Author: Various
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: This New Year 2023 issue of Past Masters, No 111, contains only stories by authors who died in 1952, and whose works therefore fell into the Life + 70 years Public Domain on 1 January 2023. 1: The Servicetown Mystery / Harold Mercer 2: The Little Green Devils / James Francis Dwyer 3: Wolfmaster / Bertram Atkey 4: Cat Luck / Jeffery Farnol 5: Pug-Face's Daughter / Gilbert Frankau 6: Cambric Tea / Marjorie Bowen 7: About the Perfect Crime of Mr. Digberry / Anthony Abbot 8: Keeping Killick Killed / Harold Mercer 9: The Statue Stealers / Bertram Atkey 10: The Call of the Wildwater / Bertram Atkey

PAST MASTERS 111

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.

1 January 2023

This New Year 2023 issue of Past Masters contains only stories by authors who died in 1952, and whose works therefore fell into the Life + 70 years Public Domain on 1 January 2023.

Contents

1: The Servicetown Mystery / Harold Mercer

2: The Little Green Devils / James Francis Dwyer

3: Wolfmaster / Bertram Atkey

4: Cat Luck / Jeffery Farnol

5: Pug-Face's Daughter / Gilbert Frankau

6: Cambric Tea / Marjorie Bowen

7: About the Perfect Crime of Mr. Digberry / Anthony Abbot

8: Keeping Killick Killed / Harold Mercer

9: The Statue Stealers / Bertram Atkey

10: The Call of the Wildwater / Bertram Atkey

11: Ghosts at Stoneylands / Bertram Atkey

12: Flies on the Ceiling / Eugene A. Clancy

13: Six Heads on a String / Mark Harper

14: The Case of the Drugged Golfers / Bertram Atkey

15: Mustard Pot— Mountebank / Gilbert Frankau

16: The White Line / John Ferguson

17: Not Much to Look At / Jeffrey Farnol

18: The Blush of Venus / James Francis Dwyer

19: The Kafir's Skull / James Francis Dwyer

___________________________

1: The Servicetown Mystery

Harold Mercer

1882-1952

World's News (Sydney) 15 Nov 1933

Harold Mercer was an Australian journalist and short story writer

"I HAVE IMPLICIT confidence in Mr. Sorrell," snapped Macintosh, the general manager. Evidently the attitude of the detectives annoyed him. "It's a queer case altogether. Mr. Sorrell has come to me with a fancy he may be robbing the bank; yet strict investigation has shown nothing out of order. It was at Mr. Sorrell's request that the investigation was made. He is still not satisfied, so you gentlemen come into the business."

Ron Dwyer recalled that scene in the bank manager's office when, some time later, Rhoda Sorrell spoke to him on his arrival in Servicetown. Whilst his chief, Detective-Sergeant Tonkin, asked keen questions, he had felt a vague sympathy for the obviously worried, fidgety Sorrell, with his fine face and prematurely grey Hair. An acquaintance with Rhoda Sorrell had made the sympathy positive.

It would be appalling to think that there was anything crooked about the father of such a girl as Rhoda. Yet the matter which had brought Dwyer in the guise of a special investigation officer of the bank to the manager's quarters at Servicetown was certainly a queer one.

Sorrell had left the table after breakfast, when Rhoda turned to him suddenly.

"Mr. Dwyer, there's a question I want to ask you; don't be offended. You are not merely a special man from the head office; you're a detective, aren't you?"

Dwyer felt a momentary chagrin, not that he was ashamed of his calling, but that he prided himself on his ability to be able to pass as anything but a detective. He laughed awkwardly. "I am here at your father's invitation."

"I know that," she returned. "My father has been worried for some time. He's not been himself at all; he used to be so calm; not at all the nervous man he is to-day. He has told us all about his dreams; but mere dreams shouldn't make the change in him. Of course," she added, "it is impossible to imagine that father would be concerned in anything wrong."

"There's no suspicion," said Dwyer.

"But something is worrying him," persisted Rhoda. "I'd give anything to have the load removed from his mind, whatever it is."

Dwyer let his hand fall on hers assuringly, and thrilled as he did it. Rhoda had more than beauty; she had charm; and the young detective had felt its influence strangely since he arrived in this household. If there was anything that Rhoda would regard as a service, he would be delighted.

Was there anything to be done? Dwyer's mind harked back to the conversation in the bank's head office. Sorrell, of whom his chief, Macintosh, spoke so highly, had been worried by what seemed to be hallucinations.

"But last night." he said, "I found myself in my car away out in the country; later, I discovered that it was the other side of Penrith, past Emu Plains. It was as if I had suddenly wakened out of a sleep. And there I was surrounded by hold-up men!"

"A hold up!" exclaimed Tonkin, Dwyer's chief. "But you made no report at Penrith?"

"I was confused. Even afterwards, it seemed like a dream. You see I had no idea how I had got where I was, and I was amazed when one of the men put his hand into my pocket and took out a roll of notes. I didn't know I had the money. It worried me. It filled me with a fever to get home and find out where the money came from; and when I found my way back I made investigations. The money had certainly not come out of my account; but the bank cash was all right; and I have been able to find no discrepancies at all."

"How much was in the roll?" demanded Tonkin.

"That's one of the things that is worrying me, confusing me. I don't know. It was just a roll of notes— pounds, I think; I can't even guess the amount. All I know is that the men were threatening me— trying to force me to take them to some place where there was money, and I was so dazed, I don't know what I said. Then one of them said, 'He's hopeless! Let's take what money he's got, now,' and put forward his hand into my pocket, bringing out the notes."

"And you didn't know it was there?" said Tonkin, scepticism in his voice. "Surely you have some sort of idea of how you reached the place near Penrith."

Sorrell, trembling and agitated, leaped to his feet; and Macintosh, rising too, interposed.

Macintosh showed a shade of resentment at the tone Tonkin was using to Sorrell. "Mr. Sorrell is a man in whom the bank has the greatest faith. He has explained that what went before is like a dream."

"It was a dream," said Sorrell. "You try to remember, the details that were so vivid; you remember that they were vivid, but what they were you don't know. The dream was that I had done something at the bank (I can't for the life of me recall what it was), and was in my car with some fixed intention of going somewhere to hide some money. Suddenly I noticed a car following me. I speeded to get away, but it speeded also. Then the dream became a nightmare. I was going for dear life, but could not shake oft that pursuing car. I dashed down side roads-going away from the track I had intended. The other car still followed. A nightmare! At last the car at the back gave a spurt. It came up, past me, with a roar; and then, suddenly, I was awake, with a lot of men around me— held up!"

"And all before that seemed only a dream?" demanded the detective.

"The worst of it is the actual happening fits in so well with other dreams that have been worrying me for months."

"Eh?" cried Tonkin sharply. "The same sort of dream?"

"Yes, only that, always before, I have wakened up in bed. The other dreams were always about doing something in the bank, then going a long distance in the car and hiding money— counting up an incredible amount of money hidden away. It was all very vivid; but I could never remember the details. Yet often, when I had a look at my car, there was mud on it, and the petrol was low."

"So your car had been used?"

"Yes; I suspected someone had secured a key that fitted my garage and had taken my car for joy-riding. I had new padlocks put on, but the car still had the appearance of being used, when I had no recollection of using it."

"How many times have you had these dreams?"

"I can't say. You see, at first they were only just dreams, and forgotten. Then they began to worry me. The thought that I might be defrauding the bank, subconsciously, has become a torture! I tried to dismiss it; but last night's incident, brought matters to a climax. You see, the men said: 'If you don't want to be a dead man, lead us to the place where you've been burying the money.' "

"Sure the hold-up men were not a dream, too?" demanded Tonkin.

"I'm certain of that."

The detective pondered.

"Look here, Mr. Sorrell," he said, sharply. "You're a good penman, I suppose?"

"Oh, yes, I am, particularly good."

"I mean— skilful. It would be no great difficulty for you to imitate signatures— the signatures of clients, I mean."

"I daresay I could do that. I know I could." said Sorrell, rather dumbfounded by the question. "I've often imitated signatures, just for a joke. But, of course, I wouldn't think of—"

"What exactly is the point?" asked Macintosh.

"The point is just this," said Tonkin, incisively. "The tale is the sort of thing a man might concoct to fall back upon if he fears some clever fraud can't be carried on any further. It. would supply a neat and original defence against a criminal charge!"

Sorrell, trembling and agitated, leaped to his feet; and Macintosh, rising, too, interposed.

"Pardon me, Mr. Tonkin," he protested. "I've told you that the bank has no suspicions about Mr. Sorrell! It was at his own request that we sent to the detective office."

"Precisely!" said Tonkin, grimly. "It helps to build the defence."

"That may be your way of looking at it," said Macintosh, warmly. "I may say the bank's faith in Mr. Sorrell is in no way affected."

"Thank you, Mr. Macintosh," murmured the agitated branch manager.

"Where do we come in?" asked Tonkin, with some asperity. "There is, of course, the hold-up. That should have been reported at Penrith. What sort of a car was it that these men had?"

"I haven't got the slightest idea, except that it was big and powerful. No. I can't even attempt to give a description of the men."

Tonkin shrugged Ills shoulders.

"Well, what's to do, then? You say there's nothing wrong at the branch or your bank; therefore, there's no charge. We can't charge a man on a confession of his dreams," he added, sarcastically

He spoke to Macintosh, but it was Sorrell who answered, eagerly.

"I'm haunted by the dread that somehow, without knowing it, I may be doing something wrong."

"Why not take a holiday? It would probably cure you of your dream habit."

"It's not only that," protested Sorrell. "I want the whole thing investigated to ease my mind. Evidently these men who held me up are watching me. If, by some means, I have secured and hidden some money; supposing I do, in a subconscious fashion, go to the place where the money is hidden; these men may follow me and secure the money that is not theirs. Then there will be no chance of recovery, if that happens— if any money is missing."

"But you say no money is missing," persisted Tonkin.

Sorrell looked at him helplessly.

"You see, it's as I say, a queer case altogether. The affair is worrying Mr. Sorrell to death, and he's too valuable and trusted an officer for the bank to wish to lose him," said Macintosh. "We want his possibly foolish suspicions about himself dispelled, and we would like police aid. If it is necessary, the bank is prepared to pay."

"DWYER," said Tonkin, that afternoon, "you're to go out to that bank at Servicetown and take up quarters there with the bank manager. There's something queer about this business; the chief has decided that it's worth looking into. We've got reports from Penrith that last night two cars did dash through the town at break-neck speed, as if one was chasing the other. That part of Sorrell's story wasn't a dream, anyway."

"What do you make of it?" asked Dwyer,

"Think of it? I think there's something crook and that a man who's grown scared of a clever fraud is building up a defence with this subconscious stuff. Well, I've put the matter to the chief and we're going to call the bluff. This Sorrell chap has asked for someone to put a watch on him, and you're going out to do it."

Not liking the job at first, Dwyer became reconciled when he met Rhoda. He discounted Tonkin's suspicions about Sorrell, who seemed genuinely relieved to have him on the premises. His term seemed likely to be uneventful, however.

On the sixth night of his stay, however, his pulses were thrilled into action. He had gone to bed, when a sound of movement brought him to wakefulness, all his senses alert. In a moment he was peering through his half-open door. Someone, he could swear, had just passed it.

He was not mistaken; a shaft of light, as from a small torch, showed on the stairs, at the end of the landing; a figure, holding the torch, was descending. It was Sorrell— and fully clothed. With the utmost care Dwyer followed Sorrell, who, with every aspect of confidence, made his way to the private entrance to the banking chamber, and, unlocking the door, entered. He switched the light on immediately; Dwyer stood back in the shadow outside, watching him, as he went to the safe and, extracting a ponderous ledger, opened it. He seemed to study the figures for some time.

Dwyer advanced and stood opposite to him.

"Mr. Sorrell!" he said. For a moment the banker did not look up; not, indeed, until his name was spoken again. There was a glassy look in his eyes that gave the young detective an uncanny feeling. Then suddenly his aspect altered. The change was that of a man waking up.

"My God!" he cried. "Dwyer! What are we doing here?" He passed his hand across his forehead. "I seemed to dream I was here— it was like the dreams I have so often had. I was going to do something; but I can't remember." He stared at Dwyer. "No, I can't remember at all!"

Dwyer, letting nothing escape him, watched him curiously as he put the ledger away. As they went upstairs together an idea struck him.

"Give me your car keys," he said. "And you go to bed, Mr. Sorrell, and sleep. I'm Just going to make a little investigation."'

He approached a window in the front— the sitting-room was there— and, without turning on a light, peered through the window. A little way down the street a car was parked.

A few minutes later he drove Sorrell's car out of the garage. As he moved off he looked cautiously back. The car he had noticed had begun to follow. He accelerated, and the car in the rear moved faster, also; he slowed again, and its pace declined. Then he stopped suddenly. Afar off the following car stopped too.

Dwyer was satisfied; but he did not wish to "wake up" too much thought. His pulses beat with the feeling that his work here was likely to be a real thing. Getting the car into action again he swerved round and made his way back to the bank. The action seemed to take the occupants of the rear car by surprise. They were about to move, but came to a standstill again. Dwyer noticed all he wanted to notice as he passed; there were several men in the car, and that they shrank back in the darkened interior.

Tonkin was with him when he went into Sorrell's office to see the banker, having avoided much talk over the last night's happening at breakfast.

"You remember last night, Mr. Sorrell," Dwyer asked.

"Perfectly. One of those dreams of mine had come to me. "Then I woke up to find myself talking to you— just outside there."

"You were asleep all right, when I wakened you," said Dwyer. "Have you been telling many people about these dreams of yours?"

"Oh, a pretty good number. At first I thought them curious, the same dream recurring, and I mentioned them just as that. Then I might have spoken of them because they began to worry me."

"A good many people might have got to know of them then? Even about the idea of your going out in the motor car? These dreams were pretty regular, eh? Would they be once a week?"

"They came too often for my liking," said Sorrell with an uncomfortable laugh. "Sometimes I didn't know whether I'd had the dream again, really, or was only imagining it."

"Why I am asking," said Dwyer, "is that, last night, I went out in your car— you remember my getting the keys? And there was a car parked across the way that followed me."

"My God!" cried Sorrell agitatedly.

"If you have been in the habit of talking about your dreams, and really did go out at night— in your sleep— it is understandable that a watch might be kept for you by evil-minded persons in search of spoils. But there were no spoils, apparently. Your auditors—"

"The auditors found nothing out of order," said Sorrell quickly. "That's the puzzle. Yet there were those notes I had with me."

"How about the ledger account you were looking at last night when I woke you?"

"Ledger account? Oh, yes, of course; I had a ledger out. I don't remember what I had it out for."

Sorrell would have been a good actor if his bewilderment was assumed.

"Do you happen to have an account for R. E. Sarfie? Curious name, isn't it?"

"Why, yes! Of course. I know that account! It's a big one— at least it's a big credit to carry on current account."

"That's the account you were looking at last night. Dwyer made a note of it," said Tonkin sharply. "Let's have a look at it."

There were peculiarities about the account, as the three men conned it. A sum of over four thousand pounds had been paid in three years ago, and had remained untouched for many months; then there had been withdrawals of amounts of £20 and £25, which had recently become weekly, after being sporadic. Cheques were produced which coincided with the entries.

Sorrell said that he could not remember having seen R. E. Sarfie since the day he had opened the account; the nature of the deposit naturally fixed the memory. Sent for and questioned, none of the other officials could give a distinct recollection of having seen Sarfie.

"Curious, isn't it?" said Tonkin. "A man draws out £20 or £25 a week, and nobody remembers."

"It is queer!" assented Sorrell. "It surprises me. Of course, this is an industrial centre, with a lot of small factories going. Thursday and Friday there are a regular number of withdrawals; although most of those who cash the cheques become known, it is quite possible, if the messengers sent to cash cheques are altered, for some of the people to be unfamiliar. Still this Sarfie being so unknown to the clerks seems peculiar. It has made me feel curious." He pressed a bell and one of the clerks appeared. "When Mr. Sarfie comes in next time, or if anyone comes with one of his cheques-I want him told that I would like to speak to him."

Tonkin looked at him queerly.

"There's nothing wrong in this account seemingly; but it seems a queer one— a mail depositing such a large sum, and only operating after a long lapse of time. The name's queer, too." He handed over the ledger and took a note of the date when the account was opened. "By-the-bye," he said, "have any of these friends you've spoken to about your dreams got mesmeric powers by any chance?"

"No-o," said Sorrell, doubtfully.

"You've never been mesmerised?"

"No. Oh, no, certainly not,"

"Well, after last night, this case certainly seems interesting," said Tonkin.

He had been staring at Sorrell, wondering if he was a supreme hypocrite, or was really genuine; and he drew Dwyer out of the office with him. "I'm coming down to-night. Last night you interrupted something; it may take place to-night. Don't interfere this time: just watch. Keep watching and let Sorrell go ahead with what he is doing. If he takes his car out, let him, but follow out into the street, keeping unobserved as much as possible."

That night Sorrell's car glided out into the darkness of the street and made off at a good pace; it was followed immediately, by the same car that Dwyer had observed the previous night. Hardly had that gone than a big car came noiselessly to the bank.

"There, Dwyer?" Tonkin called in a swift whisper, and the figure of the young detective sprang out of the dark wall of the bank building. "Jump aboard quick!" The car was in swift movement again, almost as Dwyer's foot landed on the footboard.

The red tail-lights of the two cars ahead gleamed a long way ahead as the police car rushed through the night.

"Well? What happened?"

"I was disturbed by Sorrell going down to the banking chamber. This time I waited outside, just watching. The man was moving as if in a sleep; and yet he seemed to know exactly what he wanted to do. He got a cheque out of a locked drawer, and seemed to fill it in; he got a roll of papers— like a mass of cheque forms— from the safe, and he put this one with them. I could not see all he did, but, as he came towards the door, he undoubtedly had a number of notes in his hand, which he thrust into his pocket. I got back into the shadow as he came out; but he didn't seem to have an idea of being watched. He went straight to his car, got it out, and dashed away. The other car followed."

Tonkin checked off the details. "That's what I expected," he said. "It will interest you to know regarding that queer name in the bank ledger, R. E. Sarfie, that a man named E. I. Fraser received seven years for the Macedon bullion robbery. You may remember: £5000 in gold was taken. The robbery took place oh August 23, 1923; the Sarfie account was opened here on August 31. Fraser was identified as the armed bandit, and get his sentence, but the money was not recovered."

"R. E. Sarfie is E. I. Fraser in reverse!" cried Dwyer.

"Exactly; I didn't think you'd miss that. An easy way to enable a man to remember the name under which he planted the money."

"That's interesting!"

"Yes; what's more interesting is that Fraser, whose handwriting looks to me identical with the Sarfie signature, is still in Parramatta Gaol!"

In the midst of a whistle, Dwyer had to catch his breath and hang on. The red lights ahead had disappeared; but the swift, silent, moving car lurched swiftly around a sharp turn and the red dots glowed ahead once more.

"He couldn't sign the cheques, then," he remarked, dreading the reply. .

"No; Sorrell did that. He admitted to me his ability to forge signatures. The untouched account has given him the opportunity. Very probably he discovered that the money, was lost and Fraser was in gaol. Everything was cleverly worked. Fraser is due to come cut of gaol shortly and there is, likely to be trouble; Sorrell prepares for his defence of subconscious actions."

Dwyer felt intensely sorry, especially for Rhoda, but the evidence seemed damning.

The lights had disappeared and the car swerved in rounding another sharp bend to pick up the trail again. There was an element of danger in rushing through the night with the headlights turned off.

"Sorrell isn't the type of a crook," he protested.

"Any man is likely to go crook," said Tonkin, cynically, "when opportunity presents a temptation strong enough. That untouched account must have tantalised him. Now, no doubt, he is sorry. Net being a crook, the business worries him."

The cars, going at a fast pace, had covered miles, and were well out in the country now. A clouded moon gave sufficient light to enable the driver to see the roadway. Like phantoms, the cars sped through the night.

The idea that he was involved in running Sorrell to earth made Dwyer feel sick; there would be no thanks from Rhoda for that! But there was something else. At least they were protecting Sorrell, as well as pursuing him. There was something extremely sinister about the way the men in the other car had shadowed Sorrell's.

He was used to the reticence of Detective-Sergeant Tonkin; and, indeed, the swift movement of the car over rough roads, and its consequent jolting, gave little opportunity for talk.

"Have you discovered anything about these men?" he said at last.

"We traced the registration, from the number you gave us. The owner is—"

He was interrupted by an exclamation from the driver. The red dots ahead had disappeared again, and the driver, picking them up once more, had found that the two cars had left the road. The two red dots were close together, stationary, in an open patch of bush.

The driver had brought the car noiselessly to a standstill. Its occupants, peeling out, could see a group of shadows moving away from the cars. Tonkin leaped out, followed by Dwyer, and the uniformed man who had been seated by the driver.

"That's Sorrell a little ahead. I can tell him by the droop of his shoulders," whispered Dwyer. "He seems to be perfectly unconscious of the men following him as if he was in one of those subconscious moods he told us about."

A hope of Sorell's innocence had leapt again on his heart, but Tonkin demolished it.

"Or in league with them," he commented cynically. "That's a clever story of his, of course; but I don't believe it."

Soft-footed the three crept over the ground, trailing the shadows, and, when possible, keeping trees between them and the pursued. The ground fell steeply and shortly the shadows had disappeared. The representatives of the law went on cautiously.

"This way!" ordered Tonkin in a whisper. Following him, they moved sideway along a gully into which they had come. Around a hanging bluff they came suddenly upon a hut, showing darkly against the moon-greyed bushes.

There was no alarm as they approached until they were able to peer into the hut, in which a small light twinkled.

It came from a lamp, which Sorrell very evidently had lighted. Just inside the doorway three men were grouped, watching with intent interest Sorrell as he worked in the remote corner. He had dragged aside a canvas stretcher which had covered the spot where he was digging. Shortly he threw aside a spade and heaved open a box, which was lying in the hole revealed. There were piled bundles inside, that looked like notes.

A gasp came from one of the men in the hut, and he turned towards his companions.  As he did so, his eyes looked out and saw figures beyond the open door. Uttering an exclamation, his hand shot towards, his hip pocket.

"Put those hands up!" commanded Dwyer, the quickest of the three, his service revolver in his hand.

But the man's hand thrust forward, and there was a flash. Dwyer's revolver flashed out the same moment, and with a cry of pain the weapon was dropped.

There was no more resistance, as Tonkin took an authoritative hand. Sorrell, disturbed, was facing the group now, staring limply and wonderingly.

"What's happened? Where am I?" he demanded.

"That's fair acting, Sorrell," sneered Tonkin. "You'd better come over here and join your friends. Partridge, get that box of notes out; we'll take it with us."

"You've got nothing on us, Tonkin," protested one of the men. "My mate here fired a shot, certainly; but he didn't know you were police."

"We've got the Macedon hold-up on you, Bryant," retorted Tonkin. "That's what we've got. Fraser's doing his term, but you were the fellows who were with him, and we can fit you, now."

Bryant laughed hoarsely.

"Well, go your hardest," he said. "I don't care so much as long as Fraser doesn't get the loot. The cow was trying to double-cross us and get away with the lot. He knew we'd be after his tail directly he leaves Parramatta, so he was getting the cash away. He'd told us that the loot was safe in the Servicetown bank, but, of course, we couldn't get hold of it. We didn't know the name of the account."

"Shut up, Darkie!" vociferated the man who had been wounded. "You'll—"

"I tell you, I don't care, as long as Fraser doesn't get that cash when he comes out. I'm out to beat him, if I have to do ten years! Mesmerism— that was what did it! One time I came back from Brisbane, when I was doing well there, just on a sort of impulse, and Fraser laughs at me. Tells me that he wanted me and he willed me to come. Always practising mesmerism, he was; he reckoned he could influence a man miles away by concentrating on him; and Peters, who was in Parramatta with him, says he was concentrating on it there. To beat us."

"That let's Sorrell out, doesn't it?" said Dwyer, joyfully, as the party made its way back towards the cars. When Tonkin nodded, he dropped back to talk comfortingly to the bank manager, who was dazedly stumbling along with the party. He was thinking mainly, however, of the delight of being the one to break the news of the solution of the mystery to Rhoda Sorrell.

________________

2: The Little Green Devils

James Francis Dwyer

1874-1952

Romance, January 1920

Australian born American author of many short stories.  Story produced by Matthias Kaether and Roy Glashan of Roy Glashan's Library

THE Broadway subway trains running northward take a sudden leap out of their black burrow when they get up near Manhattan Street and, apparently much to their own surprise, rush along for a few hundred yards in the full light of day. Riding the high trestles they roar noisily, palpably endeavoring to attract attention to their elevated position, but the dark tunnel again springs up before them, and, with a strange purring sound that might be construed into a note of thankfulness, they disappear into the darkness.

One can make curious comparisons with the Broadway trains. Poets, politicians, actors, authors, pugilists, pragmatists, parsons, et al., imitate the trains. They burrow for years in a darkness lit only by the dim lights of ambition; then suddenly they roar into the limelight, prance for a moment upon the high trestles of Fame, then on into oblivion. A little unlike the trains, though, they never come back!

But, and here we come to the subject of this story, there are gems in the world— great and wonderful gems with careers analogous to the subway trains. They are what the big jewelers call "unpedigreed gems." At long, long intervals they appear upon the market, carrying with them no history of their wanderings, and they excite suspicion. They are spoken of in whispers; their value depreciates. They become the Magdalenes of the trade, very beautiful without a doubt, but they are not listed correctly in the "Who's Who" of the gem world in which proper legitimate gems like the Kohinoor have records that rival that of Caesar's wife. Two such outlaws are "The Little Green Devils."

FREDERICK OSWALD BARNARD, the original "F.O.B." of Detroit, Michigan, knew a little of outlaw gems when the small Tatar, with the microscopic brow and the eyes in which terror danced on pin-points of light, called upon him. Old F.O.B. was in his own suite at the Grand Hotel des Wagons-Lits in Pekin, and the undersized Tatar had been brought to the rooms by two fat and important Chinamen who had much difficulty in keeping him there.

A wild suspicious bird was the Tatar. He pulled his sheepskin coat tighter and watched every movement of F.O.B., the secretary and the two men who had introduced him. He was taking no chances with the company and he did not conceal his distrust. Old Barnard, who indexed every person at first sight and never altered the entry, spoke to his secretary in a whisper when the Tatar was being cajoled to enter the reception room.

"If I had a billion for every throat that little hound has cut," he growled, "I'd buy up every Liberty-loan bond in the U.S."

"And you'd have a little left then, sir," murmured the secretary.

The largest and more elaborately robed of the two Chinamen introduced the Tatar, gripping him firmly by the collar as he spoke.

"This is the man, your Excellency," he said, speaking perfect English. "They are now with him."

"Very good," said the man from Detroit. "Take no notice of me. Go ahead in your own little way and make him put his goods upon the table. I'm ready to examine them. I have an expert in the next room."

The two Chinamen did proceed in their own way. The smaller poured out a stream of unintelligible abuse upon the Tatar, but the owner of the sheepskin coat drew that article tighter around his lean body and whined curiously.

"He wants all the doors and windows locked and bolted." explained the big Chinaman. "He is afraid of the friends of The Little Green Devils."

"What friends?" asked old F.O.B.

"Friends we can not see," said the Chinaman gravely. "The friends of the air that they know."

Barnard spoke to his secretary.

"Let Kuhn in here," he said, "then bolt the doors."

The secretary brought the expert, a tall lean and very solemn person, who, like all experts, looked as if he thought a trap was being constructed into which it was hoped he would fall and smash his carefully built-up reputation. He mistrusted the yielding carpet, the three Orientals, the quick, sure-footed secretary. He clutched the magnifying glass in his coat pocket, it was the only thing upon which he relied implicitly.

"Now," said Barnard, smiling at the two Chinamen, "the little set is ready. Shoot!"

Again the smaller of the two Celestials spoke hurriedly to the Tatar, whose suspicions were evidently not completely allayed. The appearance of the expert had startled him, but at last convinced that Kuhn was not dangerous, he thrust his hand within the hairy sheepskin jacket and drew forth a ball of the thick, knot-covered linen they make on the hand looms in the northern provinces. He unrolled it with fierce quick gestures, tearing off the last yard of wrapping to the accompaniment of a little crooning song; then, with a flourish, he laid something down upon the teakwood table.

The heads of Kuhn, F.O.B., the secretary and the two Chinamen came slowly forward, drawn by the invisible halters of a curiosity that strangled nonchalance, and a choking silence came into the room.

It was the big Chinaman who broke the stillness.

"Those, your Excellency," he said, addressing Frederick Oswald Barnard, "are The Little Green Devils."

Old F.O.B. looked at the two Chinamen, the expert, the secretary, and the small-eyed Tatar, who still held high the linen bandage as if threatening the things upon the table; then F.O.B. laughed in a queer, strained manner.

"Just so," he murmured. "Just so. Well we might— we might get down to business."

The secretary looked at his chief. He had seen Barnard take over a three-million-dollar business without the least excitement. Now his chief was stammering like a youth making his first investment!

The long fingers of Kuhn went slowly out and clutched one of The Little Green Devils. He brought it toward the magnifying glass and thrust it beneath it. A careful man was Kuhn. He had been brought to the Wagons-Lits to examine a pair of ear-rings whose value was enormous, and he intended to do the work thoroughly. Very slowly, very carefully, without bestowing a glance or a word upon the others, he made his examination, submitting the stones to careful tests, scrutinizing them intently for flaws.

After a long, long time he pushed the pair back to the center of the table, frowned as if their flawless beauty still puzzled him, put his glass back into his coat-pocket and whispered softly into the ear of Barnard who had lowered his head to receive the report.

Old F.O.B. straightened himself and signaled the secretary.

"Go and ask Miss Stephanie to come here," he said. "It is silly to buy them unless she likes them."

The Tatar immediately intimated that the gems should be covered while the door was open, and Kuhn placed a jade bowl over them, lowering it gently, reluctantly, on the little bed of green fire that burned in the center of the black table. Kuhn loved them, and yet, with the curious mental twist of the detector of flaws, he hated them. Beauty is detestable to the critic; the skillful vice investigator dislikes the spotlessly pure who offer no opportunities to the art of spying.

As it is impossible to describe the fire and deviltry of the wonderful gems, so, also, must the beauty and sweetness of Stephanie Barnard be left to the reader's imagination. Yuan Shih-Kai, who had a quick tongue, said upon seeing Stephanie Barnard:

"Then the American Beauty is not a flower! I am a fool because I always thought it the name of a rose!"

She came into the room looking a little startled, a little afraid, showing in her gentle movements a belief that she was a little out of place. And she certainly was. The room when she entered it was charged with a peculiar hectic atmosphere brought about by the presence of the gems. But the entry of the girl brought a soothing, quieting effect. The secretary, who was the most self-possessed of the six men, noted the immediate effect her arrival had upon old F.O.B. Barnard was a little wrought up after his first glimpse of the gems, but the coming of his daughter acted like a charm. He pulled himself together, obtained control of his face and brought back to his voice the quiet firm timbre that momentary excitement had destroyed.

"Stephanie," he said, pointing to the jade bowl, "we have here a pair of stones that I thought you might like."

Kuhn lifted the bowl, and the girl, with exquisite grace, moved forward and leaned over the little bed of green fire. All watched her. Even the half-crazed Tatar stopped tugging at his sheepskin coat and stared at the lovely face and the splendidly graceful throat, the latter showing to advantage as the girl leaned forward to examine the gems.

The men sensed their own queerness in her presence. Kuhn, the expert, felt a little ashamed of his morbid hatred of the gems— a hatred born of his inability to detect a flaw in their matchless beauty. The two Chinamen endeavored to crush the greed that broke down the barriers of celestial stoicism and paraded boldly upon their faces. The featherweight intellect of the Tatar worked manfully to keep his fingers from the suffering sheepskin coat.

For fully five minutes the girl stared at the gems without speaking; then with a look of absolute amazement tinged with something akin to supernatural fear upon her beautiful face, she turned to her father.

"Oh, Daddy!" she cried. "I— I have never seen anything so wonderful! They are so strange that they make me just a little— just a little afraid of them!"

Barnard laughed softly, then stepped forward and patted her little white hands.

"I'm glad you like them, Stephanie," he said. "I am going to buy them for you as a birthday present. Mr. Kuhn has just examined them and he thinks the stones are perfect."

Kuhn, who at the moment had his suspicious glance still upon the gems as if his eyes were unable to believe in the absolute flawlessness of The Little Green Devils, turned quickly and bowed to the girl.

"They are without equal," he said grudgingly. "I have never seen such stones. I have heard of these, heard of them years and years ago when I was at Canton, but I thought the story that was told to me was something from a child's fairy-book. They told me then that the gems possessed some strange power."

The larger of the two Chinamen seized the opportunity to air his knowledge. He stroked his fat throat, patted his silken vestlet and addressed Stephanie.

"They have a power as this gentleman observes," he said, his voice as oily as his moon-shaped face. "It is an extraordinary power. It can be obtained by those who own them, and then only at the expense of the gems. It is so, my lady. If any person who owns these beautiful jewels should desire something very, very much, they must throw the gems away, throw them away in a manner which to them makes recovery impossible."

He stepped closer to Stephanie Barnard and lowered his voice.

"It is said," he whispered, "and I who am a fool know not how true it is, that the glorious Empress Dowager of China once owned these stones. Yes! Yes! She, and again I speak from hearsay, flung them into the Yangtze-Kiang from the window of her palanquin when she was crossing the river on her way to Peking. She wanted a throne, and she was willing to sacrifice everything!"

"Oh!" murmured the girl. "And how were they recovered?"

"By a fisherman beneath the bridge." answered the narrator. "The gems must be tied together before they are thrown away, and as they came through the air they made an arc of green fire which the fisherman saw. He thought a god was falling from the heavens and he flung out his hand-net and into it fell the gems. The people who wonder at the circumstances that brought an unknown woman to the throne of China know nothing of The Little Green Devils."

The narrator's countryman nodded his head viciously as if his, forehead was a hammer that drove the nails of truth into the story. After he had performed this work to his own satisfaction he decided to add further glory to the gems.

"There was a girl at Tai-ping," he began, his voice full and sonorous, "a girl to whom a rich merchant Of Nanking had done a dreadful wrong. And this girl's father bought The Little Green Devils from the fisherman who caught them as they fell from the bridge. The father gave the jewels to the girl as a wedding present, but the girl knew that there would be no wedding. And in the madness that came upon her she held up her hands to the sky and offered The Little Green Devils for the rich man's heart!

"She flung the gems from the edge of a great cliff, O beautiful lady, first tying them together with a lock of her hair, and then went her way home. But on her way she came to a place where a robbery had been committed. Some one had killed a merchant. The girl knelt down and looked at the battered face, and lo, it was the face of her lover! And his heart, the heart for which she had offered the gems, was nailed to a tree near-by!"

"Oh, how dreadful!" gasped Stephanie. "How horrible!"

"I tell it to show the power of the gems," said the Chinaman. "They have great power. When the girl flung them from the cliff they fell at the feet of the man who murdered the merchant and who was even then fleeing down the side of the mountain, and he brought them to my partner and me. Listen, lady, the murderer is in this room, but do not look at him. He has cut many throats, and he would cut mine, too, if he knew what I am telling you!"

Stephanie Barnard tried hard to keep her splendid eyes from surveying the person in the sheepskin coat, but she failed. And the Tatar; catching her frightened glance, felt sure that the Chinaman had been dragging his iniquities into the light.

His little ferret eyes flashed malignantly, and the low brow was transformed into three furrows of hate.

It was Barnard's secretary who averted a breach of the peace. He presented a great bundle of bills to his master, and the sight of the money made the Tatar forget the Chinaman. He became a whining, money-mad pariah, his hairy hands outstretched to F.O.B., and his yellow teeth made a peculiar clicking sound as Frederick Oswald Barnard counted the bills into his hands. The two Chinamen smiled as they received their commission; then Kuhn, the expert, took up The Little Green Devils and passed them to Barnard who handed them to Stephanie.

The Tatar, going out the door, his money hidden beneath his sheepskin coat, spoke rapidly to the larger of the two Chinamen, and the Chinaman translated to Stephanie Barnard.

"He says," remarked, the unsmiling celestial, "that the last owner of the gems got the heart of a dead man in return for them, but it is far better to get the heart of a live man. Therefore, he says, if you want something great do not delay the sacrifice of the stones. I bid you good morning, my lady."

F.O.B. and his beautiful daughter left Peking two days later, Stephanie hugging to her bosom The Little Green Devils for which her father had paid a price that was unbelievable. She thought often of the stories which the two Chinamen had told of the power they wielded. She visualized both stories they told. She saw the ambitious girl who wished to rule an empire passing over the yellow Yangtze-Kiang in her palanquin. She pictured her, suddenly overcome by the desire to rule, tearing from her ears the wonderful gems and tossing them into the tumbling waters.

"Oh, how could she?" she would murmur again and again, when in the privacy of her own bedchamber she would study the carving of the devils, the work, of some long-dead Eastern lapidary who, so it would seem, had made the pattern strange and intricate with the desire to hold the gems in his possession for a long, long time. "I wouldn't throw you away for a thousand thrones!" she would cry. "No, no, no!"

And she thought often that the cunningly-carved little devils grinned back at her as if they had heard similar protestations through the years. At times they looked strangely alive to Stephanie. Wonderfully old they were, those two little pariahs of the world of gems!

She thought of the other story with a shudder. She wondered what the girl thought when she came upon the heart for which she had hurled the gems into space!

"But you didn't kill him!" Stephanie would cry, kissing one green emerald, and then, with a "Neither did you!" kissing its companion. "It was the horrid man in the sheepskin coat that murdered her lover!"

Very, very childish and believing was Stephanie Barnard. She had at twenty the precious power of belief that the years unfortunately destroy. Implicitly and firmly she believed in the power of The Little Green Devils that she loved.

BARNARD and Stephanie drifted away over hot, scented seas away up to Yokohama, and then over roads deep with cherry blossoms they went to Nikko. It was Stephanie's wish to go to Nikko.

Where the holy come and go,

Where the cherry blossoms blow,

Where the gods speak soft and low—

At Nikko in the Spring.

And at Nikko, wonderful to relate, Stephanie Barnard of Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A., met a townsman! He was painting there— painting the sanctuaries built by the great shoguns of the Tokugawa dynasty. His name was Jack Beecher, and way back in a misty beautiful past, way back before Frederick Oswald Barnard had seized opportunity by the forelock and hog-tied the creature by forming overnight The Great American Production & Distribution Company, Jack and Stephanie had played together in the yards of two wooden houses in a very unaristocratic neighborhood in old Detroit.

And the years rolled away at Nikko— Nikko where the old grow young, and where the youthful become children again. Jack was poor, very poor, while Stephanie was dreadfully rich, but at Nikko worldly riches do not count. The prince prays with the beggar in the century-old shrines, so Jack Beecher and Stephanie were not aware of the abyss that separated them as they strolled around in the sweet stillness and examined holy places that the little green hands of the dead years had patted softly.

Old F.O.B. noticed, but to F.O.B. Nikko was a place where people did unconventional things which they viewed with a shudder when they reached Chicago, London, Detroit, or whatever other spot where their social gods sat in judgment. Mr. Barnard's ideas upon art were very vague. Some one had once told him that a great artist had said that art invaded the hovel of the pauper as well as the palace of the prince, and old F.O.B., with the story in mind, devoutly hoped that it would dodge his Detroit mansion which was midway from hovel and the palace. But he was kind to Stephanie and he let her have her own way.

THE Barnards journeyed up to Yamagata and then came back to Yokohama where F.O.B. had engaged the finest suites on the S.S. Mongolia homeward-bound to San Francisco. And it was on the morning when Mr. Barnard and Stephanie rickshawed down the Bund from the Grand Hotel that F.O.B. realized the wisdom of that old motto which asserts that a stitch in time saves nine. It was while the rickshaws were threading a way through the crowded thoroughfare that Stephanie's wonderful eyes found Mr. Jack Beecher, and Mr. Beecher, without being told that F.O.B. and his daughter were returning to the United States on the Mongolia, hurriedly announced that he had just been able to get the last available berth upon that steamer.

"Extraordinary luck!" he cried. "Amazing good fortune!"

"H'm," said F.O.B.

"I stupidly left it till the last minute," burbled the artist. "Didn't think about going till the other day, then I got homesick and all that and packed hurriedly."

"Quite so," said Barnard dryly. "But it's unwise to leave things till the last moment. You should have booked your berth when we booked ours. I wired the agents from Nikko."

"You going on the Mongolia?" cried Beecher. "You and Miss Stephanie? Why that— that is perfectly splendid! It's bully!"

How amazed he was! He said it was one of the most extraordinary coincidences that he had ever heard of, and, although old F.O.B. gave no manifestations of astonishment, Stephanie was brave enough to support Beecher in his assertions.

"It is a strange happening," she stammered, her beautiful face warmed with soft blushes. "We— we say good-by to you at Nikko and find now that you are going back to America by the same boat!"

Old F.O.B. coldly ventured an pinion regarding the weather, and the interview ended. Later, however, as he and Stephanie sat upon the deck of the Mongolia, he broached the Beecher matter.

"Stephanie," he said, "that young painter is chasing you."

"Chasing me, daddy?"

"Sure! That bronze idol in your cabin could tell you that. I've got no objection to what he is but I object to what he does. Nobody loves an artist, at least no one that has a million and a beautiful daughter."

"But, daddy!" cried Stephanie, "Jack does—"

"Don't let us quarrel. You're a sensible girl and you know that things that go at Nikko would raise old Nick at Detroit. It's a bad pun, girlie, but it carries my meaning."

LOVE, say the Arabs, uses the little grains of the desert, the scents of the flowers and the breezes of the dawn. The wild doves are the slaves of love, and the date-palm signals messages with its waving fronds. And so, as the Mongolia moved eastward, the ocean equivalent to Cupid's desert helpers, brought Jack Beecher and Stephanie Barnard closer to each other. There was little conversation between them and no meetings that F.O.B. could frown at; but the winds, the sunshine, the stars and the blue, blue sky fought against parental control as they always have fought since the first primitive wench put a chain of red berries around her neck and crept out of the sleeping kampong to meet a lover in the moonlight.

F.O.B. seemed perfectly happy. On the first day out he found in the smoke-room of the Mongolia a dandified person who seemed to exude wealth, and later he introduced the dandy to Stephanie.

"The Baron Rossino," he said, leading the dandy to his daughter's deck chair.

"The Baron has been in every port in the world."

The Baron admitted unblushingly that he had traveled extensively, and a few minutes later, when F.O.B. went in search of a steward, he pointedly informed Stephanie that in all his travels he had never seen a vista more beautiful than the one he was enjoying at that moment. Stephanie was uneasy, and when the Baron gave a further exhibition of bad taste by commenting upon The Little Green Devils, she was only too willing to hide her embarrassment by telling the story of the gems.

Baron Rossino was interested. He was more than interested. He asked where they were purchased, and from whom; and after much skillful maneuvering he endeavored to find out their value.

"I don't know what they are worth," said Stephanie, then as she glanced at the little eyes of the Baron she was startled by the light of greed that showed within them.

"I don't like him!" she told Jack Beecher when Jack rescued her from the Baron's conversational grip. "I think he's horrid! No American would be half as impertinent."

The artist gritted his teeth, but he said nothing. He had overhead the Baron as he bragged to old F.O.B. in the smoking room, and he realized that the titled person would be his particular bête noire on the voyage. Half-formed plans of irritating the Baron sprang into his head. He thought of jumping hard upon Rossino's patent leather shoes, of pouring a glass of liqueur over his glossy black hair; he even thought of a dark night and a quick push over a deck-rail!

For three days the Baron Rossino devoted to Stephanie all the time he could spare from the card-tables. A girl in a deck chair is the victim of a persistent male, and Stephanie shuddered at the dandy's approach. Books were no shield against him, neither was feigned sleep. Jack Beecher, always watchful, loafing in the distance, was the girl's only salvation.

"You promised to walk with me, Miss Stephanie," he would remark, "Sorry, Baron, to interrupt your story."

Old F.O.B. at times regretted his action in introducing the Baron to his daughter. On the third day out an American cavalry officer had refused to sit in a card game with the Baron at the table, and the Baron had not resented the insult.

And then on the fifth night out from Yokohama a coral reef built by polyps through innumerable years was brought into the game by Daniel Cupid. This uncharted point that had climbed inch by inch toward the surface and had cunningly evaded those who map the waters of the deep drove itself deep into the hull of the Mongolia, and the good ship quivered at the thrust. The vicious sword that the years had made tore a tremendous hole, and twenty minutes after the vessel struck, the captain decided that the boats were much safer than the unfortunate ship.

Jack Beecher found Stephanie and her father on the deck, the old man endeavoring to protect the girl from the feet and shoulders of sailors who rushed backward and forward to carry out the commands that came from the bridge. The girl was calm and she spoke in a whisper to the artist.

"Would you do me a great, great service?" she asked. "Would you? My— my ear-rings are in my cabin. On the dressing-table. I— I want them. You know they have a great power and— and if father's life was in danger— Oh, Jack, please go and get them! Please!"

The lights went out as Jack Beecher reached the door of Stephanie's stateroom. Through a darkness that was stifling he groped his way toward the dressing-table. He moved carefully, his feet muffled by the thick carpet.

Beecher's hand touched the table, and his fingers moved forward gropingly in search of The Little Green Devils. Stephanie, with her childlike belief in their power, wanted them to save the life of her father, and he was determined that he would get them if he stayed in the cabin till the Mongolia took her long dive.

Slowly, carefully, the sensitive fingers of the artist moved across the table, feeling each object they touched. Suddenly the fingers of the right hand came in contact with something that made Beecher quickly withdraw his hands and brace himself for a shock. His fingers had touched a human hand, a hand that was moving slowly across the dressing-table as if its owner sought the same objects as the artist!

Beecher waited. There was absolute stillness in the cabin. The other occupant, aware of the artist's presence, was also awaiting an attack.

For over a minute there was no movement on the part of either; then the artist took a step forward, and the step provoked an immediate attack on the part of the unknown. Beecher's shoe struck the leg of the table, and something heavy, evidently a small mirror, hurtled by his head and smashed itself into fragments against the cabin wall. The artist sprang into the darkness, cannoned heavily against a body braced to receive his attack, and the battle was on.

They fell upon the floor and threshed around like a pair of gigantic reptiles. They clawed themselves up by the aid of chairs and tables and fell again to the carpeted floor, because the list of the ship made it impossible for them to battle while standing erect.

There was no attempt at science. It was a mad, wild rough-and-tumble fight in the dark. From above and around them came harsh cries and the patter of feet, the creaking of blocks and the wild clatter of breaking china; but they fought in silence.

They broke apart and for an instant lost each other. Beecher leaped forward, and a little fiery shaft of pain struck deep into his right side. He tried to understand what had happened. There was no explosion, so no shot had been fired. Yet he was wounded. He felt his side, and knew that his fingers were wet. Wet with blood! And upon the deck Stephanie was waiting for him to bring her the precious gems in which she had such great faith.

A slight noise came out of a corner of the cabin, and with a howl of rage Beecher sprang. He caught the unknown by the neck, thrust him against the cabin wall, then rolled with him to the floor as the Mongolia took a sharp sudden list to port. The other tried to break the grip but the artist had a death-hold. He saw Stephanie waiting, and his fingers burrowed deeper into the throat of the robber and would-be murderer.

The unknown's struggles lessened, then ceased altogether. Beecher sprang to his feet and staggered to the dressing-table. Hurriedly, madly, he clawed among the little silver knick-knacks that littered it, till with a great cry of joy, he found The Little Green Devils! He felt his way to the door, stumbling over the man with whom he had fought. The half-choked one unloosed an oath, and Beecher for the first time knew with whom he had been fighting. It was Baron Rossino!

On the dark deck of the Mongolia he found Stephanie, her father and the husky first officer who was vainly endeavoring to drag the girl to a boat.

"But I must wait for him!" she protested. "I told him to get them, and I—

"I've got them!" gasped Beecher. "Hurry! Hurry! She's going!"

It seemed as if the Mongolia had waited for Beecher's arrival upon deck to make preparations for her last plunge. She quivered like a cold hound, lifted herself for an instant, then slowly settled.

It was every one for himself at that moment, and Jack Beecher was handicapped by the fact that three inches of steel had entered his ribs some few minutes before.

Clinging to the davit-lines, he helped Stephanie into the boat—Stephanie clasping her Little Green Devils. Down went Barnard and the first officer; then, as if dissatisfied with her exit, the Mongolia humped her stern suddenly, and Beecher, faint with loss of blood, was thrown from the ropes into the water!

Stephanie screamed as the first officer shouted out an order. The boat was thrust away from the side of the ship, and a sailor swung a lantern in a circle.

"We'll get him!" cried the officer. "He'll come up!"

There was an interval of intense quiet. The Pacific sucked at the big ship; no one spoke. The sailor swung the lantern monotonously, and as the light fell upon the white hand of Stephanie Barnard she opened it and looked at the gems it contained. And she saw more than The Little Green Devils. Her hand was wet— wet with blood that was upon the jewels when Beecher handed them to her!

In an instant the girl realized the cause of his delay below deck. With frantic haste she knotted her tiny lace handkerchief around the two wonderfully carved gems and thrust them quickly over the side of the boat!

A sailor in the bow shouted a warning and the boat shot forward. The big first officer leaned far out and gripped something, two sailors came to his assistance, and Jack Beecher was dragged into the boat.

"Pull away!" shouted the officer, "Give it to her. Every ounce, boys! The old ship is going!"

FIVE minutes later, Jack Beecher whispered to Stephanie, who had managed to bind up the knife wound.

"I did give you your earrings, didn't I?" he murmured. "Things got a bit mixed with me after I got that jab. But I did give them to you; tell me I did?"

"Yes, yes," stammered the girl. "You gave them to me, Jack."

"Show them to me so that I won't think you're trying to let me down easy," he gasped. "I— I was a little silly when I got on deck, Stephanie, but if I saw them—"

"Jack," she said, her face close to his, "they— they slipped from my hand a moment after you fell into the water."

And old F.O.B. of Detroit, Michigan, sitting close to them in the darkness, overheard. It was then that he recalled the remark of the great Whistler about Art entering the hovel of the pauper and the palace of the prince. F.O.B. had a mighty big idea that the Detroit mansion would house it, too!

____________

3: Wolfmaster

Bertram Atkey

1880-1952

Journal (Adelaide) 10 Feb 1923

The Corner Magazine, Vol 1, No 1, Sep 1922

Atkey was a prolific author, noted for several "series", such as the many many short stories featuring Smiler Bunn, and the "Easy Street Experts". However, "Wolfmaster" is not a series story, but a stand-alone.

IT WAS during his idle hour between the two evening shows that Landsman, the wolf tamer, saw her again— the first time for five years. He was strolling alone— Landsman was usually alone— past the crowd of little tables at the big cafe in the southern end of the City of Pleasure and was caught by something in the profile of a woman sitting at a corner table, rather secluded by one of the wings of white and gold trellis which divided the cafe from the floridly naved Place of Enchantment adjoining.

Marian! Was it? Then he stopped abruptly, and as he stopped she looked up, straight at him, as though conscious of the grey, keen eyes fixed upon her.

Yes! It was Marian— looking older, even older than he would have expected to see her after only five years, thinner and paler, too. But Marian for all that. The touch of colour on her cheeks was not quite the colour it had been in the old days, and her eyes were bigger, and seemed darker— but she was still so pretty to him. Not quite the name prettiness— no longer the woman who, like most women, has not been wholly untouched by trouble. But still so charming.

She had always been the one woman to Landsman— indeed it was only because she was so much to him that he had been able to bring himself to the point of yielding her to Ellis. If he had thought less of her happiness and more of his own he could never have done that....

She stared for an instant, her expression strangely fixed. Then she smiled nervously and blushed deeply. The wolf tamer pushed past the noisy crowded tables that parted them, and faced her.

"Oh, Marian—Mrs. Ellis— I am— so glad. It seems like a— a sort of dream to see you here again—in this old show!"

"Why— it is Jack Landsman!"

That deep, hot, painful blush was ebbing now, but it seemed to him that she was oddly nervous. Her lips trembled— and her eyes glanced swiftly about the tables before she really faced him.

Then she began to talk— to say how pleased she was to see him again— looking' so fit— not a day older. She talked quickly as though anxious to keep him I from talking— from asking questions.

Landsman let her talk, watching her. He was accustomed to glean almost as much from eyes as from words. He had long ago learned that from certain grey and tawny pupils of his not far away— behind their bars. And it was -good to hear her voice again. It was lower, more restrained, than it had been in the old days. She was dressed fairly well, almost quite well— and she seemed in good spirits. But he was not quite satisfied with her eyes.

Landsman did not hurry. He never hurried— animal tamers learn to be swift, but they cannot afford to be hurried.  Yet, presently, it was he who was talking most— asking questions.

"Yes, I have been with the same show ever since we were here last," he told her. "Nothing exciting has yet happened to me."

She looked at him with a sudden curious intent.

"Are you married, Jack?" she asked.

Landsman shook his head, with a little smile on his firm, thinnish lips. His eyes were fixed in a steady friendly stare upon hers.

"No... not married. I am just the same quiet, old— stick— as ever, Marian. Now tell me about yourself! Honest. We were pretty good friends in those old days—and we used to be frank. I've often wondered about you. Are you happy, Marian?"

"Happy? Yes, very." Her eyes flickered to his, then swiftly away again. "Very happy— for an old married woman, Jack. "It isn't quite the same kind of happiness as— it used to be, when we were engaged and five years younger. Quieter— more cares. But I am very happy."

The wolf tamer's square, roughly chiselled, masculinely good-looking face shadowed a little. He saw that she was not speaking the truth. But he accepted what she said.

"I am glad of that, my dear," he said slowly. "It's the best news I've heard for a long time. Any children?"

"She shook her head. "And Ellis—your husband—is kind to you?"

He saw her lip corners droop before she smiled. "Very, Jack. He looks after me— well. I've no complaints." But her eyes were full of misery.

"I'm glad of that, too," said Landsman in his deep voice. "For it was on that condition that I released you, Marian. George Ellis swore to me that he would never give you cause to regret marrying him— or me cause to regret giving you up. I wouldn't have parted with you for less. It's splendid to hear from your own lips that things are all right with you. But I should like to meet—"

He broke off abruptly at a sudden clamour from a building not far from the cafe—an animal clamour that brought the faces of all the pleasure-seekers at the tables sharply round, staring. A succession of deep, short, coughing roars intermingled with a peculiar feline snarling, had burst suddenly from the "jungle" building. Landsman sprang up, then bent swiftly to the girl he had loved.

"Don't go. It's nothing much. The tigers are fighting. They've been queer for the last day or two.  It's no affair of mine— but I don't want the new wolves upset. I'll be back!  You won't go, Marian, will you?"

"No."

Landsman went swiftly down to the place of cages. He had spoken the bars truth when he Barf that the ugly noise was not serious. A sharp flaring up of the ever latent ferocity of the beasts, a struggle, darting claws, an uproar of the excited denizens of adjoining cages, a rush of keepers—and the thing was over.

Within a quarter of an hour Landsman had helped to separate the striped antagonists, quieted his own grey savages, and left was the back woman. at the table at which he had.

But she was gone.

He waited there until it was time to go down for his "show." But she did not return.

Her eyes haunted him. He had seen in them something with which he was familiar. The same look, deep down behind a blank, aloof, apparently unseeing indifference, was to be caught occasionally in the eyes of every one of the caged, cowed animals of the "Jungle."

She had said that she was happy, that Ellis cared for her— but Landsman knew, as she spoke, that it was untrue. She had blushed deeply at sight of him. He was unversed in the ways of women, but his instinct told him that the deep flame of colour was not caused by pleasure, or surprise. It had sprung from something deeper than that— perhaps from bitter humiliation, mortification.

She had chosen Ellis against the advice of many people, five years go, and Landsman had released her from her promise to him. If she had made a mistake— if she had at last realized that she had made a mistake— then he could understand that a woman might blush like that... once, And, afterwards, try to carry things off lightly. But now she was gone— swallowed up among London's millions.

The wolf tamer felt that he would never see her again. And he knew that he loved her still. He left the table reluctantly, muttering:— Ellis lied. He had broken his part of the bargain!"

HIS MIND went back to the theatrical declaration of the slick, smooth, too smartly dressed man who had infatuated Marian.

"I know what it means to you, Landsman, to do this— the way you have. Giving her up like this— for her own sake. And I'll swear that she shall never regret it. I'll take care of her. You can— can— eh?— set your wolves on to me if I break my word. Can I say fairer than that?"...

But he had broken his word. Landsman was quite sure of that. Only— he had lost sight of Marian before be could prove it.

A month passed and though his eyes sought ever among the myriad faces of the crowded City of Pleasure the wolf tamer saw her no more. His hope that she would come again was dwindling fast when, one evening, glancing at the crowd assembled before the great showcase just as he was at the point of entering to put his wolves through their show, he caught another face he knew.

Ellis! He was sitting in the third row of seats with a woman— for a moment Landsman's pulse quickened, then calmed. It was not Marian. They were laughing, and talking excitedly, the woman making some parade of her cigarette. It then occurred to the wolf tamer that both had dined a little too liberally.

"Get going, Jack. You're a bit late, Belmore's just finishing."

The voice of the manager brought his eyes from Ellis. Landsman thought quickly and turned to a confrere— old Charles Groner, the conjurer, who chanced to be near.

"Charlie, d'you see the chap in evening dress, middle gangway, third row from front?"

"Sure."

"Get some article of personal clothing off him— glove, handkerchief, anything personal. It means a lot to me, old man. Anything you like in return!" he whispered sharply.

Groner nodded, without curiosity.

"All right, boy."

Landsmen hurried away to shepherd his wolves into the arena.

Ellis and the woman left before his turn was half over. A little later he sought a bar close by. He knew where to find the old conjurer.

"Here you are, Jack. These do?" Groner passed a glove and a silk handkerchief, grinning.

"Ought to have been a pickpocket, me. It was easier than sweating out a new trick, every day. What are you going to buy me?"

Groner was always thirsty, nearly always "broke."

Landsman satisfied him and went on to his quarters.

LATE that night, long after the great pleasure haunt was closed and lay in the moonlight like a deserted city of white marble, the wolf tamer went down to the dens.

"Anything wrong?" asked the watchman, drowsily.

"No. Can't sleep. Just that, that. I'm taking old Kai for a trot. Do us both good."

"Uh-uh! You oughta have my job, Mr. Landsman."

The watchman yawned and began to twist a ragged cigarette. It was a matter of utter indifference to him that Landsman should be eccentric enough to refer walking about with the great grey Russian wolf, Kai, to taking his rest like a normal man. And it was no novelty to see the wolf tamer take one of his charges for a run in the quiet hours. He had often done it before and no doubt would do it again.

The man watched Landsman, with the huge wolf in leash, move away through the fantastic shadows cast by the pinnacle and turrets of the Pleasure City, and, yawning again, settled down to the drowsy enjoyment of his cigarette....

In the deserted auditorium facing the big-domed, iron show cage. Landsman was talking softly to. the wolf.

"You knew her, Kai, old man— though you don't remember her.... I've got to find her again, Kai. D'you hear? And you have got to help me.... She had a look in her eyes that I've seen in yours, old man. She said she was happy.... but she looked at me the way I've seen you look from behind the bars sometimes.... I found her—and I lost her. You've got to take me to her home. Understand that, Kai? It's up to you!"

He passed his hand quickly over the grey, bristling shoulders, and the great wolf whined softly, nosing at the glove which Groner had sleighted from Ellis. The visit to that place of shadows, lit only by the ghostly ray of the tamer's electric torch, had excited the quick-witted beast, and for a few moments Landsman waited, silent, smoothing the stiff, coarse ruff of hair round the wolfs neck and shoulders. talking quietly.

It was, no new thing for the tamer to put Kai on to the trail of a man—though it was the first time he had done so for any other reason than amusement or to win a wager made among the show people themselves.

Queer tempered though he could be at times, Kai had long ago learned to love the tamer, and to obey him implicitly.

Whether the wolf could take him far on the trail of Ellis, Landsman doubted. Thousands of people had crossed and re crossed any trail which Ellis had left. But it was evident to Landsman the man retained his old habit of using scent— the handkerchief reeked with it, a perfume of lavender— and there was just a chance that his boots might have caught a touch of same scent.

There was a possibility that Ellis had taken a taxi or 'bus or left for his home by train, in which case neither Kai, nor the keenest-scented animal that ever followed a trial, could keep track of him. Well, he would see.

Landsman rose and led the big beast on.

