PAST MASTERS 114

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.

29 January 2023

Contents

1: Those Dissipated Cows / Ernest Favenc

2: The Citizen / James Francis Dwyer

3: The Giant Wistaria / Charlotte Perkins Gilman

4: The Man With Nine Lives / Hugh C. Weir

5: You Can't Explain These Things / Albert Richard Wetjen

6: The Fortunes of War / Albert Richard Wetjen

7: The Man in the Moon / Homer Eon Flint

8: Dice, Brassknuckles & Guitar / F. Scott Fitzgerald

9: The Red Bungalow / Bithia Mary Croker

10: Little Liz / B. L. Farjeon

11: Ace, Deuce, Ten Spot, Joker / Irvin S Cobb

12: Pell Street Blues / Achmed Abdullah

13:  The Old Lady with the Two Umbrellas / Stacy Aumonier

14: My Friend the Murderer / Arthur Conan Doyle

15: The Man in the Inverness Cape / Baroness Orczy

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1: Those Dissipated Cows

Ernest Favenc

1845-1908

Evening News (Sydney) 12 Sep 1896

'DID I ever tell you about Mrs. Birrell and her milkers?' asked Jim one evening, when the mosquitos were especially annoying.

'No; another flame of yours?'

'Flame be hanged! She was old enough to be my grandmother. Birrell and his wife had a farm up north, in the sugar country. Both of 'em were a bit ratty. He nad a notion of matching plaid match boxes, making the top and bottom Join evenly according to the pattern. Did you ever try it! Yes, of course you have, and never succeeded, no more did anybody. Well, when old Birrell had wasted two years at this game he went off his chump, and insisted that people's heads didn't fit their bodies and wanted to screw 'em round till they did; so they had to send him to the asylum, and the store keeper of that part said it was an outrage on the liberty of the subject. When he was in his cups he let out that old Birrell used to buy his matches from him by the gross, and as he never wanted to strike any, the storekeeper bought worthless stock, so when Birrell went into retirement the storekeeper lost a little income. Old Mrs. Birrell's fad was temperance— rabid teetotalism— and when the old man went away she had the land they had planted with cane ploughed up and put under grass and lucerne, because rum was made from cane juice.'

'She was more consistent than the big brewers, at any rate,' I said.

'Oh the old woman was quite honest, but her cows— and a very nice milking herd they had— did not approve of the change, because they had got used to eating the trash, and when cattle take to that it's just like opium with a man. So when they found their supply stopped they just knocked the slip rails down, and went out and joined the other vagrant cows who picked up a living on the road. When the carts came by with cane going to the mill they used to follow them up and help themselves from the tail. This went on for some time, and the old cows began to fancy this vagabond kind of existence, and forgot to come home early, and got regular rakish-looking. One afternoon Mrs. Birrell was driving home, when she came across some cows, and she thought she was dreaming. There was one of her best-behaved milkers, 'Mother Hubbard,' fighting a pitched battle with a low little rat of a cow, with a white back and liver-colored sides. Mother Hubbard charged her adversary into a wire fence, and bent down two panels of it; then she commenced to cavort round and trumpet. The old woman had just got over the horror of this, when she saw another of her pets with a damaged eye and other signs of bad behavior. The old woman was plucked. She got down and drafted those erring cattle out of the others on foot with the buggy whip. Then she started them on ahead of her and drove after them till they came to the slip rails.  She turned them in, put the rails up, and went smack off into a faint.

'I had my team there at the time breaking up the ground for 'em. There was a fellow there milking and doing odd jobs for the Birrells. He was a broken-down swell, and he used to come out and give me a hand at times— said he found my conversation interesting when I wasn't too digressive. Well, as luck would have it, we were close by, and got her round and helped her to the house.

' "O Jim!" she said; "isn't it an awful thing those animals going out of their nature to abuse the gifts of God. I assure you, Parkes, that I found those cows in the road reeling drunk and fighting with disreputable cattle from the township."

'I tried to cheer her up, told her that they were only a bit lively after a feed of cane which they'd been used to; and the 'Wreck' he pitched a lot of yarns about elephants always getting an allowance of toddy when they were working. But she was very miserable over the falling away of her cows, and told the Wreck to go and make new pegs for the rails and wedge them in tight. That afternoon she sent the Wreck into the township with a message to the storekeeper, and he came back with about twenty yards, more or less, of blue ribbon. This she ornamented the cows with when they were brought up in the evening, and after telling them to be good and ehe would forgive them, they were turned out. But you can't lick a knowing old milker for getting slip rails down, and the next morning the Wreck had to go down the road ever so far for them, and sort them out of their dissolute companions. This was most unfortunate, for he met a friend, and they had several rums together, so the Wreck came back with the cows rather owly. Worse still, the friend gave him a bottle of white rum, and he brought that back inside his shirt. Then he sat down to milk. He got on very well with Mother Hubbard and another cow, and then, as he told me afterwards, he began to thfnir of his mis-spent past, and it preyed on his mind to such an extent that he felt he must have another nip to bear up against the painful memory. He took out the bottle and had a tidy swig. Then a brilliant idea awoke in his besotted brain, and he emptied the contents of the bottle into the half bucket of milk he had between his knees. Now just as luck would have it, I came up at that time with a pannikin to get some milk for my breakfast, and he hadn't time to bide the bottle.

' "Shim," he said, "milk's got satronary taste, this mornin', shust you try it o' feller."

'I tried a pannikin of.it, and real good it was. I had just finished, when Mrs. Birrell came in to the yard, and wanted to know how the cows were that morning.

' "Found 'em milesh away," said the Wreck. "Shee here, empty bottle with them;" and he held up the dead marine.

'Mrs. Birrell looked hard at him; then at me.

' "Milk has got a queer taste this morning, Mrs. Birrell," I said.

' "Let me taste it."

'I dipped out half a pannikin full, and she sipped and sipped until it was gone.

' "It has a strange taste," she said. "And oh my! there's all their ribbons gone and twisted and mucked up. Isn't it shocking when even the beasts of the field are led astray by the accursed thing!"

'The Wreck took advantage of the opportunity to take another pannikin of the milk, to make sure of the queer taste. He handed me the pannikin, and I had another lot, as it was a pity to see it wasted. The Wreck supported himself against the calf-pen, and remarked, "Allshrunkashkloee;" then he slid down in a sitting position, with his legs like the letter V, and went to sleep. He meant to say "All drunk as Chloe," meaning the cows, but the will was better than the deed. Mrs. Birrell had a little more of the milk. Then she began to cry; said she was worse off than a widow, and that her own cows went back on. her and got shamelessly intoxicated, and would I help her indoors. I took the old dame in, got another bucket, and finished milking. I put what was left in the first bucket safely away, as I thought, but while I was busy, blest if one of the calves didn't nose it out, put his head in tbe bucket, and drank every blooming, drop. In about ten minutes he was as drunk as a fiddler, and commenced playing up old top ropes.

'There was a nice situation for a temperance household! The Wreck asleep in the calf-pen, Mrs. Birrell camped indoors, and a drunken bull calf in charge of the paddock. Just then the parson rode up, for it was getting late.

' "Good morning, Parkes. Is Mrs. Birrell in?" he asked, getting off bis. horse. I. was just saying that she was a little unwell, when that intoxicated calf took offence at the minister's horse. He gave two or three prances and a bellow, then prodded the poor innocent nag fair in the ribs. Away he went down the paddock, stepping on his bridle until he broke it. The calf kicked up his heels and took after Jiim, and all the others, as they will do, did the same. The rails were down, for the Wreck had been too muzzy to put them up, and into the road and away out of sight went the whole crew, leaving the parson and me with our mouths open like codfish. The parson said, that be would go in and see Mrs. Birrell, and I let him go, for I wanted to have my laugh out.

'Fortunately, the parson had been too much occupied with tbe loss of bis horse to notice the Wreck, and when I went in with the milk I found Mrs. Birrell telling him all her troubles, and asking him to pray for the misguided cows. The parson went away on foot, quite mixed up, and it was soon all over the place that there had been a nigh old spree at Birrell's farm, and the parson had fallen off his horse, and all the rest of it. The Wreck made it worse, for he endorsed every word that was said, and a lot more; in fact, he managed to keep drunk for a week on the strength of his yarns.

'It was some weeks before things got straight, and the cows broken in to staying properly at home. Mrs. Birrell fired the Wreck, and got a girl in to milk and then the cows made trouble again, they were a misguided lot.

'I thought a girl was coming in,' I remarked. O! This had nothing to do with me, but she was a study was that girl. She told me that she liked milking because it was such a romantic occupation, and did I think there was any harm in changing one's name? I told her I believed there was no law against it, - so  she confided to me that she thought her own name horrid— it was plain Eliza Thomas. She'd seen a name in the "Answers to Correspondents" in a paper. "Daisy Dimple." Didn t I think that would do lovely? I said it would, but that people might make fun of it, and call her "Pimple."

'After that she didn't confide in me.

After Eliza had been there some time, a travelling photographer came round. He wanted to take some views of the farm, so I gave him the wrinkle to propose the cows, who were in favor again now, and Mrs. Birrell dropped to it, and ordered one of Mother Hubbard and another cow. Eliza got hold of that photographer, and he promised he would take the cows in the morning, when, they were being milked. Sure enough, when I was yoking, up the bullocks in the next yard, I saw a sight that nearly made me scream. How the deuce the girl had managed it I don't know, but there she was tricked out in a sort of Dolly Varden dress, with a little wooden bucket, and a threelegged stool all complete. She posed herself alongside the cow, and looked as killing and saucy as she could. Mrs. Birrell was not well, and didn't turn up, so it all came off smoothly, and the photo-man was very complimentary, and in a day or two he came back with proofs.

'Now poor Mrs. Birrell's eyes were getting weak, and the photos were pretty smeary, and when she looked at 'em she could make out nothing but a cow's head and tall, and a petticoat. Lord! the poor old woman went on worse than ever. She said the devil had surely got into those cows for her sins, and that they were sending her in sorrow to her grave. They had given up drink and taken to fine dress, and were a lot of painted Jezebels. Eliza, however, was quite charmed, and took some of the copies, but Mrs. Birrell wouldn't have any, or pay for any. This made the photographer wild, and he printed a lot, and sold them in the township as a portrait of Mrs. Birrell and her cows. Everybody thought that the old woman must be as mad as her husband, and the parson came and lectured her on the vanity of it, and the sin of dressing herself up as a girl at her time of life, when she ought to be thinking of the next world, and so on. This so upset the old woman that she took to her bed.

'Eliza heard the yarn, and she was so put out at being mistaken for Mrs. Birrell that she gave notice straight away, and married the Wreck, who had just had a remittance sent out to pay his passage home, and was busy drinking it. Yes, those cows had a kind of bad luck about them. That bull calf that got drunk, he chewed up a waistcoat of mine, leastways part of it. The Wreck was there at the time I'd laid it down, and he was arguing with me, and my back was turned. I got the best of him, and he was spiteful.

' "You'd best get your waistcoat back, anyhow what's left of it," he said, and walked away. I looked round, and there was that calf chewing away, as though he was bound to get it finished in record time, and had a bet on. There was a £5-note in the pocket, and he'd mashed it all into pulp, and though I belted his ribs with a yoke, the bank wouldn't recognise it. No, there never was no luck about those cows, somehow.'

________________

2: The Citizen

James Francis Dwyer

1874-1952

Collier’s 20 Nov 1915

THE PRESIDENT of the United States was speaking. His audience comprised two thousand foreign-born men who had just been admitted to citizenship. They listened intently, their faces, aglow with the light of a new-born patriotism, upturned to the calm, intellectual face of the first citizen of the country they now claimed as their own.

Here and there among the newly made citizens were wives and children. The women were proud of their men. They looked at them from time to time, their faces showing pride and awe.

One little woman, sitting immediately in front of the President, held the hand of a big, muscular man and stroked it softly. The big man was looking at the speaker with great blue eyes that were the eyes of a dreamer.

The President's words came clear and distinct:

You were drawn across the ocean by some beckoning finger of hope, by some belief, by some vision of a new kind of justice, by some expectation of a better kind of life. You dreamed dreams of this country, and I hope you brought the dreams with you. A man enriches the country to which he brings dreams, and you who have brought them have enriched America.

The big man made a curious choking noise and his wife breathed a soft "Hush!" The giant was strangely affected.

The President continued:

No doubt you have been disappointed in some of us, but remember this, if we have grown at all poor in the ideal, you brought some of it with you. A man does not go out to seek the thing that is not in him. A man does not hope for the thing that he does not believe in, and if some of us have forgotten what America believed in, you at any rate imported in your own hearts a renewal of the belief. Each of you, I am sure, brought a dream, a glorious, shining dream, a dream worth more than gold or silver, and that is the reason that I, for one, make you welcome.

The big man's eyes were fixed. His wife shook him gently, but he did not heed her. He was looking through the presidential rostrum, through the big buildings behind it, looking out over leagues of space to a snow-swept village that huddled on an island in the Beresina, the swift-flowing tributary of the mighty Dnieper, an island that looked like a black bone stuck tight in the maw of the stream.

It was in the little village on the Beresina that the Dream came to Ivan Berloff, Big Ivan of the Bridge.

The Dream came in the spring. All great dreams come in the spring, and the Spring Maiden who brought Big Ivan's Dream was more than ordinarily beautiful. She swept up the Beresina, trailing wondrous draperies of vivid green. Her feet touched the snow-hardened ground and armies of little white and blue flowers sprang up in her footsteps. Soft breezes escorted her, velvety breezes that carried the aromas of the far-off places from which they came, places far to the southward, like Kremenchug and Kerch, and more distant towns beyond the Black Sea whose people were not under the sway of the Great Czar.

The father of Big Ivan, who had fought under Prince Menshikov at Alma fifty-five years before, hobbled out to see the sunbeams eat up the snow hummocks that hid in the shady places, and he told his son it was the most wonderful spring he had ever seen.

"The little breezes are hot and sweet," he said, sniffing hungrily with his face turned toward the south. "I know them, Ivan! I know them! They have the spice odor that I sniffed on the winds that came to us when we lay in the trenches at Balaklava. Praise God for the warmth!"

And that day the Dream came to Big Ivan as he plowed. It was a wonder dream. It sprang into his brain as he walked behind the plow, and for a few minutes he quivered as the big bridge quivers when the Beresina sends her ice squadrons to hammer the arches. It made his heart pound mightily, and his lips and throat became very dry.

Big Ivan stopped at the end of the furrow and tried to discover what had brought the Dream. Where had it come from? Why had it clutched him so suddenly? Was he the only man in the village to whom it had come?

Like his father, he sniffed the sweet-smelling breezes. He thrust his great hands into the sunbeams. He reached down and plucked one of a bunch of white flowers that had sprung up overnight. The Dream was born of the breezes and the sunshine and the spring flowers. It came from them and it had sprung into his mind because he was young and strong. He knew! It couldn't come to his father or Donkov, the tailor, or Poborino, the smith. They were old and weak, and Ivan's dream was one that called for youth and strength.

"Ay, for youth and strength," he muttered as he gripped the plow. "And I have it!"

That evening Big Ivan of the Bridge spoke to his wife, Anna, a little woman, who had a sweet face and a wealth of fair hair.

"Wife, we are going away from here," he said.

"Where are we going, Ivan?" she asked.

"Where do you think, Anna?" he said, looking down at her as she stood by his side.

"To Bobruisk," she murmured.

"No."

"Farther?"

"Ay, a long way farther."

Fear sprang into her soft eyes. Bobruisk was eighty-nine versts away, yet Ivan said they were going farther.

"We--we are not going to Minsk?" she cried.

"Ay, and beyond Minsk!"

"Ivan, tell me!" she grasped. "Tell me where we are going!"

"We are going to America."

"To America?"

"Yes, to America!"

Big Ivan of the Bridge lifted up his voice when he cried out the words "To America," and then a sudden fear sprang upon him as those words dashed through the little window out into the darkness of the village street. Was he mad? America was 8,000 versts away! It was far across the ocean, a place that was only a name to him, a place where he knew no one. He wondered in the strange little silence that followed his words if the crippled son of Poborino, the smith, had heard him. The cripple would jeer at him if the night wind had carried the words to his ear.

Anna remained staring at her big husband for a few minutes, then she sat down quietly at his side. There was a strange look in his big blue eyes, the look of a man to whom has come a vision, the look which came into the eyes of those shepherds of Judea long, long ago.

"What is it, Ivan?" she murmured softly, patting his big hand. "Tell me."

And Big Ivan of the Bridge, slow of tongue, told of the Dream. To no one else would he have told it. Anna understood. She had a way of patting his hands and saying soft things when his tongue could not find words to express his thoughts.

Ivan told how the Dream had come to him as he plowed. He told her how it had sprung upon him, a wonderful dream born of the soft breezes, of the sunshine, of the sweet smell of the upturned sod and of his own strength. "It wouldn't come to weak men," he said, baring an arm that showed great snaky muscles rippling beneath the clear skin. "It is a dream that comes only to those who are strong and those who want--who want something that they haven't got." Then in a lower voice he said: "What is it that we want, Anna?"

The little wife looked out into the darkness with fear-filled eyes. There were spies even there in that little village on the Beresina, and it was dangerous to say words that might be construed into a reflection on the Government. But she answered Ivan. She stooped and whispered one word into his ear, and he slapped his thigh with his big hand.

"Ay," he cried. "That is what we want! You and I and millions like us want it, and over there, Anna, over there we will get it. It is the country where a muzhik is as good as a prince of the blood!"

Anna stood up, took a small earthenware jar from a side shelf, dusted it carefully and placed it upon the mantel. From a knotted cloth about her neck she took a ruble and dropped the coin into the jar. Big Ivan looked at her curiously.

"It is to make legs for your Dream," she explained. "It is many versts to America, and one rides on rubles."

"You are a good wife," he said. "I was afraid that you might laugh at me."

"It is a great dream," she murmured. "Come, we will go to sleep."

The Dream maddened Ivan during the days that followed. It pounded within his brain as he followed the plow. It bred a discontent that made him hate the little village, the swift-flowing Beresina and the gray stretches that ran toward Mogilev. He wanted to be moving, but Anna had said that one rode on rubles, and rubles were hard to find.

And in some mysterious way the village became aware of the secret. Donkov, the tailor, discovered it. Donkov lived in one half of the cottage occupied by Ivan and Anna, and Donkov had long ears. The tailor spread the news, and Poborino, the smith, and Yanansk, the baker, would jeer at Ivan as he passed.

"When are you going to America?" they would ask.

"Soon," Ivan would answer.

"Take us with you!" they would cry in chorus.

"It is no place for cowards," Ivan would answer. "It is a long way, and only brave men can make the journey."

"Are you brave?" the baker screamed one day as he went by.

"I am brave enough to want liberty!" cried Ivan angrily. "I am brave enough to want--"

"Be careful! Be careful!" interrupted the smith. "A long tongue has given many a man a train journey that he never expected."

That night Ivan and Anna counted the rubles in the earthenware pot. The giant looked down at his wife with a gloomy face, but she smiled and patted his hand.

"It is slow work," he said.

"We must be patient," she answered. "You have the Dream."

"Ay," he said. "I have the Dream."

Through the hot, languorous summertime the Dream grew within the brain of Big Ivan. He saw visions in the smoky haze that hung above the Beresina. At times he would stand, hoe in hand, and look toward the west, the wonderful west into which the sun slipped down each evening like a coin dropped from the fingers of the dying day.

Autumn came, and the fretful whining winds that came down from the north chilled the Dream. The winds whispered of the coming of the Snow King, and the river grumbled as it listened. Big Ivan kept out of the way of Poborino, the smith, and Yanansk, the baker. The Dream was still with him, but autumn is a bad time for dreams.

Winter came, and the Dream weakened. It was only the earthenware pot that kept it alive, the pot into which the industrious Anna put every coin that could be spared. Often Big Ivan would stare at the pot as he sat beside the stove. The pot was the umbilical cord which kept the Dream alive.

"You are a good woman, Anna," Ivan would say again and again. "It was you who thought of saving the rubles."

"But it was you who dreamed," she would answer. "Wait for the spring, husband mine. Wait."

It was strange how the spring came to the Beresina that year. It sprang upon the flanks of winter before the Ice King had given the order to retreat into the fastnesses of the north. It swept up the river escorted by a million little breezes, and housewives opened their windows and peered out with surprise upon their faces. A wonderful guest had come to them and found them unprepared.

Big Ivan of the Bridge was fixing a fence in the meadow on the morning the Spring Maiden reached the village. For a little while he was not aware of her arrival. His mind was upon his work, but suddenly he discovered that he was hot, and he took off his overcoat. He turned to hang the coat upon a bush, then he sniffed the air, and a puzzled look came upon his face. He sniffed again, hurriedly, hungrily. He drew in great breaths of it, and his eyes shone with a strange light. It was wonderful air. It brought life to the Dream. It rose up within him, ten times more lusty than on the day it was born, and his limbs trembled as he drew in the hot, scented breezes that breed the Wanderlust and shorten the long trails of the world.

Ivan clutched his coat and ran to the little cottage. He burst through the door, startling Anna, who was busy with her housework.

"The Spring!" he cried. "The Spring!"

He took her arm and dragged her to the door. Standing together they sniffed the sweet breezes. In silence they listened to the song of the river. The Beresina had changed from a whining, fretful tune into a lilting, sweet song that would set the legs of lovers dancing. Anna pointed to a green bud on a bush beside the door.

"It came this minute," she murmured.

"Yes," said Ivan. "The little fairies brought it there to show us that spring has come to stay."

Together they turned and walked to the mantel. Big Ivan took up the earthenware pot, carried it to the table, and spilled its contents upon the well-scrubbed boards. He counted while Anna stood beside him, her fingers clutching his coarse blouse. It was a slow business, because Ivan's big blunt fingers were not used to such work, but it was over at last. He stacked the coins into neat piles, then he straightened himself and turned to the woman at his side.

"It is enough," he said quietly. "We will go at once. If it was not enough, we would have to go because the Dream is upon me and I hate this place."

"As you say," murmured Anna. "The wife of Littin, the butcher, will buy our chairs and our bed. I spoke to her yesterday."

Poborino, the smith; his crippled son; Yanansk, the baker; Dankov, the tailor, and a score of others were out upon the village street on the morning that Big Ivan and Anna set out. They were inclined to jeer at Ivan, but something upon the face of the giant made them afraid. Hand in hand the big man and his wife walked down the street, their faces turned toward Bobruisk, Ivan balancing upon his head a heavy trunk that no other man in the village could have lifted.

At the end of the street a stripling with bright eyes and yellow curls clutched the hand of Ivan and looked into his face.

"I know what is sending you," he cried.

"Ay, you know," said Ivan, looking into the eyes of the other.

"It came to me yesterday," murmured the stripling. "I got it from the breezes. They are free, so are the birds and the little clouds and the river. I wish I could go."

"Keep your dream," said Ivan softly. "Nurse it, for it is the dream of a man."

Anna, who was crying softly, touched the blouse of the boy. "At the back of our cottage, near the bush that bears the red berries, a pot is buried," she said. "Dig it up and take it home with you and when you have a kopeck drop it in. It is a good pot."

The stripling understood. He stooped and kissed the hand of Anna, and Big Ivan patted him upon the back. They were brother dreamers and they understood each other.

Boris Lugan has sung the song of the versts that eat up one's courage as well as the leather of one's shoes.

"Versts! Versts! Scores and scores of them! Versts! Versts! A million or more of them! Dust! Dust! And the devils who play in it Blinding us fools who forever must stay in it."

Big Ivan and Anna faced the long versts to Bobruisk, but they were not afraid of the dust devils. They had the Dream. It made their hearts light and took the weary feeling from their feet. They were on their way. America was a long, long journey, but they had started, and every verst they covered lessened the number that lay between them and the Promised Land.

"I am glad the boy spoke to us," said Anna.

"And I am glad," said Ivan. "Some day he will come and eat with us in America."

They came to Bobruisk. Holding hands, they walked into it late one afternoon. They were eighty-nine versts from the little village on the Beresina, but they were not afraid. The Dream spoke to Ivan, and his big hand held the hand of Anna. The railway ran through Bobruisk, and that evening they stood and looked at the shining rails that went out in the moonlight like silver tongs reaching out for a low-hanging star.

And they came face to face with the Terror that evening, the Terror that had helped the spring breezes and the sunshine to plant the Dream in the brain of Big Ivan.

They were walking down a dark side street when they saw a score of men and women creep from the door of a squat, unpainted building. The little group remained on the sidewalk for a minute as if uncertain about the way they should go, then from the corner of the street came a cry of "Police!" and the twenty pedestrians ran in different directions.

It was no false alarm. Mounted police charged down the dark thoroughfare swinging their swords as they rode at the scurrying men and women who raced for shelter. Big Ivan dragged Anna into a doorway, and toward their hiding place ran a young boy who, like themselves, had no connection with the group and who merely desired to get out of harm's way till the storm was over.

The boy was not quick enough to escape the charge. A trooper pursued him, overtook him before he reached the sidewalk, and knocked him down with a quick stroke given with the flat of his blade. His horse struck the boy with one of his hoofs as the lad stumbled on his face.

