a single light glowed dimly. The girl produced a key As they entered, Ace Lansing took in the small, plainly furnished anteroom. Beyond, he caught a glimpse of a typical gymnasium where the flash of nude bodies greeted him. June Marson removed her hat and coat, loosened the front of her dress to reveal the fullness of her breasts and the inviting promise of the warm valley between them. She sat down at a desk.

"You'd better fill out this application," she told Ace, pushing a card toward him. Then, as he raised questioning eyebrows, she added: "You see, I'm Lestro's secretary." Ace signed the card, giving the borrowed name a final flourish, and paid the entrance fee. As she took the card, June Marson flashed him a smile. He was convinced he was going to enjoy this strange assignment. June led him swiftly to the interior of the place. She showed him a tiny dressing room, fitted with locker, chair and day-bed, which he was to use. She gave him a key to the locker and told him the evening class would start in thirty minutes.

"Get out of your clothes," she directed. "Here's a mask you can wear in class— all the boys use them. I'll be back in no time to show you the ropes."

She smiled again, a friendly smile of promise.

Ace was new at the nudist racket, but he lost no time removing his clothing. He patted his .38 with a feeling of regret as he stored it away in the locker. Then, deciding to make the plunge, he slipped on the black domino and stepped out of the dressing room into the corridor. The magnificent muscles of his legs and torso rippled smoothly as he walked out to meet the blonde June.

He was hardly prepared for the breathtaking sight that greeted him as she approached. Gracefully, her every movement a picture of motion's poetry, she strode down the hall. She had slipped out of her clothes, had thrown a lovely jade green shawl—hardly more than a scarf—about her shoulders. It revealed much more than it concealed. And June, too, accustomed as she was to seeing masculinity unadorned, was not oblivious to the manly physique of the new club member.

"How do you like it?" she asked simply.

Ace gave her another quick once-over with his eyes, grinned.

"Lady, I think it's swell!"

THE girl came closer, looking up into his face with something akin to admiration. It was too much for Lansing. It would have been too much for any man who wasn't paralyzed. Reaching out quickly, he crushed her to him, their bare flesh merging, in an ecstasy of emotion. Avidly she gave him her lips, the full, promising lips of one who knows life's secrets and revels in that knowledge. Her active, exploring tongue darted out to contact his as both trembled with the excitement of their sudden contact.

Blindly, so great was the wave of passion that engulfed him, Ace Lansing led the girl back to the tiny cubicle which was his dressing room. She followed eagerly, clinging tight to him as though loathe to lose that thrilling contact. Together, they stared at each other with wide-open eyes. June's shawl slipped from her shoulders. Lansing's hands, unable to leave this blonde vision alone, tore off the domino which masked him. He reached out to caress her breasts, to cup the lush mounds with their glowing coral buds. His hands slipped lingeringly down to her rounded thighs, stroked her legs, retraced their course. As though fired by the warmth of those possessive palms, June sought his lips once more, massaged the rippling muscles of his back and crushed herself closer to him.

At that moment his trained senses, functioning subconsciously despite the stark passion that enveloped him, caught a tiny click from the direction of the door. There was a slight movement of the curtain. But, he thought, what the hell... And then, the silence of the little dressing room, charged with the electric thrill of their mutual attraction, suddenly was broken by the muffled clanging of a gong.

"That's class time," she whispered, catching up her shawl. "Lestro will be looking for me. Come on."

And Ace Lansing, the gymnasium's newest convert to nudism, slipped on his mask. He followed the blonde vision out into the corridor, onto the gym floor. What a girl she was! His mind wandered back to that thrilling dressing room episode as he watched her stride across the room, every movement a picture of grace and loveliness. He watched her take her place beside a hairy, black-browed man. Lestro! The mug's dark eyes glowed as he nodded to June.

Everywhere he looked Ace Lansing saw middle-aged men, and some who were past middle age. Most of them had paunches, all of them had the glitter of anticipation in the avid eyes that gleamed through the slits in their black masks. As he viewed the scene he realized that June Marson, now partially hiding her physical beauty under the green shawl, was the only woman in the room!

"Something screwy here," he told himself. "These lugs aren't just interested in working off surplus poundage."

Then he noted that the men, some forty or fifty of them, were lining up on one side of the gymnasium. Following suit, he picked a spot at the extreme end of the line, near a door. Again the muffled gong sounded, a curtain swept aside. A dazzling line of pretty girls, utterly devoid of clothing, ran into the room! Ace Lansing had seen plenty of hot musical shows— he was a hound for burlesque— but never had he witnessed such a breath-stopping display of feminine pulchritude as this. There were golden-haired girls, vivid brunettes, flashing redheads. And every one seemed to be a real beauty contest winner. There wasn't a bad looker in the lot. Their amazing loveliness, their abundance of youth and vitality, showed in every movement of their white, firmly molded bodies.

As Ace edged nearer the door, the girls, like a well-trained ensemble, fell into position facing the long line of eager men. Simple dance steps, started in cadence with the modulated strains of a concealed orchestra, gave way to a wild, dervish sort of routine as the music became hotter, more barbaric. Throwing themselves into the intoxicating rhythm of the dance, the girls worked closer, ever closer, to the leering males. Expertly they writhed in their sensual evolutions until their darting arms touched the torsos of the men. The masked figures joined in, then, each clutching with frantic abandon at the dancer nearest him.

Ace Lansing, struck by the wild sensuality of the scene, shook himself as though to clear the astounding vision from his head. Then, as the oddly assorted couples pawed each other, he slipped through the door into the corridor. It ran, he found, entirely around the gym floor. On both sides of the passageway he noted curtained cubicles, identical with his own tiny dressing room.

Gliding swiftly to that room, he gained its privacy without being seen. As he entered he caught a glimpse of June Marson's flashing white legs and vivid shawl as she whisked through a door at the end of the corridor.

DROPPING down on the day-bed, Ace made a quick checkup. Sam Andrews, he decided, certainly had the right tip when he figured Lestro's place was a joint. What a swell layout for a blackmail racket! Any one of those forty or fifty paunchy chaps, providing he had more than the price of admission, would be a natural setup for a shakedown.

A candid camera, brought into action from a concealed spot while Mr. John Q. Businessman was cavorting in the altogether with a luscious beauty, similarly attired, would bring plenty potatoes into the coffers of Signor Lestro. And how!

But who was behind the layout? Was Lestro the main squeeze or was he simply the tool for some higher-up? And what part did June Marson play? Was it possible that she was a willing stooge for the beetle-browed Spik? Or was she in his power, unable to break away from the dirty business?

Ace Lansing's contemplation was broken by the thundering crash of a heavy gun! As the shot echoed and re-echoed in the barnlike structure, Ace heard the unmistakable sound of a falling body. The shot and the toppling crash of human flesh came from almost directly overhead! Ace held his breath, listening.

He caught the faint but frantic sound of feet running above him toward the far end of the gym. Another shot! Then other feet, heavier feet, also running. Leaping to his locker, Ace Lansing hauled out his .38 and the shoulder holster which cradled it. Without stopping to consider what a ludicrous figure he made, he slipped into the leather harness, settled the heavy rod comfortably against his bare chest, beneath his left shoulder, and plunged into the corridor.

Ace plowed through the mob, oblivious now to the contact of his bare shoulders and thighs with other naked bodies. Like an avenging spirit he made his way to the far end of the passage. He flashed through the door where June Marson, in her green shawl, had passed but a few short minutes earlier. Feeling his way in the semi-gloom he spotted a rude stairway, leading upward. The stairs gave into a shadowy passageway, little more than a catwalk, parallel to the corridor he had just left.

At first glance the tunnel-like alley seemed deserted. But, his eyes growing more accustomed to the dim light, Ace made out a dark figure huddled on the floor midway of the passage. Cautiously, his nostrils filled with the acrid odor of burned powder, the detective advanced, gun in hand, toward that still form.

Ace knelt beside the figure of a man, dressed in evening clothes. A white domino, similar except in color to those worn by the men in the gymnasium, was across the staring eyes. A spreading dark stain marred the ghostly whiteness of the stiff shirt front.

Quickly Ace thrust his hand inside the victim's shirt, feeling for some sign of life. He found nothing but a bullet hole, sticky with still-warm blood, directly over the man's heart. Whoever fired that shot had done it at close range, so close the leaden messenger of death could never miss. Hurriedly wiping his bloodstained hand on the dead man's coat, Ace started as he caught a glimpse of vivid, jade green cloth beneath one outflung hand. He recognized that cloth.

It was the shawl June Marson wore!

Looking once more at the still features of the heavy corpse, he could not shake off the feeling that he knew this man, or knew the man this hulk had been. He knew this guy beneath the spotless domino, but he couldn't hang a name on him. There was one way to tell. He slipped the snowy mask off those staring, sightless eyes.

Startled in spite of steel-like nerves, Ace Lansing swore, leaped to his feet.

The lifeless figure was Police Commissioner Morton!

"Jeez!" breathed Ace, half-aloud. "Here's a swell mess of spinach. What in hell was Morton doing in this joint?"

He flashed a glance about him in the eerie passage. On the wall opposite the gymnasium proper he caught a tiny patch of light. That beam, he saw, came from the gym through a hole in the partition. Gluing his eye to the aperture, he had a perfect view of the gymnasium floor, deserted now except for half a dozen flabby old dodoes who were still running in circles, unable to decide where to go.

That peephole, which appeared so innocent, gave Ace ideas. Quickly he retraced his steps, back through the passage, down the narrow steps. And on those steps he saw what he had overlooked in the dim light when he rushed toward the echoes of those crashing shots— dark spots, still damp. Blood! A veritable trail of human blood!

Ace Lansing followed that path into the inner regions of the place. Listening, he heard the babble of excited feminine voices behind one heavy door— the girls' dressing room. He passed on, still trailing the gore-marked route. Suddenly, as he reached a second door, a woman's voice rose in a scream of terror, a wild, fear-crazed shriek that froze his blood.

GRABBING his gun, Ace Lansing crept toward the room from which that frightful cry had come. As he closed in, the door swung open with surprising suddenness. A man, fully clothed, leaped through the open space. Ace tried to raise his gun, to pull the trigger. But the flying figure was upon him. The heavy, bull-necked form crashed into him. A knee caught him in the groin. A huge fist struck his chin. He fell unconscious...

When Ace came to he was lying on a couch and firm, cool hands were stroking his hot brow. Opening one eye he caught a glimpse of Mary Gaynes, smiling at him. Recovering his senses, Ace Lansing got to his feet, clutching at the sheet which covered him. He looked about. The room was full of cops. He saw Lieutenant Swanson beside a rumpled bed across the room. Twisting the sheet about his waist, Ace moved toward that bed. He saw a huddled form beneath a bloodstained coverlet. The Vice Squad copper eyed the private sleuth, then caught the coverlet, tore it off.

There on the bed, a long knife buried to the hilt in her left breast, lay June Marson!

The lovely body, that such a little while before had glowed and pulsed with life and passion, lay forever stilled. The breasts that Ace had known in all their white perfection were stained with crimson. No more would they thrill a man by their electric touch. Those lovely arms, whose warmth had cradled Lansing's head, were cold in death, on one an ugly wound. The detective shuddered, shook his head to clear it.

"Well, Lansing," Lieutenant Swanson spoke, "you're in a spot. I've waited for a chance like this. You're the smart boy who's razzed me too damned often. You killed this dame! Look at the bloodstains on your hand! We found you lying right outside this room. I say you killed this dame. Laugh that one off!"

"Yeah, I will, you squarehead," Ace grinned and turned to Mary. "What's the lay, kid? Has anyone left this joint?"

"Nope, everybody's here. Some of Swanson's men have them corralled in the gym— two of his brighter cops are on the door."

"Okay, sweetheart. Now, listen, Swanson— you think I killed this frail. We'll start from there.

"Knowing your limitations as a cop, I'm betting you haven't searched this dump. Right? Right! Then the party's just started for you, my fran'. You come with me. C'mon, Mary."

Ace Lansing piloted them through the door, out to the stairs which led to that grim overhead corridor where still another corpse lay in a sinister pool of its own blood. Silently he took them to the spot. Then, turning to Swanson, he spoke quietly.

"You'd better use your flash, Lieutenant."

The cop's pocket light came out. He switched its revealing beam on that dark form with its gray hair, its gore-stained dress shirt. Swanson stifled a curse as he recognized his chief.

"While you're about it, Swannie, you might as well make the murder rap stick. Two stiffs should be better than one."

As they stood looking down in silence, a shot rang out! Snatching the cop's flashlight, Ace led the way back through the narrow passage. He leaped down the stairs, leaving Mary and the officer to follow.

Out into the gymnasium he ran. In one corner a group of jittery girls and men, dressed now, were crowded together in a human ring. Ace Lansing shouldered through, into the very center of the mob. There on the floor lay Lestro, a blood-rimmed hole marking the center of his dark forehead! Beside the huddled form a burly cop, gun in hand, looked down at what had been a man.

"Made a break for it, did he, Donovan?" Ace asked.

The copper nodded.

"Yeah, and a pass at me with a rod, too. No Spik kin do that and git away with it. I let him have it."

"Nice shooting, Irish." Ace slapped the policeman's uniformed shoulder. "He had it coming."

Ace picked up Lestro's gun, broke it open, smiled. Then, realizing for the first time that he was the only person in the room who wasn't fully dressed, he gathered his sheet about him. Beckoning to Swanson and to Mary, he led them back to his own dressing room.

"SIT down, Swannie, I've got some talking to do while I get my pants on. Mary, you turn your back!"

The redhead grinned and made a face. "Don't mind me, big boy. I've seen everything. You didn't have that sheet when I found you back there."

"And that reminds me, sweetheart—how'd you get in?"

"Just instinct, Ace. I stuck in the office, getting out that Middleton report, and when you hadn't called by 9:15, I barged out here. I spotted the joint, used my pet key to crash the gate. There was plenty confusion, if you ask me!

"First thing, that hairy ape out there on the gym floor came through hell-bent looking for an exit. He was in too much of a hurry so I dropped my gun on him. I stood him up and used the phone to get Swanson and his mob out here. When they arrived I turned the Spik over to Donovan, prowled in with Swanson, and found you stretched out in your birthday suit. Some fun!"

Ace Lansing grinned.

"Nice going, kid! Now listen— you think I killed that moll, Lieutenant. And you figure I bumped the Commissioner. "I'm laughing at you again, Swanson. Here's what took place in this damned naked nuthouse. Listen and learn things.

"That stiff out there— Lestro— was cuckoo about June Marson, the blonde dame. But she wouldn't play with him except in a business way. It drove him nuts. She was the big come-on in this racket, but he wanted her to himself.

"Tonight he missed her from the gym, went looking for her. He found her just as he expected— with Morton in that dark alleyway above the dressing rooms.

"Morton, the Police Commissioner, was the guy behind the works, the big shot. He had heavy dough in this joint, figuring to make heavier dough by the shakedown route. And while he was about it he wanted the thrill he could get by watching what went on down here in the gym— and there was plenty. That's why he had that peephole spotted where he could see everything.

"This Lestro mug found them together. He went mad with jealous rage, bumped Morton with a single shot. June ran in fright, dropping her scarf. Lestro let a slug fly at her. It caught her in the arm. She made the dressing room, leaving a trail of blood.

"The Spik followed, stuck a knife in her. I was outside her door and heard her scream. He fouled me when he crashed out of that dressing room, knocked me cold. He'd have lammed out of here if it hadn't been for Mary.

"You'll find, Swanson, that Lestro's rod holds two empty shells. I'm glad the rat is dead. And I'm proud of you, Swanson— I didn't know you had a cop who could shoot like Donovan, even if he was too dumb to search that Spik for weapons."

Ace Lansing, finished dressing, lit a cigarette and turned to Mary. "Let's scram, sweetheart. I'm hungry, and I gotta phone Sam Andrews. This ought to give him the yarn he wanted."

And Ace grinned, winking at his assistant.

"Swanson, I'm not telling you your business— although God knows someone should—but I'd turn those old birds loose out there. They've had their lesson. They'll be shaking a month from now. The gals— well, use your own judgment about the gals. But watch 'em, Swannie, they know their stuff. So long, copper."

Stopping in the anteroom, Ace Lansing phoned Sam Andrews, gave him the yarn in short, crisp sentences. Then he and Mary hit a hash house, sought a booth and ordered steaks.

It seemed minutes only before they heard hoarse cries of newsboys. The Chronicle had scooped the town!

Sitting beside Mary, Ace slipped his arm about her shoulders, tried to draw her close. But the redhead pulled away.

"What's the matter, baby? Can't you be nice to papa? I need relaxation." "Listen, lug, judging from what I've seen tonight, you need anything else but. Here!"