Kai caught the trail instantly, and understanding perfectly what was required leaped away, nose low to the ground, whining softly with eagerness, tugging hard against the light chain. They moved like gliding shadows through the moonlit fairyland, passed out and were lost at once in the shallow, shadow-filled canyons of the streets.

The wolf did not falter nor check, and he raced away, hard held, with surprising confidence and certainty. Later, Landsman knew why the trail was so easy to the wolf. The scent on Ellis's handkerchief was "oil of lavender"— an inexpensive substitute for lavender water— and it was his habit to sprinkle drops of this liquid about his bedroom. His light evening boots had probably become impregnated with the scent.

Occasionally, policemen, silent at their ports, or slowly making their rounds, looked closely at Landsman and his grim companion. But they evidently took Kai to be some kind of huge wolf-dog, for none of them questioned or delayed the tamer.

They had not far to go. Within ten minutes Kai ran the trail to a corner house in a quiet street of tall old buildings— chiefly converted into flats. Landsman peered at the tiny brass plates by the bell-buttons. Ellis occupied the ground flat floor.

All the windows were in darkness.

"Good," said Landsman, fondling the beast at his side. "Now we know where she lives, old man. We're in luck."

He noted the name of the street, and was on the point of moving away, was half round the corner, when a taxi turned into the street and drew up outside the house Landsman had just marked. The wolf-tamer withdrew behind the angle of the wall, waiting in the hope that by some lucky chance this late comer might be Marian.

But it was Marian's husband, Ellis, who stepped out, and the woman who followed him was not Marian but the companion with whom Landsman had seen him at the "Jungle." Evidently they had come back to the flat after leaving the Pleasure City, and had gone out again.

The taxi rattled away, and Ellis fumbled for his key, talking a little thickly as he did so.

"End of a perfect month, Blanche, old girl. Been a top hole time. Pity it's all over— at least, will be over to-morrow— damn the key—"

"Are you going to meet your wife tomorrow?" The woman's voice sounded discontented and sulky.

"Yes— I shall have to. Business. Explanations.... She'll be in a fury. Don't want her to do anything silly."

"What time?"

"Nine o'clock."

"Nine in the morning?... Well, she'll be here by half-past. That means I shall have to be up and out of it before then. It's not good enough, George. I'm not stopping here to-night. I'm going on to my own flat. It s late now— and I've got no use for early rising."

The man laughed. "No you don't. You're coming in as usual. It won't hurt you to get up a couple of hours earlier than usual for once in a way."

There was a little wrangle, but it was without any real opposition by the woman. Ellis had no difficulty in overcoming her objection. The door closed on them, and Landsman moved away.

"It's only what I expected— something of that kind," he said to himself as he went. "Marian has been away for the last month— that's why I haven't seen her— and that blackguard has been amusing himself with a— guest. I guessed at something of that kind when I first saw hem together in the show... and Marian will be in a fury to-morrow when he meets her.

Why? He pondered this all the way back to he Pleasure City. "Why in a fury? About the other woman? It didn't sound quite as if that was it. She probably doesn't know anything about what has been happening. Something else.... Anyway, well see what it is in the morning."

He returned the wolf to his cage, locked up, and went to his quarters....

IT WAS at about half-past eight on the following morning that Ellis, unshaven, carelessly dressed, scowling, left the house and hurried to the nearest tube station. Behind him, silent, unobtrusive, watchful, followed the wolf tamer. Landsman had judged from the man's tone when discussing his wife's return that it was is no affectionate spirit Ellis was meeting her. and it was without false compunction that he had decided to witness the meeting. He was prepared to see coldness even perhaps signs of the fury of which Ellis had spoken— but there was a far more terrible surprise awaiting him.

There was something curious about too the place at which the meeting was arranged. It was not, as Landsman expected, to any railway station that Ellis made his way after leaving the tube. His journey ended in a cheap eating house in a North London street strange to Landsman.

The morning rush of workmen's breakfasts was over, and the place was empty, save for Ellis, who sitting facing the window, when Landsman entered and took a place at a table with his back to Ellis. He ordered cup of coffee, but even as it was brought Ellis uttered an exclamation and went out at the cafe.

The wolf tamer rose, crossed the room as though to pick up a crumpled newspaper lying on another table, and watched his man through the window. Ellis was standing on the pavement staring across at the building a little farther down the road. There was a grim and sombre look about this building as of a workhouse, or— or— a prison.

Landsman's heart missed a beat, and an icy thrill chilled his spine as he realised that it was upon the gates of the prison that Ellis's eyes were fixed. What had this place to do with Marian? Nothing—obviously.

The wolf tamer told himself that he had wasted his time and trouble— that he had misunderstood what he had overheard of the conversation outside the flat. Clearly, it was not Marian whom Ellis had come to meet—that—

Then he saw Ellis raise his hand, beckoning. The gate of the prison had opened, and three people had stepped out— all women. Landsman strained his eyes through the dirty window.

One was a big, bold, swaggering coarse creature, with a befeathered hat, to whom release from gaol was apparently no new experience. She carried herself with brazen assurance.... not Marian.

The second woman was a queer little old body in a rusty bonnet and shawl.

The third was Marian.

Marian, deadly pale, with her head up, staring straight before her, walking like a woman in a dream....

The blood hummed deeply In the wolf: tamer's brain— a curious red mist seemed for an instant to drop before his eyes.  Marian released from prison! What had happened that she— she all people— should be one of that trio? What had she done? What strange topsy-turvy interplay of mischance had brought about a situation in which Marian was in prison, while her husband, the man who had sworn to care for her, was free, and entertaining in Marian's home another woman? God, but there was something wrong?

Landsman gulped. His throat was constricted and painful. He glared at Ellis through the window as one of his own wolves might glare at an enemy through the bars. Then Marian came up to her husband. Her blue eyes were dull and red-rimmed, and her pallor startled Landsman. She looked as if she had been weeping ceaselessly, day and night, ever since he had last seen her.

Then Landsman realized that they were coming into the eating house, and he moved swiftly back to his table. The movement broke the crescendo of deadly rage and bitter pain in his heart, and he caught himself back to his normal self control again.

His back to Marian and Ellis, he spread his arms on the table before him, rented his head on them, face down, in the attitude of one asleep, and listened intently.

But Ellis never raised his voice above a whisper. The only words he caught wore "diamonds" and "snow" repeated several times. And Marian never spoke at all until, a few minutes later, she rose to go. Then she said, clearly, openly, in a voice of deadly weariness and complete despair.

"Don't trouble to explain any more. Nothing in the world can take away the mark that place has put on me.... And I shall never believe what you say. You told me the packets contained diamonds— that you were a diamond dealer. They contained cocaine— and you are drug-dealer— without the courage to deal your horrible poisons yourself. I learned that about you in the prison. There was a woman there who knew you— as I know you now.... Don't touch me.... I know the truth. I was mad not to expose you in Court. I thought I was doing a loyal thing to be silent— to suffer for you. But I am wiser— now that it is too late.... Leave me alone.... You have ruined me, broken. my heart, destroyed me. Be satisfied with that and go. God, to think what I threw away when I broke my promise to Jack Landsman for a liar, a cur and a coward like you!" She drew a sobbing breath. "Oh, go— go— go! Don't you see that I am half-mad— that I could try to kill you—"

The attendant, a hard-faced man with the air of one who had witnessed such scenes so often that they left him unmoved, signed from the back of the room to Ellis to go. The poison-seller nodded, moved his hands in a gesture intended to convey regret but which the sheer hard insincerity of his face belied as he made it, turned and, without a word, left her.

She dropped to a chair, buried her face in her hands and sat still, shivering. The man at the back of the room watched her incuriously. He had seen too many women fresh from the sombre tomb opposite do that to allow it to distress him.

But he mattered nothing. Landsman was there. Marian felt a touch on her shoulder, heard a whisper.

"Marian!... Marian! Listen to me!" Strong hands drew hers gently away from her white face, her blue eyes— tearless, for she had no tears left. For a moment there was no sign of recognition in those blurred eyes.

"It's Landsman, Marian. Listen to me, I say."

His hands were holding her tightly now, and they seemed so strong—strong and steady as hands of steel. A great wonder stole into her eyes.

Landsman was speaking— what was it he was saying? She was confused— dazed— her head was singing— she seemed able to catch only a few of the words— the marvellous words.

"...and it shall be as if the last five years had never happened, my dear... Oh, I love you—I've never had you out of my mind—since I let you go.... I heard, my dear. I know what they have done to you, damn them, damn them all, but you're still my girl— still my girl. It makes no difference to me...I will care for you as nobody ever has cared for you..."

He drew her close to him, close, soothing her, comforting her, murmuring. The man at the counter shrugged his shoulders. He had lived opposite the prison long enough to be as impassive in the presence of joy as of sorrow...

LATE THAT NIGHT, Ellis left a large house standing in a wide area of heavily timbered grounds, near Hampstead Heath. He smiled to himself as he lit a cigar find walked briskly down the carriage drive towards the entrance. The mood of resentful Irritation which had possessed him all day bad left him— charmed away by the transaction he had just completed with the wealthy victim of the cocaine lust who occupied the house he had just left.

Normally, he would have sent his wife to deliver the package and bring away the enormous sum he had exacted for the drug. But that was all over. He never expected to see Marian again— nor did he desire to.

The month of imprisonment which had followed her arrest on a charge of selling cocaine had ruined her looks— and he had long forgotten that he had ever loved her. The poison trader was incapable of appreciating the loyalty which had kept her silent in Court, and no feeling of gratitude for her sacrifice checked his satisfaction at her refusal to rejoin him. He had ceased to love her, she had ceased to be of use to him, and he was glad to be rid of her, he told, himself with brutal frankness. He could find other dupes to carry on the traffic in which she had been his partner— all unwittingly, for his pose as a dealer in precious stones she had honestly believed in; he kept papers of small stones, of various kinds, by him always. They were a useful blind to a man who had many dealings in small packages.

"She's gone and that ends it," he said aloud to himself, and laughed.

"Not quite ended," said a low voice harshly.

The cocaine seller stopped, starting. A tall figure had stepped out from behind a clump of rhododendrons, holding in a steel leash an animal which in the moon-light Ellis took to be a gigantic dog.

'Not quite ended," repeated the stranger. "Five years ago you took from me the girl who became your wife. You swore to care for her— on your oath to me you promised that. Even more than I asked, you promised in your oath. Do you remember me, you poison dealer? I'm Landsman, the wolf master. 'If I break my word set your wolves at me!' you said. Do you remember?"

He stooped, his hands at the strap round the wolf's neck, and the eyes of the beast glowed green in the light of the moon.

"You living pest, I am going to hold you to your word! Kai! At him!"

The cocaine-seller tried to scream for help, but he was too late. Without a sound the great grey wolf leapt in for the throat, striking with fangs that cut like knives. The cocaine-seller pitched sideways, crumpling, and collapsed. The big wolf began to snarl at the scent of blood, but in an instant the tamer whipped the leash on the collar and tore the animal by sheer strength from the man on the ground. "Down— down!"

The low-pitched order bit its way to the wolf's understanding, and the sudden tide of ferocity quailed back, ebbing. Landsman glanced at the cocaine-seller. The wolf's fangs had cut the great jugular vein and the man was already at the point of death.

"Come, Kai!"

Landsman, his face white and hard, like dull metal in the moonlight, turned away and strode down the drive. He paused for a moment at the gate to listen. There was no sound. He went into the road and keeping well in the shadows set out on the return journey to the Pleasure City, the wolf, whining excitedly, trotting beside him, like a dog enjoying a run at night with his master.

Unaccosted by any of the few people still abroad at that hour, Landsman reached the city, passed the watchman at the "Jungle", still deep in the slumber into which an opiate, in a glass flask of whisky Landsman had given him when be went on duty, had sent him, cleaned the neck and jaws of the grey wolf, caged him, cut to pieces the rubber-soled shoes, several sizes larger than his normal size, which he had worn, and went quietly to his own quarters. Beyond a certain pallor, there was no sign at all that be had spent the small hours in any but a normal way...

The wolf tamer was convinced in his own mind that he had carried out an act of justice, and he was strangely confident that it would not be followed by any consequences disastrous to the woman he loved or to himself. And the increasing years have proved his confidence well-founded.

_____________

4: Cat Luck

Jeffery Farnol

1878-1952

Colliers, 12 Jan 1929

JOHN PENTREATH sat in his great sea-boots, stroking the cat with large, brown hand; and John was like his hand— big and strong and gentle, albeit there were times when that same hand could become a fist, quick in action and terrible.

"Black cats be main lucky, Deborah!" said he, stealing a glance at his comely wife, who sat beside him on the huge, high-backed settle, busied with her needle. "Ay, lass, main lucky be black cats!" he repeated.

Deborah looked at her man beneath level, black brows.

"Jan," said she, a catch in her smooth, soft voice, but holding his glance with hers, "when a sailorman talks o' luck there be somewhat i' the wind, so— what du ee mean, Jan?"

"Nay, now," he answered, shaking his curly head, "I mean no more'n what I says, lass— a black cat be lucky and this Tib o' yourn be black as... as a night wi' no moon or blink o' star."

"And there be no moon— tonight Jan... oh, Jan!" she whispered, "I du believe ee be turning to 'the trade' again—"

" 'The trade?' " repeated John. "Who— me, lass?" And he opened his blue eyes in stare of such wide innocence that her fears were instantly confirmed.

"Jan," she questioned in the same hushed tone, "where be your lugger, where be the Saucy Lass?"

"Why, she should be lay in' in the Cove, for sure."

"Ay, I know she should, but she bean't!" said Deborah, her dark eyes quick with anxiety. "Where is she to, Jan?"

John slipped a long arm about his wife's trim waist and spoke:

"Nay, now, Deborah, why take on—?"

"Where be your lugger, Jan? Oh, my dear, I du believe ee be goin' to make another 'run'... and after all your promises! And the Preventives so watchful and suspicious of ee! Oh, Jan, be ee agoin' out again? Tell me the truth, lad."

"Well, then... oh, ay I du be agoin', lass, for one more venter... just one... the last, the very last—"

"Oh, Jan, and ee promised—"

"Belay, Deborah lass, an' lemme tell ee," said John, troubled by her reproachful eyes, the nervous tremor of her clasping arms. "Y'see it be like this— it du so 'appon as Israel Trevanion's boat went aground t'other night an' got bilged, can't be seaworthy for a week— so tonight, him being with a cargo to run, I—"

"Be ee goin' in his place, Jan?"

"Why, no, lass, no— Israel be comin' along wi' me aboard my lugger. Ye know as Israel an' me be old shipmates, Debby, an' I couldn't refuse him spite o' the promise I made ee, dear lass—"

"But... Oh, Jan, if they took an' 'prison ee—"

"Never fear, Debby."

"BUT there be that Tom Mings as be just made an officer o' the Preventives, he be forever comin' an' goin' hereabouts."

"Ay, dang him! You be a rare handsome creeter, Deborah—"

"Nay, don't be fullish, Jan! 'Tis because he suspicions ee, 'tis this brings him here.... So, Jan dear, doan't ee go tonight, doan't ee go, Jan, for my sake—"

"I be pledged, lass. Sweetheart, I be expected and go I must! Just once more, just this last run and never again, dear lass, never again!"

"But, Jan, if there be danger... supposing that Tom Mings should come— ?"

"Why then, sweet lass, if ee think there be any danger lift the curtain at the lattice yonder and I'll know."

"MRS. PENTREATH, a fair good evenin', ma'm! Wot, all alone? Why, where be your John, then?"

"Why, Mr. Mings, Jan be over to Marazion."

"Oh, Mrs. Pentreath? Indeed, ma'm? Which then 'ee can't nowise be along o' that smugglin' raskell Israel Trevanion as be runnin' a cargo somewheres hereabouts tonight. Hows'ever, ma'm, me and my man Jarge 'ere— off wi' your castor to the lady, Jarge— me and Jarge, ma'm, will bide 'ere a while an' keep you company."

So saying, Mr. Mings, officer in the Preventive Service, resplendent in his new uniform, placed his fine new, gold- laced hat between the lighted lamp and china bowl of flowers upon the small solid table that stood in the recess before the curtained window and seated himself between Deborah and the window while Deborah went on sewing, her mind busy as her needle, seeking how she might reach and lift that veiling curtain if only for one little moment...

It was at this moment that Tib, the big black cat, yawned, stretched, rose and, crossing the room sedately, tail in air, leapt upon the officer's knee, expectant of caresses; but Mings, ever mindful of his new uniform, promptly rid himself of the animal, which stared up at him with wide, topaz eyes, and, lashing indignant tail, paced back to his corner of the hearth.

"Now," quoth Mr. Mings, taking out his snuffbox and rapping it loudly, "talkin' o' smugglin', Mrs. Pentreath—"

"I... I'm not!" said Deborah breathlessly.

"Why, no, ma'm, but I am, for, d'ye see, they're a'goin' to pass a act o' Parliament to make smuggling a capital offense, a matter for Jack Ketch... the 'angman, ma'm, the noose, Mrs. Pentreath, the gallers an' jibbet, ma'm!" Deborah uttered a stilled gasp,

"Was you speakin', ma'm?"

"No. I... I pricked my finger with the needle," she answered, stealing another yearning, agonized glance toward that lamp, that curtained window.

"So d'ye see, ma'm, if we should ha' the good fortun' to take any man smugglin'— tonight, say... well, that man would be took, clapped in jail and dooly 'anged, ma'm—in a noose—on a gallers. And that man being dead, Mrs. Pentreath, they take his body, or as you might say, corpse, ma'm, and 'ang it in chains... on a jibbet, for a warnin'."

Sick with a creeping horror, Deborah closed her eyes.... That they should work such ghastly doing on her loved John's handsome, stalwart body! Ah, dear God in Heaven, forbid it!... Somehow she must reach the window.

A LARGE moth was fluttering about the room making small, dreary rustlings against wall and ceiling and Tib, the black cat, cut short a yawn to watch it with unwinking, topaz eyes.

"Wot, Mrs. Pentreath, are ye faint, ma'm?" inquired Mings, closing snuff¬ box with a snap. "Shall Jarge get ye a drink o' water, ma'm?"

"No," said Deborah faintly. "No!" and, dropping her needlework, she rose, strung with desperate purpose, her burning gaze upon the curtained window... and then—Tib leapt, reaching the table in a single bound, for the moth was hovering about the lamp... from lamp it fluttered to the curtain— and again Tib leapt, upsetting the china bowl with a crash and, missing that fluttering insect, clung to the curtain with his every claw, swaying there a moment, and as Mings snatched up the lamp down came Tib and curtain in a writhing tangle.

Deborah sank back upon the settle, and, bowing her head between trembling hands, poured forth her passionate thankfulness in whispered prayer, for the lamplight was beaming through the unshrouded window, her beloved John was saved.

"Frighted ye, eh, ma'm?" growled Mings, setting the lamp in a place of safety. "Frighted ye, ma'm? And no wonder! That cat o' yourn might ha' set the place afire. Ah, and he's broke your fine chaney bowl and— Lord love us, lookee 'ere, ma'm!"

And Mr. Mings showed his fine, new, gold-laced hat dripping with water.

"Look at it, ma'm!" he growled, "and there be fools as says black cats is lucky!"

________________

5: Pug-Face's Daughter

Gilbert Frankau

1884-1952

Australian Women's Weekly, 11 June 1938

The London Magazine, February 1922

ONE cannot honestly blame "Pug-face" Peters. That old man (his nickname fits his "bluff," clean-shaven, wrinkled countenance to a "T"; and the paunchy body and squat limbs hardly detract from the illusion) loved his cloth mills at least as much as— some will say more than— he loved his one daughter and only child, Milly. Therefore, when Milly insisted on marrying Harold Wentworth...

But that would be anticipating the tale.

Peters' mills employ a thousand hands. They weave— all Yorkshire admits that much— the best cloth in the West Riding. And their chimney— it cost Pug-face twelve hundred pounds to re-point the bricks in 1919— dominates the town very much in the same way that Pug-face domineers over the Town Council.

Pug-face, watching the twilight glow of that chimney as he waited for his homeward tram, was thinking about those twelve hundred pounds, gloating over the fact that he, who had started life with "nowt," should be able to spend such an amount on mere repairs.

"And there'll be no excess profits duty to pay, neither," he gloated.

Yet Pug-face was neither a mean man nor unpatriotic. He wasn't even a profiteer. What he had made, he had made honestly and spent lavishly— whether on his dead wife's Jewellery, his daughter's education, or the town

"What's the sense in making t'brass if you don't spent t'brass?" he used to say. And when it came to spending "t'brass" on his mills, Pug-face could be more than lavish.

YOU can't wonder at that. Peters' mills, to their owner, are more than a mere business— they are a creation, his own private and particular emulation of God. He knows every man Jack and every girl Jill of his thousand employees; he knows every trick and turn of the thousand processes that go to the manufac-turing of his product. Wool (which he spins himself), worsted (which he buys from his cronies), carding machinery, "mules," "wuzzers," dyes, dynamos, "helds," and "maces," there isn't a single strand of raw material, a single gadget of wood or steel, a single operation of finger or machinery that "the old man" isn't wise to, and infernally wise.

He can work the old wooden handlooms that are still used, in a quaint gallery of their own, for the weaving of patterns; he can take man or boy's place in the "warping" rooms; he can handle the clacking miracles, whose "picking sticks" shoot their shuttle a hundred times a minute through the "shed" of the moving "warp;" he can Judge "indigo" by naked eye to the minutest coloration of a three-yearold sample; he can "burl" the fin-ished cloth better than the oldest woman who gossips under the sky-light of the top floor; and he can even, at a pinch, act as his own commercial traveller.

But on this particular eveninghis customary gloat about the chimney having come to an end. Pug-face's mind deserted his mills for his Milly. Milly, and Milly's husband, expected a decision; he would have to give that decision over his after-dinner cigar.

"Confound 'em both!" muttered Pug-face, as the lights of his tram came switch-backing down the dale. Usually he enjoyed the ride home— the conductor's respectful greet-ing, the glimpses of the town through the windows. But to-night enjoyment failed him.

"The lass is as obstinate as her own father," he growled, "and her man's a fool!"

The car decanted him at the foot of his own drive; clanged away. For a moment he hesitated. Why not go to the club? Why not postpone "the row"? But lack of moral courage had never been one of the old man's fallings, and he strode on, hands in his overcoat pockets, muffler round his neck, bowler tilted at the back of his head, up his own drive, between his own laurel bushes into his own house.

A pert maid-servant (there were seven at Holmfield) informed him that "Captain and Mrs. Wentworth" were out in the motor, but would be back in time for dinner. He heard the car arrive, tooting its klaxon, while he was dressing

Wealthy manulacturers of the West Riding— despite the asseverations of "local color" novelists— no longer take "high teas" in the kit-chen. Nothing about the diningroom at Holmfield could have been cavilled at by a Mayfair hostess. On the contrary, many a humble denizen of Half Moon Street or Berkeley Hill would have opened her eyes at the winking table-silver, the Waterford glass, the deft service, and the general luxury of Pug-face's establishment.

WHILE as for Pug-face's turtle soup, fried sole, and grouse-pie— to say nothing of Pug-face's 1912 Pommery and '68 port— not a clubman in London but would have sold his hopes of immortality for a smell of them. So at least thought Harold Wentworth (some time captain of Yeomanry) as he picked a fat Havana from the box his father-inlaw passed across the coffee-cups, and glanced anxiously at his "missus."

They made a quaint trio-the old man in his bulging shirt-front; the old man's daughter, tall, dark, a trifle large of hand and foot, with Pug-face's own desperately resolute black eyes, her mother's dimpled chin, and a full, red, jolly mouth, which came from neither parent; and the well-groomed blond youth, with the clipped moustache, the "soda-water-bottle" blue eyes, the high cheekbones, and the intellectual forehead.

"Best leave us, lass," said Pug-face.

"You'll quarrel if I do," protested the girl, and the resolution in her look belied the smile of her mouth. "Besides, I'm just as interested in your decision as Harold is!" She shifted her chair nearer to her husband, so that the old man faced the pair of them. "Talk away, Daddy," she smiled.

Peters took a preliminary puff at his cigar, and began.

"Harold," he said, "I'd be the last to deny that a man has a right to choose his own career. But he can't expect another man, even his own father-in-law, to find the brass for it. When you married my lass 'twas an understood thing that you'd come into my mills. No. I'll admit you made no promise. You've been straight with me. That much I'll grant you both. You wanted time to think it over, and I've given you time. Last night you said you'd made up your mind. You wouldn't come into my mills."

He paused, and Wentworth, filling up the pause, admitted: "That's right, sir."

"And you told me that you wanted to go in for politics!" The old man sniffed. "Politicians in this country need an income. Who's to provide yours? Your father-in-law?"

"That's the Idea, Daddy," interjected Wentworth's wife. "We could manage quite well on a couple of thousand a year for a start."

"I've no doubt you could, lass. I started on five shillings a week." Pug-face's voice had begun to rasp. "But you'll have no couple of thousand a year from me— not for politics. Politicians cost me quite enough already.

"I'LL keep no M.P.'s of my own." He turned to his son-in-law. "You come into the mills, Harold. Plenty of time for the political game when you've learned how to make a living."

"I'm sorry, sir." Wentworth's jaw set. "I only wish I could make you understand. To me, politics aren't a game; they're a duty the leisured classes owe to their country."

"You talk like a parson," retorted his father-in-law. "This country isn't run by politicians. It's run by business men. I keep a thousand people in employ. I keep 'em happy. I work. You only want to idle at my expense."

"You needn't be rude. Daddy." Millicent's black eyes hardened; Into her voice, too, crept the family rasp.

"I'm telling you both the truth," said her father. "Truth's always a bit rude-to the young."

"Then you'll do nothing to help us, daddy?"

"I'll do everything in the world, if ye go my way. My way's the mills. If ye don't"— Pug-face laughed, as a man sure of his ground— "ye can look after yourselves."

Milly had fallen very silent. The hands on her lap were clenched; her teeth blt on her under lip. All the hardness of the West Riding shone in her eyes. She said to herself, "Daddy's a beast! A mean beastl I don't want Harold in the mills. I want him In the House. I'll have what I want!"

She said to her father:

"You think we can't look after ourselves?"

Her father answered, laughing:

"That's self-evident, lass. If ye could look after yourselves ye wouldn't ask me for a couple o' thou-sand a year."

There ensued an interval of utter silence, during which it seemed to Wentworth as though the issue were out of his hands. Then the woman said:

"One day you'll be sorry about this, Daddy."

She swept out of the dining-room, taking her husband with her, and Pug-face watched them go, his bluff countenance crinkled to a sardonic smile.

"She's the very spit of her father," smiled Pug-face. "Pity she wasn't a boy."

But next evening, when he returned home to find neither daughter nor son-in-law, only the little note which ended: "We're going to show you that we can look after ourselves," the owner of Peters' Mills did not smile. On the contrary, he cursed his daughter for a "pig-headed lass," and his son-in-law for "a man who didn't know which side his bread was buttered."

Some six weeks later the "pig-headed lass" sat alone over her tea in the lounge of Banister's Hotel, London. The "tea"— thin bread-and-butter and a cake or so cost half a crown. The bill for the week would be thirty pounds. Chin cupped in firm hand, Millicent Wentworth ruminated on these and other problems.

The whole position, ol course, was ludicrous. To begin with, she never ought to have coaxed Harold into running away from the town. Secondly, she ought never to have suggested Banister's. Thirdly, she ought to nave taken her pearls out of the safe before they started. One could "look after oneself" for quite a time on the proceeds of a three-thousand pound pearl necklace. Meanwhile, she would have to pawn her furs before they could pay their bill, unless she told the hotel to send the bill to her father. "And I'd die rather than do that," she thought.

She said as much to her husband when he Joined her-his hands In his trousers pockets, a wry smile on his lips.

"If I had any gumption, Harry," she said. "I'd find some way to beat him. We've only been bluffing so far, and bluff isn't any use against Daddy's money."

"If I'd had any gumption," he retorted, "I'd have found a job." He lit a cigarette and smiled philosophically. "Nothing for it but the mills, I'm afraid.

"Milly," he continued, "London's no place for an untrained man with extravagant habits. Even if I had a job we couldn't have lived on it. Your father's right-politics, without an Income, are a wash-out!"

THEY went, both very thoughtful, to their room, began dressing for dinner; and it was while dressing-to be precise, at the exact moment when Harry had fumbled the last hook of her gown into Its ultimate eye— that Millicent remarked:

"Don't Socialists say that people should be kept by the 8tate?"

"More or less," answered Went-worth, kissing her neck.

"And what do you think?"

"I think"— the kiss had put him a little off his guard— "that people " have got to look after themselves."

"Then," decided his wife, "hadn't we better do it?"

"How?" They faced each other in front of the gleaming mirror.

"Oh. anyhow!" She stretched out a hand to him. "Harry, I'm Yorkshire. And I'd hate to think Daddy had got the better of me. Let's beat him, even if— even if"she hesitated perceptibly— "we both of us have to go to work."

"Both of us!" Wentworth was only twenty-four, and a Southerner. His mouth fell open at the very suggestion.

"And why not?" Pug-face's daughter laughed. "My mother was a working woman. And her mother before her."

"Yes; but I say—" began her husband. Milly stifled protest with a full-lipped kiss; led him, still protesting, dinnerward.

PUG-FACE PETERS sat solitary in his dining-room over a fat cigar and a glass of '68 port. The cigar wouldn't burn and the port had lost its savor.

Most things had lost their savor for Pug-face since Milly and her husband disappeared. To begin with, Holmfield wasn't running smoothly; three of the seven maidservants had given notice, and the cook appeared daily on the verge of mutiny. Then the mills were short of work. And lastly, folk had begun to gossip.

Polk suspected a family row. Folk wanted to know the whereabouts of Pug-face's daughter. And Pug-face couldn't tell them the whereabouts of his daughter— because Pug-face didn't know.

He didn't know! That was the maddening feature of the whole business. The "lass" and her "man" had vanished— literally vanished from the face of London. Even "t'brass"— and he'd spent brass enough personally and through inqulry agents-had failed to trace them after they had left Banister's.

Pouring himself a second glass of the port which had lost Its savor, the old man decided on yet another trip to London.

SOME four months after Milly's disappearance from Holmfield, Nathaniel Jobson— of "Jobson's Cutprice Clothing Stores"— returned to his elaborate villa-residence at Streatham in a state of pleasurable excitement. An unpleasant person was Nathaniel Jobson; loud of voice, fat, and red of face-briefly, as noisome a representative of the newly-rich as you could hope never to encounter.

To-night, however. Nathaniel's excitement made him almost jovial. Stepping out of his new car, he flung a couple of half-crowns to his new chauffeur, and said gruffly:

"Know anything about waiting at table?"

The chauffeur pocketed the half-crowns before replying:

"Very little, I'm afraid, sir."

"Now, look here, me lad"— Nathaniel's Joviality eased off a point or two-"don't let's have any nonsense. I told the two of you when I engaged you, that you'd be expected to turn your hands to anything. I've got one of the biggest bugs from the North of England dining with me to-night, and he's got to be impressed. Impressed! Do you follow me? Bit of swank— so to speak."

"And you want me to impress him?" asked the young man In the new motor-livery.

"That's the ticket! Now, Just you listen to me."

Nathaniel gave his orders, watched the car drive off round the shrubbery, fumbled for the latch-key let himself into the ornate hall, and shouted:

"Harvey!"

Harvey Jobson, a supercilious youth with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his loose-lipped mouth lounged out from the smoking-roon and murmured:

"Hullo, father!"

"Did you get my telephone message?"

"Yes, Martha gave it to me."

"Where is Martha?"

"Getting dinner ready."

"Getting dinner ready! What the devil d'ye mean?"

"Cook's gone," said the supercilious youth. "Someone had to cook the dinner!"

For the fraction of a second his father stood paralysed; then he exploded.

"GONE! How dare she go? I'm entitled to a month's notice. I'll have the law on that woman" (he didn't actually say "woman"), "if it costs me every penny I possess. Why the devil didn't you telephone me?"

"She only went half an hour ago," put in Harvey. "There wasn't time."

"And how the devil is Martha goin' to wait at table and cook the dinner?"

"Hanged if I know," said the supercilious youth, and added, under his breath, "or care."

Pug-face Peters, driving Streatham-wards in the car which had accompanied him to London, cursed himself heartily for having accepted Jobson's invitation.

"Profiteering brute!" growled Pugface. "Bad enough having to sell him cloth. No need to eat his food."

Still, the mills would be glad of Jobson's contract— even though it was for "wools" and not for "worsteds." Jobson't Cut-price Clothing Stores— with their five hundred branches and their three-guinea ready-to-wear suits— could take a lot of "the stoof" in the course of the twelve months; and it was better to run at no profit than close down. If only the fellow hadn't insisted on inviting him to dinner!

It took Pug-face's North-country chauffeur a goodish detour to find Pinewood Lodge, so that by the time his car purred up to the front door Jobson, what with the apprehension of his guest's not arriving at all, and the fear lest the hurriedly improvised arrangements for his guest's reception should go awry, was in a state of excitement which, far from being pleasurable, bordered on hysteria. The first arrangement, therefore (that the camouflaged chauffeur should open the front door) went by the board; and Nathaniel himself, in full evening dress, rushed out.

"Come in, Mr. Peters— come in!" shouted Nathaniel. "It's a pleasure to see you with us. Even though you do find us in the midst of a domestic upheaval."

"Domestic upheaval?" thought Pug-face, shuffling out of his fur coat. "His daughter can't have bolted, too."

But Jobson's next words dissipated the illusion.

"Our staff," prevaricated Jobson, "has suddenly deserted us. Would you believe it, Mr. Peters— cook, kitchen-maid, and two of the house-maids. All gone. Without notice. Scandalous, isn't it?"

"Scandalous!" agreed the guest— wondering about how bad the dinner was going to be.

"However," went on his host, "luckily we've still enough of them to manage a bit of food for an honored guest." And he led the way into an over-furnished drawing-room, where Harvey— more supercilious than ever in his Jobson Cut-price smoking jacket— was keep-ing guard over a tray of cocktail ingredients.

Pug-face was introduced to Har-vey, accepted a badly-mixed gin and bitters, refused a cigarette, and did his best to make conversation.

"Got any family, Mr. Peters?" asked his host.

"Yes. I've a daughter."

"Lucky man! I wish I had a girl. Sons"— Jobson senior glanced meaningly at Jobson junior— "are an expensive luxury. Not that I grudge the expense, mark you. I don't expect my son to work as I've had to."

"That so?" murmured the old man. Conversation languished. Jobson, obviously ill at ease, began to fidget on his chair, excused himself, went out. Peters, listening with half an ear to the lofty remarks of Jobson, jun., heard a furious whisper beyond the door. "Hang it, how much longer are you going to be?" and a voice— a voice which seemed somehow familiar— replying: "I was just coming to tell you it was ready."

Nathaniel— a trifle flushed from his encounter— reappeared, flung open the door, and announced that the meal waited.

Crossing the ornate hall. Pug-face was aware of a female figure— a figure somehow familiar— vanishing through a baize-covered door. But before the impression could fully register he found himself In the overllt dining-room, found himself gazing across a table, heavy with silver and flowers, into the utterly impassive countenance of his son in-law.

"We'll begin with sherry, Parsons," said Nathaniel Jobson.

The soup— that much Pug-face could realise— had been on the table when they sat down. He even made an effort to partake of the soup. But Harold Wentworth's quiet "Sherry, sir?" and the sight of Harold Wentworth's aristocratic hand on the decanter upset his father-in-law to such an extent that the mouthful almost choked him.

He sat before the soup, watching it chill, hypnotised by it, hypnotised by the glimmer of the light in his sherry glass.

Harold Wentworth— Captain Harold Wentworth— his own son-in-law— butler at Jobson's! Pug-face tried to tell himself that the thing was impossible, that he must be the victim of hallucination.

"Parsons," said Jobson's voice, "clear away the soup."

"Parsons couldn't be Wentworth, couldn't be the man who'd married his Milly. "Parsons" must be Wentworth's double.

PARSONS began to remove the soup plates. Pug-face, doing his best to make conversation, could see that Jobson senior was fidgety. Jobson senior had pressed an electric table bell. Jobson senior was watching the dining-room door. Pug-face, too, watched the door.

"Confound that girl!" muttered Jobson, and again pressed his bell.

Then the door opened, and Pug-face, already sick with apprehension, looked straight into the black eyes of his missing daughter.

Milly wore the cap and apron of domestic servitude. Milly's firm hands (white no longer) carried on the most elaborate of silver dishes— a vast fish. But her firm hands shook; her face was flushed from the oven. She could feel fish and dish a-tremble. Her brain spun. "It's daddy," she thought. "Daddy! They made me cook the dinner for him. They made me bring it in. Why didn't Harold tell me it was daddy?"

Whereupon, simultaneously, she heard Jobson's voice, "Be careful with it, Martha," felt herself stagger, stumble forward; saw dish and fish shoot from his hands to carpet; caught a staccato "Clumsy fool!" from Jobson— and fainted.

But Milly's faint only lasted a second. A voice— rasped to fury— burst the black of her unconsciousness as flame bursts a child's balloon.

"What the devil d'ye mean by it, sir?" rasped the voice, daddy's voice. "Call my daughter a clumsy fool, would you? Make her cook your darned dinner, would you? Make my son-in-law your b'ly butler, would you? Spoilt the fish, has she? Curse you and your fish, sir! Curse 'em, I say!"

Pug-face was on his feet— black eyes blazing. One podgy hand pounded on the table, the other itched to seize Jobson's throat. Harvey— superciliousness abandoned— had taken refuge under the table. Wentworth was assisting his wife to rise.

"You can hardly blame Mr. Jobson," said Harold Wentworth. "He had no idea who we were when he engaged us."

"Jobson be sugared!" barked Pug-face. "And you, too! You're a fine sort of husband for any man's lass! Go and get your hats, both of you. And have my car round to the front door in five minutes Get a move on, now!"

The pair fled, and Pug-face, with a curt: "Ye'll get no stoof out of me— not if ye pay cash twice!" to the quivering Jobson, followed them.

Five minutes later an amazed North-country chauffeur headed the car for Banister's.

"AND now," grunted the owner of Peters' mills from the recesses of the limousine, "I'll thank the pair of you for an explanation."

"Well, sir"— began Wentworth. But his wife— opera cloak, last un-pawned relic of riches, hiding her domestic attire— took the words from his mouth.

"I can't see that any explanation is needed from us," began Pug-face's daughter. "You dared us to look after ourselves— and we've done it. We'd be doing it still if you hadn't frightened me, daddy."

"Frightened you!" Something in the girl's voice— a note of hysteria which came to him like a dim echo out of the past before she had been born— gentled Pug-face's grunt to solicitude.

"Tell us how ye came to make such a fool of yourself," he grunted.

Wentworth, watching his wife, saw tears dim her black eyes as she answered:

"We took the only job we could get— domestic service. There's an awful shortage of servants in London, daddy. So the Jobsons engaged us without references. We'd have been all right if cook hadn't left."

Pug-face's mottled hand stole to his daughter's.

"For how long would ye have been all right, lass?" he whispered.

"What do you mean, Daddy?" There is no resentment in Milly's question.

"Tisn't like my lass to be frightened!"

"N-o."

"Nor to faint, neither!"

"No, daddy."

And quite suddenly Wentworth, looking back on the past weeks, knew why it had been hopeless to try to dissuade his wife from her adventure; why instinct had urged him that she must have her own way, be allowed— whatever the cost— to beat Daddy.

For only out of resolute women, such women as you will find in the West Riding of Yorkshire, are bred those resolute men who made the old, and will make the new, England; and to thwart the mother-in-season is to thwart the child-to be.

That, at least, is Wentworth's theory. Pug-face's, enunciated some five months after the dinner at Jobson's, as he sat with a well-fed specialist over a bottle of '68 port in the dining-room at Holmfield, ran differently.

"I shan't pop off for another quarter of a century," said Pugface. "By that time the grandson'll be fit for the mills. Harold's as weak as they make 'em but my brass'll put him in as member for the town, and my lass'll see he doesn't make too much of a fool of himself once he gets to Parliament."

To which the specialist, who had a pretty wit, replied, "And even if he does, Mr. Peters, he'll do less harm at Westminster than he would up here."

________________

6: Cambric Tea

Marjorie Bowen

Gabrielle Margaret Vere Campbell, 1886-1952

Hutchinson's Magazine, July 1925

This story has been reprinted several times, notably in The World's Best 100 Detective Stories, (Vol. Two,  1929) and Silent Nights (2015), which is where I found it. The author wrote under numerous pseudonyms, but "Marjorie Bowen" was the one most used. Under this name she mostly wrote historic novels. She wrote some 150 books, including three volumes of supernatual stories.

THE situation was bizarre; the accurately trained mind of Bevis Holroyd was impressed foremost by this; that the situation was bizarre; he could not guess that the opening of a door would turn it into tragedy.

"I am afraid I can't stay," he had said pleasantly, humouring a sick man; he was too young and had not been long enough completely successful to have a professional manner but a certain balanced tolerance just showed in his attitude to this prostrate creature.

"I've got a good many claims on my time," he added, "and I'm afraid it would be impossible. And it isn't the least necessary, you know. You're quite all right. I'll come back after Christmas if you really think it worth while."

The patient opened one eye; he was lying flat on his back in a deep, wide old-fashioned bed hung with a thick dark, silk lined tapestry; the room was dark for there were thick curtains of the same material drawn half across the windows, rigidly excluding all save a moiety of the pallid winter light; to make his examination Dr. Holroyd had had to snap on the electric light that stood on the bedside table; he thought it a dreary unhealthy room, but had hardly found it worth while to say as much.

The patient opened one eye; the other lid remained fluttering feebly over an immobile orb.

He said in a voice both hoarse and feeble:

"But, doctor, I'm being poisoned."

Professional curiosity and interest masked by genial incredulity instantly quickened the doctor's attention.

"My dear sir," he smiled, "poisoned by this nasty bout of 'flu you mean, I suppose—"

"No," said the patient, faintly and wearily dropping both lids over his blank eyes, "by my wife."

"That's an ugly sort of fancy for you to get hold of," replied the doctor instantly. "Acute depression— we must see what we can do for you—"

The sick man opened both eyes now; he even slightly raised his head as he replied, not without dignity:

"I fetched you from London, Dr. Holroyd, that you might deal with my case impartially— from the local man there is no hope of that; he is entirely impressed by my wife."

Dr. Holroyd made a movement as if to protest but a trembling sign from the patient made him quickly subsist.

"Please let me speak. She will come in soon and I shall have no chance. I sent for you secretly she knows nothing about that. I had heard you very well spoken of— as an authority on this sort of thing. You made a name over the Pluntre murder case as witness for the Crown."

"I don't specialize in murder," said Dr. Holroyd, but his keen handsome face was alight with interest. "And I don't care much for this kind of case— Sir Harry."

"But you've taken it on," murmured the sick man. "You couldn't abandon me now."

"I'll get you into a nursing home," said the doctor cheerfully, "and there you'll dispel all these ideas."

"And when the nursing home has cured me I'm to come back to my wife for her to begin again?"

Dr. Holroyd bent suddenly and sharply over the sombre bed. With his right hand he deftly turned on the electric lamp and tipped back the coral silk shade so that the bleached acid light fell full over the patient lying on his back on the big fat pillows.

"Look here," said the doctor, "what you say is pretty serious."

And the two men stared at each other, the patient examining his physician as acutely as his physician examined him.

Bevis Holroyd was still a young man with a look of peculiar energy and austere intelligence that heightened by contrast purely physical dark good looks that many men would have found sufficient passport to success; resolution, dignity and a certain masculine sweetness, serene and strong, different from feminine sweetness, marked his demeanour which was further softened by a quick humour and a sensitive judgment.

The patient, on the other hand, was a man of well past middle age, light, flabby and obese with a flaccid, fallen look about his large face which was blurred and dimmed by the colours of ill health, being one pasty livid hue that threw into unpleasant relief the grey speckled red of his scant hair.

Altogether an unpleasing man, but of a certain fame and importance that had induced the rising young doctor to come at once when hastily summoned to Strangeways Manor House, a man of a fine, renowned family, a man of repute as a scholar, an essayist who had once been a politician who was rather above politics, a man whom Dr. Holroyd only knew vaguely by reputation, but who seemed to him symbolical of all that was staid, respectable and stolid.

And this man blinked up at him and whimpered:

"My wife is poisoning me."

Dr. Holroyd sat back and snapped off the electric light. "What makes you think so?" he asked sharply.

"To tell you that," came the laboured voice of the sick man, "I should have to tell you my story."

"Well, if you want me to take this up—"

"I sent for you to do that, doctor."

"Well, how do you think you are being poisoned?"

"Arsenic, of course."

"Oh? And how administered?"

Again the patient looked up with one eye seeming too fatigued to open the other.

"Cambric tea," he replied.

And Dr. Holroyd echoed:

"Cambric tea!" with a soft amazement and interest.

Cambric tea had been used as the medium for arsenic in the Pluntre case and the expression had become famous; it was Bevis Holroyd who had discovered the doses in the cambric tea and who had put his finger on this pale beverage as the means of murder.

"Very possibly," continued Sir Harry, "the Pluntre case made her think of it."

"For God's sake, don't," said Dr. Holroyd, for in that hideous affair the murderer had been a woman and to see a woman on trial for her life, to see a woman sentenced to death was not an experience he wished to repeat.

"Lady Strangeways," continued the sick man, "is much younger than I— I over-persuaded her to marry me, she was at the time very much attracted by a man of her own age, but he was in a poor position and she was ambitious."

He paused, wiped his quivering lips on a silk handkerchief and added faintly:

"Lately our marriage has been extremely unhappy. The man she preferred is now prosperous, successful and unmarried—she wishes to dispose of me that she may marry her first choice."

"Have you proof of any of this?"

"Yes. I know she buys arsenic. I know she reads books on poisons. I know she is eating her heart out for this other man."

"Forgive me, Sir Harry," replied the doctor, "but have you no near friend nor relation to whom you can confide your— suspicions?"

"No one," said the sick man impatiently. "I have lately come from the East and am out of touch with people. Besides I want a doctor, a doctor with skill in this sort of thing. I thought from the first of the Pluntre case and of you."

Bevis Holroyd sat back quietly; it was then that he thought of the situation as bizarre, the queerness of the whole thing was vividly before him, like a twisted figure on a gem— a carving at once writhing and immobile.

"Perhaps," continued Sir Harry wearily, "you are married, doctor?"

"No." Dr. Holroyd slightly smiled; his story was something like the sick man's story but taken from another angle when he was very poor and unknown he had loved a girl who had preferred a wealthy man; she had gone out to India, ten years ago, and he had never seen her since, he remembered this, with sharp distinctness, and in the same breath he remembered that he still loved this girl, it was, after all, a commonplace story.

Then his mind swung to the severe professional aspect of the case; he had thought that his patient, an unhealthy type of man, was struggling with a bad attack of influenza and the resultant depression and weakness, but then he had never thought, of course, of poison, nor looked nor tested for poison.

The man might be lunatic, he might be deceived, he might be speaking the truth; the fact that he was a mean, unpleasant beast ought not to weigh in the matter; Dr. Holroyd had some enjoyable Christmas holidays in prospect and now he was beginning to feel that he ought to give these up to stay and investigate this case; for he could readily see that it was one in which the local doctor would be quite useless.

"You must have a nurse," he said, rising.

But the sick man shook his head.

"I don't wish to expose my wife more than need be," he grumbled. "Can't you manage the affair yourself?"

As this was the first hint of decent feeling he had shown, Bevis Holroyd forgave him his brusque rudeness.

"Well, I'll stay the night anyhow," he conceded.

And then the situation changed, with the opening of a door, from the bizarre to the tragic.

This door opened in the far end of the room and admitted a bloom of bluish winter light from some uncurtained high windowed corridor; the chill impression was as if invisible snow had entered the shaded, dun, close apartment.

And against this background appeared a woman in a smoke coloured dress with some long lace about the shoulders and a high comb; she held a little tray carrying jugs and a glass of crystal in which the cold light splintered.

Dr. Holroyd stood in his usual attitude of attentive courtesy, and then, as the patient, feebly twisting his gross head from the fat pillow, said:

"My wife— doctor—" he recognized in Lady Strangeways the girl to whom he had once been engaged in marriage, the woman he still loved.

"This is Doctor Holroyd," added Sir Harry. "Is that cambric tea you have there?"

She inclined her head to the stranger by her husband's bed as if she had never seen him before, and he, taking his cue, and for many other reasons, was silent.

"Yes, this is your cambric tea," she said to her husband. "You like it just now, don't you? How do you find Sir Harry, Dr. Holroyd?"

There were two jugs on the tray; one of crystal half full of cold milk, and one of white porcelain full of hot water; Lady Strangeways proceeded to mix these fluids in equal proportions and gave the resultant drink to her husband, helping him first to sit up in bed.

"I think that Sir Harry has a nasty turn of influenza," answered the doctor mechanically. "He wants me to stay. I've promised till the morning, anyhow."

"That will be a pleasure and a relief," said Lady Strangeways gravely. "My husband has been ill some time and seems so much worse than he need— for influenza."

The patient, feebly sipping his cambric tea, grinned queerly at the doctor.

"So much worse— you see, doctor!" he muttered.

"It is good of you to stay," continued Lady Strangeways equally. "I will see about your room, you must be as comfortable as possible."

She left as she had come, a shadow coloured figure retreating to a chill light.

The sick man held up his glass as if he gave a toast.

"You see! Cambric tea!"

And Bevis Holroyd was thinking: does she not want to know me? Does he know what we once were to each other? How comes she to be married to this man— her husband's name was Custiss— and the horror of the situation shook the calm that was his both from character and training; he went to the window and looked out on the bleached park; light, slow snow was falling, a dreary dance over the frozen grass and before the grey copses that paled, one behind the other to the distance shrouded in colourless mist.

The thin voice of Harry Strangeways recalled him to the bed.

"Would you like to take a look at this, doctor?" He held out the half drunk glass of milk and water.

"I've no means of making a test here," said Dr. Holroyd, troubled. "I brought a few things, nothing like that."

"You are not so far from Harley Street," said Sir Harry. "My car can fetch everything you want by this afternoon— or perhaps you would like to go yourself?"

"Yes," replied Bevis Holroyd sternly. "I would rather go myself."

His trained mind had been rapidly covering the main aspects of his problem and he had instantly seen that it was better for Lady Strangeways to have this case in his hands. He was sure there was some hideous, fantastic hallucination on the part of Sir Harry, but it was better for Lady Strangeways to leave the matter in the hands of one who was friendly towards her. He rapidly found and washed a medicine bottle from among the sick room paraphernalia and poured it full of the cambric tea, casting away the remainder.

"Why did you drink any?" he asked sharply.

"I don't want her to think that I guess," whispered Sir Harry. "Do you know, doctor, I have a lot of her love letters— written by—"

Dr. Holroyd cut him short.

"I couldn't listen to this sort of thing behind Lady Strangeways's back," he said quickly. "That is between you and her. My job is to get you well. I'll try and do that."

And he considered, with a faint disgust, how repulsive this man looked sitting up with pendant jowl and drooping cheeks and discoloured, pouchy eyes sunk in pads of unhealthy flesh and above the spiky crown of Judas coloured hair.

Perhaps a woman, chained to this man, living with him, blocked and thwarted by him, might be wrought upon to—

Dr. Holroyd shuddered inwardly and refused to continue his reflection.

As he was leaving the gaunt sombre house about which there was something definitely blank and unfriendly, a shrine in which the sacred flames had flickered out so long ago that the lamps were blank and cold, he met Lady Strangeways.

She was in the wide entrance hall standing by the wood fire that but faintly dispersed the gloom of the winter morning and left untouched the shadows in the rafters of the open roof.

Now he would not, whether she wished or no, deny her, he stopped before her, blocking out her poor remnant of light.

"Mollie," he said gently, "I don't quite understand— you married a man named Custiss in India."

"Yes. Harry had to take this name when he inherited this place. We've been home three years from the East but lived so quietly here that I don't suppose anyone has heard of us."

She stood between him and the firelight, a shadow among shadows; she was much changed; in her thinness and pallor, in her restless eyes and nervous mouth he could read signs of discontent, even of unhappiness.

"I never heard of you," said Dr. Holroyd truthfully. "I didn't want to. I liked to keep my dreams."

Her hair was yet the lovely cedar wood hue, silver, soft and gracious; her figure had those fluid lines of grace that he believed he had never seen equalled.

"Tell me," she added abruptly, "what is the matter with my husband? He has been ailing like this for a year or so."

With a horrid lurch of his heart that was usually so steady, Dr. Holroyd remembered the bottle of milk and water in his pocket.

"Why do you give him that cambric tea?" he counter questioned.

"He will have it— he insists that I make it for him—"

"Mollie," said Dr. Holroyd quickly, "you decided against me, ten years ago, but that is no reason why we should not be friends now— tell me, frankly, are you happy with this man?"

"You have seen him," she replied slowly. "He seemed different ten years ago. I honestly was attracted by his scholarship and his learning as well as— other things."

Bevis Holroyd needed to ask no more, she was wretched, imprisoned in a mistake as a fly in amber; and those love letters? Was there another man?

As he stood silent, with a dark reflective look on her weary brooding face, she spoke again:

"You are staying?"

"Oh yes," he said, he was staying, there was nothing else for him to do.

"It is Christmas week," she reminded him wistfully. "It will be very dull, perhaps painful, for you."

"I think I ought to stay."

Sir Harry's car was announced; Bevis Holroyd, gliding over frozen roads to London, was absorbed with this sudden problem that, like a mountain out of a plain, had suddenly risen to confront him out of his level life.

The sight of Mollie (he could not think of her by that sick man's name) had roused in him tender memories and poignant emotions and the position in which he found her and his own juxtaposition to her and her husband had the same devastating effect on him as a mine sprung beneath the feet of an unwary traveller.

London was deep in the whirl of a snow storm and the light that penetrated over the grey roof tops to the ugly slip of a laboratory at the back of his consulting rooms was chill and forbidding.

Bevis Holroyd put the bottle of milk on a marble slab and sat back in the easy chair watching that dreary chase of snow flakes across the dingy London pane.

He was thinking of past springs, of violets long dead, of roses long since dust, of hours that had slipped away like lengths of golden silk rolled up, of the long ago when he had loved Mollie and Mollie had seemed to love him; then he thought of that man in the big bed who had said:

"My wife is poisoning me."

Late that afternoon Dr. Holroyd with his suit case and a professional bag, returned to Strangeways Manor House in Sir Harry's car; the bottle of cambric tea had gone to a friend, a noted analyst; somehow Doctor Holroyd had not felt able to do this task himself; he was very fortunate, he felt, in securing this old solitary and his promise to do the work before Christmas.

As he arrived at Strangeways Manor House which stood isolated and well away from a public high road where a lonely spur of the weald of Kent drove into the Sussex marshes, it was in a blizzard of snow that effaced the landscape and gave the murky outlines of the house an air of unreality, and Bevis Holroyd experienced that sensation he had so often heard of and read about, but which so far his cool mind had dismissed as a fiction.

He did really feel as if he was in an evil dream, as the snow changed the values of the scene, altering distances and shapes, so this meeting with Mollie, under these circumstances, had suddenly clanged the life of Bevis Holroyd.

He had so resolutely and so definitely put this woman out of his life and mind, deliberately refusing to make enquiries about her, letting all knowledge of her cease with the letter in which she had written from India and announced her marriage.

And now, after ten years, she had crossed his path in this ghastly manner, as a woman her husband accused of attempted murder.

The sick man's words of a former lover disturbed him profoundly; was it himself who was referred to? Yet the love letters must be from another man for he had not corresponded with Mollie since her marriage, not for ten years.

He had never felt any bitterness towards Mollie for her desertion of a poor, struggling doctor, and he had always believed in the integral nobility of her character under the timidity of conventionality; but the fact remained that she had played him false— what if that had been "the little rift within the lute" that had now indeed silenced the music!

With a sense of bitter depression he entered the gloomy old house; how different was this from the pleasant ordinary Christmas he had been rather looking forward to, the jolly homely atmosphere of good fare, dancing, and friends!

When he had telephoned to these friends excusing himself his regret had been genuine and the cordial "bad luck!" had had a poignant echo in his own heart; bad luck indeed, bad luck—

She was waiting for him in the hall that a pale young man was decorating with boughs of prickly stiff holly that stuck stiffly behind the dark heavy pictures.

He was introduced as the secretary and said gloomily:

"Sir Harry wished everything to go on as usual, though I am afraid he is very ill indeed."

Yes, the patient had been seized by another violent attack of illness during Dr. Holroyd's absence, the young man went at once upstairs and found Sir Harry in a deep sleep and a rather nervous local doctor in attendance.

An exhaustive discussion of the case with this doctor threw no light on anything, and Dr. Holroyd, leaving in charge an extremely sensible looking housekeeper who was Sir Harry's preferred nurse, returned, worried and irritated, to the hall where Lady Strangeways now sat alone before the big fire.

She offered him a belated but fresh cup of tea.

"Why did you come?" she asked as if she roused herself from deep reverie.

"Why? Because your husband sent for me."

"He says you offered to come; he has told everyone in the house that."

"But I never heard of the man before to-day."

"You had heard of me. He seems to think that you came here to help me."

"He cannot be saying that," returned Dr. Holroyd sternly, and he wondered desperately if Mollie was lying, if she had invented this to drive him out of the house.

"Do you want me here?" he demanded.

"I don't know," she replied dully and confirmed his suspicions; probably there was another man and she wished him out of the way; but he could not go, out of pity towards her he could not go.

"Does he know we once knew each other?" he asked.

"No," she replied faintly, "therefore it seems such a curious chance that he should have sent for you, of all men!"

"It would have been more curious," he responded grimly, "if I had heard that you were here with a sick husband and had thrust myself in to doctor him! Strangeways must be crazy to spread such a tale and if he doesn't know we are old friends it becomes nonsense!"

"I often think that Harry is crazy," said Lady Strangeways wearily; she took a rose silk lined work basket, full of pretty trifles, on her knee, and began winding a skein of rose coloured silk; she looked so frail, so sad, so lifeless that the heart of Bevis Holroyd was torn with bitter pity.

"Now I am here I want to help you," he said earnestly. "I am staying for that, to help you—"

She looked up at him with a wistful appeal in her fair face.

"I'm worried," she said simply. "I've lost some letters I valued very much—I think they have been stolen."

Dr. Holroyd drew back; the love letters, the letters the husband had found, that were causing all his ugly suspicions.

"My poor Mollie!" he exclaimed impulsively. "What Sort of a coil have you got yourself into!"

As if this note of pity was unendurable she rose impulsively, scattering the contents of her work basket, dropping the skein of silk and hastened away down the dark hall.

Bevis Holroyd stooped mechanically to pick up the hurled objects and saw among them a small white packet, folded, but opened at one end; this packet seemed to have fallen out of a needle case of gold silk.

Bevis Holroyd had pounced on it and thrust it in his pocket just as the pale secretary returned with his thin arms most incongruously full of mistletoe.

"This will be a dreary Christmas for you, Dr. Holroyd," he said with the air of one who forces himself to make conversation. "No doubt you had some pleasant plans in view—we are all so pleased that Lady Strangeways had a friend to come and look after Sir Harry during the holidays."

"Who told you I was a friend?" asked Dr. Holroyd brusquely. "I certainly knew Lady Strangeways before she was married—"

The pale young man cut in crisply:

"Oh, Lady Strangeways told me so herself."

Bevis Holroyd was bewildered; why did she tell the secretary what she did not tell her husband?— both the indiscretion and the reserve seemed equally foolish.

Languidly hanging up his sprays and bunches of mistletoe the pallid young man, whose name was Garth Deane, continued his aimless remarks.

"This is really not a very cheerful house, Dr. Holroyd— I'm interested in Sir Harry's oriental work or I should not remain. Such a very unhappy marriage! I often think," he added regardless of Bevis Holroyd's darkling glance, "that it would be very unpleasant indeed for Lady Strangeways if anything happened to Sir Harry."

"Whatever do you mean, sir?" asked the doctor angrily.

The secretary was not at all discomposed.

"Well, one lives in the house, one has nothing much to do—and one notices."

Perhaps, thought the young man in anguish, the sick husband had been talking to this creature, perhaps the creature had really noticed something.

"I'll go up to my patient," said Bevis Holroyd briefly, not daring to anger one who might be an important witness in this mystery that was at present so unfathomable.

Mr. Deane gave a sickly grin over the lovely pale leaves and berries he was holding.

"I'm afraid he is very bad, doctor."