Big Ivan growled like an angry bear, and sprang from his hiding place. The trooper's horse had carried him on to the sidewalk, and Ivan seized the bridle and flung the animal on its haunches. The policeman leaned forward to strike at the giant, but Ivan of the Bridge gripped the left leg of the horseman and tore him from his saddle.

The horse galloped off, leaving its rider lying beside the moaning boy who was unlucky enough to be in a street where a score of students were holding a meeting.

Anna dragged Ivan back into the passageway. More police were charging down the street, and their position was a dangerous one.

"Ivan!" she cried, "Ivan! Remember the Dream! America, Ivan! America! Come this way! Quick!"

With strong hands she dragged him down the passage. It opened into a narrow lane, and, holding each other's hands, they hurried toward the place where they had taken lodgings. From far off came screams and hoarse orders, curses and the sound of galloping hoofs. The Terror was abroad.

Big Ivan spoke softly as they entered the little room they had taken. "He had a face like the boy to whom you gave the lucky pot," he said. "Did you notice it in the moonlight when the trooper struck him down?"

"Yes," she answered. "I saw."

They left Bobruisk next morning. They rode away on a great, puffing, snorting train that terrified Anna. The engineer turned a stopcock as they were passing the engine, and Anna screamed while Ivan nearly dropped the big trunk. The engineer grinned, but the giant looked up at him and the grin faded. Ivan of the Bridge was startled by the rush of hot steam, but he was afraid of no man.

The train went roaring by little villages and great pasture stretches. The real journey had begun. They began to love the powerful engine. It was eating up the versts at a tremendous rate. They looked at each other from time to time and smiled like two children.

They came to Minsk, the biggest town they had ever seen. They looked out from the car windows at the miles of wooden buildings, at the big church of St. Catharine, and the woolen mills. Minsk would have frightened them if they hadn't had the Dream. The farther they went from the little village on the Beresina the more courage the Dream gave to them.

On and on went the train, the wheels singing the song of the road. Fellow travelers asked them where they were going. "To America," Ivan would answer.

"To America?" they would cry. "May the little saints guide you. It is a long way, and you will be lonely."

"No, we shall not be lonely," Ivan would say.

"Ha! you are going with friends?"

"No, we have no friends, but we have something that keeps us from being lonely." And when Ivan would make that reply Anna would pat his hand and the questioner would wonder if it was a charm or a holy relic that the bright-eyed couple possessed.

They ran through Vilna, on through flat stretches of Courland to Libau, where they saw the sea. They sat and stared at it for a whole day, talking little but watching it with wide, wondering eyes. And they stared at the great ships that came rocking in from distant ports, their sides gray with the salt from the big combers which they had battled with.

No wonder this America of ours is big. We draw the brave ones from the old lands, the brave ones whose dreams are like the guiding sign that was given to the Israelites of old--a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night.

The harbor master spoke to Ivan and Anna as they watched the restless waters.

"Where are you going, children?"

"To America," answered Ivan.

"A long way. Three ships bound for America went down last month."

"Ours will not sink," said Ivan.

"Why?"

"Because I know it will not."

The harbor master looked at the strange blue eyes of the giant, and spoke softly. "You have the eyes of a man who sees things," he said. "There was a Norwegian sailor in the White Queen, who had eyes like yours and he could see death."

"I see life!" said Ivan boldly. "A free life--"

"Hush!" said the harbor master. "Do not speak so loud." He walked swiftly away, but he dropped a ruble into Anna's hand as he passed her by. "For luck," he murmured. "May the little saints look after you on the big waters."

They boarded the ship, and the Dream gave them a courage that surprised them. There were others going aboard, and Ivan and Anna felt that those others were also persons who possessed dreams. She saw the dreams in their eyes. There were Slavs, Poles, Letts, Jews, and Livonians, all bound for the land where dreams come true. They were a little afraid--not two per cent of them had ever seen a ship before--yet their dreams gave them courage.

The emigrant ship was dragged from her pier by a grunting tug and went floundering down the Baltic Sea. Night came down, and the devils who, according to the Esthonian fishermen, live in the bottom of the Baltic, got their shoulders under the stern of the ship and tried to stand her on her head. They whipped up white combers that sprang on her flanks and tried to crush her, and the wind played a devil's lament in her rigging. Anna lay sick in the stuffy women's quarters, and Ivan could not get near her. But he sent her messages. He told her not to mind the sea devils, to think of the Dream, the Great Dream that would become real in the land to which they were bound. Ivan of the Bridge grew to full stature on that first night out from Libau. The battered old craft that carried him slouched before the waves that swept over her decks, but he was not afraid. Down among the million and one smells of the steerage he induced a thin-faced Livonian to play upon a mouth organ, and Big Ivan sang Paleer's "Song of Freedom" in a voice that drowned the creaking of the old vessel's timbers, and made the seasick ones forget their sickness. They sat up in their berths and joined in the chorus, their eyes shining brightly in the half gloom:

"Freedom for serf and for slave, Freedom for all men who crave Their right to be free And who hate to bend knee But to Him who this right to them gave."

It was well that these emigrants had dreams. They wanted them. The sea devils chased the lumbering steamer. They hung to her bows and pulled her for'ard deck under emerald-green rollers. They clung to her stern and hoisted her nose till Big Ivan thought that he could touch the door of heaven by standing on her blunt snout. Miserable, cold, ill, and sleepless, the emigrants crouched in their quarters, and to them Ivan and the thin-faced Livonian sang the "Song of Freedom."

The emigrant ship pounded through the Cattegat, swung southward through the Skagerrack and the bleak North Sea. But the storm pursued her. The big waves snarled and bit at her, and the captain and the chief officer consulted with each other. They decided to run into the Thames, and the harried steamer nosed her way in and anchored off Gravesend.

An examination was made, and the agents decided to transship the emigrants. They were taken to London and thence by train to Liverpool, and Ivan and Anna sat again side by side, holding hands and smiling at each other as the third-class emigrant train from Euston raced down through the green Midland counties to grimy Liverpool.

"You are not afraid?" Ivan would say to her each time she looked at him.

"It is a long way, but the Dream has given me much courage," she said.

"To-day I spoke to a Lett whose brother works in New York City," said the giant. "Do you know how much money he earns each day?"

"How much?" she questioned.

"Three rubles, and he calls the policemen by their first names."

"You will earn five rubles, my Ivan," she murmured. "There is no one as strong as you."

Once again they were herded into the bowels of a big ship that steamed away through the fog banks of the Mersey out into the Irish Sea. There were more dreamers now, nine hundred of them, and Anna and Ivan were more comfortable. And these new emigrants, English, Irish, Scotch, French, and German, knew much concerning America. Ivan was certain that he would earn at least three rubles a day. He was very strong.

On the deck he defeated all comers in a tug of war, and the captain of the ship came up to him and felt his muscles.

"The country that lets men like you get away from it is run badly," he said. "Why did you leave it?"

The interpreter translated what the captain said, and through the interpreter Ivan answered.

"I had a Dream," he said, "a Dream of freedom."

"Good," cried the captain. "Why should a man with muscles like yours have his face ground into the dust?"

The soul of Big Ivan grew during those days. He felt himself a man, a man who was born upright to speak his thoughts without fear.

The ship rolled into Queenstown one bright morning, and Ivan and his nine hundred steerage companions crowded the for'ard deck. A boy in a rowboat threw a line to the deck, and after it had been fastened to a stanchion he came up hand over hand. The emigrants watched him curiously. An old woman sitting in the boat pulled off her shoes, sat in a loop of the rope, and lifted her hand as a signal to her son on deck.

"Hey, fellers," said the boy, "help me pull me muvver up. She wants to sell a few dozen apples, an' they won't let her up the gangway!"

Big Ivan didn't understand the words, but he guessed what the boy wanted. He made one of a half dozen who gripped the rope and started to pull the ancient apple woman to the deck.

They had her halfway up the side when an undersized third officer discovered what they were doing. He called to a steward, and the steward sprang to obey.

"Turn a hose on her!" cried the officer. "Turn a hose on the old woman!"

The steward rushed for the hose. He ran with it to the side of the ship with the intention of squirting the old woman, who was swinging in midair and exhorting the six men who were dragging her to the deck.

"Pull!" she cried. "Sure, I'll give every one of ye a rosy red apple an' me blessing with it."

The steward aimed the muzzle of the hose, and Big Ivan of the Bridge let go of the rope and sprang at him. The fist of the great Russian went out like a battering ram; it struck the steward between the eyes, and he dropped upon the deck. He lay like one dead, the muzzle of the hose wriggling from his limp hands.

The third officer and the interpreter rushed at Big Ivan, who stood erect, his hands clenched.

"Ask the big swine why he did it?" roared the officer.

"Because he is a coward!" cried Ivan. "They wouldn't do that in America!"

"What does the big brute know about America?" cried the officer.

"Tell him I have dreamed of it," shouted Ivan. "Tell him it is in my Dream. Tell him I will kill him if he turns the water upon this old woman."

The apple seller was on deck then, and with the wisdom of the Celt she understood. She put her lean hand upon the great head of the Russian and blessed him in Gaelic. Ivan bowed before her, then as she offered him a rosy apple he led her toward Anna, a great Viking leading a withered old woman who walked with the grace of a duchess.

"Please don't touch him," she cried, turning to the officer. "We have been waiting for your ship for six hours, and we have only five dozen apples to sell. It's a great man he is. Sure he's as big as Finn MacCool."

Some one pulled the steward behind a ventilator and revived him by squirting him with water from the hose which he had tried to turn upon the old woman. The third officer slipped quietly away.

The Atlantic was kind to the ship that carried Ivan and Anna. Through sunny days they sat up on deck and watched the horizon. They wanted to be among those who would get the first glimpse of the wonderland.

They saw it on a morning with sunshine and soft winds. Standing together in the bow, they looked at the smear upon the horizon, and their eyes filled with tears. They forgot the long road to Bobruisk, the rocking journey to Libau, the mad buckjumping boat in whose timbers the sea devils of the Baltic had bored holes. Everything unpleasant was forgotten, because the Dream filled them with a great happiness.

The inspectors at Ellis Island were interested in Ivan. They walked around him and prodded his muscles, and he smiled down upon them good-naturedly.

"A fine animal," said one. "Gee, he's a new white hope! Ask him can he fight?"

An interpreter put the question, and Ivan nodded. "I have fought," he said.

"Gee!" cried the inspector. "Ask him was it for purses or what?"

"For freedom," answered Ivan. "For freedom to stretch my legs and straighten my neck!"

Ivan and Anna left the Government ferryboat at the Battery. They started to walk uptown, making for the East Side, Ivan carrying the big trunk that no other man could lift.

It was a wonderful morning. The city was bathed in warm sunshine, and the well-dressed men and women who crowded the sidewalks made the two immigrants think that it was a festival day. Ivan and Anna stared at each other in amazement. They had never seen such dresses as those worn by the smiling women who passed them by; they had never seen such well-groomed men.

"It is a feast day for certain," said Anna.

"They are dressed like princes and princesses," murmured Ivan. "There are no poor here, Anna. None."

Like two simple children, they walked along the streets of the City of Wonder. What a contrast it was to the gray, stupid towns where the Terror waited to spring upon the cowed people. In Bobruisk, Minsk, Vilna, and Libau the people were sullen and afraid. They walked in dread, but in the City of Wonder beside the glorious Hudson every person seemed happy and contented.

They lost their way, but they walked on, looking at the wonderful shop windows, the roaring elevated trains, and the huge skyscrapers. Hours afterward they found themselves in Fifth Avenue near Thirty-third Street, and there the miracle happened to the two Russian immigrants. It was a big miracle inasmuch as it proved the Dream a truth, a great truth.

Ivan and Anna attempted to cross the avenue, but they became confused in the snarl of traffic. They dodged backward and forward as the stream of automobiles swept by them. Anna screamed, and, in response to her scream, a traffic policeman, resplendent in a new uniform, rushed to her side. He took the arm of Anna and flung up a commanding hand. The charging autos halted. For five blocks north and south they jammed on the brakes when the unexpected interruption occurred, and Big Ivan gasped.

"Don't be flurried, little woman," said the cop. "Sure I can tame 'em by liftin' me hand."

Anna didn't understand what he said, but she knew it was something nice by the manner in which his Irish eyes smiled down upon her. And in front of the waiting automobiles he led her with the same care that he would give to a duchess, while Ivan, carrying the big trunk, followed them, wondering much. Ivan's mind went back to Bobruisk on the night the Terror was abroad.

The policeman led Anna to the sidewalk, patted Ivan good-naturedly upon the shoulder, and then with a sharp whistle unloosed the waiting stream of cars that had been held up so that two Russian immigrants could cross the avenue.

Big Ivan of the Bridge took the trunk from his head and put it on the ground. He reached out his arms and folded Anna in a great embrace. His eyes were wet.

"The Dream is true!" he cried. "Did you see, Anna? We are as good as they! This is the land where a muzhik is as good as a prince of the blood!"

THE PRESIDENT was nearing the close of his address. Anna shook Ivan, and Ivan came out of the trance which the President's words had brought upon him. He sat up and listened intently:

We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let those great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them, nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.

The President finished. For a moment he stood looking down at the faces turned up to him, and Big Ivan of the Bridge thought that the President smiled at him. Ivan seized Anna's hand and held it tight.

"He knew of my Dream!" he cried. "He knew of it. Did you hear what he said about the dreams of a spring day?"

"Of course he knew," said Anna. "He is the wisest in America, where there are many wise men. Ivan, you are a citizen now."

"And you are a citizen, Anna."

The band started to play "My Country, 'tis of Thee," and Ivan and Anna got to their feet. Standing side by side, holding hands, they joined in with the others who had found after long days of journeying the blessed land where dreams come true.

____________________

3: The Giant Wistaria

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

1860-1935

New England Magazine, June 1891

'MEDDLE not with my new vine, child! See! Thou hast already broken the tender shoot! Never needle or distaff for thee, and yet thou wilt not be quiet!'

The nervous fingers wavered, clutched at a small carnelian cross that hung from her neck, then fell despairingly.

'Give me my child, mother, and then I will be quiet!'

'Hush! hush! thou fool— some one might be near! See— there is thy father coming, even now! Get in quickly!'

She raised her eyes to her mother's face, weary eyes that yet had a flickering, uncertain blaze in their shaded depths.

'Art thou a mother and hast no pity on me, a mother? Give me my child!'

Her voice rose in a strange, low cry, broken by her father's hand upon her mouth.

'Shameless!' said he, with set teeth. 'Get to thy chamber, and be not seen again to-night, or I will have thee bound!'

She went at that, and a hard-faced serving woman followed, and presently returned, bringing a key to her mistress.

'Is all well with her— and the child also?'

'She is quiet, Mistress Dwining, well for the night, be sure. The child fretteth endlessly, but save for that it thriveth with me.'

The parents were left alone together on the high square porch with its great pillars, and the rising moon began to make faint shadows of the young vine leaves that shot up luxuriantly around them; moving shadows, like little stretching fingers, on the broad and heavy planks of the oaken floor.

'It groweth well, this vine thou broughtest me in the ship, my husband.'

'Aye,' he broke in bitterly, 'and so doth the shame I brought thee! Had I known of it I would sooner have had the ship founder beneath us, and have seen our child cleanly drowned, than live to this end!'

'Thou art very hard, Samuel, art thou not afeard for her life? She grieveth sore for the child, aye, and for the green fields to walk in!'

'Nay,' said he grimly, 'I fear not. She hath lost already what is more than life; and she shall have air enough soon. To-morrow the ship is ready, and we return to England. None knoweth of our stain here, not one, and if the town hath a child unaccounted for to rear in decent ways— why, it is not the first, even here. It will be well enough cared for! And truly we have matter for thankfulness, that her cousin is yet willing to marry her.'

'Hast thou told him?'

'Aye! Thinkest thou I would cast shame into another man's house, unknowing it? He hath always desired her, but she would none of him, the stubborn! She hath small choice now!'

'Will he be kind, Samuel? Can he—'

'Kind? What call'st thou it to take such as she to wife? Kind! How many men would take her, an' she had double the fortune? And being of the family already, he is glad to hide the blot forever.'

'An' if she would not? He is but a coarse fellow, and she ever shunned him.'

'Art thou mad, woman? She weddeth him ere we sail to-morrow, or she stayeth ever in that chamber. The girl is not so sheer a fool! He maketh an honest woman of her, and saveth our house from open shame. What other hope for her than a new life to cover the old? Let her have an honest child, an' she so longeth for one!'

He strode heavily across the porch, till the loose planks creaked again, strode back and forth, with his arms folded and his brows fiercely knit above his iron mouth.

Overhead the shadows flickered mockingly across a white face among the leaves, with eyes of wasted fire.

'O, GEORGE, what a house! What a lovely house! I am sure it's haunted! Let us get that house to live in this summer! We will have Kate and Jack and Susy and Jim of course, and a splendid time of it!'

Young husbands are indulgent, but still they have to recognize facts.

'My dear, the house may not be to rent; and it may also not be habitable.'

'There is surely somebody in it. I am going to inquire!'

The great central gate was rusted off its hinges, and the long drive had trees in it, but a little footpath showed signs of steady usage, and up that Mrs Jenny went, followed by her obedient George. The front windows of the old mansion were blank, but in a wing at the back they found white curtains and open doors. Outside, in the clear May sunshine, a woman was washing. She was polite and friendly, and evidently glad of visitors in that lonely place. She 'guessed it could be rented— didn't know.' The heirs were in Europe, but 'there was a lawyer in New York had the lettin' of it.' There had been folks there years ago, but not in her time. She and her husband had the rent of their part for taking care of the place. Not that they took much care on't either, 'but keepin' robbers out.' It was furnished throughout, old-fashioned enough, but good; and 'if they took it she could do the work for 'em herself, she guessed— if he was willin'!'

Never was a crazy scheme more easily arranged. George knew that lawyer in New York; the rent was not alarming; and the nearness to a rising sea-shore resort made it a still pleasanter place to spend the summer.

Kate and Jack and Susy and Jim cheerfully accepted, and the June moon found them all sitting on the high front porch.

They had explored the house from top to bottom, from the great room in the garret, with nothing in it but a rickety cradle, to the well in the cellar without a curb and with a rusty chain going down to unknown blackness below. They had explored the grounds, once beautiful with rare trees and shrubs, but now a gloomy wilderness of tangled shade.

The old lilacs and laburnums, the spirea and syringa, nodded against the second-story windows. What garden plants survived were great ragged bushes or great shapeless beds. A huge wistaria vine covered the whole front of the house. The trunk, it was too large to call a stem, rose at the corner of the porch by the high steps, and had once climbed its pillars; but now the pillars were wrenched from their places and held rigid and helpless by the tightly wound and knotted arms.

It fenced in all the upper story of the porch with a knitted wall of stem and leaf; it ran along the eaves, holding up the gutter that had once supported it; it shaded every window with heavy green; and the drooping, fragrant blossoms made a waving sheet of purple from roof to ground.

'Did you ever see such a wistaria!' cried ecstatic Mrs Jenny. 'It is worth the rent just to sit under such a vine— a fig tree beside it would be sheer superfluity and wicked extravagance!'

'Jenny makes much of her wistaria,' said George, 'because she's so disappointed about the ghosts. She made up her mind at first sight to have ghosts in the house, and she can't find even a ghost story!'

'No,' Jenny assented mournfully; 'I pumped poor Mrs Pepperill for three days, but could get nothing out of her. But I'm convinced there is a story, if we could only find it. You need not tell me that a house like this, with a garden like this, and a cellar like this, isn't haunted!'

'I agree with you,' said Jack. Jack was a reporter on a New York daily, and engaged to Mrs Jenny's pretty sister. 'And if we don't find a real ghost, you may be very sure I shall make one. It's too good an opportunity to lose!'

The pretty sister, who sat next him, resented. 'You shan't do anything of the sort, Jack! This is a real ghostly place, and I won't have you make fun of it! Look at that group of trees out there in the long grass— it looks for all the world like a crouching, hunted figure!'

'It looks to me like a woman picking huckleberries,' said Jim, who was married to George's pretty sister.

'Be still, Jim!' said that fair young woman. 'I believe in Jenny's ghost as much as she does. Such a place! Just look at this great wistaria trunk crawling up by the steps here! It looks for all the world like a writhing body— cringing— beseeching!'

'Yes,' answered the subdued Jim, 'it does, Susy. See its waist— about two yards of it, and twisted at that! A waste of good material!'

'Don't be so horrid, boys! Go off and smoke somewhere if you can't be congenial!'

'We can! We will! We'll be as ghostly as you please.' And forthwith they began to see bloodstains and crouching figures so plentifully that the most delightful shivers multiplied, and the fair enthusiasts started for bed, declaring they should never sleep a wink.

'We shall all surely dream,' cried Mrs Jenny, 'and we must all tell our dreams in the morning!'

'There's another thing certain,' said George, catching Susy as she tripped over a loose plank; 'and that is that you frisky creatures must use the side door till I get this Eiffel tower of a portico fixed, or we shall have some fresh ghosts on our hands! We found a plank here that yawns like a trap-door— big enough to swallow you— and I believe the bottom of the thing is in China!'

The next morning found them all alive, and eating a substantial New England breakfast, to the accompaniment of saws and hammers on the porch, where carpenters of quite miraculous promptness were tearing things to pieces generally.

'It's got to come down mostly,' they had said. 'These timbers are clean rotted through, what ain't pulled out o' line by this great creeper. That's about all that holds the thing up.'

There was clear reason in what they said, and with a caution from anxious Mrs Jenny not to hurt the wistaria, they were left to demolish and repair at leisure.

'How about ghosts?' asked Jack after a fourth griddle cake. 'I had one, and it's taken away my appetite!'

Mrs Jenny gave a little shriek and dropped her knife and fork.

'Oh, so had I! I had the most awful— well, not dream exactly, but feeling. I had forgotten all about it!'

'Must have been awful,' said Jack, taking another cake. 'Do tell us about the feeling. My ghost will wait.'

'It makes me creep to think of it even now,' she said. 'I woke up, all at once, with that dreadful feeling as if something were going to happen, you know! I was wide awake, and hearing every little sound for miles around, it seemed to me. There are so many strange little noises in the country for all it is so still. Millions of crickets and things outside, and all kinds of rustles in the trees! There wasn't much wind, and the moonlight came through in my three great windows in three white squares on the black old floor, and those fingery wistaria leaves we were talking of last night just seemed to crawl all over them. And— O, girls, you know that dreadful well in the cellar?'

A most gratifying impression was made by this, and Jenny proceeded cheerfully:

'Well, while it was so horridly still, and I lay there trying not to wake George, I heard as plainly as if it were right in the room, that old chain down there rattle and creak over the stones!'

'Bravo!' cried Jack. 'That's fine! I'll put it in the Sunday edition!'

'Be still!' said Kate. 'What was it, Jenny? Did you really see anything?'

'No, I didn't, I'm sorry to say. But just then I didn't want to. I woke George, and made such a fuss that he gave me bromide, and said he'd go and look, and that's the last I thought of it till Jack reminded me— the bromide worked so well.'

'Now, Jack, give us yours,' said Jim. 'Maybe, it will dovetail in somehow. Thirsty ghost, I imagine; maybe they had prohibition here even then!'

Jack folded his napkin, and leaned back in his most impressive manner.

'It was striking twelve by the great hall clock –' he began.

'There isn't any hall clock!'

'O hush, Jim, you spoil the current! It was just one o'clock then, by my old-fashioned repeater.'

'Waterbury! Never mind what time it was!'

'Well, honestly, I woke up sharp, like our beloved hostess, and tried to go to sleep again, but couldn't. I experienced all those moonlight and grasshopper sensations, just like Jenny, and was wondering what could have been the matter with the supper, when in came my ghost, and I knew it was all a dream! It was a female ghost, and I imagine she was young and handsome, but all those crouching, hunted figures of last evening ran riot in my brain, and this poor creature looked just like them. She was all wrapped up in a shawl, and had a big bundle under her arm— dear me, I am spoiling the story! With the air and gait of one in frantic haste and terror, the muffled figure glided to a dark old bureau, and seemed taking things from the drawers. As she turned, the moonlight shone full on a little red cross that hung from her neck by a thin gold chain— I saw it glitter as she crept noiselessly from the room! That's all.'

'O Jack, don't be so horrid! Did you really? Is that all? What do you think it was?'

'I am not horrid by nature, only professionally. I really did. That was all. And I am fully convinced it was the genuine, legitimate ghost of an eloping chambermaid with kleptomania!'

'You are too bad, Jack!' cried Jenny. 'You take all the horror out of it. There isn't a “creep” left among us.'

'It's no time for creeps at nine-thirty AM, with sunlight and carpenters outside! However, if you can't wait till twilight for your creeps, I think I can furnish one or two,' said George. 'I went down cellar after Jenny's ghost!'

There was a delighted chorus of female voices, and Jenny cast upon her lord a glance of genuine gratitude.

'It's all very well to lie in bed and see ghosts, or hear them,' he went on. 'But the young householder suspecteth burglars, even though as a medical man he knoweth nerves, and after Jenny dropped off I started on a voyage of discovery. I never will again, I promise you!'

'Why, what was it?'

'Oh, George!'

'I got a candle—'

'Good mark for the burglars,' murmured Jack.

'And went all over the house, gradually working down to the cellar and the well.'

'Well?' said Jack.