She flipped open her handbag, fished out a scrap of paper and shoved it to him. Silently he turned it over. He was looking at a perfect candid camera shot of himself, nude, all tangled up with the blonde and equally nude June Marson!

"I grabbed that thing when I first barged into the blonde dame's room," Mary told him coolly. "Swanson didn't see it. Seems to me you take your detective work too seriously, big boy. Nudist rackets are out from now on. We stick to good clean murders or bank jobs." "

He grimaced, tore the photo into bits.

"That's no good, mug," Mary said quietly, a twinkle creeping into her pretty eyes. "I got the negative, too!" Then she slid over, squirmed into his arms and pulled his head down till she could reach his lips with hers. After all, Ace Lansing wanted relaxation.

__________________

13: As Told To The Children

Owen Oliver

Joshua Albert Flynn, 1863-1933

Appleton's, April 1909

MOST fairy stories are not true, but this one is. I knew the fairy. What was she like? Why, very like Aunt Elsie, only smaller of course; as if you looked at Auntie through the wrong end of the opera glasses. I'll tell you about her presently, but first I must tell you about the enchanter. It is his story really.

He was tall and dark and he had a gruff voice and a big nose and a black beard like mine— and he was "not so young as he used to be," and rather grumpy and very fidgety, and he lived in an enchanted castle most of his time; a castle in the air. He kept it tied up to a chimney stack, and climbed into it out of his study window when he wanted to make enchantments.

There are lots of ways of enchanting people. He tried to do it by writing spells on paper. Some of them were very long spells, and when they were printed they filled books, but they didn't enchant people very much. That was what made him grumpy. And he shut himself up in his air castle more and more to try if he could make his spells stronger. He stayed up in the air so much that the wind blew some of his hair off, and he had a little bald patch at the back of his head, like the one Auntie teases me about, and he began to feel tired and solemn and old, like I did before Auntie married me and found a spell to make me grow younger.

He was a very terrible enchanter, but there was one good thing about him. He was ever so fond of some little people who lived in his house. They hadn't any father and mother and he was their uncle, and he wasn't grumpy to them. So they weren't afraid of him, and sometimes they even went up in his study— but little people shouldn't do that, you know— and made him come down out of his air castle to play with them.

They did not understand that he went up there to fight his enemies, the ogres. They were very big and fierce ogres, and there were two kinds of them: the Editor Ogres and the Publisher Ogres. They had big clubs and seven-leagued boots and enormous trumpets that they were always blowing, and a great engine that they squeezed people in. It was called the Press, and it was very powerful, and made a terrible noise when it let off steam. He couldn't enchant the ogres with his spells, because they were too cunning— you've no idea how cunning they are!— but they bought some of them to try if they would enchant other people. He was glad for them to buy his spells, only they wouldn't give him enough pennies for them: and that was what the fights were about, and sometimes they said nasty things to him. Some said that they couldn't give him any more for the spells, because they didn't enchant people enough. Others were even ruder and said there was no enchantment at all in them, and sent them back to him. Two or three ran off to America with them, and. never paid him at all. So he found it hard to get enough pennies to keep the little people and buy them toys and take them for holidays ; and you couldn't wonder if he got a little worried and grumpy.

One day he was sailing about in his air castle— it was like an air ship, and there was no telling where it would go when it started— and he saw another castle on the ground, and went down and tied his own castle to a tree, and walked up to the front door of the other castle and knocked and asked who lived there. They told him that it belonged to the witch Scriba. That made his knees tremble, because she was a very great witch, and could make spells that enchanted even the ogres. She only laughed at their press, for she had a press of her own that squeezed them; and she could blow off steam louder than they could. However, he asked if he could see her, and they told him to go in. He found her sitting on a golden throne, writing at a silver table with thick red ink that looked like blood. She used a great quill pen, nearly as big as a spear, that spluttered ink all over the table, and ogres were waiting outside with bags of gold to buy her spells as soon as they were written.

She was so busy writing that she did not notice the enchanter at first; but at last she looked up, and he saw that she was very pale, and rather old and had fierce black eyes that seemed to stare through him, when she laid down her pen and looked up. She looked rather cross at being disturbed, but she had quite a pleasant voice when she spoke.

"What do you want, my good young man?" she asked.

"I am not good," he told her— he was rather a truthful enchanter— "and I am not young, and I am not a man. I am an enchanter!" He swelled himself out when he said that, because he was proud of it.

"You don't know what you are talking about," she answered as if she didn't want to be bothered with nonsense. "You are better than you think, and younger than you feel, and quite a nice man; but you're no enchanter. Did you ever make a spell like that?"

She handed him over one that she had just written, and he read it, and put it down, and shook his head.

"Never," he owned; and that was the truth. For her spells were very wonderful.

"Or like this?" she asked, and handed him another.

"No," he said. "I never did; and I never shall."

"Umph!" she said. "I don't know about that; but you won't unless you alter. You must be enchanted yourself before you can enchant others."

"Is there a spell to do it?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "There is a spell."

"What is it called?" he asked. She looked at him with her great black eyes; and he saw that when she was young she must have been very beautiful.

"It is called Trouble," she told him.

"Why!" he cried. "I've had plenty of that. The ogres—"

"Nonsense!" she interrupted. "You don't know what trouble is; real trouble. You never had a child of your own to lose. You haven't even lost one of your brother's children. If you want to write good spells you must lose a few of those little people; two or three would be sufficient."

He was very angry at that, and was half a mind to throw her ivory inkpot at her; but he was a polite man— which rather spoiled him as an enchanter— he didn't.

"I'd rather write bad spells and keep the little people," he said. "I wouldn't hurt them for anything."

"You needn't hurt them," she said. "You can sell me a couple. I'll be good to them; but you must give them up to me and never come near them."

And then he really would have thrown something at her if she had only been a witch and not a lady; but he knew that it was not good manners to sling ink at ladies. So he bit his lip till he left off being angry.

"I will do without that spell," he said. "Isn't there any other?"

"There may be," she said; "but it is the only one that I have ever found."

"Losing your little people?" he asked.

"That was the way the spell came to me," she answered: "but of course there are other ways of making trouble. You might try getting married. That generally makes trouble enough; but sometimes it doesn't act."

I used to think it always did; but I know better since I've married Aunt Elsie. Still you can't go by her. She's like a fairywhen you look at her through the wrong end of the opera glasses! Not when she's making faces at me, of course!

"I dare say it would make trouble," he said, "but I don't know if it would make enough; and I don't know anyone to marry, and I couldn't afford it."

"Umph!"  Scriba said. "I can afford it; and I want those little people, and if you won't sell them you'd better marry me. There will be trouble enough then!"

He thought that there would be; but he didn't mind trouble, if it would make his spells better. So he was going to telephone for a parson to marry them there and then. But he was very much afraid that the little people wouldn't like a witch for an auntie. So he thanked her and said that he would think about it, and climbed up in his airship castle and sailed away again; and Scriba went on writing and forgot all about him: but she thought of his little people, and some little people that she had lost once upon a time— such little baby people. And so she wrote a wonderful, wonderful spell that enchanted little people all over the earth, and will go on enchanting them as long as there is any earth or any little people.

When he had arrived home and anchored his air castle to the chimney stack, he was going to stay up there and write; but the little people ran up to the study and tugged at the ropes— they were called heartstrings— and shouted to him; and they shouted a magic spell that made him come sliding down the rope, as quick as anything. This was the spell:

Nursie says it's time for bed.

Come and play with us instead.

Uncle, Uncle! Please do come!

Fee-fi-fo! Fee-fi-fo-fum!

The "fee-fi-fo-fum" part is very important. You try it on Aunt Elsie, the next time you want to stay up late. She's quite easy to enchant; but if more than two of you sit on her lap at once you'll smash her, and there won't be any Aunt Elsie left.

When the enchanter got down the rope, he found that these little people had played a naughty, wicked, abominable trick upon him. It wasn't bedtime at all, only teatime! And they wanted him to come to tea in the nursery, because the fairy was going to have tea with them. They didn't know she was a fairy, and the strange thing was that she didn't know it herself, but the enchanter suspected it from the very first, though they told him that she was Miss Musa, their music mistress, and she had been to give them their music lessons, and they had asked her to stay to tea; and she said that she thought the enchanter was busy making enchantments, or she wouldn't have dared to stay. But I believe she knew that they were going to fetch him down, and was curious to see what an enchanter was like. Fairies are very curious and want to know all about everything.

There's another thing about them. They're very artful. She was; and she artfully told the enchanter that she had found his spells very charming. That put him in a good temper directly, and he was quite nice, and played games to amuse the little people; and the fairy played and sang funny little songs that pleased them; and at last she sang a song to please him. He was sure then that she was a fairy, for she made her enchantments in music, and couldn't help making them without having to try.

He liked fairies of course. So he walked home with her, and they talked a great deal; and the next time she came he went down and begged her to stop to tea, "to please the little people;" and he read spells out of one of his books, and she sang spells, and they were all enchanted. And the enchanter was enchanted so much that, when he took the fairy home he told her about his spells and the ogres and the witch Scriba, but he did not say that the witch wanted to marry him to get the little people, only what she had told him about the great spell of trouble, and that he would not mind trouble, if it would make his enchantments better, so that he could soon earn more pennies to make the little people happier; and then the fairy looked up at him, with a smile that was very fairylike.

"There is a better spell than money for that," she said; "and I think it is a better spell than trouble, and makes stronger enchantments."

"What is that?" he asked.

"Love," she told him. Then he was absolutely and positively certain and sure that she was a fairy in disguise; and he told her so.

"You are a singing fairy," he declared; "and I am sure that you have wings, and if you tried you could fly;" and she turned rather pale.

"Don't!" she said. "Don't. Please, Mr.— Mr. Enchanter. I am always wanting to try; but mother is old, and old-fashioned. She couldn't bear me to be a singing fairy and fly about singing. She is so prejudiced against the stage." The stage is a sort of tower that fairies perch upon when they sing, you know.

"You would earn a lot of money," he said, " with a voice like yours, and you could do so much for her."

But the fairy only laughed at him. "My mother doesn't want money," she said. "She wants me!"

The enchanter was a good mind to tell her that he did too; but he felt sure that such a young and lovely and beautiful fairy would not dream of marrying an enchanter, who wasn't good at enchanting, and who had grown rather old and a little grumpy and very fidgety. So he only told her that she was a very fairy-like fairy, and he hoped that sometimes she would sing to him, because it would make his spells better.

She sang to him often, and her singing did seem to make his spells better; but he had a lot of misfortune just then. It was one of the times when an ogre ran off to America with several of his best spells and did not pay for them; and some wizards called usurers turned a lot of his money into dust. So he really did not know how to find pennies to buy nice things for his little people; and then he thought of what the witch Scriba had said to him; and he made up his mind that he must marry her, because she had such a lot of money. He told the little people about it, and they begged him to wait till the day after tomorrow. He said that he would ; but it was no use, because he must do it. Then he went up to his castle in the air; and the little people stopped downstairs and cried; and when they couldn't stop crying they wanted to be comforted. So they went to the fairy to see if she could comfort them.

She gave them ice creams and chocolates and a lot of kisses, and called them "poor little angels." She made an awful mistake there! That comforted them and made them feel ever so much better; but when they had gone she cried and cried! and couldn't comfort herself a tiny bit, because the enchanter had enchanted her, though he didn't know it— and he can't make out how it happened right to this very day— and the enchantment had made her want him to marry her; and she knew that was just what he wanted himself, though he wouldn't say so, because he was poor, and thought that she was ever so much too nice to like a silly old fellow like him. If Aunt Elsie interrupts any more you must smother her with the sofa cushions.

So she shut up her mouth very tightly— the fairy I mean— and made up her mind to make a mighty enchantment for him; and she went and sat at the piano and played on it for a long time; and then an enchantment came into her head; and she played something that made the room feel dark, and trees and ferns grow out of the carpet, and little twinkling stars glow out of the ceiling, and the fire sound as if water was running down a hill; and then she sang as if she was a fairy enchantress dressed in white, and sitting on a tree that had fallen down, and funny little goblins went running in and out of the ferns and staring at her....  Yes, I mean that she made up a song like Aunt Elsie does; but you mustn't interrupt any more, because this is a very important part of the story.

The enchantment that she made was a very funny one. There was no "fee-fi-fo-fum" in it; but you won't understand it any better than if there was, because it was in fairy language. No, not French—  only poetry. It was this:

ENCHANTMENT

To-night I'll cast a spell on you

Who think yourself so wise.

Just hold my hand.... And this one too.

Look bravely in my eyes.

Forget the world you love too well

Forget your dreams of fame,

Forget your gain or loss to tell,

Forget your very name.

Forget all things that were and are,

All things you hope shall be,

Till naught is left but one twin star

My eyes— and you and me.

Now there is only you and I,

And you and I are one,

And we 'II go sailing through the sky,

Beyond the farthest sun;

And you shall love me till you die—

Dear heart! The spell is done!

What does it all mean? Oh, it's no use asking me. I'm not a fairy. Perhaps Aunt Elsie can tell you. She is much more like a fairy— if you look at her with the opera glasses the long way round...

Yes, I think Aunt Elsie is right. It meant that she loved the enchanter and his little people, and always had, and always did, and always would. Anyhow she made the spell; and when it was finished she wrote it on music paper, and put on her hat and coat— she did not dress like a fairy, you will remember, because her mother did not care for wingsand she went and took it to an ogre's; an ogre who dealt in spells that were sung to music.

"I have brought you a wonderful spell," she said; and the ogre shook his head and looked at her over his spectacles. He was rather a nice ogre, and he was old and had long white hair, exactly like Mr. Sangster, who comes to see Aunt Elsie sometimes.

"My dear young lady," he said, "people bring me hundreds! But there is no enchantment in them." He did not know that she was a fairy, of course.

"There is in this," she said. "Let me sing it to you." He made rather a grimace at that; but he liked her because she was a beautiful fairy and young. So he said: "Very well, my dear; but I am afraid I shall disappoint you."

So she sat down at his piano and played and sang it; and he was enchanted, and nodded his head— like Mr. Sangster does when Aunt Elsie is singing— and said, "Wonderful, wonderful!" And he said that there ought to be a fortune in it; and he would pay her so much for every person who was enchanted by it; and he told her that she was a singing fairy and ought to come out in grand opera and then she would make a fortune; but she told him that she couldn't do that because her mother wouldn't like it. Real true fairies think everything of their mothers and auntie-mothers. Never forget that.

Next she went to the enchanter's, and gave the little people two pennies each to go and buy sweets, so that she could talk to him quietly; and she said:

"I have made a song spell and sold it and Mr. Sangster says that it will bring me a lot of money, will you take it for the little people? Please do."

And the enchanter looked at her as if he didn't know what to say; and at last he said: "O child! You are a fairy. You are! I can't take your money— of course I can't! But— but— God bless you, dear!"

"But you are going to take the witch Scriba's," the poor fairy said. She was almost crying...

"She is willing to marry me," he said; and the fairy gave a little scream ; and she tried to say that she was too; but she couldn't because she felt shy.

"You think that money is a better spell than love?" she asked ; and the enchanter walked up and down the hearth rug, like I used to when I was worried, before l married Aunt Elsie.

"My child," he said, "I think that love is the best spell in the world; but I have grown too old for it."

The fairy turned pale and nearly fell off her chair. She thought he meant that he didn't love her; and she had felt so sure that he did.

"Too old to love!" she said.

"No, no!" he told her. "Too old for anyone to love me--anyone young and dear like you."

"Oh!" she said. "Is that all!" And she was quite smiling again. "There's a spell to make you young again, and— Listen to mine! " She went and sat down at the piano. Then she got up and took a book to make the stool higher— just like Aunt Elsie does. And the enchanter went and stood beside her, like I stand beside Aunt Elsie. She played the first part that made everything seem to go dark and the stars come out, and all the other wonderful things happen. Then she sang the first two lines; and then she turned and held out her hands to him.

"Don't speak!" she asked him. "Don't speak. Hear it all through— my magic spell."

Then she sang without the piano; and he held her hands, first one and then the other; and she sang it right to the end. I never understood properly what happened then. He says that her wings broke out and she flew clean away with him; but if she did she must have brought him back again, for they had tea with the little people in the nursery, and laughed and played games and were happier than they had ever been before. The spell must have been very strong anyhow, for he said that he felt ten years younger, and he married her very quickly, and they have been married for two years and he hasn't got over the enchantment yet. You see, "love" is a very mighty spell; mightier than "trouble" or "money" or anything.

What happened to the witch Scriba? Why, she turned out a very nice witch after all; quite the good kind and almost like a fairy godmother. She sent them a lovely wedding present; and when the enchanter went to thank her, she kept all the ogres waiting with their bags of gold, while she talked to him.