As Bevis Holroyd left the room he passed Lady Strangeways; she looked blurred, like a pastel drawing that has been shaken; the fingers she kept locked on her bosom; she had flung a silver fur over her shoulders that accentuated her ethereal look of blonde, pearl and amber hues.

"I've come back for my work basket," she said. "Will you go up to my husband? He is ill again—"

"Have you been giving him anything?" asked Dr. Holroyd as quietly as he could.

"Only some cambric tea, he insisted on that."

"Don't give him anything— leave him alone. He is in my charge now, do you understand?"

She gazed up at him with frightened eyes that had been newly washed by tears.

"Why are you so unkind to me?" she quivered.

She looked so ready to fall that he could not resist the temptation to put his hand protectingly on her arm, so that, as she stood in the low doorway leading to the stairs, he appeared to be supporting her drooping weight.

"Have I not said that I am here to help you, Mollie?"

The secretary slipped out from the shadows behind them, his arms still full of winter evergreens.

"There is too much foliage," he smiled, and the smile told that he had seen and heard.

Bevis Holroyd went angrily upstairs, he felt as if an invisible net was being dragged closely round him, something that which, from being a cobweb would become a cable; this air of mystery, of horror in the big house, this sly secretary, these watchful looking servants, the nervous village doctor ready to credit anything, the lovely agitated woman who was the woman he had long so romantically loved, and the sinister sick man with his diabolic accusations, a man Bevis Holroyd had, from the first moment, hated— all these people in these dark surroundings affected the young man with a miasma of apprehension, gloom and dread.

After a few hours of it he was nearer to losing his nerve than he had ever been; that must be because of Mollie, poor darling Mollie caught into all this nightmare.

And outside the bells were ringing across the snow, practicing for Christmas Day; the sound of them was to Bevis Holroyd what the sounds of the real world are when breaking into a sleeper's thick dreams.

The patient sat up in bed, fondling the glass of odious cambric tea.

"Why do you take the stuff?" demanded the doctor angrily.

"She won't let me off, she thrusts it on me," whispered Sir Harry.

Bevis Holroyd noticed, not for the first time since he had come into the fell atmosphere of this dark house that enclosed the piteous figure of the woman he loved, that husband and wife were telling different tales, on one side lay a burden of careful lying.

"Did she—" continued the sick man, "speak to you of her lost letters?"

The young doctor looked at him sternly.

"Why should Lady Strangeways make a confidante of me?" he asked. "Do you know that she was a friend of mine ten years ago before she married you?"

"Was she? How curious! But you met like strangers."

"The light in this room is very dim—"

"Well, never mind about that, whether you knew her or not—" Sir Harry gasped out in a sudden snarl. "The woman is a murderess, and you'll have to bear witness to it— I've got her letters, here under my pillow, and Garth Deane is watching her—"

"Ah, a spy! I'll have no part in this, Sir Harry. You'll call another doctor—"

"No, it's your case, you'll make the best of it— My God, I'm dying, I think—"

He fell back in such a convulsion of pain that Bevis Holroyd forgot everything in administering to him. The rest of that day and all that night the young doctor was shut up with his patient, assisted by the secretary and the housekeeper.

And when, in the pallid light of Christmas Eve morning, he went downstairs to find Lady Strangeways he knew that the sick man was suffering from arsenic poison, that the packet taken from Mollie's work box was arsenic, and it was only an added horror when he was called to the telephone to learn that a stiff dose of the poison had been found in the specimen of cambric tea.

He believed that he could save the husband and thereby the wife also, but he did not think he could close the sick man's mouth, the deadly hatred of Sir Harry was leading up to an accusation of attempted murder; of that he was sure, and there was the man Deane to back him up.

He sent for Mollie who had not been near her husband all night, and when she came, pale, distracted, huddled in her white fur, he said grimly:

"Look here, Mollie, I promised that I'd help you and I mean to, though it isn't going to be as easy as I thought, but you have got to be frank with me."

"But I have nothing to conceal—"

"The name of the other man—"

"The other man?"

"The man who wrote those letters your husband has under his pillow."

"Oh, Harry has them!" she cried in pain. "That man Deane stole them then! Bevis, they are your letters of the old days that I have always cherished."

"My letters!"

"Yes, do you think that there has ever been anyone else?"

"But he says— Mollie, there is a trap or trick here, some one is lying furiously. Your husband is being poisoned."

"Poisoned?"

"By arsenic given in that cambric tea. And he knows it. And he accuses you."

She stared at him in blank incredulity, then she slipped forward in her chair and clutched the big arm.

"Oh, God," she muttered in panic terror. "He always swore that he'd be revenged on me— because he knew that I never cared for him—"

But Bevis Holroyd recoiled; he did not dare listen, he did not dare believe.

"I've warned you," he said, "for the sake of the old days, Mollie—"

A light step behind them and they were aware of the secretary creeping out of the embrowning shadows.

"A cold Christmas," he said rubbing his hands together. "A really cold, seasonable Christmas. We are almost snowed in— and Sir Harry would like to see you, Dr. Holroyd."

"I have only just left him—"

Bevis Holroyd looked at the despairing figure of the woman, crouching in her chair; he was distracted, overwrought, near to losing his nerve.

"He wants particularly to see you," cringed the secretary.

Mollie looked back at Bevis Holroyd, her lips moved twice in vain before she could say: "Go to him."

The doctor went slowly upstairs and the secretary followed.

Sir Harry was now flat on his back, staring at the dark tapestry curtains of his bed.

"I'm dying," he announced as the doctor bent over him.

"Nonsense. I am not going to allow you to die."

"You won't be able to help yourself. I've brought you here to see me die."

"What do you mean?"

"I've a surprise for you too, a Christmas present. These letters now, these love letters of my wife's— what name do you think is on them?"

"Your mind is giving way, Sir Harry."

"Not at all— come nearer. Deane— the name is Bevis Holroyd."

"Then they are letters ten years old. Letters written before your wife met you."

The sick man grinned with infinite malice.

"Maybe. But there are no dates on them and the envelopes are all destroyed. And I, as a dying man, shall swear to their recent date— I, as a foully murdered man."

"You are wandering in your mind," said Bevis Holroyd quietly. "I refuse to listen to you any further."

"You shall listen to me. I brought you here to listen to me. I've got you. Here's my will, Deane's got that, in which I denounced you both, there are your letters, every one thinks that she put you in charge of the case, every one knows that you know all about arsenic in cambric tea through the Pluntre case, and every one will know that I die of arsenic poisoning."

The doctor allowed him to talk himself out; indeed it would have been difficult to check the ferocity of his malicious energy.

The plot was ingenious, the invention of a slightly insane, jealous recluse who hated his wife and hated the man she had never ceased to love; Bevis Holroyd could see the nets very skilfully drawn round him; but the main issue of the mystery remained untouched; who was administering the arsenic?

The young man glanced across the sombre bed to the dark figure of the secretary.

"What is your place in all this farrago, Mr. Deane?" he asked sternly.

"I'm Sir Harry's friend," answered the other stubbornly, "and I'll bring witness any time against Lady Strangeways. I've tried to circumvent her—"

"Stop," cried the doctor. "You think that Lady Strangeways is poisoning her husband and that I am her accomplice?"

The sick man, who had been looking with bitter malice from one to another, whispered hoarsely:

"That is what you think, isn't it, Deane?"

"I'll say what I think at the proper time," said the secretary obstinately.

"No doubt you are being well paid for your share in this."

"I've remembered his services in my will," smiled Sir Harry grimly. "You can adjust your differences then, Dr. Holroyd, when I'm dead, poisoned, murdered. It will be a pretty story, a nice scandal, you and she in the house together, the letters, the cambric tea!"

An expression of ferocity dominated him, then he made an effort to dominate this and to speak in his usual suave stilted manner.

"You must admit that we shall all have a very Happy Christmas, doctor."

Bevis Holroyd was looking at the secretary, who stood the other side of the bed, cringing, yet somehow in the attitude of a man ready to pounce; Dr. Holroyd wondered if this was the murderer.

"Why," he asked quietly to gain time, "did you hatch this plan to ruin a man you had never seen before?"

"I always hated you," replied the sick man faintly. "Mollie never forgot you, you see, and she never allowed me to forget that she never forgot you. And then I found those letters she had cherished."

"You are a very wicked man," said the doctor drily, "but it will all come to nothing, for I am not going to allow you to die."

"You won't be able to help yourself," replied the patient. "I'm dying, I tell you. I shall die on Christmas Day."

He turned his head towards the secretary and added:

"Send my wife up to me."

"No," interrupted Dr. Holroyd strongly. "She shall not come near you again."

Sir Harry Strangeways ignored this.

"Send her up," he repeated.

"I will bring her, sir."

The secretary left, with a movement suggestive of flight, and Bevis Holroyd stood rigid, waiting, thinking, looking at the ugly man who now had closed his eyes and lay as if insensible. He was certainly very ill, dying perhaps, and he certainly had been poisoned by arsenic given in cambric tea, and, as certainly, a terrible scandal and a terrible danger would threaten with his death; the letters were not dated, the marriage was notoriously unhappy, and he, Bevis Holroyd, was associated in every one's mind with a murder case in which this form of poison, given in this manner, had been used.

Drops of moisture stood out on the doctor's forehead; if he could clear himself be sure that it would be very difficult for Mollie to do so; how could even he himself in his soul swear to her innocence!

Of course he must get the woman out of the house at once, he must have another doctor from town, nurses— but could this be done in time, if the patient died on his hands would he not be only bringing witnesses to his own discomfiture? And the right people, his own friends, were difficult to get hold of now, at Christmas time.

He longed to go in search of Mollie— she must at least be got away, but how, without a scandal, without a suspicion?

He longed also to have the matter out with this odious secretary, but he dared not leave his patient.

Lady Strangeways returned with Garth Deane and seated herself, mute, shadowy, with eyes full of panic, on the other side of the sombre bed.

"Is he going to live?" she presently whispered as she watched Bevis Holroyd ministering to her unconscious husband.

"We must see that he does," he answered grimly.

All through that Christmas Eve and the bitter night to the stark dawn when the church bells broke ghastly on their wan senses did they tend the sick man who only came to his senses to grin at them in malice.

Once Bevis Holroyd asked the pallid woman:

"What was that white packet you had in your work box?"

And she replied:

"I never had such a packet."

And he:

"I must believe you."

But he did not send for the other doctors and nurses, he did not dare.

The Christmas bells seemed to rouse the sick man from his deadly swoon.

"You can't save me," he said with indescribable malice. "I shall die and put you both in the dock—"

Mollie Strangeways sank down beside the bed and began to cry, and Garth Deane, who by his master's express desire had been in and out of the room all night, stopped and looked at her with a peculiar expression. Sir Harry looked down at her also.

"Don't cry," he gasped, "this is Christmas Day. We ought all to be happy— bring me my cambric tea— do you hear?"

She rose mechanically and left the room to take in the tray with the fresh milk and water that the housekeeper had placed softly on the table outside the door; for all through the nightmare vigil, the sick man's cry had been for "cambric tea."

As he sat up in bed feebly sipping the vapid and odious drink the tortured woman's nerves slipped her control.

"I can't endure those bells, I wish they would stop those bells!" she cried and ran out of the room.

Bevis Holroyd instantly followed her; and now as suddenly as it had sprung on him, the fell little drama disappeared, fled like a poison cloud out of the compass of his life.

Mollie was leaning against the closed window, her sick head resting against the mullions; through the casement showed, surprisingly, sunlight on the pure snow and blue sky behind the withered trees.

"Listen, Mollie," said the young man resolutely. "I'm sure he'll live if you are careful— you mustn't lose heart—"

The sick room door opened and the secretary slipped out.

He nervously approached the two in the window place. "I can't stand this any longer," he said through dry lips. "I didn't know he meant to go so far, he is doing it himself, you know; he's got the stuff hidden in his bed, he puts it into the cambric tea, he's willing to die to spite you two, but I can't stand it any longer."

"You've been abetting this!" cried the doctor.

"Not abetting," smiled the secretary wanly. "Just standing by. I found out by chance— and then he forced me to be silent— I had his will, you know, and I've destroyed it."

With this the strange creature glided downstairs.

The doctor sprang at once to Sir Harry's room; the sick man was sitting up in the sombre bed and with a last effort was scattering a grain of powder into the glass of cambric tea.

With a look of baffled horror he saw Bevis Holroyd but the drink had already slipped down his throat; he fell back and hid his face, baulked at the last of his diabolic revenge.

When Bevis Holroyd left the dead man's chamber he found Mollie still leaning in the window; she was free, the sun was shining, it was Christmas Day.

__________________

7: About the Perfect Crime of Mr. Digberry

Anthony Abbot

Charles Fulton Oursler, 1893-1952

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine Vol 1 No 1, Fall 1941

Cosmopolitan, Oct 1940

Under the name "Anthony Abbott", Fulton Oursler wrote many detective novels, and a few short stories, featuring Thatcher Colt, NYPD

THE FACTS in the case of Mr. Digberry have not been disclosed by the New York Police Department. Absurd as the statement may sound, Mr. Thatcher Colt, then Police Commissioner, actually connived with the little man to conceal all evidence of his singular misdeeds. Mr. Digberry was guilty of one felony and deeply involved in a second crime of peculiar fiendishness and horror. Yet he was allowed to go free, with his pockets stuffed with money and his secret utterly safe.

Now, after three years, the Digberry bargain has come to an end. In revealing the circumstances, as I learned them while I was confidential secretary to the commissioner, I am able to give at last a complete account of the murder of one of the most beautiful women in New York.

I FIRST SAW Mr. Digberry in the line-up about nine-thirty one scorching August morning. More than a thousand detectives were crowded into the old gymnasium of the Headquarters Building at 240 Centre Street. Across the runway, that Monday morning, passed a defiant parade of law-breakers. Auto thieves and dope peddlers, gunmen and blackmailers, they came forth, put on their hats and took them off again, stood fullface and profile, and were marched off in custody.

It was in such unholy company that Thatcher Colt and I encountered one of the truly unique conspirators of criminal history.

"Everett P. Digberry!"

Assistant Chief Inspector Flynn barked the name angrily, and a small, bald-headed man, with a fringe of gray hair around his temples and with large, blinking eyes, walked indignantly toward the center of the platform. His gray Palm Beach suit was wrinkled, and against his left side he pressed a stiff straw hat, banded with a gay ribbon of red and blue.

"You were found climbing over the back wall of St. Christopher's Cemeery, the Bronx, at two a.m. on Sunday, and you are charged with carrying a concealed weapon without a license. Are you guilty or not?"

"I would like to explain," began Mr. Digberry. "As a citizen, I demand—"

"Have you ever been arrested before?"

"Never. I can explain everything!"

"You'll have to!" was Flynn's grim assurance. "Where did you get this gun— a thirty-two-caliber French Touron? Come on, now, speak up!"

"I haven't the remotest idea where I got it," rasped Mr. Digberry. "All this was due to a letter from the Driller. If you would only listen—"

But by then he was being yanked through the door, and the next suspect faced the lights.

"Tony," whispered Thatcher Colt to me, "get that fellow and bring him to my office. I want to talk to him!"

I glanced at Colt in surprise. But orders were orders, and at ten o'clock I led my man into the commissioner's private office.

"I've just read a report about you, Digberry," Colt stated accusingly. "You've been lying! What were you doing in that graveyard at two o'clock in the morning?"

Mr. Digberry gulped. "I've been trying to answer that all night long, and no one will listen to me! Won't you let me tell my story in my own way?"

"Do I understand that you have a letter signed by the Driller?" asked Colt.

"I have, chief!"

"Then go ahead and tell your story in your own way."

"Well, you see, to begin with, I'm a wigmaker," explained Mr. Digberry. "I carry on a manufacturing business founded by my grandfather. I produce wigs of mohair, human hair, and of silk and wool, suitable for all characters and impersonations. Also, a complete line of wigs for dolls."

"What has that to do with your recent behavior? You'll have to come to the point!"

"I am now at the point," declared Mr. Digberry. "I am only a victim, chief. You see, I've been spending the summer alone at my home in New Rochelle. My family— I have a wife and six daughters— are at a bungalow in Maine. That's why I've had to face the whole thing alone. This letter— this ghastly letter from the Driller— came at a moment when I needed all my mental resources for my own business. I am about to launch a new idea in the wig field: a soft, flexible cap of silk gauze, with the hair sewn—"

"When did you get this letter?" interrupted Colt.

"One week ago."

"What did it say?"

"It told me I must pay the sum of one thousand dollars or be killed!"

"And how were you to pay this money?"

"I was to wait for directions."

"And you received them?"

"Yes, chief; that's why I was in the graveyard. Three days after the letter arrived, my telephone rang about six in the morning. A harsh voice told me to get the thousand dollars, and on Saturday— really, two o'clock Sunday morning— carry it in a bundle to Waverly Avenue and Gorsuch Street, in the Bronx; to climb over the wall of St. Christopher's Cemetery and go at once to my own family plot. I have three aunts buried in that plot. I was told to lay the money on the middle grave— Aunt Kate's."

"And you did that— without consulting the police?"

"Yes, I did, chief. After all, I have my wife and six daughters to think o£ I drew the money out of our savings, laid it on Aunt Kate's grave and ran. But as I ran, I looked back and I saw a tall man pick up the money and disappear among the trees. Then I climbed over the wall and practically dropped into the arms of one of your policemenI "

"But you carried a revolver. Where did that come from?"

"As heaven is my witness, I don't know! I found it in my room about half past ten last Saturday night. I had gone out for a few minutes, and when I returned, I found the gun on the bed. A burglar has been in our apartment house three times recently. Perhaps he left it there. I don't know. But I took it along when I started for the cemetery. I meant to give it to an officer and explain—"

Colt looked incredulous and changed the subject. "From what bank did you get the money?"

"The Drovers and Mechanics in New Rochelle."

Colt glanced at me; a flash of his eyes that was an instruction. Going to another room, I called the manager of the Drovers and Mechanics Bank. Back in Colt's office, I nodded quickly— Colt knew I had confirmed the fact that Mr. Digberry had withdrawn one thousand dollars from his savings account.

"I'm going to be reasonable with you," Colt told the nervous little man. "Frankly, I don't believe your story about that revolver. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, but only if you're on the level and help the police."

"I'll do anything— anything."

"Where is your letter from the Driller?" Colt demanded, as he pressed a buzzer.

"In the top left-hand drawer of my wife's bureau at home."

The door opened to admit Captain Israel Henry, the official guardian of Colt's office.

"Send a detective with Mr. Digberry to his home for a letter," ordered Colt. "Bring down all his personal papers— bankbooks, insurance policies. Arrange with the district attorney to delay his appearance before the magistrate. And come back here with the letter."

At the door the captive turned. "Chief, my wife and daughters are coming home tomorrow afternoon. Can't I be released in time to meet them? And can't I get out of this without anybody being the wiser?"

Captain Henry practically tossed him through the door. Meanwhile, Colt had opened a drawer of his desk, lifted out a sheaf of papers and cast them on the blotter.

"The Driller's been causing some excitement, Tony."

"Don't believe I ever heard of him."

"Probably some harmless nitwit, but because of the people involved, I have to take it seriously. Ten of Manhattan's foremost citizens have received letters like the one that fellow just described. The chairman of the Opera Society got the first one. That was two weeks ago. Since then, several friends of mine have received similar threats. Each letter was typewritten and demanded payment of money, with death as the penalty for disobedience. Each promised further instructions as to how payment was to be made, and each was signed 'The Driller.' "

"Of course it's a crank!"

"The fantastic entrance of Mr. Digberry into the affair makes me wonder. Remember that all the other letters went to eminent citizens, ranging from John Otts, the bank president, to Margaret Coleman, the coloratura soprano. All persons of position and wealth— except Digberry. And Digberry is a wigmaker!"

Two minutes later, at Colt's summons. Inspector Flynn stalked into the office and Colt explained the situation.

"Get in touch with all these people who received Driller letters, Flynn! Find out if any of them know Digberry or have had any dealings with him Within half an hour Flynn phoned me. "Tell the chief I've got a man in my office who knows all about Digberry."

"Send him right up!" was Colt's instruction.

The stranger who entered the commissioner's office a minute or two later was young and slender and blond, with keen blue eyes and the grace that expresses athletic strength. He was Captain Edgar Walters, a correspondent for foreign journals, who lived in an East Side riverview apartment.

"I am a friend of Margaret Coleman," the visitor explained. "I was told you wished to question me."

"You know Digberry?"

"Madame Coleman does. I've met him once or twice. Eggy runt, you know— harmless but full of eloquence."

"How does Madame Coleman know Digberry?"

Captain Walters grinned. "Through his art as a wigmaker. He's an enthusiast about his work— a left-handed chap who can draw curious designs. He made Madame Coleman a remarkable wig for her rôle as Gilda in 'Rigo- letto,' and has since made her other wigs. Mr. Digberry has a passion for exactitude. His wigs are most realistic."

Colt nodded thoughtfully and asked, "Where is Madame Coleman now?"

"In Norway."

"But she received one of these letters?"

"It was turned over to me."

"And what is your relation to Madame?"

Captain Walters made an expressive gesture with his hands. "I am what is called a 'ghost.' Madame Coleman's book of memoirs is soon to be published. I'm writing them for her— under her name, of course. We came to know each other when I was publishing a Riviera society and fashion magazine at Menton, and interviewed her there. That was before her divorce— you recall she was married to Lucius Polk Coleman, that jealous old poof-poof? A millionaire, but a hopeless muffle-head. I told her she was a fool to stick to him, and when that blew up—"

"Is the wigmaker trustworthy?"

Captain Walters chuckled. "Honest, yes; harmless, too, but the most garrulous creature alive. I don't know him well, but Madame Coleman finds him stimulating."

When Captain Walters had departed, after seeing the other Driller letters, Colt once more signaled for Flynn.

I want to keep busy on this case," he told the inspector. "Trace that Digberry revolver. And let's go further with that paper, too— all those Driller notes were on identical sheets.... Now, Tony, let's get at this budget report."

But the budget was doomed to be neglected. Just before noon, Colt's phone rang sharply. The commissioner listened a minute, then swore devoutly. He hung up the receiver and reached for his hat. "Woman murdered on Sixty-fourth Street. One of our men who was at the line-up this morning is on the scene. And what did he find on the mantelpiece but a photograph of our Mr. Digberry!"

I reached for my hat as Colt braced Captain Henry.

"When Digberry is brought back here, hold him incommunicado. See particularly that he learns nothing about this Sixty-fourth Street murder!"

Drawn up under the porte-cochere on the Broome Street side of Headquarters was the commissioner's car. At the wheel sat the moonfaced Neil McMahon, Colt's chauffeur. With the siren blowing defiance of all the red lights, we raced uptown to the Wedgeworth Arms on Sixty-fourth Street, a few doors from Central Park.

The crime had been committed in a fourth-floor rear apartment, furnished— two rooms, kitchenette and bath. Here we found a full detail from the Homicide Squad and Doctor J. L. Multooler, an assistant medical examiner.

"We didn't want to move the body until you came, commissioner," the doctor explained. "You'll find it a peach of a case!"

"What's the woman's name?"

"She was known here as Mrs. Samuel Smith. Probably a fake!"

I am not easily shaken by woeful sights, but the scene that awaited us in that inner room was unnerving.

It was like a living room, but with a bed that collapsed into a wall closet, The door to that closet was now open wide, and the body of the victim was standing bolt upright, facing us— a beautiful blond woman, her face rouged and powdered.

She had been shot through the left temple, and the powder burns showed that the weapon had been held close to her head. It must have been the killer who placed her in this extraordinary position. Her shoeless feet were on the floor; a scarf was tied around her throat and drawn through the bedsprings. Her arms were lifted so that the ripped sleeves of her costly dress were attached to hooks in opposite sides of the closet.

Doctor Multooler's voice broke the silence. "I wonder who she really is!"

Colt turned to the surgeon with an amazed expression. "You don't recognize her?" he exclaimed. "This is the body of Margaret Coleman, the coloratura soprano. She was believed to be in Norway."

The commissioner's piercing glances searched the room, rested finally upon an overstuffed armchair drawn up to a window, overlooking a court¬ yard. The chair faced the singer's body.

Colt studied this chair with patient care.

"Blood on the upholstery," he announced. "She must have been sitting in this chair. The murderer entered the room unheard. He crept up behind her and shot through her left temple."

"But only a left-handed person would do that!" I exclaimed.

To this deduction of mine (of which I felt rather proud), Colt made no answer. Instead, he approached the body once more and lifted its left wrist.

"Bracelet watch with crystal broken," he announced. "That slight bruise over the right eye probably means the body toppled forward, striking the watch on the floor. The hands of the watch stopped at ten minutes past twelve."

"So the time of the murder is fixed," said Doctor Multooler.

Again Colt refrained from comment. Instead, he turned to Captain Aller- ton of the Homicide Squad.

"Observe that she had recently powdered and rouged her face. Get the trademark name of the powder, rouge and lipstick," directed the commissioner. "There must be samples in this apartment."

As Allerton moved along, Colt turned to a detective from the D. A.'s office.

"Where's that picture of Digberry?"

The detective pointed to the mantel behind us. There, indeed, stood a likeness of the wigmaker of New Rochelle. The picture had been torn across as if by angry hands. The top of it was missing. Colt picked it up with a low whistle of amazement.

Just then Captain Allerton brought in the manager of the Wedgeworth Arms, Percy J. Cooper. Colt questioned him in the outer room.

"When did anyone in this apartment house last see this woman alive?"

"Saturday night, about seven-thirty, when she had a meal served in her room."

"Did she have any visitors that night?"

Yes, sir. That man there!" The manager pointed to Digberry's photograph.

"Do you know him?"

"I disrecollect his name, but we noticed him around here all the time."

"At what hour was he here on Saturday night?"

"The elevator boy says he got here late. He don't remember just when."

Mr. Cooper had not known his tenant was a famous singer; Margaret Coleman had not been recognized by the employees or tenants. She had come to the Wedgeworth Arms early in June— three days after her reported sailing, as it later developed— and engaged the apartment, paying two months' rent in advance.

"Did Madame have many visitors?"

"A few. One I distinctly remember— a gray-haired man about sixty. They had a terrific row about money. The neighbors heard Madame Coleman crying that she had been robbed and made penniless. I had to object to the noise."

"When was that?"

"About a month ago. I think the gray-haired man— he was short and dapper, I remember, and he carried a stick— came two or three times before, but never after that scene. She stopped at the desk the next morning and apologized. She said the man was her husband and asked me never to let him up in the elevator again."

"And Mr. Digberry— did he come often?" asked Colt, placing the torn photograph in his pocket.

"Nearly every night."

"Who discovered the body?"

"The floor maid. She couldn't get in yesterday, so she decided the tenant did not wish to be disturbed. But this morning, when no one answered her knocking, she went in. Seeing nobody around, she went ahead and cleaned up— until she opened that door!"

Colt dismissed the manager and we returned to the inner room. Inspector Flynn, who had arrived shortly after we did, came forward with something that gleamed dully in his hand. "The bullet that did it," he announced. "It flattened against the wall beside that armchair. My guess would be a thirty-two."

"Send it to the ballistics department," Colt ordered. "Tell them to compare it with the bullets from Digberry's gun."

Hedge, one of the assistant D. A.'s, was conferring with Captain Allerton.

"Our men have searched everywhere," Allerton reported, seeing Colt. "But all Madame Coleman's personal papers are missing. Whoever did it was thorough. No fingerprints, except the lady's."

Colt nodded abstractedly, his eyes once more searching the room for some significant detail. But there seemed to be no visible clues.

"Our men questioned twenty people in flats near this one; nobody heard the shot," continued Allerton. "But on Saturday night there were radios going in a lot of rooms in the house."

Colt's stalking around the room had brought him back to the open closet. The expanse of coiled bedspring filled his gaze. Beginning at the upper left- hand corner, he studied it by inches. Presently he lifted an almost invisible object that had been caught in the bedspring.

It was a gray hair!

On the sleeve of his left arm, Colt placed that threadlike clue. Against the blue serge, he could study it clearly; it was, indeed, a human hair, and yet there was a tiny fragment at one end that was certainly not human; it seemed more like a knotted sliver of white gauze.

I produced a department envelope from my pocket. In this, the hair was sealed and marked for identification.

Meanwhile, Colt was giving Flynn instructions. "Get Madame Coleman's husband. I want to question him downtown. And get that writer— Captain Walters. There are a few things he'll have to clear up. I'd like pictures of both of them. And come down to my office as soon as you can, inspector. I want you there when I talk to Digberry."

But our leaving was still delayed. Captain Allerton had obtained samples of Madame's facial preparations and Colt sat down to study them.

As I waited for him near the door, I felt a clammy hand touch mine. I turned around hastily to find myself staring into the pale eyes of Cooper.

"Take this," he whispered.

He placed in my hands a legal-sized envelope with bulky contents. A rubber band was around it; the flap was sealed.

"A thousand dollars reward for anyone who finds the guilty man— it might help the hotel's reputation," Cooper gurgled, and darted away.

As soon as we were in the car, I told the commissioner about the money. He merely nodded and shoved the envelope into his pocket. He remained silent until we reached Headquarters at two-thirty.

Digberry was waiting for us. "Where's the letter?" was Colt's first question.

Detective Mulvaney, who stood beside the prisoner, handed over a much-fingered envelope, from which Colt drew out a single sheet of notepaper. It was a duplicate of the ten others reposing in the drawer at his right hand.

"This calls for one thousand dollars or death," he commented. "Where is your bank passbook?"

Mulvaney promptly offered a gray-backed booklet, on the front of which appeared the names of Everett P. and Hattie Elizabeth Digberry, and a statement that the account was payable to either, or both, and to the survivor.

Colt flipped the pages; then glanced at the prisoner. "This is a new book. It has just been issued!"

"I lost the old one about three weeks ago. The bank advertised the loss, and then issued this new one for me."

Colt's eyes were solemn and accusing. "We'll come back to the bank book matter later. In the meantime, what were your relations with Margaret Coleman?"

Mr. Digberry's cheeks blanched. "She was one of my customers," he replied.

"Wasn't she an intimate friend?"

"Miss Coleman reposed a great deal of confidence in me as an artist in my own line," the wigmaker admitted.

"Is that why she put your picture on her mantel? And is that why you visited her almost every night, when she was supposed to be in Europe?" pursued Colt relentlessly.

The prisoner thrust out his chin. His silence was plainly meant for defiance.

"Are you refusing to answer?"

"I am!" declared Mr. Digberry. "I really am! There's such a thing as professional confidence. Any questions about Madame Coleman she can answer for herself."

"You know better than that, Digberry. You know as well as I do that Margaret Coleman cannot answer any questions."

"How should I know that? Why can't she?"

"Because she's dead!"

"Dead! Margaret— dead?"

"Murdered!" Colt added. "With a bullet through her head. And you didn't know anything about that, did you?"

"Nothing!" groaned Digberry. "As God is my witness, I knew nothing about it."

"Didn't you visit Margaret Coleman Saturday night?" Colt demanded.

"No! Indeed, no!"

"Where were you?"

"I was in the cemetery."

"Where were you at midnight?"

"I was waiting outside the cemetery until the time to leave the money."

"Anybody see you from eleven-thirty until you were arrested at two?"

"Not a soul."

"And you call that an alibi?"

"I call it hell!" declared Mr. Digberry.

"I'm waiting to know what your relations were with Margaret Coleman."

"She liked me," replied Digberry. "There was nothing immoral in our friendship. She was lonely. So was I. She was tired of her smart friends. She always said she could talk to me. And she admired my work. You know she was divorced?"

"Well?"

"Her husband was Lucius Polk Coleman— a very rich man. When they parted he made a settlement. But even though they were divorced, he still wanted to tell her what to do with her money. Soon the money was all gone. She said she had been cheated out of it. She blamed a man— she would not name him, but I never had any doubt. Literally, Mr. Colt, that poor lady, that truly great musical artist, was broke. Think of that humiliation. Yet she had to keep up appearances. So she pretended to go abroad. Her idea was to save every cent to prepare for next season. But her stocks went down to nothing— literally nothing. And all the time she was working with a man at the bank to punish the man who had robbed her."

"What bank?" interposed Colt.

"The Harrison National."

Colt reached for the telephone. In five minutes one of our Wall Street Squad was on his way to the Harrison National Bank. While Colt was talking, Inspector Flynn came in. He saluted and sat down.

"Go on!" prompted Colt, when he had finished phoning.

"I was telling you," resumed Digberry, "how Madame pretended—"

"Never mind. Take a look at this, and see if you know what it is."

On his desk Colt laid the envelope containing the gray hair. He extracted the strand with a small pair of pincers.

"I recognize that," Digberry said spitefully. "It's evidently from a very poor wig made by a faker named Wilkins."

"How can you make a positive statement like that?" asked Colt.

"I know by the way that knot is tied. One wigmaker knows another's work."

Colt put away the hair. "Whom did Madame Coleman fear most?" he asked.

"Her husband. She was getting evidence to bring action against him."

Flynn chuckled grimly. "Surely you can tell us more than that. For instance, what time did you leave the Wedgeworth Arms on Saturday night?"

"I just told the chief I wasn't there on Saturday night," reiterated Mr. Digberry.

"But the manager saw you!"

"Not me. On Saturday night I had my own worries; I had to put a thousand dollars on Aunt Kate's grave."

"Is that the best you can do?" Colt cried. "All right, Flynn. Take him downstairs and let the boys talk to him!"

"The third degree!" groaned Digberry.

Flynn sent him off, shut the door and walked over to Colt's desk. "Here are the two pictures you wanted. I talked with Walters. He's out of it. At the time this woman was killed, Walters and a friend who spent the night with him were talking with our sergeant on that beat. That's an alibi nobody can smash."

"But what about her husband?"

Flynn sighed. "He sailed at one a.m. Saturday on a liner due in Cherbourg five days from now."

The door closed on Inspector Flynn.

"Get me the address of Wilkins," Colt called to me.

As I hurried to the outer office, I left him, telephone in hand, asking to be connected with the chief of the Paris police. I found the address of Elmer Wilkins, wigmaker, and Colt decided to call upon him.

Mr. Wilkins, a man with ears too big, a nose too long and a mouth too wide, received us with a Chinaman's smile. Before we had spoken, he assured us that his firm was the oldest and most reliable in the United States.

Colt silenced him by stating, "I don't wish to buy any artificial hair today. I'm the police commissioner, and I want information." He drew forth the gray hair. "Now, what can you tell me about that?"

Mr. Wilkins produced a magnifying glass. "Perhaps it's from a wig that was made here," he conceded.

"How long since you made a gray wig?"

"I'll show you my records."

For ten minutes Colt and Wilkins pored over the books. Then I saw Colt produce three photographs from his pocket.

"Recognize any one of these men?"

"Why— why, yes I do. This one— it's the man himself."

"You have a quick eye, Mr. Wilkins. That's all I want to know."

With Wilkins' promise to remain within call, we hurried off. It was now six-thirty p.m.

"Amusing thing!" Colt said. "Just before we left, I had a telephone call from our Wall Street man. He discovered what Coleman was up to in her investigation, and it certainly ties up with that wig."

For the rest of that night and down to the Tuesday-morning breakfast hour Colt labored constantly on the Coleman murder case. Three times that night he talked on the transatlantic telephone with the Paris police. He also held a ten-minute conversation by radiophone with the captain of the liner on which Lucius Coleman had sailed. But not until an hour before midnight did we get a break in the case.

That came with the report of Doctor Multooler. At eleven he called Colt. "The autopsy fixes the time of death within ten minutes of ten o'clock," he announced.

"But Madame's watch stopped shortly after midnight!" gasped Colt.

"Nevertheless, my evidence is positive. I'll send you a full report in writing."

Multooler's discovery upset Colt's previous calculations. "I think we'll go up to the abode of Digberry," he announced.

The wigmaker's home was in St. Nicholas Place, not far from the railroad station in New Rochelle. During our swift drive to the suburb, Colt remarked, "That watch must have been stopped by opening the back and depressing the spring. Not a new alibi— but I didn't suspect it."

No more was said until we reached our destination, an old-fashioned, five-story apartment building known as the Gloria Arms. Mr. Digberry leased Suite G, on the second floor, and the janitor willingly let us in. For ten minutes we traversed our prisoner's deserted rooms, but Colt admitted that his search was almost barren.

On our way out, he paused to question the girl in charge of the outmoded lobby switchboard. Yes, she had worked last Saturday night. Yes, she remembered a call for Mr. Digberry around ten-thirty. She finally admitted she had listened in.

"I heard a man say he had a message from Madame Coleman and would like to see Mr. Digberry at once, down at the railroad station. Right after that Mr. Digberry went out. But he came right back. After a little while I saw him go out again, and he didn't come back for quite a while. Even then, he went out later."

As Colt lighted his pipe in the car, his face was grave. "I won't know how to put this thing together," he confessed, "if all Digberry's extraordinary story is proved true. But this much is obvious. If our little bald friend is innocent, then the murderer played him a villainous trick.

"I believe I see through this crime now, Tony — but I don't know yet how to pin it on the murderer. There's one long shot," he added. "Do you remember that Walters had a visitor who spent the night with him? Well, Tony, there's our long shot; if it hits, we might get a perfect case."

When we returned to Headquarters, I sat down at my typewriter. I had three books full of stenographic pothooks on the case, and soon I was absorbed in their transcription. It must have been an hour later when I was disturbed by voices in the commissioner's office. I entered to find Colt seated at his desk. Spread before him were a gray Palm Beach suit and a straw hat with a band of red and blue. Colt was issuing orders to a detective.

"Use the vacuum cleaners on these clothes," directed the commissioner, "and turn the results over to our laboratory. The chemists know what to look for."

The detective saluted, gathered up the costume and departed.

"I've taken a chance on our long shot, Tony," declared Colt wearily.

IT WAS Tuesday noon— twenty-four hours after the discovery of Margaret Coleman's body. Gathered in Colt's office were Inspector Flynn and Digberry, the commissioner and myself.

Flynn had failed to break down Digberry; nevertheless the inspector was satisfied of the little man's guilt.

"Mr. Digberry, where did you go when you left your house at ten-thirty Saturday night?" Colt demanded.

"I went to the station to see a man who didn't show up."

Flynn snorted. "I think we've stalled long enough with this fellow. I want to charge him with murder!"

"You have no case against me at all!" Digberry cried. "I demand to be represented by a lawyer!"

"You'll need a doctor if you take that tone," Flynn came back. "You wrote those Driller letters. We've traced the paper from the manufacturer to the dealer and found a supply of it in that hair works you run in New Rochelle. And the experts swear all the letters were written on a typewriter in your joint. And the one you wrote to yourself was only to cover up."

"Why should I do such a thing?" shouted Digberry.

Flynn gave a harsh chuckle. "You're asking me? You sent them as a blind, so the police would think the Driller killed Margaret Coleman. And he did. For you're the Driller, Digberry."

"I did not kill her!" Digberry screamed. "Why should I kill her?"

"Because you had a love affair with her. You've lied about everything. Here's the report from the bank. It's true that you drew out a thousand dollars. But not as ransom money, in one lump sum, as you said. You've been drawing that cash out in dribs and drabs all summer. While your wife was away, you were spending money on an opera singer. It was high life for you, Digberry, my boy. But now the end of the summer is near. You thought there was only one way to get rid of that woman. So the whole hocus-pocus was just a scheme of yours to kill Margaret Coleman and put the blame on some made-up villain!"

"Try to prove that I killed her!" Digberry taunted. "Just try!"

"I can do that, too," Flynn grated. "You had a gun on you, didn't you? Well, the shot that killed Margaret Coleman was fired from that gun."

Digberry whirled to Colt. "Mr. Commissioner, I'm not guilty of these things! How am I to face my wife—"

An attendant was ushering Captain Walters into the office.

"Hello!" he cried. "What's the row?"

"Just a few questions, captain," began Colt. "I believe you told me yesterday you met Madame Coleman at Menton?"

"Quite!"

Colt stood up and pointed at Captain Walters with the bowl of his pipe.

"It's a curious fact," he said, "that the revolver which Mr. Digberry says was left in his apartment by a burglar is one of French manufacture, purchased from a dealer in Menton, and containing a mark recognizable to the police!"

Walters began, "Do you infer—?"

"Tony, open that door!"

I opened a door just behind Colt's desk. Wilkins was standing there.

"Mr. Wilkins," called Colt, "do you recognize in this room any of your recent customers?"

Wilkins nodded. "The little blond fellow over there," he rumbled, pointing to Captain Walters. "He's the man I made the bald wig for the other day."

"See any head in this room that your wig resembled?"

The eyes of the two wigmakers met, and Wilkins roared, "Of course! Why didn't I think of it before? That wig was the dead image of old Digberry's head."

"That will do!" said Colt, and I closed the door after Wilkins, as an attendant led him away. Colt again faced Walters.

"I have your complete history," he announced. "This morning you kindly left your fingerprints on sensitized paper that I gave you when I showed you the Driller letters. Your prints were telephotoed to the police in Europe. You served time in France and Holland for blackmail."

Captain Walters laughed convincingly. "My dear Mr. Colt, you can't connect me with this murder. My alibi is complete. I had no motive and no opportunity."

Colt smiled. "You stole Madame Coleman's money, Walters," he said. "A banking friend of hers helped her to investigate you. The Parisian police co-operated and they told me all about that. Somehow you learned that the singer was in a fair way to send you to Devil's Island. So you decided to kill her!"

"That is preposterous! I refuse—"

"And you decided to make it a perfect crime. A perfect crime demands that the police have a victim. You decided on Digberry after calling on Margaret Coleman. She refused to forgive you. That was when you tore Digberry's picture. You wanted only the upper part of his head— the lower part might have been recognized by Wilkins, a fellow craftsman. For you meant to kill a woman and have it appear that Digberry was her murderer. That was why you had a wig designed to make you resemble Digberry. That was why you bought a duplicate of his Palm Beach suit and his straw hat. We've traced the shops where you made those purchases. Too bad you didn't destroy the suit and hat and wig, but before you got around to it, they were in our hands.

"You dressed up like Digberry and went to the Wedgeworth Arms. It was a hot night; the door was open and you crept in. Mr. Digberry was left- handed, so you fired the fatal shot with your left hand."

"You can't prove one word of this."

"The concierge in Menton can prove that you owned the revolver with which Margaret Coleman was killed," pursued Colt. "That was the gun you planted in Digberry's apartment by calling him out and then going in yourself. After that, you thought the job was finished. You had faked the time on the wrist watch; by eleven o'clock, you were at home with your friend. You expected to prove you were home an hour before the crime was thought to be committed. Too bad a hair of your wig caught in that bedspring."

"You have no evidence that will put me on the scene of the crime," Walters snarled.

"Sorry to disappoint you, Walters," Colt replied. "But I really can put you on the scene of that murder. You remember that Margaret Coleman's face was powdered and rouged. She preferred a distinctive powder made by a craftsman in Norway. Madame still had some of it left from more prosperous days. When the killer lifted that body it was inevitable that some of the powder should fall on his clothing. And we found some of it on your suit— our chemists have identified it."

"I've nothing to say," replied Walters thickly, "until I talk with my attorney."

Two detectives came and took him away to a fate that all New York remembers.

When the door had closed, Inspector Flynn rose. "Mr. Commissioner," he protested, "that was wonderful work, but there's still the evidence against Digberry. He did write those letters; he did lie about taking the money out of the bank."

Colt chuckled. "You're right," he agreed. "Mr. Digberry, as Captain Walters told us, has a passion for realism, for exactitude. That is shown in his masterpieces of wigs, and also in his visit to the cemetery.

"But he didn't have a thousand dollars with him, chief—"

"Because he wanted to befriend a lady who had been gracious to him, Mr. Digberry drew on the savings which were the joint property of his wife and himself. Tomorrow, Mrs. Digberry returns. The day of reckoning is at hand. The new bank book will hide the withdrawals. But what about the balance? Mr. Digberry must explain to his wife what he did with the missing thousand. Hence, he invented these letters and included himself among ten illustrious others."

Flynn began to laugh. But Colt, opening a strongbox in his lower drawer, drew out a sheaf of green paper money.

"The Wedgeworth Arms has posted a reward of one thousand dollars," he explained. "Mr. Digberry, you identified the Wilkins wig— I think you earned the cash and the glory."

"I would like the cash," Digberry admitted. "But chief, my wife mustn't know about this affair. Give the credit to Mr. Flynn."

With his pockets full of money, the wigmaker ran off to meet the train. Colt had promised to keep the facts a deep secret. And so he did— but Digberry, since a widower, has married again and the necessity for silence has passed.

_________________

8: Keeping Killick Killed

Harold Mercer

World's News (Sydney), 12 May 1937

YOU would think that when his friends have gone to the trouble of killing him, a man out of sheer gratitude would remain dead. But you never know. Killick only seemed half pleased about dying; he must have known it was the best— indeed, the only— thing that could happen to him; but he never worked up any real enthusiasm for it.

The idea was Palty's. It was the end of an idea that shows that if he hadn't been tied down to a regular job as a wholesale fish salesman he would have made a great mark in the world as the leader of a band of international crooks, or something like that— a politician, perhaps.

Killick was a man who periodically worried his friends with the thought that he really would commit suicide some time; he usually compromised by accepting a small loan, sometimes as low as two shillings, and as many drinks as he could get. Saving Killick from suicide was apt to become expensive to his friends. There was an occasion when his references to a desperate end had been pointed by the reiterated wail that he had been compelled to pawn his  second-best suit. It so impressed one that I made a hole in a badly-needed cheque in order to save him. Then I remembered that I had no second-best suit myself, although the only one I have to wear looks like one.

The night that Killick sat on the edge of one of Palty's chairs with his head in his hands, and moaned out his troubles, it didn't look as if small loans would do any good

"I can't understand," said Palty, as he sympathetically poured another whisky into his glass, "why Pecksniff and Parsons sacked you for lack of thoroughness. You've certainly made a thorough mess of things."

Killick groaned. It looked thorough enough to me. He'd lost his job and kept it dark until he'd dissipated his last bean; on leaving, he owed the petty cash a few quid (that was the way he put it), and it might be regarded as embezzlement, although (of course) he had intended to pay it back; he expected that if he went home he would find the bailiff in for the rent, and that the wireless people had repossessed the wireless; but, as he had assured his wife that both rent and wireless instalments were paid, he didn't dare to go home, though he had nowhere to sleep and not a bean in his pocket. Such items as the fact that the gas was cut off and that he had managed, for a small sum to mortgage the wireless that wasn't his to somebody who would be annoyed to find his security gone, were merely incidentals to a somewhat comprehensive story of difficulty.

And late at night he had dropped  into Palty's flat, where there is always a bottle of whisky (Palty sees that hotel employees get free fish at his employers' expense and they reciprocate), to distress his friends.

"I wish I was dead!" moaned Killick.

"The very idea!" cried Palty.

"We'll help you, my boy. We'll see that you are properly killed.  You'll be free from all your troubles."

Killick looked startled. When Palty, who had been putting his fingers into his waistcoat pocket, produced a knife and started to open a blade, he shifted quickly to the other side of the table.

"Did anyone see you when you came into these flats?" Palty asked. I

Whitefaced, Killick sprang to his feet.

"No, but they'll hear me, if you start any funny business!" he cried.

It wasn't till then, when he had found his tobacco— Palty sticks to plug— that he realised the scare he had given Killick, and laughed. Then he explained his plan. But Killick, wasn't quite satisfied even when assured that the process would be quite painless and would relieve him of all his troubles.

"Perhaps if you two could make up a quid I could scrape through," he suggested.

"Nothing doing," said Palty, decisively. "We've got to see you right out of your worries, or not help at all. You've gotta die."

Of course, luck helped us; it always helps the adventurous. If there hadn't been that unidentified body lying at the foot of the cliffs at Boulder's Bluff, with the clothes all torn to ribbons and the face beyond identification through bumping against the rocks and bushes on the way down, there'd have been something else. We made Killick write a pathetic farewell letter, and we drove out in Palty's car to place that and the contents of Killick's pockets under a stone on the top of Boulder's Bluff.

There were a lot of people sightseeing there, getting a thrill from looking at the place where a fellow-creature had gone over the edge; and it was simple tor me to say to one of them:

"I say! Doesn't that look like some papers under that stone on the ledge?" He discovered them, feeling like the hero of the moment, without our coming into the picture at all; and in a few hours Killick was as dead as any man could wish to be.

Palty had nearly jumped up to the ceiling when he examined those papers from Killick's pockets. They would explain anybody's suicide— police court summonses, bills and demands for payment, reminders of ten years' unpaid income tax, and all that sort of thing. They not only showed that the man who committed suicide was Killick; they showed the reason for his death.

Killick was the most troublesome corpse you ever saw. He'd given all sorts of promises, if we'd only help him out of his troubles; but, as I said, he was never enthusiastic about dying, and he proved a handful. You'd think that a man would do his best to help friends who were kind, enough to kill him; but Killick was what you'd call captious.

Of course, he wasn't Killick any more. Palty had once been on the stage; as a matter of fact, it was at a time when the company he was with played at a little fishing town on the South Coast that he got his first insight into the fish business. That was after the audience had pelted the actors with fish. Palty collected and sold them. He gave Killick a splendid disguise, with a little help from discarded fish scales, christened him Sam Billings, and got him a job in the fish markets. The ungrateful hound said he wasn't used to working in the fish markets, but Palty reminded him that it was much better to work there than in a gaol.

That was Killick— or Sam Billings— all over; raising difficulties instead of trying to help. Not satisfied at being relieved of all his troubles, he seemed to suspect that we were trying to cheat him, because he had no chance of getting hold of any of his insurance money. His wife had kept the insurances going; and the fact that the wife would be provided for had been one of the advantages of his death; but, mind you, he wanted to share in it. Then, although he'd always said she had been impossible to live with, he wanted to ring his wife up and break the news of his own death to her.

One way and another, there was a lot of anxiety with him. We were always afraid that he would get drunk and forget that he was dead, and go wandering back to his old pubs proclaiming, his revival. We thought the limit was reached when he wanted to go to his funeral.

"Who's damn funeral is it?" he asked, passionately. "I've got a right to be there. It wouldn't be respectful for me to stay away from my own funeral."

That was a point of view, of course. The circumstances were unique; it was quite natural that when he had the opportunity a man would like to see what happened at his obsequies. After consultation, in which we considered the possibility of Killick getting drunk and turning up whether we gave him permission or not, we decided that he should go with us as his own uncle, who nobody had seen. That would explain any resemblance in appearance, manner and voice which Palty's art and his own sense were not able to disguise.

I wish Palty and I had enjoyed that funeral as much as Killick, or Killick's uncle, did. We caught him saying to Pittock, who had declared that Jim Killick was one of the finest fellows who ever lived, in spite of his peculiarities.

"Yes, I am a fine fellow. I never realised that people thought so much of me before. It's worth being dead."

When he heard Darby sigh, "I wish I'd lent him that quid he asked me for a couple of weeks ago," he suggested that we might get up a subscription for the widow and get away with it for his benefit; while at the graveside we had difficulty in restraining him from hopping on to an adjacent tombstone and returning thanks to those who had attended his funeral, and for their floral tributes and their words of appreciation.

At that time he had only had a few drinks; the real trouble began when a a few select-friends returned to the house of mourning and Killick's uncle insisted on regarding the affair as his own party— "and a jolly fine party, too," as he declared once— making shameful love to his nephew's widow, and offering to sing some of those rollicking Irish songs he had been fond of singing when he was Killick in a drunken mood. Several times we tried to get him away, but he was getting more and more out of hand when the end came.

Palty, who had left us for a moment, came back with an agitated face.

"Your real uncle has arrived," he said shortly. "He's just come down by car from Queensland."

That sobered even Killick. We got out quietly by the back gate; and Killick reverted to the role of Sam Billings.

I don't know how Palty explained the existence of two uncles. He must have done it, somehow; for Palty, as a friend of the family, was often at the house of mourning, helping the widow to adjust affairs; and he kept on going there.

It was difficult for Sam Billings to get on, with a large thirst, on a small wage. He kept turning up, with threats of coming to life again, with requests for money.

"You fellows killed me," he complained. "You wiped out all my friends; I can't go to them and borrow money when I'm short; I've got to come to you."

"Do you know," said Palty to me one day, "the man's blackmailing us! I'm not going to stand that!"

The next time Killick came, Palty charged him with the offence.

"You can call it what you like. You know you've committed a criminal  offence," said Killick, coolly.

"You ungrateful swine!" I said. "We did it to get you out of a hole, and now!— Well, you're in it, too."

"Me? They can't charge a man with a criminal offence for being dead," retorted Killick.

The man had no moral principle. His unrestrained thirst was a danger. When he got well shot he rebelled against the stale fish scales that were part of his disguise as Sam Billings. Palty and I suffered heart palpitations when we heard stories about Jim Killick's ghost having been seen about town.

Old Tomsitt, who had seen him buried, had a fit in Hunter Street when the ghost walked up to him with outstretched hand. Once Palty and I saw the ghost ourselves in the Blue Lion.

We were with a group of friends, and the conversation had turned upon the poor departed Killick, when the glass dropped out of Harvey's hand to shatter on the floor, while his eyes became like saucers.

"My Gawd!" he yelled. "He's there!"

Palty, I admit, showed great presence of mind; I showed a little of my own. While he leaped towards the apparition I, with horror, threw myself backwards against those who seemed likely to advance; and several of us fell to the floor and had to be picked up. Palty, who had disappeared, as had Killick, came back again as we were talking awefully about the incident.

"Did you fellows think you saw Killick?" he asked. "I thought I did, too; I leaped forward to seize him, but he seemed to vanish into thin air. I went out to see if I could find him. He had gone— simply vanished!"

"It cost me a quid to get him to vamoose, after I'd pushed him out," he whispered to me.

"This sort of thing can't go on," I remarked.

"It can't. It's not going to go on, as far as I'm concerned," he retorted, grimly.

It was pretty tough, when you come to think of it; we had tried to help a friend, and this is what we suffered for it. As if Killick wasn't bad enough, there was another complication.

A conscience is an uncomfortable thing; it's usually a darn sight more uncomfortable for others than for the one who has it. A man with a conscience had reported himself to the police. He insisted that he had committed a murder by throwing a man over the cliffs at Boulder's Bluff. It couldn't have been as bad if he had merely left it at that. He said the man's name was James Dowling, and gave full details of where he had lived and all about him. The police were making inquiries.

Directly I got this news I set out to see Palty, to consider what was to be done— if anything. But on my doorstep I saw Killick's ghost— no, Killick. And he hadn't the excuse of being drunk.

"Good heavens, man!" I cried. "What do you mean by going about like this? Are you mad?"

"If you don't like it, you can get rid of me. There's a boat leaving for New Zealand in half an hour," he said. "Give me twenty quid— you can get half of it back from Palty; he'll be equally glad to get rid of me— and I'll leave by it."

The relief seemed well worth the money. I bustled Killick into a car and pulled down the blind.

When I had seen him safely on the boat I used the car to drive to Palty's.

To my amazement, he was locked in his flat, and, pummelling at the door, I had to get the caretaker to open it; it had a quaint external lock for emergency use.

"You blinded fool!" yelled Palty when I had told him the news I thought would delight him. "Why didn't you insist upon coming here first? The swine locked me in! I was going to travel by that boat; and now I've missed it. Did the hound say anything?"

"Something I didn't quite understand," I said. "He said his wife thanks us both for helping her to get that insurance money. And he said his wife wanted her love sent to you; although how—"

"Curse it!" he screamed, as if in agony. "His wife was on that boat!"

I suddenly saw the light.

"And you were going to run away with her— and the insurance money— but he cut you out!" I cried. "It serves you damned well right!"

It's a wicked world. For my part, I have accepted that travelling job in the islands my firm has offered me. It seems best to be away from Sydney for a time.

_______________________

9: The Statue Stealers

Bertram Atkey

Chronicle (Adelaide)  16 Aug 1919

The Grand Magazine, April 1919

There were many of these Smiler Bunn adventures over the years.

'GOING ON for fifty— say a generous forty-two,' mused that adroit old crook, Mr. Smiler Bunn, absently surveying his partner, ex-Lord Fortworth, one evening after a triumphant dinner.

'Who is?' asked Fortworth stiffly.

'You,' replied Mr. Bunn, and shaking his head, added ruefully, 'and me.'

'Well', what of it? What's the matter? with a generous forty-two— or, say, forty?'

'Nothing,' admitted Smiler, 'providing you've got a reasonable reserve clamped down to produce a sensible income for your old age. A thing, Fortworth, which we haven't got and don't look like getting.'

'Why not?'

Mr. Bunn helped himself to another glass of their rare old liqueur brandy, and thoughtfully selected a further cigar from, the boxful at his elbow.

'Why not?' he echoed. 'You can search me for an answer, old man. Probably it's because we've never yet had he sense to pull ourselves together enough to  earn it. And it's a mistake, old man, it's s serious mistake. Not only are we growing older— we're growing more unprotected.'

'Oh, I don't know, said Fortworth easily, 'I guess we can look after ourselves without straining anything.'

'Maybe we can,' admitted Mr. Bunn, 'but we're getting no younger. You don't want to forget that. And one of these days we shall be getting out of  date in our methods, and that's when a regular income will be— well, to put it simply, a comfort in our old age.'

His face grew serious and, unconsciously, he shook a warning forefinger at his unperturbed partner.

'Otherwise,' he said, with the most profound emphasis, 'we shall find ourselves feeding along to our finish on sausages and mashed—' he paused impressively, then concluded— 'and 'beer!'

Fortworth sat up abruptly.

'Ha!' exulted Mr. Bunn, rather pleased, 'I thought that would stick a pin into you!'

'Stick nothing,' denied Fortworth testily. 'I quite agree that we ought to provide for our old age. The thing is, what is the amount to be?'

'Fifty thousand a year!' said Mr. Bunn promptly.

The ex-financier roared with laughter.

'My God, man!' he shouted, 'but your ideas about figures are as good as a bull-goat's! D'you know how big a sum you'd need to produce an income of fifty thousand a year?'

Mr. Bunn shook his head rather sulkily.

'A million cold! At 6 per cent.'

Mr. Bunn looked serious.

'It's a lot of money, that,' he admitted. 'Work out the figures for ten thousand.'

'It calls for a clean little lump of two hundred thousand,' declared Fortworth, and added unfeelingly. 'And what are you going to do about it?'

'Do about it? Why, get it!' responded Mr. Bunn grimly.

Fortworth laughed sourly.

'Prance right in then, old man, and get it. Don't let me be a hindrance to you,' he said sardonically. 'How're you going to swing it?'

'By taking a little more interest in things and by working a good deal harder than we have been,' declared Mr. Bunn.

'I see. And by economising; too, I suppose? We'll sure have to economise if ever we're going to salt down any such slab of good, honest money as two hundred thousand plunks.'

Mr. Bunn let the matter drop then. But it swiftly presented itself for serious consideration only two days later.

In this manner.

IT WAS a pleasingly bright and sunny Thursday which followed, and the partners decided that what they described as a 'week-end' (Thursday till Wednesday) at their country place at Purdston was clearly indicated. Consequently the late morning of that day found them en route for the luxurious little retreat they called 'Purdston Place.'

Mr. Bunn chanced to be at the wheel and was thus afforded an excellent view of the minor 'tragedy' which was destined to lead to the production of what might be termed the foundation stone of their fund.

They were running gently down the road past a large, expensively brick-walled park, heavily belted with timber, when, some hundred yards in front, they perceived two men issue forth from a gate in the big wall.

One of the men— the smaller— was in front of the other— a large man and broad. The smaller man was clearly moving across the road against his own judgment and wishes, for ever and anon he would stick his feet into the dust and lean back, like a stubborn jackass. But the larger man, who possessed, it appeared, a grip upon the collar of the stubborn one that was unbreakable, simply pushed him forward, so that his feet ploughed through the dust, until they reached the deep dry ditch on the opposite side of the road. Then he released his grip, end, taking extremely careful aim, hoofed the smaller man clean into the ditch. The fat man pen recrossed the road and disappeared into the park.

Confessing to a feeling of amused curiosity, Mr. Bunn ran the car to a standstill, and in a mild, benevolent tone invited the occupier thereof to come forth without fear.

'The fat sportsman's gone, old man,' called Smiler cheerfully, 'and you're with friends, anyway.'

In a moment or so the tenant of the ditch arose therefrom. He proved to be a rather insignificant individual with a reddish face, devoid of any personal beauty, rather watery and shifty eyes, and a coyly retreating chin. But at the moment what he lacked in personality he was making up in rage.

'Four months' faithful service!' he bawled, his speech festooned with lurid verbiage. 'Four months' faithful service— long hours— night shift— and turned down because of being thirsty? No harm in being thirsty, is there? A man who's thirsty in that place is a criminal, you'd think!'