'Now you can laugh; but that cellar is no joke by daylight, and a candle there at night is about as inspiring as a lightning-bug in the Mammoth Cave. I went along with the light, trying not to fall into the well prematurely; got to it all at once; held the light down and then I saw, right under my feet— (I nearly fell over her, or walked through her, perhaps)— a woman, hunched up under a shawl! She had hold of the chain, and the candle shone on her hands— white, thin hands— on a little red cross that hung from her neck— vide Jack! I'm no believer in ghosts, and I firmly object to unknown parties in the house at night; so I spoke to her rather fiercely. She didn't seem to notice that, and I reached down to take hold of her— then I came upstairs!'

'What for?'

'What happened?'

'What was the matter?'

'Well, nothing happened. Only she wasn't there! May have been indigestion, of course, but as a physician I don't advise any one to court indigestion alone at midnight in a cellar!'

'This is the most interesting and peripatetic and evasive ghost I ever heard of!' said Jack. 'It's my belief she has no end of silver tankards, and jewels galore, at the bottom of that well, and I move we go and see!'

'To the bottom of the well, Jack?'

'To the bottom of the mystery. Come on!'

There was unanimous assent, and the fresh cambrics and pretty boots were gallantly escorted below by gentlemen whose jokes were so frequent that many of them were a little forced.

The deep old cellar was so dark that they had to bring lights, and the well so gloomy in its blackness that the ladies recoiled.

'That well is enough to scare even a ghost. It's my opinion you'd better let well enough alone!' quoth Jim.

'Truth lies hid in a well, and we must get her out,' said George. 'Bear a hand with the chain?'

Jim pulled away on the chain, George turned the creaking windlass, and Jack was chorus.

'A wet sheet for this ghost, if not a flowing sea,' said he. 'Seems to be hard work raising spirits! I suppose he kicked the bucket when he went down!'

As the chain lightened and shortened there grew a strained silence among them; and when at length the bucket appeared, rising slowly through the dark water, there was an eager, half reluctant peering, and a natural drawing back. They poked the gloomy contents. 'Only water.'

'Nothing but mud.'

'Something—'

They emptied the bucket up on the dark earth, and then the girls all went out into the air, into the bright warm sunshine in front of the house, where was the sound of saw and hammer, and the smell of new wood. There was nothing said until the men joined them, and then Jenny timidly asked:

'How old should you think it was, George?'

'All of a century,' he answered. 'That water is a preservative— lime in it. Oh!— you mean?— Not more than a month; a very little baby!'

There was another silence at this, broken by a cry from the workmen. They had removed the floor and the side walls of the old porch, so that the sunshine poured down to the dark stones of the cellar bottom. And there, in the strangling grasp of the roots of the great wistaria, lay the bones of a woman, from whose neck still hung a tiny scarlet cross on a thin chain of gold.

________________

4: The Man With Nine Lives

Hugh C. Weir

1884-1934

Miss Madelyn Mack, Detective, 1914

One of the numerous detectives in the wake of the Sherlock Holmes phenomenon, but this time a lady.

NOW that I seek a point of beginning in the curious comradeship between Madelyn Mack and myself, the weird problems of men's knavery that we have confronted together come back to me with almost a shock.

Perhaps the events which crowd into my memory followed each other too swiftly for thoughtful digest at the time of their occurrence. Perhaps only a sober retrospect can supply a properly appreciative angle of view.

Madelyn Mack! What newspaper reader does not know the name? Who, even among the most casual followers of public events, does not recall the young woman who found the missing heiress, Virginia Denton, after a three months' disappearance; who convicted "Archie" Irwin, chief of the "firebug trust"; who located the absconder, Wolcott, after a pursuit from Chicago to Khartoum; who solved the riddle of the double Peterson murder; who—

But why continue the enumeration of Miss Mack's achievements? They are of almost household knowledge, at least that portion which, from one cause or another, have found their way into the newspaper columns. Doubtless those admirers of Miss Mack, whose opinions have been formed through the press chronicles of her exploits, would be startled to know that not one in ten of her cases has ever been recorded outside of her own file cases. And many of them— the most sensational from a newspaper viewpoint— will never be!

It is the woman, herself, however, who has seemed to me always a greater mystery than any of the problems to whose unraveling she has brought her wonderful genius. In spite of the deluge of printer's ink that she has inspired, I question if it has been given to more than a dozen persons to know the true Madelyn Mack.

I do not refer, of course, to her professional career. The salient points of that portion of her life, I presume, are more or less generally known— the college girl confronted suddenly with the necessity of earning her own living; the epidemic of mysterious "shoplifting" cases chronicled in the newspaper she was studying for employment advertisements; her application to the New York department stores, that had been victimized, for a place on their detective staffs, and their curt refusal; her sudden determination to undertake the case as a free-lance, and her remarkable success, which resulted in the conviction of the notorious Madame Bousard, and which secured for Miss Mack her first position as assistant house detective with the famous Niegel dry-goods firm. I sometimes think that this first case, and the realization which it brought her of her peculiar talent, is Madelyn's favorite— that its place in her memory is not even shared by the recovery of Mrs. Niegel's fifty-thousand-dollar pearl necklace, stolen a few months after the employment of the college girl detective at the store, and the reward for which, incidentally, enabled the ambitious Miss Mack to open her own office.

Next followed the Bergner kidnapping case, which gave Madelyn her first big advertising broadside, and which brought the beginning of the steady stream of business that resulted, after three years, in her Fifth Avenue suite in the Maddox Building, where I found her on that— to me— memorable afternoon when a sapient Sunday editor dispatched me for an interview with the woman who had made so conspicuous a success in a man's profession.

I can see Madelyn now, as I saw her then— my first close-range view of her. She had just returned from Omaha that morning, and was planning to leave for Boston on the midnight express. A suitcase and a fat portfolio of papers lay on a chair in a corner. A young woman stenographer was taking a number of letters at an almost incredible rate of dictation. Miss Mack finished the last paragraph as she rose from a flat-top desk to greet me.

I had vaguely imagined a masculine-appearing woman, curt of voice, sharp of feature, perhaps dressed in a severe, tailor-made gown. I saw a young woman of maybe twenty-five, with red and white cheeks, crowned by a softly waved mass of dull gold hair, and a pair of vivacious, grey-blue eyes that at once made one forget every other detail of her appearance. There was a quality in the eyes which for a long time I could not define. Gradually I came to know that it was the spirit of optimism, of joy in herself, and in her life, and in her work, the exhilaration of doing things. And there was something contagious in it. Almost unconsciously you found yourself believing in her and in her sincerity.

Nor was there a suggestion foreign to her sex in my appraisal. She was dressed in a simply embroidered white shirtwaist and white broadcloth skirt. One of Madelyn's few peculiarities is that she always dresses either in complete white or complete black. On her desk was a jar of white chrysanthemums.

"How do I do it?" she repeated, in answer to my question, in a tone that was almost a laugh. "Why— just by hard work, I suppose. Oh, there isn't anything wonderful about it! You can do almost anything, you know, if you make yourself really think you can! I am not at all unusual or abnormal. I work out my problems just as I would work out a problem in mathematics, only instead of figures I deal with human motives. A detective is always given certain known factors, and I keep building them up, or subtracting them, as the case may be, until I know that the answer must be correct.

"There are only two real rules for a successful detective, hard work and common sense— not uncommon sense such as we associate with our old friend Sherlock Holmes, but common, business sense. And, of course, imagination! That may be one reason why I have made what you call a success. A woman, I think, always has a more acute imagination than a man!"

"Do you then prefer women operatives on your staff?" I asked.

She glanced up with something like a twinkle from the jade paper-knife in her hands.

"Shall I let you into a secret? All of my staff, with the exception of my stenographer, are men. But I do most of my work in person. The factor of imagination can't very well be used second, or third, or fourth handed. And then, if I fail, I can only blame Madelyn Mack! Someday"— the gleam in her grey-blue eyes deepened— "someday I hope to reach a point where I can afford to do only consulting work or personal investigation. The business details of an office staff, I am afraid, are a bit too much of routine for me!"

The telephone jingled. She spoke a few crisp sentences into the receiver, and turned. The interview was over.

When I next saw her, three months later, we met across the body of Morris Anthony, the murdered bibliophile. It was a chance discovery of mine which Madelyn was good enough to say suggested to her the solution of the affair, and which brought us together in the final melodramatic climax in the grim mansion on Washington Square, when I presume my hysterical warning saved her from the fangs of Dr. Lester Randolph's hidden cobra. In any event, our acquaintanceship crystallized gradually into a comradeship, which revolutionized two angles of my life.

Not only did it bring to me the stimulus of Madelyn Mack's personality, but it gave me exclusive access to a fund of newspaper "copy" that took me from scant-paid Sunday "features" to a "space" arrangement in the city room, with an income double that which I had been earning. I have always maintained that in our relationship Madelyn gave all, and I contributed nothing. Although she invariably made instant disclaimer, and generally ended by carrying me up to the "Rosary," her chalet on the Hudson, as a cure for what she termed my attack of the "blues," she was never able to convince me that my protest was not justified!

It was at the "Rosary" where Miss Mack found haven from the stress of business. She had copied its design from an ivy-tangled Swiss chalet that had attracted her fancy during a summer vacation ramble through the Alps, and had built it on a jagged bluff of the river at a point near enough to the city to permit of fairly convenient motoring, although, during the first years of our friendship, when she was held close to the commercial grindstone, weeks often passed without her being able to snatch a day there. In the end, it was the gratitude of Chalmers Walker for her remarkable work which cleared his chorus-girl wife from the seemingly unbreakable coil of circumstantial evidence in the murder of Dempster, the theatrical broker, that enabled Madelyn to realize her long-cherished dream of setting up as a consulting expert. Although she still maintained an office in town, it was confined to one room and a small reception hall, and she limited her attendance there to two days of the week. During the remainder of the time, when not engaged directly on a case, she seldom appeared in the city at all. Her flowers and her music— she was passionately devoted to both— appeared to content her effectually.

I charged her with growing old, to which she replied with a shrug. I upbraided her as a cynic, and she smiled inscrutably. But the manner of her life was not changed. In a way I envied her. It was almost like looking down on the world and watching tolerantly its mad scramble for the rainbow's end. The days I snatched at the "Rosary," particularly in the summer, when Madelyn's garden looked like nothing so much as a Turner picture, left me with almost a repulsion for the grind of Park Row. But a workaday newspaper woman cannot indulge the dreams of a genius whom fortune has blessed. Perhaps this was why Madelyn's invitations came with a frequency and a subtleness that could not be resisted. Somehow they always reached me when I was in just the right receptive mood.

It was late on a Thursday afternoon of June, the climax of a racking five days for me under the blistering Broadway sun, that Madelyn's motor caught me at the Bugle office, and Madelyn insisted on bundling me into the tonneau without even a suitcase.

"We'll reach the Rosary in time for a fried chicken supper," she promised. "What you need is four or five days' rest where you can't smell the asphalt."

"You fairy godmother!" I breathed as I snuggled down on the cushions.

Neither of us knew that already the crimson trail of crime was twisting toward us— that within twelve hours we were to be pitch-forked from a quiet weekend's rest into the vortex of tragedy.

We had breakfasted late and leisurely. When at length we had finished, Madelyn had insisted on having her phonograph brought to the rose garden, and we were listening to Sturveysant's matchless rendering of "The Jewel Song"— one of the three records for which Miss Mack had sent the harpist her check for two hundred dollars the day before. I had taken the occasion to read her a lazy lesson on extravagance. The beggar had probably done the work in less than two hours!

As the plaintive notes quivered to a pause, Susan, Madelyn's housekeeper, crossed the garden, and laid a little stack of letters and the morning papers on a rustic table by our bench. Madelyn turned to her correspondence with a shrug.

"From the divine to the prosaic!"

Susan sniffed with the freedom of seven years of service.

"I heard one of them Eyetalian fiddling chaps at Hammerstein's last week who could beat that music with his eyes closed!"

Madelyn stared at her sorrowfully.

"At your age— Hammerstein's!"

Susan tossed her prim rows of curls, glanced contemptuously at the phonograph by way of retaliation, and made a dignified retreat. In the doorway she turned.

"Oh, Miss Madelyn, I am baking one of your old-fashioned strawberry shortcakes for lunch!"

"Really?" Madelyn raised a pair of sparkling eyes. "Susan, you're a dear!"

A contented smile wreathed Susan's face even to the tips of her precise curls. Madelyn's gaze crossed to me.

"What are you chuckling over, Nora?"

"From a psychological standpoint, the pair of you have given me two interesting studies," I laughed. "A single sentence compensates Susan for a week of your glumness!"

Madelyn extended a hand toward her mail.

"And what is the other feature that appeals to your dissecting mind?"

"Fancy a world-known detective rising to the point of enthusiasm at the mention of strawberry shortcake!"

"Why not? Even a detective has to be human once in a while!" Her eyes twinkled. "Another point for my memoirs, Miss Noraker!"

As her gaze fell to the half-opened letter in her hand, my eyes traveled across the garden to the outlines of the chalet, and I breathed a sigh of utter content. Broadway and Park Row seemed very, very far away. In a momentary swerving of my gaze, I saw that a line as clear-cut as a pencil stroke had traced itself across Miss Mack's forehead.

The suggestion of lounging indifference in her attitude had vanished like a wind-blown veil. Her glance met mine suddenly. The twinkle I had last glimpsed in her eyes had disappeared. Silently she pushed a square sheet of close, cramped writing across the table to me.

MY DEAR MADAM:

When you read this, it is quite possible that it will be a letter from a dead man.

I have been told by no less an authority than my friend, Cosmo Hamilton, that you are a remarkable woman. While I will say at the outset that I have little faith in the analytical powers of the feminine brain, I am prepared to accept Hamilton's judgment.

I cannot, of course, discuss the details of my problem in correspondence.

As a spur to quick action, I may say, however, that, during the past five months, my life has been attempted no fewer than eight different times, and I am convinced that the ninth attempt, if made, will be successful. The curious part of it lies in the fact that I am absolutely unable to guess the reason for the persistent vendetta. So far as I know, there is no person in the world who should desire my removal. And yet I have been shot at from ambush on four occasions, thugs have rushed me once, a speeding automobile has grazed me twice, and this evening I found a cunning little dose of cyanide of potassium in my favorite cherry pie!

All of this, too, in the shadow of a New Jersey skunk farm! It is high time, I fancy, that I secure expert advice. Should the progress of the mysterious vendetta, by any chance, render me unable to receive you personally, my niece, Miss Muriel Jansen, I am sure, will endeavor to act as a substitute.

Respectfully Yours,

WENDELL MARSH

THREE FORKS JUNCTION, N. J.

JUNE 16

At the bottom of the page a lead pencil had scrawled the single line in the same cramped writing:

"For God's sake, hurry!"

Madelyn retained her curled-up position on the bench, staring across at a bush of deep crimson roses.

"Wendell Marsh?" She shifted her glance to me musingly. "Haven't I seen that name somewhere lately?" (Madelyn pays me the compliment of saying that I have a card-index brain for newspaper history!)

"If you have read the Sunday supplements," I returned drily, with a vivid remembrance of Wendell Marsh as I had last seen him, six months before, when he crossed the gangplank of his steamer, fresh from England, his face browned from the Atlantic winds. It was a face to draw a second glance— almost gaunt, self-willed, with more than a hint of cynicism. (Particularly when his eyes met the waiting press group!) Someone had once likened him to the pictures of Oliver Cromwell.

"Wendell Marsh is one of the greatest newspaper copy-makers that ever dodged an interviewer," I explained. "He hates reporters like an upstate farmer hates an automobile, and yet has a flock of them on his trail constantly. His latest exploit to catch the spotlight was the purchase of the Bainford relics in London. Just before that he published a three-volume history on 'The World's Great Cynics.' Paid for the publication himself."

Then came a silence between us, prolonging itself. I was trying, rather unsuccessfully, to associate Wendell Marsh's half-hysterical letter with my mental picture of the austere millionaire ...

"For God's sake, hurry!"

What wrenching terror had reduced the ultra-reserved Mr. Marsh to an appeal like this? As I look back now I know that my wildest fancy could not have pictured the ghastliness of the truth!

Madelyn straightened abruptly.

"Susan, will you kindly tell Andrew to bring around the car at once? If you will find the New Jersey automobile map, Nora, we'll locate Three Forks Junction."

"You are going down?" I asked mechanically.

She slipped from the bench.

"I am beginning to fear," she said irrelevantly, "that we'll have to defer our strawberry shortcake!"

The sound eye of Daniel Peddicord, liveryman by avocation, and sheriff of Merino County by election, drooped over his florid left cheek. Mr. Peddicord took himself and his duties to the taxpayers of Merino County seriously.

Having lowered his sound eye with befitting official dubious-ness, while his glass eye stared guilelessly ahead, as though it took absolutely no notice of the procedure, Mr. Peddicord jerked a fat red thumb toward the winding stairway at the rear of the Marsh hall.

"I reckon as how Mr. Marsh is still up there, Miss Mack. You see, I told 'em not to disturb the body until— "

Our stares brought the sentence to an abrupt end. Mr. Peddicord's sound eye underwent a violent agitation.

"You don't mean that you haven't— heard?"

The silence of the great house seemed suddenly oppressive. For the first time I realized the oddity of our having been received by an ill-at-ease policeman instead of by a member of the family. I was abruptly conscious of the incongruity between Mr. Peddicord's awkward figure and the dim, luxurious background.

Madelyn gripped the chief's arm, bringing his sound eye circling around to her face.

"Tell me what has happened!"

Mr. Peddicord drew a huge red handkerchief over his forehead.

"Wendell Marsh was found dead in his library at eight o'clock this morning! He had been dead for hours."

Tick-tock! Tick-tock! Through my daze beat the rhythm of a tall, gaunt clock in the corner. I stared at it dully. Madelyn's hands had caught themselves behind her back, her veins swollen into sharp blue ridges. Mr. Peddicord still gripped his red handkerchief.

"It sure is queer you hadn't heard! I reckoned as how that was what had brought you down. It— it looks like murder!"

In Madelyn's eyes had appeared a greyish glint like cold steel.

"Where is the body?"

"Upstairs in the library. Mr. Marsh had worked— "

"Will you kindly show me the room?"

I do not think we noted at the time the crispness in her tones, certainly not with any resentment. Madelyn had taken command of the situation quite as a matter of course.

"Also, will you have my card sent to the family?"

Mr. Peddicord stuffed his handkerchief back into a rear trousers' pocket. A red corner protruded in jaunty abandon from under his blue coat.

"Why, there ain't no family— at least none but Muriel Jansen." His head cocked itself cautiously up the stairs. "She's his niece, and I reckon now everything here is hers. Her maid says as how she is clear bowled over. Only left her room once since— since it happened. And that was to tell me as how nothing was to be disturbed." Mr. Peddicord drew himself up with the suspicion of a frown. "Just as though an experienced officer wouldn't know that much!"

Madelyn glanced over her shoulder to the end of the hall. A hatchet-faced man in russet livery stood staring at us with wooden eyes.

Mr. Peddicord shrugged.

"That's Peters, the butler. He's the chap what found Mr. Marsh."

I could feel the wooden eyes following us until a turn in the stairs blocked their range.

A red-glowing room— oppressively red. Scarlet-frescoed walls, deep red draperies, cherry-upholstered furniture, Turkish-red rugs, rows on rows of red-bound books. Above, a great, flat glass roof, open to the sky from corner to corner, through which the splash of the sun on the rich colors gave the weird semblance of a crimson pool almost in the room's exact center. Such was Wendell Marsh's library— as eccentrically designed as its master.

It was the wreck of a room that we found. Shattered vases littered the floor— books were ripped savagely apart— curtains were hanging in ribbons— a heavy leather rocker was splintered.

The wreckage might have marked the death-struggle of giants. In the midst of the destruction, Wendell Marsh was twisted on his back. His face was shriveled, his eyes were staring. There was no hint of a wound or even a bruise. In his right hand was gripped an object partially turned from me.

I found myself stepping nearer, as though drawn by a magnet. There is something hypnotic in such horrible scenes! And then I barely checked a cry.

Wendell Marsh's dead fingers held a pipe— a strangely carved red sandstone bowl, and a long, glistening stem.

Sheriff Peddicord noted the direction of my glance.

"Mr. Marsh got that there pipe in London, along with those other relics he brought home. They do say as how it was the first pipe ever smoked by a white man. The Indians of Virginia gave it to a chap named Sir Walter Raleigh. Mr. Marsh had a new stem put to it, and his butler says he smoked it every day. Queer, ain't it, how some folks' tastes do run?"

The sheriff moistened his lips under his scraggly yellow moustache.

"Must have been some fight what done this!" His head included the wrecked room in a vague sweep.

Madelyn strolled over to a pair of the ribboned curtains, and fingered them musingly.

"But that isn't the queerest part." The chief glanced at Madelyn expectantly. "There was no way for any one else to get out— or in!"

Madelyn stooped lower over the curtains. They seemed to fascinate her. "The door?" she hazarded absently. "It was locked?"

"From the inside. Peters and the footman saw the key when they broke in this morning ... Peters swears he heard Mr. Marsh turn it when he left him writing at ten o'clock last night."

"The windows?"

"Fastened as tight as a drum— and, if they wasn't, it's a matter of a good thirty foot to the ground."

"The roof, perhaps?"

"A cat might get through it— if every part wasn't clamped as tight as the windows."

Mr. Peddicord spoke with a distinct inflection of triumph. Madelyn was still staring at the curtains.

"Isn't it rather odd," I ventured, "that the sounds of the struggle, or whatever it was, didn't alarm the house?"

Sheriff Peddicord plainly regarded me as an outsider. He answered my question with obvious shortness.

"You could fire a blunderbuss up here and no one would be the wiser. They say as how Mr. Marsh had the room made soundproof. And, besides, the servants have a building to themselves, all except Miss Jansen's maid, who sleeps in a room next to her at the other end of the house."

My eyes circled back to Wendell Marsh's knotted figure— his shriveled face— horror-frozen eyes— the hand gripped about the fantastic pipe. I think it was the pipe that held my glance. Of all incongruities, a pipe in the hand of a dead man!

Maybe it was something of the same thought that brought Madelyn of a sudden across the room. She stooped, straightened the cold fingers, and rose with the pipe in her hand.

A new stem had obviously been added to it, of a substance which I judged to be jessamine. At its end, teeth-marks had bitten nearly through. The stone bowl was filled with the cold ashes of half-consumed tobacco. Madelyn balanced it musingly.

"Curious, isn't it, Sheriff, that a man engaged in a life-or-death struggle should cling to a heavy pipe?"

"Why— I suppose so. But the question, Miss Mack, is what became of that there other man? It isn't natural as how Mr. Marsh could have fought with himself."

"The other man?" Madelyn repeated mechanically. She was stirring the rim of the dead ashes.

"And how in tarnation was Mr. Marsh killed?"

Madelyn contemplated a dust-covered finger.

"Will you do me a favor, Sheriff?"

"Why, er— of course."

"Kindly find out from the butler if Mr. Marsh had cherry pie for dinner last night!"

The sheriff gulped.

"Che-cherry pie?"

Madelyn glanced up impatiently.

"I believe he was very fond of it."

The sheriff shuffled across to the door uncertainly. Madelyn's eyes flashed to me.

"You might go, too, Nora."

For a moment I was tempted to flat rebellion. But Madelyn affected not to notice the fact. She is always so aggravatingly sure of her own way!— With what I tried to make a mood of aggrieved silence, I followed the sheriff's blue-coated figure. As the door closed, I saw that Madelyn was still balancing Raleigh's pipe.

From the top of the stairs, Sheriff Peddicord glanced across at me suspiciously.

"I say, what I would like to know is what became of that there other man!"

A wisp of a black-gowned figure, peering through a dormer window at the end of the second-floor hall, turned suddenly as we reached the landing. A white, drawn face, suggesting a tired child, stared at us from under a frame of dull-gold hair, drawn low from a careless part. I knew at once it was Muriel Jansen, for the time, at least, mistress of the house of death.

"Has the coroner come yet, Sheriff?"

She spoke with one of the most liquid voices I have ever heard. Had it not been for her bronze hair, I would have fancied her at once of Latin descent. The fact of my presence she seemed scarcely to notice, not with any suggestion of aloofness, but rather as though she had been drained even of the emotion of curiosity.

"Not yet, Miss Jansen. He should be here now."

She stepped closer to the window, and then turned slightly.

"I told Peters to telegraph to New York for Dr. Dench when he summoned you. He was one of Uncle's oldest friends. I— I would like him to be here when— when the coroner makes his examination."

The sheriff bowed awkwardly.

"Miss Mack is upstairs now."

The pale face was staring at us again with raised eyebrows.

"Miss Mack? I don't understand." Her eyes shifted to me.

"She had a letter from Mr. Marsh by this morning's early post," I explained. "I am Miss Noraker. Mr. Marsh wanted her to come down at once. She didn't know, of course— couldn't know— that— that he was— dead!"

"A letter from— Uncle?" A puzzled line gathered in her face.

I nodded.

"A distinctly curious letter. But— Miss Mack would perhaps prefer to give you the details."

The puzzled line deepened. I could feel her eyes searching mine intently.

"I presume Miss Mack will be down soon," I volunteered. "If you wish, however, I will tell her— "

"That will hardly be necessary. But— you are quite sure— a letter?"