"My dear man," she said, "I didn't want you; but I wanted some little people very, very badly. Oh, you don't know what a hard spell trouble is!" And then she actually cried; and when she left off she turned so pale that he knew it was blood that she wrote her wonderful, wonderful spells with; and it was the spell of "trouble" that made her do it, and he thought she had better use another spell instead.

And he said: "Dear lady, I think my little people would love you. Will you have some of them sometimes to stay with you? Perhaps they would enchant some of your trouble away."

She jumped up and shook his hand and said she should like that above  everything. So they go to stay with her in turns, like you go to stay with Mrs. Maybury; and they enjoy themselves as much as you do. She declares that they have enchanted her with another spell, that makes her write the beautiful stories that Mrs. Maybury tells you, and you want to hear over and over again; and I think she is right. For you cannot enchant other people unless you are enchanted yourself; and the greatest of all enchantments is the one called "love".

______________

14: A Girl Who Was Afraid

Charles Wesley Sanders
c1876-1937?

Blue Book, August, 1916

Prolific author, mostly of western short stories and novels. His last known story was published in 1939, probably posthumously. A Charles Wesley Sanders died in California in 1937.

AS she stepped down from the suburban trolley-car, Virginia found herself in the heart of the driving March storm. The storm had been pounding at the car all the way from the big Ohio city where she had taken it, to Jetson's Harbor, which was her destination. She had watched it shudderingly through the clouded window.

Now the wild wind buffeted her and the sleet stung her face, and the rain drenched her to the skin. She staggered across the slippery pavement and put down her suit-case at the curb. There was a drug store on the corner, and after a moment of hesitation she entered it. At the door a man in oilskins stood aside to permit her to pass. The clerk came forward affably, after the manner of clerks attracted by an extremely pretty girl apparently in distress.

And it was a distressed face which Virginia turned to the young man. There was a cloud of uncertainty in her very brown eyes and a pucker between them. Her red-lipped mouth drooped a little. The clerk found her pale, though usually Virginia was rosycheeked. The clerk noticed, however, that her brown hair curled all the more tightly on account of the rain. It was the crinkly kind of hair that could never become straggly.

"I want to go to 809 Alburn Street," Virginia said in a low, throaty voice. "I wondered if you could direct me."

As she spoke the address, the man at the door turned. The clerk reached for the thin city-directory. While he was fingering its leaves, the man at the door moved to Virginia's side.

"Excuse me." he said. "You're looking for the Jordans, ain't you? It's only three blocks to where they live. I'll take you there if you like."

Virginia, fresh from the country, hesitated anew. The doubt in her eyes was deeper as she raised them to the man's. What she saw reassured her a little. The man's eyes were large and bright blue. His face had been bronzed and hardened by weather and labor. It was a big face, but it held a quick and kind intelligence.

THE clerk looked up and noticed Virginia's hesitation. He closed the directory.

"It's all right if Captain Bob says so, lady," he told her. "Everybody knows Captain Bob in the Harbor here."

"Well—" Virginia yielded.

"Come right along," said Captain Bob. "We'll he there in a minute.... I thought I saw you carrying a suit-case when you got off the car."

"It's outside," said Virginia.

Outside, Captain Bob picked up the suit-case. Virginia made a murmur of protest. Captain Bob looked down on her with a smile.

"One of us has got to carry it," he said. "Do you think it ought to be you?"

In spite of her anxiety, Virginia had to return the smile. It was a fine, wholesome smile, which seemed to bid Virginia to forget her troubles. They turned into the street running alongside the drug-store, and there the wind smote them mightily. It leaped up the hill as if eager to get at them. Virginia gasped and struggled with her skirts.

"You better take my arm." Captain Bob said. Virginia thought that rather an intimate thing to do, but she had no choice. Alone, she could scarcely keep her feet. She tucked her wet, gloved hand under Captain Bob's big elbow, and together they fought their way along.

"This is the place," said Captain Bob after fifteen minutes' hard walking.

"Oh, thank you," Virginia breathed.

"Go right along in," said the Captain. "I'm going in too."

"Oh!" said Virginia. "You know them?"

"Rather. Dick Jordan is one of my men."

VIRGINIA understood from that who Captain Bob was. Her cousin Dick Jordan was, she knew, a Great Lakes fisherman, working for the past few years out of Jetson's Harbor. Captain Bob must be his boss, master of the tug Dick worked on.

Virginia preceded the Captain up the walk. He followed her closely and reached around her and knocked on the door. There was a stir within, and the door was flung open. A heavily built, blonde young woman stood on the threshold. For a moment she stared at Virginia, and then she sprang forward and clasped Virginia, wet clothes and all, to her breast.

"Virginia!" she cried. "Why, Virginia! Why in the world didn't you let us know you were coming, so's we could have met you? The idea of your trustin' youself to a scamp like Captain— why, Virginia, dear!"

She broke off her raillery, and her voice fell to touch the note of a mother's croon. For Virginia had dropped her head to the girl's ample shoulder and was sobbing so unrestrainedly that her whole young body shook. The girl quickly drew her inside. Captain Bob paused with the suit-case in his hand, but the girl ordered him in with a vigorous backward jerk of her head. He entered and closed the door behind him.

"You come right up to my room, Virginia," the girl said. "You must get those wet clothes off."

She seized the suit-case and putting her arm around Virginia helped her up the stairs. Captain Bob went into the parlor. There he met another man coming toward the door.

"What's the row?" Dick Jordan asked.

"Darned if I know," Captain Bob answered. "I found a little girl at the drugstore, inquirin' her way to your house. I fetched her here, and she busted out cryin' right on Mary's shoulder."

"Pretty, little, brown-eyed girl— shy, sweet little girl?" Dick asked.

"That fits," said Captain Bob.

"Why, that's our cousin Virginia from down State," Dick said. "Wonder what brings her here? You say she was cryin'. What made her cry, I wonder!"

"I give it up," said Captain Bob.

"Well, come in and dry yourself," Dick said. "They'll be down before long."

Captain Bob went to the kitchen and removed his oilskins. He stood forth then, neatly dressed in blue with a blue shirt. His clothes were dry, but he sat down beside the base-burner.

He was a handsome sailor lad as he sat there, listening for some sound of the girls' returning. In the lamp-light his eyes sparkled, and there was even more color than usual in his cheeks. His close-cropped black hair lay damp on his smooth forehead. His stocky-figure suggested repose and strength.

"I ain't keepin' you from doin' anything, am I, Dick?" he asked after a while.

"As if that would make any difference to you," Dick scoffed. "You know you're goin' to sit here till Virginia comes down, whether it bothers me or not. Ain't she a nice little girl?"

"She's a dandy little girl, Dick," the Captain said. "When we were coming along through the rain with her hanging to my arm and peeking up into my face every now and then— say— well, never mind."

And Captain Bob did not smile. He could still see those appealing brown eyes and feel that light clasp on his heavily muscled arm.

UPSTAIRS, Virginia had got off her wet clothing and put on a warm, dark house-dress. Mary had combed out the crinkly dark hair that needed no combing. Virginia had dried her eyes, but now and then a sob shivered through her.

"I had to run away, Mary," Virginia said in a low voice. "Jimmy is gone, and I don't know where he is. I had no place to come but here, and I didn't have time to let you know. Is it all right? Do I have to tell you anything more to-night?"

"It's as right as right can be, and you don't need to tell me a thing now or ever," said Mary, and kissed her heartily. "We'll go downstairs now and I'll make you some hot coffee and get you something to eat."

A moment more, and they were in the sitting-room. Captain Bob rose, and he and Virginia were face to face. Mary hustled Dick into the kitchen to help her with the fire in the cook-stove.

"I declare," she said, "if Captain Bob ain't hit at last. I don't think he ever looked at a girl before, and just see how he's eating Virginia up with his eyes."

In the sitting-room Virginia murmured: "I'm much obliged to you for helping me with my suit-case."

"Oh, that's all right," said Captain Bob.

Virginia's color came rushing back. They sat down, and then they could find nothing else to say till Mary and Dick came back. But over the coffee Captain Bob's tongue was loosened, and he talked a good deal about the only things he was familiar with— the Great Lakes and fishing.

"If it's fine to-morrow, I'll come and get you and we'll go out on the breakwater," he said at parting. "It's quite a sight— the docks and the ships in the harbor and— and everything."

"I'd like to go," said Virginia, who seemed somehow to have forgotten her trouble a little.

CAPTAIN BOB came the next afternoon as soon as dinner was over. There was a biting wind off the lake, but the sun was shining. The Captain and Virginia walked down to the docks, where the great freighters were being outfitted for the summer. Once in a while, as they walked out to the pier, Captain Bob touched Virginia's elbow to steady her over a particularly rough bit of planking. At those times he watched the color come and go in her smooth, oval cheek.

When they came to the end of the docks and the concrete pier lay straight ahead of them out to the lights, the wind caught at them and roared past them. Virginia gasped and stepped kick to the lee of the last warehouse. She stood gazing out across the blue-gray waters. Here and there white-caps were breaking.

Suddenly Virginia's eyes filled with tears. She bit her lip and turned her face from the Captain. She looked so small and helpless in her mysterious grief that the Captain felt a lump come into his own throat.

"You're in some kind of trouble," he said impulsively. "Is there anything I can do?"

"No, oh no," she said. "Only it looks so lonely— so forbidding. Don't you ever get afraid of it?"

The Captain lifted his head and laughed. "I love it." he answered. "It's given me my living ever sence I was a kid."

She looked at him with eyes in which her tears still shone. "Yes, I suppose you would be like that," she said; "but it makes me afraid."

They turned back. She was very quiet. The Captain did not speak, for he felt that he was outside her thoughts; it made him a little unhappy. Their slow strolling brought them presently to the foot of the hill. The girl turned for a last look toward the lake. As she did so, a man stepped out from the lee of the corner building. With his eyes fixed steadily on the girl, he advanced toward her.

Captain Bob knew everyone in the village, but he did not know this man. Yet the man seemed to know the girl.

THE man was within three feel of the girl when she turned. She uttered a kind of strangled cry and drew bark quickly, her hand at her breast. Her face had gone white. She was trembling. Captain Bob took her by the arm.

"What is it?" he asked. "Is this fellow bothering you? If he is, just say the word and I'll throw him in the river."

"Oh no. you mustn't," Virginia said, and she faced the newcomer.

"Well," he said smoothly, "you've led me quite a chase." He smiled grimly. "Didn't you suppose I'd have you watched? I knew the moment you left, and about the moment you arrived here. You had an idea your brother had got safely away, and so you ran.... I'd like to talk to you alone, I know just where your brother is. I had him watched too, you know."

"Will you leave us, please?" the girl asked Captain Bob. Captain Bob's abundant muscles tightened all over his body. He eyed the stranger malevolently. He disliked the man's looks. He was a sandy-haired, pallid, weaklooking imitation of a man, thought the Captain. He didn't relish leaving the girl with him, especially since he seemed to have frightened her by some sort of veiled threat.

"Not so you could notice it," he answered roughly. "I'll just stick around and see what your friend tries to pull off." His ready anger was mounting. He turned on the stranger. "If you'll just excuse yourself a moment," he said, "we'll take a walk. We can settle this little matter, man to man, in about four seconds."

"I'm talking to this young lady."

"And I'm talking to you. I—"

"Captain Bob, please leave us alone," the girl said.

CAPTAIN BOB turned on her. She was still white and shrinking. Her great brown eyes looked larger than ever, because of her pallor. And they pleaded with him to do as she said.

But Captain Bob was a fighting man, sprung of a long line of fighting men. The smell of the salt had been in the nostrils of his forefathers in the old sailing days. His women had cradled their children to the sound of wind and wave. In times of stress he knew no way but to do battle for those for whom he cared. And he had liked Virginia from the first.

"Are you afraid of—that?" he demanded.

"Yes, I'm afraid of him."

Captain Bob's shoulders swayed from the impulse to strike the man, but he suddenly remembered that he had no claim on Virginia. Twenty-four hours ago he had not even known her. He might make a fool of himself and get no thanks.

"You know the way home, do you?" he asked.

"Oh, yes," Virginia answered. He turned up the hill. Virginia sent a look of dumb misery after him, but he did not see it. He was simple enough to be angry with her and a little scornful of her. He had often said he couldn't abide cowardice in man or woman, and he thought Virginia was a coward. Why didn't she spurn the man, let him plant his fist in the man's face and thus settle the matter.

AS Captain Bob reached the corner of the street on which the Jordans lived, he paused irresolutely. He had a notion to go and tell Mary what had happened. Mary had sense. Virginia was her guest. It might be only fair to tell Mary what was going on. But he knew he could not do that, and he started on again. There was a rush of little feet behind him, and his name was softly called. He wheeled; Virginia faced him.

She was breathless with excitement. He noticed that the pupils of her eyes had widened, so that now her eyes seemed black.

"Captain Bob," she said, "I want to explain. Perhaps you don't care, but I—I don't want you to go and leave me only the recollection of the way you looked.... You've been nice to me.... I'm engaged to marry that man.... My brother was employed in his bank back home. My brother stole some money. That man said he wouldn't do anything about it if I would marry him. He had asked me a thousand times before.... I loved my brother, and so— I became engaged. Then my brother disappeared, and I ran away. I hoped my brother was safe somewhere. But that man told me he has tracked him just as he tracked me. So you see I've got to keep my promise. I've got to go home next week. He'd put my brother in jail. My brother's so young and so— so helpless. He didn't mean to do wrong.... You see, don't you, Captain Bob?"

"Darned if I do," said blunt Captain Bob. "If the kid is a thief, he ought to go to prison. I ain't got no use for this martyr stuff. Let every man pay his own score, I say."

He lifted his head and his blue eyes shone.

"What right has this lad got to ask you to sell yourself?" he challenged her.

"But he hasn't asked me," she said. "He doesn't know anything about it. He wouldn't let me if he knew."

"Well, he stole, and then run away and left you to face the music," the Captain said. "A fine piece of a man he must be. My girl, we haven't got any use for such people down here. We don't understand people like that. We play the game all the time.... You take my tip and pass this man up."

She lifted her white face to his appealingly, as if he were a judge who had passed sentence on her and hers. But she found no relenting in his proud face. She saw that for him life was exceedingly simple. He would enter into no situation which made it complex.

"I can't," she said.

"Very well," said Captain Bob, and in his righteousness he turned away from her and so left her.

VIRGINIA went wearily back to the Jordans. She was doubly unhappy now. Her case had been had enough before, when she had been about to give up her liberty odiously. Now she was to give up Captain Bob as well. All that night she lay staring into the dark. She tried to find a way out, but there was none. She could not let the brother she loved go to jail.

She was still in bed next morning when she heard Mary mounting the stairs. Mary came in hastily. She was as near to excitement as her calm nature ever permitted her to be. She held a little book and a letter out to Virginia.

"It's a special-delivery letter," she said. "Sign right there." Virginia signed, and Mary went downstairs to return the book.

Virginia looked at the address on the envelope. The letter had been originally sent to her home and had been forwarded to her by the postmaster, whom alone she had trusted with her new address. She broke the seal and drew out three pages of closely written letter-paper. She read the letter rapidly. At the end she bowed her head, and her tears flowed out on the boyish handwriting.

"Oh, Jimmie, Jimmie!" she sobbed. The storm of her grief subsided in a moment. She sprang from bed and dressed. Down-stairs she found Mary in the kitchen. Virginia's eyes were shining, and her cheeks were pink.

"Mary." she said. "I've had a letter from my brother. I want to tell Captain Bob about it first, if you don't mind. Where can I find him?"

"You can't find him till to-night, dear," Mary said. "He took his fishing tug out this morning for its first trip. Unless the weather should turn bad, the tug won't come in till night."

"Oh, do you think they might be caught in a storm?" Virginia asked.

Mary glanced through the kitchen window. The sun had risen in a clear east, but low-hung clouds had filled the sky to the north and west. It was a March day typical of the lake coast. Its beginning gave no guarantee of what its ending would be.

"You never can tell what will happen to us fisher-folk in the spring and the fall," Mary said soberly. "But Captain Bob is careful. He'll come in if the weather changes."

ALL day Virginia sat by a window and watched the sky. Once or twice there was a flicker of rain out of the northwest. The wind moaned softly throughout the day.

Then toward five o'clock it suddenly died. Darkness came down swiftly. Virginia went to the front door and looked out. Afar she could hear an ore-train making its weary way. That seemed to be the only sound. Soon that died away murmurously in the distance. Brooding silence wrapped the village. The street-lamps began to glow into life. A couple of pedestrians hurried by, glancing apprehensively at the sky.

Mary came and stood at Virginia's elbow, slipping her arm about the girl's waist. Mary looked at the northwest. Out of the darkness of the sudden night a looming shape seemed to define itself there. Mary knew it was a bank of jet wind-clouds.