A violent hiccough shook him where he stood, but he ignored it. Indeed, he seemed to gather fresh vitality and inspiration from it.

'As long as a man strained his eyes watching the bloomin' dial, and cracked his ear-drums listening for an alarm that never came, it was all right! But if he once dared to get thirsty and have a small drink— out him, the low scoundrel! That's it! Barleywater Bill would see to that, the time-serving, favor-currying, hypocritical old he-rhinoceros!'

He drew breath and loosed a bloodcurdling stream of criticism of the person the called 'Barleywater Bill.' Then he gradually ran down from a liberal bawl to gloomy mutterings, and so came to himself again.

Mr. Bunn, his attention caught by one or two of the muttered threats, sympathised. It was abundantly evident that the man had been discharged for what he described as 'thirst' but which more probably was for too frequent and enthusiastic quenching of the said thirst.

His work, the wolf-witted old rascal had gathered, had been that of night watchman in the big mansion surrounded by the park from which he had just been so tumultuously ejected. His watching seemed to have been of a somewhat special character, namely, the watching of a 'dial' only.

Mr. Bunn was conscious of a feeling of profound curiosity concerning the duties of which the man had been so unceremoniously relieved— and he acted  accordingly. That is to say, he produced a flask of very noble proportions and in tones of breezy commiseration invited the gentleman to extract therefrom the nourishment necessary to restore his depleted vitality to its normal standard again.

'Take a pull at that, aid man,' he said, 'and don't be afraid of it. It seems to me that you've been treated in a way that no man should be treated. Hey, Black?'

Fortworth glanced fiercely at the gate through which the mighty Barleywater Bill had vanished.

'I'm not a vindictive man,' said the ex-financier, 'but I don't mind admitting that the man who handled me as our friend here has been handled would need to keep his liver padlocked to his backbone for a few years or he'd sure lose it.'

'And you not a vindictive man, either,' chuckled Mr. Bunn. He turned to the late occupant of the nettle bed and took the gravely depleted flask.

'Which way are you going, Mr— er— Mr—'

'Grieve's my name,' said the man, dusting himself with the vague care of the semi-sober, 'Alfred Grieve— and I ain't particular which way.'

'Well, in that case you can do worse than accept a lift from us. Come and have a whisky and soda and a bit of lunch at our little place, a few miles on, and take your train from there.'

Mr. Grieve needed no pressing. He scrambled into the back of the big car, I and they slid onwards to Purdston.

ii

IT IS painful but necessary to relate that when the unfortunate Mr. Grieve departed for London by the last train he left in charge of the guard, who had received him, fast asleep, and a shining peace-time sovereign from Mr. Ferdinand Bloom, the bland, and hairless butler of ex-Lord Fortworth.

With the sovereign the guard had received instructions to place Mr. Grieve in a taxi— or cause him to be so placed— and taken to his friends at an address given. Neither the guard nor Grieve knew, nor cared, that a silent yellow shadow went with them— Sing Song, the Chinese valet and sword- and burden-bearer of Mr. Bunn, with strict orders not to lose sight of Grieve at any cost.

So, happily and blissfully oblivious of all that was going on around him, the poor creature departed completely unaware of whom the partners were, where they lived, what they looked like, or, even more important, of the fact that he had unwittingly imparted to them—  information of such value that, at the moment the London train pulled out, it was forming the subject of an extraordinarily keen and intense conversation between messrs. Bunn and Fortworth.

'Now, let's look.' Smiler had begun as the sound of the car conveying the saturated Grieve to the station had died away down the drive.  'We've got to get this thing worked out right— and worked out quick.'

'Sure, sure!' Fortworth nodded, gravely, picking up a small object from the table, as Mr. Bunn went to a drawer in his desk, took therefrom a tiny bottle of acid and returned to the table. Fortworth passed him the object which was engaging his attention— a tiny piece of metal, shaped like a finger— an exact replica of a little finger neatly divided just before the second joint. The adventurers craned close over the finger for a second— then stared at each other.

Mr. Bunn put the bottle down, carefully re-stoppering it.

'That little soak was right, old man,' said Mr. Bunn in a low voice, harsh. with excitement, 'it's pure gold!'

'And gold is worth—' said Fortworth.

'Four pounds an ounce,' completed Mr Bunn. He put away the bottle and the pair settled down to think things over. It was, indeed, necessary— even, from their point of view, urgent.

For the little golden finger had in a moment of alcoholic excitement and unwary exhilaration come from Mr. Alfred Grieve, who, he had whiskily informed them, had obtained it from a place where plenty more metal of the same kind was to be found.

'This li'l finger's oly li'l finger, y'un'stand. Ma'r of no impor'ance, Plenny more where tha' li'l fing co' from. La'y Addleaid's— what I meana say— La'y Adelay's husban'. Pore ol' feller. Statute!  Un'rtand?' Mr. Grieve had said, when, aimlessly, he had taken out the finger to show them after lunch. And since men who carry about with them little chunks of gold are sufficiently rare  to merit close investigation, the two partners bad 'investigated' the petulant Grieve forthwith.

Without difficulty they had gleaned that his duties in the situation he had just involuntarily evacuated had been merely to occupy throughout the night a small secret room in a pavilion in the park from which he had that morning been cast, watch an electric dial, listen for an electric alarm, and once every hour he was required to leave the pavilion and walk to a big marble pedestal, erected on a hillock in the park, close by the pavilion, and take note that the statue upon the said pedestal was still in position— that is to say, he had to assure himself that the statue had not been stolen or tampered with. The employer of Mr. Grieve, and the owner of the park, the pavilion end the statue was none other than the famous Lady Hardelott, said to be one of the richest women in England— made so by her late husband, the great shipbuilder, Sir Adam Hardelott.

As far as the partners could gather from the scrambled account they slowly distilled from the thirst-consumed Grieve, the only thing in the world which Lady Hardelott had ever loved was her husband, and when, some ten years before, he had been successfully launched from the slipway of life, she, seeking to set up a symbol of her undying devotion to him, had erected on the low hillock in the park, which had been one of his favorite spots, a marble pedestal with a small statue of Sir Adam thereupon.

It was, so those competent to judge were wont to say, a perfect statue, though very small. Indeed, almost everybody regarded the statue as too small, but only the men who had put it there knew what it weighed, and only Lady Hardelott, and, perhaps, three or four other people in the world, knew that the statue was made of pure gold.

Of the select few in the secret surprisingly enough Mr. Grieve was one, and he had only, learned of the value of the statue by sheer blind good luck. Or at any rate that was what he claimed.

He said, with a species of muzzy caution, that he had picked the golden finger up— had trodden on it one evening while making his round. Some thief, he suggested, had sawn the finger off the statue and dropped it. The secret electric wires which ran from the statue to the alarm dial and bell in the watchman's pavilion had (he woozily suggested) not worked, but, hearing him coming, the thief had promptly bolted.

Returning to his pavilion Mr. Grieve had devoted the remainder of the night to an endeavor to relieve a painful dryness of the mouth and throat which, the events had produced in him. He had been duly relieved at dawn, and his nerves being still profoundly disturbed he had chosen (he thought, for the best) to take a bottle of whisky with, him to a quiet retreat in the park, in preference to lying sleepless, parched, and uneasy in bed.

Unfortunately, Barleywater Bill— otherwise one Mr. William Groude, steward and confidential major-domo to Lady Hardelott— so-called on account of his bigoted temperance principles, had discovered Mr. Grieve in his sylvan retreat, and had paid him his wages forthwith and cast him out of his retired grotto.

That, briefly, was the narrative of Mr. Grieve— and it interested Messrs. Bunn and Fortworth so intensely that it would positively have interfered that night with their sleep, had they not known that the trustworthy Sing Song was now sticking to the worthy Grieve closer than a brother. For it was quite obvious to them that Grieve would shortly be making a species of attempt, to steal the golden man for himself. All they desired to find out was precisely when the man intended to make his attempt, and because they knew that Sing Song was amply capable of worming that information out of a better man than Grieve if necessary, they slumbered in perfect tranquillity that night.

iii

THE following morning ushered in a day of unwonted stir for all at Purdston place— the results of which, and of the successful labors of Sing Song, were made manifest about a fortnight later, when one morning the portly figures of Messieurs Bunn and Fortworth might have been seen moving briskly down, the long wide drive across the park to the main entrance of Hardelott Hall.

There was lacking in the partners' appearance much of their customary spruceness. In place of the usual quiet-patterned, extremely good tweeds, dark brown boots, soft velours hats, and quietly-dignified sticks which the brace of old rascals usually affected in the country, they were wearing very dark blue suits of vaguely official air, hard felt hats of the type usually referred to as bowlers, squareish black boots, and carried rather short, obviously heavy, sticks. Each had allowed an inch of tough-looking, closely-cropped whisker to grow down towards the hinges of his jawbones. They were out after a big stake and for once they had deigned to go to real trouble to assure success.

Any person of the least intelligence would have summed them up at a glance as a pair of highly-respectable retired police inspectors who had started in business as private enquiry agents. At any rate that is what they passed as being, and what 'Barleywater Bill' Groude, meeting them, half-way to the house, decided they were.

Mr. Groude passed them with a rather bitten-off but perfectly polite 'Good morning,' waited till they had rounded a bend in the road, then turned and followed them.

'There's Adam— 22 carat,' said Mr. Bunn softly as they passed the statue in the park a hundred yards or so on their left. 'All that doesn't glitter isn't lead,' he added rather nebulously, but truthfully.

Certainly nobody would have imagined that the dull-grey little statue— half life-size— was made of anything but lead or bronze, or words to that effect.

'Quarter of a ton of it!' said Smiler briefly, through, pinched-up lips.

Half an hour later they stood in the presence of Lady Hardelott two square, blunt, hardish-looking men, obviously respectable, plainly in great earnest, palpably experienced, capable and courageous— each, in fast, the very beau ideal of a retired police inspector. The elderly widow of Sir Adam ran a penetrating eye over them and placed them at once. She was far from being incapable herself, and she, too, was hard by nature and bleak by disposition. Rumor had it that she had never let go a shilling without first receiving eighteen-penn'orth for it. But this was undoubtedly an exaggeration. Probably she never let a shilling stand between her and thirteen pence worth.

Be that as it may, it is certain that, in spite of her one lone romantic gyration represented by the statue, she had, with masterly skill, augmented the mammoth income left her by her husband to a size which made most large incomes look like small change beside it.

'You desire to make a statement of great importance to me, I understand, she said.

'Yes, my lady,' said Mr. Bunn.

'Very well. Be seated.' She touched a bell on the table before her, and bade the solemn-visaged manservant who answered it send to her Mr. Groude, who entered almost instantly.

'You may proceed,' she said, 'to make your statement. Please pay close attention. Mr. Groude,' she added to the confidential steward, and with a meaning glance passed him the large card under which the partners were sheltering.

Hardforth & Harriman,

26 Norfolk Row, Chancery-lane,

London, E.C

INVESTIGATORS

NIGHT or DAY

WILBUR HARDFORTH (late Linkerton's, N.Y.. USA.)

JASPER HARRIMAN (late Personal Guard, J. D Stockfeller)

Telephone No. 09921, Gerard

'Very good, your ladyship,' said Mr. Handforth, otherwise Mr. Bunn. 'We wish to state that in the course of business we have ascertained that the statue of the late Sir Adam Hardelott in your park is made of gold, and that within a week from now an organised attempt to steal it will be made by a gang of thieves under a man lately employed by you as night watchman, the said man being named Alfred Grieve, discharged from your service at 11  o'clock, Thursday, the 8th inst., for being intoxicated after repeated warnings. We are aware of your desire that the fact of the statue being made of gold should be kept secret, and we have the honor to request that your ladyship will permit us to place under your consideration a plan whereby the statue may be protected, and the thieves caught without the publicity which would ensue were the job handed over to the regular police.'

The faded lady nodded thoughtfully and ran her pike-point eyes over them both in a long and careful scrutiny.

'You are retired detectives,' she stated— there was no suggestion of enquiry in her tone, she stated it— just as Sherlock Holmes might have done.

Messrs. Handforth and Harriman admitted it, rather humbly.

'You've set yourselves up in business with your savings,' she informed them shrewdly.

'That is so, your Ladyship,' said Mr. Handforth. 'You were employed by the firm of Linkertons, I see — and you, Harriman, were personal guard to Mr. J. D. Stockfeller.'

Both saluted affirmatively.

'You are both of American origin and your experience is mainly American, I perceive. Have you any credentials?'

They had. They produced them. There was a personal letter of thanks and appreciation from J. D. Stockfeller to Harriman; there was a latter from the chief of the San Francisco Police to Harriman, and a note from the chief secretary of the late Mr. Jay Gould commending in terms of high praise upon the work of Harriman in a private matter, not detailed, but evidently important.

Mr. Handforth's dcoumemts included a testimonial from Linkerton's referring praisefully to ten years of loyal service, no fewer than five letters from members of the wealthy and powerful Van der Schnatchit family and a resounding declaration as to the detective's integrity by a late Mayor of Chicago.

Lady Hardelott passed them to Mr. Groude to sort and return to the two men, who were, or seemed to be, uneasy without them.

'What would your fees for preventing this robbery amount to?' asked the lady with a marked air of indifference.

'Twenty-five pounds, and out-of-pocket expenses, your ladyship.'

'Your charges are excessive,' said the alleged wealthiest woman in England.

They apologised. 'Surely it must be clear to you both that the fact of having myself as one of your first English clients will be of immense value to you in building up your business?'

They confessed that it was so, very readily— so readily that the eagle face of Lady Hardelott even relaxed for a moment.

'It is my patronage you wish rather than we actual money,' she stated in her shrewd, practical, keen manner.

'Yes, your ladyship,' blurted Mr. Handforth.

'Very well.' She thought for a moment, then decided. 'If I approve of your plan, and if it is successful, I will pay you the sum of ten guineas honorarium, defray your out-of-pocket expenses, and give you a letter expressing my entire satisfaction with your work. Is that agreeable to you?'

'Yes, your ladyship,' chorused the investigators most gratefully.

'Very well. After luncheon you shall give me your plan and I will consider it.' She turned to Mr. Groude. 'Let Handforth and Harriman be given lunch in the butler's room, Groude. I will see them at two o'clock.'

'Very good, your ladyship.'

Barleywater Bill moved across to the desk and spoke softly.

'Ah, yes, Groude, I was about to speak of that.'

She faced the pair again. 'Are you abstainers?' she enquired.

'Total, your ladyship,' said Handforth.

'And total, your ladyship,' chimed Harriman.

Mr. Groude smiled with patronising approval and Lady Hardelott's gesture of dismissal was quite gracious. She could, she imagined, afford to be gracious, on the whole. She was expecting to save a statue which, if it really were solid gold throughout, was worth at least thirty thousand pounds, at a cost of perhaps twenty-odd pounds and a couple or lunches, and it was easy to be gracious on those terms.

Like many a cleverer person she was conscious of a slight feeling of good-humored contempt for the two beefy detectives. They were experienced, no doubt, but when it came to brains they were obviously in a different class from herself.  Still, they were clearly more than a match for the mentality of robbers who were content to act under the banner of such a person as the man Grieve. Lady Hardelott was quite easy in her mind on that score.

The interview after lunch did nothing to lessen the wealthy lady's opinion of herself, though it slightly raised her opinion of Handforth and Harriman, for their plan was so very simple and effective.

The robbery (it appeared from the respectful statements of the investigators) was planned for a week ahead, and the thieves intended to do their foul work at night.

'Yes, yes— naturally,' said the keen lady. "What do you propose?'

Messrs. Handforfh and Harriman proposed, briefly, to have constructed a duplicate of the statue in lead, and on the night of the theft to substitute the lead man for the gold man. The latter would be carefully guarded by the detectives in the pavilion, assisted, suggested Mr. Handforth, by Mr. Groude. The thieves would remove the lead statue and would be arrested red-handed by the employees of Handforth and Harriman, with the statue actually in their possession. The real statue could then be replaced, the electric wires put into order, and by dawn the whole affair would be over.

Mr. Handforth pointed out that by using a substitute statue any responsibility of damage to the gold statue would be obviated, and the discovery of a statue in the actual possession of the thieves would be conclusive evidence— this ensuring a short and not sensational trial— and finally the fact of the stolen statue being of lead would effectually convince the thieving fraternity generally that it was not worth stealing. In conclusion Mr. Handforth very respectfully advised Lady Hardelott to prosecute for stealing a statue of lead. By doing this, Mr. Handforth pointed out, with some care, possible thieves would give the statue a wide berth, and even the actual thieves, when they issued forth from durance again, would abandon the idea of another attempt. That, briefly, was the plan of Handforth and Harriman.

Lady Hardelott looked upon it, worried it a little, perceived that it was good, and gave permission for the sleuths to proceed accordingly. Barleywater Bill was ordered to render any aid— which did not cost money — that he could.

So the bold Handforth and Harriman went forth from Hardelott Hall to prepare their snares.

With the aid of Barleywater, certain plans, photographs, and measurements, they gleaned all the information needed for the construction of the substitute statue, and he departed.

Three hours later they sat at a table at the Astoritz Hotel, dallying with liqueurs, clothed and in their right minds. They had dined and were conning over matters in a fashion that would have surprised the chisel-edged Lady Hardelott and the baby-lipped Barleywater Bill Groude, had they heard it.

'She's hard, old man— hard as wire and as twisty. But she ain't brainy— she only thinks she is. If she was half as brainy as she thinks she is she would be too shrewd to think she could buy men to fight for her thirty thousand for five pounds apiece, a letter of thanks, and a d——d bad lunch. And she's one of the richest women in England,' said Mr. Bunn dreamily.

'Yes,' agreed the full-fed Fortworth. 'She ain't fit to be trusted with it. She leans too much on Barley-faced Bill. I don't like that big barrel.'

Mr. Bunn smiled indulgently and beckoned a waiter. 'Leave him,' said the old rascal, 'to me.'

iv

AS MR. BUNN, naturally, was not slow to point out to his partner, one of the more entrancing beauties of the scheme outlined by him and so trustingly approved by Lady Hardelott and her obese henchman, was the entire absence of publicity attending the operation. Since, clearly, it was most unwise to allow more people than possible to learn of the value of the genuine statue, it was obvious that as few should be allowed to assist in the affair as possible. And it was due to her keen ultra-caution on this point that, as Mr. Bunn rather coarsely put it afterwards, the lady 'skidded' rather badly. She invited Barleywater Bill to express himself in the matter, and he did so— in terms so heroic that the partners, so far from having to persuade the lady to limit her forces, found themselves instructed to carry off the affair with the help of Barleywater only and not more than two of their own most trained assistants.

So it befell that at the coming of darkness on the night of the robbery Mr. Bunn found himself in the pavilion in the park with none other than the bulky Groude. Barleywater was evidently feeling tolerably important, for he patronised Mr. Bunn considerably.

'Now, Handforth, me man, it's nearly eight o'clock, and we've no time to lose,' he observed.

'No, sir,' said Mr. Bunn meekly.

'The wires were disconnected by the estate electrician this afternoon, so as soon as your partner arrives with the substitute we are all ready.'

'Yes, sir,' responded Mr. Bunn respectfully.

Barleywater Bill produced from a capacious bag a huge two quart flask. The night was chilly, and Smiler's eyes brightened. He had suspected that William was not quite so wedded to wholly innocuous beverages as he claimed, and for a moment the man rose in his estimation.

'You've got a drop of good stuff in there, sir I'll be hound, he said.

'The very best, me man,' said Groude. 'Stimulating, sustaining, and invigorating!'

'Really, sir?' said Mr. Bunn.

'Yes, me man. It's cold cocoa— food and drink in one— cold cocoa and cream—'

'My God!' gasped Mr. Bunn. Barleywater glanced up.

'Beg pardon?'

'I said, "How odd!" sir.'

'Why odd, me man, why odd?'

'My father was the only other man I knew who used to swear by cold cream and cocoa,' lied Smiler airily.

'Intelligent fellow,' said Groude indulgently, and placed the flask and a horn-cup upon a table.

Before Mr. Bunn could answer civilly a big car without lights came gliding to a standstill on the drive at the back of the pavilion.

'Here they are, sir, I think,' said Smiler, who had recognised the sound. 'Shall I go and help them carry across the substitute statue?'

'Yes, do, Handforth do!'

Mr. Bunn swung like a padded-pawed grizzly into the dark, and welcomed Mr. Harriman and his assistant detectives, who appeared to be a person of Chinese appearance and one who looked like a retired butler. Sing Song, the Chink, and Bloom, the partners' Purdston butler, made very presentable assistant sleuths.

'All right?' asked Mr. Bunn cautiously.

'Sure,' growled Fortworth.

Mr. Bunn opened a gate and the car ran across the turf of the park toward the pavilion, stopping at the back of that little building.

'The substitute's here, sir!' reported Smiler.

Barleywater moved out towards the gold statue.

'Very good! Bring it to the pedestal and be quick about it!' commanded the fat one, moving towards the pedestal himself.

The four investigators threw, themselves upon an object in the car, and with infinite labor and many groanings carried it to the pedestal, where Mr. Groude swiftly examined it in the light of a flash-lamp.

'A poor imitation— but it will do,' he said, and proceeded to supervise the really hard work of getting the gold statue on the pedestal and the lead one erected thereon.

Fortunately the pedestal was low, and the steps leading up to it were broad, and though the statues weighed something like four hundredweight each, half an hour's really hard work did the business. But it made Messrs. Handforth and Harriman perspire as they had never perspired before. Nor with the globular Groude present, could they seek relief in language.

By nine o'clock the lead figure was on the pedestal, and the gold one (which looked not in the least like gold, but precisely like the lead it was painted, or treated in some way, to resemble) was in the pavilion under a roll of sacking.

'All satisfactory, I think, sir,' said Mr. Handforth. 'if you approve, my partner and the men will now go to their posts for intercepting the thieves.'

'Very good, Handforth,' said Barleywater Bill graciously, and took a seat.

Smiler dismissed the little gang to posts in the main road by which he expected the thieves to come, and then, having sent them well on their way, returned to share his vigil with the unspeakable Groude.

He had been away from the pavilion five minutes. Much can be done in five minutes— and there was a gleam in Mr. Bunn's eye that might have stirred even the befattened wits of Barleywater Bill had that gentleman noticed it. But he did not.

That was, Mr. Bunn always maintained, the dullest evening he had ever wrestled through in the whole of his life.

Since the exigencies of the situation unquestionably demanded it, he sat respectfully in his chair until precisely eleven o'clock listening to the views of Mr. Groude upon (1) Politics. (2) Religion. (3) Temperance, (4) The Lower Classes. (5) The Exquisite Perfection of Mr. Groude, and (3) The Sin of Gluttony.

It was indeed a dismal séance, and its utter dreariness and gloom were not relieved until within an hour of midnight when Barleywater Bill, imagining he heard a noise out by the statue, stepped outside for a moment— thus affording Mr. Bunn the long-waited opportunity of dropping into the horn cup a little powder, most carefully prepared. He stirred it well into the horrible brew of cream and cold cocoa which the man affected, and experienced the gratification of seeing him empty the cup almost immediately he returned.

Thereafter, Mr. Bunn allowed him to gurgle himself into a drug-inspired slumber from which he would not awaken till dawn— if then.

'And that,' mused Mr. Bunn, easing Mr. Groude's collar and surveying him dourly, 'and that fixes you, I think!'

He went out of the pavilion and pointing a green-lensed electric torch towards the high road flashed it thrice.

Five minutes later the low purr of the partners' big Rolls-Royce made itself manifest as it came stealing, without lamps up the drive to the back of the pavilion. From it, in the pitchy darkness, emerged Fortworth, Sing Song, and Bloom. Smiler groped his way across and there followed low groanings and gaspings. Within a space of seconds the quartet bore into the pavilion yet another figure which they swiftly set up on the floor side by side with the gold figure. Unlike the first substitute, now on the pedestal, this one was a literally perfect replica of the gold statue.

'Good enough, hey?' said Smiler. 'Come on, then. Look alive.'

Again they strained through the darkness, laboring under the weight of the gold statue, leaving the lead replica under the sacking.

'Now, Sing Song, you're for Purdston. And the sooner the better. Pull your freight for all you're worth— more, in fact— that's a good lad,' urged Mr. Bunn tensely to the shadow at the wheel. 'Then slide back in the touring car and join the others at their posts. All clear?'

'Yes, master.'

Delaying them only long enough to diminish the valuable contents of Fortworth's flask by seventy per cent, Mr. Bunn hurried back to the pavilion and the big car hummed away into the darkness. Smiler saw that Groude was 'in order,' admired the second lead statue and proceeded to fall into a gentle doze.

Lulled and lapped by pleasant dreams he slumbered. Several times he smiled in his sleep and once he spoke....

'Reserve...yes, yes ... Old Age Pension, hey? Ha! Ha!... Income?... decent... live and let live!' he mumbled, and woke with a violent start to perceive a strange, rather scared-looking man standing over him holding a revolver in his face with a muzzle that looked like the entrance to a railway tunnel.

'Make one sound and you're a dead man,' said the intruder.

Mr. Bunn put his hands up without a word. The man looked over his shoulder at several others crowding in the doorway —among them Mr. Grieve.

'All right, boys, I've got the watchman safe— hurry up!' said he of the revolver urgently. They disappeared into the darkness. Evidently they too knew the value of haste for almost instantly Mr. Bunn heard a heavy thud. They had 'shoved' Sir Adam bodily off his pedestal. Followed an odd, thick, soft rubbing sound.

Mr. Bunn strained his ears, puzzled for a moment. His guard grinned nervously.

'It's all right, ole man— they're hack-sawing the image into quarters. Gold's heavy stuff.'

Evidently they had a good hack-saw, for in less than ten minutes they were back— four of them. Hastily they bound and gagged the much- enduring Smiler and disappeared.

But his shrewd old eyes twinkled as be sat there awaiting release.

He did not wait long. Within twenty minutes three of them were back again— bruised, battered, and dejected, the prisoners of Sing Song, Fortworth and Bloom. Mr. Grieve was not among them. He, it appeared, had managed to escape— with a haunch of lead which, he fondly believed to be gold, and which was ultimately inherited by a bewildered and furious London landlady shortly after Grieve had departed by stealth to other apartments, leaving his box behind in lieu of rent.

Hustling the three prisoners into the back room of the pavilion. Messrs. Bunn and Go. poured a little chloroform on a creased, handkerchief, wiped Mr. Groude's hair and face with it, and threw it on the ground. They then light-heartedly administered a series of extraordinarily violent restoratives to him and dragged him forth from his slumbers.

Muzzily, he demanded instant explanation. This Mr. Bunn promptly provided. It appeared that he, Groude, had dropped off to sleep and that, while he slumbered. Mr. Handforth, visiting the statue, had been surprised and overcome by the thieves, who had then crept into the pavilion and foully chloroformed the dozing Mr. Groude. There was the reeking handkerchief, marked 'A. Grieve,' to prove it.

Both Mr. Handforth and Barleywater Bill being thus rendered helpless, the scoundrels had dismembered the leaden statue at their leisure and made away with it— only to be captured (bar Grieve) by the waiting detectives.

Deeply chagrined at his lapse, still seriously sozzle-witted from the drug, and desperately anxious that no hitch should occur likely to affect his reputation with Lady Hardelott, Barleywater Bill 'got busy.'

He wanted the gold statue put back on the pedestal and he wanted it done at once. He drove Handforth & Co. to it like the man with the whip driving galley' slaves And they worked— they worked like lions. Long before dawn the statue which Barleywater believed to the gold statue— hadn't he, with his own hand, put sacking on it, and also removed the sacking?— was once again in position with the wires connected up and all in order— even the lead filings had been swept up and scattered in the grass.

Then, having dismissed their assistants (who promptly returned to Purdeston to hack the golden man into perfectly shapeless but none the legs valuable chunks), Messrs. Handforth and Harriman, supervised by Groude, herded their prisoners— three abject and quite ordinary sneak thieves— towards the hall, there to await the arrival of the local police— whose efforts, it may be said, subsequently procured each of them, on the evidence of Mr. Groude and their own confessions, six months' hard labor on the simple charge of mutilating a leaden statue with the intention of stealing the lead.

Barleywater Bill had just sufficient decency in his system to provide a species of breakfast for the partners. But if they expected any compliments from Lady Hardelott, later, they were deceived. She did not even see them. Mr. Groude reported that all had gone according to plan; and evidently she was satisfied with the obese one's report. She sent out a cheque for ten guineas, and a brief letter stating that she had employed them on a private matter, that they had given satisfaction, and that they appeared to be honest, sober, hard-working men. The cheque and the sparse encomium were conveyed to them by Groude without verbosity.

'That, I think, is all, my men. Good morning,' said Barleywater Bill.

Messrs. Bunn and Fortworth perceived that they were dismissed and so, with rather subtle sarcasm, they respectfully raised their hats to Mr. Groude and went away.

On the way out they passed the statue. 'There he is, old man,' said Mr. Bunn cautiously. 'As counterfeit a little statue as ever came down the turnpike! He looks very well, though, hey?'

'Well enough,' granted Fortworth. 'But he nearly broke my back last night, damn him!'

'What if he did?' returned Mr. Bunn gaily. 'With gold at £4 an ounce and something like 7,000 oz. of it salted down at Purdston towards our Old Age Pensions!'

They both turned to take a farewell look at the leaden man.

'He's all right,' said Smiler approvingly. 'I wonder if they'll ever discover that he ain't the Adam they think he is?'

'Some day they will. But I don't suppose they'll ever trouble Handforth and Harriman about it!' said Fortworth. He was right. For 'Handforth, and Harriman' went out of business that morning.

And stayed out.

__________________

10: The Call of the Wildwater

Bertram Atkey

Blue Book March 1932

Well of course, if you're stranded alone on a coral island, it's nice to have a pet to keep you company; and why not call him "Spot"?  Definitely not a Smiler Bunn story.

THE waters of the lagoon encircled the coral island like a garter of pale green silk around the— er, that is to say, stretched like a sheet of pale green silk. Round the island, naturally.

In that vast expanse of sea there was nothing visible to the naked eye except millions of tons of water and coral, myriads of leaping fishes that flashed in the brilliant sun-fire like jewels falling in silver spray, hosts of tropical birds, their offspring and relatives, thousands of albatrosses, a quantity of frigate birds, a few coveys of Mother Carey's chickens, the remains of a wrecked schooner on the reef, and the coral island itself, some five miles by twelve in extent. Beyond these things nothing was visible.

Nor was there an echo of sound to be heard in that lonely and bitterly desolate spot except the everlasting thunder of the surf on the outer reef, the organ-like drone of the trade-wind, the loud dry rustling of the foliage of the palm trees, the deafening din of the birds and the splashing of the leaping fishes. Save for these sounds the place was numbly silent.

And then he came— silently, as was his way. At one moment he was not there. One could have sworn to it with absolute certainty— he was definitely and decidedly not there. Next moment he was there. Thus: he wasn't— then he was. It was like that. He always moved like that. First in one place— then in another. How he did it is more than I can tell you; it is one of the secrets of the wild.

But, sure enough he was there— staring out to sea with an expression which can only be described as wistfulness upon what, for lack of a better word, might be termed his face. There was in his greenish-gray eyes something of the look which a famished jackass bestows upon a bed of thistles growing halfway up a perfectly perpendicular cliff— a yearning.

For fully ten minutes he stared, motionless, at the mighty expanse of sea beyond the outer reef— so motionless that he might have been carved out of granite by a sculptor, a lunatic sculptor with a cheap chisel.

Then, turning abruptly, he went prowling along the lagoon, his gaze ever turned to the sea. Thus tigers prowl, though in a somewhat more abbreviated manner, along the bars of their cages.

The smaller denizens of the lagoons fell fearfully back from him as he approached them, for they knew him of old in these moods.

In this they exhibited a singular degree of common sense. It does not appear to be conclusively proved whether fishes actually think or whether we only think they think. I will now settle this matter. They think. This statement requires proof. I will provide it. The fishes of the lagoon fell back from the green-eyed prowler because he was what he was. And what he was, was a forty-five-foot spotted sea-serpent, in a villainous temper and at war with all the world— except one man, his master.

He was traveling slowly, with perhaps twenty feet of him out of water. His utmost speed, with only twenty-five feet in the water to propel him, was not more than, say, forty miles an hour.

Occasionally he stopped, stretched his head out over the reef and whined piteously, pawing the sharp coral with some of his foremost fins— gingerly, because he was soft-skinned and the coral edges were like saws.

As he came to the place from which he had started his circuit he laid his gigantic flat head down upon the surface of the water, and gave vent to a howl that was like the howling of a pack of wolves.

But the howling stopped swiftly as a man issued from a palmetto shack built under a clump of coconut palms and, clothed only in a ragged shirt and trousers, came racing down the beach, shouting, and shaking a dog-whip at the mighty beast.

Evidently he was furiously angry.

"Shut up— shut up!" he bawled, as he cracked the whip with the report of a pistol-shot. "How many more times have I got to tell you about—"

Here he broke off abruptly, turning to stare seaward where, suddenly, on the outer side of the reef, the head of another gigantic sea-serpent rose dripping from the sea— that of a female.

She lifted at least twenty feet of herself out of the sea, and staring toward the lagoon, began to moo plaintively.

Instantly the head of the big male in the lagoon towered aloft and he softly returned the love-note of the new arrival.

For some time the man on the beach watched them with sympathetic eyes. He was quite an ordinary person,— obviously a shipwrecked sailor, very ragged, and profusely hairy. His whiskers and hair and beard were like a red cascade falling over his head, face and shoulders.

His anger died out as he watched the two sea-serpents, and he shook his head slowly.

"You can howl, Spot, old man, howl till you're black in the face— and your lady friend can moo till her tonsils are swollen— but, as far as I can see, you're a prisoner in this lagoon for life— same as me. The only way you'll ever get to the open sea is by crawling across the coral, and you'll cut yourself to ribbons if you try it— you being so soft-skinned, son!"

He was right. The facts in the case of "Spot," as the man had named the huge beast, were briefly as follows:

Some ten years before, when Spot had been practically a baby sea-serpent, no more than perhaps twenty feet long and no bigger round anywhere than a nine-gallon cask, he had swum through the narrow channel through the reef dividing the lagoon from the outer sea. He had found huge masses of his favorite seaweed there, and he had lived luxuriously in the lagoon for nearly eighteen months before he felt the call of the wildwater. Then he had headed for the channel with the intention of going out to sea— and it was then that he had received the shock of his life.

The channel was too small!

While the young sea-serpent, feeding heavily upon the succulent and nourishing seaweed, had been steadily growing huger, the industrious coral insects had been working with extraordinary diligence. They had reduced the size of the channel by half, while Spot had increased his bulk by fully a quarter.

Had he been a thick-skinned sea-serpent this would not have mattered— it would have been merely a matter of a minute or so to come out of the lagoon, writhe across the belt of coral and so into the sea. But, like the sperm whale, his skin was . astonishingly thin and tender, and, unlike the whale, he did not possess an armor plating of protective blubber under the skin. The soft-skinned sea-serpent loathes and dreads contact with rock or coral or anything sharp; thus, since his every instinct revolted against the inevitable dozens of wounds and bleeding to death which any attempt to crawl across the reef would bring him, the unhappy reptile was, indeed, as his master told him, condemned to live his life out in the lagoon—or, at any rate, until such time as the channel became wider or the tide rose sufficiently high on the reef to enable him to swim for it. Neither was a very probable contingency.

And what made this little tragedy of the wild more painful for the unfortunate serpent to endure, and more distressing for his owner— for so the shipwrecked mariner chose to describe himself— to witness, was the fact that recently a feminine sea-serpent had appeared off the reef, and, the two creatures clearly possessing an affinity, she came daily to call plaintively for the imprisoned Spot. The mating time for sea-serpents was long past, but so strong was the mutual attraction of the two that now never a day passed without the interchange of, so to speak, vows and protestations of everlasting fidelity.

"It's tough— it's very tough!" said Abner Clarke, as he pushed the hair out of his eyes and watched the movements of the two sea-serpents. "For it aint as if sea- serpents was anyways plentiful. There they are, only a few yards apart, but they might as well be miles. They're fair crazy for each other. But she's free and he aint. She's got all the seas of the world afore her and he's only got this measly lagoon. Why, damme, it's jest like me and Mrs. Lilygreen. There she is, back in Cardiff, free to roam the whole earth and the waters thereof, and here's me locked up in this everlasting island!"

He thought hard.

"Of course, the difference is that Spot aint got much to fear from no competitors. Sea-serpents is undeniable scarce, and mebbe old Spot is the only gentleman serpent of her own class and size she's ever met. More'n likely he's the only one in the world. Whereas in my case, there's no doubt thousands of sharps always scrounging into Mrs. Lilygreen's homey little pub, for her to pick and choose from. It's easy enough for her"— he jerked his tousled head seaward— "to be true to Spot— the only one of his kind in the world. But how about me? After all, all he needs is a drop of deep water over the reef and he'll be free. Or else the tide might tear down a slab of coral in the channel. It's only a question of time, with him! But how about me? That's what I want to know!"

He was gradually working himself up.

"What I want is a ship at least to take me off. And it might be a million years before any ship comes near here! But I don't go mooing and bawling about the place day in and day out, waking folk up and making a reg'lar damn' nuisance of myself. There's no sense in it. It's ridic'lous and selfish. And it's ungrateful, coming from Spot— what I brought up, you might say, by hand, from the time he was no more than a mite twenty foot long! It's ridic'lous and selfish, and I'm damined if I'll stand any more of it!"

He concluded his soliloquy with a shout that startled the sea-serpent.

"Shut that row, you Spot, d'ye hear?" shouted Mr. Clarke, and Spot obediently fell silent. Receiving no further reply to her callings, the female sea-serpent presently relapsed yard by yard into the sea, and with a final bellow of love disappeared, while Spot turned and swam slowly back to his master.

There was nothing novel or unusual in this— it was merely the regular program enacted at every dawn for the past six months.

The well-trained, and in many respects, affectionate creature knew that what Mr. Clarke wanted was a fish for breakfast, and a lobster for lunch. Long ago Spot had been trained to select meals from among the denizens of the lagoon for the sustenance of his master.

This he proceeded to do at once, and having speedily placed a fine fat fish and a vast lobster on the beach at his master's feet, and received an affectionate pat upon his huge, ham-shaped head, he turned away to attend to the matter of his own breakfast.

Mr. Clarke watched him go.

"That there animal ain't by any means the animal he was," said Mr. Clarke, shaking his head sadly. "Not by no means whatever he ain't so. He's fretting.... There was a time when that there little snake was quite willin' and content to play about in the lagoon, as merry and innocent as a little eel, in a manner of speakin', but now he's dull and changed. He's a good serpent, and a honest, hard-workin' serpent— dunno as anybody could want a better sea-snake than what old Spot is— but he's losing flesh, and his heart aint in his work. He's pining and his heart is breaking."

Then with one of those swift changes of feeling to which ten years of loneliness on the desert island had rendered him so liable, Mr. Clarke switched round again.

"But, blast him, he aint the only one! Why can't he bear up— the same as me? Aint I pining, and aint my heart breakin'? Milly Lilygreen never comes off the reef and calls out to me and paws at the coral with her fins, do she? Well, then— I reckon that there three- starred old selfish water-worm's got the laugh on me, ain't he?" muttered the mariner as he strode up to his hut of wreckage and palm leaves.

"Parading up and down the reef, bawling as though he was the only one with troubles in the world! There's others, I s'pose," he concluded, administering a back-handed clip to an aged monkey (salved from the wreck) in the hut, whom he caught with its hand groping in a chest (also salved from the wreck), a slap which convinced the ape that there were indeed others with troubles to bear in the world.

But this is not, strictly, the story of Mr. Clarke and his other friend and companion, Cesar, the ship's monkey, and the only other survivor from the wreck. It is instead the story of the call of the wildwater— for so, in an unnatural nature story naturally the sea should be called— to the captive sea-serpent; the story of how this inhabitant of the wildwater instinctively went back to its own place, deserting in that great call all its man-taught habits and customs, returning again to its grand heritage the sea, to roam in company with its mighty mate the lady sea-serpent those huge jungles of seaweed, and those trackless, illimitable deserts of slimy ooze deep down upon the ocean floors.....

Let us return to him where, having fed, he lies on the bed of the lagoon, watching with the expressionless, patient eyes of a captive beast, the all-too-narrow passage or channel between the sharp coral rocks, which, were it only three or four times as large, would be large enough to permit of his escape from the lagoon-prison.

He was restless. At times he would be lying perfectly still, staring at the gap; then he would start into convulsive motion so that the green water boiled under the lashing of his great tail; then he would go nosing fever- ishly at the coral barrier, only to relapse again into quietude and his eternal watching. The serpentess had gone away for a space...

There had been a time when he was forever trying to squeeze through the gap— the sides of his head were cov- ered with old scars of the wounds which were all he had gained from those efforts, and both his ears were perma- nently thickened. But he had never tried to get through since the day when, endeavoring to squirm out tail first, he had practically invited a prowling shark outside to help himself, which that intelligent brute had promptly proceeded to do. It had treated several feet of the sea-serpent's tail precisely as most humans treat a stick of celery— and it had not gone empty away. Indeed, it had abbreviated Spot by at least four feet, and was hanging about just outside the gap on the following day hoping for a further selection of the sea-serpent, when it had fallen a prey to the she who happened to arrive off the island that day.

But even in the slackwater of lagoons, not to mention the wildwater of the sea, the law of Nature is as inexorable as it is in cities. Sea-serpents must eat, as must humans from millionaires down to actors or artists— or even, incredible though it may seem, short-story writers.

And presently Spot abandoned for a space his vigil and instead opened his cavernous mouth across the gap. For an hour fish, under the mistaken impression that they were swimming into the lagoon, swam steadily into the sea-serpent's mouth.

IT was during this hour that a ship appeared on the horizon and driving steadily before the trade-wind, presently cast anchor off the island.

Observing from the well-nigh maniacal gyrations and signalings of Mr. Clarke that the island was not wholly deserted, those on board put out a boat.

Driven across the water by its crew of muscular Kanakas the boat presently touched the reef, and its passenger, warned by Mr. Clarke that there was practically no passage through to the lagoon, stepped out on the reef.

He was a tall European, very thin and wiry, with a red mustache and a scarlet nose. Otherwise he was colorless. He seemed very shaky.

"How do?" he said, and explained his shakiness and the bottle of gin in his hand by the brief remark: "Fever, what?"

"Same here," said Mr. Clarke enthusiastically— and they took one each for the fever. Mr. Clarke briefly explained his position and the newcomer readily agreed to take him off the island and deliver him safely at Honolulu.

They took one each to seal the bargain.

"I've been ten years on this lump of coral and I'll be glad to leave it!"

"Sure," said the newcomer, who said his name was Reed and his business that of a collector for the world-famous firm of naturalists, Messrs. Horne, Hyde & Head, Ltd., of London.

"I'd like to drink to their health," said the happy Mr. Clarke.

"Would you? So would I!"

They had one each to Horne, Hyde & Head, Ltd.

Then they had one to Mr. Clarke, followed by one to Mr. Reed.

And then, just as Mr. Reed threw the empty bottle into the lagoon, Spot emerged foot by foot, fathom by fathom, from the water.

MR. REED turned white, and his trembling hand closed upon the arm of Mr. Clarke.

"It serves me right!" he groaned. "I knew how it would be with this gin. I ought to have stuck to good honest whisky!"

But the sailor reassured him. It was no dream-serpent that the collector was gazing upon, said Mr. Clarke, but a genuine, thin-skinned, spotted sea-serpent— and to prove it, he called Spot to him.

Obediently the great creature paddled across, to be fondled by his master. For a moment the collector was speechless; then he pulled himself together.

"Is— is he yours?"

Mr. Clarke nodded.

"Is he for sale?" inquired Mr. Reed excitedly.

Mr. Clarke pondered. He did not particularly wish to sell the companion of his solitude, but he reflected that in any case he could not take him away and even if he could have taken him away he could not get him out of the lagoon. He would land in Honolulu penniless, if he refused to sell.

"Well, I dunno— he's a good faithful old sea-serpent. And he's been a good friend to me," he said.

"Will you take five thousand pounds for him as he stands and accept the job of keeper to him at ten pounds a week until he gets used to me?" said Mr. Reed hoarsely, his eyes bulging with excitement.

"Yes," shouted Mr. Clarke in furious haste, "I will!" He had not expected even five thousand pence.

"Shake hands on that!"

Both equally pleased, they shook hands.

"You'll have to enlarge the channel to get him out," said Mr. Clarke.

"Bah! A stick of dynamite will do that. Man, I'd enlarge Hades to get him out!" cried Reed, stroking the huge spotted head.

"But can you get him home?"

"I've got a tank on board with twenty thousand pounds worth of specimens in it. It's big enough to hold him, too! And d'ye know what I'm going to do? Im going to chuck that twenty-thousand-pounds'-worth of specimens overboard to make room for this chap, Clarke. For he's priceless. He's settled you for life already, and if he don't settle me— and a few others— for life too, you can call me Temperance Joe! . Where is this channel— let's have a look at it!"

And they lapsed into technicalities relating to tides and explosives and so forth.

FOUR days later there was observable an unusual stir at the mouth of the gap.

Mr. Reed was there in a small boat, together with Mr. Clarke, keeping close to the channel, on the seaward side. Spot was there, but he, of course, was in the lagoon. A thick length of whale-line was fastened round his neck and passed to Mr. Clarke, who held the rope. Farther out to sea was the big whaleboat, manned with a heavy crew of Kanakas, and it was to this boat that the end of the whale-line, passing through Mr. Clarke's hand, led. In a tub in the bow of the whaleboat were many fathoms of brand new line. Mr. Reed's idea was to use kindness, if possible, to lure Spot to the tank floating by the ship in readiness for him, and it was Mr. Clarke who, by gentle suasion on the line, was to do the luring.

But if Mr. Clarke failed, the line was to be flung clear of the small boat and the big whaleboat's crew was to come into action, treating Spot precisely as a whale— until he was tired out and half-choked and ready, even anxious, to give in.

A naked Kanaka was waiting at the narrowest part of the channel ready to dive and place the explosive in the gap upon receiving the word of command.

And though there was no sign of the she sea-serpent Mr. Reed had not overlooked her. He had little hope of capturing her alive, but he was prepared to accept her dead, if necessary. A second fully equipped whaleboat was hovering close in, with the harpooner waiting in the bows, ready to harpoon her the instant she appeared.

All was in readiness.

Mr. Reed glanced round at his preparations and nodded. He took a little stimulant, passed the bottle to Mr. Clarke, and shouted to the Kanaka at the end of the channel to "carry on."

Nothing loath, the lad grinned, and dived.

Spot was watching the operations with an interest so intent that one might almost have believed that the intelligent reptile knew the object of the work. The rope round his neck seemed to fret him a little, but not more than was to be expected in so soft-skinned a creature.

The head of the Kanaka bobbed to the surface and leaving the water, the sagacious native rapidly caused fifty yards to intervene between himself and the gap.

Almost immediately there was a muffled roar at the gap, a sudden spurting geyser, and a number of big lumps of coral were flung up with the spout of water.

"Look out, now!" shouted Mr. Reed.

The water subsided, and Mr. Clarke pulled gently on the line attached to the neck of the sea-serpent. Recovering from the momentary shock of the explosion, Spot obediently yielded to the slight strain and swam gingerly through the widened channel.

"Here he comes— great work!" said Mr. Reed en- thusiastically and seized a long pole with a large bale of fresh sea-weed tied to the end. This ingenious device he pushed out over the stern of the boat, waggling it to attract the attention of the sea-serpent.

"Here he comes— row, you black divils!" said Mr. Reed to the two men resting on their oars. The boat began to edge quietly toward the ship and the fateful tank, attended at a cautious distance by the big whale- boat.

Mr. Clarke, to make assurance doubly sure, set up a croon, intended to soothe and fascinate the big sea-serpent.

"Come along then, Spot! Come along! Come along! Poor old feller, then! Good old Spot!"

Blindly trusting to the good faith of the man for whom he had caught so many fish and who had been his fellow- prisoner so long, and utterly unsuspicious of any contemplated treachery, the great sea-serpent innocently followed the boat, his huge soup-plate-size eyes fixed on the bale of seaweed.

And then, just at the moment when the success of the enterprise seemed to be assured, when another two minutes would have seen the deluded Spot safely immured in the semi-submerged tank, with a big grating clamped down above him, the she sea-serpent appeared.

Her gigantic head shot up through a boiling circle of water and towered, streaming, twenty clear feet above the boat.

With a bellow of delight she hurled herself at the excited Spot, and the two huge heads rubbed together.

"Look out, Clarke! The rope!" yelled Reed, for it was evident that the seaweed had gone completely out of what may somewhat flatteringly be described as Spot's mind.

But, realizing this, Mr. Clarke had already released his grip of the rope, leaving it to the crew of the first whaleboat, and was leaning over, vainly endeavoring to coax the sea-serpent into ignoring the new arrival.

By this time the second whaleboat had rowed up. The harpooner, interested only in the sea she-serpent, cast his weapon.

It passed through her ear— and with a grunt of pain and rage, she shot her head down and seized Mr. Clarke, whom she had never liked and to whose agency she had always appeared to attribute the captivity of Spot.

The last manifestation of life shown by Mr. Clarke in this world was in the form of a large bulge sliding down the throat of the she sea-serpent. With a savage swirl of her tail she upset the whaleboat to splinters, very completely putting the harpooner and his sable colleagues out of action.

Evidently inspired by her example, and intensely excited by his unaccustomed freedom, Spot himself suddenly lost the veneer of tameness which hitherto had always characterized him, and reverted to the wild— to the wildwater.

With a blood-curdling bellow he reached for Mr. Reed and hastily bolted him. Then the great beasts gazed for a brief moment into each other's eyes, exulting in the prospect of freedom which now lay before them.

For a moment they remained so. Then, with a final bellow, they dived together en route for the very floors of the sea and the attractions of the wildwater which, with no more serious mishap than a slight indigestion attributable to Messrs. Reed and Clarke, they were destined to enjoy for many a long year.

___________________

11: Ghosts at Stoneylands

Bertram Atkey

Leader (Melbourne), Sat 25 Feb 1911

The Grand Magazine, February 1911

HAD ANY villager in a reasonably sober condition chanced to he passing up Mangel-lane (which leads into the rural hamlet of Wurzel, Wilts) at eleven o'clock on New Year's eve in the year 1909, he might have seen an elderly ghost with wiry whiskers sitting thoughtfully upon a thatched heap of turnips on the edge of the field nearest the sign post at the corner.

It was a bitterly cold night, and the east wind was singing through the ribs of the desolate ghost in the weird but not unmusical fashion of an aeolian harp slightly out of tune and rather the worse for wear. An occasional discord which crept into into the melody was probably due to the fact that the third right rib of the ghost had been broken and was bound tightly but unevenly together with string.

The ghost, however, paid little or no attention to the song of the wind about his vertebra. He merely turned up the collar of his shroud and settled himself more comfortably on the turnip heap.

"I wish I hadn't taken the job on," he grumbled, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his palms. "I wouldn't have if it hadn't have been for the boss promisin' double pay. I own I ain't no titled ghost, but that don't make me no wuss than any other ghost— not as a ghost, I mean. And what's double pay, anyhow? 'Ardly a living wage. It's the big pots git all the big salaries and the workin' ghosts gits the leavin's. If they don't look out back home there'll be another lockout like they had in '95, and sarve 'em darn well right, I say. Gimme my rights and I'm reasonable. I only wants me rights, and to be sent out on a bitter cold night like this is to do Oliver Cromwell's dirty work— what he's too bloomin' lazy to do 'isself, mind you— ain't no rights o' mine. But wait till next election"— the ghost grinned sourly— "that's all! Mebbe the Labor party ghosts'll have a bit of a eye opener for some of 'em. It ain't goin' to go on for ever. Give a ghost a chance, I says, and a ghost'll give you a chance."

He stood up and looked round.

"And I ain't goin' to wait here much longer, anyhow! I'll give him another five minutes, and if he ain't here then I'm off home, and chance me luck." He reseated himself. "I don't believe Oliver Cromwell ever come to Wiltshire, anyhow. What good's Wiltshire? As cold a county as ever I was in. I'm very near perished."

He flapped his bony arms to and fro apparently with the idea of warming them. Suddenly his attention was attracted to something moving near the sign post just opposite.

" 'Ello, who's this?" He got off the turnip heap and glided across the road. Half way there he stopped, shading his eyes with his hands, staring uncertainly. Then he moved on again quickly.

" 'Ullo, mate," he said grufily to a smoky, shadowy figure that was standing peering up at the fingers of the sign post.

The figure jumped. It was a negro ghost.

"Hi, doan' yer do dat no moh, sah. I'se skerry!" said the outline uncomfortably.

" 'Oo are you?" demanded the wiry whiskered ghost. "What d'ye think yer doing of— where d'ye think you are?"

The smoky figure hesitated. "Am dis de way to Kentucky, sah?" it asked.

"Well, it's one way— but it's a darned long way round, mate," replied the elderly English ghost humorously. "This is England."

The negro ghost moaned. The moon shone through him like the silver lining to every cloud, and lit up a razor in his hand.

"Was you ordered out hauntin' there to-night?" asked the elderly ghost sympathetically

"Yassah.  It am my fust hauntin', sah."

"Well, you'll never get there to-night, matey.  Stop here with me. I've got to meet a ghost here in a minute or two, and if he don't turn up punctual we'll hook it off home together."

"Tank yah, sah," said the negro ghost gratefully.

The English ghost looked at the razor curiously.

"Goin' ter have a shave?" he asked.

"Nossah— dis am de hauntin' tool dat was give me. Ah dunno whaffor."

"Well, come on over here. There's some niceish turnips over here, only I ain't got nothing to peel 'em with. That razor'll do the trick beautiful. Like turnips?"

"Ah dunno. Ah like water melons!" said the black ghost doubtfully.

'"Cheese it, mate!" advised the other. "Turnip's reckoned good enough for the likes of us."

And they went across to the turnip heap.

"What you got to learn if you're going to do much hauntin' in England is that a ordinary, working ghost don't get much luxury," explained the elderly ghost. "What chance have ghosts like us got agin ghosts like Napoleon Bonaparte or Nero or Cleopatra or Lu Borgia or Oliver Cromwell? No. chance. Not. till next election any how. And what good's the Trade Unions?— no bloomin' good. But mebbe there'll he a bit of a change before long. Daly don't you go expectin' a lot of luxuries, because you ain't goin' to get many. If you can't get water melon you take turnip, old cock, and be thankful for it. Lend us your razor."

And, so saying, the elderly ghost raked a turnip out from under its thatch, and, carefully peeling it, began, to devour it with a relish. His companion did the same. They were about half way through their meal when they observed a third ghost approaching quickly down the lane.

" 'Ere he comes. Now we can git the job done with and kite off home," said the broken ribbed phantom, and rose quickly, reluctantly throwing away his turnip.

The newcomer looked like a ghost who occupied a much better social position than the two who were awaiting him. He was well dressed in the  style fashionable in Oliver Cromwell's time, and he was much fatter and way more phosphorescent than the others. One could have seen to read small print by him. But to judge from his greeting, he seemed a light-hearted sort of ghost.

"What ho, my bucks," he said jovially as he came up. "How goeth it? Marry, but tis most miserable parky out here on these lonesome downs. Hast waited long, my merry knaves?"

But he suddenly dropped his theatrical tone as he saw the colored ghost.

"What's this thing with the razor?" he demanded. "There isn't any coon ghost on in this act. At least I haven't had any instructions about one."

The elderly ghost spoke apologetically.

"I dunno. I seen him under the sign post trying to find his way to Kentucky. It's his first job, and he lost his way. He thought he was in America. I should leave him alone, guv'nor; he ain't got no chance of getting there to-night, and I don't s'pose he'd do much harm if we took him along with us. He'll hardly be visible when the moon goes in."

The fat ghost pondered for a moment.

"Oh, all right, old lad. I don't care. I haven't got any prejudice one way or the other about the color question. I'm being paid by the hour— not by the job— for this haunting, and I don't mind telling you that there isn't another ghost who can play Cromwell so well as I can. Cromwell says so himself. I was an actor in the old days. You'll see later on. Come on: let's get along to the castle."

They went down the lane casting a faint flickering light before them as they went. The fat ghost was about as powerful as a Chinese lantern, but the coon threw out about as bright a beam as a magic lantern with a dark slide across the lens.

"Did you get your instructions before you left?" asked the fat ghost, and blew on his fingers to get them warm.

"Only told to wait for you," said the elderly looking ghost in a dissatisfied voice. "I tell you, guv'nor, there's no management back in the old place. Goin' to the dogs, that's where it's goin'. The fore-ghost of our squad jest called me up to the pay office, and 'Ninety-five,' he says, 'you're told off to help with the haunting at Stoneylands Castle, just outside a village called Wurzel, near Salisbury. Get a map and look it up. Be near the sign post at eleven-thirty sharp and report to the main haunter, who'll he along. It's on the Cromwell circuit, and you're cast for a trooper's part. There's no costumes left— so wear your ordinary Sunday shroud. Hurry up!— and that's all," explained Ninety-five. "What have we got to do?" he asked sulkily.

"Groans and murmurs, mostly. Then I violently thrust my sword through your stomach, and you utter an unearthly yell, and we vanish," said the fat ghost comfortably. "Years ago, in the days of the Civil War, a trooper was set to guard a certain door by Cromwell. He was specially warned against looting. But at about midnight he began to prowl round to try and and something worth pinching, when suddenly Cromwell appeared and killed him on the spot for disobedience. That's the story we've got to illustrate. I don't hnow what we can do with your black pal. We'd better stick him in an outhouse until our turn is over."

But the black ghost demurred.

"Nossah— not in de dark," he began nervously, when the three ghosts heard an unmistakable snore issue from the hedge at the side of the road.

"Help, there's a bloke in the hedge!" said Ninety-five. "Let's have a look at him."

They hurried across the road, and discovered lying well up under the hedge a villager fast asleep. Near him lay a fine goose, and, even in his sleep, he clutched lovingly a bottle of whisky over three parts full. The man himself was obviously quite full. Evidently he had been overcome by his festive season exertions some tavern in a neighboring village, and had stopped on his way home to rest a little.

"Poor chap!" said the fat ghost, who had been an actor, sympathetically, as he gently removed the bottle from the villager's unresisting fingers.

"The night air's proved too much, for him. How it takes me back to the old davs— the dear old days! Ah, well— Happy New Year!"

He tried the whisky, the others Watching him enviously. Presently he detached the bottle from his lips and drew a Iong breath.

"Scotch. Have one with me," he said humorously, and passed the bottle.

The villager moaned in his sleep. The elderly ghost with the wiry whiskers took a pull, and his phosphorescence increased by ten candle power.

"It fair puts you into a glow. Good 'ealth!" he said appreciatively, and handed the bottle on to the ghost who had once been a coon.

He may have, been a poor haunter, but he was evidently a remarkably fine drinker. He kept the bottle elevated so long that the fat ghost started forward in alarm.

"Here, I say, steady on! Don't be hoggish! he protested. "Remember, there are other ghosts in the world besides you. How about me?"

Gently but with firmness he took the whisky from the black ghost.

He and his assistant each refreshed themselves, and then placing the bottle inside his transparent and luminous leather coat he linked arms with his companions, and they moved along with a marked access of cheerfulness.

But as they turned the corner at the end of the lane they suddenly stopped.

"Good Lord, what's that?" said the fat ghost, pointing with a trembling finger down the road.

The teeth of the elderly ghost began to chatter, and he clutched the arm of his principal fearfully.

"I— I dunno." He stared nervously at something a few yards further on, "Here, let's go back— lets go round some other way," he said. "There wasn't nothing, said about no danger when I took this job on, and I ain't goin' to run no risks. I shall report this here to the Union when I get home. Come on; it'll be settin' about us if we don't hook it!"

He was obviously scared. The black ghost had already bolted some way back— he had not yet had much experience. But the stout ghost was getting his nerve back. He pluckily stood his ground, staring at the Thing that seemed to be waiting for them to come within reach.

It was a ghastly sight— a man, or a figure resembling a man, at least seven feet high, clothed from neck to feet in a flowing white robe, and with a curious round head. His eyes and mouth seemed to emit fire, and he appeared to be grinding his teeth with rage. Both his arms were stretched out yearningly as though he was on the point of springing upon the unfortunate three who in another moment would have been within reach.

A few seconds passed; the man or thing did not move— and suddenly the fat ghost broke into a quavering laugh, which he stopped by the simple process of applying the bottle of whisky to his mouth.