"Quite sure," I returned, somewhat impatiently.

And then, without warning, her hands darted to her head, and she swayed forward. I caught her in my arms with a side-view of Sheriff Peddicord staring, open-mouthed.

"Get her maid!" I gasped.

The sheriff roused into belated action. As he took a cumbersome step toward the nearest door, it opened suddenly. A gaunt, middle-aged woman, in a crisp white apron, digested the situation with cold grey eyes. Without a word, she caught Muriel Jansen in her arms.

"She has fainted," I said rather vaguely. "Can I help you?"

The other paused with her burden.

"When I need you, I'll ask you!" she snapped, and banged the door in our faces.

In the wake of Sheriff Peddicord, I descended the stairs. A dozen question-marks were spinning through my brain. Why had Muriel Jansen fainted? Why had the mention of Wendell Marsh's letter left such an atmosphere of bewildered doubt? Why had the dragonlike maid— for such I divined her to be— faced us with such hostility? The undercurrent of hidden secrets in the dim, silent house seemed suddenly intensified.

With a vague wish for fresh air and the sun on the grass, I sought the front veranda, leaving the sheriff in the hall, mopping his face with his red handkerchief.

A carefully tended yard of generous distances stretched an inviting expanse of graded lawn before me. Evidently Wendell Marsh had provided a discreet distance between himself and his neighbors. The advance guard of a morbid crowd was already shuffling about the gate. I knew that it would not be long, too, before the press siege would begin.

I could picture frantic city editors pitchforking their star men New Jerseyward. I smiled at the thought. The Bugle— the slave driver that presided over my own financial destinies— was assured of a generous beat in advance. The next train from New York was not due until late afternoon.

From the staring line about the gate, the figure of a well-set-up young man in blue serge detached itself with swinging step.

"A reporter?" I breathed, incredulous.

With a glance at me, he ascended the steps and paused at the door, awaiting an answer to his bell. My stealthy glances failed to place him among the "stars" of New York newspaperdom. Perhaps he was a local correspondent. With smug expectancy, I awaited his discomfiture when Peters received his card. And then I rubbed my eyes. Peters was stepping back from the door, and the other was following him with every suggestion of assurance.

I was still gasping when a maid, broom in hand, zigzagged toward my end of the veranda. She smiled at me with a pair of friendly black eyes.

"Are you a detective?"

"Why?" I parried.

She drew her broom idly across the floor.

"I— I always thought detectives different from other people."

She sent a rivulet of dust through the railing, with a side-glance still in my direction.

"Oh, you will find them human enough," I laughed, "outside of detective stories!"

She pondered my reply doubtfully.

"I thought it about time Mr. Truxton was appearing!" she ventured suddenly.

"Mr. Truxton?"

"He's the man that just came— Mr. Homer Truxton. Miss Jansen is going to marry him!"

A light broke through my fog.

"Then he is not a reporter?"

"Mr. Truxton? He's a lawyer." The broom continued its dilatory course. "Mr. Marsh didn't like him— so they say!"

I stepped back, smoothing my skirts. I have learned the cardinal rule of Madelyn never to pretend too great an interest in the gossip of a servant.

The maid was mechanically shaking out a rug.

"For my part, I always thought Mr. Truxton far and away the pick of Miss Jansen's two steadies. I never could understand what she could see in Dr. Dench! Why, he's old enough to be her— "

In the doorway, Sheriff Peddicord's bulky figure beckoned.

"Don't you reckon as how it's about time we were going back to Miss Mack?" he whispered.

"Perhaps," I assented rather reluctantly.

From the shadows of the hall, the sheriff's sound eye fixed itself on me belligerently.

"I say, what I would like to know is what became of that there other man!"

As we paused on the second landing the well-set-up figure of Mr. Homer Truxton was bending toward a partially opened door. Beyond his shoulder, I caught a fleeting glimpse of a pale face under a border of rumpled dull-gold hair. Evidently Muriel Jansen had recovered from her faint.

The door closed abruptly, but not before I had seen that her eyes were red with weeping.

Madelyn was sunk into a red-backed chair before a huge flat-top desk in the corner of the library, a stack of Wendell Marsh's red-bound books, from a wheel-cabinet at her side, bulked before her. She finished the page she was reading— a page marked with a broad blue pencil— without a hint that she had heard us enter.

Sheriff Peddicord stared across at her with a disappointment that was almost ludicrous. Evidently Madelyn was falling short of his conception of the approved attitudes for a celebrated detective!

"Are you a student of Elizabethan literature, Sheriff?" she asked suddenly.

The sheriff gurgled weakly.

"If you are, I am quite sure you will be interested in Mr. Marsh's collection. It is the most thorough on the subject that I have ever seen. For instance, here is a volume on the inner court life of Elizabeth— perhaps you would like me to read you this random passage?"

The sheriff drew himself up with more dignity than I thought he possessed.

"We are investigating a crime, Miss Mack!"

Madelyn closed the book with a sigh.

"So we are! May I ask what is your report from the butler?"

"Mr. Marsh did not have cherry pie for dinner last night!" the sheriff snapped.

"You are quite confident?"

And then abruptly the purport of the question flashed to me.

"Why, Mr. Marsh, himself, mentioned the fact in his letter!" I burst out.

Madelyn's eyes turned to me reprovingly.

"You must be mistaken, Nora."

With a lingering glance at the books on the desk, she rose. Sheriff Peddicord moved toward the door, opened it, and faced about with an abrupt clearing of his throat.

"Begging your pardon, Miss Mack, have— have you found any clues in the case?"

Madelyn had paused again at the ribboned curtains.

"Clues? The man who made Mr. Marsh's death possible, Sheriff, was an expert chemist, of Italian origin, living for some time in London— and he died three hundred years ago!"

From the hall we had a fleeting view of Sheriff Peddicord's face, flushed as red as his handkerchief, and then it and the handkerchief disappeared.

I whirled on Madelyn sternly.

"You are carrying your absurd joke, Miss Mack, altogether too— "

I paused, gulping in my turn. It was as though I had stumbled from the shadows into an electric glare.

Madelyn had crossed to the desk, and was gently shifting the dead ashes of Raleigh's pipe into an envelope. A moment she sniffed at its bowl, peering down at the crumpled body at her feet.

"The pipe!" I gasped. "Wendell Marsh was poisoned with the pipe!"

Madelyn sealed the envelope slowly.

"Is that fact just dawning on you, Nora?"

"But the rest of it— what you told the— "

Madelyn thrummed on the bulky volume of Elizabethan history.

"Someday, Nora, if you will remind me, I will give you the material for what you call a Sunday 'feature' on the historic side of murder as a fine art!"

In a curtain-shadowed hook of the side veranda Muriel Jansen was awaiting us, pillowed back against a bronze-draped chair, whose colors almost startlingly matched the gold of her hair. Her resemblance to a tired child was even more pronounced than when I had last seen her.

I found myself glancing furtively for signs of Homer Truxton, but he had disappeared.

Miss Jansen took the initiative in our interview with a nervous abruptness, contrasting oddly with her hesitancy at our last meeting.

"I understand, Miss Mack, that you received a letter from my uncle asking your presence here. May I see it?"

The eagerness of her tones could not be mistaken.

From her wrist-bag Madelyn extended the square envelope of the morning post, with its remarkable message. Twice Muriel Jansen's eyes swept slowly through its contents. Madelyn watched her with a little frown. A sudden tenseness had crept into the air, as though we were all keying ourselves for an unexpected climax. And then, like a thunderclap, it came.

"A curious communication," Madelyn suggested. "I had hoped you might be able to add to it?"

The tired face in the bronze-draped chair stared across the lawn.

"I can. The most curious fact of your communication Miss Mack, is that Wendell Marsh did not write it!"

Never have I admired more keenly Madelyn's remarkable poise. Save for an almost imperceptible indrawing of her breath, she gave no hint of the shock which must have stunned her as it did me. I was staring with mouth agape. But, then, I presume you have discovered by this time that I was not designed for a detective!

Strangely enough, Muriel Jansen gave no trace of wonder in her announcement. Her attitude suggested a sense of detachment from the subject as though suddenly it had lost its interest. And yet, less than an hour ago it had prostrated her in a swoon.

"You mean the letter is a forgery?" asked Madelyn quietly.

"Quite obviously."

"And the attempts on Mr. Marsh's life to which it refers?"

"There have been none. I have been with my uncle continuously for six months. I can speak definitely."

Miss Jansen fumbled in a white crocheted bag.

"Here are several specimens of Mr. Marsh's writing. I think they should be sufficient to convince you of what I say. If you desire others— "

I was gulping like a truant schoolgirl as Madelyn spread on her lap the three notes extended to her. Casual business and personal references they were, none of more than half a dozen lines. Quite enough, however, to complete the sudden chasm at our feet— quite enough to emphasize a bold, aggressive penmanship, almost perpendicular, without the slightest resemblance to the cramped shadowy writing of the morning's astonishing communication.

Madelyn rose from her chair, smoothing her skirts thoughtfully. For a moment she stood at the railing, gazing down upon a trellis of yellow roses, her face turned from us. For the first time in our curious friendship, I was actually conscious of a feeling of pity for her! The blank wall which she faced seemed so abrupt— so final!

Muriel Jansen shifted her position slightly.

"Are you satisfied, Miss Mack?"

"Quite." Madelyn turned, and handed back the three notes. "I presume this means that you do not care for me to continue the case?"

I whirled in dismay. I had never thought of this possibility.

"On the contrary, Miss Mack, it seems to me an additional reason why you should continue!"

I breathed freely again. At least we were not to be dismissed with the abruptness that Miss Jansen's maid had shown! Madelyn bowed rather absently.

"Then if you will give me another interview, perhaps this afternoon— "

Miss Jansen fumbled with the lock of her bag. For the first time her voice lost something of its directness.

"Have— have you any explanation of this astonishing— forgery?"

Madelyn was staring out toward the increasing crowd at the gate. A sudden ripple had swept through it.

"Have you ever heard of a man by the name of Orlando Julio, Miss Jansen?"

My own eyes, following the direction of Madelyn's gaze, were brought back sharply to the veranda. For the second time, Muriel Jansen had crumpled back in a faint.

As I darted toward the servants' bell Madelyn checked me. Striding up the walk were two men with the unmistakable air of physicians. At Madelyn's motioning hand they turned toward us.

The foremost of the two quickened his pace as he caught sight of the figure in the chair. Instinctively I knew that he was Dr. Dench— and it needed no profound analysis to place his companion as the local coroner.

With a deft hand on Miss Jansen's heartbeats, Dr. Dench raised a ruddy, brown-whiskered face inquiringly toward us.

"Shock!" Madelyn explained. "Is it serious?"

The hand on the wavering breast darted toward a medicine case and selected a vial of brownish liquid. The gaze above it continued its scrutiny of Madelyn's slender figure.

Dr. Dench was of the rugged, German type, steel-eyed, confidently sure of movement, with the physique of a splendidly muscled animal. If the servant's tattle was to be credited, Muriel Jansen could not have attracted more opposite extremes in her suitors.

The coroner— a rusty-suited man of middle age, in quite obvious professional awe of his companion— extended a glass of water. Miss Jansen wearily opened her eyes before it reached her lips.

Dr. Dench restrained her sudden effort to rise.

"Drink this, please!" There was nothing but professional command in his voice. If he loved the gray-pallored girl in the chair, his emotions were under superb control.

Madelyn stepped to the background, motioning me quietly.

"I fancy I can leave now safely. I am going back to town."

"Town?" I echoed.

"I should be back the latter part of the afternoon. Would it inconvenience you to wait here?"

"But, why on earth— " I began.

"Will you tell the butler to send around the car? Thanks!"

When Madelyn doesn't choose to answer questions she ignores them. I subsided as gracefully as possible. As her machine whirled under the porte cochere, however, my curiosity again overflowed my restraint.

"At least, who is Orlando Julio?" I demanded.

Madelyn carefully adjusted her veil.

"The man who provided the means for the death of Wendell Marsh!" And she was gone.

I swept another glance at the trio on the side veranda, and with what I tried to convince myself was a philosophical shrug, although I knew perfectly well it was merely a pettish fling, sought a retired corner of the rear drawing room, with my pad and pencil.

After all, I was a newspaper woman, and it needed no elastic imagination to picture the scene in the city room of the Bugle, if I failed to send a proper accounting of myself.

A few minutes later a tread of feet, advancing to the stairs, told me that the coroner and Dr. Dench were ascending for the belated examination of Wendell Marsh's body. Miss Jansen had evidently recovered, or been assigned to the ministrations of her maid. Once Peters, the wooden-faced butler, entered ghostily to inform me that luncheon would be served at one, but effaced himself almost before my glance returned to my writing.

I partook of the meal in the distinguished company of Sheriff Peddicord. Apparently Dr. Dench was still busied in his gruesome task upstairs, and it was not surprising that Miss Jansen preferred her own apartments.

However much the sheriff's professional poise might have been jarred by the events of the morning, his appetite had not been affected. His attention was too absorbed in the effort to do justice to the Marsh hospitality to waste time in table talk.

He finished his last spoonful of strawberry ice cream with a heavy sigh of contentment, removed the napkin, which he had tucked under his collar, and, as though mindful of the family's laundry bills, folded it carefully and wiped his lips with his red handkerchief. It was not until then that our silence was interrupted.

Glancing cautiously about the room, and observing that the butler had been called kitchenward, to my amazement he essayed a confidential wink.

"I say," he ventured enticingly, leaning his elbow on the table, "what I would like to know is what became of that there other man!"

"Are you familiar with the Fourth Dimension, Sheriff?" I returned solemnly. I rose from my chair, and stepped toward him confidentially in my turn. "I believe that a thorough study of that subject would answer your question."

It was three o'clock when I stretched myself in my corner of the drawing-room, and stuffed the last sheets of my copy paper into a special-delivery-stamped envelope.

My story was done. And Madelyn was not there to blue-pencil the Park Row adjectives! I smiled rather gleefully as I patted my hair and leisurely addressed the envelope. The city editor would be satisfied, if Madelyn wasn't!

As I stepped into the hall, Dr. Dench, the coroner, and Sheriff Peddicord were descending the stairs. Evidently the medical examination had been completed. Under other circumstances the three expressions before me would have afforded an interesting study in contrasts— Dr. Dench trimming his nails with professional stoicism, the coroner endeavoring desperately to copy the other's sang-froid, and the sheriff buried in an owllike solemnity.

Dr. Dench restored his knife to his pocket.

"You are Miss Mack's assistant, I understand?"

I bowed.

"Miss Mack has been called away. She should be back, however, shortly."

I could feel the doctor's appraising glance dissecting me with much the deliberateness of a surgical operation. I raised my eyes suddenly, and returned his stare. It was a virile, masterful face— and, I had to admit, coldly handsome!

Dr. Dench snapped open his watch.

"Very well then, Miss, Miss—"

"Noraker!" I supplied crisply.

The blond beard inclined the fraction of an inch.

"We will wait."

"The autopsy?" I ventured. "Has it—"

"The result of the autopsy I will explain to— Miss Mack!"

I bit my lip, felt my face flush as I saw that Sheriff Peddicord was trying to smother a grin, and turned with a rather unsuccessful shrug.

Now, if I had been of a vindictive nature, I would have opened my envelope and inserted a retaliating paragraph that would have returned the snub of Dr. Dench with interest. I flatter myself that I consigned the envelope to the Three Forks post office, in the rear of the Elite Dry Goods Emporium, with its contents unchanged.

As a part recompense, I paused at a corner drugstore and permitted a young man with a gorgeous pink shirt to make me a chocolate ice-cream soda. I was bent over an asthmatic straw when, through the window, I saw Madelyn's car skirt the curb.

I rushed out to the sidewalk, while the young man stared dazedly after me. The chauffeur swerved the machine as I tossed a dime to the Adonis of the fountain.

Madelyn shifted to the end of the seat as I clambered to her side. One glance was quite enough to show that her town mission, whatever it was, had ended in failure. Perhaps it was the consciousness of this fact that brought my eyes next to her blue turquoise locket. It was open. I glared accusingly.

"So you have fallen back on the cola stimulant again, Miss Mack?"

She nodded glumly, and perversely slipped into her mouth another of the dark brown berries, on which I have known her to keep up for forty-eight hours without sleep and almost without food.

For a moment I forgot even my curiosity as to her errand.

"I wish the duty would be raised so high you couldn't get those things into the country!"

She closed her locket, without deigning a response. The more volcanic my outburst, the more glacial Madelyn's coldness—  particularly on the cola topic. I shrugged in resignation. I might as well have done so in the first place!

I straightened my hat, drew my handkerchief over my flushed face, and coughed questioningly. Continued silence. I turned in desperation.

"Well?" I surrendered.

"Don't you know enough, Nora Noraker, to hold your tongue?"

My pent-up emotions snapped.

"Look here, Miss Mack, I have been snubbed by Dr. Dench and the coroner, grinned at by Sheriff Peddicord, and I am not going to be crushed by you! What is your report— good, bad, or indifferent?"

Madelyn turned from her stare into the dust-yellow road.

"I have been a fool, Nora— a blind, bigoted, self-important fool!"

I drew a deep breath.

"Which means— "

From her bag Madelyn drew the envelope of dead tobacco ashes from the Marsh library, and tossed it over the side of the car. I sank back against the cushions.

"Then the tobacco after all—"

"Is nothing but tobacco— harmless tobacco!"

"But the pipe— I thought the pipe—"

"That's just it! The pipe, my dear girl, killed Wendell Marsh! But I don't know how! I don't know how!"

"Madelyn," I said severely, "you are a woman, even if you are making your living at a man's profession! What you need is a good cry!"

Dr. Dench, pacing back and forth across the veranda, knocked the ashes from an amber-stemmed meerschaum and advanced to meet us as we alighted. The coroner and Sheriff Peddicord were craning their necks from wicker chairs in the background. It was easy enough to surmise that Dr. Dench had parted from them abruptly in the desire for a quiet smoke to marshal his thoughts.

"Fill your pipe again if you wish," said Madelyn. "I don't mind."

Dr. Dench inclined his head, and dug the mouth of his meerschaum into a fat leather pouch. A spiral of blue smoke soon curled around his face. He was one of that type of men to whom a pipe lends a distinction of studious thoughtfulness.

With a slight gesture he beckoned in the direction of the coroner.

"It is proper, perhaps, that Dr. Williams in his official capacity should be heard first."

Through the smoke of his meerschaum, his eyes were searching Madelyn's face. It struck me that he was rather puzzled as to just how seriously to take her.

The coroner shuffled nervously. At his elbow, Sheriff Peddicord fumbled for his red handkerchief.

"We have made a thorough examination of Mr. Marsh's body, Miss Mack, a most thorough examination—"

"Of course he was not shot, nor stabbed, nor strangled, nor sandbagged?" interrupted Madelyn crisply.

The coroner glanced at Dr. Dench uncertainly. The latter was smoking with inscrutable face.

"Nor poisoned!" finished the coroner with a quick breath.

A blue smoke curl from Dr. Dench's meerschaum vanished against the sun. The coroner jingled a handful of coins in his pocket. The sound jarred on my nerves oddly. Not poisoned! Then Madelyn's theory of the pipe—

My glance swerved in her direction. Another blank wall— the blankest in this riddle of blank walls!

But the bewilderment I had expected in her face I did not find. The black dejection I had noticed in the car had dropped like a whisked-off cloak. The tired lines had been erased as by a sponge. Her eyes shone with that tense glint which I knew came only when she saw a befogged way swept clear before her.

"You mean that you found no trace of poison?" she corrected.

The coroner drew himself up.

"Under the supervision of Dr. Dench, we have made a most complete probe of the various organs— lungs, stomach, heart—"

"And brain, I presume?"

"Brain? Certainly not!"

"And you?" Madelyn turned toward Dr. Dench. "You subscribe to Dr. Williams' opinion?"

Dr. Dench removed his meerschaum.

"From our examination of Mr. Marsh's body, I am prepared to state emphatically that there is no trace of toxic condition of any kind!"

"Am I to infer then that you will return a verdict of— natural death?"

Dr. Dench stirred his pipe-ashes.

"I was always under the impression, Miss Mack, that the verdict in a case of this kind must come from the coroner's jury."

Madelyn pinned back her veil, and removed her gloves.

"There is no objection to my seeing the body again?"

The coroner stared.

"Why, er— the undertaker has it now. I don't see why he should object, if you wish— "

Madelyn stepped to the door. Behind her, Sheriff Peddicord stirred suddenly.

"I say, what I would like to know, gents, is what became of that there other man!"

It was not until six o'clock that I saw Madelyn again, and then I found her in Wendell Marsh's red library. She was seated at its late tenant's huge desk. Before her were a vial of whitish-grey powder, a small rubber inked roller, a half a dozen sheets of paper, covered with what looked like smudges of black ink, and Raleigh's pipe. I stopped short, staring.

She rose with a shrug.

"Fingerprints," she explained laconically. "This sheet belongs to Miss Jansen; the next to her maid; the third to the butler, Peters; the fourth to Dr. Dench; the fifth to Wendell Marsh, himself. It was my first experiment in taking the 'prints' of a dead man. It was— interesting."

"But what has that to do with a case of this kind?" I demanded.

Madelyn picked up the sixth sheet of smudged paper.

"We have here the fingerprints of Wendell Marsh's murderer!"

I did not even cry my amazement. I suppose the kaleidoscope of the day had dulled my normal emotions. I remember that I readjusted a loose pin in my waist before I spoke.

"The murderer of Wendell Marsh!" I repeated mechanically. "Then he was poisoned?"

Madelyn's eyes opened and closed without answer.

I reached over to the desk, and picked up Mr. Marsh's letter of the morning post at Madelyn's elbow.

"You have found the man who forged this?"

"It was not forged!"

In my daze I dropped the letter to the floor.

"You have discovered then the other man in the death-struggle that wrecked the library?"

"There was no other man!"

Madelyn gathered up her possessions from the desk. From the edge of the row of books she lifted a small, red-bound volume, perhaps four inches in width, and then with a second thought laid it back.

"By the way, Nora, I wish you would come back here at eight o'clock. If this book is still where I am leaving it, please bring it to me! I think that will be all for the present."

"All?" I gasped. "Do you realize that—"

Madelyn moved toward the door.

"I think eight o'clock will be late enough for your errand," she said without turning.

The late June twilight had deepened into a somber darkness when, my watch showing ten minutes past the hour of my instructions, I entered the room on the second floor that had been assigned to Miss Mack and myself. Madelyn at the window was staring into the shadow-blanketed yard.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Your book is no longer in the library!" I said crossly.

Madelyn whirled with a smile.

"Good! And now if you will be so obliging as to tell Peters to ask Miss Jansen to meet me in the rear drawing room, with any of the friends of the family she desires to be present, I think we can clear up our little puzzle."

It was a curious group that the graceful Swiss clock in the bronze drawing room of the Marsh house stared down upon as it ticked its way past the half hour after eight. With a grave, rather insistent bow, Miss Mack had seated the other occupants of the room as they answered her summons. She was the only one of us that remained standing.

Before her were Sheriff Peddicord, Homer Truxton, Dr. Dench, and Muriel Jansen. Madelyn's eyes swept our faces for a moment in silence, and then she crossed the room and closed the door.

"I have called you here," she began, "to explain the mystery of Mr. Marsh's death." Again her glance swept our faces. "In many respects it has provided us with a peculiar, almost an unique problem.

"We find a man, in apparently normal health, dead. The observer argues at once foul play; and yet on his body is no hint of wound or bruise. The medical examination discovers no trace of poison. The autopsy shows no evidence of crime. Apparently we have eliminated all forms of unnatural death.

"I have called you here because the finding of the autopsy is incorrect, or rather incomplete. We are not confronted by natural death— but by a crime. And I may say at the outset that I am not the only person to know this fact. My knowledge is shared by one other in this room."

Sheriff Peddicord rose to his feet and rather ostentatiously stepped to the door and stood with his back against it. Madelyn smiled faintly at the movement.

"I scarcely think there will be an effort at escape, Sheriff," she said quietly.

Muriel Jansen was crumpled back into her chair, staring. Dr. Dench was studying Miss Mack with the professional frown he might have directed at an abnormality on the operating table. It was Truxton who spoke first in the fashion of the impulsive boy.

"If we are not dealing with natural death, how on earth then was Mr. Marsh killed?"

Madelyn whisked aside a light covering from a stand at her side, and raised to view Raleigh's red sandstone pipe. For a moment she balanced it musingly.

"The three-hundred-year-old death tool of Orlando Julio," she explained. "It was this that killed Wendell Marsh!"

She pressed the bowl of the pipe into the palm of her hand. "As an instrument of death, it is almost beyond detection. We examined the ashes, and found nothing but harmless tobacco. The organs of the victim showed no trace of foul play."

She tapped the long stem gravely.

"But the examination of the organs did not include the brain. And it is through the brain that the pipe strikes, killing first the mind in a nightmare of insanity, and then the body. That accounts for the wreckage that we found— the evidences apparently of two men engaged in a desperate struggle. The wreckage was the work of only one man— a maniac in the moment before death. The drug with which we are dealing drives its victim into an insane fury before his body succumbs. I believe such cases are fairly common in India."