"Come in, Virginia," she said in a low voice. Virginia's ears were attuned for a note of alarm in Mary's voice. She found it— and she did not stir.

"There's going to be a storm— a bad storm— isn't there, Mary?" she asked.

"We can't tell how bad it will be," Mary answered. "Storms on the lake come in a minute at this time of year. But don't worry, dear. Captain Bob is inside the breakwater by this time, more than likely."

"But suppose he isn't? Suppose he should be caught outside in a terrible storm. Is there anyone to help him?"

"The life-saving station isn't open yet," Mary answered. "It will open right away, now that one tug has gone out. That's all that's needed. That opens navigation, for the life-savers."

"But is there no one else?" Virginia asked.

"If Captain Bob got into trouble, he would flare," Mary answered. "If a tug could get out to him, it would go. If it couldn't get out— why, they would just have to take their chances.... Come in, Virginia."

AS Virginia half turned, there was a mutter out of the hidden shape in the northwest. Then there was a soft, easy flare of lightning, much like heat-lightning in summer. For that instant it looked as if the storm would break gently. But of a sudden there was a rocking crash, and the sky was split by a living, zigzag line of lightning. Still there was no rain.

Virginia turned swiftly back into the house and ran up the stairs. When she reappeared from her room she had on a long raincoat with a scarf tied tightly over her head.

"Virginia, where are you going?" Mary cried.

"Down to the docks," Virginia answered. "I want to see if Captain Bob is in. If he's out there in this storm, perhaps there's something I can do."

Mary prisoned the slighter girl in her arms.

"You poor child!" she said. "There's nothing you can do. If there is anything to be done, it's work for men."

"But I'm going to see," Virginia declared. Mary stepped back and scanned her cousin's face.

In Virginia's eyes there was a light from an inward flame stronger than anything that burned in Mary's breast, stronger than anything that had ever burned in Virginia's before.

Mary understood. In the thought of Captain Bob's peril, Virginia had forgotten her native timidity. If Captain Bob were in danger, she wished to be in danger too. It was woman's age-old instinct toward self-immolation. "Wait," Mary said.

"I'll go with you." As they went down the hill toward the docks, the wind began to rise again.

By the time they reached the docks it was sobbing along the river, backing the dark water away from the mouth. Now and then thunder crashed in the northwest, and lightning ran up the sky. The docks were dark and silent. The big freighters loomed up, dull, dark, motionless shapes. Here and there a fish-tug hugged up to the piling. Virginia and Mary walked to the end of the docks without encountering anyone. Beyond them the basins inside the far breakwaters lay lonely, silent and unlighted.

"Captain Bob's boat isn't in," Mary screamed at Virginia. "Can we get out to the lighthouse?"

Virginia screamed back. Mary nodded. More than Virginia, she understood the peril Captain Bob's boat was in. Doubtless by now he was headed toward the gap, but the gap would not show in the dark. If the sea began to run, as it surely would in a few minutes, he would have nothing to guide him. His little craft would be as likely to be dashed against the breakwater, and pound to pieces there, as to make the harbor.

MARY put out her hand. Virginia clasped it tightly, and together they stepped out from the shelter of the last building. Virginia remembered curiously how she and Captain Bob had stood there just a few hours before.

The wind, still rising, had free sweep of them as they made their way along the pier. It snatched their breath away, so that they had every once in a while to turn their backs, and it wound their skirts about them so that they could scarcely walk. But they kept on, and after what seemed a long time they gained the lighthouse.

They stood behind this a moment to get their breaths. Virginia was panting and her body was shaking. She sank down on the lighthouse base. Mary, stronger than she, got herself together first. She moved cautiously to the side of the lighthouse and peered around it. On the instant she was back, clutching at Virginia's sleeve.

"They're out there," she cried, "—Captain Bob and Dick and the other men.... They're— they're— oh, Virginia, they're flaring."

Virginia felt her heart turn to ice. Her nerves went dead, as if they had been charged with an electric current and the current had been suddenly turned off. She put her lips to Mary's ear.

"We've got to keep cool," she said. "Maybe we can help them. What can we do?"

With a shudder Mary looked out across the east basin. Lightning flared up and held. The basin was as illuminated as if at midday. Inside the big concrete breakwater the sea was comparatively smooth, though outside, the waves were already beginning to dash against it and break in a smother of spray.

"They've got to have a light," Mary said. "I think that's what they're flaring for. There hasn't been enough sea to damage their steering-gear yet or to put out their fires. They are probably headed inshore, but they're afraid they can't make the gap. There isn't time to go for help. Captain Bob's boat is fast, and he will be coming in under a full head.... There ought to be a flare on the east arm of the breakwater—out there, Virginia, where the storm is.... Captain Bob has a launch at the shore end of the pier. I can run it.... It's smooth enough inside the breakwater.... We can get some oily waste from the car-boxes."

Virginia felt a surge of terror through her whole being. Her mind was working like some high-power machine, and her imagination was vivid. In a breath she could see herself and Mary in the little launch, speeding out to where the storm was wreaking its fury....

She put her hand on Mary's arm and started along the pier. They came to a string of ore-laden cars along the shore, and Mary showed Virginia how to dig the oil-soaked waste out of the car-boxes. By the time Mary brought the launch around. Virginia had a pile of it ready. Regardless of the oil, they gathered it up in armfuls and put it into the boat. Then Mary headed the launch out across the basin toward the breakwater.

THE lightning flared constantly now, and thunder crashed and broke and died in the distance. Big drops of rain began to fall, and soon there was a torrent of it.

Mary peered ahead, but Virginia dropped her face to her knees and hugged herself together before the blast. She was conscious of little feeling except the flame of hope in her brain. She whispered lift to herself that she was not afraid. She was roused by the bumping of the boat against the breakwater. She lifted her head. The boom of the waves on the outer side of the breakwater filled her ears. White spray broke above her and dashed over her. When the lightning flared again, she saw that they were close to the gap and that through it the water was pouring without restraint.

The wash of it caused the launch to dance. Mary held the nose of the boat against the concrete. It constantly tried to pull away as the gap-current caught it. It seemed to be a thing alive, conscious of the peril to itself and its passengers.

With her left hand Mary tore open the bosom of her waist and drew forth a little oilskin packet. She held out her hand and Virginia crept aft and took the packet from her.

"Matches," Mary screamed. "Take an armful of waste and pile it up on top of the breakwater. Touch a match to it as soon as you get it up there."

Virginia hugged an armful of waste up to her and got back to the bow. Twice she tried to stand, but each time she had to sink back. The boat rocked so that she was afraid she would be pitched overboard. But on her third attempt she managed to hoist the waste to the top of the breakwater. She struck a match on the under side of one of the boatseats. It flickered and died.

Another suffered a like fate. With a moan she struck another. Was she to fail here just at the crucial moment? The third match flared up, flickered in the wind, almost went out, and then grew to life between her hollowed hands. She reached up quickly and thrust it into the waste. For an instant the waste sizzled, and then it suddenly sprang into red, smoky flame. Its light went out across the dark waters.

"Watch it," Mary cried. "As soon as it burns down a little, throw on more waste."

For five minutes Virginia fed the flare. At the end of that time she piled on the last of the waste. Her hands were numb, and her body was so nearly paralyzed that she could scarcely move to gather up the flare's fuel. Now she sank down to the bottom of the boat. That was the last of their signal, up there in the pelting rain and the dashing spray.

If Captain Bob had not seen now, he would never see any signal from them....

The waste burned steadily on, wavering and flickering and being nearly gone half a dozen times. Then slowly it began to die....

Virginia huddled herself on her knees and began to pray incoherently. Now the rain was a flood. The lightning was intermittent. The thunder had almost ceased. But the wind howled along the wide expanse beyond the breakwater.

OUT of the darkness came the hoarse cry of the tug's whistle. Mary screamed hysterically. Virginia only huddled further down on the bottom of the boat. She was so huddled when the forward lights of Captain Bob's tug showed at the gap.

The tug wallowed, narrowly missing the east abutment. The aft lights showed, and the tug came through. It kept on for a hundred feet, and then it came round out of the sea and into the smoother water. Its engines were shut off, and Mary screamed. There was an answering shout from some one in the bow of the boat.

The tug had come to a standstill. Mary put the launch about and came alongside. Captain Bob leaned down. Then he sprang and landed deftly in the center of the launch.

"Mary!" he yelled.

"Never mind me," Mary cried. "Look after Virginia."

She pointed to the huddled figure, and Captain Bob with a cry that seemed to tear up from his heart bent and gathered Virginia up in his arms.

Dick Jordan appeared in the tug's bow. Mary threw him the rope, and he made it fast. He held his hands down to Mary, and she clambered over the side. Captain Bob passed Virginia up and followed her. Then he took her from Dick again and ran to the engineroom door. Mary followed him.

"Get us ashore quick," Captain Bob ordered his engineer.

WHEN Virginia opened her eyes, she was in her own bed with hot irons at her feet. Mary was standing beside her. Mary put a cup of something hot and pungent to her lips. Virginia drank and seemed to doze.

After a while she opened her eyes again. She was very warm and comfortable. She looked for Mary. But Mary was not there. Captain Bob stood where Mary had been.

Captain Bob dropped to his knees and began to stroke her crinkly hair.

"Virginia," he whispered. "Virginia!"

Suddenly Virginia sat up in bed. Her dark hair rumbled down about her shoulders. Her eyes were shining. Her cheeks were pink.

"Captain Bob," she said slowly, "I'm not afraid of that man any more. I don't think I'm afraid of anything after to-night. I had a letter from my brother to-day. That man lied when he said he knew where he was. He's in Canada. He got over the border at Buffalo. He's going to enlist for the war. He said he had been a coward but he was going to wipe that out. He may never come back.... If this had happened before to-night, I'd have been afraid for him, but now—"

Captain Bob took her slender hands in his big ones.

"You're not going to be afraid of anything any more, are you, Virginia?" he murmured.

Virginia only shook her head. She was afraid to answer, lest the tears that were so very near should come flooding out.

_______________

15: When Brasset Forgot

Harcourt Farmer
fl  1919-1922

The Thrill Book, 15 May, 1919

I HAD always regarded Brasset as a curious kind of human duck, a strange mixture of somnolence and brain, but it wasn't until his death that I really believed him a trifle mad. The newspapers at the time chronicled the passing of Professor Henry Layterman Brasset, with the usual accompanying stuff from their "morgues," and ample tribute was paid to his splendid research work in the Congo. He was tireless and energetic and original. He labored in many fields. In fact, to this man the world owes the famous Brasset rubber compound for tires, a preparation that has saved the United States government thousands of dollars in equipment maintenance. And when he died there was much sincere sorrow in the scientific world.

The medical certificate stated that death was "from natural causes," the press agreed with the doctors, the public believed what they were told, and so the world knew nothing to the contrary. But there were two men who were in a position to prove at the time that the professor's death was distinctly unnatural; one was Taylor, who will be remembered as the brilliant editor of The Meteor— the other is myself.

For ten years a strict silence has been kept by us about the truth of the Brasset tragedy, but I think, and Taylor thinks with me, that the time has come to present the facts. It may possibly do some ethical good, and now that Brasset has become almost a myth no harm can result from lifting the curtain.

I am writing of events that took place in the fall of 1906. We had been dining together— Brasset and Taylor and I— and I was in particularly fine fettle, owing to the unexpected acceptance of a set of articles I had ground out on India. In addition, Taylor had commissioned me— I was the gayest of free lances in those days— to write up some special matter on rubber, which commodity was then all the rage. Hence this dinner with Brasset. During the dessert the talk ranged over a dozen varied topics, and later on I recalled the circumstances which led to becoming acquainted with the professor.

I first met Brasset at Nice, when he was on the eve of being swindled in a particularly complete style by the fascinating Nelly Forsyth, and I had the satisfaction of spoiling little Nelly's pretty game once and for all. Brasset seemed profoundly grateful about this, though it wasn't really much to bother over, and thereafter we were good friends. Nelly, by the way— but that's another tale.

The next time I ran across the academic chappie was in London, at the Albert Hall, where I was covering the annual meeting of the Royal Geographical Society. This was some three years after the Nice episode— the professor was wont to say, in his dry way, after the Nice un-Nice episode—and I must confess I had partially forgotten all about Nelly. But the thin, metallic tones snapping from the platform brought back a good deal.

His address was quite the most interesting event in a most uninteresting program, and he told his audience— which was composed of six parts professor and two parts nondescript and the press— a few things concerning rubber, its preparations, its values, its uses, where it comes from, and what is done with it, and talked so learnedly that we all felt quite expert on the subject as a consequence.

"You are the gentleman I met at Nice?" he said, when I went up to him at the conclusion of the meeting, "Under— well, rather distressing circumstances. Am I right?"

I told him he was, and congratulated him on his excellent memory. Well, on this particular night, when we were at dinner at the Savoy, over our cigars, Professor Brasset suddenly switched the current of conversation from Lloyd George to spiders, and on this peculiar topic he waxed discursive. He said he had been devoted to spiders all his life.

"They give me more delight than perhaps you imagine." We stared. He rambled out about African spiders and English domestic spiders and spiders from the Andalusian fastnesses; he told us about spiders that feed on small sparrows and spiders that will eat man's flesh, if they can get it.

"I have seen spiders," he said, "that would— but possibly you gentlemen would be sufficiently interested in our subject matter to see some rather curious specimens."

"I should," Taylor replied, and when I nodded confirmation the professor capped it by using and leading the way to the street, where a taxi transferred us, in fairly adequate style, to the Brasset flat.

Brasset was accounted eccentric because he had an aversion to entertaining. To my knowledge, he rarely invited a man to his apartments, though he was generally eager to dine a chap at the club or accept the hospitality of others. He lived with a manservant, and as he laboriously opened the door he explained with much prolixity that the man was away for two weeks. "No wife, by my own choice, and no man, by his," he chuckled.

We soon made ourselves at home. He had some drinkable whisky and some ripping cigars, and we talked and smoked and drank for a couple of hours, and while Taylor and Brasset argued some dull point about another professor's book, I found myself wondering why Brasset had made the concrete rule of not inviting people to see him, except on state occasions. The explanation turned up a few minutes later.

"Would you care to see my spiders now?" the professor inquired politely, and, without waiting for a reply, led us to a door of a room at the other end of the apartment.

The door was painted a dull brown, almost a russet brown, and nailed along the bottom of the door were some thick, even pieces of felt. In addition to a Yale lock, it was fastened with two strong padlocks, caught between staples. While the old fellow was bending over his series of "locks, bolts, and bars" I glanced at Taylor, and he at me, quizzically.

Soon the padlocks were off, and then Brasset turned the key in the main lock, and as he did so he called out something in an unknown tongue. I think it was Arabic, but that's only a weird guess on my part. Anyway, it was as though the sound of his voice had unlocked something in the room, concurrently with the unlocking of the door by his key, for no sooner had he shouted than we heard a sudden and strange noise inside.

I can best describe that noise by saying that it seemed like the tapping on the floor of a thousand dead men's finger tips. I had never heard anything quite like it. Said Brasset:

"I must warn you both that on no account must you speak while in the room. If you do, I cannot be held responsible. So long as you are quiet all will be well. Come!"

He pushed open the door and entered, and we after him; then he closed the door carefully and quickly behind us. The primary and dominant impression was that we had, by some quixotic mishap, strayed into an undertaker's embalming room after a big railroad accident I felt disgustingly sick. The stench was awful. But in a few, seconds the nausea fell away from me. Taylor, who was never what you would call robust, seemed inclined to faint, for he turned deathly pale, but with an effort pulled himself together, too. Brasset alone was unmoved. Freely with the unautomatic certainty of a man who feels wholly familiar with his surroundings, he moved into the room saying something in his gun-metal tones and the cluttering, rasping, patting noise increased!

We stood rocklike, while Brasset went right across the room, still keeping up his weird chant, his hands outstretched toward some object. What it was we could not see, for the room was dark.

Suddenly he stopped. Shrill and sharp the chant pierced the air, and a funny feeling began to tingle in my hands. I don t know if it was fear; I don't know whether Taylor was feeling the same, but I do know that we kept a rigid silence, remembering Brasset's injunction.

The silly song rose into a minor strain, we heard Brasset clap his hands together very softly, and then a light blazed. I say "blazed" because it seemed like a blast of yellow flame in that warm black room. In reality it was an electric bulb, shrouded carefully with dull, brownish paper So the room appeared as obscure as the professor's native melody. But what light there was was amply sufficient.

Brasset knelt on the floor, singing his damned Arabic or whatever it was, and on his hands, his knees, his shoulders, all over the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling, in thick nests, in ones and twos and clusters and dozens, were spiders.