"Why, it's only a kid's ghost!" he said in a tone of extraordinary relief. "It's a turnip with a candle inside it. Kids left it stuck up here when they went home— perhaps to frighten the poor chap back there, under the hedge. Come on. There's nothing to fear. It's not real— like us!"

Reassured by the confidence in their leader's voice, the other two ghosts plucked up their courage, and in a few rapid steps passed the artificial phantom. Once past, the stout ghost gave them each another drink, and pointed ahead to the black bulk of a huge building which loomed up out of the moonlight.

"That's the place— Stoneylands Castle."

"What if Stonylands is at home!"

"If he blooming well is I'll frighten the sawdust out of him— draggin' decent ghosts out on a night like this," grumbled Ninety-five, pulling his whiskers vindictively. His visits to the whisky bottle seemed to have had the effect of making him slightly sullen. He kept muttering to himself as they entered the grounds of the castle.

"We can't take a bottle inside with us, mates," he said rather thickly. "I reckon we'd better finish it afore we go in!"

"All right— I'm willing, laddie," agreed the ghost with the bottle; and they finished the whisky with a speed and precision that spoke eloquently of considerable practice in some previous life.

Then, walking a little unsteadily, they surveyed the castle, looking for a means of easy ingress. An exhaustive search disclosed no open window or door left ajar, and so, reluctantly, they decided that it would be necessary to enter by the keyhole. It is not a comfortable method of entering a place, even for a ghost, but there was no help for it.

"Worra we goin' to do with this li'l lot?" asked Ninety-five, unevenly indicating the black ghost.

The leader pondered, swaying a little. "Oh, let him hide in er porsh— in the porch— until we get—hic — the job finish with. Worra meantersay— you know worra mean— hide in the corner porsh. Nobody wanna innerfere with a pore li'l nigger ghos'!" He stared solemnly at the elderly, ghost. "Unnerstan'. worra meantersay, Whiskers, ole man? Whiskers— thash fin' name f'r a ghos'— ain't it, Whiskers?"

He turned to the black ghost.

"Go 'long," he said, "hide in th' corner. Less see you hide."

Without a word the negro phantom retreated meekly to a dark corner of the huge stone porch in which they stood, and vanished.

The other stared doubtfully into the corner. Their follower was quite invisible.

"Are you— hic!— are you there?" asked; the fat ghost.

"Yassah!" came a humble, voice out of the shadows.

"Ver' well— bloom well stay there till we come back if y' don't wanna thick ear," said Ninety-five encouragingly. Then he and his principal turned to the keyhole; and poured themselves  through it— as steam pours through the spout of a kettle. It was obvious to the most superficial observer that they were in no fit state to carry out a really effective haunting.

Had their companion been an intelligent, thoughtful ghost he would have warned them. But he was not. It was his first haunting trip, and, besides being  wholly inexperienced, he had no talent. An occasional order to haunt a hen roost or a melon patch was the biggest thing that would ever come his way. He was too simple and credulous ever to make a name for himself. He merely sat in his dark corner and watched the others disappear.

Once inside the castle the fat ghost became a little more professional. He came through the key-hole with a hollow sound like the low hoot of a draught of cold air— but he uttered the sound; mechanically, and not like a ghost who took an interest in his work.

"Whoo-oo-oo-oo— hic! Damn it— who-oo-oo-ooh!" he went on as he took shape again.

Ninety-five combed his whiskers with his fingers and laughed uproariously.

"You're squiffy, mate— blin' to th' worl'!" he said, looking rather "boiled" himself. "Thass wass' marrer you."

"Nothin' sort. You're squiffy one. Pull y'self togerrer now, like good feller, aii' follow me. Understan'? Foller on!"

Save for the faint glow proceeding from the two ghosts the castle was in profound darkness. There was a warm, comfortable feeling about the atmosphere, and the smell of good cigars faintly pervaded the gloom. Evidently the inmates of the castle had only just retired for the night. The ghosts proceeded up the broad stairs and turned into a wide corridor on the first floor. They moaned softly as they went, and save for an occasional hiccup it was a very impressive and fear inspiring sound. But half way up the corridor they stopped suddenly.

"Hallo— wass marrer?" said the stout ghost. He put out his hand as though to feel something just in front of him. Even as he did so a thin gauze curtain with a wooden frame snapped down from the ceiling to the floor behind the two ghosts, exactly like the door of an ordinary mouse trap.

There was a hard laugh from a dark recess further on, the snap of a switch, and the corridor was suddenly illuminated with a blaze of electric light, disclosing a party of men and women in evening dress at the end of the corridor, looking intently in the direction of the two ghosts.

Those unfortunates were hardly visible in the bright light, but every detail of the trap in which they had been taken was plainly to be seen. It was shaped precisely like a big mouse trap — except that the wood and wire was replaced by fine gauze tightly stretched on a wooden frame. There was no bait — the ghosts had simply walked into the trap exactly as a man walks through a doorway. Evidently the inmates of the castle had concealed themselves, watching for the ghosts, and had touched the button controlling the electric motive power of the door of the trap the instant the ghosts entered it.

The whole trap seemed to be based on the same idea as that of the safety lamp which is used in coal mines. A kind of wire gauze encircles the flame, preventing it in some extraordinary way from reaching the outside air. The ghosts seemed to be composed of some cheap and ineffective variety of flame also— or of something of that kind. At any rate, being entirely surrounded by the fine gauze they found themselves quite unable to pass out.

"That's done it," said the ghost with the whiskers mournfully, as he realised the idea of the trap. "It's a fair cop!"

The fat ghost nodded. They were both thoroughly sobered now.

The house party came up to the trap, headed by a short, hard looking man with red hair and an American appearance. He stared through the gauze for a moment, and then ordered a footman to put out all the lights.

Through the pitch darkness that resulted the ghosts showed up almost as plainly as whitewash splashed on a tarred fence.

"Why, it really is Oliver Cromwell," said a girl amusedly.

"No— only an imitation, I guess," said the man with red hair, who seemed to be the host. "And a mighty poor imitation, too." He frowned. "If it had been Oliver, I wouldn't have grumbled," he went on angrily; "but to pass off a cheap imitation like this is a fraud. I shall see the Marquis about this. It was chiefly because of the ghosts I bought the blamed castle!"

He addressed the ghost, who had been an actor in the old days.

"Say, you're a fraud. You're haunting under false pretences. You're looking, for trouble— and you're going to get it— see? I bought this castle on the understanding that the spirit of Oliver Cromwell poked a sword through the liver of a trooper every New Year's eve. Nothing was said about a cheapskate disguised as Oliver and a pal that looks like a navvy just escaped from the mortuary. See?"

There was a murmur of approval from the guests.

The fat ghost cowered.

"I— I beg pardon!" he said. "It's no fault of mine. I was ordered out on the haunting by the managing director, and me assistant's foreman— fore-ghost, I mean— instructed him to come too. Orders are orders where we come from. We've got to do as we're told. It's no fault of ours. Cromwell wouldn't come. He was playing snooker pool with Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte at the club when his turn was due, and he wouldn't come. He said he'd been haunting this castle for hundreds of years, and he was about fed up with it.

"Julius and Napoleon took his part— and, well, even the boss can't order men like that about. They won't stand it. They can make themselves unpleasant in a lot of ways. And so we were sent, as under-studies," he concluded with a sigh.

The American sniffed as the ghost sighed, and his lips tightened for a moment. "You've been drinking," he said sharply, and peered keenly through the gauze. "Why, you're half drunk!"

"Excuse, me, sir, but you are quite mistaken," pleaded the fat ghost earnestly. "I assure you, sir, I have not touched a thing since last Wednesday. And my assistant here is a total, abstainer. If you would be so kind as to let us out we would vanish at once. We regret very much, that we should have put you to so much trouble, and we will certainly see that it doesn't occur again. I will explain what you have said to the managing director, and you will probably hear from him in due course!"

The American smiled sardonically.

"Well, you're the rottenest ghost I ever heard of," he said insultingly. "Why, you're no ghost— you're only a glowworm— an apology for a ghost. And your pal's a farce. You've got no more pluck than the ghost of a mouse. You're only fit for one thing, and that's night lights."

He turned to his amused guests.

"Isn't that so?" he asked.

The ghosts clutched each other and stared anxiously at the people round  the trap.

The answer as a unanimous "Certainly," and the American beckoned to the footman.

"Go and get a watering syringe out of the conservatory, or wherever they are kept," he said, "and bring me two of those glass flasks. Quart size— there's no need to cramp these frauds, although they deserve it. I guess they'll compress into a quartz flask all right. We'll see, anyway!"

The footman hurried away, and a chorus of questions arose as to what the American intended to do. The two ghosts had quite lost control of themselves, and were dashing frantically about the trap trying to find a means of exit. But everywhere there was the fatal gauze. They gave up in despair just as the footman returned. The American took, and unscrewed the cap of, one of the flasks.

"You see," he explained to his guests, "these two stiffs in the trap are composed of a kind of unwholesome air, and they can only travel through air, so, if I can only get these two impostors into the flasks, and screw the tops down they won't be able to escape. In fact, they'd be finished pretty thoroughly. Anyway, we'll see!"

And, amid a murmur of delight, he took the syringe and approached the trap. Very carefully the American inserted the nozzle of the syringe through the gauze.

"Ready!" he said to the footman, who had gone round to the back of the cage. The footman began to manipulate a wheel and some levers, and slowly but relentlessly the sides of the trap at one end began to contract until the shape of the trap had changed from an oblong to a V. The sides continued to contract until the ghosts, struggling and scrambling, were forced by the closing in gauze to the end of the trap where the American waited. At last the fat ghost was jammed against the nozzle of the syringe, and instantly the American drew the handle of the syringe swiftly back. There was a sharp sucking sound and— the fat ghost had disappeared. He was in the syringe.

"Quick," snapped the American; "before he gets his breath back!"

Somebody held one of the flasks in position, the American rapidly squirted the ghost out of the syringe into the flask, and screwed on the cap.

"Got him!" he said triumphantly, and he was right. The flask was filled with a soft, mellow light, making an ideal reading lamp of it.

"Oh, what a sweet lamp!" said a girl, charmed with the gentle, soothing light.

The elderly ghost with the whiskers took one look at his old friend as, compressed into a quart flask, he was passed from hand to hand. He had quite lost his shape. One could not have recognised the illuminant in the flask as a ghost at all. He looked exactly like a newly invented reading lamp— which he was.

Ninety-five moaned, and as the nozzle of the syringe approached him in turn, gave a short yelp and fainted dead away. He made a perfect night light.

TWO HOURS later a hungry and disappointed owl, flying past the big porch at the entrance to Stoneylands Castle, gave voice to his opinion of the state of the  mouse hunting business that night, in a hoot so loud and discordant that it echoed dismally to the furthest recesses of the Castle, and aroused from deep sleep the small black ghost which had been left  there long ago by the now brightly burning night lights.

He sat up with a groan and a shiver.

"What's dat?" he said nervously.

There was no answer, and creeping stiffly to the entrance he looked out into the night. The moon had vanished behind a big bank of snow clouds, and the wind was singing dolefully through the trees in the park surrounding the castle. An anxious look overspread the face of the ghost.

"Dem gentlemen's done gone forgot dis chile," he said uneasily. "He thought for a moment.  "Or else dey's been cotched! Reckon dis chile oughtah go 'n' see!"

He carefully let himself in through the keyhole, and, feeling perfectly safe in the dark, drifted silently about the castle hunting for his fellow ghosts. Luckily for him the trap had been removed from the corridor, or it is extremely likely that he would have shared the fate of his comrades and ended his career as a dark lantern.

Presently as he went prowling wistfully in a dark corridor he heard a voice— that of an angry man, as near as he could judge.

"Now look here, you ghosts!" said the voice, "shut up! I've had just as much of your noise as I can stand. You stay where you are— see? Is that clear to you? I don't care whether you find it cramped and stuffy, or whether you don't. You're a couple of frauds, and a quart flask is plenty big enough for a fraud! Now shut up! Thunder and lightning! Will you shut up?  One more word from either of you and I'll get out of bed to you. And if I do get out of bed I'll squirt you into a pint flask apiece. See? What? What's that? Don't you get gay with me, ghost, or so help me Roosevelt you'll regret it to the end of your days! Hey? Feel creased, d'you say? Of course you're creased! What did you expect, you fool? But you'll feel considerable more creased if you make me get out of bed to you! Now, shut up! I don't want any more talk from you. You're illuiminants— not orators. You are required to shine— not to talk. I'll do the talking. Understand? Then shut up! I've had nothing but complaints from you two stiffs ever since I went to bed. I only want one more— just one more little complaint— and I shall get out of bed to you and crease you so you won't know whether you're ghosts or concertinas. So shut up!"

There was a pause. Then the black ghost heard the voice again.

"Good-night, ghosts," it said. "You be good ghosts, and I'll take care of you all right."

Two extraordinarily humble voices made answer.

"Good-night, sir!" they said, and the listener started— the last two voices were those of his companions.

The keyhole of the door was filled with key, but without a moment's hesitation the black ghost poured himself into the room through the ventilator. He found himself in the bedroom of the  American who owned the castle. Standing on a table were two curious looking lamps which lit up the apartment with a soft soothing glow.

The black ghost stared at them— he had never seen lamps of this kind before. The light they shed was precisely the same sort of light as that which a healthy ghost was accustomed to shed; only it was more concentrated. As he stood there pondering, the black ghost heard a gentle snore from the bed of the American. He waited a few moments, then stole across to the table, listening intently.

A faint far-off whisper came to his ears. "Unscrew the top of the flasks— the lamps, laddie," implored the whisper. "Quick!"

Trembling with excitement, he did so. The tops came off quite easily— for they were well made flasks. There was a rushing sound as of air escaping from a football, and— the "lamps" suddenly went out.

The American woke with a start. He had just time to catch a glimpse of two ghosts standing by his bedside. Then they vanished, leaving the room in pitch blackness.

Outside, an owl passing the window uttered a hungry hoot that sounded more like profanity than the voice of a fowl of the air.

Then there was silence.

___________________

12: Flies on the Ceiling

Eugene A. Clancy

1882-1952

Detective-Dragnet, May, 1930

INSPECTOR "Andy" Williams was a most unhappy man. For the second time within a month the chief was giving him an urgent assignment that would take him into "Big Dan" Grogan's Italian district, which was about the same as giving a man a smiling invitation to stick his head into the open jaws of a raging lion.

Williams leaned against the desk and became almost tearful. "Listen, chief," he said earnestly, "have a heart! Why pick on me for this job? You know Dan Grogan— he'll eat me alive if he finds me snooping around in his district! And my being an old friend of his only makes it worse, because he thinks I should know better. Give it to Cassidy, or Tompkins— a taste of Grogan's tongue will do them good, anyway!"

For the first time in headquarters experience, Williams was treated to the startling spectacle of the chief becoming almost human. He leaned forward over the high desk, his expression actually one of friendly sympathy.

"I'm sorry, Andy," he said, "but it's because you are an old friend of Grogan's that I'm sticking you with the job. You can handle him. You see, we don't want this business to get to the newspapers, and if I sent Cassidy or Tompkins, Grogan would warm their pants so loud the thing would make the front page of papers in Japan, China, and the Red Sea, let alone New York! Hop to it, Andy, and take your medicine!"

Williams swore, and straightened his tall, erect figure. He looked more like a polo player than a detective.

"All right," he said, "but this is the last time I'm going to take on any job like this! But look here— what's the idea of keeping the thing out of the papers? Why isn't it already all over the papers? These rich dames who have fifty thousand worth of ice stolen generally want the whole world to know it. Chorus girls haven't anything on some of these society dames when it comes to grabbing off the publicity."

Again the chief leaned close, with a hush, hush expression.

"Listen, Andy," he said. "You and the rest of the master minds around here better get it through your heads quick that this new commissioner is different, damn different. He's one of these society guys himself. Don't you read the papers at all? He'll get over it, of course, but he's still got one foot in the police department, and the other in the middle of the Four Hundred. Any time Mrs. Million-bucks of Park Avenue loses her pet dog, she can get the commish on his private phone and he drops everything to hunt for the mutt personally. I never heard of this Mrs. J. Preston Hax, but for some reason she don't run true to form, and has told the commish that she doesn't want any publicity. Get busy, Andy— and you better turn up something within twenty-four hours."

"Meaning," Williams groaned, after swearing some more, "that this is another of the commissioner's pet cases, eh? All right, I'll be the goat."

Twenty minutes later, feeling like the man who went to his own funeral, he climbed up the worn, uncarpeted stairs that led to the oldfashioned, top-floor tenement apartment where Dan Grogan had lived on alone for fifteen years after the death of his mother and father.

"Big Dan," Irish boss of an Italian East Side district, could have moved to better quarters long ago, for he was a political czar, and the Grogan Trucking Company was now a prosperous concern, but whenever anybody who didn't know any better hinted that he move, a cloud would descend on Grogan's big, strong face, he would glare, and retort:

"The place was good enough for me mother— an' I guess it's good enough for me!"

And that, precisely, was Big Dan, a born leader of men, a power, loved and feared by his "damn wops." Long since the word had been given out from the "Hall"— "Give Dan Grogan anything he wants—and leave him alone."

Mayors and police commissioners were nothing in his life. He was a lonely man by choice, taciturn, sharp-tongued, but— as many a poor Italian knew—with a heart as big as all New York. He was gifted with an uncanny understanding of the Italian mind, and he took care of his wops like a mother does her children. Long ago the police had learned that if they wanted to live long and enjoy life, they had better not interfere with anybody in Big Dan's district without first consulting him!

IT WAS exactly five minutes to seven, and, as usual, Grogan was finishing his supper in the kitchen of the flat. He was alone, except for Maggie, the old woman who cleaned up the place for him, got his supper, and disappeared. Maggie was deaf as a post, but once in a while, by roaring at the top of his powerful lungs, Dan made her hear something he said. Usually he roared at her all through his meal— just doing his thinking out loud and not caring whether Maggie heard him or not. Drinking gallons of hot tea was a pet hobby of Dan's, and he was drinking the last of his fourth cup when the doorbell rang.

"Whoever it is," he roared at Maggie, "tell 'em I ain't seein' anybody if it is the Pope himself! I'm goin' to the fights!"

But Andy Williams had heard the roar— and at once opened the door himself and walked in. They were old boyhood friends, these two, though at times one would not suspect it. In fact, if it hadn't been for Dan, Williams might still have been pounding the pavements.

"Hello, Dan— thought you might be in," the inspector greeted, striving to speak casually. "Just finishing your supper?"

"No," Dan growled, pushing back from the table and lighting a cigar. "I'm playin' golf in the East River. What brings you here, Andy? Has the new commissioner lost his collar button, and is some four-year-old child in my district supposed to have swallowed it? You look kind as if you'd swallowed a collar button yourself, Andy. Come in on front till I have a look at you."

The big fellow got up and led the way into what had once been the sacred front parlor of the flat, but which Dan now used as his sitting room and "office." He plumped himself down in his old armchair in the corner. Across from this, in the centre of the room, was another armchair.

It was Dan's official visitor's chair, and in the privacy of this room, with no one but Big Dan to hear, many a wretched story had been sobbed out in that chair; many a gangster had sat there— and been told that he had twelve hours in which to get out of the district.

A mayor or two had sat in that chair— and been told what to do, and where to get off.

Inspector Williams had squirmed there for many a bad half hour, and now he sat down gingerly. Grogan seemed to be in a good humor— but he had a way of fooling you. Dan had brought his evening paper from the kitchen, but now he dropped it on the floor.

"I been straightenin' out trouble all week, Andy," he remarked, "an' I guess I take a night off. Glad you dropped in. I got tickets for the fights— you better come along with me."

The inspector squirmed— nothing could be worse than this!

"I sure would like to, Dan," he replied, nervously lighting a cigar of his own, "but— well, the truth is, I'm on a job that looks mighty puzzling, and I thought I better come up here and see you about it—"

"I thought there was a collar button in it!" Grogan blared, taking a savage pull at his cigar. "I can see now I might as well go an give them fight tickets to Maggie. Well— out with it, Andy! What new parrot disease is headquarters sufferin' from now?"

"It's really a serious and very mysterious case, Dan," Williams replied, ignoring the sarcasm and trying to look impressive. "And as it seems to be a pet case of the commissioner's—"

"If that feller keeps on goin' the way he is," Dan growled, "one of these days he's goin' to wind up in the hospital with a pet case of lead poisonin'. I was sayin' to a feller only last night that this city is gettin' large enough now to have a police department, with uniformed patrolmen, detectives, traffic cops, an' inspectors, just like they got now in many smaller cities, like Hoboken, Troy, an'—"

"Oh, shut up, Dan, and listen!" the inspector flared in sudden desperation. Grogan dearly loved to get his old friend's goat— and always succeeded. Williams gave the brim of his Panama hat a tug and leaned forward: "This thing is a twohundred thousand dollar jewel robbery, man— and if you want to know just why I'm here, it's because the only clue we've got leads right to this district!"

GROGAN'S eyes flickered. "I been readin' the evenin' paper, an' I don't seem to remember seein' anythin' about—"

"The papers haven't got it," said Williams quickly, "and I'm supposed to see that they don't get it. It's another of these society cases that we're supposed to clean up without any fuss or noise."

"Which naturally makes it very hard for you broadcastin' dicks to operate," Grogan remarked, with an inward chuckle, "because puttin' a muzzle on headquarters an' askin' them to do somethin' without fuss an' noise is like askin' a rooster to lay a egg without crowin'. You're gettin' good as a talkie comedy, Andy— go on an' let's hear what this social collar button sounds like."

"There's a rich dame who is living out at her country place at Eastmere, Long Island," Andy Williams went on, striving to control himself. "Her husband is a Wall Street broker, and one of these birds who is so high-hat and exclusive that nobody can get near him— wouldn't talk to anybody less than the police commissioner himself.

"Well, last night they went to some extra ritzy formal dinner at some neighbor's out there. The dame wanted her extra special junk that she usually wears only to the opera and big affairs in town in the winter. On his way home yesterday afternoon, Hax stopped at the bank and got the stuff from a safe-deposit box. They didn't stay long at the blowout, because Hax had to be at his office early this morning. He intended to bring the stuff to town with him and put it back in the safedeposit box, but he left in a hurry and forgot it. When he got to his office, however, he suddenly remembered, and got into an awful stew, I guess, thinking of that two-hundred-thousand dollars worth of junk lying loose out there in that country house.

"The dame, you see, is one of these useless young things without much sense— he's twenty years older than she is, and something of a grouch, they tell me. Well, he phones her, wakes her out of her beauty sleep, and tells her to hop in the car the moment the chauffeur gets back to Eastmere, and bring that stuff right to the office Well—"

"Andy," Grogan interrupted, pulling at his cigar impatiently, "you ain't goin' to tell me that them jewels was stolen by a feller wearin' a summer suit an' a straw hat, are you? I'm thinkin' I'll go to them fights, after all! What has this bedtime story got to do with me an' my district— or are you just askin' me to wind up your brains for you?"

"I'm coming to that right now, Dan," Williams hurried on. "I hopped out there this afternoon and had a talk with the dame. She's one of these little blond babies. She was having a nervous breakdown, with a maid giving her smelling salts and a shot of pre-war rye every now and then, and nobody allowed to see her. From her chatter I was able to get what happened. It seems she'd just locked up the stuff in a bureau drawer when they got home last night. When Hax phoned her this morning, she got right up, dressed in a hurry, put the stuff in the leather carrying case especially made for the purpose, and was all ready when the chauffeur showed up with the car.

"But what do you think that dumb Mabel did, Dan? When the car hit Manhattan, it suddenly occurred to her peanut mind that she'd like to stop a minute and telephone a friend to have lunch with her. She told the chauffeur to stop at a hotel and wait while she phoned. Before getting out of the car, however, she hands that leather case to the chauffeur, a man who hadn't been with them a month— tells him what it contains, and that she is afraid to carry it into the hotel, and to hold it tight for her until she gets through phoning and comes back! Well, she phoned her friend, came out and got into the car again, and the chauffeur handed her back the case. In front of Hax's office building she got out, telling the chauffeur she'd be down in a few minutes.

"When she entered Hax's private office and put the case on his desk, he grabbed it and unlocked it at once—it seems he kept the key of it. The dame admitted that he was cussing— said he is always growling about how careless she is— and he wanted to make sure she hadn't left some of the stuff behind. Well, Dan, when he opened the case, it was worse than that. The case was empty!"

WILLIAMS paused dramatically. Grogan eyed him for a moment— and then grinned.

"This dame didn't have her pet dog along, did she, Andy?"

"What the hell—!"

"Because," Dan persisted, his eyes twinkling, "the dog might have opened that case in the car an' swallowed all them diamonds an' pearls. My father had a dog what had the bad habit of swallowin' the kitchen alarm clock, an' he used to go off every mornin' at five-thirty an'—"

Williams swore. Good fellow though Andy was, he wasn't naturally overburdened with a sense of humor, and just now he wasn't in any mood for laughing. His job was at stake. He had twenty-four hours in which to solve a pet case of the commissioner's, and failure surely would mean either demotion or transfer to the sticks.

"Maybe in a minute you won't think it so funny, Dan," he said, biting his cigar. "Here's the rest of it: Hax, of course, goes haywire on finding the case empty. He pretty near jumps down his fool wife's throat. She blubbers and assures him that she put the stuff in the case with her own hands— but in ten seconds he gets out of her that little incident of phoning a friend and leaving the case with the chauffeur. Telling her to sit there and keep her mouth shut— and not waiting to knock her block off, as I bet he felt like doing!— he dashed for the elevator and the street. The car is gone, of course—and we haven't got trace of it since. It was a clean getaway— so far.

"And now— listen: That chauffeur is a wop named Angelo Scotti. He's been living out there, of course, in a room over the garage. I searched that room, Dan— only got back from there about an hour ago and in a coat pocket I found this letter!"

With a certain gleam of satisfaction that he could not quite hide, the inspector handed over an unsealed envelope. He took out the letter and read it. Both envelope and letter were the stationery of the Grogan Trucking Company. The letter was addressed "To Whom It May Concern," and consisted of the usual brief line, stating that one, Angelo Scotti, was a young man of good character, known to the undersigned, and a qualified and capable chauffeur. The signature was Dan's own heavy scrawl!

Grogan put the letter back in the envelope, handed it back, took a puff of his cigar, and gazed up at the ceiling. But he said nothing.

"Well?" Williams asked. "I guess maybe you can help me now—seeing that it was no less a person than yourself who recommended this crook."

BUT GROGAN continued to look at the ceiling. Finally he spoke. "I got to tell Maggie," he remarked, "to get busy an' wash the ceilin' of this room. The flies has sure got it all specked up, an' if there's one thing I hates to see about a house it's fly-specks. How they gets in so thick is—"

"To hell with your fly-specks!" Andy Williams yelled, nearly beside himself. "Listen, Dan— I've got twenty-four hours to—"

"All right, Andy, all right," said Grogan. Suddenly his face became grim, and a dangerous glint showed in his eyes. The whole police department knew that glint, knew what it meant. Dan Grogan was going into battle for one of his brood— one of his "damned wops." Not that he would hesitate to turn the man in if he proved guilty— Dan tolerated no crooks in his district— but the investigation now was out of the hands of the police. Grogan would go after the man personally, and if found guilty, Dan Grogan would turn the man in himself. He glared at the inspector.

"Andy," he said, "maybe I know this Angelo Scotti, an' maybe I don't. Of course, if I had the keen brains an' sharp memory of you master minds down to headquarters, I'd remember instantly all about every one of the dozens of them letters what I have wrote for people, but I got only average intelligence— an' maybe, too, I'm gettin' old. But this feller Hax, now— seems to me I do recall some feller of that name callin' me up to confirm a letter. Say, what'd he do when he don't find no chauffeur?"

"He hustles right up to his office again," the inspector replied, with almost pathetic eagerness, "packs the dame off home in a taxi with orders to keep her mouth shut, and then, through some friend of his who is a friend of the commish's, he gets the commish on the wire personally. The commish, smelling the social status over the wire, tells the damn High-hat not to worry— that everything will be handled quietly, and that the crook hasn't a chance in the world and will be nabbed within twenty-four hours. Just like that, Dan! He relays the thing personally to the chief— and the chief makes me the goat."

Grogan threw the butt of his cigar into a cuspidor, took out another, and lighted it.

"I see," he commented, nodding. "But what I don't see, is—"

The ringing of the phone, on an old table in a corner, interrupted him. He got up and answered it.

"It's headquarters—for you," he said, plumping the instrument down and going back to his chair.

Williams hurried across the room, picked up the phone and listened for a moment.

"All right, chief," he said finally. "No— I'm talking to him now. I'll call you a little later."

"The car's been found, Dan!" he exclaimed, going back to his chair. "They found it parked— or, rather, abandoned way up on West Seventyninth Street. Evidently left there very early in the day. But no clue to Scotti."

Oddly enough, Grogan chuckled.

"You mugs sure do make fast progress," he said. "Half of your twenty-four hours is gone, an' by accident some traffic cop, havin' nothin' special on his mind, finds a abandoned car— which by accident turns out to be the one a million dicks is doin' nothin' but look for! Honest, Andy, I think I'll go to them fights after all. It ain't no use— an' you don't look so good. A little rest-up in the sticks'll build up your health an'—"

Williams, red in the face, jumped to his feet— evidently this was more than human flesh and blood could stand.

"You can go to hell, Dan Grogan!" he cried. "I'm through. I'm going right back to headquarters and resign!"

He was actually halfway out of the room before Grogan, who was never the man to carry a joke too far with anybody, much less with an old friend, bellowed at him to come back and sit down.

"You're the same baby you was at twelve years old, Andy," he said, with a smile, "when I used to pull you out of trouble by the seat of your pants. Now, maybe we can do somethin' about this business."

He got up suddenly, a light of action in his eyes, and picked up his plain straw hat from the top of the covered-up piano— another of the dilapidated antiques with which the flat was crowded. Though Dan didn't know it, bets often were made by visitors to the effect that the piano hadn't been played in twenty years. They didn't know the half of it; that old piano had never been played at all!

"Come on, Mr. Inspector," he said. "We're goin' visitin'."

WITHOUT reply Williams followed him out of the flat and down to the street. Grogan led the way, silently, down to Avenue B, and then stalked into a big tenement down one of the teeming side streets. Climbing to the third floor, he knocked at the door of a rear flat. The door was opened by a withered old Italian woman, who threw it wide open with a welcoming smile as she recognized Grogan.

Dan did not return the smile, however. He stalked into the kitchen, Williams close at his heels. The inspector saw that the old woman and a pretty young girl, evidently her daughter, were in the midst of their supper.

"Mrs. Scotti," said Grogan, in a tone that wiped the smile from the old woman's face and took the color from the girl's cheeks, "you ain't seen or heard from Angelo today, have you?"

The old woman quailed, and looked sharply from one man to the other, her quick, native instinct telling her that something was wrong, very wrong.

"Angelo?" she breathed. "No— no, Mist' Grogan. Angelo, he have not been here since las' week. Oh, Mist' Grogan! My Angelo, he is not—"

"He's disappeared from that swell job what I got him, Mother Scotti," Dan cut her off bluntly. "The bulls is lookin' for him, an' if you an' Camella knows anthin', you better come across at once, mother, or I won't do nothin' to help him."

With a helpless moan, the old woman sank down in a chair. It was the girl, her eyes bright with quick intelligence, who spoke.

"Mother is telling the truth, Mr. Grogan! We haven't seen or heard of Angelo since he dropped in after supper last week, on his day off! And he was so happy! Telling all about his wonderful job! Oh, it can't be—"

"Maybe not," Grogan said. "All right, Camella— that's what I wanted to be sure about. You're a bright girl, Camella— I ain't any time to waste now answerin' questions— not if I'm to help Angelo. He's in bad, kid. Looks like your brother Angelo has gone back on me. Now— has that feller what I warned him against, and warned you against, been around here lately?"

The old woman started to mumble, and raised a protesting hand, but the girl brushed her impatiently aside.

"Yes, he has, Mr. Grogan!" she replied. "Mother was afraid to let you know— because you might think things. He's been around twice in the last two weeks. He tries to get me to influence Angelo. If he has anything to do with this, I'll kill him, Mr. Grogan! He hasn't fooled me— I just knew he has some special reason for wanting to get hold of Angelo! Mr. Grogan—"

"Just you leave everythin' to me, Camella," Grogan broke in on her, his tone now more kindly. "And here's what you do. Not a word about me an' this man comin' here. See? You don't know nothin'. I'll be around again sometime tomorrow, if I ain't here sooner. Come on, Andy!"

WITHOUT further word, or even a nod, he stalked out of the flat precisely as he had stalked in. Unless you had been told, you never would have suspected that the iron-gray gentleman who followed meekly and silently at his heels was no less a person than Inspector Andrew Williams, of Headquarters.

And Inspector Williams did not feel so hot himself. He was the kind of man who, deep down in his heart, is honest with himself, and out of it on the street, where Big Dan received respectful greetings on all sides, greetings that a king might envy. Andy Williams cursed himself, his own limited abilities, and found himself wondering if some day he might be able to handle a job without having to go yelling for help to this big, powerful, shrewd man who had stuck by him since boyhood.

"Andy," said Grogan, suddenly coming to an abrupt stop on a crowded street corner, and calmly ignoring the fact that half the street could overhear him if it wanted to listen in, "I got a hunch. I guess you kind of suspect now that them wimmen I was talkin' to are Angelo Scotti's mother an' sister?"

"No!" snapped Williams, aggravation giving him a sudden flash of humor of his own. "I thought they were two Chinese women having tea at the Ritz!"

"Really now, Andy," Grogan chuckled, "I didn't expect it—there is some hope for you! You make me feel better. Well," and his tone became grim again, "I guess you also gathered that I been keepin' a eye on Angelo. You see, gettin' a young feller a good job often keeps him from goin' up the river. But you never can tell, as the man said when he found out his new wife had buried three husbands. Say, Andy did you ever hear of a bird named Tuxedo Joe?"

"Sure," Williams replied, looking at Grogan quickly. "One of this new swell racketeer crowd. The chief was talking about him only the other day. We don't seem to be able to tie anythin' on him. Say, what's he got to do with this, Dan?"

"I didn't say he had anythin' to do with it," Grogan retorted, frowning and chewing on his cigar. "If you mugs downtown wouldn't go jumpin' at conclusions like you do, maybe fellers like Tuxedo Joe wouldn't be eatin' in swell night clubs an' enjoyin' life, while phony dicks come to me for advice. But now, Andy, I'm sure worried about Angelo Scotti. We got to find out where that damn wop is got to, an' what he's doin'."

"Maybe," the inspector suggested, hesitantly, "maybe that wop girl was— was holding out on you. I sure would like to search that flat!"

"Which statement, Andy," Grogan remarked, with a chuckle, "is just another reason why you are a dick instead of president of the Woolworth Building."

He stood for a moment, chewing his cigar.

"I said I had a hunch, Andy. You game to play a hunch?"

"I'm damn ready to do anything," Andy Williams replied, almost dancing with impatience, "that will get my hands on that crook of a chauffeur and that stuff he got away with!"

"Well," said Grogan, suddenly hailing a taxi, "let's take little ride out to Eastmere."

"Eastmere!" Williams exclaimed, as the taxi drew up to the curb.

"Sure," Dan replied, grinning, and literally pushing and shoving the bewildered inspector into the cab, and looked at him curiously. It was a strange address for an Avenue B fare to give!

"But you don't think, Dan, that Scotti—"

"I just got a feelin' I'd like to meet this J. Preston Hax," said Grogan, an odd note in his voice, "an' this dame— maybe she'll give me a shot of that pre-war rye you said she was sniffin'. Besides, I'm kinder curious to have a look at a dame what is so dumb as to let her new chauffeur hold two-hundred-thousand dollars worth of social glassware while she passes the mornin' scandal with another skirt over the phone."

"But look here, Dan—"

"Shut up, Andy," Grogan cut him off, with a grin, while he pulled out a fresh cigar. "I want to do some thinkin'— an' listenin' to you ain't goin' to help. All you got to do from now on, Mr. Inspector, is to introduce me to this here Eastmere society—an' then be seen an' not heard."

IN ABOUT forty minutes the cab turned into a driveway and stopped before the steps of the Hax country house. A maid ushered them into the drawing room, and in a moment a tall, flabby, bald-headed man, with a distinctly high-hat manner and disagreeable eyes, came in.

Andy introduced himself, while Big Dan, still puffing his cigar, stood meekly waiting.

"Ah," said J. Preston Hax. "So you are the man the commissioner has put on the case. You had an interview with Mrs. Hax. You have come to report that the scoundrel has been arrested? And the jewels found?"

"Well— not exactly," Andy replied, feeling like kicking both Hax and Dan Grogan. "The fact is, I came— er— at the request of this gentleman, here. I want you to meet Mr. Grogan— he is the man who wrote the letter of recommendation for your chauffeur."

Hax had been looking at Dan with a frown of disapproval. "Mr. Grogan?" he said, the same disapproval in his tone.

"To get down to business, Mr. Hax," said Dan, treating the broker to a glare that somehow made that gentleman take a slight step backwards, "this Angelo Scotti comes from my district, an' I'm takin' a personal interest in the case. In fact, I'm in charge of it— an' I suggest, Mr. Hax, that you take us into your den, or library, or somewheres where we can sit down an' talk without bein' interrupted."

Hax tried to eye Dan with cold indignation— but fell down on the job. Instead, he led the way to a small library in the rear of the house, shut the door, and waved them to seats.

"But I don't understand this at all, inspector," he said, sitting down in the chair behind the big desk in the centre of the room. "I am not accustomed to—"

"You'll get used to it," said Dan shortly. "Andy, get on that phone an' get the commissioner— if he ain't at his summer house in Westchester, headquarters'll get him."

While Hax waited in frowning astonishment, Williams picked up the phone that stood on the desk. In four or five minutes he had the commissioner on the wire— and instantly Grogan took the instrument.

"This is Dan Grogan, commissioner," he growled. "Fine! How are you? Listen— I'm out here at Mr. Hax's place— that wop chauffeur case, you know. Yeh. Mr. Hax don't seem to understand why I'm runnin' the show. Wise him up— I'll put him on the wire."

The broker took the phone with a puzzled expression on his red, flabby face. The commissioner seemed to do all the talking, and in a moment J. Preston Hax hung up. He looked at Dan in a dazed way.

"I— er— I'm very glad to meet you, Mr. Grogan," he spluttered. "I'm afraid I did not understand." He leaned back in his chair and tried to summon a flabby smile. "You see— er— I know very little of politics— that sort of thing. Well, I suppose you have come to see what I know about this young crook. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I can tell you little. You see—"

"I didn't come to ask about the chauffeur," Grogan interrupted, taking a pull at his cigar. "I'd like to have a little talk with your wife, Mr. Hax. Would you please ask her if she'll just step in here for a few minutes? An' to save time, you can tell her whatever the commissioner told you."

Mr. J. Preston Hax stared, and flushed more red than nature made him.

"I really cannot consent to that, Mr. Grogan!" he replied. "It's out of the question. Inspector Williams heard Mrs. Hax's story today, and that should be enough. She is very near a breakdown—"

"I guess she is," said Grogan, fixing the broker with a glare. "But if you want to avoid some mighty unpleasant developments in this case, Mr. Hax, you take my advice an' bring Mrs. Hax in here at once. Your forgettin' that you're mixed up in a police case, Mr. Hax."

The broker gasped. He spluttered— and then got flabbily to his feet and left the room.

"Say, look here, Dan," Andy Williams protested nervously, "what in the name of hell are you—"

"You just shut up until I ask you somethin'! Dan growled. "A nervous breakdown. Huh!"

IN A FEW minutes Hax threw open the door, stood aside, and a small, blond woman of not more than twenty-four or five came into the room with a quick, nervous step. She stopped abruptly beside the desk, and stood eyeing Grogan.

He could see that despite her child's haircut and baby-blue eyes, she was no infant. There was a hard look behind the baby stare— and a look of desperate trouble. She was clutching a pack of cigarettes and a folder of matches— and now there was a distinct odor of pre-war rye in the room.

Both Grogan and Andy had risen.

"Please sit down," she said, in a soft but oddly excited voice. "No— I'll stand— I've been sitting down all day. Mr. Grogan, I believe? Mr. Hax has explained— it was foolish of him not to summon me at once. What is it you want to ask me?"

Mr. Hax was fairly dancing behind her. It was quite plain that his young wife had small patience with his formality and pomposity. She snatched a cigarette from the pack and lighted it.

"Is there something I failed to make clear to Inspector Williams this afternoon?"

Grogan eyed her for a moment. This tense little dame wasn't the flighty, tearful baby Andy had described. A few hours had made a startling change in her. But you never could tell about a woman— and it might just be the pre-war rye.

"I just want to ask you a few questions, Mrs. Hax," he said, trying to speak gently. Dan had a soft heart for all women, and hated these cases in which a woman was involved. But he had a hunch and was going to play it.

"You see, this Angelo was kind of a ward of mine— all them poor wop boys are, an' it knocks me all of a heap to find that he's a crook. But outside of that, Mrs. Hax— I'm wonderin' if you ever met a feller named Footner, Edward J. Footner?"

The girl started, gasped, and then managed to get control of herself. "Footner? No— no. Of course not! Why do you ask such a question, Mr. Grogan?"

"I thought maybe you knew him," said Dan, while something electric seemed to shoot through the room. "He's a tall, slim, handsome young feller— nice black hair an' eyes. Regular society guy, too. You sure you ain't met him, Mrs. Hax? But maybe you ain't. Few people knows it, but he runs a couple of these swell card clubs for rich dames to play bridge in. Some well-known society wimmen plays in them clubs on the quiet, an' there's thousands of dollars changes hands. They say Footner has a way of gettin' rich wimmen in debt an' do all sorts of things to pay up— but I'm forgettin' about Angelo. Funny, but I seen this feller talkin' to Angelo a couple of times. I'm worried about Angelo, Mrs. Hax. In fact," and here Grogan leaned forward, pointing his cigar at her, "I got a feelin' he's in grave danger— I wouldn't be surprised, Mrs. Hax, if Angelo Scotti was found dead tomorrow mornin', murdered!"

"Here!" cried Hax, stepping forward, quivering all over. "I won't have it! I don't care who or what you are, Grogan! How dare you come in here and talk to my wife like this! I'll have you—"

BUT suddenly a queer cry came from the blond girl-wife. She had gone dead white, her big blue eyes staring at Grogan with an expression of fear, horror. Now something seemed to crack within her, and a crazy, excited, stark energy possessed her. She threw out an arm and fairly knocked her husband aside.

"I can't stand it a moment longer!" she cried, her eyes flashing now with a reckless light. "Oh, it was wrong, wrong— I knew it. I can't go through with it! I can't get that poor Italian boy out of my mind." She faced Grogan. "It's true, Mr. Grogan— what your eyes are saying about me. I'm just that— a dirty little coward and liar!"

Again Hax tried to speak. "Jessie— what are you saying! My God—"

"An' that story you told Williams, Mrs. Hax," said Grogan, his eyes glinting, "was that—"

"Lies, all lies!" she cried, facing the three men. "I'll tell the truth now —and I don't care if the whole world hears it— and you must find that poor boy at once! And you, Press— you've got to hear it, now! If you'd given me the pocket money our wealth and position entitles me to, this never would have happened! Yes, I know Footner, and I've been gambling in his clubs. I won at first— but yesterday I owed forty-thousand dollars, that had to be paid at once, somehow. I dared not go to my husband.

"But this morning, when he forgot my jewels and phoned for me to bring them, the idea came to me. Footner has been suggesting for some time that I let him lend me money on my jewels. But my husband keeps them under lock and key— what fools some men are! I phoned to Footner that I had my jewels here, and asked him if he couldn't think of something, as I must have fifty-thousand dollars at once. He told me to bring them right to his apartment—that he had a scheme that would work like a charm."

"Jessie!" Hax gasped.

"You shut up!" roared Grogan, while Andy Williams sat with his eyes starting from his head. "Go on, Mrs. Hax— an' trust me!"

"Something tells me I can, Mr. Grogan!" the girl said. "Well, I gave Angelo the address and went there. Footner had a packet of bills, fifty thousand, on the table when I went in. He asked me at once did I have the same Italian chauffeur with me. I was puzzled— but then he told me his scheme— the story I told Inspector Williams. I must have been crazy with worry, for I listened to that scheme. He said everything would be all right. Just to leave the chauffeur to him. All these Italians are the same, he said. He'd give, the boy five hundred dollars and spirit him out of town for a few weeks, until the thing blew over. In a few weeks, he said, beyond a doubt I would be able to redeem the jewels. A week later, the jewels would be mysteriously delivered to my husband's office and the whole thing would be forgotten.

"As I said, I must have been quite mad, for I agreed. He gave me the money, and with the empty case, I went down to the car. As Footner had instructed me, I told Angelo that I would go downtown in a taxi— and meantime I wanted him to go right upstairs to apartment 6B and get some packages a man up there had for me. He was to put them in the car and drive home. Press— take this key, go to my desk, and bring me my handbag! That's all I know, Mr. Grogan. And now— Oh, I know now I was a fool, a mad fool— and that poor boy, Angelo—"

"Don't say a word more, Mrs. Hax," said Grogan getting to his feet. "Leave the rest to me, an'—"

He broke off as Hax came running in with the handbag. All the pomposity had gone from him now. He was like a flabby blubber. The girl opened the bag and handed Grogan a packet of bills, which Dan calmly put in his pocket.

"My God!" blubbered Hax. "The scandal— we'd better drop—"

"You shut up!" Grogan roared. "If my hunch holds, there ain't goin' to be no scandal—except maybe for Tuxedo Joe. You've been took over by a slick racketeer, little lady. Thank God you've come through like a game little sport. Now, get your cloak—we're all goin' visitin' in a hurry. Andy, you got a plainclothes dick around here somewheres, ain't you? Get him! We all got to get into that taxi, somehow! God help that crook if he's done anything to Angelo Scotti!"

A LITTLE less than an hour later, in response to a ring, the door of apartment 6-B, in a walk-up in the West Sixties, was opened cautiously by a pasty-faced youth.

At sight of the revolver in Andy Williams' hand, the youth opened the door wider, raised his hands, and suppressed the warning whistle he had been about to give. He backed silently into the little foyer hall, and into the living room beyond. The plainclothes man's gun was now in evidence, too.

Two other young men were seated at a table strewn with cards and poker chips. The hands of these young men reached for the ceiling. It was evident that such a visit was totally unexpected.

But the tall, handsome, immaculately attired young man known to the underworld as Tuxedo Joe, and to society ladies with a yen for gambling as Edward J. Footner, always was equal to the unexpected. He smiled pleasantly, while being frisked for weapons.

"I didn't expect to see you so soon, Mrs. Hax," he remarked. "And you have brought Mr. Hax— and Dan Grogan, of all people! Well, I suppose—"

"Suppose you shut up, Tuxedo!" Grogan snapped. "We'll make this snappy. Where's Angelo Scotti?"

"If one of you will be kind enough to open that bedroom door," the racketeer replied, "you will find the damn fool in there. He's still tied up, I regret to say— he refused to listen to reason— and I really didn't know just what to do with him."

It was characteristic of the man, evidently, not to ask foolish or useless questions. Tuxedo Joe had brains— and was using them, as Grogan knew very well.

It was Dan who went into the bedroom. In a few moments he came out, followed by a scared-looking young Italian, rubbing his wrists. Angelo Scotti looked around the room in startled amazement.

"Everythin' is all right now, Angelo," said Grogan. "Now— what happened when you come up to get them packages?"

"I find the man up here is this devil, Joe!" Angelo said. "He have a gun. He say Mrs. Hax's jewels have been stole— an' I am suspect. He say he give me five-hundred dollar an' I better beat it out of New York quick! He say if not, the cops get me in a hour— an' will laugh at any story I try to tell them! I fight— try to get away— an' then they tie me up an' throw me in there to think it over, they say! I don't—"

"That's all from you, Angelo," said Grogan. He glared at the racketeer, then suddenly reached in his pocket and tossed the packet of bills on the table.

"There's your damn money, you mutt!" he snapped. "Now— produce the stuff!"

Tuxedo Joe eyed him.

"Suppose I don't know what you're talking about?" he said.

"Then you can tell it to the judge," said Grogan, lighting a fresh cigar. "We ain't much time to waste here, Joe."

"But," said the racketeer, "in that event, how about Mrs. Hax? Surely she would not want to be dragged through—"

"Mrs. Hax," said Dan, "is ready to go through with the whole works! Don't try to bluff me, Joe. But for the sake of this lady, I'll give you an out. Produce the stuff, keep your damn trap shut— an' I'll call it quits— this time."

"May I take my hands down?" Tuxedo asked, after eyeing Grogan for a moment.

"Thanks."

He went to a safe in the corner of the room, opened it, took out a box, and emptied it on the table.

"Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Hax will be kind enough to check up— and see how honest I am!" he said, resuming his seat. It was the flabby Hax who rushed forward and pounced on the glittering pile.

"Yes, yes— it's all here— all here!" he cried, meanwhile eagerly stowing it away in several pockets. "Come, Jessie dear—let's go home. I— er— I feel quite ill."

Mr. J. Preston Hax was indeed an absurd, pitiful sight. Grogan glared at him.

"You'll feel better in the mornin', Hax," he said. "An' when you do, you take this advice— you give this nice little wife of yours some spendin' money! Get goin', Mrs. Hax. Inspector Williams will see that one of his men rides home with you."

"And I want Angelo to come along with us," said Mrs. Hax.

One of Big Dan's rare smiles broke all over his face. "Good for you!" he said. Come on, Andy— I got a idea Tuxedo Joe'll kinder lay quiet for awhile— maybe leave town for his health."

A few minutes later Andy Williams and Grogan were riding downtown in a taxi.

"Why the hell didn't you let me pinch that mutt anyway?" Andy asked. Grogan chuckled. "Because, Andy— Tuxedo ain't like you. He's got brains— an' might use 'em!"

______________

13: Six Heads on a String

Mark Harper

Joseph Thompson Shaw, 1874-1952

Mystery Magazine March 1942

1: Farstone's Return.

THE GREAT SALON of John Farstone's secluded house was ablaze with lights. The explorer had only recently returned from the South American wilds, and his wife was giving the reception in his honor, having invited a small group of wealthy friends and a scientist whom she had known for some years.

That there was only one scientist was probably explained by the fact that Farstone's expeditions had never yielded a great deal of scientific information. Fortune hunter he was called more often than explorer, and it was said that all of his money came from the trophies he had found in strange places.

A lot of other things were said about him, dark and sinister rumors involving the deaths of men who had accompanied him into the jungles; but none had come to light, and no crime was proved against him. Sardonic and cold, John Farstone was a man of mystery to some; to others, he was a figure of menace.

Notwithstanding the ugly rumors, however, it could not be gainsaid that his fortune hunting was profitable, to judge from evidences in his big home.

Ruth Acosta, crossing the room with Professor Hale toward their hostess, thought of this as her eye caught the diamonds flashing from Mrs. Farstone's ample bosom. But Ruth had other matters to occupy her mind just then, and her dark eyes were brilliant with excitement and suppressed dread.

Ruth's brother, Miguel, had just arrived from South America and had told her that he, too, would be present this evening— and that filled her with much concern. Ruth had heard of the unexplained deaths of Far- stone's first two assistants.

Following their deaths, a year or two apart, Miguel had been the third to join the explorer, and Ruth had been relieved when she had learned of his safe return to their home in Brazil.

But now, suddenly, Miguel had come to New York, and her intuition told her that he had some unusual reason for following John Farstone home. Her misgivings had doubled when Miguel warned her not to disclose that they were brother and sister. Miguel had had time only to phone, and he had not explained.

The deception would not be difficult. They had racial resemblance, but it ended there. Ruth had used her mother's name, Acosta, while in college. Miguel was known to Farstone merely as Miguel Portas. But the warning had stirred Ruth greatly. She was afraid for Miguel.

She was no ordinary girl, this Ruth Acosta. The college life had concealed much of her character, but beneath the satiny-smooth, olive skin was still something of a tigress if sufficiently aroused by threat of danger; and she had more than once experienced that with Miguel in the wilds of their homeland.

"We are early, Mrs. Farstone," Professor Hale was saying. He introduced Ruth and the two young men, Eric and Max, friends who had come with them.

"I am glad of that," Mrs. Farstone said. "I am terribly worried. I can't talk with John and I must speak with someone."

"Nothing bad, I hope."

The two young men strolled away. Ruth didn't.

"It's about John. Something has happened to upset him. A man is coming tonight he doesn't want to see. I would say ‘afraid' to see, but John is afraid of nothing. I am fearful something awful may happen!"

The man of science laughed reassuringly. "Perhaps you are borrowing trouble."

"Let me tell you. Of course, you know those terrible stories they told about John when, first, David Mansfield didn't return, and then, later, Jim Hastings?"

"Envious people always gossip," Hale answered. "Those two expeditions made him rich, and he must have been to great risk to get what he brought back. An explorer is always in danger, which he shares with his companions."

"Danger and trouble both," the blond Mrs. Farstone murmured. "I know something is hanging over his head all the time, but he is so secretive, he tells me nothing. He has that laboratory downstairs he told me never to enter. I'm dying to, but I don't dare, and it's always nailed up when he is away."

"Perhaps he has some snake venoms there."

Mrs. Farstone's face was suddenly white, and she shuddered.

"It is worse than that," she almost whispered. "This time, John brought back with him a native from one of the tribes, and I know he's up to some horrible work!"

"How do you know?"

"I... I peeked one day, when that man went in. John keeps him in his quarter, and he goes only between his room and that laboratory."

"What did you see?"

The blond lady strained her hands down over her face, then looked up with wide eyes.

"I only hope to Heaven I didn't see what I thought I saw, and what has haunted me ever since." She caught Hale's arm. "Tell me; Jim Hastings was very light, wasn't he, with curly, fair hair?"

Hale stared at her. Then, glancing beyond her shoulder, he abruptly smiled and said: "Good evening, Farstone. You see I'm prompt, and curious."

EVEN Ruth's keen ears had not heard the approaching step, but some sixth sense had warned her and she was already studying the explorer as he came to them.

Farstone's well-proportioned figure was gaunt, a penalty, no doubt, for his many years in the tropics. His walk was like that of a jungle cat. His lean face was made to appear longer by the pointed beard. The tips of his ears were pointed, too, and that, with the ironic smile on his thin lips, made him seem satanic.

"I don't know on what lines your curiosity runs. Hale," he answered, "but I think we shall be able to satisfy you." He glanced sidewise at Ruth, with his lips twisted in what might have been intended for a smile, but his steel-gray eyes were cold and studying her speculatively. Hale named her to him.

"Come, my dear," Farstone said abruptly. "While my wife is entertaining Hale with her ghost stories. I'll give you a peek at some of my things."

Ruth went with him eagerly. It was strange, she thought: Mrs. Farstone feared for this man striding beside her, while her fear was of him and for her brother Miguel. She wondered if there might not be a third menace threatening both. She had witnessed such things in the jungle.

They left the salon by the far end, went halfway down a corridor and Farstone unlocked a door, switched on a light and taking Ruth's arm, urged her to enter.

His grip was not tight, but she sensed the strength in the lean fingers, and stopped just inside the threshold, partly to loosen it, partly to let her eyes roam over strange and familiar objects that crowded it.

Animals, birds and even reptiles seemed everywhere, in such lifelike pose and appearance that Ruth remarked upon it.

"I do most of the taxidermy myself," the explorer informed her. "It's a hobby of mine. But here is something I have not yet mastered, although i might in time."

He laughed, but it was a grating sound on Ruth's sensitive ears. He turned her a little and gestured toward one wall, where there was a high mantel above a built-in safe. Strung on a cord beneath the mantel were four objects not much bigger than large oranges that, at a little distance, might have passed for children's puppets.

Once before in her life Ruth Acosta had seen one such object, and had not since forgotten her sudden horror. She recognized them for what they were and felt herself gripped by the same sensation. But, in time, she recalled the advisability of pretending ignorance.

"Heavens!" she gasped, and very realistically. "What are they?"

"Hand-picked specimens, my dear," Farstone answered lightly, "of the head-hunters' art. Perfect specimens, I should say, and I'm rather up on this sort of thing, having followed the whole process from the hunt, the decapitation, down to the finished product as you see it here."

Ruth shivered, in spite of herself, and made no effort to restrain the feeling.

"This is probably one of the finest collections in the world," Farstone went on coolly. "When it is complete. I will show it to a friend or two, then probably present it to a museum."

Ruth felt the blood drain from her heart by sudden fear, but with a struggle of self-control, steadied herself.

"N-not complete?" she stammered.

"Not quite." Farstone laughed, a little harshly. "There will be six. A fifth is already in process. The sixth, at this moment, is no doubt wandering around where nature placed it."

There was a table opposite the mantel and before it were two chairs. Ruth sank into the nearer one to hide the trembling of her legs.

"I... I think you brought me here to frighten me."

"Not at all," the explorer assured her, but she watched him keenly as, stooping, he worked the combination and opened the safe.

From a compartment he took an object about ten inches in height, wrapped in a brownish cloth of fine texture, which brought a quick, almost startled glance from the girl. Then she looked away, and when Farstone turned from the safe toward her, there was nothing to be learned from her expression.

A moment before, when Farstone had spoken so lightly of his string of heads, she had felt suffocated with fear and could barely restrain herself from rushing out of the room. Now, the primitive elements of her nature were beginning to reassert themselves, and the thought flashed through her mind that if this satanic gentleman had any idea of adding Miguel's black, curly head to his prized collection, she herself would kill him as quickly as she would stamp on a viper.

Fear left her entirely. Outwardly calm, she set herself to discover what she could.

FARSTONE came to the table beside her, laid down the cloth-wrapped object with a little metallic thud as it struck the wood. He took the chair facing Ruth.

Turning, he picked up a Malay creese from the table and let his fingers caress the keen, wavy blade as he talked.

"I am thoroughly primitive," he said. "During the past several years, I have spent only one out of each twelve-months period in so-called civilization. I have not the slightest use for its travesty on justice and its squeamish abhorrence when it is necessary that a man should be killed."

"Why do you tell this to me?" Ruth asked.

There was a fierce light in the eyes Ruth looked into, but they were hard and inscrutable and told her nothing of her growing suspicion that in some way the explorer had made a guess at her identity. For why else had he brought her here?

"I think," he said slowly, "I have acquired the jungle sense of anticipating something about to happen. It tells me there will be strange doings here this evening— strange for civilization. Listen," he said sharply, and tossed the creese back to the table, with a ringing of fine steel.

"I do not kill wantonly, but, like the savage, I know how to revenge myself for an attack on me." He turned and stretched a long arm toward the gruesome things beneath the mantel.

"That second head from the left— the one with lighter skin than the rest— that is all that remains of a man who sought what I had found. His name was— David Mansfield. The fifth, when it joins the string, is a memento of such another. And the sixth, my dear, will also be a deadly enemy!"

Ruth kept her gaze steady against his blazing stare and, unconsciously, a light grew in her own eyes, a flame of hot resentment; for she could guess now where all this was leading.

"I know what you are thinking,'' he cried. "The law. Bah! Who can disprove my story? The heads of Mansfield and Hastings mean nothing except to confirm what I tell. But we are not in the jungle now, and it is because of that law I am telling you that I shall resist if attacked, and warning you to observe that fact."

Suddenly, he smiled. With a slight gesture, he rose gracefully from the chair.

"Go now, my dear. The guests will be here, and I shall join you presently."

He turned and walked with her to the door, and Ruth went out. But in the corridor, alone, she shivered slightly, for in Farstone's quick turn, his coat had been brushed aside and she saw at his belt a knife hilt, the mate of the Malay creese.

2: The Bronze Image

THE guests were assembled, as Farstone had surmised, and almost at once Ruth saw her brother, Miguel. Tall, dark, distinguished-looking, she thought with a little glow of pride, that was immediately succeeded by a wave of fear which she would never have felt for herself.

He was crossing the room slowly, pausing to speak with acquaintances he had made on an earlier visit here, when he had first come into contact with the explorer. Ruth observed his direction and moved beside their hostess.

"Let me introduce Mr. Waldo Fleming, Miss Acosta," Mrs. Farstone said. "Waldo is Mr. Farstone's nephew and makes his home with us, but he is so helpful to me, I also claim him."

Ruth nodded to a watery-eyed young man whose vacant expression and loose-lipped mouth made her question his ability to be of much help to anyone.

"I do all the little errands around here," Waldo said, quite seriously, and Ruth tried not to smile too broadly.

Mrs. Farstone turned to shake hands with Miguel Portas, and Ruth noticed that while she seemed very cordial, she was also nervous. She asked almost at once where Miguel was stopping. Ruth turned her head, so not to appear too interested, and saw that Waldo was watching Miguel with his vacant stare.