"Then Mr. Marsh was poisoned after all?" cried Truxton. He was the only one of Miss Mack's auditors to speak.

"No, not poisoned! You will understand as I proceed. The pipe you will find, contains apparently but one bowl and one channel, and at a superficial glance is filled only with tobacco. In reality, there is a lower chamber concealed beneath the upper bowl, to which extends a second channel. This secret chamber is charged with a certain compound of Indian hemp and dhatura leaves, one of the most powerful brain stimulants known to science— and one of the most dangerous if used above a certain strength. From the lower chamber it would leave no trace, of course, in the ashes above.

"Between the two compartments of the pipe is a slight connecting opening, sufficient to allow the hemp beneath to be ignited gradually by the burning tobacco. When a small quantity of the compound is used, the smoker is stimulated as by no other drug, not even opium. Increase the quantity above the danger point, and mark the result. The victim is not poisoned in the strict sense of the word, but literally smothered to death by the fumes!"

In Miss Mack's voice was the throb of the student before the creation of the master.

"I should like this pipe, Miss Jansen, if you ever care to dispose of it!"

The girl was still staring woodenly.

"It was Orlando Julio, the medieval poisoner," she gasped, "that Uncle described—"

"In his seventeenth chapter of 'The World's Great Cynics,' " finished Madelyn. "I have taken the liberty of reading the chapter in manuscript form. Julio, however, was not the discoverer of the drug. He merely introduced it to the English public. As a matter of fact, it is one of the oldest stimulants of the East. It is easy to assume that it was not as a stimulant that Julio used it, but as a baffling instrument of murder. The mechanism of the pipe was his own invention, of course. The smoker, if not in the secret, would be completely oblivious to his danger. He might even use the pipe in perfect safety— until its lower chamber was loaded!"

Sheriff Peddicord, against the door, mopped his face with his red handkerchief, like a man in a daze. Dr. Dench was still studying Miss Mack with his intent frown. Madelyn swerved her angle abruptly.

"Last night was not the first time the hemp-chamber of Wendell Marsh's pipe had been charged. We can trace the effect of the drug on his brain for several months— hallucinations, imaginative enemies seeking his life, incipient insanity. That explains his astonishing letter to me. Wendell Marsh was not a man of nine lives, but only one. The perils which he described were merely fantastic figments of the drug. For instance, the episode of the poisoned cherry pie. There was no pie at all served at the table yesterday.

"The letter to me was not a forgery, Miss Jansen, although you were sincere enough when you pronounced it such. The complete change in your uncle's handwriting was only another effect of the drug. It was this fact, in the end, which led me to the truth. You did not perceive that the dates of your notes and mine were six months apart! I knew that some terrific mental shock must have occurred in the meantime.

"And then, too, the ravages of a drug-crazed victim were at once suggested by the curtains of the library. They were not simply torn, but fairly chewed to pieces!"

A sudden tension fell over the room. We shifted nervously, rather avoiding one another's eyes. Madelyn laid the pipe back on the stand. She was quite evidently in no hurry to continue. It was Truxton again who put the leading question of the moment.

"If Mr. Marsh was killed as you describe, Miss Mack, who killed him?"

Madelyn glanced across at Dr. Dench.

"Will you kindly let me have the red leather book that you took from Mr. Marsh's desk this evening, Doctor?"

The physician met her glance steadily.

"You think it— necessary?"

"I am afraid I must insist."

For an instant Dr. Dench hesitated. Then, with a shrug, he reached into a coat pocket and extended the red-bound volume, for which Miss Mack had dispatched me on the fruitless errand to the library. As Madelyn opened it we saw that it was not a printed volume, but filled with several hundred pages of close, cramped writing. Dr. Dench's gaze swerved to Muriel Jansen as Miss Mack spoke.

"I have here the diary of Wendell Marsh, which shows us that he had been in the habit of seeking the stimulant of Indian hemp, or 'hasheesh' for some time, possibly as a result of his retired, sedentary life and his close application to his books. Until his purchase of the Bainford relics, however, he had taken the stimulant in the comparatively harmless form of powdered leaves or 'bhang,' as it is termed in the Orient. His acquisition of Julio's drug-pipe, and an accidental discovery of its mechanism, led him to adopt the compound of hemp and dhatura, prepared for smoking— in India called 'charas.' No less an authority than Captain E. N. Windsor, bacteriologist of the Burmese government, states that it is directly responsible for a large percentage of the lunacy of the Orient. Wendell Marsh, however, did not realize his danger, nor how much stronger the latter compound is than the form of the drug to which he had been accustomed.

"Dr. Dench endeavored desperately to warn him of his peril and free him from the bondage of the habit as the diary records, but the victim was too thoroughly enslaved. In fact, the situation had reached a point just before the final climax when it could no longer be concealed. The truth was already being suspected by the older servants. I assume this was why you feared my investigations in the case, Miss Jansen."

Muriel Jansen was staring at Madelyn in a sort of dumb appeal.

"I can understand and admire Dr. Dench's efforts to conceal the fact from the public— first, in his supervision of the inquest, which might have stumbled on the truth, and then in his removal of the betraying diary, which I left purposely exposed in the hope that it might inspire such an action. Had it not been removed, I might have suspected another explanation of the case— in spite of certain evidence to the contrary!"

Dr. Dench's face had gone white.

"God! Miss Mack, do you mean that after all it was not suicide?"

"It was not suicide," said Madelyn quietly. She stepped across toward the opposite door.

"When I stated that my knowledge that we are not dealing with natural death was shared by another person in this room, I might have added that it was shared by still a third person— not in the room!"

With a sudden movement she threw open the door before her. From the adjoining anteroom lurched the figure of Peters, the butler. He stared at us with a face grey with terror, and then crumpled to his knees. Madelyn drew away sharply as he tried to catch her skirts.

"You may arrest the murderer of Wendell Marsh, Sheriff!" she said gravely. "And I think perhaps you had better take him outside."

She faced our bewildered stares as the drawing-room door closed behind Mr. Peddicord and his prisoner. From her stand she again took Raleigh's sandstone pipe, and with it two sheets of paper, smudged with the prints of a human thumb and fingers.

"It was the pipe in the end which led me to the truth, not only as to the method but the identity of the assassin," she explained. "The hand, which placed the fatal charge in the concealed chamber, left its imprint on the surface of the bowl. The fingers, grimed with the dust of the drug, made an impression which I would have at once detected had I not been so occupied with what I might find inside that I forgot what I might find outside! I am very much afraid that I permitted myself the great blunder of the modern detective— lack of thoroughness.

"Comparison with the fingerpints of the various agents in the case, of course, made the next step a mere detail of mathematical comparison. To make my identity sure, I found that my suspect possessed not only the opportunity and the knowledge for the crime, but the motive.

"In his younger days Peters was a chemist's apprentice; a fact which he utilized in his master's behalf in obtaining the drugs which had become so necessary a part of Mr. Marsh's life. Had Wendell Marsh appeared in person for so continuous a supply, his identity would soon have made the fact a matter of common gossip. He relied on his servant for his agent, a detail which he mentions several times in his diary, promising Peters a generous bequest in his will as a reward. I fancy that it was the dream of this bequest, which would have meant a small fortune to a man in his position, that set the butler's brain to work on his treacherous plan of murder."

Miss Mack's dull gold hair covered the shoulders of her white peignoir in a great, thick braid. She was propped in a nest of pillows, with her favorite romance, The Three Musketeers, open at the historic siege of Porthos in the wine cellar. We had elected to spend the night at the Marsh house.

Madelyn glanced up as I appeared in the doorway of our room.

"Allow me to present a problem to your analytical skill, Miss Mack," I said humbly. "Which man does your knowledge of feminine psychology say Muriel Jansen will reward— the gravely protecting physician, or the boyishly admiring Truxton?"

"If she were thirty," retorted Madelyn, yawning, "she would be wise enough to choose Dr. Dench. But, as she is only twenty-two, it will be Truxton."

With a sigh, she turned again to the swashbuckling exploits of the gallant Porthos.

________________

5: You Can't Explain These Things

Albert Richard Wetjen

1900-1948

Sun (Sydney) 31 July 1932

THERE were just three of them under the awning that night, going down from Aden to Zanzibar. Captain Thomas was to tranship for Beira to take the Willapa home, since her master and mate were both dead of cholera; McGilvray had business in Madagascar; and little Bobby Towns was eventually to land at Mauritius to work for the sugar people. There were other passengers on board, of course, but they were sweating in their bunks, cursing the heat and cockroaches and keeping the steward busy making iced Tom Collinses.

The sea was dark velvet, flat as a table, and the big stars were so close they sent reflections across the water as do the lights of London River. Not even the creaking progress of the ship seemed able to create a wind, and the three men under the awnings sprawled in long cane chairs and felt their whites settle stickily against them.

"And there you are." said McGilvray. "It was nothing but luck. If we'd sailed on time, we'd have been in the channel when she blew up. Never had a chance. As it was the explosion flattened houses miles away. Imagine! A thousand tons of T.N.T.

"We dodged it only because a

drunken man broke his Jeg and we were held up until the ambulance came. Delayed us half an hour. You can't explain these thlings."

"I remember the affair," said little Bobby, who was six feet four and drank more than was good for him. "In Halifax, wasn't it? In '10. Ship carrying explosives collided in the harbour."

"That's right," agreed McGilvray. "And we were to follow her out. Had five hundred tons of the stuff aboard ourselves. As it was. we were still behind the headlands when things busted. Nothing but luck."

"Luck's right," said Captain Thomas. "And that reminds me of something that happened in '17, during the War, too."

He unfastened another button of his shirt and clasped his hands over his ample stomach. A round little man he was, with a sandy walrus moustache and mild blue eyes. Tubby Thomas they called him, and the younger men laughed behind his back. Yet it was curious that the Line always sent him to take over when there was trouble.

"I was younger in '17." he said reflectively, "And a bit thinner. They hauled me into the Naval Reserve and stuck me aboard a light cruiser so that I could lake orders from little boys of the regulars .and show them how to navigate through ice . . . no matter . . . it's a long time ago." He sighed and flicked the sweat from the end of his nose. "Not that It's much of a story," he apologised, "but you were talking of luck. Anyway, we were on the Greenland patrol, looking for submarines and one thing and the other, and coming south for Home.

"The skipper was an old man, raised in the days when the Navy still had square-riggers, and hey were debating the practicability of ironclads. Old shellback type. You know! Rather do anything than sail on Friday. Throw a fit if he saw St. Elmo's lire at his trucks. Like an old woman. Superstitious."

Captain Thomas laughed as if the word reminded him of something else.

"Well, we had a black cat on board, donated by Lady Something or Other. The skipper got the willies over it, but the Lady was a personal friend of his, and he didn't like to throw it overboard or lose it when we were in dock. He'd never allow it on the bridge though, and if it happened to wander up there he'd chase it down himself.

"He did just that the day before we expected to get home. Kicked it off the bridge, so that it went chasing for'ard. I suppose the poor beast was scared. Anyway, the men were busy with something or the other and they had a hawser leading through a snatcliblock on the deck.

"Just taking a strain, you know, and vibrating a lot. That fool cat made a dive to get under instead of going, over, and just then, the hawser jumped, and caught it. Flattened it against the deck and broke its back.

"The skipper never said a word. Merely turned and went below, and when I followed him down a few minutes later he was lighting a stick of incense before a carved joss he'd brought from China when he was on station there. Big, grinning thing. He always figured it brought him luck. And so there he was lighting incense in front of it because the black cat was gone. He looked serious, too, frowning and worried.

"I asked him if I shouldn't set the clocks ahead an hour that noon. It was early summer, and they had the daylight saving system in England. We'd been keeping Greenwich time all the way down, and I thought it'd save a lot of confusion if we went into port with the clocks corrected to the shore. We had only about an eighteen hour run left.

" 'We'll do nothing further,' he snapped at me. 'Too many new-fangled ideas already. Leave the clocks alone until we dock.' "

"I could see he was upset about the cat, and it may be he thought that to change the clocks would be bad luck too. Anyway, you can't argue with your skipper. So the clocks remained as they were.

"We went ahead through the rest of the afternoon and the night, never sighting a thing though we were right in the submarine zone; and then, just about seven-thirty the next morning, we got it— smack! —right in the quarter. It didn't sink us but it blew the wardroom all to splinters; wiped it out. Killed a steward, and that was all. We limped into port six hours late, and with a list that gave you a crick in the neck."

Captain Thomas paused and flicked die sweat from his nose again.

"And what's the point?" asked little Bobby Towns. McGilvry grunted agreement and fumbled for a cigar.

"It's the time element," said Captain Thomas patiently. "If the skipper had let me set the clocks ahead, it would have been eight-thirty instead of seven-thirty when we caught that torpedo. As it happened, the wardroom was empty."

"Had it been eight-thirty, every officer not on duty would have been eating his last breakfast... Now would you call that luck or superstition? Personally, I've always felt rather grateful towards that black cat."

__________________

6: The Fortunes of War

Albert Richard Wetjen

Smith's Weekly (Sydney) 18 Feb 1939

WHEN the current government of the somewhat unstable Republic of Marindella approached Munitions Ltd. regarding a matter of war supplies, Munitions Ltd. took several businesslike steps.

They ascertained first that a very healthy revolutionary movement was in progress in Marindella, and so demanded, and received, payment in advance and in gold. Then they rounded up five thousand rifles, ten field guns, fifty machine guns (mostly old stock), some two million rounds of ammunition, over a thousand tons of dynamite and other high explosives, several boxes of hand grenades, sundry poison gas shells, and, along with other such material, loaded the lot on board the Ivanhoe, which on behalf of the Republic of Marindella they had bought off a scrap-heap and registered under the Marindella flag. That done, they crossed their lingers, looked round for someone crazy enough to take the ship to sea, and finally alighted upon Captain Bean.

"It's like this," said Munitions Ltd. "The officials at Bello Port will pay you a bonus of a thousand dollars as soon as you make delivery of ship and cargo. But we want no funny business. Do we make ourselves clear?"

CAPTAIN BEAN heaved ponderously from the office chair, rubbed his bulbous nose, and tucked his stomach back inside his belt. "Very clear, gentlemen," he said heartily. "But you don't need to worry. Bulkhead Bean always delivers."

"We'll let that pass," said Munitions Ltd. dryly. "There will be a Señor Manuel sailing with you, probably he's on board now; the representative of Marindella, and an expert on explosives. He will take charge as soon as you arrive and will arrange your passage home."

Captain Bean went down to the waterfront, took a launch out to the Ivanhoe (safely anchored away from all decent ships and people), the red danger flag whipping at her halliards, and waddled to his cabin on the lower bridge.

"That outfit seems to think we're a bunch of crooks, Jed," he complained to his mate, who was sprawled on the settee. "Warning me of this and that."

"Maybe they've been hearing tilings," suggested the mate sourly. He was a tall, gaunt man, very solemn, and, surprisingly enough, Captain Bean's brother.

"Anyway it's a job," said Captain Bean amiably. "A thousand dollars bonus, Jed, and I got the double pay in advance." He poured himself half a tumbler of whisky and took it without flinching.

"What with all that high-power stuff below I feel like I'm walking on hot eggs," the mate complained. He sat up, jerked his uniform cap lower over his eyes, and spat again. "Even the deck's so damn rusty you put your foot through it if you step too hard. It's gonna be a funny trip."

"Now have a drink," said Captain Bean reasonably. "And be sensible. We needed a job and we've got one."

"Well, what about this Señor Manuel who's lucked himself aboard? Is he coming, too?"

"Ah yes," agreed Captain Bean. "I forgot to mention him. He's the expert Marindella's sending along with us, and he's supposed to know all about explosives."

"Anyway," said Jed, "I don't like that guy."

CAPTAIN BEAN very amiably let the matter pass, but was inclined to agree that he did not care for Manuel either. He was a young, swarthy man with annoyingly precise black hair and a wisp of black moustache. He was apparently some relation of Marindella's current president, and had an excellent opinion of himself. None of which would have disturbed the bland calmness of Captain Bean save for the fact that Manuel had introduced him to a new dice game called Biddoo and had deftly taken fifty dollars from him. And when Captain Bean lost money it was a matter of major importance.

"The way he rolled those dice!" he informed Jed. And he added, very seriously: "I don't think that man is on the level."

"Well," said Jed dryly, gnawing a fresh chew from a battered plug, "we'd belter teach him poker. And use our own pack."

"That," Captain Bean had agreed heartily, "has all been arranged. We take the young gentleman tonight... But that can wait. I've been thinking, Jed. We've got a nice thing, here."

He eased his brother into the Ivanhoe's chart-room, doubled his own bulk over the chart table and picked up a pencil.

"Look," he said mysteriously, jabbing down on the chart. "Here's Barranola."

Jed stuck his hands in his hip pockets and spat into the chart-room sandbox.

"Barranola," he agreed sourly. "It's been there three hundred years. So what?"

"I used to know a man in Barranola," explained Captain Bean cheerfully, "who peddled guns up-country."

"LISTEN," said Jed wearily. "Do you figure any port's going to let us in with the load we're carrying? Use your head. Everyone knows by this time we sailed for Bello Port with a floating bomb. What d'you think wireless is for?"

"That," agreed Captain Bean amiably, "is what I've just found out." He fished a flimsy from his pocket and handed it to Jed.

"Why not Barranola? The second mate (he was also wireless operator on the Ivanhoe) picked that up this morning. The rebels've won and Bello Port's in their hands. And where does that leave us?"

Jed almost swallowed his quid, choked, and handed the wireless back. "You'd better ring up Munitions Ltd. and ask them," he said grimly. "If we run into Bello Port we'll be confiscated."

"Exactly," agreed Captain Bean. He blew his nose again and waved his red handkerchief. "I wonder what price dynamite's fetching these days," he murmured.

"Better wireless Munitions Ltd. before you go off half-cocked," Jed insisted. "We don't want to get into any international mix-up."

Captain Bean frowned and fretted and complained, but finally sent a wireless hack, and Munitions Ltd replied in a hurry.

NO FURTHER BUSINESS OF OURS. SHIP AND CARGO BELONG REPUBLIC OF MARINDELLA GOVERNMENT. USE YOUR OWN JUDGMENT. SUGGEST CONSULT MANUEL.

"To hell with Manuel," said Captain Bean heartily. "I ain't got no owners and I'm sea-loose with a fortune. All we got to do now is to find a good war. Let's try Barranola first."

"Barranola?" "Barranola?" inquired Manuel when he heard. "You said Barranola, yes?" He was quite mystified. "But we do not go that way."

"The rebels have won," said Jed solemnly, "in Bello Port."

"Won?" said Manuel, dazed. "Are you sure?" Captain Bean handed him the wireless, and his swarthy face shone.

"Now all is so simple," he exploded. "Magnificent!"

"Eh?" said Captain Bean. "Simple?" Manuel laughed and spread his hands'. Of course," he said impatiently. "You did not think I would turn all this stuff over to the so stupid government? No! We would be met at sea by gunboats and all would go for the revolution."

"Hold on a minute," Jed put in. "I thought the president was your uncle or something."

"Poof!" said Manuel. "My uncle!  What of that?  I am of the revolution."

"And just how did you figger the gunboats would meet us at sea?" demanded Captain Bean, growing a little purple.

Manuel snapped his fingers. "So easy. I read your course. I give the second mate a present to send a friend of mine a message in Bello Port. And then come the gunboats. So easy."

Captain Bean looked at Jed and shook his head. "He was going to doublecross his own crowd," he said sorrowfully. "Can you imagine that, Jed? He was buying all this stuff with government money and then going to double-cross his own crowd."

Jed spat over the rail and stuck his hands in his hip pockets.

"I never thought," he admitted, "that a man could sink that low."

"Bos'n," called Captain Bean sadly. "Put Señor Manuel in the spare cabin aft... the one that smells... and lock him in."

"Aye, aye, sir," agreed the bos'n. He took Manuel by the arm and led him away, expostulating and quite bewildered. Jed spat across the rail again.

"It looks like Barranola," he said absently.

"Of course," agreed Captain Bean. "My friend there can probably use the rifles and such. We must sell them on behalf of the deposed government of Marindella. And possibly," he coughed, "remit to it." He coughed again, and added: "If we can find it."

NOW all this might have been well save that Captain Bean had overlooked one thing. Sending wires at sea, unless it be in code, is somewhat like shouting private information down a crowded street. Half a dozen operators, sitting by illicit instruments on half a dozen ships, picked up the Ivanhoe's message to Munitions Ltd., and also picked up the report from Bello Port that it had fallen. In their turn the half a dozen operators, gossiping back and forth across the world, as operators will, passed the information on.

And the tale grew. By the time the latest Cunarder out of Liverpool had picked it up, the Ivanhoe had become a pirate ship, savagely roving the sea and a menace to all. Papers in Caribbean ports came out with startled headlines:

DEATH SHIP LOOSE! ... or  VESSEL LADEN WITH HIGH EXPLOSIVES AND POISON GAS SEEKING REFUGE! . . . or . . . DEATH SHIP HEADING FOR BARRANOLA!

The latter information escaped when Captain Bean got in touch with his friend at Barranola. A minor clerk talked too much and as a consequence the populace panicked. A grey-painted cutter met the Ivanhoe well outside the port and a nervous officer yelled through a megaphone, his language much to the point and sprinkled with purple oaths. Barranola, in short, did not want any part of the Ivanhoe. She was forbidden to enter with her dangerous cargo, and if she persisted she would be shelled at long range.

CAPTAIN BEAN groaned.

"And I can remember the time when a cargo like this would have meant fat pickings from Vera Cruz to Rio. Let's try Nombre de Santa Juliane."

But that port wanted no part of the Ivanhoe either. She was a floating arsenal, in the charge of the infamous Bulkhead Bean, and any little spark might send her in roaring chaos towards the sky. No port on the whole coast, in fact, would admit her. Jed was for dumping the stuff, but for a long time Captain Bean refused to listen.

"All right," he said at last, resigned. "How do you dump high explosive? I don't know anything about it. You try it."

"Not me," said Jed hastily. "I'm no expert. Better try Manuel."

"That might be an idea," said Captain Bean hopefully. "If you can talk him over."

"That might take time," Jed admitted, "after us throwing him in the brig because he was double-crossing the Republic. How about running into Bello Port after all? Manuel's pals are on top now, and he might not be too sore."

Captain Bean up-tilted the whisky, bottle again and brightened.

"Sure, go ahead, Jed. And see if he feels like poker. This time we'll take him."

Two hours later Jed climbed to the upper bridge, pushed open the chart-room door and surprised Captain Bean surveying the Brazilian coast. Jed grunted. "Not thinking of trying the Argentine, loo, were you?" he said unpleasantly. "Slick those charts away and come on down. Manuel's decided to forgive everyone if we make Bello Port and deliver the goods."

"And my bonus?" demanded Captain Bean. "Will he guarantee that?"

"I've got the best part of a bottle of brandy inside him," said Jed sourly, "and right now he'll guarantee anything."

"I am a gentleman," said Manuel, as Captain Bean offered his best cigars. "You have insulted me, no? But I understand it was your sense of duty." He hiccoughed and bowed, and Captain Bean eased him to a chair.

"Certainly, certainly," he agreed. "Now, if you'll ring for the steward, Jed, and get another bottle of brandy, maybe we can interest Señor Manuel in a little poker." Manuel tried to get up to how, but decided the effort was not worth it. "I shall be delighted," he said.

"Delighted." And Captain Bean smiled, and patted his stomach. He was going to be delighted, too.

THE  Ivanhoe ploughed up to Bello Port some days later, through an ugly quartering sea that shipped green water aboard every time she dipped, and Manuel, very sober and very voluble, had practically taken charge. He gave crisp orders as to nets and slings for the unloading, strutted on the bridge and generally made himself a nuisance. Jed grumbled, but suffered philosophically.

Captain Bean consoled himself with numerous bottles and skilfully manoeuvred Manuel into further poker games which were all very profitable. Manuel did not seem to mind. He smiled graciously and paid, and complimented the captain on his luck.

Which somewhat worried Captain Bean. "He's taking the harpoons too easy," he complained. "As if he'd got something up his sleeve."

Manuel had. As the "Ivanhoe" clanked her rusty way into Bello Port he appeared on the bridge in a magnificent uniform, all but smothered with gold braid and sundry medals. Jed spat and looked interested.

"Nice," he agreed. "Just like a drum major." Manuel stroked his wisp of a moustache and smiled thinly.

"You are speaking to Captain Jose Maria Esteban de Zamora Manuel, of the Marindella Civic Guard, who will command the city company when the new administration is established. And now I must ask you to hand over your personal guns and any other weapons. You will consider yourself under arrest until my good friend, General Espada, decides what must be done."

Jed looked at Captain Bean and Captain Bean blew his nose in his red handkerchief.

"So you're double-crossing us." he said sadly. "After all your promises. My faith in human nature," Captain Bean blew his nose again, "is badly shaken."

"Also, before my friends come on hoard," said Manuel smoothly, "you will he so good as to return the money you so cleverly won from me at your poker. I do not think the games were honest."

"I resent that," said Captain Bean with dignity, then let out a gasp as Manuel poked him hard in the stomach with a gun muzzle and deftly lifted his wallet from his hip. "This is also the fortune of war," said Manuel regretfully. "And now comes my General Espada."