No normal man objects to seeing a spider once in a while under ordinary conditions, or even a couple of them, but I have to confess that the sight of a university professor in a dress suit, who had come straight from a respectable dinner at the Savoy, almost smothered by countless spiders, sickened me.

The things padded about the floor, ran up and down Brasset's legs, pulled their way through his hair walked across his face, hid in his beard, sat on his nose, crawled in and out of his ears, and generally nested on him. The creatures who could not get near him he picked up by the handful, while they appeared to register content, as the saying goes. It may have been genuine affection on their part and genuine regard on Brasset's part. God preserve me from such affection!

The chant went on unremittingly, and then Brasset rose, shaking himself free from his ugly pets, and held out something indistinct in his right hand. We looked closely, and saw that it was a little dead mouse. Taylor's breath came and went in quivering gasps which he tried to stifle.

The professor rapped out a long and twisted phrase in the jargon which the spiders seemed to understated and they ran up his body in masses and along the outstretched arm. toward the mouse. I tried to count them, but my brain refused to work; at the lowest computation there must have been a thousand spiders on the man. And there were others in the room.

They reached the mouse. Brasset's hand was hidden behind a palpitating, seething cloud of dark bodies and countless legs; one or two bright red legs here and there; two or three of the spiders uttered faint sighs, and we heard the mouse eaten.

That was the last straw for Taylor, for he turned abruptly and said in very healthy and unmistakable English: "Good God! Let's get out of this!" and stumbled to the door.

Instantly there was a silence, and you could literally feel it. The spiders suspended their meal and appeared to listen. Brasset jerked, under his breath, "Quick!" and we both made for the door. Brasset followed us. He shut and locked the door and from within we could hear them at the door, for all the world like thousands of clay pellets being thrown at the brown panels. They were trying to get through.

"It is unsafe to speak in there," said Brasset as we walked to the living room for a stiff drink. "They become exceedingly fierce if you say anything to them, unless one uses the particular dialect I employ."

"Which is—" I questioned.

But Brasset was lost in thought.

ii

A FEW weeks later I wanted to ask the professor about a point in rubber, and one morning I rang the bell at his apartment. I rang it six times as matter of fact without response. There was no sign of either professor or valet.

I telephoned Taylor at the paper, and told him he had better meet me at Brasset's flat. While I was waiting I hunted up the janitor of the building, but he proved as stupid as the race of men foreordained to be janitors, and all he had to say was that the valet— only he termed it valett— had not returned, and he knew nothing of the professor.

Taylor came presently, and, after talking over the situation, we decided to risk interference and get into the apartment. We allayed the janitor with a durable piece of fiction, to the effect that we wanted to see the place with a view to renting it, and a tip evoked a duplicate key. We succeeded in ridding ourselves of him for the time being, and entered. Perhaps it was ominous, but we both turned instinctively toward the room with the dullbrown door.

I called "Brasset!" and as the noise of my shout died away we heard the familiar cluttering, padding sound from inside. "Brasset!" There was no response. "Brasset!"

"He's in there," I said to Taylor, and cursed myself for saying it, for something told me I wasn't far wrong. Taylor nodded.

"Burst the door in," he said.

I thought to show how absurd his remark was by pointing at the padlocks, when I realized the padlocks were off. I tried the handle of the door. The door was unlocked!

After that it was just a matter of simple discovery. The professor's body lay on the floor, and the yellow light, which had evidently been on for some days, showed the state of things in their hideous completeness.

What had once been flesh was now a chaos of spiders. The clothes hung in patches and threads about the bones, and only a minute piece of skin remained. Along the floor, toward us, the intruders, sidled hundreds of spiders, some fat and bloated, some thin, but all bent on the one objective.

We banged the door to and went out into the sunshine.

___________________

16: Smoky Skies

Raoul  Whitfield

1896-1945

West, December 24, 1927

EDDIE LEWIS met up with Seeb Hallam on the outskirts of Calexico. He wasn't particularly pleased with the manner in which the meeting was effected, but he had sense enough to take it in the right spirit. Raising his hands toward the sky, he kept his gray eyes on the muzzle of Hallam's gun— and waited for the short, stockily built individual to speak. The wait was a short one.

Hallam chuckled mirthlessly, spoke in his hoarse tones. There was mud on the road which Eddie had been traversing, and as Hallam rocked on the toes and heels of his boots, it made sucking noises beneath his weight.

"Goin' back to the ship, Eddie? Now that's just great— I'm going that way myself."

Eddie said nothing. About a half mile to the north of the town was his two-seater De Haviland. He had set her down on the sandy soil only two hours ago, just before dark. It was his idea that very few knew the plane had come in. Seeb Hallam, apparently, was one of the few.

Eddie was on his way with a load of machine guns for Johnny Leeds in the concession strip south of the border. It wasn't exactly legal, this running guns across to Mexico, but Johnny was Eddie's friend and needed guns for protection against border renegades and raiders. So Eddie was being the friend in need. He now wondered what Seeb Hallam was up to.

The short man stepped up close to him, patted him expertly with his left hand, got the Colt from the holster under Eddie's left shoulder. Slipping it into a pocket of his khaki jacket, he chuckled once more. "Let's move, Eddie," he suggested.

"You lead the way to the plane. You can rest your arms now. How's business?"

Eddie Lewis swore softly. He was tall, rather lean, brown faced. He moved along the road, toward the spot where the D. H. rested.

"You've come a long way since Mac kicked you out of the outfit, eh?" he snapped at Hallam. "Stickup stuff now."

The man behind him swore harshly. His thick-toned voice had a sharp note in it when he spoke again.

"That's my business, Eddie! What in hell are you doin' in Calexico? Figurin' on sky hoppin' some of the boys, I suppose? Playin' on the level, sure enough. Like hell you are!"

Eddie said nothing. They walked along the narrow road. The stars were bright, but the outline of the ship was not yet in sight. The man behind Eddie swore grimly.

"Get it straight, Eddie— don't try anything fast with me. I'm wise to you. Over in the Chink's place last night— a little redheaded runt took too many drinks, and did some talkin'. I'm on to why you set the ship down. Was waiting for you, Eddie— and even the glide-in with the engine cut didn't fool me."

Eddie stiffened. "Red" Collins had celebrated at the wrong time— and talked. And because of that fact, Hallam had been able to walk up behind him and pull a gun. Quite a bit of carelessness on Eddie's part, but he hadn't been in a border town for many months. And Hallam was a bit catfooted when it came to getting in close without being heard.

"You're safe with me, Eddie." Seeb Hallam was speaking again. There was an edge to his tone. "Know your game, and it's all right. The boys down in the concession strip can use a few machine guns. Every rebel that gets himself kicked out by the Federal boys goes down there and pulls some raids. They can use the guns, and it's all right with me, Eddie."

HE CHUCKLED. Eddie walked on. As yet there was no moon. The road was becoming nothing more than a rough floor of sand. Mesquite dotted the stretches ahead, blue-gray in the starlight. The shape of the plane was to be seen now, off to the right. Back of them gleamed the lights of the town, and of Mexicali, across the railroad tracks from Calexico on the Mexican side of the line.

"There's just this, Eddie"— Hallam's voice was low now— "just one little thing. I'm wise to you. I could raise hell— if I wanted to do it. But we flew together in the old days, eh?"

There was grim amusement in the shorter man's voice. He chuckled, then went on. "You're taking some machine guns down toward Ensenada, and that's all right with me. But I'd kind of like to ride along. An' when you come back. I'd kind of like to come back along with you."

Eddie sucked in his breath sharply. So that was Hallam's game. Kicked out of the Lait's Air Circus months ago, because of using passenger's money for bad liquor, he'd got to the point where he was playing loose over the line.

Hallam had never liked Eddie; the pilot knew that, and now he was making a direct threat. And the tough part of it was— he knew something.

The pilot of the De Haviland halted. The ship was less than a hundred yards away. A voice came down the faint breeze to them.

"That you, Eddie?"

Eddie started to call out, but Hallam stopped him with a sharp command. "Never mind that stuff! Who you got watchin' the plane?"

Eddie spoke quietly.

"Tex White— flew over from Bakersfield with me," he said slowly.

"Call him over— and do it nice-like!" Hallam gritted out the words. "Remember, I got two guns!"

Eddie Lewis shrugged his shoulders. Hallam was holding his own gun low— at his right side. His left hand reached into the pocket into which he had slipped Eddie's Colt.

"Come over here, Tex!" Eddie called sharply, and saw the tall, lean figure of White coming toward him.

Seeb Hallam raised his right-hand gun slightly. Tex was within fifty yards before Hallam spoke. His voice was low, level.

"Come on over, Tex—with your hands up!" he ordered sharply.

Eddie Lewis held his breath. Tex hesitated for the fraction of a second—his eyes were on the gun Hallam held in his left hand. He raised his hands, moved toward them. Hallam backed a short distance away from Eddie. He chuckled.

"We change planes— right here," he said slowly, as Tex reached Eddie's side, his brown eyes narrowed on the short figure of Hallam.

"Guess Tex was goin' to fly over with you, Eddie— give you a lift with the guns, eh? Well, I'll do that job. Got 'em aboard now, I suppose?"

Eddie swore softly. "Tex wasn't going over," he said slowly. "I went in to get the landing place dope. Tex was watching the ship. The rear cockpit's pretty crowded."

Hallam grinned nastily. "I'm small," he stated. "Guess I can crowd it a bit more. What I'm bringing back won't take up much space."

Tex White let his eyes go to Eddie's. He held both hands shoulder high.

"What's the game, Eddie?" he asked in a grim tone. "Friend double-crossing you?"

The pilot shook his head. "No friend," he replied. "I don't mix with dope runners."

There was a sneer in Seeb Hallam's voice. His eyes were narrowed on Eddie's.

"Workin' the line game yourself, ain't you?" he asked. "Funny how one crook hates to help out another."

Eddie grunted. Tex White swore sharply. His eyes went to those of the short, thick-set man.

"Eddie and me, we're working this game. You can't tell us where to get off. Put your gat up. After we do this job we'll talk about the stuff you want to bring over. The D. H. is mine— see? I'm hiring Lewis here, to pilot her, that's all."

There was surprise in Seeb Hallam's eyes. A full moon edged up into the sky. There was a silver light over the mesquite and sand.

"That's it!" He chuckled again. "Just a hired pilot, eh?" Hallam's eyes met Eddie's. His voice was suddenly knife-edged. "Well, I'm hiring you, just now— see? Got her ready for the air?"

Tex White swore grimly. "You can't pull that stuff on me, man!" he muttered. "You wait until we—"

HE BROKE off. Hallam's guns were raised slightly. He walked close to the lean one. And then, suddenly, it happened. Eddie Lewis struck from the side, as Seeb passed him. A glancing right-arm blow; it knocked Hallam off balance and he went to his knees.

Tex leaped at him. There was the sharp crack of the Colt. Eddie saw Tex drop forward, roll over on his back. Hallam faced him, his Colt ready for action. The gun he had taken from Eddie was not in his left hand. He used that hand to steady himself. His face was twisted grimly.

"Walk in— an' you get yours, too!" He breathed heavily, got to his feet, never taking his eyes from Eddie's. "Thought you'd jump me from behind, eh? Damn near worked it—"

He broke off. His eyes were narrowed. With a swift glance toward the ship, he spoke steadily. "You get aboard, an' you fly me to where I say! I'll rap the side of the fuselage and point down. And you get down, see? No funny stuff. We'll dump the guns off where I say. An' the first break you make, Eddie— it'll be the last! Get that straight!"

Eddie stared down at the motionless figure of Tex White. Seeb Hallam followed his gaze.

"Let him stay where he is!" he muttered thickly. "It'll mean a split for the two of us— instead of hire money for you. Got 'chutes aboard?"

Eddie nodded his head. Hallam was staring toward the lights of the town; he was alert, his body swayed slightly as he stood looking toward Calexico.

"Get me one 'chute; make it fast!" he ordered. "You fly without one. I'll wear mine. That'll make it safer— for me!"

Eddie moved toward the ship. There had been rumors about Seeb Hallam, before he had come to the flying outfit. It was said that he had killed a man in Texas months before he had turned up. He was a fair pilot; a good stunt man. Eddie swore beneath his breath. He had been a fool to try and slug the man, with Tex right in line of fire.

He got one 'chute from the front cockpit. As he turned, with one foot on the lower wing's footstep, Hallam was beside him. His face was white in the light from the night sky.

"Your pal's dead!" he muttered. "An' you'll get the same dose if you try anything funny. The wind's blowin' toward town. Get her revvin' up an' make it fast. If they heard that shot—"

EDDIE tossed down the 'chute. He climbed into the front cockpit. There were six machine guns packed in the rear cockpit, but there was no ammunition for them aboard. It would be a tight squeeze, but Hallam had room.

He snapped the self starter, the prop swung down and the engine spat. She roared as he advanced the throttle, on his left. A voice sounded in Eddie's right ear. Hallam was on the wing-step, staring down into the front of the cockpit.

"I'll be back of you with lead waitin' for a false break— remember that. If you've got a gun in here—"

Eddie shook his head. He shut the engine down to a low rumble of sound. "I'm not crazy to go out, Hallam," he stated grimly. "I'll fly you across, but we've got to wait for those clouds."

He pointed toward the west. Gray clouds were rolling across the sky; almost a solid mass of them. In fifteen minutes they would be overhead. And on such a night they would need clouds. Hallam swore softly.

"Get up above— and wait!" he snapped.

"Border ship might spot us. Bad business, after what you did down here—"

"Up above, Eddie!" Hallam interrupted in a grim tone. "It'll be worse business if you don't sky-ride me. I can fly 'em; you know that."

Eddie Lewis nodded his head. He did know that Seeb Hallam could fly ships. There were no blocks under the wheels of the De Haviland; he could not rev the engine up much without turning her over on her nose. He jerked his head. Hallam was already squeezing into the rear cockpit. There was room for his legs to the left of the packed guns; Eddie had left space purposely, though be intended flying across the lines alone. Hallam was nodding his head. He leaned forward, shouted in Eddie's ears.

"South! And bear over toward the Cocopah hills, when you get across a ways. I'm lookin' for smoke in the skies— and so are you!"

Eddie advanced the throttle. He twisted his head as the ship rolled forward, stared toward the spot where Tex White had fallen. His body straightened in the cockpit. Tex was on his knees—was getting to his feet! Hallam had lied about White being dead.

There was a sharp crack. It sounded highpitched above the exhaust roar. Eddie twisted his head again. Hallam swung his gun around, held it in the prop wash of the plane. With his left hand index finger he pointed up. Eddie turned his eyes to the front again, moved the joy stick back slightly. The ship rose from the earth.

Hallam had seen Tex getting up; had fired at him again. But Eddie doubted that he had hit the wounded man. Or perhaps Tex had not been wounded, but had faked the fall. Why, then, had Hallam said White was dead? Bluff? Eddie shook his head slowly. More likely he had slipped up on a swift examination.

THE D. H. climbed steadily into the sky. The night would be a bright one; Eddie held the ship north of the lines. There were Border Patrol ships around. If they caught the D. H. in the air, forced him to make a landing, and found the guns in the rear cockpit— He swore grimly.

Smoky skies. Seeb Hallam riding the rear cockpit, with an Irving seat pack 'chute harnessed about him, and a gun in his right hand. Looking for smoke signals, somewhere over toward the Cocopah Mountains. Red Collins talking at the wrong time, about the guns. The whole thing was a mess. He hadn't considered taking the guns into Mexico so bad.

There were three American concession holders in the Imperial Valley stretch south of Tia Juana. And Johnny Leeds had flown with Eddie, over in France, during the war. Johnny had the biggest melon concession along the strip. He wasn't sure of his cholos and Chinks— and there had been raids. He needed the guns.

But Red Collins, who worked for Johnny, had talked. And Hallam had listened. It was a tough break.

The D. H. circled, climbing up toward the silver gray sweep of clouds. Eddie stared down over the side of the fuselage, wiped his goggle-glass clear of a splattering of oil. A figure was moving slowly, unsteadily, toward the outskirts of Calexico.

Tex White! Eddie leveled the De Haviland off, banked sharply to the left, watched Tex. He was moving slowly, but he was keeping on his feet. Help? There was nothing Tex could do. He had tried a bluff, saying that he had hired Eddie when he had only been watching the ship while the pilot got final instructions. But the bluff had failed, Tex couldn't get an Army ship up after the D. H. Not with the guns aboard. Regulations were regulations, even though the Army pilots would probably sympathize with the concession holders along the strip. It would be up to Eddie.