A moment later, Miguel stepped aside to talk to Professor Hale, and then John Farstone entered and at once became the center of attention.

The explorer had his cloth-wrapped object under one arm, and after coolly exchanging greetings, he stepped to a small table set against one wall, and with a gesture of his free hand arranged his little audience in a semicircle before him.

Ruth took advantage of the general movement to slip among those nearest him, noting that Miguel was standing in the middle of the bent line and, therefore, directly opposite Farstone as he faced outwardly.

The explorer was taking his time, with a deliberation that rasped Ruth's taut nerves, slowly unwrapping the cloth and letting his eyes wander from face to face, passing Miguel Portas without even a glance of recognition that Ruth could notice.

"You will forgive me," he was saying in his most ironic manner, "if I allow no hands but my own to touch this little bauble." He paused on the last layer, and Ruth, flashing a glance at her brother, saw that his eyes were fixed, with a curious expression of triumph, on the thing Farstone was handling.

"I assure you," the explorer continued, "in my many years of exploration and research, this is by far the most important and valuable relic I have yet discovered!"

Again he paused, and Ruth had the feeling he was doing it deliberately, to heighten curiosity or to bait someone on, and noting the effect on Miguel, she was certain of the latter.

"Just a moment, John," Mrs. Farstone suddenly intervened. She turned to the watery-eyed nephew. "Waldo, please see that the last of the servants have left the salon and that the doors to the kitchen are locked."

The young man hesitated, his lips parted as if about to say something; then he appeared to get her meaning, and Ruth watched his retreating figure with its uncertain walk.

Farstone waited a moment, then threw off the last wrapping with a little flourish, and was greeted by an involuntary chorus of disappointment and disbelief.

From all but one. Miguel Portas took a step forward, with a sharp exclamation. His eyes were wide and shot with sudden anger.

"Will you let me take that bronze a moment, Farstone?" he asked hoarsely.

"Ah!" the explorer exclaimed delightedly. "My good friend Portas has seen something in this little image which you others have missed! No," he added coldly. "As I said at the outset, I will give it into no other hands.

"Look at it, by all means, Portas." Farstone held it higher, a crude representation in bronze of a small, apish figure. "I believe it is from some branch of the Incas. Possibly you have some ideas about it."

Miguel Portas' dark eyes were following the bronze avidly, as Farstone's hand moved it about. His whole wiry body was tensed.

"I know little of its very old history," he said, in a voice he made obvious effort to control, "but if I am right in recognizing it, it is stolen property, Farstone."

The explorer shrugged.

"Without doubt, Portas," he answered sarcastically. "And probably many times since it was cast."

Portas moved another step nearer. He seemed to have forgotten the people on either side of him, everyone and everything in the salon except that object which Farstone was holding so tantalizingly before him.

"If you would only let me have it in my hands for a moment, Farstone," he murmured, as if unaware of speaking his thought aloud. "If I could see it close. There is a certain mark that would make me sure."

John Farstone shook his head, then turned more toward the other guests, who were becoming nervous and tense under the strange situation.

THE SOFT opening and closing of a door caught Ruth's attention. She turned her head and saw the watery-eyed Waldo in the act of locking the door of the serving entrance to the salon. With mouth loosely open, he tiptoed quietly toward the group. No one else seemed to notice his coming.

Ruth was glad of the moment's interruption of her thoughts. She, too, had sensed what she knew was gripping her brother Miguel; and she had begun to fall under the same spell of Farstone's tantalizing, taunting manner. He was inviting attack, and Ruth alone knew it.

She glanced swiftly across to the other side of the semicircle, where her two young men friends, Max and Eric, were standing. She met the look of one and tried to signal a warning. He nodded back.

"It is, of course, a symbol," Farstone was coolly explaining, "of an ancient cult. But it is more than that. Its workmanship shows an advance in the arts and crafts and a knowledge of metals not generally accredited to that particular civilization."

"I don't care to hear a lecture on it!" Miguel Portas suddenly burst out. "I am becoming more certain it is exactly what I believed it to be— an heirloom of my own family, which you have stolen! In which case, I shall take it back from you, Farstone."

"A daring statement," Farstone said, quite unruffled, "and one I shall prove before these good people here to be entirely false."

Portas' black eyes flashed. He moved quickly, and Mrs. Farstone, who was beside him, caught his arm.

"Please, Mr. Portas," she implored.

He shook off the touch but remained where he was, a step in advance of the others. Farstone continued to look at him and the sardonic, mocking smile twitched his mouth wide.

"I shall not leave it to the word of either of us," he said calmly. "You assert you know all about this small trinket?" he asked Portas directly.

"I certainly do," Portas answered between clenched teeth.

"Very well. I will put the matter to a very simple test." Farstone's cold glance ranged the group of tensed faces. "I will request you merely to observe our impetuous young friend's expression. As you have noted, he is forewarned."

He spread the brownish cloth on the table, turned so that his back was to his audience with the exception of Ruth, who watched every movement of the clever hands.

In a few moments, Farstone stepped from the front to one side of the table and faced around. His left hand was holding the base and the body of the image; his right held the head and a portion of the neck. His eyes fixed themselves triumphantly on Portas, whose eyes and lips were wide with an expression of bewildered surprise that could not be concealed.

"It is evident to all, even to yourself, Portas," Farstone cried mockingly, "how wrong you were. But I will show you still further your complete ignorance of it."

"I am not wrong," Miguel Portas mumbled. "It was always in the hands of the priests—"

Ignoring the remark, Farstone upended the greater portion of the bronze above the dark brownish cloth. An amazing stream of scintillating jewels cascaded forth— emeralds, diamonds, rubies. And it seemed never-ending, piling up the price of a king's ransom on the cheap cloth.

There was a chorus of cries and gasps of wonder and amazement; but above all, one cry rang clear.

"Great Heaven!" Portas suddenly screamed, and sprang forward.

Ruth threw herself toward Farstone, but before her were the two young men, Eric and Max. Portas' tall, wiry form crashed against them and seemed to rebound a little. He gathered himself for another assault; then Mrs. Farstone clutched his arm with both hands, trying to drag him back.

"Mr. Portas!" she cried. "Restrain yourself! You forget where you are!"

Either the voice or the grip on his arm caught his attention. He glared around, saw the frightened guests moving precipitously backward, the desperate terror on Mrs. Farstone's face.

Abruptly, he covered his face with both hands, his long fingers clenched in his scalp. He turned aside, broke through the circle and moved blindly away. Ruth did not watch to see where he went; she turned the other way.

JOHN FARSTONE had not moved from his position, but Ruth noted that his right hand had set the bronze on the table and was resting lightly on his hip. She caught an expression in his eyes of anger and what she thought was disappointment, as well. He began to restore the jewels to their hiding place, and Ruth saw his thin lips muttering savagely.

Ruth turned from him and saw the watery-eyed Waldo staring at his uncle, with jaw slack and an expression as if he had just seen a fairy tale enacted before him. The young man turned and began to move toward the door. Then Mrs. Farstone called to him and he turned and blinked at her.

"Waldo, are the refreshments ready to be served?" she asked briskly.

"Oh, yes, quite. Aunt Agnes," he answered.

"Then order them to be brought in at once." She cast a withering glance at John Farstone. "It will perhaps help us to remember that we are in a drawing room and not in the jungle!" She turned to move among her guests, and Waldo went softly out.

Farstone wrapped up his bronze, with a keen, fleeting glance around. For some reason, no one seemed inclined to approach him and he crossed to the door leading to his study and disappeared.

A few moments later, a butler entered from the servants' entrance, walked to the exit door and seemed to try it. Ruth, watching idly, noticed that the key, which she had seen, was no longer there when he turned away toward the long buffet set against the end wall.

She glanced curiously at Mrs. Farstone and saw their hostess was following the man with a puzzled frown.

"Is anything wrong?" Ruth asked her.

"It's not important— I suppose. I'll speak to Waldo when he comes in."

Ruth looked back at the butler, studying his face carefully; then her eyes narrowed. Farstone had warned her that his jungle sense had told him of strange things to happen this evening. And now, more than ever, she was suspicious of everything.

"Isn't he your regular man?" she asked Mrs. Farstone.

"No; but he's probably one of the caterer's men. Waldo will know. He made all the arrangements." She turned away— a little impatiently Ruth thought.

Ruth gave the man another glance— he was putting ice into the cocktails—then she drew a long cigarette case from her purse, and selecting a cigarette, held it in her fingers without lighting it.

She moved away from where she had been standing, and paused a moment to speak a word to one of the two young men who had accompanied her here with Hale.

He offered her a light but she declined, and strolled, apparently aimlessly, on toward the buffet.

Two serving men came in with trays and went to the buffet to load them with plates of canapes and other appetizers, a procedure which seemed to interest Ruth, for she stopped to watch them.

They started toward the guests, who were mostly grouped near Mrs. Farstone, passing Ruth. The butler, following to observe them, as a good butler should, stopped near her.

Abruptly, a tray fell to the polished floor with a startling clatter, instantly drawing the attention of practically every eye. Mrs. Farstone started forward in annoyance. She stopped suddenly, and a quite different expression came over her face.

The clumsy waiter was rising from his stooped-over position. He didn't have the tray in his hands. It was still on the floor. In its place, his right hand held a black automatic.

"This is a stick-up," a voice beside Ruth told them calmly, but with the authority of power.

3: The Stick-Up

THE startled guests turned toward the pseudo butler. An ugly-looking pistol had appeared in his hand.

"Be quiet!" he commanded in harder tone, against the little gasps and choked screams. "Do as you're told and no one's goin' to get hurt. We know the penalty, and if anyone acts up, that's his hard luck. Don't fool yourselves. We'll shoot, all right!"

So far as the guests were concerned, they seemed paralyzed with fright and incapable of anything. Ruth, with her quick mind, didn't know whether to be scared or amused. It seemed to her almost like a drama, rehearsed in advance.

She was thinking of Farstone's warning and the fact that he had been thwarted in his purpose to kill if attacked. And this had come almost too pat right on the heels of his frustrated attempt, although the act itself must have been planned ahead.

A sudden suspicion caused her to look furtively around. Her brother Miguel was no longer in the salon. She frowned hard against the thought that he himself could possibly have conspired this. She had seen little of ^er brother in the past few years, but she couldn't, and she wouldn't, believe this, although she could not be sure that others might not have that suspicion.

Her glance came back to the bandit leader. He looked real and formidable enough. She'd thought there was something suspicious about him when she'd first seen him. She looked away again and met the glances of Max and Eric, and to both she narrowed her eyes and nodded slightly. Each nodded back in turn.

The erstwhile butler made a sweeping gesture with his gun.

"You men," he snarled to the guests, "get over to that wall and line up. Go on! Be quick about it!" Ruth saw his glance shoot to the entrance and back again.

"Oh!" Ruth gasped. "I believe I'm going to faint! Somebody catch me!" and she swayed nearer the leader of the trio of phony servants.

He swung around on her angrily.

His eyes were blazing, his mouth opened to curse.

Ruth had raised her arms, like most in the room. Now they began to droop, and when her right hand came level with the man's face, her fingers pinched the butt of the cigarette they held, that was so like the new extra long cigarettes. But in place of the tobacco it was supposed to hold, a thin stream of liquid shot out and splashed on the man's brow and in his wide-open eyes.

His curse came forth as a scream of pain. The gun fell from his grip and clattered on the floor, while his hands dug at his blinded eyes as he staggered around.

Ruth's two companions were no more idle than she. Apparently, they had taken advantage of the shifting, milling group of men as the two gunmen were herding them to the wall, and certainly they had acted on Ruth's signal.

Max, sturdily built, drove at his man with a football rush, putting a hard shoulder in the fellow's stomach, catching his gun hand and driving him clear across the room and against the wall.

Somewhere in their hurried passage, the pistol had been dropped, but unaware of that, Max lost no time in crashing rights and lefts to the unexposed jaw as the man doubled over from the blow to his middle.

The taller Eric, as lithe and quick as a cat, clamped a hand on his man's wrist and forced that arm up behind the thug's back until his pistol thudded to the floor. Then Eric lifted him bodily, twisted him in midair and smashed him down.

Minutes, perhaps, had passed in preparation, but the stick-up was over almost as quickly as it had begun. The blinded leader was still staggering helplessly around, and Ruth, knowing well the potency of the liquid, got away from him. The two gunmen, unarmed and with no more fight in them, were groping uncertainly to their feet.

The act, real or fake, was over; so Ruth thought in that moment of triumph. And now she had to discover which it was, to turn suspicion away from her brother Miguel if any should begin to talk wildly of him and his undisguised determination to take to himself the fortune John Farstone had shown.

Ruth stopped in her walk and looked around. Her eyes fell on the gun the leader had dropped. Possibly with the idea that, reinforced by it, she could make one of the three talk, she started toward it. Then she stopped dead in her tracks.

THE SERVANTS' door had burst open with startling abruptness, and too late Ruth recalled the leader's quick glance in that direction, which should have told her he had a fourth partner there.

But, unlike the trio, this man was indistinguishable. Not only was his face masked, but he was also clothed from head to heels in rough overalls. Yet the two formidable guns he brandished were recognizable for what they were.

He glared around him, and Ruth wanted to laugh. She knew it was a pure fake, now. The first three had put on a pretty good act, but this amateur, bouncing out like the villain in an old Bowery melodrama, put the skids on the show.

"Don't anyone move!'' he called hoarsely, and his voice had a strange, unnatural sound.

He looked over at his three companions and apparently decided they were unfit for further duty.

"We're going out," he declared in his peculiar tone. "I'll shoot anyone who interferes or tries to follow us for the next ten minutes! Come on, men!"

The blinded leader groped toward the sound of the voice; the two others followed more quickly. The masked man made a sweeping gesture to the room, then followed his henchmen through the doorway. There was the click of a lock.

"The police!" Mrs. Farstone gasped from the chair into which she had collapsed. "Someone call the police. The phone is there"— and she waved a hand vaguely toward the wall.

"The line's dead; it must be cut," the man who got there first called back excitedly.

"I shouldn't worry," Ruth told them. "The whole thing was nothing but an act."

Mrs. Farstone came bolt upright in her chair.

"It was nothing of the sort!" she declared angrily, although from the way she had been clutching her diamonds a few moments earlier, it was evident she would have given much to think it was so. "It was an intended robbery, and I have a good idea who was behind it!"

"I wouldn't be too sure of it, Mrs. Farstone," Ruth told her, a little sharply.

"So you are thinking the same as I!" the lady cried exultingly.

"Suppose you wait a few moments," Ruth answered, and turned away.

She saw that Eric and Max were at the servants' door, trying keys in the lock, and she strode that way hurriedly. Unafraid, because she had been convinced the stick-up was nothing but a fake, she had studied the masked man with greatest care, figuring his height and his breadth of shoulders under the loose overalls.

That man had been quite tall, although he had stooped slightly in his absurd posture of bravado. Farstone was of good height; so, also, was her brother Miguel.

Ruth wanted to get through that door and get through it quick, and she was glad to see that Max had it unlocked and was peering cautiously through the slit of opening he had made.

"There's nothing to worry about," Ruth said, and shoved the door wide. She strode across a butler's pantry, and then she paused.

A man's form was stretched on the floor, motionless. Blood was trickling slowly down his temple from a cut close to the hair. His eyes were closed, but he was breathing.

It was Waldo, whom Ruth had forgotten completely, even to the fact that he had come out this way some time before. His evening clothes were hardly rumpled. Just the one blow on the head.

Fake? Ruth asked herself.

She stepped to his side, knelt and felt the wrist. Some small, hard object pressed her knee and she picked it up, looked at it curiously, then slipped it into her purse. She resumed her counting of Waldo's pulse, looking closely meanwhile at his face, where it was exposed as he lay on his side.

"Listen," young Eric spoke abruptly, and Ruth glanced over where he had a door slightly open into darkness beyond. "I hear something funny down there," he added in a whisper. "Come on, Max. Let's go see."

"Wait a moment," Ruth said, and scrambling to her feet, joined them at the door which led plainly to the basement.

She listened and heard a faint grating sound, then a soft scraping, as of a slippered or bare foot on the cement.

She smiled at her companions.

"Our lads would hardly have gone down here," she said in low tone, "but if one did, we want him, especially if he's in the act of taking off his overalls. I've got my hand on the light switch. Sneak down easy, and I'll snap it when you get to the bottom."

They tiptoed down softly and when Ruth judged they were at the last step, she pressed the switch.

Instantly, there was a yelp of surprise from one of them. Ruth was at the bottom of the stairs as the echoes died away, and then she almost cried out in sheer horror.

A man's stout form lay on the cement. It was motionless, but it wasn't breathing. The bald head, with its fringe of hair, was half decapitated.

"Look!" Eric cried out, pointed.

Ruth's glance flashed that way.

Against one wall, several feet from the body, a strange figure was crouched down to the floor. Ruth saw first the shining of the eyes, glaring, steady, like those of an animal at bay. Then she made out the dark skin, the broad face at the cheekbones, and what seemed no forehead at all because of the shaggy mat of hair that covered it completely and fell below the ears.

They glared at each other, this strange creature and the three young people in their evening clothes: the jungle and fashionable civilization, and between them lay the body of a dead man, with the head half cut off.

"Farstone's head-hunter!" Ruth whispered in a voice she tried desperately to keep from trembling.

Slowly, as if the whispered sound had reached him and stirred him to movement, the man at the wall began to rise. And they saw the rough covering of his body and that his feet were bare. They saw the long, thin-bladed Ijnife clutched in the dirty right paw.

"Steady!" Eric whispered, and although Ruth was watching the native, she was aware that Eric was moving to one side. The man shifted his eyes to Eric and back to them. He seemed making up his miivi as to what he was going to do.

He was short and squat, but strength was evident in the long arms and broad shoulders. His tongue shot out, like a viper's, licking his lips in the single motion and

Ruth, with a shudder, felt the eyes greedily taking in her long, bobbed hair.

"Don't move," she whispered softly to Max, "unless he comes this way, but don't let him get near you with that knife. Stare at him! Stare at him hard!"

Abruptly, the light in the basement was reduced by half and the squat man leaped six feet to one side, although they hadn't seen him poise for the spring. There he crouched, glaring at them, his eyes shifting from wherever Eric had gone and back to the two at the foot of the steps. His mouth began to work and saliva drooled from its cor-

"He's going to rush!" Max whispered, hardly above a breath. "When he starts—"

He had time to say no more.

With no more preparation than they had seen before, a single spring brought the man seemingly halfway to them. He landed, with legs bending slightly for the next leap, the long knife gleaming as he held it high.

Then some object streaked past Ruth's staring vision even as she felt Max's arm against her, pushing her backward and himself ahead Something struck fairly between the native's wild eyes, with a loud plop and a little cloud of dust.

Whatever it was, its effect was instantaneous. There was a sharp, incoherent yell. The squat man whirled and went diving headlong to another part of the basement, disappeared through a doorway and slammed the door after him.

"Quick!" Max cried out. "If that's his den, let's keep him there!"

HE LEAPED over the body on the floor and braced against the door, which had closed inwardly, Eric joined him and, while Max held, brought up every object he could find to make a barricade. And they didn't leave until they were certain it could not be forced from the inside.

"Hope this is the only exit," Eric remarked, looking around. "At least, it's the only door on this end and side. Got an idea what that place is, Ruth?"

He tried to make his tone nonchalant, but they were all conscious of that gruesome form on the floor, and they made their way around it as they returned to the stairs.

"That's Farstone's laboratory," Ruth answered, "and I'm inclined to believe Mrs. Farstone was right. She said something horrible was going on inside."

"Nice party you've brought us to," Max said jovially, as they came to the kitchen. "A stick-up, and now chased by a head-hunter. Anything more in the cards?"

"I'm afraid it's only started." Ruth amazed them by her answer, and her tone was sober. "You boys have been fine, sticking to me; but please don't let me down before this night is through."

"Don't worry," they both assured her, and Eric asked: "Any idea what this is all about?"

"I have so many ideas, they're driving me wild! I didn't look too carefully, but I suspect that dead man in the cellar is Mrs. Farstone's real butler. I don't think we ought to speak about it just yet."

"We ought to get the police in on this," Max suggested.

"Not just yet, please," Ruth begged.

"That head-hunter didn't kill him," Eric said. "Before I got the bright idea of the light bulb, I saw the rope that had probably strangled him. Somebody else hanged him, and it must have been the stick-up crowd."

"Yes, I saw that," Ruth said, "but I had almost forgotten it. Please wait for me in the butler's pantry— or, better still, go all the way in, if you can scare up a smile or a laugh between you to reassure that crowd."

Ruth waited, then stepped to Waldo's side, who apparently had not yet recovered consciousness. She again stooped over him, studying him closely. Rising, she went to the sink and filled a pitcher with cold water from the tap. She came back and, standing behind him, dashed the full contents over his face and neck. Waldo gasped, for his loose mouth had been partly opened. His eyes blinked.

"Don't kill me!" he shouted suddenly.

Ruth slipped silently into the pantry, closing the door, then went on into the salon.

4:  Who Felled The Explorer?

A FEW minutes earlier, Ruth had looked on all this as a fake. She shuddered now as the thought recurred to her. And if she had been worried at the beginning of the evening, she was nearly frantic now. For murder had been committed on an innocent victim, thus showing the temper of these men whom she had considered harmless.

She shivered again and wondered where was her brother Miguel, for he was not in the salon. And neither was John Farstone, the man she would hold responsible for what might take place there.

Ruth avoided Mrs. Farstone, and observing that the two young men were laughingly answering questions, made her way unnoticed to the far end of the salon and entered the corridor where she had earlier walked with Farstone.

She came to the door of the study and saw that a key was in the lock, on the outside. The sight gave her misgivings, and for some reason, she hesitated before knocking lightly.

There was no answer that she heard. She glanced both ways along the corridor, then opened the door a crack, listening. After a moment, she pushed it open slowly, peering around the edge.

Ruth thought, at first, there was no one there, and she stepped across the threshold, to stop suddenly. In the little space in front of the safe, and between it and the table with its chair, for the third time that evening she saw a form lying motionless. She hurried forward.

John Farstone was lying partly on his side, but with his face down and his back bent. And just to one side of the midway line between shoulder blades there protruded the hilt of a knife.

Strangely, perhaps, relief flooded Ruth, but it was instantly succeeded by overwhelming horror. Could Miguel have done this? she asked herself. And then, who else? Miguel had left the salon apparently before Farstone. Ruth had not watched to see which way he had gone, and now she considered it had been unnecessary.

She wanted to believe in him; she tried to tell herself that she still did, but she could not fight against all the factors that were lined up to point out his guilt. And, suddenly, anger flushed her face.

She bent closer, then knelt beside the stricken man. She had seen a slight lifting of his chest. He was not dead yet, as she had thought. She wondered, a little wildly, if he could talk— if he would talk and name his assassin.

One eye alone was visible as he lay there. The lid flickered and, bending over, she caught its look, hard and implacable. But his lips did not move.

"I will get help," she murmured, and rose to her feet, swaying a little as she hastened to the door.

In the corridor, she was surprised to see one of the two young men who had stood by her so well that evening.

"Oh, Max," she said. "Get Professor Hale quickly, will you? He's a doctor, and one is needed badly inside here."

He looked at her questioningly, but turned without a word back toward the salon, while Ruth returned to the study. She went toward the prone figure, but when she saw the single visible eye was closed, she turned from it and swung the partly open door of the safe wide, so that she could see into the compartment" from which he had taken the bronze image with its priceless fortune.

It was no longer there, and Ruth could see no other place in the safe where it could be concealed. She could have no further doubt. The treasure was gone and there was only one who could logically have taken it; Miguel, her brother.

Ruth closed the safe door to the position in which she had found it and swung away, too much disturbed to notice the eye that glanced up at her, with its look of grim humor showing through the set expression of pain.

Professor Hale met her before she reached the door, and before he closed it behind him she caught a glimpse of Max, waiting outside. She nodded over her shoulder, then turned and watched the man of science and medicine, fearful of his verdict, yet chained to the spot to learn it.

HALE PAUSED briefly to look at the protruding knife handle, then stooped to test the pulse. He came erect, turned again to study the position of the knife, but left it almost immediately to glance over the nearby table and around the room.

"What are you looking for?" Ruth asked him.

"If that knife has a mate, the length of the blade would be of help to me."

Ruth stepped to the table, took one look and turned back. She nodded at the prone figure.

"If you can move him a little," she said, "try his belt on the right side."

Hale was on his knees instantly, and up in a moment. In his right hand was a creese with its wavy blade and its hilt a twin to the one now sunk in flesh. He bent low and put the two hilts close together, pressing lightly on the cloth of the coat to expose all that was to be seen of the embedded blade, then verifying the length of the one he held.

He straightened and tossed the extra creese to the table, much as John Farstone had done some time before. He walked with Ruth toward the door.

"It's touch and go," he said, "but on the whole, not hopeless. He's tough as the devil."

"You think he may live?" Ruth asked, and was surprised at the hardness of her own voice.

"It's a question how far and what the point has penetrated. I judge the blow was struck when he was bent over and the blade went downward instead of straight in. However, I don't dare withdraw it and determine the seriousness of the injury until I have something to work with."

"You don't want me to wait?" Ruth asked.

Hale glanced back over his shoulder.

"There is nothing you can do," he said, and they stepped into the corridor.

Ruth didn't see Max immediately before her, and she thought nothing about him as she stopped and turned in the opposite direction from that leading back to the salon.

"I don't suppose you know anything about this terrible business?" Hale asked her.

"There is another man in the basement— I think it is the butler," she answered quickly, "who was killed. I suppose the same persons could have attacked Mr. Farstone."

"Does Mrs. Farstone know about that? She was acting quite unconcerned just now."

"We thought it best not to tell about the butler until we found if anything else was wrong."

"Well, I'll probably have to tell her about her husband. I'll have to get some things from her, anyway. Where are you going, Ruth?"

"I want to get into the fresh air for a moment," Ruth faltered. "This has been a ... a little too much for me, I guess. I can get out this way, can't I?"

"And I don't wonder. Yes; takes you right to one of the doors," and Hale strode hurriedly off.

5: Uncovering the Gems

THERE was no weakness in Ruth's nature, in spite of her pretense. On the contrary, the primitive strength that had never been far below the surface of her feelings was beginning to assert itself. She could not tell Professor Hale that she feared her own brother had committed this attack on the explorer, no matter what his provocation had been.

For one thing, while she could hardly doubt that it was true, she wanted confirmation from Miguel's own lips. And for another, that blow in the back was the stroke of a coward, and according to her principles, such an act was worse than the attack itself.

Miguel had told her where he was stopping when he had phoned her earlier in the day, and she had heard him repeat the address in reply to Mrs. Farstone's apparently casual question.

Perhaps purposefully, Miguel had chosen a room not far from the Far- stone residence, and Ruth knew she could reach it on foot within a few minutes.

Ruth had wondered about Mrs. Farstone's question. Knowing something of her husband's feelings toward his latest assistant, she could hardly be concerned over Miguel's comfort or welfare, and Ruth decided that probably Farstone himself had asked her to find out, for some reason of his own.

She put the question aside almost as soon as it came to her mind again. It seemed so trivial, in comparison with the other matters. She walked swiftly, and as it did not occur to her that anyone might be following her, she did not once look behind.

Coming to the street she was seeking, where the better residential quarter gave way to a more ordinary section, she found the number, mounted steps and rang the bell twice without answer. Then she descended to the basement entrance, and after a time the janitor opened that door.

Ruth explained to him that she was Miguel Portas' sister, that since he had only arrived that day, she'd had no earlier chance to see him.

"There was a telephone call," the man said, "and I think I heard him just go out."

"Then he'll be back soon. I'll go up and wait for him, if I may."

The man went with her to the first flight and indicated where Miguel's room would be, in the rear and one story higher.

Ruth found the door unlocked and the room lighted when she stepped in. Although this was a back room, it was unusually long, with windows on the outer side facing a narrow alley. There was no trunk in the place and only a single bag.

She went to it and rummaged through it without finding what she dreaded to find— the bronze image and its incredible fortune, proof of her brother's guilt.

Ruth wanted the bronze badly enough, and the jewels of whose existence they had never suspected. It was, as Miguel Portas had declared to Farstone, an heirloom of their family, cared for through the generations almost as a sacred symbol. But she would have forsworn both, if their loss would mean her brother's innocence of the cowardly assault from behind the victim's back. That was her code, and she had thought it was Miguel's, and she went on with her search hoping it still was.

The room itself held few places of concealment— bed, couch, chairs, and they took her but a minute. A doorway led to a short space, on one side of which was the bathroom, into which she gave a hurried glance, stooping low to see that the floor was clear.

She turned back to the closet on the other side of the passage, swept hanging clothes aside, peered into the shoe rack below, then raised herself on tiptoe to investigate the broad shelf above.

A coat had been thrown there carelessly. Her hand pushed under it, moved along. Her fingers encountered something, and of their own volition closed around a hard object, cloth wrapped.

Ruth didn't move. She stood there, still on tiptoe, her whole body stiff while the blood drained from her face and surged through her heart in a spasm of pain and white- hot anger.

It was the final proof, shattering her last faith in the brother who had been like a parent to her in their years of orphanage. She tried to think, but her mind wouldn't work coherently. Her emotions had full control of her.

A SOUND from outside the room broke through her tortured confusion. It was in the house, close to the thin wall where she now stood. Footsteps! And for some reason, the sounds held her there motionless.

A sense of danger had come to her with those footsteps. It could be Miguel returning, she thought swiftly, but there was more than one person mounting the stairs.

And if it were Miguel, she didn't want him to enjoy the fruits of his crime, even if she would be denied what was rightfully hers. And it if weren't Miguel, it could be the police on his trail, seeking this final proof which even now was clenched in her grasp.

Then she heard a voice quite clearly— possibly because of a crack in the old wall. It wasn't the voice of Miguel. Another answered, in a coarse laugh, and that, too, was the voice of a stranger. Detectives, she thought.

Ruth's hand came from the shelf, holding the bronze and its treasure. For a moment she stood crouched in the little passage, glaring around as if her eyes could see what her mind sought: a way to escape. She whirled into the bathroom.

The window was up a scant foot. She tried to open it farther, but it was blocked from going higher. She craned her neck and made out the ironwork of a fire escape a little to one side, for the bathroom window evidently was not the intended exit to it.

There was time for but one thing. She shoved her hand, with the cloth- wrapped image, through the window opening, tossed the bronze lightly to where she hoped was the fire-escape landing, then closed and locked the window. A moment later, she was in the main room, with the passage door closed behind her.

She tried to forget the fortune she had intrusted to luck and the night. She tried to compose her features, to appear calm and unconcerned, as she heard the footsteps advancing along the corridor toward the door.

Blood was stronger than anything else; the blood of relationship. She was thinking only of how she could save her brother from the police.

Ruth reached into her purse, wishing vainly that she still had the trick cigarette she had used earlier that evening. But she'd had only one and the stick-up leader had taken all the liquid there had been in it. Instead, she drew out her compact and was touching her lips when the door was roughly opened.

These weren't the police, not the two burly forms that shoved through. As far from the law as the two poles are apart, were these lads.

"So!" the one in advance cried out. It was a snarling, triumphant cry. He was the leader of the stick-up crowd, and he seemed very, very happy at the sight of Ruth.

"So you're in this game, huh?" he growled. "Now, isn't that nice!"

The man behind him closed the door. He, too, had a wolfish grin. He'd been the one who had received young Max's special attention, as his face bore evidence.

"I don't know what you mean," Ruth said coldly. "This is my brother's room and I am waiting for him to return any moment. You'd better leave while you have the chance. The police are after you now." she added on an afterthought. Then her face blanched a little.

She had spoken before she realized the full meaning of her threat. These were the men who had already done murder. They must be the ones who had strangled the Farstone butler. Then another killing would mean nothing to them.

A second thought rushed through her mind. Were these the partners of Miguel in the murderous crime? The idea sickened her.

The leader took her words in slowly, as if he could not grasp them all at once.

"You are Portas' sister?" he repeated slowly. "Well, that makes a hell of a lot of things clear!" He turned to his companion. "See it, Jake?"

"All I see, Mose," Jake leered, "is the dame that busted up our little play back yonder, and makes all this run-around for the stuff when we oughta scrammed long ago."

"Yeah, I ain't forgot that," the leader growled. He stepped close to Ruth and suddenly cuffed her hard with his open palm.

Ruth came erect from the reeling effects of the blow, with blazing eyes. The tigress was aroused now, unafraid and wanting only to gouge and kill. And the leader must have seen this. He sprang at her. His rough hands grabbed her face between sweaty palms.

"Tear up some cloth quick, Jake," he snarled over his shoulder, "before she screams and wakes up the whole damn neighborhood!"

But it was Mose who made what outcry there was. Ruth's teeth sank
into a finger that was pressed between her lips and Mose let out a startled, searing oath. His hands shifted to her throat, but Ruth's teeth found another finger before the rough, calloused palms made that attack effective.

Ruth was lithe and strong and tiger-quick. She writhed and squirmed. Her fingers dug at his eyes and tore at his hair. One leg twined around his and she tried to throw her body to break his hold.

The man's voice came forth in a steady stream of snarling oaths. Then, with all his strength, he clamped her throat. Her breath and her strength left her, and when the other man, Jake, rushed up with his cloth, her whole body was limp and her face almost purple.

She had no more power to resist as they forced a gag roughly into her mouth, nearly suffocating her as she gasped for spent breath. A strip held it firmly in place, and still another bound her wrists behind her. The leader shoved her roughly against the door to the short passage, and a hand on her shoulder held her there.

"Now talk, damn you," he snarled, "and be quick about it! Where is that stuff?"

Then the absurdity of his demand occurred to him. He pulled her away from the door and shoved her hard into a chair.

"Watch her, Jake, while I find it."

Hurriedly, he made the same search as Ruth had, but not with the same result. Ruth even heard him forcing the bathroom window high, which she hadn't been able to accomplish, at least in the time at her disposal. He came back into the room and his eyes were hard and ugly.

"You sure he didn't have it with him, Jake, when he went out?" he asked his companion, with a cold quiet that impressed Ruth with more seriousness than all his blistering oaths.

"He couldn't have. Both his hands were empty. He went right by me and I could 'a' seen it or if his pockets bulged."

"Then there's only one answer." The leader's eyes centered on the girl in the chair, then swiveled around the sparsely furnished room and narrowed in thought. "How long d'you make it, Jake, since he went out and we come in?"

"Not more'n four or five minutes. I followed him, you know, till I picked you up, then we come straight here."

"Uh-huh. That's what I make it."

"What you thinking, Mose?"

"She got it outa the room, but she didn't have time to get it outa the house."

"Well, hell, we can't go lookin' all over the house!"

"We don't have to," the leader said softly. "She's going to tell us!"

Standing squarely before Ruth, with a swift motion of his hand he drew a long, straight-bladed knife from a shoulder scabbard. The hilt was straight, too, the blade wide and double-edged, coming to a fine, flat point.

He held it level with Ruth's throat and glared triumphantly into her eyes. And then a puzzled expression came into his own. For the dark eyes that stared back at him showed not the slightest fear. On the contrary, there was a light in them that mocked the man and his weapon.

"So that's all you think of it, huh?" he growled angrily, and pushed the point against the soft flesh.

Little beads of blood appeared and trickled down her throat. But she did not wince; neither did her eyes change their look.

The thug pulled his knife back a few inches.

"Take out the gag, Jake," he ordered. "We'll listen to her talk."

Ruth gasped a little when the ball of cloth was removed, and took her time getting her breath.

"One scream outa you," the man warned, "and I'll drive this all the way through! Now, what'd you do with it?"

"What are you talking about?" Ruth asked quietly, and made her look puzzled.

"So you think we are foolin' and you can stall, huh?" And again steel met flesh and the little beads of blood appeared.

Ruth shook her head, even while the point was against the skin so that it scratched a cut across her throat. Amazed, the man involuntarily drew his hand back.

"How can I answer your question," Ruth said Coolly, "if you don't tell me what you are talking about?"

The stick-up man stared at her, then looked around at his partner and back at the girl.

"If I got the idea you're takin' our time—" he began.

"You're wasting all the time," she told him. "I have nothing to tell you, and you'll find that true even if you cut me to pieces. Go ahead, if that's what you're going to do anyway."

"All right. Just this once. I'm asking you what you did with the sparklers, the grit, the little knick that held the babies. Now, come on!"

Ruth frowned, then a bright look came into her eyes.

"You don't mean what Mr. Farstone had?" she asked incredulously.

"That's just what I do mean!"

"The last I saw of them," she said slowly, "he still had them. How did you know about them?"

He cuffed her with his free hand.

"We'll ask the questions. You'll answer 'em. Now—''

"But I just told you."

The man's hand tensed. A growl started in his throat.

"Wait a minute, Mose," his partner intervened. "I got an idea." He grinned.

"So've I," Mose growled. "To shove his shiv through her damned lying throat!"

"No; look. Not just yet, anyway. You still good, Mose?"

"Huh?"

"Your always in pretty good practice, ain't you?"

Mose nodded. "I getcha."

"There ain't nothing like it to break 'em," Jake said gleefully.

6: Trial By Steel

RUTH WAS yanked from the chair and pushed against the door, with her back to it, and her bound hands were tied to the knob.

Jake .drew a knife of his own and remained beside her, while the leader strode to the far end of the room, balancing his weapon by the point of the blade. He turned and faced the girl, with a distance of about six paces between them.

"You better talk while you can," he advised grimly. "Maybe I ain't as good as I used to be."

Ruth did not answer. This, as Jake had said, was something different. To feel the pain of a cut and to stand it, is one thing; but to know a knife is flying toward you with force enough to drive through whatever it should hit, is enough to break any nerve. Still, she said nothing.

She wanted to think. There was something new in the situation, at least new to her understanding, and she wanted to get it clear. These men were not partners with Miguel; they had made that evident. Therefore, Miguel had had no part in the stick-up, had not planned it. And they knew that the bronze with its jewels had been taken from Farstone's hands, and had come to Miguel's room in quest of it.

How did they kpow that? But Ruth could only ask the question. She could not set her mind to work out the answer— not with the big leader beginning to sway a little to get his motion, with the keen blade between thumb and finger.

And her thoughts stood still as he swung backward, then forward, whipping his hand over. Ruth wanted to close her eyes, but she could not. And they saw the gleaming streak of light as it seemed to come straight toward her.

The passage was brief— a split second only— yet time stretched long for her in that instant. Then there was a thud against the wooden panel, a breath brushed her cheek, and she felt the quivering of the steel against it.

"That was too close!" the man Jake gasped. "I thought sure you'd spiked her!"

Mose was striding forward, grinning.

"Pretty good," he exulted, as he yanked the blade clear. "But it was a bit closer'n I figured. Shows how you can get outa practice. Well," he growled to Ruth, "you goin' to talk now, or you wanta make me try another?"

Ruth did not want him to try again. That instant of suspense had done something to her, had given her a terror she'd never known before. She was trying to cope with it, trying desperately not to give way to it. But fear suggested a compromise. Miguel was not there, and she could suggest that he must have taken the prize somewhere else.

"You could have been mistaken—" she began; and then there was the sound of a step in the corridor and she broke off.

The knife man tore the gag from his pocket where he had stuffed it, and again forced it into Ruth's mouth.

"Get to the door," he ordered his companion, in a hoarse whisper. "Switch is right beside it. Maybe it's the guy, and we gotta take him."

He finished binding the gag in place and was halfway to the door, when the room was suddenly darkened. The door opened and the light went on again.

It was Miguel Portas, and he was faced with a knife poised in its aim for his heart, while he felt the pressure of another point at his back. Jake kicked the door closed, and the movement caused his sharp blade to scratch the skin of Portas' neck.

"Hold him, Jake," the leader of the two ordered, and Jake obediently clamped a hold with his free hand on Miguel's neck in front, while he held the knife point where it could be felt behind.

The first man got more strips of the cloth and, twisting them into something like a rope, bound the Brazilian's arms behind his back. Then he turned and spun the key in the lock.

"I oughta croak him," he growled, "but I'm playing this safe, Jake, case the dame don't come through and we have to finish her."

AT THAT, Miguel Portas raised his head sharply. So far, apparently, he had not seen his sister and had no suspicion that she was in the room. He glared around, and the sight that met his eyes almost proved his immediate undoing.

Ruth was standing against the door, and he could tell that she was bound and even more a prisoner than himself. Her dress exposed her throat, and on it he saw the crimson streaks where the knife had cut.

For the moment, it seemed that he would go berserk, but the two knives that instantly threatened him made him realize the futility of resistance against them. He suddenly became immobile.

And it was .evident to the two thugs that he was more concerned over his sister than himself, for he ignored them completely and continued to stare at her. But for some reason beyond his understanding, she would not meet his look.

He waited, braced, unmoving, paying no attention to the leader's command. But Ruth's gaze was fixed straight ahead, and her lips pressed together over the rough gag showed that she had no wish to speak, even if she could.

Portas turned finally to his captors.

"What is the meaning of all this?" he asked quietly.

Mose stared at him, amazed, saying nothing.

"Tell him." Jake cut in, "and then let's get on with it. We can't fool around here all night. If he doesn't come through, heave another one at the dame. That'll bring him, if he has anything to spill."

"Perhaps I have," Miguel Portas said in the same cold tone, "and perhaps I haven't. It depends on what you want to know."

"We want to know," the leader said, with elaborate sarcasm, "what the hell you've done with the jewels you took off Farstone?"

"I took nothing from Farstone," Portas answered instantly; and for the first time, his sister's glance wavered in his direction.

Mose's face purpled with sudden anger.

"Say," he began, chokingly. He swung abruptly. Again his arm whipped over, and again the gleam of steel shot through the air. The blade grazed Ruth's other cheek, and so hard was it driven that it split the panel and the hilt jarred against the wood.

Portas started forward, but the point of Jake's knife met his chest. Mose pulled the knife free. He came back a stride and faced Portas, his face convulsed with rage.

"Talk," he ground out. "So help me, the next won't miss!"

"You let her out of here," Portas said, "and I'll tell you everything I know."

"Oh, yeah? Well, maybe you don't know enough. We figure you brought the image here and she put it somewhere before we come in."

"You're crazy!" Portas answered quickly. Almost too quickly, for it brought a leer from the man facing him. "How could she? I've been gone only a few minutes and she certainly wasn't here when I went out."

"Now we're gettin' somewhere,' the leader snarled triumphantly, and Portas must have realized his mistake, for his glance flickered to Ruth, then around the room a little desperately. "You admit you brought it, and that's all I wanted to know, for you didn't take it out with you—"

"Yes?" Portas said, so quietly that the man stopped with his mouth opened. "And how do you know what I might have done with it before I went out?"

The stick-up man stared at him. He turned, glared long at Ruth, then looked at his companion and nodded.

He walked deliberately to the far end of the room and took his position there, toying with the knife in his fingers.

"We'll work it this way, Jake. There ain't any dame ever lived could hold up against a shiv. Now, this one goes plumb center, right through her pretty throat— if he don't open up 'fore you count three. Count!"

"One!" Jake began, a little hoarsely.

Ruth started making frantic motions with her head, but apparently the only one that noticed this was the man about to throw his knife and he grinned as if aware she had broken.

"Two!"

Ruth no longer looked at the man balancing his knife. Her eyes sought her brother and grew frantic. She saw he was tensed, watching the thrower's motion. Regardless of what Jake might do, Miguel was about to cast himself in the knife's path at the last instant, when it could not be deflected in its aim.

"Thr—"

A hand rattled the knob of the door, a louder sound than Jake's hoarse count, stopping it before it was fully uttered.

"Open up! Police!" a voice rasped sharply.

THE INSTANT reaction of each person in that room was his own and unlike that of the rest. Jake streaked for a window, from which already he must have noted the fire escape.

Miguel Portas hesitated for a bare fraction of a second, and lost his chance for self-sacrifice; for the stick-up leader already had his arm in motion, and sudden rage at the interruption must have carried it on. The steel streaked true on its deadly aim.

But Ruth's glance had come back to him and in that instant she dropped like a plummet, and the blade pierced the wood just at the level where, a moment before, her heart had been.

With a yelp of anger, Mose rushed for it to finish his work of revenge, but Portas' body crashed into him, and the force of his rush slammed the man against Jake and the window which he had half raised.

There was the splintering tinkle of broken glass, a snarl of pain. Jake went through headlong. Miguel's hands were bound, but his feet were not and he kicked viciously at the small of the back exposed to his aim. Then, when the man half turned, Miguel's shoulder rammed him again and he fell on the sill.

A fist was pounding on the door, but for the moment no one heeded it. Ruth's fall had broken her wrists free of the cloth that had bound them. She had the knife now and, like a tigress, she was coming to Miguel's aid.

Consumed by rage, the bandit leader had scrambled upright, but in the act of springing on Miguel, he saw Ruth bearing down on him and dived headlong after his companion.

"Open up!" the voice at the door called again.

Miguel glanced sharply in that direction but, strangely perhaps, Ruth paid it no attention.

She slit Miguel's bonds with her knife, then stepped back a pace, facing him, her eyes fixed on his.

"You told them," she said tensely, "that you took nothing from John Farstone. Yet the bronze was here. I found it."

"He gave it to me," Miguel said simply.

"What!" she cried incredulously.

"He gave it to me," Miguel repeated.

"You mean... you mean you didn't take it from him by force— you didn't stab him?"

She saw the answer in his face, the sudden start, the look of surprise and disbelief.

"You say John Farstone was stabbed?" he demanded blankly.

"Wait a moment!" she cried.

She flew across the room, turned the key in the lock and pulled open the door.

"Come in, Eric," she called, and ran back to her brother.

But she didn't say anything at once. She was staring at him, her look as blank as his but her mind working overtime, trying to unravel the mystery which his revelation had suddenly given a situation that she had feared was all too clear.

Young Eric came a short way into the room, then stopped, watching the two curiously. Ruth had instantly recognized Eric's voice, and now had forgotten him.

She believed her brother, for she had seen the truth in his eyes and knew they could neither lie to her nor deceive her. And for the moment, relief swept her. But not for long. She knew he was innocent of the murderous attack on Farstone.

But what of the others back there; of Mrs. Farstone, who had suspected Miguel of a part in the holdup? Now she must have learned of her husband's desperate injury, and she would believe the same man guilty of that. And Hale?

It seemed an age had passed, but Ruth knew it could not have been many minutes since she had left that house, although they might have already gotten word to the police meanwhile.

"We must go back!" she said suddenly.

Why?" Miguel asked.

"Tell me what happened," she said quickly.

"AFTER Farstone showed the jewels," Miguel said. "I wandered into the corridor, although I had no idea where I was going. I must have been pacing up and down, for the first thing I knew, Farstone called to me from the door of his study. I went to him, and he thrust the wrapped bronze into my hands. ‘I will have my joke, Portas,' he told me, ‘but this is yours.'

"He turned, closed the door. I don't remember if he locked it. I wasn't interested in that. I hurried here as fast as I could, and was thinking where I could hide it safely until morning, when I got the tde- phone message to meet you immediately at the street corner below the Farstone house. When you weren't there, I came back."

He looked curiously at Ruth, and she said: "I tossed it out the window to the fire escape."

"Then those men must have found—"

"We can't think of that now,", she broke in excitedly. "No matter how valuable it is, there is something more important first. We've got to hurry back, and you must be seen there, Miguel. Come on!" She turned toward the door.

"Wait a minute," he called. "Why? Our first duty is to ourselves, isn't it? Why should I go there?"

"Listen," she said swiftly. "There was a man killed, in the basement, in the holdup, and Mrs. Farstone thinks you had something to do with that attempt. There is a head-hunter we locked in the laboratory, and he may be loose by now. There is Farstone, probably dying, and Mrs. Farstone will blame you for that. Besides, the man who stabbed him is possibly in that house now. We must hurry, I tell you, Miguel!"

And this time she went to the door.

On the street, the moment they passed the narrow alley and a glance told Ruth it was clear both of the men and of any object below Miguel's window, she broke into a run, while the others matched her speed.

Young Eric pushed up alongside her.

"I wanted to tell you—" he began, but she cut him off nervously.

"Not now, please, Eric," she panted. "Later. I can't think of anything now except, I'm awfully grateful. I had no idea you'd followed me."

7: Professor Hale Explains.

RUTH led them to the side door, which she had used a few minutes earlier. She had slipped the catch automatically when she had come out, and oddly enough now found the door still unlatched.

They went in and to the corridor from which Farstone's study opened on one side and the salon, farther along, on the other.

At the moment of their entrance, all three were struck by something that seemed strange and out of place, and immediately realizing that it was the complete silence of the place, they proceeded with almost stealthy quiet and without speaking.

Ruth, who was in the lead, paused briefly at the study door and put an ear to the panel, although she did not try the knob. She'd had little time to think of Farstone's plight, but she vividly recalled now that she had left him with a knife in his back, possibly dying and with Hale about to determine that fact.

Then, she had been entirely absorbed by fear of her brother's guilt; now, she knew differently, but she still had to impress that belief on others.

If Ruth expected to hear any sound in the study, she was disappointed. Almost at once, she turned away and hastened down the corridor, wondering with a feeling of dread what more had happened to throw the whole house in such silence.

The guests had been noisy enough when she had left them. Thanks to the calm poise of the two young men, Eric and Max, the gathering had been given no suspicion of the tragedy that had ushered in the stick-up and, with the departure of the bandits, had been inclined to treat the whole matter as a harmless, if exciting, episode while it lasted.

Ruth had closed the salon door behind her on a very gaily chattering group of men and women. She opened it now not only on silence, but also on a deserted room. The lights were still on, as she had left them. The buffet had not been cleared, and, although the food was somewhat depleted, it still held various delicacies of the caterer's art.

Glasses stood on small tables beside the chairs which some of the guests had occupied. Cigarette butts littered ash trays and their stale odor mingled with the fainter scent of perfume. But over all was that weird, depressing silence.

Ruth had paused on the threshold, and the others had stopped with her, while the eyes of all three surveyed the peculiarly desolate scene before them. Then a slight sound at one side of the long room caught Ruth's keen ears.

She glanced that way quickly and saw a man on his knees in the little, paneled niche which had inclosed the telephone. Ruth pointed a hand and strode that way, and the man, hearing their approach, got to his feet and turned to meet them.

It was Professor Hale, the man of science and medicine. Ruth saw his quick, searching glance at her brother Miguel before he looked at her, but she could make nothing of his expression. He shook his head.

"Can't seem to get it working," he said. "They probably cut out a section of wire in another place.''

"Never mind that," Ruth said impatiently. "Tell us what has happened. What about Mr. Farstone?"

Hale gestured toward some chairs, seated himself, and selected a cigarette from a pack he found on a table beside him. His calm deliberation strained Ruth's jangled nerves, but she forced herself to remain quiet and await his pleasure, for she realized that he was apparently considering his reply.

"Farstone will live," he announced finally, with an almost furtive glance at Miguel Portas. "The knife, fortunately for him, went downward, as I said to you, and not directly in, which would have caused an immediate fatality. However, in its passage it glanced from a section vertebra, striking a nerve and causing instant paralysis.

"On removing it, with this exception, he was not seriously hurt, and if he remains absolutely quiet for a certain period, the danger of paralysis will probably be eliminated."

"Where is he now?"

"I put him to bed myself and left him there to sleep."

"What about the others?"

Hale shrugged before replying.

"It seemed best to get rid of the guests without their knowledge of anything serious having occurred here. We did that, and then found that all the servants had gone as well." He hesitated a moment.

"Mrs. Farstone," he went on finally, "was insistent that the police be somehow notified. I was obliged to promise her that I would do so as soon as I had the phone in working order again." Hale regarded the smoke curling from his cigarette.

"In reality," he said, "I was not going to do it, even if I had the phone in order, which I haven't as yet, until you had been given a reasonable time to return. And I am very glad you are back now."

"Listen," Ruth said swiftly. "I know what Mrs. Farstone was thinking— or trying to make herself believe— which she probably communicated to you. Miguel had nothing whatever to do with the attack on Mr. Farstone.

"As a matter of fact, Mr. Farstone had given him the bronze, as our property, and was perfectly all right when Miguel hurried away to put it in a safe place. The attack on Mr. Farstone came after Miguel had gone."

Hale looked at her keenly, and Ruth noted that relief brightened his face.

"No offense, Portas," he said, with a glance at Miguel. "The lady was very convincing, as well as angry, and you certainly had all the provocation a man could have, to see his own property dangled before his eyes in that fashion which Farstone knows peculiarly how to do.

"Frankly, his method of taunting you to an attack, which was most obvious to me, made me speculate a little on a couple of other matters of the fairly recent past."

"I'll tell you something," Portas said unexpectedly. "When I left my South American home, I had merely heard that the bronze was missing from its usual place. I didn't know that Farstone was the one who had stolen it. But I had learned something, from the natives, which made me suspicious of the fates of Mansfield and Hastings, my predecessors in Farstone's employ.

"I came here immediately to look into that. However, when I saw our bronze and the fortune in jewels it contained, I forgot my first errand for the time being."

Hale nodded.

"Well, I am truly glad your temper didn't get beyond your control." He turned suddenly toward Ruth. "But someone," he said slowly, "drove a knife into Farstone's back."

"Eric, here," she said, "has just saved us from an encounter with two of those stick-up men, both of whom had knives. Either of those men could, and probably would, have done it if they'd had the chance. They didn't. At the time of the attack, one was blinded and his vision couldn't have cleared for fifteen minutes. I know the effects of that liquid.

"The other was reeling from the punishment Max had given him. There was a third, but I think Eric had put him out of commission. There was the fourth, uninjured, but he could have gone with the others. Where is Mrs. Farstone?" she asked abruptly.

"She left the salon just a few moments ago. I was busy with the telephone wires," Hale explained, "and I didn't see which way she went."

"And the helpful Waldo?"

Hale laughed.

"Waldo is quite a hero, and he was wearing his laurels with becoming modesty: a bandage around his wounded head and the look of a martyr in his watery eyes! Between us four now, I think Waldo too dumb to have been as frightened as most men would have been."

"Do you know," Ruth asked again, "what Mrs. Farstone went for?"

"She said something to Waldo, to which I paid little attention at the time. Let me see. Yes, it went something like this—that Farstone would be laid up for some time and this was the opportunity she had been waiting for, since he could not stop her. And she asked Waldo if he would go with her.

"I am sure of that, for he didn't reply at once, and I looked around at him and saw him looking at her with his mouth half open, as if he couldn't quite get what she was talking about. Finally he agreed, I guess, for they went out together."

Ruth turned and stared at the young man, Eric. "Where is Max?"

Eric smiled.

"That's what I have been trying to tell you all this time. He went—"

He broke off, and even if he had talked on, no one there would have taken in his words.

A scream, distant, a little muffled by intervening doors, pierced the silence of the great house beyond the room where the four had gathered. It was a woman's scream, and faint as it was, the sheer terror that rang through it gripped the startled listeners and held them momentarily where they were.

Once again it shrilled, and instantly another cry rose above it, a weird, prolonged, unearthly cry that was more wild than human. Miguel Portas sprang to his feet.

"Good God!" burst involuntarily from his lips. "It is the head-hunter's cry in pursuit!"

RUTH and young Eric were already running toward the servants' entrance to the salon. Hale started uncertainly after them, but Miguel Portas, fleet of foot, seeing where they were going, passed them and wrenched the door open before they could reach it.

Ruth caught up with him, however, in the kitchen, where he had paused to look uncertainly around.

"Wait, Miguel," she cried. "We know the way and you don't!"

She unlocked and opened the door to the basement, but Eric pushed past her and went down the stairway first as Ruth pressed the light switch. The scream rang out again, but, strangely, it sounded more muffled than before. Still, the terror in its tone was no less.

The four came to the basement floor where still lay the body of the murdered butler. Ruth and Eric avoided it, but sight of the half- decapitated head drew a sharp exclamation from Hale, who had caught up with them.

"What is this infernal thing?" he demanded, while Eric, with Ruth helping, was attacking the barricade which they had hastily erected.

"All I know," Miguel Portas answered, "is that it certainly was the cry of one of the head-hunting tribes of the Upper Amazon. I have heard it only once before, but I could never forget it."

"John Farstone brought one of them back with him," Ruth flung over her shoulder. "We ran into him here. He was starting to attack us, when Eric frightened him. He is in the laboratory behind this door, which we blocked so he couldn't get at us again."

She straightened suddenly and stepped back.

"Wait!" she said. "He is in there, but Mrs. Farstone couldn't have come this way. We're crazy! There must be another entrance. Come on! We've got to find it!"

"Hold on a minute!" Eric called, frantically tearing at the barricade litter. "Something is going on in there! I can hear it. It's a fight of some sort. And this is the quickest way in!"

"How is the savage armed?" Hale asked.

"With a hell of a big knife," Eric told him.

"And what weapon have you to meet him with?"

There came a splintering crack of wood and Eric brandished a barrel stave in his hand.

"I've got a club now," he said, and went to his work again.

"No!" Ruth cried. "We must go back and around the other way, if we can find it. Mrs. Farstone was not in there when she screamed last. It sounded farther away."

"Listen!" Eric called to them, and placed his ear close to the door he had partly uncovered.

They stood in their tracks, and for a few moments there was no sound in the basement. Then Eric breathed something they could not hear and looked slowly around at them. His gaze settled on Portas.

"Take this club, will you?" he said, tossing him the barrel stave. "I'm going in here. Ruth, you better beat it," he added, and started on the door again.

"I'm going back, anyway," Ruth cried, and ran toward the stairs.

She stopped with foot half raised, arrested a second time by the wild, inhuman cry. But this time it was near at hand, seemingly just the other side of the door which young Eric was struggling desperately to free. And in its dying echoes they heard again the woman's faint scream.

"I'm going!" Ruth cried, and ran up the stairs.

8: Head-Hunter's Chase.

IN THE kitchen, Ruth heard a step behind her and a glance over her shoulder showed Hale close behind. They burst into the deserted salon together and raced for the farther end.

"Do you know the layout of the house?" Ruth threw at him, as they passed side by side. "Do you know the other way down?"

"No, but it might be through Farstone's study. Go there," the stout man of science panted. "Farstone's weapons!"

They passed through the far doorway and tore along the corridor and into the explorer's study. Hale at once looked for a weapon among the many trophies, while Ruth made her way to the wall opposite the safe and examined it for any sign of a door which, earlier, she had not observed.

She found it at last, close to the outer corner of the room and cleverly concealed by the paneling. She found the latch, too, which could have passed for a native scabbard, although it held no knife now and gave, with a little click as she pulled down on it.

She opened the door on a landing. There was another door from the landing, to her right, but she failed to notice it because her gaze was fixed on the stairway leading downward.

Hale came to her as she paused on the threshold. In his hand was a long, curved cutting knife, not unlike the bolo of the Filipinos but not as heavy as the Cuban machete.

"Listen!" Ruth whispered to him. "Mrs. Farstone must have come up this way, I think, but if she had come through this door, we must have heard her from the salon. I don't hear a thing. Do you?"

Then, almost as if in answer to her question, from below came a single rasping thud. That was followed by silence. Ruth turned toward Hale and saw that he was listening intently. not with his head bent downward like herself, but with his right ear raised a little.

"Get back!" Hale told her, and she slipped away to one side, while, leaving the door slightly ajar, he took his position beside it with his weapon raised high.

Ruth looked around hastily in search of a suitable weapon for herself. She did not see one, but she did observe that the safe door was still a little open, as it was when she had earlier left the room.

From some room or corridor not far distant, and on that same floor, there came once more a woman's terrified shriek. It was followed by the sound of running feet, the slam of a door, the pounding feet and again the unearthly scream.

Hale, too, must have missed the other door on the landing, for he swung back into the room uncertainly. And the sounds continued uninterruptedly.

"He's chasing her round and round!" Hale cried.

"But where? We've got to get to her!" Ruth started toward the door to the corridor, but Hale called to her to wait, to let him go first.

He pushed past her and both stared down the corridor, but saw only the door which led back into the salon, and then both heard distinctly running steps in that room, following the heavy slam of some door.

They sprang that way, with Hale reaching the door first and thrusting it open. Ruth pushed in shoulder to shoulder with him.

Far down the long room, a woman was running stumblingly, as if near exhaustion but making speed as was shown by her blond hair trailing behind her head.

"Mrs. Farstone!" Hale called, when he was almost at the servants' door. "Stop! We're here to help!"

Mrs. Farstone slowed down as she neared the door. She turned her head toward them and they could see the wild look of insane fright in her staring eyes, while her opened mouth gasped for breath.

Both Ruth and Hale had started toward her, but they had taken barely two strides when a door halfway down the long room burst inward and the horrifying figure of the squat native sprang in.