A BIG launch swerved alongside and after sundry important-looking officers had climbed aboard the "Ivanhoe" there came a white-moustached, pompous little man with a stomach almost as large as Captain Bean's, and a nose that was, if anything, slightly redder. He embraced Manuel. Manuel embraced him. And there were torrents of speech and many gesticulations. And finally the General shook his head.

"I should demand a firing squad," he stated regretfully. "But since you say these are your friends we might consider the jungle camp. Poof! We must teach even foreigners to respect the sovereign people of Marindella, for whom you, my dear Manuel, have set a so magnificent example."

"The danger is past, I have overcome it," Manuel declared, with a flourish. "Captain Bean, we will drink in your room. Your so good brandy. You are permitted to join us while General Espada inspects your papers and hears my report."

"That's damn kind of General Espada," grunted Captain Bean, and reached a ham-like hand for Jed's shoulder.

"Listen," he muttered. "And think fast. I ain't letting nothing like this get by."

"What the hell can we do?" said Jed gloomily. "The damn ship's lousy with soldiers."

"You listen and shut up," breathed Captain Bean. "I ain't serving no time in jungle road camps." And then he whispered into Jed's ear.

Jed grunted, said somewhat absently: "Well, it's your funeral," and eased himself down to the main -deck. Captain Bean waddled into his room and produced his best cigars. The stewards brought a case of brandy and the party livened up.

"We must consider," said General Espada, after his second glass, "the unloading of the so welcome munitions. The dogs who oppose me are still lurking in the hills in force, but with these new guns I shall defeat them utterly."

Captain Bean blew his nose and waved his red handkerchief.

"You certainly feel good," he grunted mildly, and at that moment bedlam broke loose on the Ivanhoe's decks. Men shouted, some screamed, and then Jed eased to the cabin door.

"She's afire," he said sourly. "Fore and aft. Some damn fool's started something."

"Lower the boats!" choked Captain Bean. "We've got to get ashore! She's liable to go up!"

General Espada dropped his glass and came out of his chair with an agility remarkable considering his size.

"Fire?" he croaked. "Fire!" screamed Manuel. General Espada made a break for the door, followed by his staff.

Manuel clawed after him, but Captain Bean stuck out a foot and tripped him neatly. That done, he bent over with a grunt, deftly recovered his confiscated wallet, and then thoughtfully removed Manuel's too. Manuel was paying no attention. He was up and out of the door like a rabbit. And Jed and Captain Bean had the cabin to themselves.

"Well," said Captain Bean amiably, "let's go see."

In less than five minutes there was not a citizen of Marindella on board. Captain Bean uptilted a bottle of brandy and took a satisfying drink. Bulkhead Bean was mad.

The Ivanhoe's anchor came up faster than it had ever . come before and her whole hull shook as the black gang poured the power into the engines. She backed in the harbor and started to turn, and the frightened young second mate said: "What about the forts? They'll fire on us."

"To hell with the forts!" said Captain Bean, "if they blow us up they'll get the works, too."

The citizens of Bello Port had grasped the same idea, too, and were streaming for the hills, mingled with the army which was already in flight.

"See?" said Captain Bean cheerfully. He took another drink. "There ain't a bit of danger."

He must have been slightly foggy in piloting the Ivanhoe out of the harbor, for he very nearly ran her on to an ugly shoal in the very mouth, and there she canted and kicked up foul-smelling mud until her engines were stopped, while the thick smoke still rose from her decks. Jed came on the bridge and looked disgusted.

"And what now?" he demanded. "We'd better drop the boats and get to hell out of it ourselves." Captain Bean consulted the brandy bottle for a while, and then shook his head. "No," he announced gravely. "We've got the Republic licked. No one's going to bother us, and in fact there's no one about."

Jed stuck his hands In his hip pockets and spat. "You're drunk," he said. And Captain Bean looked hurt.

"I may be mellow," lie stated, "but I'm never drunk."

"Well," said Jed pessimistically, "it looks like there's a flock of people  coming back."

IT did. Captain Bean rubbed his chin and had some apprehensions. The last time he had looked at Bello Port he had seen people and soldiers streaking away from it, but now, unless his eyes deceived him... as might he the case, considering the brandy.... there were a large number of soldiers streaming back. There were rifles squibbing and a lone, ancient-looking aeroplane was circling overhead.

Jed stared through the glasses and started.

"Say," he observed, "that flying orange-box is painted with the Republic's flag. I just wonder...."

And he turned the glasses ashore upon the soldiers streaming into Bello Port. Then he looked at his brother.

"I believe," he said, with a faint trace of awe, "you've done it. Them troops heading back, if their flags mean anything, is government ones. They don't know what the score is, apparently. They just saw the rebels pour out and they just poured in."

"Yes, I figgered on that," agreed Captain Bean. "Anyway, if I didn't I should have."

He took another drink.

HALF AN HOUR later the same launch which had but recently brought out General Espada slid alongside the Ivanhoe again, and a trim young man in immaculate whites came aboard. "I am the secretary to the President," he informed Captain Bean very politely.

"His Excellency would be honored to meet you and to see that all the Republic's agreements are honored."

"What about my thousand dollars?" said Captain Bean belligerently.

"That," the other assured him, smiling. "I am sure will even be added to. Your presence in the harbor threw such consternation into the rebels that we were easily able to retake the town. The Republic is your debtor."

"It should be," observed Captain Bean. He suppressed a hiccough. "And "don't I get extra for my fire?"

The young man stared, and a glimmer of comprehension came. "Your fire, señor?" He waved a hand round at the still wisping smoke. "Was all this...."

"What do you think?" snapped Captain Bean. "It did the trick. Cotton waste soaked in oil, stuck in buckets and ventilators and lighted, looks bad, Smoke every place and the crow yelling its head off. Why shouldn't Bello Port be uneasy? I'm damned if I ain't worried myself. Douse the smoke, Jed. The party's over."

THE secretary to the President of Marindella grew pale with emotion.

"It was then, what you call the bluff?" he managed. "You are a very great man."

"That," said Captain Bean heartily, "has never been disputed. Jed, tell the steward to shake out my best uniform."

Jed spat thoughtfully and cocked one eye. "So you're gonna see the President," he observed. "And you leave me here sitting on the dynamite."

Captain Bean took another drink.

"I am going," he said gravely, "to see a thousand dollars. And the dynamite's your job. What in hell do you think mates are for?"

And he went very grandly, if swaying slightly, down to his cabin to change.

______________________

7: The Man in the Moon

Homer Eon Flint

1892-1924

All-Story Weekly 4 Oct 1919

Way over-the-top super-science tale from the master of the improbable

1: LADIES FIRST

IT is only fair to say, right now, that Catherine accepted Mr. Brett with a distinct condition. She was to be merely a companion to him in his last days. He cheerfully agreed to the arrangement, knowing better than to expect anything more. At the time, he was just four times her age.

"But it's worth it, my dear, just to have you to look at," he often assured her; and he meant it. He made her his sole heir.

So, as might be expected, Catherine soon turned her attention to making use of the million he had left her. She found, of course, that the particular strata of society for which she longed rather frowned down upon her. She had been the millionaire's stenographer previous to their marriage.

Whereupon she deliberately set to work to win a man of her own age; a man already within the charmed circle. She had brains as well as youth and beauty, and she proposed to spare neither.

She went about it very energetically, taking prominent parts in several social-welfare enterprises, thereby coming in contact with the people she sought to know. But she failed to make a hit with the younger men. Had she been as well informed in athletics or politics as she was in business, she would have done infinitely better. And as soon as she realized this, she proceeded to have a good cry, changed her mind entirely, and began to look over the field of confirmed bachelors.

It was about this time that John Bates, of Bates & Foster, Constructing Engineers, decided to run for Governor. Immediately his opponents searched for facts with which to discredit him; and that is the reason why Philip Foster, his partner, was thrust into the public eye and before Catherine Brett's notice.

Philip had been the silent, and incidentally the thinking, partner of the firm, it seemed. His contact with the world had been almost entirely through Bates. Now, people learned that Philip was really the brains of the pair.

Of course, it was the San Francisco-to- Chicago Tunnel which put Bates & Foster on the world map. Before that, they had done everything in the engineering line, from installing the new Pacific Coast wave-motor system to building the Detroit airplane-starter tower. They had nothing to do with such propositions as the San Francisco Bay Bridge; they specialized on difficult work which other concerns were afraid to handle.

That is where Philip Foster's brains came in. Quiet, retiring sort of chap though he was, he had a most astonishing imagination, coupled with a truly remorseless logic. He could devise ways and means where all other experts failed.

Not to go into details; but who except Philip Foster would have had the nerve to adapt the screw-tube principle to so huge a project as the tunnel? Yet, to-day, when folks on the Pacific Coast receive a shipment of freight which left Chicago just twenty-four hours ago, we may possibly think of Bates & Foster, and that will remind us of Bates; but never of Foster.

The Bates & Foster suite occupied the entire ninth floor of the Ballou Building on Market Street, not far from the ferry. Altogether, it amounted to nearly thirty rooms, fully a third of which were given over to laboratories; for Philip often had a score of experiments, chemical, electrical or physical, under way at one time. As for the other rooms, most of them were occupied by the small regiment of draftsmen the firm required, while the partners had each a private office, opening off a single reception-room. The knob on Bates's door was worn smooth; Philip's still looked new. The one was opened fifty times to the others once.

Catherine found these details immensely interesting. She learned that Philip could claim membership in the coveted set; and she quickly made up her mind that this hitherto unsought, because unknown, bachelor must be won if she was to prove that she was "qualified."

She did not believe that true love was blind. On the contrary, Catherine was firmly convinced that the only genuine love is that which develops between those who have shown mutual fitness. She believed in love after a year or two of married life, during which both parties had proved that they were worthy. According to her theory, she couldn't possibly have fallen in love with Mr. Brett; it was out of the question for her to prove herself worthy of a man old enough to be her grandfather.

So her apparently cold-blooded designs upon Philip Foster were not so cold-blooded, after all. Catherine fully expected that the affair would become quite ardent enough in due time.

She learned that Philip rarely left his club, appearing in society only when his aunt gave some sort of an affair for a certain orphanage. By means of the most intricate maneuverings, which need not be gone into here, Catherine contrived to attend these affairs, succeeded in getting an introduction, and even managed to hold Philip's attention.

She did it by talking business. It relieved him immensely to get away from the small-talk people; he had never mastered the art of saying much about nothing while seeming to mean it all; and even though Catherine's stock exchange chatter was quite out of his line, it was infinitely preferable to the other kind of embarrassment.

He studied her carelessly. She was between twenty-five and thirty, slightly stoop- shouldered from her early life in Mr. Brett's office, and singularly languid in her movements. This, however, was rather deceptive; in actual fact Catherine Brett covered a great deal of ground in the apparently lackadaisical fashion of hers, whether she were walking or talking. She made every move, every word, count heavily.

Also, she was really beautiful, in a somber, wistful sort of a way. A closer look at her dark brown eyes might have revealed a very slight tightening at the outer ends of the lids. And the deep indentations at the corners of her mouth argued a strength in reserve that one might mistake for secretiveness. Her nose was very slightly arched, thin, and yet not prominent, probably because her chin was straight and sharply pointed. There was a single deep line between her eyes.

Now, Philip Foster was no Adonis. Of medium height and chunkily built, he showed many signs of too much indoor life. His face was pink as a baby's, his hands as soft. In fact, he was dangerously close to being plain, out-and-out fat; and for the past fifteen of his thirty-five years he had assiduously watched the scales, keeping within a five-pound margin which he felt he must never exceed.

His whole manner was exceedingly gentle and diffident. "As modest and bashful as a young girl," the newspapers had said; and Catherine found it quite true.

He had large, blue, timid and unassertive eyes, tucked away beneath a bulging forehead. His nose was really large; likewise his mouth. Why use more delicate terms? The only thing about his face which ever worried him was its lack of a healthy tan. He wasn't bad looking at all, Catherine decided.

Catherine also knew, from the newspapers, that "the other half of Philip Foster is his office." It was an extraordinarily complete thing, it seems, containing every conceivable publication on every branch of engineering. The man was a human index to all known data about the profession. Principles he knew by heart, while he kept facts and figures at his fingers' ends. In his office he was invincible; away from it— Catherine would see.

They had not met many times before he began to prefer her company. She had the tact not to compliment him in any way upon his success; had she done so, he would have been acutely miserable. And all this explains why, since neither of them cared to dance, they often wandered into his aunt's conservatory.

On the night things began to happen, it was full moon. Philip himself picked out a seat in the most secluded spot in the place. He expected to just sit and listen to her talk, as usual, saying "Yes?" and "Of course" now and then, meanwhile thinking of something really important. He took the place beside her quite without noticing that they had to sit pretty close together in order to fit the seat.

Said Catherine Brett to Philip Foster:

"Isn't the moon beautiful to-night?"

2: AS FOR THE MOON.

PHILIP stirred uncertainly, and cleared his throat. "Very handsome moon, beyond a doubt. Although," he could not help but add, "there's one of Jupiter's moons which I happen to admire a good deal more."

Catherine noted that his eyes were now fixed upon the big yellow disk with which we are all so familiar. Summer time— conservatory— moon; at least three conditions for romance were fulfilled. Catherine lowered her voice:

"What a soft light it is now! Once I saw it from Lick Observatory, and then it had a cold, hard look I didn't like." She shivered almost pitifully.

"It is due to our atmosphere," declared the engineer, thinking only of the softness of the moonlight, not of Catherine's chilliness. "Up at the observatory, the air is much clearer than here."

"Don't you think it has something to do with the warmth of the season?" suggested the woman, softly.

"Only in this sense," he answered, "that there's more dust in the air during the dry months."

She let silence prevail for a little while; then, shyly: "It always makes me feel confidential, somehow, to watch the full moon this way."

He looked at her blankly. "Confidential?"

"Yes"— moving a tiny bit closer to the man. "The moon seems so big and—  near! I feel as though I could reach up and whisper secrets in her ear!"

The scientist gave a dry chuckle. “You'd have to reach about a quarter of a million miles, then," said he, adding regretfully: "I haven't the exact figures with me just

“But— she looks so big!" protested Catherine, provokingly.

"Very deceiving," said Philip, referring only to the apparent size of the satellite, not to Catherine's manner. "She's less than half the diameter of the earth, so that her actual area is only about one fifth." He added that he would look the matter up the next day, and mail her the data in more precise terms.

She sighed, in a manner which would have opened most men's eyes. "You scientific people are always trying to see the mathematical side of things," she complained, prettily, in a fashion calculated to bring contrition at once. "Isn't there something about the mellowness of that light which— well, which stirs thoughts other than— other than everyday thoughts?"

He longed for a telescope. "Looks normal enough to me," he admitted, sorry he could not see what she saw; he never liked to disagree with people. "As for her light— it isn't hers at all, of course."

Catherine pretended ignorance. "Whose light is it, then?"

"The sun's, reflected," said the scientist. "That's why it doesn't amount to much. Why, it would take half a million such moons to equal the sunlight. At least, something very close to that figure," he added, uncomfortably.

Catherine sighed again, and Philip realized that he had not said the right thing. He was used to that feeling, however, and simply waited for the next test of his painfully limited conversational powers.

Catherine had a notion to change the subject entirely, then thought better of it. "I wonder why poets often rave about the ' cold beauty of the moon '?" she mused. "There's nothing cold about her appearance now." She settled herself more comfortably in the narrow settee, so that Philip was made freshly aware of her nearness.

"Nor is she cold," he declared. "The moon is always a pretty warm place wherever the sun shines on her. No wonder; her day is fourteen times as long as ours." He reminded Catherine that the moon always kept the same face toward the earth, and added that this peculiarity was due to the great gravitational pull of the bigger globe.

Catherine opened her eyes wide, then closed them swiftly as she saw her chance. "She has nights fourteen days long? What a pity she has no moon!"

"Oh, but she has," returned the agreeable man of science. "The earth is the moon's moon, Mrs. Brett, and a mighty efficient one. Four or five times as big, you know."

"Then," she went on, with studied artlessness, "it would be perfectly grand to sit m a conservatory like this, somewhere on the moon. Just think of a night as long as that, and watching the moon with— with—" She stopped, as though in great embarrassment.

Philip looked at her in perplexity. Not once did it occur to him that anybody could desire his company any longer than half an hour. He thought of something quite different.

"A conservatory like this on the moon?" he chided gently. "My dear Mrs. Brett, there can be no plant life of any kind there. No air or water; besides, the temperature drops down to the absolute zero, during the long night." He was on the point of telling her just how cold the nights became, but could not trust his memory for the figure.

Once more Catherine let silence have its way for a while, and Philip had just about brought his mind back to the electrical problem he had been trying to solve when she broke in with:

"Just the same, I think the moon has a wonderful influence. I know I simply cannot watch her without feeling— oh, different! "I want to do unconventional things!" she finished daringly.

"Eh?" The engineer's mind collected what she had said. "Oh, I don't see why you should be so affected, Mrs. Brett. This astrological nonsense has no basis in fact. The only influence the moon has upon the earth is in causing our tides."

"Tieds?" wondered Catherine, as though shocked. But Philip did not sense the pun. He gave a short and, to him, woefully inaccurate explanation of the tidal action.

This time Catherine did not let so much time elapse. "I wonder why the ancients used to call the moon ' luna'?" she murmured pensively.

"Why, I can't say," he said regretfully. " 'Luna '—Latin, word, I suppose." He frowned. "Maybe it's from the same root as 'lunatic.' Guess it is."

She clapped her hands lightly. "And yet you say that the moon can have no effect upon us!" she laughed delightedly, tantalizingly. "Although the ancients must have considered that the moon was to blame for everything foolish that happened!"

He pondered this seriously, so seriously that Catherine said, as lightly as she could: "Hasn't the moon ever inspired you to recklessness, Mr. Foster?"

Instantly his face lighted up. "Oh, my, yes! I've had any number of ideas about the moon. For instance—" He stopped, remembering that he was not talking to Bates. But Catherine, taking care not to appear too eager, urged him to go on.

"Well, this is it: Go to the moon and build a large, air-tight hotel. Nothing like this conservatory; more like an office building. Would have to carry all the water from the earth, but that is only a detail. Oh, yes," answering Catherine's questioning look; "there's more than one way to travel to the moon. Merely a question of controlling the right kind of power.

"Having the hotel, I'd advertise a novelty such as the world couldn't resist. 'Go to the moon and view the full earth.' Ought to make a hit with some of these wealthy time-killers."

He kept right on, forgetting that the woman at his side was herself one of the despised "time-killers."

"But the main attraction would be the difference in gravity." He briefly explained how the moon's smaller mass produced only one-sixth the gravitational force of the earth. "Fancy advertising an indoor Derby: ' Come and see Joe Dillon trot a mile in thirty seconds.' Or, 'Watch Annie Kellerman dive five hundred feet into six feet of water.' All quite feasible, you know, Mrs. Brett.

"I'd charge ten thousand dollars for the trip, including forty-eight hours' accommodations, and get rich in a year!"

Catherine had all she could do to resist his enthusiasm. Instead, she commented: "You must be pretty anxious to get rich!"

He became acutely self-conscious. He made some lame reply, and Catherine Brett came to a conclusion which was not at all unwarranted under the circumstances.

As she rose to her feet, she took his arm and gave it a friendly squeeze, glancing up at him in a knowing way which left him badly puzzled. For this is what she was thinking:

"He wants to get rich so that he can match my million!"

3: WANTED— A MONUMENT.

AMONG the late Mr. Brett's business associates was one who easily outclassed all the rest. He was a tanner, the leader of the Western world in his line, and the practical dictator of the Pacific hide trade. He became enormously rich during the war, through combining with other tanners to secure hides at rock-bottom prices, on the one hand, and selling the product at utterly unreasonable prices on the other.

So it is not really necessary to tell a name so well known. David Sulzman is not likely to be forgotten in a hurry.

And Catherine thought of him the very next day after, as she thought, she had divined Philip's ambition. She recalled certain things she had heard Mr. Brett say of the aged tanner, and she lost no time.

As a consequence, David Sulzman came to San Francisco one morning, stepping from the San Jose train just like some commuter. He was entirely without attendants, which was his invariable custom; and most people would have taken him for some highly respectable but not very successful lawyer of the old school.

For David Sulzman, then in his eighties, was not like other men of great wealth. He never even indulged in an automobile, although such a machine would often have been of the greatest service to him. "Can't afford it," he would say, in his low, pleasant, perfectly steady voice.

But this does not mean that David Sulzman was stingy. Whatever he had was of the best; his thirty-dollar shoes were made especially to fit a pair of oddly shaped feet; he wore nothing but the finest of black broadcloth.

Yet his shoes were repaired with the utmost care, as long as they would hold together; his broadcloth was worn until it shone as brightly as his shoes. He did not believe in using anything cheap, but neither did he spend five cents without getting full value. As to his generosity in matters of charity, and other qualities of a more intimate nature, they must be left to others to describe. We are concerned here with the man the world knew.

He did not take a surface-car, much less call a taxi. He walked from choice, preferring to spend several dollars' worth of time in an exercise he valued very highly. This, despite the fact that he required a cane, and could move no faster than a one-year-old child. When he reached the Ballou Building, he was tired out, and glad enough to resort to the elevator.

"Mr. Foster does not see callers except by appointment," he was told, in the engineers' reception-room. "Mr. Bates will doubtless be glad to see you, however."

He did not offer a card; he secretly hoped he might be recognized. But the people in the outer office were all of a younger set, and none knew the rather striking face of the old man, although his white chin- whiskers, short, stubby, and "Dutchy," ought to have stirred their memories. He shook his head about Bates.

"I know the custom," he said in his peculiarly soft voice. "However, it will be necessary for me to see Mr. Foster. I did not make an appointment, but merely telephoned before I left San Jose, to make sure that he would be here to-day."

So the old fellow was certain that Foster would see him, mused a stenographer. Then the word "San Jose" did the rest. "You're David Sulzman!" she said with genuine pleasure. And the old man was satisfied.

As he expected, Philip was willing to see him. The old man faced the younger across a low, clay-filled modeling-table, at which Philip had been working when the millionaire entered. "A relief map of the Mount Lassen reservoir system," explained Philip, "which we have just finished for the Volcanic Steam Power people."

"You seem to specialize on big things," remarked David Sulzman; then, as Philip made no comment: "I have come to the right man."

"The right firm," protested the engineer, with a smile. "Bates is the man you should talk to, really; although I am more than glad to have met you." His eyes went back to the clay.

David Sulzman merely made himself a little more comfortable in his chair. "Mr. Bates may be a very clever man, and no doubt is," said he, with his deliberate gentleness. "But the thing I have in mind requires something more than executive ability. It will take originality of the highest possible order."

Philip waved a hand. "Bates will tackle anything under the sun," he declared. "He tells me what is wanted, and I figure it out." Which was a good deal for Philip to admit to a stranger.

"Then what is the use of talking to Bates first?" the millionaire wanted to know, not a change coming to his voice. "Besides, in one sense this is a rather personal matter.

"I have come to you because Catherine Brett requested me to do so."

Philip Foster forgot all about his modeling. He flushed deeply, sensitive fellow that he was, and David Sulzman judged that he might give Catherine an encouraging word when he next saw her.

"To begin with, Mr. Foster," said the old man, not letting the engineer collect words enough for a protest— "to begin with, I must bother you by explaining my own view-point. Otherwise you cannot be of much help to me.

"You know, of course, that I have a good deal of money. You ought to know, too, that whatever truth there may be. in some of these magazine attacks on my business methods, the fact remains that the world has had a great deal more leather, because of what I have done, than it would have had otherwise."

"I understand that," Philip hurried to comment. "No thinking person underestimates men of your stamp, Mr. Sulzman:"

But the millionaire was not looking for appreciation. "At the same time," he went on, "I am not blind. I realize that the day of the millionaire is almost past. What with income and other forms of taxation, it is not the game it once was. Moreover," and no socialist could have stated this with more conviction than the aged capitalist, "from now on, Mr. Foster, the world intends to encourage the majority, not the minority.

"Now," he became even more earnest, "many men of my station realize this as fully as I do. They know that the future is to see the rise of the working classes. They know that progress must go on and on, until people will one day positively forbid the accumulation of large fortunes, for fear that the welfare of the majority will be crippled thereby.

"And most of my associates have given in with as good grace as they possessed, and to-day are helping in the education drive, as well as other ways, to help lift up the very class of people which they were trying to keep down only a few years ago. Yes," he said, very surely, as Philip made as though to protest; "it is true. I know— I tried to keep them down myself. "But to-day it is different. As I say, most of my class have turned to helping the progressive movement, hoping in that way to win the good opinion of the people. A few of us are still bitter about it; you can still read a few reactionary journals, which even go so far as to urge slavery as a solution of the labor problem.

"Personally," said the millionaire, a little sadly, "I cannot look at the matter either way. I am no longer young; I lack the kind of fighting spirit that would be required to stop this new progress. Besides, I cannot bring myself to it; I—"

He stopped, and Philip gathered that it was only the old man's pride that had prevented him from taking part in the great interwelfare movement.

He paused, as though resting, and after a while went on: "And yet, like any other man of ambition, I am anxious to leave behind me a name which will live as long as possible. I cannot depend upon my children to perpetuate my memory; the strain may die out in another generation. Neither can I expect my business to do it; the government will take it over, sooner or later, and change the plant's name into a mere number."