And as he nosed the ship upward again, heading her toward the gray of the clouds, he shook his head slowly. Hallam was a killer and wouldn't fool. He wanted something across the line. The machine guns didn't bother him, but he needed the ship. And he wore the 'chute that would get him down safely if he were forced to put a bullet through the back of Eddie's helmeted head. Also, he could fly the plane, if he wanted to spill lead when Eddie had set the plane down, in the first rise of the Cocopahs. It looked tough, all around.

At ten thousand they hit the first, lower mists of the clouds. Eddie leveled off, flew southward by compass. There was a rapping on the fuselage fabric; he cut the throttle, nosed downward, just out of the white stuff.

"Get in 'em! Fly south for twenty minutes, then nose her down!" Hallam's voice was hoarse.

Eddie nodded his head; advancing the throttle, he climbed the ship once more. The roar of the curved exhausts became louder; everything was wet. He was forced to wipe the instrument glass and his goggles again and again.

Twenty minutes! That would mean, with the drift wind from the west, about eighteen miles across the line, and over toward the brown-gray slopes of the rugged mountain range which ran near the Pacific and to the west of Mexican Imperial Valley. Eddie thought swiftly. There was a Chinese concession about that far in— a cotton concession. West of the railroad that ran to Ensenada, and west of the flood road and American Waterway ditch line, was that Chinese concession. It ran almost to the slopes— the eastern slopes— of the Cocopahs. On the other side of the range was the watershed— rich foliage and fruit right down to the blue-green water of the Pacific.

There was no spot to set a ship down west of the mountains. But on the east side, in the Valley, there were plenty of landing spots. Mesquite and sand— except where the concession lands were irrigated— and flat, hot country. Seeb Hallam would have him land east of the mountains, Eddie guessed.

THE D. H. roared through the clouds. From time to time Eddie wiped clear the level glass. The ship was not equipped with an inclinometer; it was not modern enough for that. Air speed was seventy-two, altitude was nine thousand. The air was not bumpy; night flight over the valley was easier than day flight.

The ship winged through gray blackness; only the instrument board lights gleamed dully. Eddie flew with a highly developed air-sense. Smoke signals—  that was what Hallam would be looking for when they came down out of the clouds. And that meant that Hallam would not be working alone. Which, in turn, meant that Eddie would be hijacked out of his Browning machine guns, and might get in a jam flying back across the lines. Hallam held the gun; he had Eddie where he wanted him. The chances were that he'd keep him there. Outside help would only mean more trouble. And worst of all, Hallam was ship wise.

Eddie Lewis swore grimly through oil-caked lips. He wiped savagely at the mist on the goggles. The ship was flying with the left wing low; he corrected for it by moving the stick to the right. Smoky skies? He shook his head slowly.

"Black as hell!" he muttered beneath the roar of the Liberty engine. "If I get out of this one I'm good!"

The De Haviland came out of the clouds at the end of fifteen minutes' flight. The reason was that the ship flew into a break in the gray stuff. There was a rapping on the fuselage fabric; Eddie cut the throttle, nosed the ship down.

"Dive her; jazz the engine; and hold her south!"

Hallam shouted the words.

Eddie nodded his head, wiped the instrument board and his goggle glass clear for the last time. There was moonlight on the stretch of mesquite and sand below. The clouds were breaking to the southward. Off to the west he could see the dark slopes of the Cocopahs. The American Waterway ditch, which irrigated the valley, was to the east of the ship's course. Several miles ahead was a 'dobe ranch house— the Chink's place. In the light of the moon the valley surface was silver white. Visibility was very good.

Eddie held the D. H. in a fairly stiff glide. His eyes traveled over the mesquite and sand ahead, then moved to the westward. He stiffened in the cockpit. Perhaps three miles southward and as many to the west there was a gray haze in the sky. It was moving from the slopes of the Cocopahs, blown by the wind. Smoke! Above the shrill of the wind through the flying wires and struts, the voice of Seeb Hallam sounded.

"Ease up on the glide— and listen!" he shouted.

Eddie moved the stick back slightly and the nose of the plane came up. The shrilling of wind through the rigging diminished in tone. Hallam was leaning over toward the front cockpit.

"Get down to about two hundred feet and fly toward that smoke southwest of us. See it?"

Eddie nodded his head. There was a little silence, then Hallam spoke again. There was a grim note in his voice.

"What I'm looking for; it's down there, Eddie. Know what it is?"

Eddie twisted his head. "Dope?" he snapped back.

Hallam swore harshly. "Gold!" He shouted above the wind shrill. "Mexicans handing out good old U. S. A. coin. Guess why?"

Eddie shook his head again. They were down within a thousand feet of the sand and mesquite; he banked the plane to the southwest, toward the smoke in the sky.

"Tell you why, Eddie." There was a note of mockery in Hallam's voice. "They want— machine guns!"

EDDIE LEWIS stiffened. Eyes to the front, toward the throttled down prop, lips pressed tightly together, he understood, for the first time. Seeb Hallam was taking the machine guns he had intended for Johnny Leeds and the other boys. Hallam was hijacking him in the air, and taking the guns to raiders, perhaps. To the very man against whom Johnny and the boys wanted to use the Brownings! Behind him Hallam laughed. It was a nasty, sneering laugh. It came hoarsely above the faint wind shrill through the rigging, above the throttled down rumbling of the D. H.'s engine.

"Soft for me, Eddie, but it ain't much of a walk back. We'll turn you loose— an' I need the ship!"

Eddie Lewis' fingers tightened until the knuckles were white over the wood of the joy stick. Hallam was stealing the plane! Turning him loose in the valley; flying out in the plane! He would be miles distant; the ship could easily be abandoned before Eddie could get word to the authorities. And even then— could he say? How about the cargo he had been carrying?

He advanced the throttle, pulled back on the stick. They were two hundred feet above the sand and mesquite. The smoke was rising from the flat surface, perhaps two miles distant. The valley was almost as light as day. The full moon shone down, with the clouds through which they had flown drifting eastward, and a clear sky to the west.

Eddie Lewis groaned. He thought of Red Collins, when he had seen him an hour ago. Red had been able to talk, then. He had told Eddie where the guns were to be landed. But it had been plain that he had been drinking heavily. It was just a tough break that Seeb Hallam had listened in on Red's words, had worked fast. Six Brownings and the D. H. And if Eddie didn't like it— well, there was lead in the gun Hallam held. Lead that the short, heavy set man was not afraid to spill.

The De Haviland roared over the dumps of mesquite, flashed across the black ridges of a section of cultivated cotton soil. The Chinese ranch house was behind them now; the Cocopahs were ahead. And the nearest American concession was fully forty miles distant.

The smoke seemed all about them now. Eddie could taste it as the propeller flung back wisps of the gray stuff. He felt a touch on his right shoulder, cut the throttle, nosed downward.

"Hit the sand— quarter mile ahead! Don't nose her over or try tricks!"

Hallam's voice was cool, steady. He was leaning forward in the rear cockpit again, the upper portion of his body exposed to the rush of night air, the prop wash. Gleams of red shone through the smoke. Eddie cut the throttle, glided the plane down the remaining distance toward the surface of the valley.

For seconds he stared through the smoke. Then the air ahead was clear; the Cocopahs rose plainly, not far distant. The ship was less than fifty feet above the sand and mesquite.

Hallam's voice sounded harshly. "Set her down, damn you! Set this baby down or—"

EDDIE was pulling the stick back toward his khaki shirt now; the plane was losing flying speed. He gave her the gun, got her over some mesquite that might easily have nosed her over, cut the engine off again. Wheels and tail-skid struck in a perfect three-point landing. She rolled forward, slowly in speed. She stopped.

Eddie snapped his safety belt, turned his head. Seeb Hallam had a leg over the side of the fuselage; his eyes met Eddie's. They held a grim smile.

"Hop down, Eddie!" he ordered. "Like oldtimers, you flyin' me. Only the stunt I'm pullin' this time is kind of different, eh?"

Eddie slid over the side to the sand. Hallam was holding his gun low, in his right hand. Figures were running toward the plane, from the direction of the rising smoke. Eddie jerked off his helmet and goggles. Hallam had flown without any head or eye protection; his dark hair was mussed badly, his eyes were rimmed with red. He grinned.

"Eddie"— his voice was mocking— "what'll I do to a guy that knows too much?"

The pilot steadied his voice with an effort. He could guess what Seeb Hallam would do. He fought to speak calmly.

"Hell, man, I don't know anything!" he stated. "I didn't hand out cash for the guns, and you didn't murder Tex White. I saw him moving toward Calexico, as we climbed into the sky."

Hallam chuckled mirthlessly. "So you saw him, too," he muttered. "An' you don't know anything, eh? Well, Eddie, I'm not takin' chances, I'm not— hello, Juan!" The Mexican who came up first was short and swarthy faced. His black, narrowed eyes went to Eddie, then met those of Seeb Hallam.

"In the rear cockpit back there!" Hallam pointed with his gun. "Get your boys busy an' count out the cash as soon as you grab a look. Make it fast, too!" The short Mexican called shrilly to several comrades running up. They moved toward the rear cockpit of the D. H. Hallam's eyes were on Eddie's again.

"Just toss over the helmet and eye-protectors, Eddie; I can use 'em in my business."

The pilot tossed them at Hallam's feet. His eyes went to the gun held in the other man's right hand. Hallam wasn't exactly careless with that gun, and even should Eddie trick him, there were the Mexicans. He shrugged his shoulders.

"Rotten place to leave me, Hallam," he said slowly, keeping his voice steady with an effort, and looking beyond the shorter man. "You might set me down nearer a ranch house."

Hallam grinned. The Mexicans were getting the guns out, chattering in shrill voice. There were four of them by the plane now.

"Not leavin' you, Eddie." Hallam's voice held the same mocking note it had held before. "Takin' you along, for a little way. Kind of like air company."

Eddie stiffened. The guns were out of the ship now; the short Mexican who was the leader came to Hallam's side. He handed the hijacker a roll of bills. Hallam backed a short distance away from the Mexican, counted them carefully, his gun held in his right hand as he did so. Then he nodded his head.

"Right, Juan. My compliments to El Jefe, and tell him I'll be up north somewhere for a while. It ain't healthy down here—not now." He stuffed the bills in a pocket of his khaki jacket. The Mexican moved off, bearing the guns with them. Eddie's eyes were narrowed. Hallam spoke sharply.

"Get a 'chute for yourself! You ride the rear cockpit; I'll take her off. Stay down in the seat, back of me. I'll be turnin' and watchin' you. If you make a move I'll fill you up with lead. And where I'll land you, after that— you'll be plenty safe. If you're good—"

Hallam grunted, breaking off. "Get the 'chute!" he ordered grimly.

EDDIE got the 'chute, strapped it on. He climbed into the rear cockpit. Hallam jerked the goggles down over his eyes, climbed into the front cockpit. He advanced the throttle; the plane rolled forward, into the wind. The take off was fairly good; the bank, off the surface of the valley, was shaky. But the ship didn't slip off on a wing. Hallam steadied her, climbed up into the sky. The clouds had drifted to the eastward. There was smoke in that direction—the signal smoke.

And there was something else, too. Less than a mile to the north, flying down the valley at about five thousand feet, were two planes!

Eddie stared at them, his heart beating rapidly. And at the same instant Seeb Hallam saw them. He banked to the southward, roared the D. H. up into the sky wide open. Jerking his head, he shouted two words at Eddie.

"Sit tight!"

Eddie Lewis smiled grimly. One of the two ships was diving down toward the smoke of the signal fires; toward the Mexicans who had the guns. But the other was winging straight on toward the D. H. And she had altitude. Better still, she had a gun swung on a bracket in the rear cockpit!

Eddie twisted his head, watched her come in from an angle of the tail assembly. He could see, in the moonlight, the helmeted head of the rider in the rear cockpit. And the ship was gaining fast on the climbing De Haviland. Eddie smiled grimly. Tex White had got back into town. He had got help— and not Army help. Army planes would not come across the lines, and risk international complications. But there were other ships around Calexico and Mexicali. Hallam jerked his head again. He cut the throttle, glided the plane, losing precious altitude.

"Stand up!" he shouted. "Face 'em! Let 'em see who you are!"

Eddie shook his head. That would mean that the pursuers might not tackle the D. H. And if Hallam could get altitude, then fly eastward into the clouds, he might lose them. The chances were he would lose them. Clever, Seeb Hallam was. Fighting until the finish.

The D. H. was flying with her left wing low; Hallam twisted in the front cockpit; raised his right arm. The Colt gleamed in the moonlight, its muzzle leveled at Eddie's head.

"Up!" Hallam shouted hoarsely. "Get on your feet!"

Eddie snapped the safety belt, stood up in the prop wash. The wind tore at his khaki shirt. The other two-seater was close in. Hallam's eyes gleamed; he turned his head to the front of the plane. Eddie Lewis drew a deep breath. He waved a hand. The man in the rear cockpit of the other ship waved back. The two planes were flying very close now. Eddie pointed toward Seeb Hallam.

Seeb Hallam looked at Eddie and grinned; then his eyes shifted momentarily toward the other plane. And in that second, Eddie jumped.

Straight toward Hallam he jumped; even with the 'chute holding him back and the wind tearing at him, he plunged ahead, his hands shooting out with a lightning-like clutch. One hand knocked the Colt aside; the other found Hallam's shoulder, fastened to it with a death grip, and Eddie hauled himself by main strength across the intervening space.

But the surprise was good only for a second. Hallam let go the control stick completely and with an oath of desperation turned to fight his enemy. Eddie barely had time to grab the fingers that clutched the Colt and crush them and the butt together in an iron grasp before Hallam was at him like a wildcat, tearing, scratching, striking.

NOW the fight was uneven because Hallam was safely belted in, whereas Eddie naturally had had to loosen his safety belt before leaving his seat. Hallam, finding his gun-hand held fast, used his other hand, hitting furiously at Eddie's head, his eyes, his mouth. He clawed with his fingers and fingernails, raking the skin from Eddie's face in long scratches.

Against that free hand Eddie could but duck his head down and bury his face in Hallam's shirt and against his chest. One of his hands was holding that deadly gun-muzzle away from him, trying to wrest the weapon completely away from Hallam. The other arm was fastened around Hallam's body in a desperate clench, helping Eddie to hold himself in the jerking plane even as his right knee crooked around Hallam's leg helped.

For by now the plane was out of control altogether. It had nosed down and was twisting and lurching toward earth in sickening fashion. At one moment the two clenched fighters were hurled forward against the instrument board, the next moment they were being dashed sideways against the rim of the cockpit. The air shrieked in Eddie's ears, tore at his body, and every now and then he felt a sickening lightness as the force of gravity loosened him from the solid structure of the cockpit.

But in one way Eddie's very defenselessness was a help, for it forced him to keep his head ground hard into Hallam's chest. And with every ounce of strength within him he was struggling, butting, crushing Hallam against the instrument board, dashing him against the side framing. He heard Hallam grunt, he felt him jerk with sudden pain as he came into violent contact with something solid, and it served to invigorate Eddie to further effort.

In his first attempt to snatch Hallam's pistol Eddie had failed; he had hoped to capture it and force Hallam at gunpoint to land. Now Eddie fought to keep Hallam from breaking loose and killing him, as undoubtedly he would do.

The thrashing and lurching of the plane, too, now brought the realization of additional danger. They had not been any too high to begin with, and the machine had been falling now for some time; just how long, Eddie himself did not know. They must have lost altitude rapidly; perhaps even now the crash was inevitable. A plane spinning as this one was doing could not be brought out of it in a second.

And then Eddie caught a glimpse of the ground. It seemed frightfully close; it was hurtling toward them at terrific speed, seeming to spin around and around like a giant top. There might not be time even now for a parachute to open.

The prospect lent Eddie sudden superhuman strength. He fairly hurled Hallam from him, smashing his face with a terrific punch as he let go. Then without waiting to see the result, without waiting for anything, Eddie scrambled out. Somehow—he never knew exactly how—he worked clear, hurled himself out and away from the plane with all the force within him.

Something shot past him by inches; then he was somersaulting down through the yellow night. His fingers gripped the ripcord of the Irving 'chute. He did not wait to count five; he counted three, and jerked.

There was the crackling of the pilot 'chute as it sprang free. His breath was almost gone. Then came the greater crackling of the large spread of white silk. The harness tightened about his body, the risers came up and he was drifting as one sitting in a swing—drifting down toward the valley surface. Shaking the tears from his eyes, he stared around for the D. H.

To his surprise it was still spinning fiercely. He had thought to see it already begin to ease up, to level out, as Hallam brought it under control.

But no, there was no leveling. And then Eddie's surprised eyes caught sight of something dark working out of the cockpit, out onto the wing. For a second it hung. Then it too shot out and clear. Seeb Hallam also had jumped! Evidently something had gone wrong—the controls damaged, jammed— and Hallam had chosen the 'chute jump rather than the risk of staying with the plane.