The long, gleaming knife Ruth had seen once before was in his hand. Hale cried out and for an instant the black eyes, like those of a jungle animal, were turned in their direction. But at the same time, unfortunately, an involuntary scream burst from Mrs. Farstone and the savage whirled in that direction just as the woman was disappearing through the doorway.

Hale cried out again. Then he threw his weapon with all his force at the retreating form, but it only clattered harmlessly along the floor, and while he and Ruth were running after it, the native was drawing nearer the door.

They had gone barely halfway down the room when he came to the door and darted through it out of their sight.

"Hold it!" a rough voice suddenly snarled, from their right.

Amazed, they looked quickly in that direction. Unnoticed by either, a man had come into the room. It was the stick-up leader, and he was striding toward them. There was the gleam of a knife in his right hand. A second man slipped through the opened door behind him and ran to his side— the man called Jake.

Both Hale and Ruth had stopped involuntarily at the command. Now Ruth started forward again.

"We can't stop!" she cried. "You saw that beast. He will murder Mrs. Farstone!"

"Stop!" the man yelled, and raised his arm slightly.

"I won't!" the girl cried back at him, and tensed herself to run.

"All right," he snarled. "This time you get it!"

He swayed once, with his arm drawing back and rising for the throw. The knife left his hand, but not as was intended. It fell from lifeless fingers, and the sound it might have made as it struck the floor was lost in the crashing report of a pistol.

Ruth paused and looked at young Max coming through the doorway, his pistol now leveled on the man Jake. She noticed something strange about Max, but took no time to see what it was. She was aware of Miguel and of young Eric calling something from behind her, but she had no thought for that.

"Hurry!" she cried to Hale, and she was running again.

He swept up his weapon as he followed her and, with strenuous effort, caught up with her before she reached the basement stairs. His hand grasped her shoulder as she was about to descend, and he forced himself ahead. Yet she followed closely behind him.

There was silence in the basement, now; not a whisper of sound. A weird, dread silence as they stepped cautiously toward the doorway Eric had barricaded, and which now stood open before them. Hale still preceded her, his weapon ready, but she was close to his shoulder and almost as soon as he, she saw the prone figure on the floor.

It was motionless and, as they crept nearer, they saw it was lifeless and the body of Waldo, the simple-minded nephew.

"Steady!" Hale cautioned her.

Ruth glanced beyond Waldo's body to another one; and that, also, was not moving. It lay face downward, the matted hair showing no neck at all, and just beyond one outflung hand was the gleaming knife. It was the head-hunter. Ruth could not understand but she moved forward after Hale, trying not to look too closely at the crimson gash across Waldo's throat, stepping around the native.

Then she saw the woman's body and noticed, with a curious sensation, that the string of shriveled heads she had seen in Farstone's study was close beside her shoulder.

Hale, who had knelt beside the woman's body— it was Mrs. Farstone— straightened.

"Fainted," he said tersely. "And mercifully!" He glanced beyond her. "Well, I'm damned!" he exploded, and strode forward.

Ruth hurried after him. Another form was lying just beyond the threshold. It, too, had an out-stretched arm and a pistol was grasped loosely in the hand. But the eyes, while very bright, were grim and tensed with pain.

"I guess I'm done for this time. Hale," John Farstone was saying. "I can't move at all. At least, I can't raise myself."

"I warned you if you moved it would be so," Hale said shortly.

The explorer shrugged, and his glance went back into the laboratory where his wife was lying unconscious.

"LET me talk," Ruth said, a little later.

The rest were gathered in the explorer's bedroom, where he lay without motion, with the exception of his restlessly shifting eyes.

"I am going to tell the truth of this,'' Ruth spoke again. "I know who planned the robbery, and who struck Mr. Farstone from behind. The jewels are no longer in the bronze. They weren't there when he gave it to Miguel.

"Max, here, saw me toss the bronze from Miguel's window and brought it here after he had waited a long while for Eric to come to him, as agreed. I opened it just now— as you. Mr. Farstone, had done before us. Now—"

"I prefer you wouldn't say it," the explorer broke in.

"I am telling it," Ruth insisted.

She opened the purse, which she had managed to keep with her, and from it took a small object which she held concealed in her hand.

"Here is one proof," she said, then opened her palm and showed a small, round pebble. "That was used," she explained, "to disguise the voice of the masked man who rescued the stick-up men the first time. I found it beside Waldo as he pretended to be unconscious in the kitchen.

"I examined his wound carefully, then. It was probably self-inflicted and would not have rendered a kitten unconscious. But while looking at it I also saw the mark left by the elastic of his mask. Moreover, the man called Jake, who is now Max's prisoner out there, will confirm this."

She paused, but no one spoke, no one contradicted what she had said.

"Waldo must have planned the stick-up for the diamonds Mrs. Farstone and the other ladies were wearing, for a split afterward. Then he saw something bigger— a prize he had not dreamed of and of which his companions in the robbery part were unaware.

"Miguel left Mr. Farstone just before the holdup. Farstone was stabbed just when the stick-up started, and the only one who could possibly have done that was—"

"Just a moment," John Farstone broke in. "Waldo is dead, killed by the savage undoubtedly while defending my wife. There is no question of justice to be gained by going into this further."

"How about Mansfield and Hastings?" Miguel Portas asked coldly. "If I am not mistaken, and I do not think I am, one of their heads is on that string you were so proud of, and the other will be. The other three are natives. I suppose mine was to be the sixth, but I'll let that pass now."

"Listen, Portas," the explorer said, with something of his old fire. "I have told my story and I defy you or anyone else to disprove it! If those are the heads you say they are, prove that, too. But it will not alter my story one whit.

"Now, I have something to propose. I say, let us go no further in this matter of my nephew. No law can punish him now, if what your sister was about to say should be true."

He paused, and it was evident that even the effort of speaking was difficult as well as painful.

"Hale," he went on, "tells me I will never walk again, and"— with a wry grimace— "I have never known Hale to lie. I have all the money for my needs. The jewels are in the lower compartment in the safe. Fill the bronze with them, you two, and go home. Leave me now. This has all been a little trying!"

_______________

Sherlock Holmes in—

14: The Case of the Drugged Golfers

Bertram Atkey

Fry's: The Outdoor Magazine Nov 1909

Published in a near-forgotten magazine in 1909, and not reprinted for three quarters of a century, another Holmes and Watson spoof.

"HOLMES," said I, as I was looking out of our window one morning, "here is a madman coming!"

My friend slipped the fully loaded hypodermic syringe— with which he was whiling away a pleasant half-hour after breakfast— into the pocket of his dressing-gown, and looked over my shoulder.

"Yes. Coming to consult me," he said, rubbing his hands. "Ha! there he is." Almost as he spoke the front door bell-wire was torn completely down and out through the door into the street.

The landlady ushered into the sitting-room a short, stout, red-faced, middle-aged man of hairless appearance with a military look.

Puffing and gesticulating, he sat down heavily in the arm-chair which Holmes indicated.

"Whisky, for Heaven's sake!" he gasped.

I poured out the stimulant for him, and turned to get the soda syphon. By the time I reached it our caller had emptied his glass, refilled it, emptied it again, and was refilling for the third time. He motioned the soda away impatiently, and drained the glass.

"Not another drop," he said, emphatically. "Is this Mr. Sherlock Holmes's place?"

Holmes opened his eyes suddenly. He had been lounging in his favourite chair with half-closed lids.

"Were you under the impression that it was 'The White Hart' or 'The Three Tuns'?" he said, suavely. "Let me offer you— er—" he pushed over the cachou box presented to him by a Russian Grand Duke.

Our caller smiled.

"No doubt you think I am mad!" he said.

"No— only thirsty," said Holmes, gently. "And now that you have slaked your thirst, let me have a clear account of who you are and what trouble has befallen you."

"My name," answered our visitor, "is Colonel Cleak. I am a member of Blameshot Golf Club, and I have been travelling half the night in order to lose no time in laying my case before you. Blameshot Golf Club is composed wholly of retired officers— we tolerate no d—n nonsense there, sir, from the pups of the younger school— and two days ago I put up for competition an Indian trophy of great value. It was a gem-studded drinking cup fashioned from a tiger's skull, and had long been the envy of every member of the club. It was, of course, an event of some moment in the annals of the club, and to celebrate it the committee engaged an Indian cook for the occasion, and arranged for a perfect dinner to be attended by all the members, at which I should formally offer the cup for competition. I attended that dinner— held last evening— Mr. Holmes, and I have no hesitation in saying that it was the finest dinner I recollect— and that from a man who has eaten with kings, damme! We have a cellar to be proud of, Mr. Holmes. Now, I remember distinctly taking the cup to the club-house— where the event was celebrated— I carried it personally in a small brown bag, and during the meal the bag was under my chair. At the conclusion of the banquet I made a few well-chosen and appropriate remarks, and, producing the cup from the bag, placed it in the exact centre of the table upon a pedestal which had been put there for the purpose. Then followed a few speeches suitable to the occasion, and we adjourned to the billiard-room for some pool. Since that moment not one of us has set eyes on the cup. It has vanished completely. The servants are above suspicion, and I need scarcely say the members also. Indeed, there are only twenty members of the club. We are fairly well-to-do, and we like to play our own games in our own way— without the advice and sneers of strangers or of the younger generation. Practically all the Blameshot Golf Club is a purely private concern. And now, Mr. Holmes, we want you to find the cup. That is the problem you have to solve."

"I have!" said Holmes, languidly.

"You have! Have what?" cried the colonel.

"Solved it!" Holmes yawned. "I shall arrive at the club-house at four o'clock this afternoon, and I shall place the cup in your hands at six o'clock precisely." He rose. "It has been an interesting little problem, colonel, but elementary. And now I must leave you. I have an appointment at the docks in connection with the Case of the Man with Striped Hair, the story of which Watson here is anxious to finish in time to catch the American mail on Saturday. It would be wise for you to rest here for an hour or so— you won't find it dull, there is plenty of whisky left— and by twelve o'clock Watson and I will be back. We might all three travel to the scene of the robbery together. Good-morning. Come along, Watson, and bring your revol— your fountain pen, that is."

A few hours later found us on the scene of the robbery, where we were met by an inspector of the local police, who, beyond arresting the entire staff of the servants and telephoning to Scotland Yard to have the Indian cook arrested on his arrival at Waterloo, had taken no steps pending our arrival. There were a number of elderly gentlemen of a military type sitting on the verandah behind tumblers, discussing their handicaps.

Holmes asked to be shown the kitchen, and the inspector conducted us thither. Colonel Cleak had joined the group on the verandah. Lost in admiration and wonder the inspector and I squeezed ourselves up against the dresser watching the great detective at work. With a magnifying-glass in one hand, his pamphlet upon cigar ash in the other, and a tape measure between his teeth, he crawled about the kitchen, evidently hot upon the scent. Suddenly he turned to the inspector.

"I shall want to see the waiter or butler who served at table at the dinner last night," he said.

The inspector went to fetch the man.

"Will you ask Colonel Cleak to step this way, Watson, my dear fellow?" next asked Holmes.

I did so.

"Which of the members of the club has the most seasoned and strongest head for wine, colonel?" questioned Sherlock Holmes when the colonel arrived.

"I have, Mr. Holmes, undoubtedly," said the colonel, readily.

Holmes thanked him, and he withdrew, as the inspector returned with the waiter— a tired-looking man, with a very pale face and a curious look of regret in his eyes.

Holmes whispered something to the inspector, who left the kitchen. He then spoke in low tones with the man for a few moments, and went with him into a sort of scullery adjoining the kitchen.

Very shortly the inspector returned, accompanied by a horsey-looking individual in coachman's livery.

"How was your master when you drove him home last night, my man?" asked Holmes, holding a half-sovereign in his hand.

The man threw up his hands in a gesture of envy and despair.

"Absolutely, sir. Broke all records."

"All right, my man, that will do!"

The horsey-looking man grabbed the half-sovereign and vanished. Holmes pulled out his cocaine apparatus and took a stiff dose. Then, lighting his pipe and placing a paper of shag on the floor, he sat down beside it and stared vacantly at a toasting-fork that hung near the kitchen range. He was thinking— that flawless, pitilessly logical mind was dissecting, as with a pork-butcher's knife, weighing, as with a cheesemonger's scales, the case upon which we were working. It was almost possible to hear that great brain grinding as it worked, swiftly, surely, relentlessly, to the solution of the problem. An hour passed. Then, with an exclamation, Holmes leaped to his feet and darted into the scullery. We heard a rattle of plates and dishes, then a sound of running water. A minute later Holmes appeared before us. In his hand he held a whitish, jewelled object that blazed and sparkled in the sunlight which shone through the kitchen window. It was the Indian trophy!

"Call the colonel," said Holmes.

We did so, and as the old soldier appeared in the doorway the clock struck six.

"Permit me, colonel," said Sherlock, and handed over the cup.

"THE case has been interesting, though elementary, Watson," said Holmes as we sat in the London train an hour later. "Very elementary. I saw at once, this morning, from the manner in which the colonel dealt with my whisky, that, to coin an expression, he was no cold-water sharp. I had found myself looking askance at the part played by the Indian cook and the servant or servants who waited upon our military golfers at the dinner. But, upon arriving here I eliminated the cook— at least, the inspector had arranged his elimination for me. He was to  be arrested at Waterloo. I then examined the waiter, as you saw. He was complaining of a headache; he did not remember when it began, but was sure that he woke up with it this morning. He did not remember seeing the trophy on the table when he cleared away the remains of the banquet. He did not remember any speeches. He had a vague idea that he had found the billiard-room full of dead bodies an hour or so after the dinner, but was not sure. It might have been a dream, he thought. It all seemed to be a dream to him, he remarked, banquet and all. Towards the end of the meal he had noticed a kind of haze about the place. He did not remember anything more. Fancied he had been out of sorts. Had a dark blue taste in his mouth, as though he had been drugged. The crockery used at the dinner had not yet been washed.

"Suspecting at first the presence of some Indian drug, I went into the cellar and among other things counted the number of empty wine, liqueur, and spirit bottles that had been removed after use at the dinner. The number was incredible. I began to get a glimmering of the truth. I then examined Colonel Cleak as to his staying powers. He considered he could give a bottle of anything drinkable start to any member of the club and beat him to a standstill. Then I gathered from the colonel's coachman that his master was 'abso-lutely' on the night of the banquet. This being so, what must the others have been like? I began to see what the waiter's dim recollection of dead bodies meant. It was clear to me that none of the members either knew or cared what had appened to the trophy by the time they had finished their liqueurs and were ready for whiskies and sodas in the billiard-room. The empty bottles proved that.

"Then in the scullery I found three quart champagne bottles empty, and a half-empty bottle of cognac, and then I understood why the waiter thought he had been drugged. Now, how does an extremely 'drugged' waiter, when alone, remove the débris of a banquet, my Watson? He removes it by armfuls— glass, cutlery, decorations, dishes, flower-bowls, everything— by armfuls. (I have written a small monograph on the effects of drugs on waiters.) And that is what this waiter did. All the members were far too 'drugged' to care. I found the things piled in heaps on the scullery tables and floor. Among them was a round bowl liberally covered with a mixture of mayonnaise and about 50 horse-power tipsy cake. I marked this down, and at two minutes to six went into the scullery and washed it. It was the trophy, of course. The waiter had mistaken it for a flower-bowl. That is all!" and the great detective smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and dreamily proceeded to recharge his cocaine pump.

________________

15: Mustard-Pot— Mountebank

Gilbert Frankau

Strand Magazine,  Jan 1923

Gilbert Frankau was an English novelist, short story writer, and poet. He wrote several humorous short stories revolving around an outsize yellow horse called Mustard-Pot.

LOATH though I am to cast any aspersion on the character of so noble, so celebrated, and so coruscating a prad as my gigantic yellow horse-friend, Mustard-Pot, truth forces me to admit that three years in the Shires, three winters of lavish corn-feeding and three summers of lavish grass, have not widened his equine outlook. More and more, as the easy months go by, he tends to become— possibly in imitation of his human betters— a mere hunter; interested solely in "the chase," in questions of pace and pedigree, of "casts " and "scent," and the other mysteries of his present calling. Also— to be quite frank on an unpleasant topic— he is developing a reticence about his past which I can only describe as "snobbish."

Yet Mustard-Pot's past, as the past of so many of us, is in many ways more interesting than his present. There was, you see, a recklessness about that past, and a fecklessness about it, and a certain whcre-the-devil- is-my-next-feed-coming-from Bohemianism which— at any rate from a mere storyteller's point of view— compares very favourably with the "fourteen-pound-of- oats" and "mind-you-dry-his-ears-Jenkins" atmosphere of Sir Victor Plowright Lomondham, Bart.'s, highly-efficient stables.

For what, from the storyteller's point of view, is a mere foxhunter, whether human or equine? His appeal is limited— as limited as his adventures must be! Can your fox-hunting man, for instance, balance a peacock's feather on his nose? Or your fox-hunting woman leap deftly toe-poised from her Champion-and-Wilton through a hoop of gas-jets? Or your fox-hunting horse dance the sawdust circle on his hind hoofs? Isn't the glamour of "the chase"— all said and done— a farthing rushlight sort of glamour against the glamour of Herbert Hanks's Mammoth Equestrian Circus?

Of course it is! Of course, to quote Herbert Hanks's handbills, "The circus is the thing ! Never mind your troubles— leave 'em at home. But bring the kiddies. Bring 'em along— bring 'em along— bring 'em along. They're half price— but you won t think about the price once you're inside. Come and see Bogo the Clown in his screamingly funny act, 'Father's Pants.' Come and sec Goldylocks, the Queen of the Ring, in her feats of bareback horsemanship. Come and see her ride Monster— the biggest horse ever foaled. Come and see the Elephants! The Elephants!! The Enormous Indian Elephants!!!"

Sorry, Mustard-Pot, old thing; but the murder's out now; and though doubtless you'll snort with rage when you read it.

The story of Bogo and Goldylocks (Quorum pars magna fuis — perhaps the classical allusion may soften the blow to your snobbish, narrow-minded soul) will have to be told.

ii

"THIS," quoth Mr. Herbert Hanks, surveying the grimed account-book with a beery and melancholious eye, "is my blinkin' Waterloo— the grave, so to speak, of all my financial hopes. I'm done in— that's what I am— done in by the worst August that ever happened and a parcel of 'draws' that don't even draw their salaries. Pish! And likewise tush! Who would be a circus proprietor?"

He spat scientifically through the tent-flap; rose heavily from the uncertain camp- stool; twirled a long black moustache with a short, stubby-fingered hand; and shambled out— an ungainly, broad-shouldered figure in his grey flannel trousers, yellow gym. shoes, and stained sports coat.

The rain was still drizzling steadily, as it had drizzled ever since the circus struck Diddlehill-cum-Hardy— ten miles from anywhere, on the bleak Yorkshire moorlands. The roof of the yellow property-wagon spouted four continuous runnels. The big, square show marquee and the little conical living tents loomed dirty grey against a background of sodden dun. The tarpaulin- covered Ford— sole means of swift conveyance in the lumbering steam-drawn caravan— sank tyre-deep in yellow slime, some thirty yards from the deserted high road; beside which the traction engine poked a smokeless funnel at the smoky skies.

"Sugar it! " quoth Mr. Herbert Hanks. "May the Deity sugar the entire contraption."

He returned to the office-tent, and began rummaging among the contents of an untidy suit-case. At the bottom of the suitcase lay a bag— a small canvas bank bag, which jingled as he drew it forth.

"Seven pounds seventeen and ninepence three-farthings," quoth Mr. Herbert Hanks. And again: "Sugar it!"

Re-wrapping the bag in a soiled flannel shirt and thrusting it back into the bottom of the suit-case, he started in to consider the future. The future, regarded from a coldly materialistic view-point, loomed black enough. Diddlehill-cum-Hardy, as a credit proposition, was hopeless. Whether one required— as one undoubtedly did require— coal for one's engine, food for one's "artistes," or fodder for one's horses ("Praise the Lord I sold them elephants at Leeds," interpolated Mr. Herbert Hanks), Diddlehill-cum-Hardy insisted upon "t' brass" before parting with a penn'orth of the necessary commodities. While as for "patronizing the finest show on earth," Diddlehill-cum-Hardy, having— to its own shrewd idea— been "swizzled" over the non-materialization of the elephants, promised it in the out-of-date handbills, could only be relied upon to abstain.

"Seven pounds seventeen and ninepence three-farthings," repeated the glooming Hanks.

Feet, squelching without, disturbed his ruminations; and a moment later there appeared, round-about and menacing at the tent-flap, the check-capped, be-sweatered figure of Loony Harris, better known, by those who studied their handbills, as Bogo the Clown.

"Momin', Loony," remarked the circus proprietor.

"Momin' to you, Mr. 'Anks," retorted the clown. And he added, his plump, cleanshaven face black as a thunder-cloud: " Saturday momin', I may venture to remind you, Mr. 'Anks."

"And what if it is Saturday?" The beery eyes, losing their melancholy, displayed an ominous glint. "What if it is Saturday, Loony ?"

Followed a silence, the silence of giants preparing for combat. Then the roundabout little man went on: "Only this, Mr. 'Anks, that in our profession salaries is due on the Friday night."

A whip, a long, vicious, black-handled lungeing whip, hung from the tent-pole; and Mr. Herbert Hanks regarded that whip for several seconds before replying: "Well— I never said they weren't, did I ? "

"Not in so many words." The clown, too, looked towards the tent-pole. "Not in so many words, Mr. 'Anks. But deeds is more than words, and this morning being Saturday—"

" You thought you'd remind me of the fact that your salary hadn't been paid."

"Exactly, Mr. 'Anks."

"Then let me tell you"— the circus proprietor grasped abruptly for his whip—" that I don't need no reminding. You and the rest of them will be paid what's due to you after to-night's performance. Neither sooner nor later. Do you get me, Loony?"

Loony Harris, however, stood his ground.

"If you don't pay up," remarked Loony Harris, "there won't be no to-night's performance. Nor," emphatically, "no this afternoon's performance neither. Me and my missus have made up our minds. When you took us on you said: 'Grub and a quid.' That's what you said— and my missus can prove it. Well— we ain't had much grub, and this week we ain't had no quid. Wherefore— as I used to say when I was in the legit.— no pay, no play's our motto. And the rest of the mob's with us."

Followed another silence— and the wilting of Mr. Herbert Hanks.

"Now, look here, Loony," wilted he. Don't you cut up rough. Things is bad. Damn bad. I'll admit that to you— tho' I wouldn't to everyone. But H. H. isn't the man to do the dirty on his artistes. Not he. You ask anyone that knows him, and they'll tell you."

"Possibly they will"— Loony continued to stand his ground— "and possibly they won't. That— as we used to say in the legit.— is beside the question. The question is," more emphatically than ever, "do we get our quid?"

Tactfully, the circus proprietor changed the subject. "Thirsty work talking," remarked he, sympathetically.

"Agreed." The clown's voice lost a little of his hostility. "Agreed. What've you got? Beer?"

For answer, the other— still grasping his whip— stooped to a wooden case half-hidden under the closed tent-fly and withdrew a bottle, a square and a tempting gin-bottle, which Loony Harris eyed as a man eyes his first love.

"Old Tom!" gasped Loony.

"Neither more nor less," confirmed Loony's employer.

iii

THE Loony Harris who, some fifteen minutes later, squelched blithely past the tarpaulined Ford, and blithely towards the living-tents, might have been treading on the proverbial air. True that no coins jingled in his trouser-pocket! Yet what were base coins in baser pockets compared with that which still wanned the very cockles of his sanguine soul ? Nothing— nothing at all! "H. H. is all right," he murmured, squelching. "H. H. is a sport. He isn't the man to do the dirty on his artistes."

Nevertheless, arrived at his own tent. Loony Harris, better known as Bogo the Clown, hesitated— hesitated considerably before the closed flap. From behind that flap came voices— a hum of quarrelsome voices, shrill above which he recognized the voice of his wife.

"If I had my way with him," shrilled Mrs. Harris, " I'd scratch his eyes out. That's what I'd do to him. Herbert Hanks, indeed! His name ain't Hanks— it's Hisaacs. Hisaxs the Black Jew. Not that I've anything against Jew's— so long as they're rich ones."

Whereupon, more hesitant than ever, Mrs. Harris's husband lifted the tent-flap and passed in. A silence greeted him; and in that silence he inspected the "mob." The "mob" were all there— foregathered round the litter of his conjugal breakfast to hear his news. "Sports!" commented his gin-warmed soul. "Sports, every one of them. They won't mind."

But the mob, informed that "they'd all get their money all right if they'd only wait till after the evening's performance," did mind. They minded enormously. "Pip and Squeak, the finest tumblers in Europe"— two rat-faced, pimple-nosed, Woodbine-smoking youths who combined Socialistic leanings with the Scotch money-temperament— decided that the thing was a "do": "a regular do on the whole caboodle of us." Marlow, the trick-cyclist, a lantern-jawed, middle-aged mountebank whose meanness had driven him to abjure all save the freest of free alcohol, opined with a sniff that "Loony had been got at." Marlow's daughter, thin, vixenish, and vivacious, agreed with her father. Beaver Belinda, once the admitted star of all bearded ladies, but now, alas! a mere camp-follower, thought " they'd be lucky if they got a bob." While as for Mrs. Loony— "Goldylocks. Queen of the Ring"— her language transcended the rage of Lady Macbeth.

"You boob!" screamed Mrs. Loony. "You mutt! You poor, putty-faced, weak-kneed fish ! Didn't I tell you to have it out with him ? Didn't you promise me that you would have it out with him? Didn't we all agree that if he wouldn't brass up we'd put the ruddy kybosh on him? Didn't we agree that, Loony?"

"We did, me dear, we did." The clown, his courage and the gin in him alike exhausted, sat down heavily among the conjugal blankets. "And that's what I told him. 'Mr. 'Anks,' I said, ' we're all agreed. No pay, no play. That's our motto.' But what's the use of talking? Talking won't provide the cash to take us home. If we don't play this afternoon, and he don't pay us, we're stranded. That's what we are. Stranded like a lot of sardines."

"I'm not stranded," put in Marlow. "I've got the bikes."

"One can't eat bikes," commented Marlow's daughter.

"We can pawn 'em, though." Past experience tinged the trick-cyclist's remark with bitterness. "And I'd rather pawn them than work for this— this welsher."

Pip and Squeak, however, having nothing pawnable except two pairs of somewhat soiled spangle-suits, were inclined to agree with the force of Loony Harris's last argument; and Beaver Belinda also supporting it, the strike committee, after some further palaver, broke up. "Scallywags," commented the Queen of the Ring as the tent- flap fell to behind the last of them. " Scallywags and nincompoops! If I had my way—"

Speechless with indignation, she began to tidy up the breakfast things. Equally speechless— for there is nothing so dead as ead gin— her husband watched the slummocky process. "She's a terror," he thought, "a holy terror! It's a marvel, a blinkin' marvel, how I've put up with her all these years."

He began to speculate, lying there dog-like among the unmade blankets, on the causes of his putting up with her. "It ain't because she's a good wife," he speculated, "and it ain't because of the business I'd do better, heaps better, on me own. It ain't even as if we had kids. Then wot" — emphatically— "wot in 'ell is it that prevents me from 'opping it ? ''

Finally, his fuddled mind dimly recalling some phrase he had once spouted in the "legitimate drama," some phrase about "beauty drawing a bloke with her married 'air," Loony Harris decided that nothing except the physical perfections of "Goldylocks " (her real name happened to be Mildred, but her "married 'air" being down her back at the moment made the ringside appellation more fitting) had kept him so long tolerant of her other disadvantages.

"Beauty!" speculated he, his brown eyes following her about the tent. "It's beauty wot does the trick."

And indeed, if one is not over-particular on the subject of cleanliness; if one approves that type of rumbustious womanhood which the North Country dialect onomatopaeically terms "a bolly-oxer"; if one has a penchant for big cow-like eyes, fat pink cheeks, and fat red lips, the arms of a retired wrestler and hips to match, one might agree with more incongruous verdicts than Loony Harris's considered judgment on the wife of his bosom, who now, her slummocky jobs finished, began her equally slummocky hairdressing.

"Going to he there all day?" she commented between a comb-stroke and a brushstroke.

"No." Loony Harris heaved himself to his feet. "No. I'm goin' out."

"Where to?"

"See after the nags, of course."

"It ain't your job to see after the nags."

"I knows that as well as you do."

Harris, snorting audibly, made his way out of the connubial bell-tent and across the sodden grass towards the big marquee. The sky was still grey above his diminished head. The rain drizzled and drizzled. "Bust any show, this would," he ruminated, pushing aside the dank canvas and hopping deftly over the wooden benches, over the sawdust, and between yet more benches till he came to the "stables."

Here, tethered miserable under sloped tarpaulins, seven quadrupeds stood munching the last of Herbert Hanks's hay. All of them, even the tiny black Shetland, were thin; but thinnest of all, so thin that it seemed to the clown as though one could have struck matches on his projecting ribs, was that peculiar steed whom the out-of-date handbills referred to as "Monster." The original Monster had long since perished; but his substitute lived well up (seventeen hands and a bittock up) to the name. He had the frame of a giant; and his hocks, his pasterns— every bone and sinew of him from poll to navicular— matched the framework: a framework whose skin, stretched tighter than the soiled spangle-suits of Pip and Squeak, displayed that pale yellow colouring which, in later years, became celebrated throughout fox-hunting England.

"Poor old Margarine!" ejaculated Bogo the Clown, surveying this caricature of a prad. "Poor old Marge! You're a rum 'un, you are— and no error."

The horse, as though understanding, snuffled; and the clown, still talking to himself, stooped to gather a handful of musty hay from the trampled dirt.

"Here y'are," said the clown.

Margarine (if Mustard-Pot will excuse my designating him by the old vulgar nickname) took the hay in his prehensile lips and champed it mournfully between his teeth. Meanwhile, the clown continued to talk.

"You and me," said the clown, gentling that enormous yellow muzzle, " is much of a muchness. Put upon— that's what we are. Me with 'er tongue, and you with 'er whip— that wife of mine does what she likes with the pair of us. Wherefore— as we used to say in the legit.— if I was you, old sport, I should 'op it. Yuss— that's what I'd do— 'op it; bolt; do a bunk. You could, easy enough."

Margarine, however, showed no signs of obeying the advice; and after a little while the clown, shaking his head as one who, smitten with some great idea, yet lacks the courage to put that idea into execution, wandered away— to be followed by Benjamin, the half-witted stable-boy, with a currycomb, a canvas water-bucket, and various lengths of ribbon destined for the Monster's mane and tail when he should leap, vide handbills, "the biggest five-barred gate in England."

iv

THERE are some subjects— say the older chroniclers, from whom a modern may learn much and occasionally steal a little— too painful for words. Among these subjects, indubitably, must be included the Saturday afternoon performance of Herbert Hanks's Mammoth Equestrian Circus in the parish of Diddlehill-cum-Hardy, Yorkshire. Nothing, at that particular performance, seemed to "go over." The audience— a meagre handful of rain-soaked hobbledehoys and rain-soaked lasses— were even more bored than the performers. They neither clapped applause nor shouted disapprobation. They just sat, in stolid Yorkshire fashion— sat the thing out, turn by turn, hoping against hope for one thrilling minute, one sixty-second ecstasy which would justify the expenditure of their hard-earned "brass."

But no ecstasy was vouchsafed. The tumbles of Pip and Squeak were the tumbles of tired schoolboys; Marlow might have been a trade union plumber cycling to Monday's job; Marlow's daughter (she played her banjo that afternoon, and— what was worse— sang to it) a Sunday-school teacher at a choir-feast; the "Great Herbert Hanks" in his waiter's costume looked like a mute with a lungiing whip; while as for Bogo the Clown— his face would have curdled skim milk.

Nor— incredible as it is to relate— did the eventual appearance of "the Queen of the Ring " effect any improvement in the dramatic temperature. Though she made her bow gallantly enough, and smiled round the half-empty benches as if she had been the sweetest-tempered Goldylocks in the kingdom, the hobbledehoys and their lasses failed to respond. They just sat on, on and on, stolid, unmoving, contemptuous, while she rode two horses, while she rode three, while she leaped— a vast anachronistic figure in her out-of-date hunting habit— the low brush-wood hurdles which the halfwitted stable-boy set up here and there about the sawdusted arena.

"Gawd!" muttered the Great Herbert Hanks, hardly bothering to crack his whip. "Gawd! What a blinkin' wash-out!" Then, as Goldylocks, bowing and smirking, made her penultimate exit to the deadest of dead silences, and Bogo, the Shetland pony between his knees, came running in, he pulled his showman-soul together, and shouted, in approved ringmaster style: "Here, what are you doing in the arena?"

"Doing!" Bogo's answer, to any save a bored bucolic audience, would have been sheer comedy. "Doing! Why, I'm enjoying myself, of course."

"Oh, are you ? Well, you can't enjoy yourself here."

"Can't I? "

"No, you can't."

"Why not?"

"Because I say so."

The back-chat continued; and with its continuance the audience grew restive. The Shetland, appropriately pinched, kicked Bogo off its back— and the restiveness subsided. "I'll get a laugh yet," thought the prostrate Bogo. But no laugh came— even when the Shetland's teeth tore for the carrot hidden in the seat of his property pants.

"Gawd!" repeated the Great Herbert sottovoce. And once again, "Gawd!" Never, never in all his years of circus-hood, had he known that incident of the pants go for nothing. It was uncanny— more than uncanny. It— it meant something. Meant— disaster. "If that don't make 'em laugh," opined his superstitious soul, "then nothing won't do the trick; and I may as well give up the biz."

Bogo, crestfallen, made his unapplauded exit; and the Monster, a be-tighted, ballet-skirted Goldylocks pirouetting on his bared back, came cantering in.

"Be'old," cried the Great Herbert, " be'old the Queen of the Ring, and the largest 'orse ever foaled."

But the cry carried no conviction. "What's the use?" thought the Great Herbert. "What's the use of telling 'em the tale? What's the use of Barnum 'isself when the blighters can't see nothing funny in an animal biting a man in the seat of his trousies?" And it seemed to him, as he lifted the fourteen-stone horsewoman from her saddle and handed her the lungi ing whip, as though the very Spirit of Comedy had taken wings and departed this earth, carrying his livelihood with it. "It's all U.P.," he decided. "Yuss. The circus biz is all U.P. This show ain't an asset— it's a ruddy liability. The sooner I cut my losses on it, the better."

MEANWHILE Goldylocks, plying an expert lash, was also glooming. "I oughtn't to 'ave given up the 'oops," gloomed she, as the Monster reared waltzing on his hind-hoofs. "No, I never ought to 'ave given up the 'oops— even though I do weigh fourteen stone. This sort of thing don't get 'em. It don't get 'em a bit."

The Monster, obedient to the whip, ceased his waltzing; did his polka-walk; feigned dead on the sawdust; sprang to life again. The half-witted boy brought "the biggest five-barred gate in England." The Monster, lashed to a hand-canter, jumped the gate; jumped it again; cantered out of the ring. Goldylocks bowed to the hobbledehoys. The rest of the company— Bogo, balancing the feather on his nose, among them— came bounding in. The Great Herbert Hanks spoke his peroration: "That, ladies and gentlemen, is all we have to show you this afternoon. If we've amused you, we hope you'll tell your friends. To-night's performance will be a gala performance— our last in Diddlehill."

Whereupon the audience, unmoved as ever, filed out into the rain-drizzle; and Goldylocks, her rouged lips no longer smiling, turned on her grease-painted husband with a terse:—

" 'Ere, you. Go and tell Beaver Belinda we want our tea."

v

NOW, in a travelling circus, tea— unlike those makeshift feeds dinner and breakfast— is a communal function, a matey kind of a meat-meal whereover, even in the worst of weathers, the ladies exchange small talk and the gentlemen— always presupposing that one is within reach of a daily paper— racing intelligence. Also— as Beaver Belinda, presiding benignant over the enormous brown tea-pot which dominated the smoky interior of the property-wagon, explained to her fellows— it is customary for "the boss" to attend.

"Not that I altogether blame 'im for keeping away," continued the ex-bearded lady. "Under the circs., perhaps, it'd be 'ardly tackful of 'im to put in an appearance."

"Tactful!" The trick-cyclist smiled sardonically at the hunk of bully-beef on his tin plate. " 'Tain't tact that keeps him away. He wouldn't put up with this— this 'ere garbage, I'll bet he's got a tasty bit of tucker for his tea."

Beaver Belinda, her effort at light conversation frustrated, sank to ruminant gloom behind the brown pot. The cyclist's vixenish daughter chuckled. Pip and Squeak helped themselves to the last of the mustard. Goldylocks buried a nose to which a remnant of grease-paint still adhered, for promise of the night's gala performance, in her third mug of Lipton's; and emerged spluttering:—

"Wonder we all didn't get the bird this afternoon! Must say I'd rather 'ave 'ad the bird than them there frozen faces. These Yorkshire tykes are the limit— and no error. Tykes! That's just what they are. And dirty tykes at that."

She ranted on; till her husband, thinking to appease, put in: "P'r'aps it'll go better to-night, dearie."

" 'Twon't be your fault if it does," was the cheerful retort. "I've seen some two- penny-'a'penny clowns in my time. But you— you're about a penny-farthing."

Miss Marlow tittered again; Mrs. Harris's round-about husband subsided, as Beaver Belinda, into a black depression; and the meal continued gloomily towards its ending.

"Blast it," thought Mrs. Harris's husband during that continuance. "Blast it and sugar it. Wot's the sense in sticking to a creature like that? Beautiful! Well— supposin' she is beautiful. Beauty don't make up for hinsults." Then he drained his cup to the bottom; wiped his cleanshaven lips on the sleeve of his sweater; rose, and made slowly round the table for the back door of the wagon.

"What's the weather like, Bogo?" asked Pip, as he came to it.

"Still rainin' cats and dawgs, I expect," replied the clown, pulling aside the soiled lace which covered the round glass upper panel.

" 'Oo the 'ell cares about the weather ? " put in Squeak, querulously. " So long as we get our brass after this 'ere gala performance, it can rain pirate omnibuses for all I—"

BUT Squeak's sentiments never reached completion, for suddenly, strangely, terribly— while Bogo's hand was yet at the curtains and Bogo's eye not yet focused on the world without— a sound, a weird and an ominous sound, a sound blent of petrol- gas in agony and machinery in torment, burst gunfirewise on the ears of t hat assembled company. And even before the meaning, the one and only meaning, of that sound had made itself clear to their petrified comprehension. Bogo— turning from his peephole— shouted: "'E's doing the dirty on us. So 'elp me Gawd, 'e's doing it on us in the old tin Lizzie," and flung himself at the doorhandle.

But though the door-handle turned, the door would not open.

Followed a second's frozen speechlessness — then panic— then pandemonium. They were no longer a company— they were a mob, a mob mad for their money. They were all stamping— stamping and shouting at the top of their voices. "Binjamin!" they shouted. "Hi, Binjamin— you young sugarer— come and open this ruddy door!" The tea-table heeled sideways; crashed. The brown pot exploded to fragments on the littered floor. " Binjamin!" they shouted, stamping on those fragments. "Hi-hi, Binjamin!" The property-wagon began to rock. To and fro it rocked— terrifying the women, maddening the men. "You'll 'ave it over," screamed Goldylocks. "You'll 'ave it over. We'll all be killed."

" 'Oo cares?" screamed back Pip and Squeak. " 'Oo the 'ell cares? We've gotter get out. We've gotter get at 'im. Binjamin! Hi, Binjamin!"

But no Binjamin came; and always, louder than their screaming, rose that other sound— the agonized sound of a Ford starting under protest. Till at last the Ford protested no longer, and they knew— as a man from the wars knows machine-gun fire in nightmare— that it was chugging, chugging away.

Then, and then only, did the pandemonium in the property-wagon subside; then and then only did Binjamin, the sixpence of the absconder's giving still warm in his breech-pocket, unbolt the brass bar which the Great Herbert, creeping silent on them while they feasted, had shot across the property-wagon door and give them full view of disaster.

The Great Herbert was well away— and their salaries with him. Beaver Belinda, tumbling last down the wagon steps, saw the ill-hooded Ford— already a fair five hundred yards beyond the smokeless traction engine— gather speed down a slope of the road, hesitate at slope-bottom, and climb slow but remorseless towards the rain- blurred horizon. "Shot!" muttered Beaver Belinda. "Shot! That's what we are. Shot in the tails like garden-thrushes."

The rest of the company didn't even mutter. For a full half-minute they might have been statues— marble-faced statues whose hands pointed to the distant skyline. For a full half-minute the suddenness of catastrophe muted even the mouth of Goldylocks.

But at last, bitterly voicing the rage of them all, Goldylocks spoke. "If you'd 'a' done wot I told you, Loony," said she in her bitterness, " if you'd 'a' stood up to 'im like a man this morning, that there excremental tripe-spot wouldn't 'a' been 'oppin' it wiv our brass. Go arter 'im, Loony. Go arter 'im on a horse ! Go arter 'im on a bike ! Go arter 'im on yer poor flat bun ion y feet! But go arter 'im some'ow, go arter 'im now this minute— or never more call yerself 'usband of mine."

Now, if— this time to borrow not from the older but from more modern chroniclers— there is "one moment in each man's life" when he "realizes himself," when "his very soul is uplifted" and "every fibre in him thrills to exultant manhood," of a surety such a moment came on Bogo the Clown as he listened to those words, those harsh and bitter words of his Goldylocks. For, listening, he did not— as was his custom— cringe before her; neither thereafter did he— as was his custom when he had done with listening— argue. He just fled— fled like the proverbial arrow— fled for the show marquee. And as he fled he shouted, shouted back over his flying shoulder, "Binjamin! Binjamin! Come 'elp me saddle an 'orse."

vi

THEY saddled him the Monster, all six of them— and it was an execrable saddling. The stiff girths chafed Monster's belly; the rusty bit tasted like a foul electuary in his mouth. But Monster gave never a kick; and Monster's jockey made never a protest. "Get on with it," grunted Monster's jockey. "Get on with it— and get 'im outside."

They got him outside— Binjamin heaving away the sodden canvas to make a passage. They hoisted the be-trousered, be-sweatered Bogo to his back. They waited, all six of them, for an endless thirty seconds while Bogo fiddled with his leathers, fiddled his feet home into the irons. "You'll never catch 'im," said Beaver Belinda. " 'E'sout of sight already."

But Bogo only barked, "Give us a whip! Somebody give us a whip," and. the whip having been given, " 'E'll make for Diddlehill Junction. Ten miles if it's an hinch. Let go 'is 'ead, Binjamin. Binjamin, you bastard, let go "is 'ead."

The half-witted stable-boy loosed hands from the reins; and for the fraction of a moment Monster, puzzled by the unwonted proceedings, dropped his muzzle for a graze. In that fraction of a second Bogo's eyes met the eyes of his wife. And "Never no more" thought Bogo the Clown, "never no more— if the boss has the price of two fares on 'im." Then he bunched the reins between his fingers and smote— smote deliberate at the yellow horse's toast-rack ribs.

Once Bogo smote— and the yellow horse's head lifted wearily from the nibbled grasses. Twice Bogo smote— and the yellow horse's neck arched wearily to the curb-tug. Thrice Bogo smote— and the yellow horse, as one suddenly understanding, sprang forthright to a canter. "Good-byee," thought Bogo, cantering past the smokeless traction-engine; "good-byee for ever, Goldylocks, Queen of the Ring."

It surprised him, as Monster gathered speed down the squelching high road, that this crisis, so totally unexpected, should have brought him to so desperate a decision. It awed him, as Monster slowed to an amble up the long, long slope which the Ford had climbed before them, to realize that he was free.

For he was free— free as the untamed moorland which swept, mile upon mile of unbroken mystery, to left and to right of him. Oh, yes, he was free, free as the scudding rain-clouds— free as the hoof- startled grouse-coveys that rose wingwhistling from the heather. Turning in his saddle as Monster topped the slope, he could scarcely see the circus-tents; scarcely see the slate-roofed grev-stone cottages of Diddlehill-cum-Hardy.

All that lay behind him. With one swift razor-stroke of fortitude he had severed the hair, the insolent golden hair, which bound him to circus-servitude. Exulting, he found words for his exultation. "We've 'opped it," exulted Bogo. "We've 'opped it at last. You and me, old rum 'un. You and me. Put upon with 'er tongue, put upon with 'er whip, we've 'opped it— we've 'opped it together."

And with that, it seemed as though a little of his rider's exultation entered sudden into the mind of the horse. For now, the up-slope behind him. Monster's ears began to twitch; and now, the down-slope aiding, he broke from trot to canter; and now, the wind of the open moorland in his nostrils, his great hocks hurled him from uneasy canter to uneasier gallop; and now, a gleam of sunshine breaking watery through the rain-clouds, his rider saw— a mile and a mile and a mile to windward, where the grey road twisted level between the stonewalled heathers— the black, ill-hooded shape of Herbert Hanks's Ford. And, "Catch 'im, old sugarer," shouted Bogo, smiting with the whip-handle; "catch 'im, for the love o' Moses and the price of a fare."

But though, for a mile and a mile and yet another mile. Monster held the Ford— held it till the stiff girths galled his galloping sides and the torn saddle-lining galled his galloping withers— held it till his ears dripped and his nostrils blew and the musty hay was lead in his belly— he might not gain on it. Gradually— so gradually that it seemed to Bogo, wearier than his horse, as if all the eternities had leagued themselves to defeat him— the black, ill-hooded shape dwindled, dwindled, and dwindled away towards that far faint smoke-blur which was Diddlehill Junction.

Soon the ill-hooded shape had altogether vanished. Soon the water-gleam of sunshine went out from the skies. Soon Monster's gallop slackened once more to canter. Soon they were ambling— ambling dead-beat through the renewing rain-drizzle along a road endless as endless Time.

"Yet surely," thought Bogo the Clown, "surely— even if I miss 'im— I'm free."

vii

"ALL reet," said John Lumb. "All reet. Ah'll take tha word it's not stolen. But twenty pound is all Ah'll give tha for it. 'Tis ten year old if 'tis a day; tha engine won't turn, and tha tyres are worth nowt."

"Cash?"

"Cash if tha needs it, lad."

"Right. Only hand it over quick. I've got a train to catch."

The Great Herbert Hanks lifted his suit-case out of the smoking Ford; waited, one eye on the Junction clock, while the car-dealer dived back into his oily den; counted over his notes— and disappeared across the slippery cobbles.

Thought John Lumb, scratching his bullet head: "It's no bargain. Ah'll be lucky if I see ma brass back." Then— a habit of his— he walked across to the station; watched the train puff in; inquired at the Goods Office, "Anything for t' garage, Frank? "; heard there was " nowt in"; and returned to contemplate his new- purchase.

The purchase still stood where he had left it— a muddy caricature of a car that shocked his tidy soul. But now, beside the car, stood two other caricatures— the caricature of a horse and the caricature (for so the be-sweatered, be-trousered clown seemed to the Yorkshireman) of a stool-ball player. The horse's head was down; but the stool-ball player's was up. He appeared, to the Yorkshireman, "a tough sort of cove"; and from his language a foreigner.

"This 'ere car," began the foreigner, "ain't yours. It's 'Erbert 'Anks'. Where's 'Erbert 'Anks ? That's what I want to know."

"T' car is mine," retorted the laconic Lumb. " Ah dunno nowt about any 'Anks."

They looked at one another— silently, hostilely. About them, for the rain had cleared and it was the habit of others besides the car-dealer to watch the train in, foregathered the embryo of a crowd. "What's all about?" queried the crowd; and the " foreigner " told them— told them in a dialect they scarcely understood.

"It's 'Anks," said the foreigner, " 'Anks I'm a-lookin' for. 'As anybody 'ere seen 'Anks? "

At last, slowly, comprehension dawned on the mind of John Lumb. "T' chap as sold me t' car," vouchsafed he, "caught t' train to Leeds."

"Gaw'blimey! " ejaculated Bogo the Clown; and again, "Gawblimey! That's tore it."

The embryonic crowd— for already the Junction clock pointed the hour of the opening pub— drifted away, leaving him alone with the weary horse and the broken- down car and the speculative car-dealer. He tried to tell the car-dealer the whole story— but half-way through it words failed him. He wanted a drink— a drink of strong liquor at yon inn, whose lights, suddenly outshining, made two radiant pools on the cobblestones. But he had no money, no single copper-piece of money. That much he managed to tell John Lumb in full.

And John Lumb listened— listened, if not with eagerness, at least with attention.

"If Ah was in tha place, lad," said John Lumb, finally, "I'd sell tha horse."

"But 'oo'd buy 'im?" A gleam, a gleam of miraculous hope, irradiated the clown's mud-bespattered features. So he could still make his bid— one last horse-coping bid— for freedom!

"Happen "— the Yorkshireman scratched a reflective head— "happen Ah'd buy 'un myself. Not that Ah wants horses. But Ah've a friend, a farmer."

" 'Ow much?" Now the gleam of hope was a blaze— a great blaze of pub-lights across Bogo's darkling skies.

"Five pun. With t' 'arness."

"Make it seven, cockie."

"Nah. Five pun."

"Six ? "

"Nah. Five. With t' 'arness."

For a moment, Bogo the Clown, who was Loony Harris in private life, gentled the Monster. The Monster was a pal— his only pal in a harsh and an insolvent world. The Monster had done his best— his weary best. Ten miles of it! Ten terrible hard, high road miles!

"If I sells 'im," burst out Bogo, abruptly voicing his thoughts, "if I sells 'im for five quid, you'll 'ave to promise me that this 'ere friend of yours'll be kind to 'im. That 'e'll 'ave a bit of com now and again. That 'e'll 'ave a roof over 'is 'ead, and a bit of litter to lie on. 'E's a good 'orse— even though 'e is thin. Yuss— 'e's a Christian is the old Monster; an' I won't part with 'im— be damned if I'll part with 'im— unless you can guarantee 'e'll be treated as such."

Whereupon John Lumb, with one scornful glance at the huge, shivering, sweat-sodden animal, retorted in broadest Yorkshire: "Ba goom, lad, if any nag in t' West Riding looked like yon 'un. Ah guess us'd horsewhip t' man what owned 'un"— and once more dived back into his oily den for "t' brass."

viii

THE deal, the miraculous deal for freedom, had been done a good two hours. In another sixty minutes the train, the w on- derf ul London train, would arrive at Diddlehill Junction. "I mustn't miss it," thought Loony Harris, who was no longer Bogo the Clown. "Whatever happens, I mustn't miss it."

He ordered himself yet another glass of "Old Tom," and gazed pensive about the empty bar. How good the gin tasted ! How good it was to be free— free for ever from the nagging of Goldylocks! And yet— freedom could be lonely. One ought to have a pal— a pal to yarn with.

"Mustn't miss that train," repeated thought, as Mr. Loony Harris, rising unsteadily to his feet, made his way through the swing-doors of the Goat and Compasses.

The rain-clouds had cleared themselves away. A moon, a high and a dithery moon, shone bright over Junction Square. "I'm shicker," mused Harris. "Shicker as a sailor on a spree." Shicker or sober, though, he had three pounds— three glorious pounds, fist-clenched in the pocket of his trousers. And the ticket to London cost only two— two miserable paper pounds. That would leave him—

He sat him down on the station-steps and, gazing wearily moonwards, wrestled with the higher mathematics. The moon was silver; but a pound— a pound was gold. At least— it used to be gold. Now it was only paper. Two paper pounds from three gold pounds left— one gold pound. At least, it ought to be gold. But it wasn't gold. It was only paper. Paper! What the 'ell could one buy with paper? To buy things, tickets for instance, one must have gold. Gold!

"Gotter get gold," muttered Loony Harris, rising abruptly to his feet. "Some'ow gotter get gold. No gold, no tickets. That's sense— that's ruddy common sense."

But there was no gold— only paper— in his clenched fist. There was no gold— no gold anywhere. Except—

And then suddenly, to Loony Harris standing there all alone in Junction Square, came a vision— a glorious shimmering vision — a vision as of a gold-haired angel. He tried to put the vision away; he tried to say to himself: "That ain't no angel. That's Mildred. I ain't going back to Mildred. I'm going to town."

But the vision persisted. The vision spoke. "You ain't going to no town," said the vision.

He wrestled with the vision— or so it seemed to his fuddled mind— for many hours. Wrestling, he heard the sound of wheels, voices, the puff-puff-puff of a train. Then he felt himself falling— falling down and down into a gin-rocked darkness where dwelt neither gold nor paper nor any hope for the likes of Bogo.

THE moon was still shining when he emerged from that gin-iocked darkness, and for a long while he lay where he had fallen, blinking up at it through half-closed eyelids. At last, blinking still, he rose to his feet. Somewhere above his head a clock was chiming. "One," chimed the clock. "One— two— three— four."

He knew that he had got tight, that he had missed his train. He felt in his trouser-pockets, felt the three notes still in their place. "Thank Gawd for that," he muttered.

Then, deliberately, he turned his back on the station and shambled away. "Ten miles," he muttered, shambling. "Ten miles to Diddlehill-cum-Hardy. It's a long way— a 'ell of a long way. But visions is visions. An' I've gotter go back. Yuss— hinsults or no hinsults, I've gotter go back to Goldylocks."

For beauty— in deference to Mustard-Pot's newly-acquired snobbery I correct a previous misquotation for my moral— draws even Bogos with a single hair.

_________________

16: The White Line

John Ferguson

1871-1952

The World's Best 100 Detective Stories, 1929

BEFORE McNab had negotiated the pivoted chair at the dinner table in the Magnificent— it was her first night out from Sandy Hook— he was greeted by a feminine welcome

"So we meet again, Mr. McNab."

Mrs Westmacott looked up at him with a smile on her clever face. She was a chance acquaintance made on the journey from Washington. McNab expressed his pleasure.

"You are in luck," said she with a nod.

"So I see," he returned with a ceremonious bow.

"Poof! It's not because they placed you next me. You didn't think I meant that."

McNab looked around as he picked up his spoon.

"Well, it's the luckiest thing I perceive at the moment. Quite enough to content me," he added.

"Why, man, they've given you a front seat for the comedy, and you don't know it. What a waste. There are people on board who'd give a thousand dollars, cash down, to change places with you."

"I wouldn't accept," said McNab, "unless you changed also."

"Ah! And in the train you denied you were Irish!"

To this McNab's only response was an enigmatic smile. People at the tables were a little hushed, subdued. But that was the usual state of affairs the first night out. Later, when they got to know each other, the laughter and the chatter would flow. But the scene that met his eye was gay enough with the women's multi-coloured frocks and the shimmer of their jewels.

"Do you never ask questions, Mr. McNab?"

As he turned to her Mrs Westmacott made a moue at him, evidently anxious to impart the information his roving glance had failed to discover. He laughed— internally— at the notion that he was an incurious person. His head ached yet with investigations which had kept his mind keyed up for weeks.

"I was looking for the comedy you spoke of," he said,

Mrs. Westmacott turned to him, the morsel of fish poised on the end of her fork.

"And found it?"

He shook his head.

She leant towards him confidentially.

"To the right— opposite— the girl in black— between the two young men You must recognise her."

"I am not up in types of American beauty— not feminine ones anyhow," he amended. "Still, I seem to—"

"I should think so, indeed. Her picture is in every paper. That is Sally Silver."

"Really? Sally Silver? Now where have I heard that name before?"

Mrs. Westmacott laughed.

"How perfectly delicious you are. Oh, how I wish she could hear you!"

"I can be wonderfully dense," McNab admitted. "The times I've missed things under my very nose— you'd never believe. Tell me about her "

"She's Henry Silver's only child— and you won't say you haven't heard of him! She's just twenty, and the biggest catch that ever came out of a Chicago pigpen. But no man's caught her yet."

McNab was regarding the girl with interest. He had wondered already why her presence there had drawn all eyes in her direction. The girl was undeniably pretty, but scarcely beautiful. There was not enough repose in her face for real beauty. The headlong pursuit of pleasure, the eager search for new sensations, were visibly marked on her restless and uneasy face. Her face, McNab thought, would miss the beauty designed for it, and become m a year or two the ruins of what it had never been. He felt a certain pity for her.

"The most envied girl we have just now," Mrs. Westmacott remarked. "Her diamonds alone make the women hate her."

"She is wearing none."

"No That is her pose for the moment. The little miss knows very well all the women on board are dying to see the famous Vernese necklace her doting father has just bought for her. That is why she has left it in her cabin "

"And they hate her still more for that."

"Naturally "

McNab resumed his dinner.

"The men don't seem to miss the diamonds," he observed.

"No. She has a fine neck, and her shoulders are— well, brave."

McNab again looked over at the two men and the girl. With both elbows resting on the table, and with her chin on her clasped hands, she was still listening to the young man on her right, while the youth on her left, who had been getting her shoulder all through, sat crumbling his bread gloomily.

"The two favourites in the race," Mrs. Westmacott explained sotto voce.

"Not much doubt which is making the running."

Mrs Westmacott looked at him almost in contempt.

"You men!" she said. "You think because at the moment she's showing a preference for Jefferson Melhuish she has turned down young Hilary Harben for good."

"Well, by the look on his face young Hilary Harben seems to share my view."

"Very likely he does, being a man. But any woman could tell him it doesn't follow. The minx knows the betting has lately been on Harben."

McNab was startled.

"What!" he cried. "You don't mean to say people are betting on it. I call that almost indecent "

"Indecent? I like that! You English who flog horses to make them run races for you to bet on— you call this indecent! Why, Sally Silver is proud to know America is betting on this, and both men must know it. Notoriety, Mr. McNab, may not be so fine a thing as fame, but it is better than obscurity. As for Hilary's chances, I'm not sorry my money is on him "

"You have a bet on this?"

"I have. I stand to win what will pay my six months' trip to Europe twice over. You are surprised? You think I should have backed Melhuish, who is good-looking and wealthy, while Harben is almost poor, and still has that limp he got in the war?" She tapped McNab lightly on the arm and breathed into his ear. "That lameness is no handicap in a woman's eyes. You put something on him, too. You'll get long odds. No? Well, you'll see, in two days there won't be a soul on board from the ambassador to the stewardess who hasn't made a bet on it."

And Mrs. Westmacott proved to be right. The daily sweepstake on the ship's progress was thin and tame compared with the zest and excitement aroused by the betting on Melhuish and Harben McNab marvelled over it. They were all like children, he thought. There was nothing to show— so far as he could see— that Miss Silver must necessarily choose either of her suitors, much less choose one of them before they reached port. It was just a chance He pointed out the absurdity of the thing one night in the smoking-room, and half-a-dozen voices promptly offered to bet him on that very chance McNab went away puzzled. They could not really know. Of course, on board a liner the pace and rhythm of life quickened enormously Minutes were as hours on land, and hours held much in them as days So many things happened quickly, things that would scarcely happen at all, to the same people anyway, ashore. That must be why they were all so confident something was bound to happen in the matter of Sally Silver.

Now, McNab was a keen student of human nature. Professionally his concern was with the darker side, but his connection with New Scotland Yard had not made him a narrow specialist; he remained interested in humanity, in ail its infinite variety, which fact is probably the secret of his great professional success. Therefore, McNab turned an eye on Miss Silver, on her two suitors, and on the betting over their chances with all the interest he was wont to give to the study of innocent human foibles in his moments of leisure The men, he found, ail betted on Meihuish, who appeared to be well aware of the fact. He had a way of twirling up his moustache, a way of smiling till you caught just a glimpse of his gold-filled teeth that seemed to irritate the women. But the men backed him as confidently. And the women without exception backed Harben.

For three long days the good-looking, immaculate Melhuish basked in Miss Silver's honeyed smiles, while young Harben limped along the deck to his solitary chair, followed by the sympathetic glances of the ladies

Then on the fourth day a change came. It came just at the moment when Melhuish's triumph seemed complete, when the men, convinced their bets were safe, were ceasing to chuckle among themselves, and the women almost began to doubt That is to say, just when interest threatened to die down, Miss Sally Silver took it into her wayward head to readjust matters. Very early on the fourth morning one of Melhuish's backers coming on deck, found her and Harben, the deck chairs side by side, holding each other's hands. The news circulated with mysterious quickness. At breakfast the men exchanged uneasy glances with each other. By lunch time they were whispering together about it in odd corners. And all through the long afternoon there was a hush on the ship that reminded McNab of a Sunday afternoon he once had to pass in Tunbridge Wells. For all that afternoon Miss Silver and young Harben sat together, and Melhuish paced the deck alone, gnawing the end of his moustache. To the men who covertly watched the pair on the hurricane deck the afternoon seemed an eternity. What it seemed to Melhuish none but Melhuish knew and he did not tell

At tea Mrs. Westmacott crossed to the corner in which McNab sat with Colonel Bayhs.