He said this with no bitterness.

"Now, Mr. Foster, other men of wealth have sought to immortalize themselves by building libraries, founding colleges, and so forth. They do not seem to realize that a democracy can do anything it chooses with such things, and if the people ever come to believe that these millionaires did more harm than good, their names will be wiped out overnight."

Philip said: "If all saw this matter as clearly as I do, Mr. Sulzman, you would need have no uneasiness."

"That is precisely what I mean," declared the tanner. "It is because I have so little faith in the good sense of the people that I have come to you.

"I want," his voice rose for the first time, so that Philip clearly saw what a dominating figure David Sulzman must have been when younger— "I want you, Foster, to devise something which will resist stupidity, which will guarantee that I shall not be forgotten, come what may!"

"I want you to do something which cannot be undone, something which will forever remind the world that David Sulzman once lived in it! I give you carte blanche; you shall have every cent I own, if need be! The only thing I require of you is that your work shall benefit the people, either directly or indirectly. Otherwise, the sky is the limit!"

"You mean"— Philip's breath came fast, and his eyes flashed— "you mean, Sulzman, that I am to go as far as I like? To invent anything I choose, build what I think best, so long as it works for the interests of the people in general and at the same time guarantee that they ' shall not forget who did it '?"

As suddenly as it had come, the old man's earnestness disappeared, leaving him a little tired and almost cross. His voice became the same as it had been when he entered.

"You can do anything you damned please, Foster, within the law or outside it, so long as you make the name of Sulzman live!"

4: STARTING SOMETHING.

PHILIP jumped to his feet and went to his drawing-table, where he leaned over the board and began to kick the legs of the table— his invariable habit when anything especially interesting was on his mind. He had forgotten that the millionaire's call was due to Catherine Brett, forgotten the understanding with Bates. He subconsciously realized that Sulzman's gigantic proposition was over Bates's head, anyhow.

"You're just the man I've been wanting to get in touch with," he said suddenly and with the bashful smile which only came to his face when he felt thoroughly at home with the smile. "Fact is, Sulzman, although Bates and I have pulled off some pretty unusual stunts, we've never been able to take hold of my really big ideas. And I think I've got the one that'll fill your qualifications!"

"Could you make it clear to me now, or would you rather wait until you have turned the matter over in your mind a while?" The aged millionaire might have been referring to the purchase of a pair of socks, for all the concern he showed. The world will some day be told how David Sulzman once cleared a hundred thousand in ten minutes through his masterful ability to handle large affairs in an unconcerned manner.

But Philip Foster was immensely excited. "I think I could do it right now!"— coming back to his chair, sliding half-down into the seat, stopping in this position for five seconds, and then hopping back to the drawing-table. "That is, in general terms. The details probably wouldn't interest you, anyway."

And within the next quarter-hour Philip Foster had unfolded a scheme which sent David Sulzman out of the office in such a nonchalant, confident, jaunty mood that any one who knew him intimately would have declared: "He's just found out something that pleases him immensely." But those who sat in the train with him never guessed that the old man with the quaint goatee was already anticipating a dream come true, a scheme which would immortalize him, and by so doing influence the life of every man, woman, and child on the earth.

As for Philip, he went at once to his partner. It will be remembered that Bates's campaign was a failure. Probably this tempered his egotism; for instead of disputing Philip's action, he meekly agreed that the hitherto silent partner had best handle the whole thing alone.

Within a week a new organization, known as the Foster Construction Company, was well under way. Arrangements were made for receiving the products of nearly twenty factories, products of a rather curious nature, handled in such a way as to insure very little talk. And mean time superintendents and foremen of exceptional ability were secured by the offer of extraordinary salaries, while a veritable army of skilled laborers was recruited in the same way.

Philip went to see Catherine a few days after David Sulzman's call. He thanked her formally for what she had done.

"You will have to take the credit, or the blame," he said, with his diffident smile, "for whatever we do, Sulzman and I. You've thrown two men together who have the same potential ability for getting results as nitric acid and glycerine!"

She realized that this was quite a speech, for Philip, and more than half suspected that it was rehearsed— which happened to be true. But she said, with just the right amount of shyness:

"I couldn't forget what you told me the other night when we were talking about the moon. About— about your wanting to get rich, you know."

Philip looked up, startled. Ever since Sulzman's advent Philip had given no thought to the other ambition.

"You're wonderfully—" He stammered at a loss whether to say "thoughtful" or "solicitous."

Catherine's face became radiant, and she swayed nearer to him.

"Why shouldn't I be?" she murmured, her eyes fixed on his. Next instant die turned away, as though aghast at her daring; so she never saw the bewilderment on Philip's face. A moment later, greatly to her disappointment, he said he would have to say good-by.

"Going to be an outside man now, for a few months," he told her. His enthusiasm mounted rapidly, and he smiled almost continually as he spoke of the trip he expected to make— an airplane flight to Ecuador, to begin the next morning. "Expect to reach Quito at twelve thirty-five the next afternoon," said he, happily. "Send you some photos."

She held his gaze for a second before remarking very quietly: "Aren't you going to leave one of yourself?"

"Why"— a little flattered— "if you like; I'll put it in the mail as soon as I get back to my quarters." He moved toward the door; then, his laggard memory finally wrenching an item from his unused stock of small talk, he stopped short. "Have you a picture of yourself which I might have?" Unconsciously he made the request seem urgent.

Catherine kept her face averted, for fear it might give her away. She found a small, semiformal photo which emphasized the appeal in her eyes, rather than the beauty of her face. He took it from her with extravagant thanks.

And it was in just this mood that Philip went to the door. Catherine accompanied him thoughtfully; and as he looked back at her for what he knew would be the last time in several months, there came over him exactly the same feeling he would have known if, after several weeks of helplessness in a hospital, he were told that he would get well.

In his joy and excitement he would feel like hugging the nurse, in whose company he had been fearfully embarrassed before. And to-night he was jubilant, jubilant as a boy on Fourth of July morning; the fact that the "nurse" was a beautiful young woman of great wealth did not alter the case. Just as the man who is usually at ease becomes agitated when a real crisis arises, Philip Foster, ordinarily as shy and awkward as an adolescent girl, became perfectly at ease when the great moment came.

And yet, if Catherine had taken leave of him in a sad or pensive mood, he would not have done it. It was largely because she smiled up brightly at him in her effort to hide her feelings, that his exuberance reached the overflowing point.

“Well— see you in October then!" he exclaimed, as they clasped hands; and then, to her utter amazement, he swept her into his arms and gave her a boisterous kiss!

5: THE MOON BACKSLIDES.

OF course, Philip was thunderstruck at his presumption, as soon as he had left the house. He wrote a very contrite note to accompany the photo he had promised, adding: "I hope you do not consign this to the ash-barrel because of my folly last night." Then, confident that < he had dealt with the case in the most approved manner, he completely forgot about it.

Two days later found him, as he had said to Catherine, descending from the Intercontinental Aerial Stage landing at Quito. He spent several days in this place, getting in touch with the various factors of his enterprise.

Before he left for the interior, the first shipment of supplies, still in their original cars, arrived via the Pacific Submarine Freight Company's service and the Quito- to-the-Sea Tunnel.

Philip and his associates at once proceeded with the construction of a railroad, using the most up-to-date apparatus in the work and employing a gang to every half- mile; with the result that two months after the first shovelful was scooped, a complete equipment of rolling stock was plying over the three-hundred-mile stretch of line which lay roughly southeast of the capital.

Meanwhile buildings had been put up for men and machines; and by that time Philip was hard at work in Peru, putting the finishing-touches on a huge electric power plant high in the Andes. In all of this, the vast wealth of David Sulzman figured conspicuously, breaking down all governmental interference and securing real cooperation. There were no serious delays.

Philip had been away just five months when a peculiar thing happened, or, rather, began to happen. The general public was the last to notice it; the astronomers were the first, followed closely by the navigators, surveyors and others who had occasion to watch the heavens with any degree of accuracy. It is said that some of the old seafaring men along the water-fronts, watching the tides, noticed it before anybody else; but that is unlikely. What happened is this:

The moon began to slow up. The month began to lengthen. The almanacs all fell into disrepute; for, instead of rising fifty- one minutes later each night, as had been the satellite's average, she now lagged behind this figure until, after a week, her average was over fifty-two minutes!

A small matter, apparently; but to any one who knows how mathematically precise are all the movements of the heavenly bodies, the thing was simply terrific. In every observatory, all other investigations were dropped entirely in order that the whole staff might observe the new phenomenon.

The moon, which for untold ages and with unfailing regularity had circled the earth once every twenty-seven days, was actually slowing down before their eyes!

The public had scarcely done with discussing this mystery before there came an announcement which almost eclipsed the first one. It ran:

"It has been observed, in all parts of the world, that the daily revolution of the earth itself is changing. Instead of twenty-four hours, our day is now twenty-three hours, fifty-nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds long!"

This did not seem possible. Could it be that Mother Earth, who had not been known to vary the thousandth part of a second in the regularity of her spinning, had really begun to speed up a bit in her old days? It took a long time for most people to accept this; until, in fact, a few dependable citizens had had a chance to watch a few dependable clocks. It was true; the day was shortening.

But the next thing to attract attention was noticed first of all by a class of people who seldom pay much attention to scientific affairs. The folks here meant usually go by the name of "spooners."

"Honey— how big the moon seems tonight!" was the way the convention had started among these people for ages and ages. Now, it came to have a new meaning. The moon certainly did look big.

"It's due to an optical illusion, deary," was the usual explanation, such as had been given from all time. "If there were no objects on the earth between the moon and you, sweetheart, it wouldn't look so big."

But as night after night passed and the satellite seemed to grow very slightly larger each time, there came a time when everybody on the earth was aware of the new marvel. Shortly there came a third announcement from the authorities, an announcement somewhat delayed as a matter of policy.

"Let no one be alarmed," was this statement; "but the fact is that while the moon's speed has been decreasing, her distance from the earth has also been reduced.

"She is now twenty thousand miles nearer the earth than she has ever been before. She is falling toward us at the rate of a thousand miles a day!"

6: THE WORLD AWAKES.

THE next three months were the most extraordinary since the deluge. Never before had the world been threatened as it was now threatened. For, unless something happened to stop the moon before she fell the rest of the way to the earth, mo6t certainly the entire globe, together with every living thing upon it, was doomed to absolute annihilation.

"Do not get excited!" the authorities cautioned, again and again, as soon as the announcement had been made. "We will soon discover the cause of this mystery, and then doubtless be able to remedy matters. Keep cool!"

But it did no good. Wherever there was a mind with imagination enough to see what this thing really meant, there also was fear. It was impossible to keep up courage in the face of that ever-nearing satellite, unless one had an especially strong mind. And those whose minds were strong did their best to forget their own fears, by trying to quiet those of others.

The only thing had helped was religion. Everywhere the churches were crowded to the doors; services were held every day, all day long. Vast crowds gathered on the mountain-tops, like the worshipers of old, and madly prayed to God to prevent the disaster. Every soul on earth was searched to its depths by the approaching catastrophe.

Out of all that wild period there emerge two facts which need to be recorded. One is the Second Ark, a tremendous antigravitational machine built by a Syrian named Ben Malik.

“This is the end of the world!" Ben Malik proclaimed, like Noah had done thousands of years before. The Syrian went to prodigious expense to get publicity. "Out of the earth's billions I shall be able to save one hundred. A hundred, no more, may escape the anger of God.

Let the devout assemble and examine themselves, that fittest of them all may survive, to start life again on some other world!"

People flocked to this call. For weeks the self-examination went on, until nearly half a billion of the less intelligent peoples had gone through a winnowing process which left just a thousand— half men and half women— who were adjudged competent to represent the human race.

Ben Malik himself was not among them; he was a cripple. And for lack of any better method of picking the final hundred the Syrian decided to leave it to chance. "The Lottery of the Lord," it was called.

But Ben Malik wanted to make sure. His was one soul in millions; not only was he willing to stay behind in order that a better man might take his place, but he felt constrained to give his Ark a trial trip before the great event took place.

The trial failed. The Ark, a hastily constructed affair, rose to a height of fifty miles and then broke under the strain of its own machinery. It and Ben Malik were totally destroyed.

The other great result of that wonderful period was the political revival. Obviously the swift approach of the moon meant that in a few weeks there would be no such thing as political parties, no such thing as social caste, no such thing as capital and labor. On Friday, the 27th of October, ignorance and wisdom alike were to perish, culture and rudeness were to be no more, poverty and wealth to come to an eternal end!

And it did not take the world long to see this. As always, the people of the thinking middle classes were the first to state the situation.

"Let us forget our differences," was the upshot of what they said. "There is nothing to be gained by contention now; the 27th of October will reduce us to a common level.

"Let us make the remaining days as agreeable as possible."

Of course, there were many who took this as a license. Among this class, the last few weeks were spent in rioting and licentiousness which went past anything the world had ever known before. No attempt was made to stop these persons; law and order were enforced only when the safety of other people was endangered.

But the great majority of folks saw the thing more seriously. They saw that not of the globe one of them could escape the calamity; in days there was but one known method of getting away from the earth, and that equally was the method used by Ben Malik, who had scoured the globe to get enough of a certain element to make his single ill-fated attempt.

And so it came about that because it did no good whatever to think of self first, men began to think of others. Only a few weeks till the end of all things! Very well; why not make those few weeks devoid of misery? Why not fill them with happiness, so that when the end should come, it would find men with at least some agreeable memories to take with them.

It was a marvelous thought. Partly, it originated in the churches; partly with the socialists. And before long mankind was gazing upon itself in amazement.

For the earth was transformed. Where before there had been terrible poverty, even in the most enlightened countries, now every effort was made to relieve all suffering. Great hoards of foodstuffs, held for speculation by profiteers, were distributed overnight to the needy. The same with clothing, building materials, fuel and, finally, luxuries. If all was to be destroyed, why not make use of it first?

For the first time in history thrift did not pay. No one could gain by "putting something by." The aim now was to spend, spend for the good and the wholesome, spend for experiences which would leave pleasant memories.

Memories! That was what was wanted! Memories which would make the next world worth while!

Couples who had been postponing marriage "until there's money in the bank," got married at once, finding an infinite satisfaction in knowing that the next world would not be a lonesome place.

People of wealth, who formerly had kept the aloof from those less fortunate, who had been enjoying their station in life as selfishly as they knew how— such people suddenly found themselves longing for something more substantial than memories of extravagance. Instead—

They began to find rare pleasure in helping those who needed help. They became eager in their efforts to give happiness. Shortly men and women of vast wealth turned their magnificent homes over to those who, because of misfortune and weakness, had known nothing better than tenements.

And a time came when people who had previously thought nothing of keeping half a hundred people from useful industry in order that their mansions might be "properly served"— a time came when these millionaires fought hysterically among themselves for the privilege of service, for the chance to make some one happy for a few hours.

And another class of people who, before, had gone about their work in a sullen spirit, convinced that their employers were robbers, were amazed to find a wonderful satisfaction in working as they had never worked before. They took vast pride in careful workmanship, got vast satisfaction from a consciousness of service rendered well. The end should find them on the job!

Memories! Memories of work well done, of something accomplished for the welfare of others. Memories of the blissful look that came to the face of one who had been presented with a right long withheld. Above all, the knowledge of having done something at last to right the fearful injustice of the world!

7: MADE IN AMERICA

PHILIP FOSTER had been away about eight months when, quite unexpectedly, he returned. He brought with him certain Intercontinental officials whose names need not enter this account, officials who had been invited to the plant in Ecuador. Philip did not go home at all; he merely sent Catherine an aerogram, and proceeded straight to Washington.

On the same day, and for the first time, newspapermen were permitted on the grounds of the Foster Construction Company's plant. They found that the word "grounds" scarcely did the place justice; "tract" would have been more accurate; for there were about fifty square miles of the wildest mountain territory, all carefully guarded by several companies of aerial and ground patrols.

These reporters immediately transmitted their negatives by the Pacific Wireless Photography Service to the League of Nations Daily Screen News, who distributed the films to all parts of the earth by plane; so that Philip's little speech was flashed before the public in several million talking- picture theaters, at the same time the reporters' material was released.

"Friends and fellow citizens of the earth," began the engineer, using the English language, at that time the nearest approach to a universal tongue, "in behalf of my associate, David Sulzman, I wish to explain the thing that has worried us so long, and then get your judgment as to our future course of action.

"As I need not tell you, the moon, which has been dropping toward the earth for the past three months, came to a halt night before last, and has since showed no motion whatever. We seem to be in no danger now of that collision.

"At the same time"— and here a photo of the moon took the speaker's place on the screen, while his voice went on— "at the same time, the moon has entirely ceased her former monthly trips around the earth. And our day has been decreased to something like twenty-two hours.

"Now, be patient with me, but I've got to remind you that the moon, when she finally did come to a stop, did so on the side of the earth opposite from the sun. That is to say, we now see the moon each and every night; she rises when the sun goes down, and does not set till the sun rises again eleven hours later."

Philip need not have apologized; people never grew tired of hearing this incredible fact put into words. He hurried on:

“As a result, the whole world now enjoys full moon every night. Only, compared to what we used to call full moon, she's a supermoon now.

"To-night the moon is only a tenth as far away as she used to be." And the screen showed a small landscape of a part of the earth, with the satellite in the background.

A hundred times the size she had been three months before, the moon was now an enormous, shining globe of tremendous brilliance and beauty, seemingly near enough to be touched with the fingers. She occupied a space larger than the bowl of the Great Dipper.

"If it were not for the fear she has aroused," continued the man of science, "we'd appreciate her more. The moon now lights our nights for us as they've never been lit before. We don't need artificial lights now, except for very special purposes; our country roads are as bright as our streets ever were; our streets brighter than any cafe.

“At the same time the moon has caused our tides to become immensely higher, and our ocean waves much greater. This has compelled some of our seacoast towns to rebuild extensively. On the other hand, it has enormously increased the output of our wave-motor system, so that we are now able to dispense with wood, coal, and petroleum entirely. In short, the moon has made us a present of enough power to tum every wheel in existence; and for all practical purposes, she has abolished night."

He made only brief mention of the great religious and social revivals, and their consequences. Not that Philip Foster was out of sympathy; instead, he was tremendously glad to see justice brought about as it had been. He was before the people merely as an engineer, and as an engineer he talked on.

Then came the sensation. The films which had been sent from Ecuador were shown. And for the first time the world learned what the secrecy-shrouded enterprise had been.

The most important of the great group of buildings which comprised the company's plant was a giant, dome-shaped structure, exactly like an observatory on a mammoth scale. Within it, and visible through an open slot, stood a colossal telescope. That is, it appeared to be a telescope, until its nature was revealed.

"This," it was explained, "is a device for projecting large quantities of radioactive elements to a distance. It is operated by means of electrical current taken from a hydraulic plant in Peru, and is capable of exerting terrific force."

As this was said, the "telescope" was slowly brought to the horizontal, and trained upon a range of peaks several miles away. The scene was next shifted to this range.

"A small amount of power will now be released," went on the explanation. "Watch closely the rocks on the top of the nearest peak." This was about a quarter of a mile away.

Next moment a wonderful thing occurred. A very large boulder, apparently of granite and weighing many hundreds of tons, was slowly toppled over by some invisible force; so that in a moment it was rolling and tumbling, end over end, down the side of the peak.

"The power-plant is located opposite the camera." As this was said more boulders were dislodged and sent flying down-hill, until the air was thick with rock-dust. There was a slight wait till this had settled; then came the finishing touch.

"Watch the entire peak this time."

At first nothing could be seen. Nothing appeared to be happening. Then, very slowly indeed, a change occurred in the outline of the mountain. Another moment, and one could see that its upper half was shifting. Before two minutes were up, the entire top of the peak had moved out of place among its fellows, so that it finally stood with one edge overhanging a deep chasm.

And then, while millions of people gasped in amazement, that whole vast mass of granite was tipped up, up and over, until it toppled inertly into what had been the canon. At the same time there was a sharp earthquake, which was noted by seismographs in all part of the globe.

Then came a quick "flash-back to the ray-projector, where a streak of blinding white light, about two hundred yards long, was now being emitted from its orifice. As the picture came to an end, the light began to subside very slowly. The voice and figure of Philip Foster came back to the screen. "I suppose you've guessed it now," said he, with a return of his diffident smile. "The Foster Construction Company is responsible for the moon's backsliding!

"Every day for the past several months, when the moon had passed the meridian, we have been playing these rays upon her western, or left-hand, edge. You will understand that the left edge of the moon is her 'front,' with respect to her motion in space. Well, for six hours daily that 'telescope' has been pushing with all its might!

"That's why the moon has come to a stop, and why the earth has come to revolve faster. By turning on this power very gradually each day, and, turning it off just as slowly when the moon had set, we've been able to use Ecuador as a fulcrum without the knowledge of any one else on the earth."

It was not until then that the supreme audacity of the thing seemed to dawn upon the scientist. His face changed, and a certain amount of determination came into it as he finished.

"Ever since the moon fell to its present distance of twenty-four thousand miles, the projector has been trained upon the center of her disk, instead of upon her western edge. In this way the moon has been prevented from falling any nearer—the whole matter has been calculated with extreme care, of course—and so long as our supply of certain chemicals holds out, we can keep the moon just where she is. I may add that we have a duplicate equipment to guard against accident.

"Now, the future is up to you, people. The company can keep the moon in its present position for a year. Or, it can proceed to undo what has been done, and restore the moon to exactly its former position and speed. In either case, the world's entire supply of the necessary materials will be used up in the process."

He waited a moment before going on. In the mean time, the feelings of those who were watching and listening, can best be imagined. What a choice he was offering!

"However," he continued, now smiling broadly, "there is a third alternative. It is this:

"That suitable sky-cars, already completed and thoroughly tried out, be sent with men and materials at once to the moon's surface. And once there, this equipment would proceed to make the moon's present position permanent.

"It would be done by means of miniature projectors, using— However, these details are a little intricate. You will find them discussed in a pamphlet the company is issuing. You may take my word for it that the method will succeed.

"So there you are. Either we (1) keep the moon on the job as a curiosity for about a year, and then let the smash come, or (2), we push her back where she used to be right away, or (3), make a real job of it, and keep her where she is as long as she'll stay!

"Take your choice! I thank you!"

8: THE MAN—

CATHERINE had had plenty of time to think it over. Philip's lack of response to her letters bore out her suspicions, first aroused by his note apologizing for having kissed her. By the time Catherine bad recovered from the astonishment of Philip's announcement to the world, she had resolved to match boldness with boldness. She would demonstrate her worthiness by being as audacious, in her own sphere, as he had been in the realm of science.

Once more the considerate reader must remember her theory of love and marriage; she was confident that ardor would come out of such a rationally made union. And she made her plans in all sincerity, sure that nothing but good would come from it all.

When Philip reached California he proceeded to call at once upon all whom he felt he should see. He made out a list in his methodical way, mapping his route so as to make every minute count. His one idea was to get it over, so that his time might afterward be occupied with something more valuable than social obligations. He had figured that eight minutes, possibly seven and a half, would elapse between leaving and re-entering his plane at the Brett home. As he ran up the steps he was already estimating the amount of time probably necessary for the next call. In each case he had taken pains to make sure that the person he wished to see would be at home at that particular hour.

But he suspected nothing whatever when, as he was announced at the Brett drawing room, he found the place already nearly filled with callers. He never did know that an impromptu tea had been hastily arranged. He only wondered that Catherine should have so many callers so early in the afternoon.

He stood, embarrassed as usual, looking over the people before him. There was a small knot of women in the further comer. The butler spoke his name; and with remarkable speed the knot untangled, revealing Catherine herself at the center of the snarl.

She gazed at the returned hero as though she were entranced. She stood there for exactly the right length of time to get everybody's attention; then, her face changed, she gave an enraptured gasp, and in half a second had crossed that room, as it seemed, on wings.

Just in front of Philip she paused, for the briefest possible instant, peering at him as though to make sure her eyes were not deceiving her. Then she gave a tiny, happy, hysterical laugh, and swayed suddenly toward him. He involuntarily thrust out his arms; the fixed smile was still on his face.

And then her arms were about his neck, and his about her shoulders. The scientist had no time, no warning, no chance.

"Phil, my dear!" cried Catherine Brett.

Of course, it is all old news now, but it's a bona fide part of this account and therefore must be mentioned. By this is meant the remarkable end of the whole Foster- Sulzman scheme.

In one way or another the people of the world managed to express their choice of the three alternatives Philip had named. In the more advanced countries the thing was done by direct vote of the citizens themselves. In others, where the majority were not capable of forming an opinion, it was done for them by their representatives, whether political or ecclesiastical.

And when it is remembered that the moon's previous position and motions had had a very definite influence upon religious history in some lands, it is really remarkable that there was not more opposition than did develop. However, even the Brahmans finally came to see that the masses would be greatly benefited by the electrical power which the moon's new location would insure. Practically the whole world agreed to making the "new moon," as it was called, a permanent institution.

Consequently Philip and his associates, after remaining in the United States about two weeks, returned to their plant with the League of Nations itself backing their work. However, those two weeks were extremely significant ones.

Philip was daily in Catherine's company. He had, of course, felt obliged to go through with the thing according to Catherine's lead. His disposition would not allow anything else.