The valley surface was close now, striking up at Eddie. He wondered if Hallam's 'chute had opened in time, as the wind twisted him around in the harness. Then he was drawing up his legs to break the force of the drop; was striking sand. He went to his knees; rolled forward. He saw the plane, still spinning, dash earthward. A crash sounded.

The wind started to drag the spread of silk; Eddie's fingers ripped at the harness buckles. He was out of the harness before he had been dragged into the nearest clump of mesquite; held the shrouds until it had collapsed. Then he straightened, stared toward the red flames and black smoke rising from the wreckage of his ship.

Silhouetted against the flames was the figure of Seeb Hallam. He was less than a hundred yards from Eddie, and even as the pilot stared, Hallam swayed; fell heavily forward.

Eddie Lewis hesitated. The two-seater which had chased the D. H. was landing into the wind, not far distant. Eddie had no gun. Hallam had collapsed— but was it a trick?

He moved forward swiftly. Trick or no trick, he would risk it. He would give Hallam no chance to recover from the fall of the 'chute, and perhaps hide the money the Mexicans had given him. He was within ten feet of the short man when Hallam got to his knees. There was red across his face, across his eyes. As he got to his feet, Eddie leaped at him arid struck savagely with his right fist.

Hallam crumpled beneath the fury of the blow; fell heavily. He lay on his face, motionless. Eddie stared down at him, breathing heavily. When he raised his eyes the first thing he noticed was smoke from the burning D. H. mingling with the signal smoke in the sky.

TEX WHITE grinned at Eddie. Hallam, his hands and legs tied tightly, was propped up against a wheel of the Waco two-seater. Beside him, lying flat on the sand, were two Mexicans. One was the shrill voiced leader of those who had waited for the plane.

"Hallam figured he'd got me, and he did get some lead through my rib flesh. Not enough to stop me, though. Got to town just as two ships dropped down on that old landing field. They were watching the D. H. head south. Stuck some bandages around my ribs, and rode with Cy here. Jake Connely tackled the cholos. A few got away, but we got the guns."

Eddie grinned at Jake Connely and Cy Harris. It was Jake who spoke.

"Johnny Leeds wired us to come down with some guns, if we could get across the line. Then Tex got to us, just as we landed to look things over. The D. H. was flying over, so we came along after her. Lost her, of course. But we saw smoke in the sky— and that helped us to pick her up again."

Eddie nodded. Hallam swore bitterly.

Tex White passed the bills around. "You keep the coin the Mex gave Hallam, Eddie. It'll help pick up another ship. We'll all go down to Johnny's place and see what he wants to do with Hallam and the breeds. We can't take 'em across the line. Johnny'll know what's best. He's had this concession here a long time. He knows his Mexico."

Eddie grunted. "From what I've seen," he said slowly, "the guy that doesn't know this valley doesn't last long. It isn't exactly"— he grinned, his eyes on Seeb Hallam— "clear skies down here."

Tex chuckled. "Sort of smoky," he agreed cheerfully

___________________

17: In The Fourth Dimension

Richard Dehan

Clotilde Graves, 1863-1932

The Cost of Wings, and Other Stories, 1914

THE balloon ascended from the Chiswick Gasworks at twelve-thirty, amid the thin cheers of an outer fringe of Works employés and an inner circle composed of members of the Imperial Air Club, who had motored down expressly for the start. It was by courtesy a summer day, a June gale having blown itself out over night, a June frost having nipped vegetation over morn. Now there was not a breath of wind, and the sky vault arching over London and the suburbs was of purplish-gray, through which a broad ray of white-hot sunshine pierced slantingly with weird effect as the order "Hands off!" was given, and the Beata, of forty-five thousand cubic feet, owner Captain the Honorable H. Maudslay-Berrish, of the I.A.C., soared rapidly upward.

Hitherto Maudslay-Berrish, occupied with the thousand cares devolving on the aeronaut, had not looked directly at either of his traveling companions. These were his wife's friend and his wife. We all remember the sumptuous Miss Fennis, of the Hyperion and other West End comedy theaters. Many of the masculine readers of this truthful record have laid offerings of hot-house flowers, jewelry, sweetmeats, and settlements, at those high-arched insteps in their pre-nuptial days, and not all have had cause to mourn the rejection of the same. But Maudslay-Berrish, son of a philanthropic Nonconformist peer, to whom the theater is the antechamber to the Pit, married her, and, as too far south is north, the men of his set thenceforth tacked on "Poor chap!" or "Poor beggar!" to the mention of his name, when another stage triumph of his gifted wife, who did not resign her profession, was recorded in the newspapers.

The friend of Mrs. Maudslay-Berrish, whom we may know as "Teddy," gasped one or two private gasps as the Beata shot up to an altitude of three thousand feet, and Chiswick Gasworks fell away underneath her into a tinted relief map of West London, and then was buried under a sea of swirling dun-gray vapors. The hoot of a motor-car— the needle-sharp screech of a railway locomotive— were the last sounds to reach the ears of the Beata's three passengers. Then the sounds of Earth sank into the silence of Eternity. And the soul of Mrs. Maudslay-Berrish's friend felt very thin and small, knowing itself adrift upon that tideless sea. The wicker car seemed also small— small to unsafeness— and the ropes as frail as the strands of a spider web. Cautiously Teddy put forth his immaculately gloved hand and touched one. Madness, to have trusted limb and life to things like these. Madness, to have left the good solid ground, where there were clubs and comfort and other men to keep you from feeling alone— for Teddy realized with vivid clearness that in this particular moment and at this particular point Mrs. Maudslay-Berrish counted for nothing. He even forgot to look to see if she was there. But she was there, and looking at him across her husband's back. For Maudslay-Berrish was in the middle of the oblong basket, and he was leaning over, peering down into the swirling gray sea below, his folded arms upon the wicker car edge, his chin upon them.

As matter of fact, he did not wish his wife and her friend to see how heartily he was laughing. When you have set a trap for two beings whom you hate with an intensity beyond all the range of human expression, and waited patiently for years— it had taken him, Maudslay-Berrish, just three years to qualify as a member of the Air Club— to see them fall into it, you laugh when it happens. And if they chance to see your face while you are doing it, it makes them feel uncomfortable.... And when they know!... The purple veins swelled upon his narrow forehead under the leather peak of his Club cap. His muscles cracked, his shoulders heaved with that hidden, terrible, convulsive laughter.

"Harwood," cried his wife, her strong voice ringing loud in the thin, untainted air, "what is the matter? Is anything wrong?"

"The balloon is not leaking, the valve is in proper order, there is plenty of ballast on board, the car is sound, the ropes are new and have been tested," said Maudslay-Berrish. "There is scarcely a breath of wind to move us, and yet something is wrong. What are you trying to ask me, Beryl... whether we are in danger? At the risk of spoiling your evident enjoyment of your first ascent, I answer 'Yes!' "

Then he straightened his bowed figure and turned so as to face the wife who had betrayed him so often, and Teddy, her friend. She, Beryl, looked at him with wild eyes set in a face suddenly grown sharp and thin. She clenched her gloved left hand upon a rope of the car, and the splitting of the glove back revealed her wedding ring and its keeper of sparkling diamonds. At the sight of that consecrated symbol another gust of mad laughter seized Maudslay-Berrish, and the tears poured down his purple face, and he roared and roared again, until every fiber of the car vibrated with his ugly merriment.

"For God's sake, Berrish, don't laugh like that!" shrieked Teddy, blue-white and gibbering. "Are you mad, or what?"

"Were you sane, you infernal fool— you two infernal fools— when you got into this car with the man whom you have outraged?" shrieked Maudslay-Berrish. "Haven't you dragged my good name in the mud, made me a by-word and a laughing-stock, a mockery even to myself— even to myself, in the last five years! Why, you d—— " (he called Mrs. Maudslay-Berrish an unlovely name) "my very servants sneer at me, the people at the theater grin when I come loafin' round behind the scenes. They're quite aware of what I've swallowed without gaggin'. They know I've lived on your money when I'd got through my own, quite fly as to where most of it came from"— he pointed a shaking finger at the stricken Teddy— "and as downy as you pleased. Teddy, old chap, I've called that blue-gilled funker there, and half a dozen like him. Well, Teddy, old chap, say your prayers quick, for you're going to die suddenly!"

The woman and her lover knew now what their late dupe and butt meant to do. He had the ripping cord half-hitched about his left wrist— the ripping cord, a sharp tug at which will, when a balloon is dangerously dragged during a descent, take an entire panel out of the envelope in two seconds, immediately deflating the bag. And in his right hand Maudslay-Berrish manipulated a neat little revolver.

Certainly he played the star part in the drama, and held the audience breathless. Half of the audience, that is, for Teddy, old chap, was at his prayers. Down on his knees at the bottom of the car, his gloved hands rigidly clasped, his handsome, weak face turned up to the sustaining ball of gas that hovered in its imprisoning net above, between him and the Illimitable Void, he cowered and slavered. In pleading for Heaven's mercy upon a miserable sinner, he set forth that his Eve had tempted him; he asked for time to make up, another chance, a year, six months, a week only of sweet life. Hearing him, Eve herself grew sick with contempt of his infinite littleness, and even Maudslay-Berrish half turned away his eyes.

"Why don't you pray?" he said, sneeringly, to his wife. "Why don't you grovel like that thing you have kissed?"

Miss Fennis, of the Hyperion, would have held an audience mute and breathless by the quiet scorn conveyed in Mrs. Maudslay-Berrish's look and tone.

"I dare say when you have done what you are going to do, I shall wake up in Hell," she said; "and I believe I shall have earned it!"

Teddy, still spinning out the smeared records of his Past, was now prostrate and bathed in tears.

"If I doubted the existence of such a place before, I do not now. For I have loved that man"— she bit her white underlip sharply— "and I have seen and heard him. Henceforth there can be nothing worse to bear, here or hereafter. Why do you delay? Pull the cord and have done with it, or I shall say you are afraid!"

THE BEATA came sailing gently down upon a delightful green expanse of turf at Aldershot— the tennis ground, in fact, of a dandy Cavalry Regiment. The anchor dropped and caught in a pollard oak; a dozen delightfully pink lieutenants in correct flannels assisted the handsome Miss Fennis, of the West End theaters, to alight from the basket. Maudslay-Berrish, calm and imperturbable as usual, followed. In the midst of congratulations and offers of luncheon, a lieutenant exclaimed:

"Great Scott! Why didn't you say you'd another passenger in the car? Here's a man lying in a dead faint at the bottom of it!"

And they brought out Teddy, very white and limp, and gave him brandy.

"Heart weak, what?" said the lieutenant who had exclaimed.

"He has certainly had some— cardiac trouble," returned Maudslay-Berrish placidly; "but I think he will be less liable to the— ahem!— the weakness after this little trip of ours together in the Fourth Dimension."

And he smiled as he lighted a very large cigar.

____________________

18: The Woman Who Sat Still

Parry Truscott

Abbie Hargrave,  1871-1936

Colour, Nov 1921

WHEN HE WENT, when he had to go, he took with him the memory of her that had become crystallised, set for him in his own frequent words to her, standing at her side, looking down at her with his keen, restless eyes— such words as: "It puzzles me how on earth you manage to sit so still...."

Then, enlarging: "It is wonderful to me how you can keep so happy doing nothing— make of enforced idleness a positive pleasure! I suppose it is a gift, and I haven't got it— not a bit. It doesn't matter how tired I am, I have to keep going— people call it industry, but its real name is nervous energy, run riot. I can't even take a holiday peacefully. I must be actively playing if I cannot work. I'm just the direct descendant of the girl in the red shoes— they were red, weren't they?— who had to dance on and on until she dropped. I shall go on and on until I drop, and then I shall attempt a few more useless yards on all fours...."

"Come now," in answer to the way she shook her head at him, smiled at him from her sofa, "you know very well how I envy you your gift, your power of sitting still— happily still— your power of contemplation...."

And one day, more intimately still, with a sigh and a look (Oh, a look she understood!), "To me you are the most restful person in the world...."

WHY HE WENT, except that he had to go; why he stayed away so long, so very long, are not really relevant to this story; the facts, stripped of conjecture, were simply these: she was married, and he was not, and there came the time, as it always comes in such relationships as theirs, when he had to choose between staying without honour and going quickly. He went. But even the bare facts concerning his protracted absence are less easily stated because his absence dragged on long after the period when he might, with impeccable honour, have returned.

The likeliest solution was that setting her aside when he had to, served so to cut in two his life, so wrenched at his heartstrings, so burnt and bruised his spirit, that when, in his active fashion he had lived some of the hurt down, he could not bring himself easily to reopen the old subject— fresh wounds for him might still lurk in it— how could he tell? Although it had been at the call, the insistence of honour, still hadn't he left her— deserted her? Does any woman, even his own appointed woman, forgive a man who goes speechless away? Useless, useless speculation! For some reason, some man's reason, when another's death made her a free woman, yet he lingered and did not come.
He knew, afterwards, that it was from the first his intention to claim her. He wanted her— deep down he wanted her as he had always wanted her; meant to come— some time. Knew all the time that he could not always keep away. And then, responding to a sudden whim, some turn of his quickly moving mind— a mind that could forcibly bury a subject and as forcibly resurrect it— hot-foot and eager he came.

HE HAD LEFT her recovering slowly and surely from a long illness; an illness that must have proved fatal but for her gift of tranquillity, her great gift of keeping absolutely, restfully still in body, while retaining a happily occupied mind. Her books, and her big quiet room, and the glimpse of the flower-decked garden from her window, with just these things to help her, she had dug herself into the deep heart of life where the wells of contentment spring. Bird's song in the early morn and the long, still day before her in which to find herself— to take a new, firmer hold on the hidden strength of the world. And, just to keep her in touch with the surface of things, visits from her friends. Then later, more tightly gripping actuality, with a new, keen, sharp, growing pleasure— the visits of a friend.

While those lasted there was nothing she would have changed for her quiet room, her sofa: the room that he lit with his coming; where she rested and rested, shut in with the memory of all he said, looked, thought in her presence— until again he came.

While they lasted! She had been content, never strong, never able to do very much, with seclusion before. During the time of his visits she revelled, rejoiced in it, asking nothing further. While they lasted, sitting still (Oh, so still), hugging her joy, she didn't think, wouldn't think, how it might end.

Sometimes, just sometimes, by a merciful providence, things do not end. She lived for months on the bare chance of its not ending.

Yet, as we know, the end came.

At first while the world called her widowed she sat with her unwidowed heart waiting for him in the old room, in the old way. Surely now he would come? She had given good measure of fondness and duty and friendship— that was only that under another name— to the one who until now had stood between her and her heart's desire, and parting with him, and all the associations that went with him, had surprisingly hurt her. Always frail, she was ill— torn with sorrow and pity— and then, very slowly again, she recovered. And while she recovered, lying still in the old way, she gave her heart wings— wild, surging wings— at last, at last. Sped it forth, forth to bring her joy— to compel it.

While she waited in this fashion a sweet, recaptured sense of familiarity made his coming seem imminent. She had only to wait and he would be here. She couldn't have mistaken the looks that had never been translated into words— that hadn't needed words. Though she had longed and ached for a word— then— she was quite content now. He had wanted her just as she was, unashamed and untainted. And to preserve her as she was he had gone away. And now for the very first time she was truly glad he had gone in that abrupt, speechless fashion— in spite of the heartache and the long years between them, really and truly glad. Nothing had been spoilt; they had snatched at no stolen joys. And the rapture, (what rapture!) of meeting would blot out all that they had suffered in silence— the separation— all of it!

As she waited, getting well for him, she had no regrets, growing more and more sure of his coming.

It was not until she was well again, not until the months had piled themselves on each other, that, growing more frightened than she knew, she began her new work of preparation.

SUDDENLY, impulsively, when she had reached the stage of giving him up for days at a time, when hope had nearly abandoned her, then he came.

He had left a woman so hopeful in outlook, so young and peaceful in spirit, that with her the advancing years would not matter. On his journey back to her, visualising her afresh, touching up his memory of her, he pictured her going a little grey. That would suit her— grey was her colour— blending to lavender in the clothes she always wore for him. A little grey, but her clear, pale skin unfaded, her large eyes full of pure, guarded secrets— secrets soon to unfold for him alone.

A haven— a haven! So he thought of her, and now, ready for her, coming to her, he craved the rest she would give him— rest more than anything in all the world. She, with her sweet white hands, when he held them, kissed them, would unlock the doors of peace for him, drawing him into her life, letting him potter and linger— linger at her side. Even when long ago he had insisted to her that for him there was no way of rest, he had known that she, just she, meant rest for him, when he could claim her for his own. Other women, other pursuits, offered him excitement, stimulation— and then a weariness too profound for words. But rest, bodily, spiritually, was her unique gift for him. She— he smiled as he thought it— would teach him to sit still.