"Well?" she said brightly.

The colonel almost scowled.

"It won't last!" he snapped.

The lady thrilled with triumph

"I hear some of you men are already trying to hedge. Now me never did that!"

"Our man's not done yet."

She turned to McNab.

"Is that your view?"

"Well, I don't know He's of the type that takes what he wants."

"It won't last, you'll see," the colonel repeated as Mrs. Westmacott returned with the sugar basin "That monkey is only taking Harben up to give the women a bigger drop. She knows that the cats don't love her much."

He stirred his tea angrily. Mrs. Westmacott held out the sugar basin to him.

"An extra lump to-day," she suggested sweetly

But after dinner that night the affair took a new turn, one which brought McNab into the business in real earnest, in his professional capacity.

It was a fine, still night, with the moon approaching the full, and McNab had gone up to the long hurricane deck to finish his cigar while taking a little gentle exercise. It was still early, but most of the men were down below in the smoking-rooms, while the ladies were in the music saloon. McNab therefore had the deck almost to himself as he paced up and down, first up one side and then down the other, with the long row of staterooms occupying the centre. So quiet was it that above the throb-throbbing of the vessel, as she cut her way across the smooth sea, McNab could distinguish the distant tinkling of a piano. But the deck, with its row of white, untenanted cabins, was like a deserted village, dominated by four great red incongruous chimney stacks. He was watching the silent rolling columns of black smoke from the funnels, following the smoke till it thinned out and the moonlight came through it, when his ear caught a sharp sound behind him. It was like the opening of a door which has been recently varnished, when some of the varnish has adhered close to the hinges— a crack, short and abrupt. The unexpectedness of the sound on that quiet, deserted deck, the contrast it made to the continuous throbbing of the screw, caught his attention. But after the little start it gave him, interrupting his thoughts, he resumed his silent promenade without giving any more heed to the occurrence. When he reached the aft termination of the deck, however, he found something that amused him— Miss Sally Silver was sitting there alone.

Several times that evening in the course of his promenade he had come close enough to see Harben seated by her side and hear the murmur of their voices. Not ten minutes earlier Harben had been there; but now his chair was vacant, a rug lying on the deck looked as if it had been tossed aside. The girl, her elbow on the arm of the chair, and her hand beneath her chin— a  characteristic attitude— seemed to be gazing dejectedly into vacancy. If there had been a quarrel, and all the symptoms pointed to it, McNab smiled to think how, once known, it would stir the ship from end to end. Who would have dreamed that the affair would end, not with Sally Silver leaving Harben, but with Harben leaving Sally Silver!

Now McNab was by instinct and occupation an observer, not a talker. So he simply turned on his heel and continued his promenade. Turned on his heel, he distinctly remembered that afterwards. That is to say, instead of crossing over the deck and continuing down the other side as he had been doing for the best part of an hour, he for the first time went back the way he had come.

He had gone half the length of the deck when he saw a man step out of a state-room a little way ahead, close the door gently, and come quickly towards him. Then the man pulled up suddenly, as if at sight of McNab, hesitated an instant, and came on again. McNab, though the figure passed him with down-bent head and in the shadow of the deck houses, recognised him from his limp as young Harben. He was probably on his way to make it up with the girl, McNab thought with a smile, observing as he passed that the cabin bore the number 13. Looking back, he saw Harben now in the full moonlight, awkwardly, painfully limping aft. McNab, tossing the butt of his cigar overboard, took out his watch It was thirteen minutes to nine; his exercise was over. So he went to the lower deck.

He had been in the crowded smoking-room for nearly an hour, indolently watching a group playing poker for rather high stakes, when a man entered so hurriedly and noisily as to attract immediate attention.

''Heard the latest?" he asked almost breathlessly.

There was so much significance in his tremulous tones that even those who had not cast a glance at his entrance looked up from their game. Indeed, everyone present looked up hopefully. Men reading put their magazines on their knees, even the man dealing out the cards arrested his arm in mid-air to regard the speaker. For it was obvious there was something new in the Silver-Meihuish- Harben affair— or, at least, they hoped so. McNab thought he knew what it was, and that he could have told them as much when he had entered an hour ago. He was slightly amused by this man's snatching at a piece of news which gave him a temporary importance

"No!" came a chorus of impatient voices as the fellow hung on, enjoying the interest he had aroused.

"Sally's necklace has gone."

"Gone?"

"Stolen from her cabin to-night."

"Is that all? Serve her jolly well right!" someone grunted in disgust. There came a chorus of approval.

The dealer continued with his cards and the old gentlemen lifted their magazines again.

"What else could she expect— canoodling up there with that fellow?"

The chorus of agreement seemed to McNab unfair. Had the thing happened when Meihuish was the girl's favourite the judgment would have been otherwise, and Melhuish would not have been "that fellow."

"She'll never get it back. The crooks on liners are smart."

"But on a ship— after all— they can't run away."

"You'll see. Depend on it they had a hiding-place ready for the swag before it was lifted "

"This comes of her choosing cabin 13 out of pure bounce,"

"I remember once—"

McNab heard no more. He left the saloon. He wanted to think.

Cabin 13! He was quite sure that was the one out of which be had seen Harben come. Harben of course might have been sent there for some purpose by Miss Silver her- self. There was against that theory — ^it could easily be settled by Miss Silver — ^his hesitation on catching sight of someone approaching, and the furtive manner in which he had slunk past, in the shadow; close to the deck houses. But, again, Harben must have known that his limp would betray him. If he had no guilt, why had he been furtive?

Harben was no professional crook, of course, for the ex- pert would not have been taken by surprise, and besides, he was, like his rival Meihuish, an old friend of the Silver family. But why had Harben been surprised to see him? It was to this question McNab recurred most. Harben must have been aware that he had been walking the deck all the time. Then whence came the surprise? He had hesitated and stopped for a moment at sight of him. Why?

Suddenly the detective smote his fist on the taffrail as an explanation burst upon him. Of course!

"I'd been walking round and round the deck houses until I saw the girl and the empty chair," he muttered. "Just like a policeman on his beat. But that last time I turned hack. And when he came out of the cabin he calculated that I'd be on the other side. But what a fool the man was not to put the thing back once he knew he had been seen."

McNab lighted another cigar reflectively. Perhaps, he mused, Harben had no chance to go back. Perhaps, as was not uncommon, he supposed his lameness less noticeable than it actually was, and believed he had avoided detection. The furtive slinking along in the shadows suggested he had that belief.

The detective, in his dark corner, grinned to himself. Harben would probably stick to the diamonds ; he did not know with whom he had been playing that little game of "Here we go round the mulberry bush" up there in the moonlight! There was little danger of such an amateur in crime as Harben getting frightened and dropping the things overboard. He must need them badly indeed Had he come away without sufi6cient funds for the trip? He could not take money from Miss Silver, and he would salve any qualms by telling himself it was for her sake, her ultimate happiness. Later he would tell her ail, perhaps; own up, and she would cry out: "You poor boy! Why didn't you ask me for the money?" So the young fool would picture the happy ending'

McNab had no desire to thrust his professional services on those concerned— indeed, he did not suppose his services would be required— but being well aware of a witness's duties in such matters, he went to see Miss Silver. Miss Silver, however, had retired, prostrated by her loss, so the maid informed him. Well, his knowledge of Harben's movements would keep till morning. McNab himself sought his berth.

Next morning he was much later at breakfast than usual He had slept badly. He had not, somehow, been able to dismiss this case from his mind so easily. He had lain awake, thinking it out. He had traversed all the facts repeatedly, and some features of the thing left him doubtful. He was, however, scarcely seated before he sensed that something new had happened. People stood about in little groups with their heads together. There were noddings and whisperings. Mrs. Westmacott, observing him, came across and took a place beside him.

"Well," she said, "you've heard what they're saying?"

"No. What is it?"

''They say the thief is a man with a limp. He was seen coming out of her state-room."

McNab almost bounded out of his chair.

"What?" he cried. "What's that you say?"

"Ah, you know what that means. There aren't many lame men aboard, are there?"

"I've seen only one."

"Weil, that seems to fasten the thing on him all right. Do you think he did it?"

McNab regained his self-control. He looked at her fixedly.

"I did," he said, "till you told me others are saying he did it."

"What on earth do you mean by that?"

"It sounds odd, but the explanation is simple: I was the only person who saw him come out of her state-room."

Her woman's wit took her at a bound to the vital point

"And you have not mentioned it to anyone?"

McNab looked at her in admiration.

"Not unless I've been talking in my sleep."

"And do you?" she asked anxiously.

"No," he replied with a grin. "That is one of the things forbidden us at Scotland Yard."

Her face changed from anxiety to amazement.

"Scotland Yard! Are you—?"

"Hush! Just tell me who you think did it."

"Melhuish," she rejoined promptly. "He is your man."

McNab shook his head.

"It doesn't follow. The first question to ask in the presence of a crime is, cui bono— who benefits?"

"Well, he does. Sally will certainly—"

He put a hand on her arm restrainingly.

"Yes, but this Vernese necklace in itself supplies a sufficient motive to a few hundreds of us, perhaps. Melhuish had one motive which no one else but Harben shared, that is Sally Silver herself. But the motive of Sally Silver's diamonds would be equally strong for a far larger number."

"Still, I feel sure it was Melhuish. Something tells me—"

"Yes, your dislike of him. And if I were to put the case before any of these men, they would, for the same reason be equally sure it was Harben."

"And you?" she asked.

"I suspect everyone but you. That is why I ask your help."

"Me!" she flushed with excitement. "Women are said to talk."

"They do. So do men. Look at them."

As he reached for the marmalade he nodded towards a group of men in eager converse

"You mean to take up this case?"

"Yes. You see, this infernal thief has brought me into it. He used me. That's what it amounts to. For if it was someone who imitated Harben's limp, and affected hesitation at the sight of me, he expects me to say I had seen Harben coming out of the cabin He used me: that stings, you know. If it was Harben himself—"

McNab broke off pensively

"You need my help because the thief knows you know so will be on the watch?" Mrs. Westmacott asked.

"Especially when he finds I shall say nothing. You see," he went on, "we have not merely to detect the thief but to keep him, if he is startled, from dropping the necklace over the side."

Mrs. Westmacott sighed with a half wry smile.

"To think I should find myself trying to save her necklace. I shouldn't dream of doing it if I wasn't sure Hilary Harben is innocent. You can't be sure that someone else wasn't hiding up there, watching both you and him."

"I don't deny it. Anything is possible. And if Harben is cleared, so much the better for your bet. Can I count on you?"

"What do you wish me to do?"

"Very little— and that little easy. I am not going to report what I saw to Miss Silver or to the captain. I am not going to make any enquiry. I am going to sit out on the promenade deck entirely absorbed in a book. All I want you to do is to stroll over, and give me news of what happens from hour to hour."

"It sounds just a man's idea of a woman's job! But what if nothing happens?"

"Then come and tell me."

At eleven she came to him with her first report. Harben had tried to see Miss Silver, but had been refused admission. A notice had been posted asking anyone who had been on the hurricane deck between the hours of eight and ten to see the purser in his office.

At half past eleven she reported having seen Miss Silver and Melhuish together on the upper deck

At noon she returned with the news that Harben's cabin was then being searched. There was a crowd outside the door McNab sent her off to join the crowd, while he sat on apparently engrossed in his book.

She was back in half an hour. Nothing had been found, of course. She laughed:

"The amusing thing is that Harben finds that he himself has been robbed Oh, it's nothing of consequence— just a leather collar-box missing."

"Ah!"

There was so much significance in the ejaculation that she was startled

"Did Harben mention it?"

"No, the steward who does his cabin did."

"A leather collar-box? It would just do to hold the necklace, I suppose."

McNab lay back again in his chair and shut his eyes, while Mrs. Westmacott waited.

She waited a long time, or so it seemed to her. She began to think McNab must have fallen asleep, so still was he. Then he startled her again.

"What is the colour of Harben's door, red or green?" he asked.

"Neither; it is white," she replied, wondering if he were mad.

"Good! Do you think you could get me a ball of wool?"

"A ball of wool?" she cried. "What for?"

"To snare the thief. If any lady friend can provide a ball of wool, we have him."

"Heavens above us!" she murmured, aghast.

"Let me see," he went on, "there is to be some sort of entertainment to-night, isn't there?"

She welcomed what seemed a return to sanity.

"Yes— a concert. The Orpheus String Quartette have kindly—"

"Well," he cut in, "for the sake of variety well provide a conjuring trick also— if you can find me that ball of wool."

MRS. WESTMACOTT was very nervous at the concert— thoroughly disquieted about McNab. Of course, the recent events had upset everyone, but the soothing effect of classical music is well known, and perhaps that is why practically every passenger in the ship was present. Even Miss Silver came in before the interval, looking very pale and tired, leaning on the arm of Melhuish Melhuish, after finding her a seat, left the saloon, returning with a wrap for her just before the interval McNab, Mrs. Westmacott saw, was very fidgety. He kept looking at his watch, glancing keenly about him. When the interval came, most of the men seemed ready for a stimulant. She saw Colonel Baylh approach McNab with an invitation on his face; and she did not miss the curt refusal he received. The men began to filter towards the door Captain York, who was acting as chairman, rose and tapped the table.

"Gentlemen," he said, addressing those who were moving towards the door, "I regret very much that for the moment it will be impossible for anyone to leave this saloon. You are aware that a necklace, a very valuable necklace, has disappeared from the cabin of one of our lady passengers A general search for it, which I am sure no honourable or innocent person here will resent, is now in progress. There are, unfortunately, black sheep in most ships of—"

Mrs. Westmacott saw McNab rise to his feet.

"Excuse me," he said in calm, determined tones. "There is no need to detain these gentlemen, nor to disarrange their baggage. The necklace is in a leather collar-box in Mr. Hilary Harben's cabin."

A tense hush fell on the saloon— a moment's breathless silence, and then Harben, pushing aside the men in his way, came towards the platform with blanched face and clenched fists.

"That is a lie!" he called out. "I'll make you eat those words. How do you know what is, or what is not, in my cabin? Who are you?"

"I am the person who saw the man with the limp come out of Miss Silver's cabin last night."

An "Ah!" of astonishment ran round the saloon like a wave, and Mrs. Westmacott, sparing a glance for Miss Silver, saw the girl sink in her chair with both hands covering her face. Melhuish, standing beside the captain, was, like most, eagerly intent on McNab.

"I was not that man, I swear it!" Harben cried out helplessly, as if he did not expect them to believe him. And certainly nobody seemed to. Mrs. Westmacott saw the gleam of gold as Melhuish smiled. In the tense, painful silence which ensued, the ship's purser entered and handed up to Captain York the little leather collar-case. As he opened the thing and took out the necklace, the man whispered something to him, and it was evident to all from the way in which he stared at McNab, who was still on his feet, that it had been found where McNab had said.

"I swear I had no hand in this— I never took it!" Harben cried passionately again.

"I know you didn't," said McNab.

Melhuish, who had gone forward to receive the necklace from the captain, turned sharply.

"Since you know so much," said the captain, "perhaps you know who did?"

"I do," the reply came quietly, electrifying the whole saloon. "You see, at first I did think the thing had been done by this young gentleman. The man who passed me outside cabin thirteen I took for Mr. Harben. But in the morning, when I heard that a man with a limp was seen coming out of the cabin, I knew it was someone else. I knew it must be someone else because I was alone on that deck, and had not spoken to anyone of what I saw. Any- one might have imitated his walk. Later in the day, when I heard of the missing collar-box, it was clear that the guilty person, through fear of discovery or some other reason, meant to fix the guilt on Mr. Harben. That little box which was missing in the forenoon would be found when the general search was made. The inference would be that it had been hidden till the earlier search was over, and when it was discovered later in his cabin with the necklace inside, the conclusion would be irresistible."

McNab paused while everyone hung on his words.

"All that was easy. The real difficulty lay in detecting the guilty man. It was, of course, useless to watch Mr. Harben's cabin all day. The real thief would not venture to go in so long as anyone was in sight. Well, the road was left open, and he did his trick exactly as I thought it would be done, about half an hour ago; and not a soul saw him do it."

Mrs. Westmacott sighed miserably as she saw Melhuish's face brighten on hearing McNab's last words. Captain York himself voiced her fear.

"Then you cannot prove who this black sheep is? I suppose we must be content with—"

McNab held up his hand.

"Pardon me, but that is exactly the task I set myself. I have marked the black sheep."

"How?"

Half-a-dozen cried out the question, and did not know they had spoken.

"The door of Mr. Harben's cabin is white. I fastened a length of wool from one side to the other, five feet five inches high, chalking it so that it was invisible against the door. The two broken ends will be found hanging there now, and the man who entered the cabin ought to have a chalk line across the lapels of his coat exactly five feet five inches from the floor."

Instinctively Melhuish had looked down. He saw what all saw, a thin white line across the collar of his faultless dress coat.

Pitiably the man wilted. The tense silence was broken suddenly by a girl's voice.

"Hilary, oh Hilary, I am so glad! So glad!"

The words in themselves might have committed her to nothing, but there was that in her tones which led every man who heard them to settle his bet without a murmur.

_________________

17: Not Much to Look At

Jeffrey Farnol

News (Adelaide) 11 March 1933

Collier's, 26 March 1932

TOMMY FRAYNE, starting in life with much to lose, had been steadily and consistently losing all his days; fortune, position, money, friends, the woman he had loved— all had gone, and, lastly, his self respect. So tonight he meant to finish his career of inaptitude once and for all, and, being a Londoner born and bred, had decided to end his troubles and float away from his sordid miseries on the broad bosom of the old river. Thus then upon this sad autumnal evening he shuffled along in his broken shoes.

Being a gentleman of infinite leisure he went very much at his leisure until Big Ben, a pallid disc twixt heaven and earth, chimed the eleventh hour.

"And that's that!" quoth he, when the deep reverberation had died. humming to silence. "And now for supper. As well go hence full as empty."

So saying. he shuffled on until he had reached a bench almost opposite a broad flight of steps that led down to the river's verge; and here, seated crosslegged at his ease, he fished from sagging coat pocket a screwed-up paper bag wherefrom he extracted a crust of bread, a wedge of cheese, and an onion.

Something rubbed against his leg, and, glancing down, he saw two eyes very bright and wistful, a stump of tail, and, in between, a woefully gaunt direputable shagginess: and those wistful eyes pleaded with a profound eloquence.

"Hal-lo, old boy!" exclaimed Tommy, reaching hand to this shaggy head that became suddenly abject. "Are there two of us? Are you likewise up against it. down and absolutely out, too oId chap? Well, let's eat. I suppose you're hungry?"

The dog sat up and uttered a short, muffled yelp, his eyes upraised to the man's pallid, unshaven face.

"Yes, I thought so, starving, of course," sighed Tommy, and offered a piece of bread that instantly vanished... and the bright eyes pleaded, the stumpy tail wagged.

"Exactly, my lad," murmured Tommy, "but what about me? I'm pretty ravenous, too!"

The dog eyes intent, sat down, close against Tommy's leg and made quick, soft, thumping noises with his brief tail.

So, chunk by chunk, Tommy parted with his supper, as he had done with all other of his worldly goods. Watching the dog's gulping ecstasy with eyes very wistful also.

"And that's the last, my boy," said he tossing his onions into the river. "So hook it— away with you."

But instead of so doing, the dog butted his head against Tommy's knee, shot pink tongue a little tentatively totward his nearer hand, then, crouching at his feet, gazed up at him with such look that in human eyes might have been called adoration.

"Ha!" quoth Tommy, pulling an ear. "And when we meant to insult a fellow that's a pestiferous blighter and what not, we call him  a dog!.... Well I suppose you had a name once— but my name for you would be Demosthenes, though I'll swear that old-timer with all his oratory, eloquence, and what not, could never have wheedled me out of my last meal. And now a long good-night!"

So Tommy arose, a little wearily, and went slouching to a flight of steps... down these stepe to where the river lapped hungrily, lit by a lamp immediately above. Then he turned and leaped.

But Tommy had been a powerful swimmner, and now, though his soul courted death and oblivion, his body yearned for life, and, rising to the surface, his limbs struck out instinctively. Tommy laughed, swore, and, in the act of throwing up his hands, heard a rasping whine, saw in a patch of radiance a small, shaggy wet head with eyes wide and staring in passionate supplication.

"Oh!" gasped Tommy. "Demosthenes... you fool! Come on then... after me!"

Another whine that ended in piteous choke... Tommy saw these bright eyes suddenly quenched.

"What are ye... done, lad? Sure, he'll never make it!"

Tommy dived, found, and clutched that sinking shagginess. And rose to lights and air again.

But the current ran strong, and Tommy, enfeebled by privation, hampered by the dog and his own sodden clothes, was dragged down and swept away...  down to a roaring darknes... up to a swirl of lights that spun past giddily... yet still be clutched Demosthenes. He was whirled beneath the rushing gloom of a bridge... out again and on. struggling feebly, but with a grim resolution. For the Man in him was awake and doing at last. Death lured him, like kindly friend, with proffer of the weakling's haven, respite from pain, trouble, and needies travail. Death glared on him like bitter foe certain of victory— but Tommy the Man strove, as conqueror must, with heart and brain, body, soul, and will, with his every nerve, muscle and sinew, to the limit of his strenth— and just beyond.

Thus he strove, weak but indomitable, keeping afloat by his mere water-sense... a red glare ahead of him... a huge bulk that loomed above them. nearer... nearer yet... timbering that changed to stone... to a flight of slimy steps.

And so-out of the depths. up from the river, up from the death he had sought crawled Tommy, the dog beneath his arms, and found himnelf on a small jetty with tumble-down sheds and new masonry at one end, and before these a red-glowing fire in a brazier. Thither he staggered, gasping, shivering, half dead, and sinking down in this grateful warmth. closed-his eyes... opened them to see a whiskered face topped by battered peaked cap bent over him:

"What-o, mate!" said the face, in accents hoarse yet kindly, "where you come from. I wonders?"

"The river."

"And wot was yo a-doing of in the river, mate?"

"Drowning myself."

"Lumme... Well, why ain't you? Why come out afore you was drowned?"

"To save my dog... had to... absolutely!"

"Dog? Love a duck! And he ain't much to look at!"

"Neither am I, for that matter. But we're both better than we look."

"Could ye eat some stew, mate? Though it's a bit coldish."

"Eat? Try me, friend, try me."

So Tommy ate ravenously, then dozed a while, until the kindly watchman roused him, and he saw it was dawn with promise of a golden day.

"It's home and bed for me, mate— and wot for you? Sooicide, eh? Going to try it again?"

"Not likely!" answered Tom Frayne, rising. "You see, old chap, I shall have to... er... give my dog a chance and what not... and besides there's always Tomorrow, with a capital T."

"Why then good-by, mate, and good luck!"

"The same to you, and... my hearty thanks— both our thanks!... Come on, Demosthenes, old chap!"

So, man and dog, they went to face the chance of this new day together, the dawn bright above them, and it was to be noted that the dog's stumpy tail was jauntily a-cock, and the man, chin up and shoulders squared, shuffled no more.

_________________

18: The Blush of Venus

James Francis Dwyer

The Cavalier, Nov 1909

FROM Bencoolen to Wake Rock, and from Point Danger to the Marquesas, you can gather a thousand stories concerning the biggest pearls found in the Pacific. The stories are all diferent as the the pearls round which they are spun. That's just natural. Men who nuzzle after "blacklip" and "blue-edge" are not experts, and drink-shops from Padang to Port Kennedy add many grains to the gems by stirring the imaginations of the tinders.

That's why many of the biggest haven't made a stir in Hatton Garden or Maiden Lane. Up around the Arafura you'll hear of the Peri of Papua, the Opal Moon, the White Ghost, the San Christoval, and nine hundred and ninety-six others; but I think there were only three men who knew of the Blush of Venus.

Once the tropics have held your heart a prisoner in a net of rose pink and lilac and wondrous purple, they call you wherever you stray. Those white beaches that look like lace petticoats fringing the green dresses of the islands, swing before your eyes in the night, and you just gasp. Then you hear the water gurgling over the sand that, looks like diamond-dust, and you get a dream squint of a mother prahu with a mongrel clutch of sampans slithering across a trepang-scented ocean that's all ruby-colored and champagne-tinted, and when you wake in the morning everything looks like ten cents.

It was through a dream of that kind that I came to be one of the three who saw the Blush of Venus. Jack Desmond met me one morning after I had been dreaming of fluttering down the Sulu Sea in a sky-blue schooner with turquoise sails, and three weeks afterward I was watching Desmond's crew scrape blacklip off the bottom of Torres Straits near Thursday Island.

Desmond was Irish-American, and he had thrown more gloves in the face of destiny than any man his age. He just lacked imagination; and when a strong man without imagination goes knocking round the fringe of the earth, where policemen are an unknown quantity and writs stop ten parallels away, he's not a good risk for a life-insurance company. But Desmond had luck.

We had a mixed crew— Javanese, Japs, Orang Laut, and Klings ; but the best man on the lugger was a half-caste Chinaman from Dutch Borneo named Chola. He did the work of two on the boat, and when we dried out at Lul Rock he was worth three of the others.

It was Chola who found the Blush. When and where he found it, I don't, know; but one morning Desmond sprang upon him, bounced him onto the boards, and rolled him over and over. The others just looked on wondering, and I grabbed a pump-stave to keep any one from interfering.

The half-caste tried to get a jiu-jitsu grip on Desmond, but his mind was so busy with the problem that he forgot to shift his head out of the way of a short-arm jolt. When he was recovering consciousness, Jack was in the cabin, showing me the Blush of Venus, named it then and there.

ii

I'VE SEEN a few pearls, but the Blush wasn't the kind that a ten-grain speck could push out of your memory. It looked like a transparent film filled with claret, and the color just came and went in it as if it were alive.

"How did you know he had it?" I gasped.

Desmond laughed.

"There were six signs," he said; "and when he sprang away from me when I touched his loin cloth, it made the seventh. Seven is a lucky number, so I grabbed him. Some fools tell you that the Chow and the Jap never show emotion. Huh! But isn't it a beauty?"

I nodded.

Desmond put the pearl in his mouth and sucked it; then he put it on a red silk handkerchief, and laid down near it on the bunk, half crying and half laughing over the find. He made me smile; but I was listening all the time to the noises up on deck, where some of the crew were reviving Chola with buck¬ ets of salt Water.

"What'll you do with him?" I asked, referring to the half-caste.

Desmond thought I meant the pearl. The gem had all genders to him at that moment.

"Do with him?" he said, sucking the Blush softly. "Why, I'm going to give him to a girl living at Woollahra, near Sydney. I said I'd bring her back the biggest pearl ever scooped out of the Pacific, and, by Luk-e-ling, the sea-god of the Yaps, I've got it!"

"And Chola? " I asked, not bothering to tell him that it was the yellow-skinned. gentleman I meant in the first instance.

Desmond looked up, brushed the hair out of his eyes, and laughed then as he remembered the little rumpus.

"Oh," he said, " the little yellow devil! Let him go on with his work, of course."

Then he started to tell me about the girl to whom he had promised the pearl. He said she had auburn hair; but I had tested Desmond's eye for color when the sun would be slipping down toward Timor of an evening, so I formed my own opinion. He said she was plump, too, and I nearly smiled. Any person under two hundred pounds weight was in the first stages of consumption, in his opinion. Then he said her name was Birdie, and I had to go outside the cabin, because my face was aching to wrinkle itself up.

My imagination got to painting a plump Birdie with red hair, walking round with that big pearl on her breast; so I went up on deck, and after a time Desmond followed.

The half-caste was over the side when we came up the ladder; but when we got to the surface, there was nothing on his face to tell of the trouble. Desmond didn't look to see. His eyes were looking down toward Bass Straits, two thousand miles away. I'll bet he was wishing that he could set out and walk over that blood-tinted water so that Miss Birdie Williams would get the pearl in a hurry. He was a cool customer, was Desmond.

For two weeks everything ran on quietly. Desmond sat on the deck all day and dreamed of the Blush and the girl that was going to get it; but he could pull himself out of Iris dreams mighty sudden if any one tried to take him unawares.

Then, one afternoon, Chola took a fit after coming up out of the water; and when we were eating our supper, the Jap cook came along and reported him dead. Desmpnd just nodded his head and went on eating.

"That was sudden," I said,.after the Jap had walked away.

"Very," said Desmond, and he smiled into his plate of curry. "Guess he died of grief over that pearl," he added as he finished eating. Then he stood up and walked into his cabin.

I went up on deck and. smoked till near midnight, but when I went down the ladder Desmond was waiting for me. He was standing in the dark, near the door of his cabin, and when I came along he caught me by the arm and pulled me inside.

"Been waiting two hours for you," he snapped.

"What's wrong?" I asked, trying to breathe quietly and making as much row as a croupy hippo.

"Chola isn't dead," said Desmond; "he's shamming! Some trick is in the wind, and we've got to keep our lamps trimmed, or we'll go over the side without any canvas wrapping or prayer service."

"How d'ye,know he's alive?" I asked.

"Seen him," growled Desmond. "He's in the little cubby at the back of the cook's galley, and when I went in there the air was warm from his breath. I didn't touch him, because that would have sprung the plot, and I wanted to think."

He picked up his belt, took the pearl out of the cotton-wool in which it was packed, and laid it down on the table.

"Chola is coming after that," he said, "and I want to be prepared. See, the Queensland law will not permit the burial of a diver at sea, so I've got to take him to Port Kennedy. I don't see how Chola is going to gain anything by his faking; but a Chinaman is a shrewd guy. However, I'm going to slip into port to-morrow for reasons of my own, so that gives him to-night and to-morrow to get after the Blush."

"How many d'ye think are in the know?" I asked as Desmond hacked at the heel of lu's rubber boot.

"P'raps only the man that's feeding him; p'raps the whole bunch," he growled. "Look here! I'm putting this beauty into the heel of my boot, and if anything happens to me I want you to deliver it to Miss Birdie Williams, 711 Queen Street, Woollahra."

"Getting nervous?" I laughed.

Desmond looked at me, and I backed away. Somehow, Desmond's eyes would push you away when you tried to stare him down.

"I promised Miss Williams I'd get the pearl," he said. "It was my property before Chola stole it; and, now I've got it, I'm not going to let that yellow hound get it without a fight."

After he had fixed up the heel so that the cut couldn't be seen, he put out the light and got into his bunk, .and I stumbled into mine. It looked like trouble, with Chola pretending; but I was that tired I fell asleep.

iii

I WOKE about three o'clock, feeling a bit surprised at finding myself still alive. I put out my foot hastily and kicked Desmond in the jaw, and that started trouble. He was crouched up. inside the door, waiting for Chola to come along, and he cursed me for five minutes for my clumsiness.

"Something'll happen to-day," he growled. "Did you forget the name I gave you?"

"Miss Birdie Williams," I murmured.

"And the address? "

"711 King Street, Woollahra," said I.

"Queen Street, you blockhead!" yelled Desmond, and he made me chant that address a dozen times before breakfast. In the spells he told me about Miss Birdie's beauty, and I was tired when the coffee came along.

The early part of the day went by quietly, and late in the afternoon Desmond let on that he was swinging into port with the body of Chola. I guessed that the half-caste had really slipped his cable, but Desmond thought otherwise.

"I know when a man is dead," he snarled; "but whether Chola is dead or alive, he is not putting me out any."

Just as we got under way, a fat Malay tripped over a windlass and went overboard, and Desmond and I forgot all about Chola for one short moment. We rushed the bows, because the Malay appeared to be stunned, and Desmond yelled out an order to the steersman.

Just then there was another yell that you could hear over at Cape York, and when I turned my head I saw the defunct Chola step up from the fo'cas'le- ladder onto the deck. That was the only squint I got of him. The whole of that crew, having seen the apparition that produced the yell, were looking for the nearest track to the water; and, as, we were in the way, Desmond and I got thumped with a black-and-yellow avalanche of arms and legs and bodies, and we went along with it.

When I came to the surface, the lugger was ripping down the straits, with Chola making faces at me from the wheel.

I cursed the Blush of Venus pretty heartily after I coughed up a gallon of warm salt water, and then I looked around. The black heads of the crew were bobbing near me, but there was no Desmond. I shouted and yelled, but nothing came of it. I began to think that Jack had got a whack on the head when going over, and had gone to the bottom. The crew seemed to think the same. Half a mile to leeward was a coal hulk with a Dutchman named Wagner aboard, and as night was slipping down from New Guinea like a black cloud, we steered for her as fast as we could paddle.

I was all in when the Dutchman pulled me aboard his dingey. He told me afterward that I kept on saying "Miss Birdie Williams, 711 Queen Street, Woollahra," when he was yanking me up. He had made a note of the address with a bit of chalk, thinking it was a friend who was to be told of my death if I failed to come round; but he rubbed it out pretty quick when I told him it concerned Desmond. Dutchy had no love for Desmond.

There was one other missing beside Jack, and that was a boy from Surabaya; but one of the divers said that he had seen him aboard after the dead Chola had taken charge, so it looked as if he were in league with the half-caste.

The fat Malay had been helped by a Jap in the swim across, and Wagner's hulk looked crowded. But the Dutchman was very hospitable. When I told him that Desmond had gone to the bottom, he walked to the side and spat savagely into the night.

"Not heem," he gurgled. "He is de debil! He will turn up. Gone to de bottom? Yah! I not pelief heem dead till I see heem tipped over de side mit sixty pounds of chain tied to his toes."

But I reckoned it was all up with Jack. We burned lights, and I sat up all night thinking of the Blush of Venus in the heel of the rubber boot and the girl at Woollahra that wouldn't wear the gem after all. When the sun came up over a clear ocean, I staggered below and turned in.

It was the Dutchman who woke me up. He poked me viciously in the ribs, and when I got my breath I called him names in every dialect of the archipelago.

"Come up on deck," he growled. "Did I not tarn well tell you so?"

I went up in a hurry when I saw the disgust on his face. When I got my head out of the hatch I saw the lugger coming toward us with Desmond at the wheel, and Chola and the boy reefing sails.

"He vos de debil," said Dutchy. when he got a chance between my cheers. "Some day he will die, but it will be from old age."

When I climbed aboard, Desmond explained things quietly.

"Chola didn't intend to stampede the mob," he said, laughing. "Well, that is what he says. He told me that he was in a trance, and he only found it out a few minutes before we got ourselves in such a good position for a bath. Me? Oh, I had luck. I caught the dingey-rope in falling over, and I kept my head under water till Chola had finished making faces at you and had wandered below to ransack my cabin. Then I climbed on deck, and put him into another little trance with the help of a boat-hook, so that he wouldn't forget the habit."

He handed the wheel to a Jap, and I followed him down to the cabin.

"Say," he growled, turning round on me. "What d'ye think that yellow devil was doing when I whacked him?"

I shook my head.

"He was overhauling the rubber boot that carried the pearl! That makes you stare, doesn't it? I took it off an hour before; but how did he know that I stuck it in there? What? I'm not frightened of Chola, but I am frightened of losing that pearl. I promised Miss Williams that I'd bring it to her, and she's going to get it."

He glared at me as if he was waiting for a contradiction, but I kept on nodding. It was good policy to nod when Desmond was laying down his own opinions.

"Look here!" he went on. "I'm not going to make a fuss about this business. The law moves slower than a sick turtle once you're north of Townsville, and I want to slip away. I'm going to turn the lugger over to Tom Hesketh when I get into port, and then I'm going to buck a steamer down to Sydney. The Blush is too valuable to keep in one's rags after this matter."

"I'm with you," I said.

The mile swim to the coal hulk had started my imagination into wondering what I'd have done if Chola had performed his resurrection stunt when no craft was within swimming distance.

iv

THAT AFTERNOON we pushed through the crowd of luggers and prahus into Port Kennedy: and we didn't go round babbling of our intentions. We fixed everything up with Hesketh, and then, at the last minute, we crept aboard a sandalwood steamer bound for Brisbane. It was raining like the mischief when we were feeling our way out; but when we woke next morning, we had cleared the Albany Pass, and were slithering down the coast at a fourteen-knot gait.

Desmond sat up in his berth, gave the Blush a suck, and then held it up to a sunbeam that came through the porthole. He wanted my opinion as to how Miss Birdie would wear it, and he had me pretty tired before the bugle blew for breakfast.

"Say! Won't she trim 'em when she slings it on her windpipe and sasshays round the Botanical Gardens and Lady Macquhrie's Chair on Sunday afternoons?" he said. "Why, she could get into Government House on the strength of that pearl."

Then he started wondering as to how it would suit her auburn hair, and he kept it up all the day while we were slipping down by the Great Barrier.

Next morning we got a little surprise. Desmond had been wearing his rubber boots on the evening before, but when he got up in the morning the boots were gone. He cursed a heap.

"Why, Chola must be aboard!" he yelled. "The yellow devil thought I would leave the pearl always in the heel!"

The locks on those coasting steamers are the kind that open when the ship gives a good roll, but we were puzzled as to how he got on our track. Des¬ mond went to the skipper after break¬ fast, and they started a hunt for stow¬ aways ; but the boat had a crew hatched in the tropics, and they didn't look too close after one of their own breed.

The captain suggested the purser's safe if Desmond had any valuables, but Jack reckoned he'd hold the Blush till he presented it to Birdie; and he swore if he couldn't hold it, that Chola was welcome to it. I didn't mind the half-caste getting the pearl, but I didn't want a knife stuck into my ribs in a mistake; so I slept rather light till we reached Moreton Bay.

Desmond had planned for a few busy hours in Brisbane. We hired a hansom and galloped out to Fortitude Valley at a breakneck pace; then we got out, dodged through side streets and back lanes, jumped cars, doubled on our tracks about seventeen times; then picked up another hansom and galloped back into town.

"We'll go aboard separately this time," said Desmond. " Don't go on till the last minute, and then watch the gangway. There are two boats going at six o'clock— the Coonanbarra and the City of Melbourne. Take the first, and I'll see you on board."

The Blush had my nerves upset. I waited in the back parlor of a public-, house opposite the wharf, and when the last bell went I rushed across and climbed up the plank as they were pulling it in. Desmond was hauled up over the side, and when he got his breath he reckoned we had given Chola the slip.

"He's a wise one if he's on our tracks now," he said, feeling his knee where he had skinned it climbing aboard. "The City of Melbourne pulled out from her wharf at the same moment as we left; besides, he had no idea we were going farther south."

I hoped that we had lost him, but I was a little anxious. Desmond took no chances. He slept little while we were going down the coast, and the more he kept awake the more I heard about Birdie. He wasn't engaged to her at all. He had just met her at a friend's house, and had promised to send her the biggest pearl he could find. That was Desmond's way.

"And I try to keep my word," he would say, sucking the Blush till its heart used to grow red as if it warmed beneath his breath. "This is surely the biggest pearl that has ever been located."

When we picked up South Head Light, on the third morning, I gave a sigh of relief. We would be at Circular Quay in four hours, I thought, and my nerves would have a rest.

Desmond was giving me Birdie at the rate of thirty knots an hour as we swung in through the Heads; and when a fellow pointed out a school of sharks, I walked over to the rail to dodge Jack's tongue.

"Nice customers," he said, as he followed me over and stood looking at the fins cutting through the red water like so many plowshares. "I wouldn't like to play a game of hide-and-seek with that brigade."

The plowing squadron got on my nerves, and I turned to go below to pack my valise, when a figure passed me with a bound, stopped for a moment by Desmond's side, and then sprang over the side with Jack's leather belt gripped in a lean, yellow hand!

It was Chola! He had cut Desmond's belt with the point of a knife, and before we had recovered from our astonishment, he was breasting the waters of Port Jackson.

I didn't know where the Blush of Venus was secreted on the particular morning, but I formed a good idea the moment the half-caste hit the water. Desmond let out a yell of fury, and then, without stopping a moment to consider the danger, he sprang onto the rail and dived after the thief!

I don't want to see anything like that again. Of course, Chola hadn't seen that batch of gray nurses that were swimming near us, but Desmond had. I said he had no imagination. Some one signaled the bridge, and we lowered a boat in record time, while a storm of life-buoys were thrown into the water. But those two were not looking for lifebuoys. Chola was making for Middle Head, about half a mile away, where he had a good chance, of getting into the bush, and Desmond was after him full speed.

v

IT MADE my blood run cold to see those four fins plowing round directly in the track that Chola was taking. We screamed and yelled out warnings, but I knew Desmond. He wouldn't turn for a thousand sharks. And that four kept circling round and round as if they were sentinels waiting for the half-caste to come into the territory they were guarding!

Chola put on a spurt, and then he eased down; and, raising himself for a moment out of the water, he looked to see how far he was from the shore. Then he saw the patrol! He gave a scream, and, swinging round, started to swim back toward Desmond, while the fellows in the boat drove it toward the two.

But Desmond kept straight ahead. He had started out after Chola, and there was nothing swimming in that harbor that would turn him back. The two came closer together, and then we saw the black fins disappear as Desmond stretched out his arm and gripped the terrified half-caste.

I don't want another sight of that little whirl of hell-foam that came round the two of them at that moment. I saw that once before, when a bull-nose grabbed a kanaka at Wollongong breakwater.

Chola threw up his arms and sank, while Desmond turned and swam to the boat that was now only a few yards away. No wonder Dutchy Wagner said he had the devil's luck.

Desmond was clutching the belt when we hauled him on deck. After he got his breath, he turned to me and laughed.

"I beat him, after all," he said; then he put his fingers in the pouch where the pearl was packed in cotton-wool.

He fumbled for a moment, then he looked round helplessly and rolled over on the deck in a swoon. The pouch was empty! Chola had taken out the pearl while swimming, and now the Blush of Venus is lying somewhere inside Sydney Heads, under the big guns of the fort.

I didn't see Desmond for a week after we reached Sydney; then I met him.

"That little mishap was not so bad as it looked, after all." he said. "Miss Williams married a Riverina wool king while I was up north, and now she is on her way to London, where she can buy all the gems she wants. He's a millionaire."

I thought it cool of Desmond. " What are you going to do now?" I asked.

"I'm going up to this new goldfield at Wyalong," he said.

He went, too; and four weeks afterward I read that Mr. Jack Desmond had struck a marvelously rich reef, and was then negotiating with a company that offered him one hundred thousand pounds for the claim. The Dutchman was right about his luck.

_____________________

19: The Kafir's Skull

James Francis Dwyer

The Cavalier Jan 1909

IT was but yesterday Elsie asked me why I had never written the story of the great Brandon diamond— or, at least, that part of its history with which we are acquainted— and I am now making an attempt to carry out her wish.

It was on the afternoon of January 18, 1906, that I turned into an auction- room in Tottenham Court Road, London, and became mildly interested in a sale of unclaimed baggage sent to the rooms by the Great Northeastern Railway Company. Such a sale easily stirs one's imagination. There is a mystery connected with every box and portmanteau put under the hammer of the auctioneer, and the mind of the thinking onlooker, in endeavoring to account for the negligence of the owners in not making thorough search for their property, hints at possible happenings that thrill one to contemplate. I have always thought that unclaimed baggage should be overhauled by detectives before being submitted at auction, and if such a course was followed I think that the fate of many a missing traveler might be solved. There must be strong reasons why valuable personal effects are unclaimed, yet the law neglects this opportunity of solving mysteries, and allows the baggage to be sold to dealers in old clothes, who pay little attention to papers found within the packages.

The auctioneer on this particular afternoon was a large, good-humored man, and he endeavored to encourage speculation by hinting at possible wealth within the packages offered for sale.

"Nothing has been examined, gentlemen," he cried, as he tapped a locked tin hat-box with his ivory mallet. "Nothing has been touched. Now, what would any one think was in this box? Eh? Not potatoes! Not bloaters! No, my friends. It sounds as if it was stuffed with Bank of England notes! It sounds—"

"Five shillings!" screamed a black-bearded man, angrily interrupting the discourse of the auctioneer. "I bid five shillings."

The bulky auctioneer looked surprised. He studied the face of the impatient bidder for the space of a minute, and then started to bait him for the amusement of the crowd.

"Five shillings?" he asked contemptuously. "Oh, you are a funny fellow. You want to get a box stuffed with bank-notes for five shillings. You are a humorist. Don't you think you could spare a little more— just a little more?"

The crowd laughed. The bid was a fair one, but the poorest quality of auctioneer's humor always provokes a smile.

"Just a little more!" whined the man with the mallet. "Just a little more for the box stuffed with bank-notes!"

All eyes were turned on the black-bearded man, and he fidgeted nervously. He looked wildly round the room, stared at the dirty ceiling, and then he did a peculiar thing. He raised his own bid.

"Seven and six!" he cried.

I don't know if the others in that room were affected in the same manner; although, when I consider their subsequent actions, I am certain that they were; but to me came a peculiar indefinable feeling. I cannot describe it. It seemed as if the cold, raw air blowing through the room had suddenly been replaced with a warm, soul-stirring atmosphere from some far-away spot, and I thrilled again. The others must have felt it— it stirred the room. Men shuffled forward and craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the man and the tin hat-box, and the auctioneer stared as if dumfounded at the result of his own wheedling tactics.

A voice with a Whitechapel accent, that cut the air like a razor-blade, broke the strange little silence that followed the second bid, and challenged it by yelling out: "Arf a sov're'n!"

"Twelve an' six!" shrieked another.

"Fifteen!" screamed the black-bearded man.

The battle for the hat-box had started. Men moved forward and bid excitedly.

"Seventeen an' a arf!" cried the Whitechapel man.

"A pound!" yelled another.

"Twenty-five!"

The auctioneer was delighted. The manner in which the bidders struggled forward brought great smile-furrows on his round face.

"Stuffed with notes!" he roared, and again he thumped 4he box with his mallet.

"Twenty-seven an' six!" screamed the black-bearded man.

"Thirty!"

"Thirty-five!"

"Two pounds!"

"Guineas!"

The bidding was remarkable, unprecedented. The boxes previously auctioned sold for sums ranging between seven and fifteen shillings; yet this battered hat-box, because of the peculiar actions of a nervous speculator who foolishly exhibited a mad desire to obtain possession of it, had been rushed up to two guineas without any bid-hunting efforts on the part of the auctioneer. Men like myself, who had strolled in to pass an idle hour— with no intention of taking part in the sale—pushed forward eagerly, and stared at the box as if they could pierce its tin sides and see the contents. Bidders whispered to each other, and the dirty auction-room became a place of mystery.

And yet, not one of the bidders competing against the black - bearded man had the slightest knowledge of the contents of the box. They bid because they saw that he was consumed with nervous horror lest the box should be lost to him; and his claw-like hands, raised imploringly to the auctioneer as he shrieked his bids, stirred competition.

"Two guineas," mumbled the auctioneer. "Two guineas I'm bid for this treasure-box! Two—"

"Forty-five!" shrieked the man from Whitechapel.

"Fifty!"

"Fifty-five shillings!"

"Three pounds!"

Nerves were at a tension. I edged up closer to the black-bearded man and noticed that his yellow face was bathed in perspiration, while waves of agony flitted across his features. His thin lips moved in silent prayer, but the prayers were changed to muttered curses whenever a challenging bid echoed through the room. There was no deception about his actions. I put from my mind all the common tricks of the salesroom tout. The horrible lust for possession that was visible on his face sickened me. He had lost all control of himself, and the opposition of the others stirred a murderous hate that was apparent in every glance he bestowed upon a competitor. But there was no trace of insanity. The man had a keen, cruel face, and his deep-set'eyes twinkled far back in their skull caverns, as if trying to escape the fantoms of a past.

By half-crown rises the bid for the box reached four pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence, that being the offer of the black-bearded man, and for a minute his competitors were mute. The next bid would take it to five pounds, and five pounds appeared a large amount of money to pay for a battered box.

"Four seventeen six," murmured the auctioneer. "Four seventeen six, I'm offered. The box stuffed with Bank of England notes going for four pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence! Going for four seventeen six! First, second, third, and—"

"Five pounds!" I gasped.

For the space of ten seconds I was doubtful if it was my voice that had interrupted the auctioneer; then I knew that I had spoken. In the instant before I had made my bid, I had noticed that the palms of the black-bearded man's hands were covered with blood where he had, in his intense excitement, driven his nails into the flesh, and my bid had leaped from me so suddenly that my brain was doubtful if it had authorized the words that my ears had checked.

"Guineas!" yelled "Blackbeard," glaring at me viciously.

"Five and a half!" I stammered, the blood pounding through my head as I noted the hate on his face. We had the field to ourselves. The others had dropped out, and all eyes were turned upon us.

"Five fifteen!" screamed my competitor.

"Six," I mumbled.

The auctioneer beat upon the box till the room echoed.

"Six pounds!" he cried. "Only six pounds offered for the treasury-chest! Any advance?"

Blackbeard raised himself on his toes, as if fighting for his breath. Fear seemed to be choking the very life out of him.

"Seven pounds!" he yelled. "I bid seven pounds!"

I was insane at that moment. "Guineas!" I added.

A gurgle of horror came from my opponent. He turned upon me savagely, as if he contemplated an attack; then he rushed forward and whispered excitedly to the auctioneer. I guessed that he had come to the end of his tether.

"No, no, no!" cried the auctioneer, shaking his round head in answer to the other's question. "This is a cash sale, my friend, and you must show the yellow coin to get the goods."

"Seven guineas!" I repeated.

"Seven guineas!" echoed the auctioneer. "Seven guineas offered for the wonderful treasure-chest! Only seven guineas offered! Going at seven guineas! First, second, third, and last time! Going at seven guineas! Going, going, gone!"

I was the owner of the mysterious box.

ii

AFTER I had paid the clerk, I looked round the dirty room in search of the black-bearded man; but he was nowhere to be seen. It was evident that the hat- box of all the articles to be offered was the only one that interested him.

As no goods were delivered till the sale was over, I had to wait some two hours for my precious purchase, which remained in full view meanwhile. On account of this delay, it was after five o'clock when I crossed from Tottenham Court Road into Oxford Street, and, after making a small purchase at a druggist's, took the Tube to Shepherd's Bush.

During the ride I pondered over my investment. Seven pounds was a large sum of money for me to speculate at that time, and the suggestions that imagination put forward to account for the actions of the excited bidder brought me little consolation. My cautious mind hinted that old papers and mementoes— valueless to me — might have induced the reckless bidding of the other; and, in consequence, I was not in a particularly exuberant state of mind when I reached the Uxbridge Road Station and alighted.

Walking slowly to the elevators that take the passengers to the street, I was shut out of the second one, and with a quartet of feeble old men I ascended to the little side passage leading out upon the road near the small park. The fog that hung over the city all the day had now thickened. The voices of the newsboys and bus conductors at the end of the passage sounded eerily through the heaving sea of vapor, and the electric lights appeared like sputtering candles behind panes of frosted glass.

I had made but two or three steps from the door of the station building when I discovered that my boot-lace had become untied, and I stooped quickly with the intention of fastening it before walking out on the crowded pavement. The movement was providential. As I bent my head forward, a fist, moving swiftly in what is termed in pugilistic parlance a round-arm swing, grazed the back of my neck instead of landing squarely on my jaw, as the person who aimed it evidently intended. The impetus caused by missing the point aimed at made the striker carom heavily against me, and next instant we were rolling in the mud. I clung tenaciously to the hat-box, and yelled loudly as my antagonist tried to wrench it from my grip.

I could not see the face of the thug, as I was momentarily blinded by the upward sweep of his coat-sleeve; but as I struggled and yelled, the look of hate that came upon the face of the man in the auction-room when I made the first bid flashed through my mind. The awful blanket of thick vapor choked my cries, and the half minute that we struggled in the mud seemed an eternity. At last there was a rush of feet in the passageway, and, half unconscious, I was dragged to my feet. But the footpad had fled. Staggering blindly, but still gripping the precious box. I allowed myself to be led to the street: and as there were no police present, and I had no wish to make my doings public, I climbed into a cab that waited at the corner. Fear lest my assailant might be then within hearing distance prompted me to give a wrong address to the driver: and I urged him to drive quickly, as the crowd around the vehicle increased.

iii

THE CAB dashed up Richmond Road into Addison Gardens, and then along Dunsany Road to Brook Green, where I countermanded the order given at the Tube Station, and ordered the driver to take me back to my lodgings in Sinclair Road. I dismounted from the vehicle a block away from my apartments, and then dashed quickly through the fog bank to my rooms, feeling perfectly satisfied that I had outwitted the thug, even if he had hung round the outskirts of the crowd in an endeavor to hear the address I gave to the driver.

After locking the door, I lit the gas, and with a broken chisel I wrenched oft' the lock of the box, my heart pounding wildly as I did so.

What had I given seven pounds for? I asked myself again and again as I struggled with the hasp. What could the box contain to induce a man to risk seven years' imprisonment by attacking me in an open thoroughfare? I thought over the oft - repeated assertion of the auctioneer when he spoke about it being stuffed with bank-notes, and with a stupid smile at my own folly I lifted the lid.

The box appeared to be filled with coarse cloth, similar to that used for bed-ticking. It bulged up as the opening of the lid relieved the pressure, and kneeling on the floor. I picked up a loose end of the cloth and pulled it slowly.

It was then that I became cognizant of the fact that something was concealed in its multitudinous folds. Carefully I unwound yard after yard of the thick cloth, my excitement increasing as the ball remaining in the box became smaller and smaller.

Imagination suggested a thousand things that might be concealed within the package, and delicious thrills raced through my body. Still unwinding, 1 lifted up the bundle, and holding it in my left hand, I stripped away the cloth with nervous fingers, my whole form quivering with the desire to see what the peculiar bundle concealed. Suddenly the cloth ended, and I gave a little cry at sight of the object left in my hand.

It was a human skull.

I sat down and looked at the thing, then burst into a wild fit of laughter. I had paid seven pounds and received a severe mauling to become the possessor of a weather-worn skull that looked as if it had been bleaching in the open for centuries. It was decidedly humorous. Even the skull, which I perched on the pile of cloth that had wrapped it round, seemed to see the humor of the situation and grinned in company.

But why had the black-bearded man evinced such a mad desire to possess the thing? This question I put to my overwrought mind a score of times. Why had lie bid so determinedly to acquire the worthless memento? Why hadn't he acquainted me with the contents if he was aware of them; or, better still, given me his name and address in case I wished to dispose of the relic after satisfying my curiosity?

I was attempting to evolve a rational excuse for his action, when a knock came at the door, and Macklin's deep bass voice asked admittance.

Macklin was a medical student, who lived on the floor above, and I rushed to the door and dragged him in.

"Hallo!" he cried, as he saw the skull on the pyramid of ticking, "have you been interviewing a client?"

I might explain Macklin's remark by stating that I was a beginner at the law when the incident happened.

"No," I answered, "but I have an idea that the fellow who owned this skull had a grudge against the fraternity. It cost me a bruised lip, torn trousers, and seven pounds in cash to obtain possession of it."

Macklin whistled. "Caesar!" he murmured, glancing at my muddied clothes. "It's an expensive specimen. Did you steal it out of the British Museum?"

I laughed stupidly, and, pushing forward a chair, I told him the story.

"I suppose it's the skull of some relative of his," I added, as I finished the account of my roundabout ride from Uxbridge Road Station.

Macklin picked up the purchase and examined it carefully— upon his face that wise look which the budding medico imagines makes up for inexperience. He prattled learnedly about the formation of the skull, and gave it as his opinion that the original dweller within was a person of low intelligence, on the same grade as an Australian aborigine or African black.

"But he's not worth seven pounds," I said wearily.

"Not quite," laughed Macklin. "You've been—" . He stopped sudden- ' ly and dashed across to the light.

I followed him.

Across the frontal bone was written an address in lead-pencil, and we deciphered it with difficulty. It read:

Miss Elsie Brandon,

21 Ryewood Place,

Manchester, Eng.

Near the address were the initials "J. B." and the words, "Kimberley, South Africa."

We stood looking at each other for a few minutes; then I reached forward, and took a railroad guide from my desk. I was going to get to the bottom of the mystery.

"Where are you going?" queried Macklin, as I turned over the pages.

"To Manchester," I answered. "There was something about that black-bearded man I can't explain; and if Miss Brandon can say a word or two about this skull, it will ease my mind greatly."

"Why not go to-night?" he laughed, the slightest suggestion of a sneer in his voice.

"I will," I retorted, and springing up,

I pushed the skull into a valise; and five minutes afterward I was on my way to the station.

iv

THERE is no necessity to tell of my wearying search through Manchester for Elsie Brandon; but late in the afternoon of the day I arrived I found her, serving as waitress at the Queen's Hotel. I asked for a few moments' private conversation, and before speaking of the skull I inquired if she knew any one ill Kimberley with the initials "J. B."

The little girl broke down and sobbed bitterly, and bit by bit I managed to extract her story. Her father, John Brandon, who had been in South Africa for many years, had written to her ten months before, stating that he was returning home. Although the girl had proof that he left Capetown by the Cairngorm Castle, and left that vessel at Tilbury Docks, all her efforts to trace him had proved fruitless, and she had come to look upon him as dead.

Without questioning my object in making inquiries, she handed me the last letter she had received from her parent before he started on his way home, and I scanned it quickly. The first sentence on the second page caught my eye, and with throbbing heart I read:

I am followed by a man named Healy, who is aware of the contents of the packet, and for this reason I am packing it inside a Kafir's skull and trusting it with my luggage rather than carry it upon my person.

I read no farther. I flung the letter down, and hurriedly opening my valise, I placed the skull upon the table. The girl's eyes opened wide as she gazed upon it, and with a cry she clutched my arm and asked me to tell her what I knew.

I told my story before we investigated the skull, and from it we then drew a little package that had been gummed securely to the inside.

In that package we found the great Brandon diamond— the stone that afterward startled the experts of Hatton Garden and created much spirited competition among buyers till it passed into the hands of Prince George Frederick of Helentz-Murstein.

The whole affair lay before us. Brandon's fate was plain, but Brandon's murderer had missed the gem which actuated the crime. The stone, in its curious resting-place, had evidently been left at the luggage-office of the Great Northeastern some time before the murderer had attacked his victim; and the failure to discover the gem upon Brandon's person had led him to suspect that it was concealed in his luggage. Bv weariless watching he had discovered when the unclaimed property of that date would be put up at auction: but here again his mad desire to possess the box that he knew was Brandon's had upset his scheme when he rushed the price up beyond his means. It was a peculiar case of retributive justice.

With the marks of the murderous attack still upon my person, I advised the girl to seek her friends, lest the thug might then be on my trail; and finding that her only living relative resided in Chelsea, I persuaded her to pack hastily and leave with me that very evening.

We reached London a few minutes before midnight, and after leaving Elsie Brandon with an aunt in Vine Grove, I drove toward Sinclair Road. The night was wonderfully bright; and as the cab turned down from the Olympia, a man dashed madly up the street with a policeman and half a dozen civilians in pursuit. As the pursued one passed my cab, the policeman raised his revolver and fired. The man staggered forward and fell upon the snow.

The cab-driver turned his horse round in response to my call, and when I sprang out of the vehicle I collided heavily with Macklin.

"By Jove!" he cried, as he picked himself up, "you're back just in time to identify stolen property. That beggar was trying to get away with the tin box that you brought your skull home in."

Through the little knot of people we shouldered a passage, and leaning over the policeman who had turned the dying man on his back, I saw again the haggard face of the man who had bid against me in the auction-room. His run of bad luck had carried him to the grave.

The Kafir's skull now ornaments my study, and Elsie has a whimsical habit of curtsying good night to the thing when she comes in to tell me that it is bedtime.

"It brought me luck and you," she murmurs if I expostulate.

When I look into the bright eyes of John Brandon's daughter, I also am inclined to salute the skull.

She is a treasure, worth more than all the diamonds ever discovered in the gray land south of the line.

End

Table of Contents

- 1: The Servicetown Mystery / Harold Mercer

- 2: The Little Green Devils / James Francis Dwyer

- 3: Wolfmaster / Bertram Atkey
- 4: Cat Luck / Jeffery Farnol
- 5: Pug-Face's Daughter / Gilbert Frankau
- 6: Cambric Tea / Marjorie Bowen

- 7: About the Perfect Crime of Mr. Digberry / Anthony Abbot

- 8: Keeping Killick Killed / Harold Mercer

- 9: The Statue Stealers / Bertram Atkey

- 10: The Call of the Wildwater / Bertram Atkey

- 11: Ghosts at Stoneylands / Bertram Atkey
- 12: Flies on the Ceiling / Eugene A. Clancy
- 13: Six Heads on a String / Mark Harper

- 14: The Case of the Drugged Golfers / Bertram Atkey

- 15: Mustard Pot— Mountebank / Gilbert Frankau

- 16: The White Line / John Ferguson

- 17: Not Much to Look At / Jeffrey Farnol

- 18: The Blush of Venus / James Francis Dwyer

- 19: The Kafir's Skull / James Francis Dwyer