And tired, so tired, he hurried to her across the world as fast as he could go.

Waiting at her door, the door opened, crossing the threshold— Oh, he had never thought his luck would be so great as to be taken direct to the well remembered room upstairs! Yet with only a few short inquiries he was taken there— she for whom he asked, the mistress of the house, would be in her sitting-room, he was told, and if he was an old friend...? He explained that he was a very old friend, following the maid upstairs. But the maid was mistaken; her mistress was not in her private sitting-room; not in the house at all— she had gone out, and it proved on investigation that she had left no word. The maid, returning, suggested however, that she would not be long. Her mistress had a meeting this evening; she was expecting some one before dinner; no, she would certainly not be long, so— so if he would like to wait?

He elected to wait— a little impatiently. He knew it was absurd that coming, without warning— after how many years was it?— he should yet have made so sure of finding her at home. Absurd, unreasonable— and yet he was disappointed. He ought to have written, but he had not waited to write. He had pictured the meeting— how many times? Times without number— and always pictured her waiting at home. And then the room?

Left alone in it he paced the room. But the room enshrined in his heart of hearts was not this room. Was there, surely there was some mistake?
There could be no mistake. There could not be two upstairs rooms in this comparatively small house, of this size and with this aspect; westward, and overlooking with two large windows the little walled garden into which he had so often gazed, standing and talking to her, saying over his shoulders the things he dare not say face to face— that would have meant so much more, helped out with look and gesture, face to face.

The garden, as far as he could see, was the same except that he fancied it less trim, less perfect in order: in the old days it would be for months at a time all the outside world she saw— there had been object enough in keeping it trim. Now it looked, to his fancy, like a woman whose beauty was fading a little because she had lost incentive to be beautiful. He turned from the garden, his heart amazed, fearful, back to the room.

The room of the old days— with closed eyes he reproduced it; its white walls, its few good pictures, its curtains and carpet of deep blue. Her sofa by the window, the wide armchair on which he always sat, the table where, in and out of season, roses, his roses, stood. The little old gilt clock on the mantlepiece that so quickly, cruelly ticked away their hour. Books, books everywhere, the most important journals and a medley of the lighter magazines; those, with her work-basket, proving her feminine and the range of her interests, her inconsistency. A woman's room, revealing at a glance her individuality, her spirit.

But this room— ! He looked for the familiar things— the sofa, the bookshelves, the little table dedicated to flowers. Yes, the sofa was there, but pushed away as though seldom used; on the bookshelves new, strange books were crowding out the old; on the little table drooped a few faded flowers in an awkward vase. On the mantlepiece, where she would never have more than one or two good ornaments, and the old gilt clock, were now stacks of papers, a rack bulging with packing materials— something like that— an ink-bottle, a candlestick, the candle trailed over with sealing-wax, and an untidy ball of string. And right in the centre of the room a great clumsy writing-table, an office table, piled with papers again, ledgers, a portable typewriter, and— a litter of cigarette ends.

Like a Mistress on the track of a much-doubted maid he ran his finger along the edge of a bookcase and then the mantlepiece. He looked at his fingers; there was no denying the dust he had wiped away.
She must have changed her room— why had she done it? But the maid had said— in her sitting-room—

He waited now frightened, now fuming. Still she did not come. Should he not wait— should he go— if this was her room? But he had come so far, and he needed her so— he must stay. For some dear, foolish woman's reason she must have lent her room for the use of a feminine busy-body; a political, higher-thought, pseudo-spiritualistic friend. (He must weed out her friends!) The trend of the work done in this room now his quick mind had seized upon— titles of books, papers, it was enough. Notices stuck in the Venetian Mirror (the desecration!) for meetings of this and that society, and all of them, so he judged, just excuses for putting unwanted fingers into unwanted, dangerous pies. He thought of it like that— he could not help it; he saw too far into motive and internal action; was too impatient of the little storms, the paltry, tea-cup things. She, with her unique gift of serenity— her place was not among the busybodies grinding axes that were better blunt; interfering with the slow, slow working of the Mills of God. Her gift was example— rare and delicate; her light the silver light of a soul, that through 'suffering and patience and contemplation, knows itself and is unafraid.

For such fussing, unstable work as it was used for now she ought not even to have lent her room— the room he had looked on as a temple of quietness; the shrine of a priceless temperament.

He smiled his first smile— she should not lend it again.

Then the door opened. Suddenly, almost noisily, she came in.

She had heard, downstairs, his name. So far she was prepared with her greeting. She came with hands out-stretched— he took her hands and dropped them.

When he could interrupt her greeting he said— forcing the words— "So now you are quite strong— and busy?"

She told him how busy. She told him how, (but not why) she had awakened from her long, selfish dream. She said she had found so late— but surely not too late?— the joy of action; constant, unremitting work for the world's sake. "Do you remember how you used to complain you couldn't sit still? I am like that now— "

And he listened, listened, each word a deeper stab straight at his defenceless heart.

Of all the many things he had done since they met he had nothing to say.
Having just let her talk (how she talked!) as soon as he decently could he went. Of all he had come to tell her he said not a word. Tired, so bitterly tired, he had come seeking rest, and now there was no more a place of rest for him— anywhere.

Yes, he had come across the world to find himself overdue; to find himself too late. He went out again— as soon as he decently could— taking only a picture of her that in sixty over-charged minutes had wiped out the treasured picture of years.

Sixty minutes! After waiting for years she had kept him an hour, desperately, by sheer force of will keeping a man too stunned at first to resist, to break free. (Then at last he broke free of that room and that woman, and went!) For years he had pictured her sitting still as no other woman sat still, tranquil and graceful, her hair going a little grey above her clear, pale skin, her eyes of a dream-ridden saint. And now he must picture her forced into life, vivaciously, restlessly eager; full of plans, (futile plans, how he knew those plans!) for the world's upheaval, adding unrest to unrest. And now he must picture her with the grey hair outwitted by art, with paint on her beautiful ravaged face.

At first he had wanted to take her in his arms; with his strength to still her, with his tears to wash the paint off.

But he couldn't— he couldn't. He knew that his had been a dream of such supreme sweetness that to awaken was an agony he could never hide; knew that you can't re-enter dreamland once you wake.

So he went.

He never knew, with the door shut on him, how she fell on her sofa— her vivacity quenched, her soul spent. He never knew that having failed, (as she thought) to draw him to her with what she was, she had vainly, foolishly tried a new model— himself.

He did not know how inartistic love can be when love is desperate.

__________________

Cumulative Index  #101 to 110

Achmed ABDULLAH (1881-1945)

—Fear  109

W. L. ALDEN (1837-1908)

—A Sleeping Car Tragedy  109

Grant ALLEN (1848-1899)

—Fra Benedetto's Medal 102

Frederick Irving ANDERSON (1877-1947)

—The Hunter's Moon  106

T. F.  ANDERSON and H. D. Umbstaetter (fl 1890s;  1851-1913)

—The Mystery of the Thirty Millions 109

ANONYMOUS

—Detective Death 109

—The Garage Crime  103

—Lost: A Millionaire  106

—The Phantom of Castle Ballyran 102

—Rogue's Room 109

—The Stolen Ship 105

—Thone of Chaos 109 (as by "J. F. B.")

William Waldorf ASTOR (1848-1919)

—Balkameh 110

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

—The Temple of the Ten (with "W. C. Robertson") 107

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

Earl Derr BIGGERS (1884-1933)

—Henry and the Restless Sex

Eugene Shade BISBEE (1864-1933)

—The Compass of Fortune 101

—A Hundred Thousand Dollar Trance 101

Charles G.BOOTH (1896-1949)

—"Not According to Text"  106

Max BRAND (1892-1944)

—The Small World 104

—Spy! 101

—Wine on the Desert  110

Broughton BRANDENBURG (fl 1900-1933)

—The Mystery of the Steel Disk 105

T. C. BRIDGES (1868-1944)

—The Seringapatam Medal  106

—The Slatter Case  106

Willis BRINDLEY (fl 1920s)

—The Strike at Too Dry 102

Rhoda BROUGHTON (1840-1920)

—The Man With the Nose  109

John Buchan (1875-1940)

—The Grove of Ashtaroth  110

Edward BULWER-LYTTON (1803-1873)

—The House and the Brain 108

Walter Noble BURNS  (1872-1932)

—The Man the Law Forgot  110

Ellis Parker BUTLER (1869-1937)

—Brother Bill  108

—Mad Marix  108

Reginald CAMPBELL (1894-1950)

—The Medicine Man  108

Hayden CARRUTH, 1862-1932

—Uncle Bentley and the Roosters 107

Willa CATHER (1873-1947)

—The Garden Lodge 104

—Paul's Case  103

—The Bohemian Girl  108

Robert W. CHAMBERS  (1865-1933)

—The Case of Mrs Helmer  107

—A Matter of Interest  106

Peter CHEYNEY (1896-1951)

—Dance Without Music 102

—The Key  106

—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

Thomas COBB (1854-1932)

—The Witness 106

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

L. DE CHAVANNE (1861-?)

—The Artists Story  109

Richard DEHAN (Clotilde Graves, 1863-1932)

—The Fourth Dimension 110

—The Man Who Lost Himself  104

—The Motor-Burglar 103

—Ponsonby and the Pantheress  106

—The Revolt of Rustleton  107

C. J. DENNIS (1876-1938)

—The Mother 101

—While Jerry was Away 102

Captain DINGLE  (1879-1947)

—Roll and Go!  109

Dick DONOVAN (1843-1934)

—The Barnfield Murder Case 105

— Some Experiments With a Head  107

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

Harcourt FARMER (fl  1919-1922)

— When Brasset Forgot  110

Ernest FAVENC (1845-1908)

—The Drought Demons  107

—Fraulein von Heslau  108

—A Haunt of the Jinkarras  104

—The Justice of Captain Dampier  108

—The Lady Ermetta  110

—The Living Dead  109

—My Only Murder 103

—Never Save a Man from the Sea  108

—Spirit-Led 103

—The Swagman's Dream  107

—A Tale of the Western Desert  107

F. Scott FITZGERALD (1896-1940)

—Financing Finnegan  104

J. S. FLETCHER (1863-1935)

—The Revolver 105

—A Shot in the Night 105

—The Tiger Lily  108

Hulbert FOOTNER (1879-1944 )

—Four o'Clock in the Morning 102

Sewell FORD (1868-1946)

—Seed To The Sower  110

Mary Helena FORTUNE (1833-1911), as by"Waif Wander"

—The Greenstone Graves  102

—Heatherville  107

—The Red Room 103

Lieutenant Edgar GARDINER (fl 1920s-1930s)

—Eyes of the Dead  108

R. Murray GILCHRIST (1868-1917)

—The Return  107

Guy GILPATRIC (1896-1950)

—The Flaming Chariot, 106

Joseph GOLLOMB (1881-1950)

—A Case Without a Clew  110

Jack GRAY (fl 1930s)

—The Nudist Gym Death Riddle  110

Zane GREY (1872-1939)

—Tigre  107

C. Ranger GULL (1876-1923)

— Le Maitres de l'Affiche (with Reginald BACCHUS, 1874-1945)  108

—The Ordeal By Fire 101

—A Regent of Love Rhymes 102 (as by Guy Thorne)

James Norman HALL (1887-1951)

—Sing a Song of Sixpence  110

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

Robert E. HOWARD (1906-1936)

—The Shadow of the Vulture

William Dean HOWELLS (1837-1920)

—Braybridge's Offer  109

Washington IRVING (1783-1859)

—Rip Van Winkle 102

M. R. JAMES (1862-1936)

—Rats  109

Val JAMESON  (fl. 1900-1920s)

—Dixon's Theories  106

Sarah Orne JEWETT (1849-1909)

—The Green Bowl  102

—A Financial Failure 105

Richard Ashe KING (1839-1932)

—Disinherited  103

—Trapped 103

Meyer KRULFELD  (fl  1937-1942)

—The Thing From Antares  109

Henry LAWSON (1867-1922)

—The Mystery of Dave Regan 101

—On The Tucker Track 101

Arthur LEEDS  (fl. 1915-1926)

—The Man Who Shunned the Light  109

J. Sheridan LE FANU (1814-1873)

—Schalken the Painter  107

Lottie LESH (fl 1930)

—The Circle of Illusion  108

Hal Field LESLIE (fl. 1925-1936)

—The Night the Devil Walked  107

Henry LEVERAGE (Carl Henry, 1879-1931)

—Imagination 105

—Two Aces 103

—The Voice in the Fog  110

Jack LONDON (1876-1916)

—The Pearls of Parlay 102

Marie Belloc LOWNDES (1868-1947)

—The Haunted Flat  107

Fred MacISAAC (1886-1940)

—The Ghost City 101

Lucas MALET (1852-1931)

—The Birth of a Masterpiece 103

Richard MARSH (Richard Bernard Heldmann, 1857-1915)

—The Pipe  110

Herman Howard MATTESON (1876-1951)

—The Shadow Jumper  108

—The Whispering Shell  109

—With Much Gusto  109

Cleveland MOFFETT (1863-1926)

—On the Turn of a Coin 101

Charles G. NORRIS (1881-1945)

—The Beach  103

Owen OLIVER (Joshua Albert Flynn, 1863-1933)

—As Told To The Children  110

"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

Marjorie PICKTHALL  (1883-1922)

—The Desert Road  107

Ernest M. POATE (1884-1935)

—Mirage 101

Edgar Allan POE (1809-1849)

—The Cask of Amontillado 104

Muriel A. POLLEXFEN (1876-1923)

—The Fox's Earth  109

Mearle PROUT (fl mid-1930s)

—The House of the Worm 103

A. T. QUILLER-COUCH (1863-1944)

—Old Aeson  109

W. Pett RIDGE (1859-1930)

—Mr. Barling's Income 101

Arthur Somers ROCHE (1883-1935)

—Alicia goes a-Burgling 101

Charles Wesley SANDERS (c1876-1937?)

—A Girl Who Was Afraid  110

"SAPPER" (H C McNeile): (1888-1937)

—Uncle James's Golf Match 103

M. P. SHIEL (1865-1947)

—Dickie 106

Margaret Busbee SHIPP (1871-1936)

—The Prethereau Sapphire  108

—The Priestess of the Purple Petunia  106

Dan L. SILVERLING (fl 1913)

—Hard Harman 104

Helen SIMPSON (1897-1940)

—Young Magic 101

C. C. SPRUCE (fl. 1934-5)

—Cave of the Criss-Cross Knives  108

Frederick Dorr STEELE (1873-1944)

—The Adventure of the Murdered Art Editor 104

Emile C. TEPPERMAN (1899-1951)

—Sleuth of the Air Waves  108

Albert Payson TERHUNE (1872-1942)

—The Sights They Missed  106

—The Twenty-Four-Hour Croesus  107

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

Parry TRUSCOTT (Abbie Hargrave,  1871-1936)

—The Woman Who Sat Still  110

Louis Joseph VANCE (1879-1933)

—Night  108

Charles E. VAN LOAN (1876-1919)

—The Crusader 106

W. B. WALLACE  (fl 1900s)

—The Demon of the Opal 101

"Waif Wander" (See Mary Helena FORTUNE, 1833-1911)

Edward Parrish WARE (1883-1949)

—Hell's Back Room  109

—Killer's Can't Fly 109

Fred M. WHITE (1859-1935)

—Adventure  109

—The Western Way  110

Henry S. WHITEHEAD (1882-1932)

—No Eye-Witnesses 102

—West India Lights 102

Raoul  WHITFIELD (1896-1945)

—Smoky Skies  110

Albert Richard WETJEN (1900-1948)

—Strain 105

Thomas WOLFE (1900-1938)

—The Sun and the Rain 105

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Table of Contents

- 1: The Lady Ermetta / Ernest Favenc
- 2: The Western Way / Fred Merrick White
- 3: The Voice in the Fog / Henry Leverage

- 4: The Man the Law Forgot / Walter Noble Burns

- 5: Wine on the Desert / Max Brand
- 6: The Grove of Ashtaroth / John Buchan
- 7: A Case Without a Clew / Joseph Gollomb
- 8: Seed To The Sower / Sewell Ford

- 9: Sing a Song of Sixpence / James Norman Hall

- 10: Balkameh / William Waldorf Astor
- 11: The Pipe / Richard Marsh
- 12: The Nudist Gym Death Riddle / Jack Gray
- 13: As Told To The Children / Owen Oliver

- 14: A Girl Who Was Afraid / Charles Wesley Sanders

- 15: When Brasset Forgot / Harcourt Farmer
- 16: Smoky Skies / Raoul  Whitfield
- 17: In The Fourth Dimension / Richard Dehan

- 18: The Woman Who Sat Still / Parry Truscott

- Unnamed