She had explained her theory; he had been unwilling to argue about it. And one day he found himself asking her to fix the day, quite without knowing that she had manipulated the conversation so as to make him do it.

They were to be married as soon as he came back from the moon. This was settled a week before he started. And during that last week the scientist looked at the matter just as cold-bloodedly as Catherine had looked at it some time before.

He saw that Catherine Brett was as unlike himself as any one could possibly be. At first he argued that "opposites attract";  then he began to look for some one point on which they could agree, a sort of home base, to which they could fly in case of differences.

There didn't seem to be any. Neither he nor Catherine was in love with any one thing. Even in love of country they differed; for while Catherine was an orthodox American, Philip was an internationalist, as might be expected in a man of his type of mind.

As for simple, elemental, animal attraction— even Catherine was obliged to admit that as yet she didn't care for Philip's embraces more than, say, her brother's. She may have been right in insisting that all this would come in time; but Philip continued to look for "something to hitch to." And he couldn't find it.

On the other hand, he found plenty of real obstacles; Catherine liked poodles; he, Philip, loved children. Also he was passionately addicted to trap-shooting, and very apt to get up at two o'clock in the morning, during the winter, in order to slay ducks. And for this kind of insanity Catherine had an absolute horror; she had had a relative hurt in a hunting accident, and she would certainly worry every minute.

In petty matters— which often loom pretty large— there were more objections. Philip was inclined to be stout, and liked to have the house warmed to precisely sixty-eight degrees or lower. Catherine, being slender, required a temperature about six degrees higher. Moreover— don't laugh; this is deadly serious— Philip was a great lover of the photoplay, which Catherine simply could not tolerate.

Of course they respected one another. Philip stood in awe of Catherine's social prestige and business acumen, while she fairly worshiped his profession. But Philip did not agree that Catherine, in throwing herself into his arms, had thereby matched his own boldness.

"What you did was old, old stuff," he might have told her had he been conceited enough, which he wasn't. "What I did was absolutely new."

But Philip never realized what a terrific effort it cost Catherine to make her actions appear natural on that occasion. Only a woman could appreciate that supreme play.

And only a man could comprehend to the full the mental and moral agony the man went through before he finally began the moon's transfer.

So neither understood the other. And the great difference between them can best be stated by simply remarking this: that, whereas, Catherine was not aware that she did not fully appreciate Philip's feat, yet he plainly saw that he could never properly value hers. It was the old, old distinction between the mind that has ceased to expand, and the mind that is ever expanding.

9: —IN THE MOON.

IT was done. Nearly half the moon was gone—the half the world had never seen, and now was never to see. It was blown into space by the steady pressure of what are now known as "Foster's rays." At times the cloud of powdered rock-dust was clearly visible from the earth as the material was ejected from the surface.

It is only necessary here to add that the insignificant gravitation of the moon was not enough to pull any of this dust back to the surface. It was hurtled into the void, never to return.

In this way, just as Philip had outlined, the mass of the moon was decreased to the exact point where the sun's pull, added to that of the earth, amounted to just enough to keep the moon in place. As we look up at the immense disk above us to-night— always there, night after night, turning what once was blackness into continuous twilight— as we look up at her, we take it for granted that she will always look just like that; that she will forever continue to circle the sun, instead of the earth. The younger generation will find it hard to believe that she was once a pitifully small object, giving only a hundredth part of the light she now gives.

Of course she is only half a moon now, as a result of what Philip and his associates accomplished. But the half that is left is the half which people have always seen.

Perhaps it should be mentioned that miniature projectors were used to propel the heat-and-cold-proof sky-cars through space. Buoyed up on those irresistible rays of invisible force, the vast loads of men, machines, and materials necessary for the work were transported quite without difficulty. In fact, up to the very last day the whole enterprise was carried off without any loss of life, and with only a few trifling accidents. That made the last day's record even more of a shock to the world.

For, upon the return of the last sky-car to the earth, people were startled beyond measure to learn that Philip Foster himself had lost his life just as the work was being completed.

"He left the sky-car, dressed as usual in a protective, insulated suit, taking enough oxygen to last over an hour." So ran the official report of the superintendent, who immediately wired a copy to Catherine.

"He said he intended to take pictures of a near-by crater before its destruction.

"No one saw fit to watch his actions. He was out of sight for perhaps half an hour; then some one saw him on the edge of the crater taking photos. He again disappeared. It was thought that he was returning to the sky-car as he knew that the crater was next in line for the projecting crew.

"But just as the men were sweeping the rays in that direction three men in the sky- car plainly saw Mr. Foster standing motionless half-way down the inner slope of the crater, out of sight of the workers. There was no mistaking his suit; it was different from the others. And before the three men could warn the crew, the crater was wiped off the moon.

"Mr. Foster probably did not suffer, for the reason that the shock of the rays would certainly have caused concussion of the brain. A thorough search of the locality was made as soon as the rays were stopped, but quite without results. At this moment the unfortunate man's remains are now flying through space in the direction of the constellation Hercules."

And yet, before the last of the sky-cars had put a thousand miles between itself and the moon, a strange sight would have met the eyes of any person who might have been left behind. There were no telescopes aboard the car which would have shown the thing. Neither was any one on the lookout.

Directly beneath the sky-car, on the patch of the moon's surface which the machine had just quit, there was a stir and a movement in the soil. Presently a large, square section of the sun-lit material was in actual motion; and before the eyes of the mythical beholder, a cavern was revealed in the solid rock of the satellite.

A minute passed, and then a figure clad in a suit the exact duplicate of the one the three observers had seen destroyed, clambered lightly to the surface, and turned the big glass eyes of its helmet up toward the fast-disappearing sky-car. It was the figure of a man of medium height, inclined to be stout, who slouched somewhat even as he sat on the edge of the pit.

No one needs to be told that it was Philip Foster. And a glance into the cave would have told the whole story. The place was stocked with enough supplies of all sorts, very scientifically selected, to last one man a lifetime.

Presently the engineer disappeared, to return with the framework of a small, hemispherical building, which he at once proceeded to set up over his cavern. When finished, some time later, it provided him with a neat, little, combined observatory, drawing-room, wireless-station and living- room, all incased in glass.

To-day an unusually fine and powerful wireless tower stands in the mountains of California; and under the direction of John Bates, sworn to secrecy, the news of the world is daily transmitted into space. On the moon, a former fellow citizen hears what earth's billions are doing.

All about him is desolate wilderness. The sun shines continually just above the eastern horizon; there is neither day nor night. Always the dark side of the earth is toward him; he sees very little of the globe he renounced. He never talks to a living soul, although he makes a great many talking- machine records; why, we need not try to tell.

But he has a great deal to be thankful for. He has plenty to eat and to drink; the air he breathes is chemically pure; he always has the great black above him, every star shining with vast greater brilliance than we on earth ever know. And beside him at all times is his beloved library, the condensed compendium of all the information that is worth while to him.

And back in Bates's office, in his safe, is a sealed document which is to be opened only in a certain contingency. In the vaults of a well-known bank rests a large chest, in which, among other things, is a duplicate of this document.

And— mark this— so far as any one on earth knows, there are not enough of the required chemicals in existence to produce the "Foster rays" once more. The moon will never be visited again!

As we enjoy our satellite this evening, if we happen to possess extra keen eyes we can detect a short, dark streak across the face of our moon; a streak which no astronomer ever saw in the old days. And if we use a small opera-glass, we can see just what it is.

For the Foster Construction Company made a thorough job of the moon's transformation. All the while that the crews were blasting on the other side, another crew of chemists was at work on the earthward face. Look closely through that glass, and this it what you will read:

GIFT OF DAVID SULZMAN.

But, although many of us will utter the old guess about "the man in the moon," and many will recall the supposedly tragic fate of the Californian engineer, only a very, very few will know that there is now an actual, bona-fide, flesh-and-blood being on its surface. That an American citizen now lives there, its sole inhabitant, and the only genuinely independent man in all creation.

For he, of all men, is absolutely safe from the other sex!

__________

8: Dice, Brassknuckles & Guitar

F. Scott Fitzgerald

1896-1940

International, May 1923

PARTS of New Jersey, as you know, are under water, and other parts are under continual surveillance by the authorities. But here and there lie patches of garden country dotted with old-fashioned frame mansions, which have wide shady porches and a red swing on the lawn. And perhaps, on the widest and shadiest of the porches there is even a hammock left over from the hammock days, stirring gently in a mid-Victorian wind.

When tourists come to such last-century landmarks they stop their cars and gaze for a while and then mutter: "Well, thank God this age is joined on to something" or else they say: "Well, of course, that house is mostly halls and has a thousand rats and one bathroom, but there's an atmosphere about it—"

The tourist doesn't stay long. He drives on to his Elizabethan villa of pressed cardboard or his early Norman meat-market or his medieval Italian pigeon-coop— because this is the twentieth century and Victorian houses are as unfashionable as the works of Mrs. Humphry Ward.

He can't see the hammock from the road— but sometimes there's a girl in the hammock. There was this afternoon. She was asleep in it and apparently unaware of the esthetic horrors which surrounded her, the stone statue of Diana, for instance, which grinned idiotically under the sunlight on the lawn.

There was something enormously yellow about the whole scene— there was this sunlight, for instance, that was yellow, and the hammock was of the particularly hideous yellow peculiar to hammocks, and the girl's yellow hair was spread out upon the hammock in a sort of invidious comparison.

She slept with her lips closed and her hands clasped behind her head, as it is proper for young girls to sleep. Her breast rose and fell slightly with no more emphasis than the sway of the hammock's fringe.

Her name, Amanthis, was as old-fashioned as the house she lived in. I regret to say that her mid-Victorian connections ceased abruptly at this point.

Now if this were a moving picture (as, of course, I hope it will some day be) I would take as many thousand feet of her as I was allowed— then I would move the camera up close and show the yellow down on the back of her neck where her hair stopped and the warm color of her cheeks and arms, because I like to think of her sleeping there, as you yourself might have slept, back in your young days. Then I would hire a man named Israel Glucose to write some idiotic line of transition, and switch thereby to another scene that was taking place at no particular spot far down the road.

In a moving automobile sat a southern gentleman accompanied by his body-servant. He was on his way, after a fashion, to New York but he was somewhat hampered by the fact that the upper and lower portions of his automobile were no longer in exact juxtaposition. In fact from time to time the two riders would dismount, shove the body on to the chassis, corner to corner, and then continue onward, vibrating slightly in involuntary unison with the motor.

Except that it had no door in back the car might have been built early in the mechanical age. It was covered with the mud of eight states and adorned in front by an enormous but defunct motometer and behind by a mangy pennant bearing the legend "Tarleton, Ga." In the dim past someone had begun to paint the hood yellow but unfortunately had been called away when but half through the task.

As the gentleman and his body-servant were passing the house where Amanthis lay beautifully asleep in the hammock, something happened— the body fell off the car. My only apology for stating this so suddenly is that it happened very suddenly indeed. When the noise had died down and the dust had drifted away master and man arose and inspected the two halves.

"Look-a-there," said the gentleman in disgust, "the doggone thing got all separated that time."

"She bust in two," agreed the body-servant.

"Hugo," said the gentleman, after some consideration, "we got to get a hammer an' nails an' tack it on."

They glanced up at the Victorian house. On all sides faintly irregular fields stretched away to a faintly irregular unpopulated horizon. There was no choice, so the black Hugo opened the gate and followed his master up a gravel walk, casting only the blasé glances of a confirmed traveler at the red swing and the stone statue of Diana which turned on them a storm-crazed stare.

At the exact moment when they reached the porch Amanthis awoke, sat up suddenly and looked them over.

The gentleman was young, perhaps twenty-four, and his name was Jim Powell. He was dressed in a tight and dusty readymade suit which was evidently expected to take flight at a moment's notice, for it was secured to his body by a line of six preposterous buttons.

There were supernumerary buttons upon the coat-sleeves also and Amanthis could not resist a glance to determine whether or not more buttons ran up the side of his trouser leg. But the trouser bottoms were distinguished only by their shape, which was that of a bell. His vest was cut low, barely restraining an amazing necktie from fluttering in the wind.

He bowed formally, dusting his knees with a thatched straw hat. Simultaneously he smiled, half shutting his faded blue eyes and displaying white and beautifully symmetrical teeth.

"Good evenin'," he said in abandoned Georgian. "My automobile has met with an accident out yonder by your gate. I wondered if it wouldn't be too much to ask you if I could have the use of a hammer and some tacks— nails, for a little while."

Amanthis laughed. For a moment she laughed uncontrollably. Mr. Jim Powell laughed, politely and appreciatively, with her. His body-servant, deep in the throes of colored adolescence, alone preserved a dignified gravity.

"I better introduce who I am, maybe," said the visitor. "My name's Powell. I'm a resident of Tarleton, Georgia. This here nigger's my boy Hugo."

"Your son!" The girl stared from one to the other in wild fascination.

"No, he's my body-servant, I guess you'd call it. We call a nigger a boy down yonder."

At this reference to the finer customs of his native soil the boy Hugo put his hands behind his back and looked darkly and superciliously down the lawn.

"Yas'm," he muttered, "I'm a body-servant."

"Where you going in your automobile," demanded Amanthis.

"Goin' north for the summer."

"Where to?"

The tourist waved his hand with a careless gesture as if to indicate the Adirondacks, the Thousand Islands, Newport— but he said:

"We're tryin' New York."

"Have you ever been there before?"

"Never have. But I been to Atlanta lots of times. An' we passed through all kinds of cities this trip. Man!"

He whistled to express the enormous spectacularity of his recent travels.

"Listen," said Amanthis intently, "you better have something to eat. Tell your— your body-servant to go 'round in back and ask the cook to send us out some sandwiches and lemonade. Or maybe you don't drink lemonade— very few people do any more."

Mr. Powell by a circular motion of his finger sped Hugo on the designated mission. Then he seated himself gingerly in a rocking-chair and began revolving his thatched straw hat rapidly in his hands.

"You cer'nly are mighty kind," he told her. "An' if I wanted anything stronger than lemonade I got a bottle of good old corn out in the car. I brought it along because I thought maybe I wouldn't be able to drink the whisky they got up here."

"Listen," she said, "my name's Powell too. Amanthis Powell."

"Say, is that right?" He laughed ecstatically. "Maybe we're kin to each other. I come from mighty good people," he went on. "Pore though. I got some money because my aunt she was using it to keep her in a sanitarium and she died." He paused, presumably out of respect to his late aunt. Then he concluded with brisk nonchalance, "I ain't touched the principal but I got a lot of the income all at once so I thought I'd come north for the summer."

At this point Hugo reappeared on the veranda steps and became audible.

"White lady back there she asked me don't I want eat some too. What I tell her?"

"You tell her yes mamm if she be so kind," directed his master. And as Hugo retired he confided to Amanthis: "That boy's got no sense at all. He don't want to do nothing without I tell him he can. I brought him up," he added, not without pride.

When the sandwiches arrived Mr. Powell stood up. He was unaccustomed to white servants and obviously expected an introduction.

"Are you a married lady?" he inquired of Amanthis, when the servant was gone.

"No," she answered, and added from the security of eighteen, "I'm an old maid."

Again he laughed politely.

"You mean you're a society girl."

She shook her head. Mr. Powell noted with embarrassed enthusiasm the particular yellowness of her yellow hair.

"Does this old place look like it?" she said cheerfully. "No, you perceive in me a daughter of the countryside. Color— one hundred percent spontaneous— in the daytime anyhow. Suitors— promising young barbers from the neighboring village with somebody's late hair still clinging to their coat-sleeves."

"Your daddy oughtn't to let you go with a country barber," said the tourist disapprovingly. He considered— "You ought to be a New York society girl."

"No." Amanthis shook her head sadly. "I'm too good-looking. To be a New York society girl you have to have a long nose and projecting teeth and dress like the actresses did three years ago."

Jim began to tap his foot rhythmically on the porch and in a moment Amanthis discovered that she was unconsciously doing the same thing.

"Stop!" she commanded, "Don't make me do that."

He looked down at his foot.

"Excuse me," he said humbly. "I don't know— it's just something I do."

This intense discussion was now interrupted by Hugo who appeared on the steps bearing a hammer and a handful of nails.

Mr. Powell arose unwillingly and looked at his watch.

"We got to go, daggone it," he said, frowning heavily. "See here. Wouldn't you like to be a New York society girl and go to those dances an' all, like you read about, where they throw gold pieces away?"

She looked at him with a curious expression.

"Don't your folks know some society people?" he went on.

"All I've got's my daddy— and, you see, he's a judge."

"That's too bad," he agreed.

She got herself by some means from the hammock and they went down toward the road, side by side.

"Well, I'll keep my eyes open for you and let you know," he persisted. "A pretty girl like you ought to go around in society. We may be kin to each other, you see, and us Powells ought to stick together."

"What are you going to do in New York?"

They were now almost at the gate and the tourist pointed to the two depressing sectors of his automobile.

"I'm goin' to drive a taxi. This one right here. Only it's got so it busts in two all the time."

"You're going to drive that in New York?"

Jim looked at her uncertainly. Such a pretty girl should certainly control the habit of shaking all over upon no provocation at all.

"Yes mamm," he said with dignity.

Amanthis watched while they placed the upper half of the car upon the lower half and nailed it severely into place. Then Mr. Powell took the wheel and his body-servant climbed in beside him.

"I'm cer'nly very much obliged to you indeed for your hospitality. Convey my respects to your father."

"I will," she assured him. "Come back and see me, if you don't mind barbers in the room."

He dismissed this unpleasant thought with a gesture.

"Your company would always be charming." He put the car into gear as though to drown out the temerity of his parting speech. "You're the prettiest girl I've seen up north— by far."

Then with a groan and a rattle Mr. Powell of southern Georgia with his own car and his own body-servant and his own ambitions and his own private cloud of dust continued on north for the summer.

She thought she would never see him again. She lay in her hammock, slim and beautiful, opened her left eye slightly to see June come in and then closed it and retired contentedly back into her dreams.

But one day when the midsummer vines had climbed the precarious sides of the red swing in the lawn, Mr. Jim Powell of Tarleton, Georgia, came vibrating back into her life. They sat on the wide porch as before.

"I've got a great scheme," he told her.

"Did you drive your taxi like you said?"

"Yes mamm, but the business was right bad. I waited around in front of all those hotels and theaters an' nobody ever got in."

"Nobody?"

"Well, one night there was some drunk fellas they got in, only just as I was gettin' started my automobile came apart. And another night it was rainin' and there wasn't no other taxis and a lady got in because she said she had to go a long ways. But before we got there she made me stop and she got out. She seemed kinda mad and she went walkin' off in the rain. Mighty proud lot of people they got up in New York."

"And so you're going home?" asked Amanthis sympathetically.

"No mamm. I got an idea." His blue eyes grew narrow. "Has that barber been around here— with hair on his sleeves?"

"No. He's— he's gone away."

"Well, then, first thing is I want to leave this car of mine here with you, if that's all right. It ain't the right color for a taxi. To pay for its keep I'd like to have you drive it just as much as you want. 'Long as you got a hammer an' nails with you there ain't much bad that can happen— "

"I'll take care of it," interrupted Amanthis, "but where are you going?"

"Southampton. It's about the most aristocratic watering trough— watering-place there is around here, so that's where I'm going."

She sat up in amazement.

"What are you going to do there?"

"Listen." He leaned toward her confidentially. "Were you serious about wanting to be a New York society girl?"

"Deadly serious."

"That's all I wanted to know," he said inscrutably. "You just wait here on this porch a couple of weeks and— and sleep. And if any barbers come to see you with hair on their sleeves you tell 'em you're too sleepy to see 'em."

"What then?"

"Then you'll hear from me. Just tell your old daddy he can do all the judging he wants but you're goin' to do some dancin'. Mamm," he continued decisively, "you talk about society! Before one month I'm goin' to have you in more society than you ever saw."

Further than this he would say nothing. His manner conveyed that she was going to be suspended over a perfect pool of gaiety and violently immersed, to an accompaniment of: "Is it gay enough for you, mamm? Shall I let in a little more excitement, mamm?"

"Well," answered Amanthis, lazily considering, "there are few things for which I'd forego the luxury of sleeping through July and August— but if you'll write me a letter I'll— I'll run up to Southampton."

Jim snapped his fingers ecstatically.

"More society," he assured her with all the confidence at his command, "than anybody ever saw."

Three days later a young man wearing a straw hat that might have been cut from the thatched roof of an English cottage rang the doorbell of the enormous and astounding Madison Harlan house at Southampton. He asked the butler if there were any people in the house between the ages of sixteen and twenty. He was informed that Miss Genevieve Harlan and Mr. Ronald Harlan answered that description and thereupon he handed in a most peculiar card and requested in fetching Georgian that it be brought to their attention.

As a result he was closeted for almost an hour with Mr. Ronald Harlan (who was a student at the Hillkiss School) and Miss Genevieve Harlan (who was not uncelebrated at Southampton dances). When he left he bore a short note in Miss Harlan's handwriting which he presented together with his peculiar card at the next large estate. It happened to be that of the Clifton Garneaus. Here, as if by magic, the same audience was granted him.

He went on— it was a hot day, and men who could not afford to do so were carrying their coats on the public highway, but Jim, a native of southernmost Georgia, was as fresh and cool at the last house as at the first. He visited ten houses that day. Anyone following him in his course might have taken him to be some curiously gifted book-agent with a much sought-after volume as his stock in trade.

There was something in his unexpected demand for the adolescent members of the family which made hardened butlers lose their critical acumen. As he left each house a close observer might have seen that fascinated eyes followed him to the door and excited voices whispered something which hinted at a future meeting.

The second day he visited twelve houses. Southampton has grown enormously— he might have kept on his round for a week and never seen the same butler twice— but it was only the palatial, the amazing houses which intrigued him.

On the third day he did a thing that many people have been told to do and few have done— he hired a hall. Perhaps the sixteen-to-twenty-year-old people in the enormous houses had told him to. The hall he hired had once been "Mr. Snorkey's Private Gymnasium for Gentlemen." It was situated over a garage on the south edge of Southampton and in the days of its prosperity had been, I regret to say, a place where gentlemen could, under Mr. Snorkey's direction, work off the effects of the night before. It was now abandoned— Mr. Snorkey had given up and gone away and died.

We will now skip three weeks during which time we may assume that the project which had to do with hiring a hall and visiting the two dozen largest houses in Southampton got under way.

The day to which we will skip was the July day on which Mr. James Powell sent a wire to Miss Amanthis Powell saying that if she still aspired to the gaiety of the highest society she should set out for Southampton by the earliest possible train. He himself would meet her at the station.

Jim was no longer a man of leisure, so when she failed to arrive at the time her wire had promised he grew restless. He supposed she was coming on a later train, turned to go back to his— his project— and met her entering the station from the street side.

"Why, how did you— "

"Well," said Amanthis, "I arrived this morning instead, and I didn't want to bother you so I found a respectable, not to say dull, boarding-house on the Ocean Road."

She was quite different from the indolent Amanthis of the porch hammock, he thought. She wore a suit of robins' egg blue and a rakish young hat with a curling feather— she was attired not unlike those young ladies between sixteen and twenty who of late were absorbing his attention. Yes, she would do very well.

He bowed her profoundly into a taxicab and got in beside her.

"Isn't it about time you told me your scheme?" she suggested.

"Well, it's about these society girls up here." He waved his hand airily. "I know 'em all."

"Where are they?"

"Right now they're with Hugo. You remember— that's my body-servant."

"With Hugo!" Her eyes widened. "Why? What's it all about?"

"Well, I got— I got sort of a school, I guess you'd call it."

"A school?"

"It's a sort of Academy. And I'm the head of it. I invented it."

He flipped a card from his case as though he were shaking down a thermometer.

"Look."

She took the card. In large lettering it bore the legend

JAMES POWELL; J.M.

"Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar"

She stared in amazement.

"Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar?" she repeated in awe.

"Yes mamm."

"What does it mean? What— do you sell 'em?"

"No mamm, I teach 'em. It's a profession."

"Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar? What's the J. M.?"

"That stands for Jazz Master."

"But what is it? What's it about?"

"Well, you see, it's like this. One night when I was in New York I got talkin' to a young fella who was drunk. He was one of my fares. And he'd taken some society girl somewhere and lost her."

"Lost her?"

"Yes mamm. He forgot her, I guess. And he was right worried. Well, I got to thinkin' that these girls nowadays— these society girls— they lead a sort of dangerous life and my course of study offers a means of protection against these dangers."

"You teach 'em to use brassknuckles?"

"Yes mamm, if necessary. Look here, you take a girl and she goes into some café where she's got no business to go. Well then, her escort he gets a little too much to drink an' he goes to sleep an' then some other fella comes up and says 'Hello, sweet mamma' or whatever one of those mashers says up here. What does she do? She can't scream, on account of no real lady'll scream nowadays— no— She just reaches down in her pocket and slips her fingers into a pair of Powell's defensive brassknuckles, débutante's size, executes what I call the Society Hook, and Wham! that big fella's on his way to the cellar."

"Well— what— what's the guitar for?" whispered the awed Amanthis. "Do they have to knock somebody over with the guitar?"

"No, mamm!" exclaimed Jim in horror. "No mamm. In my course no lady would be taught to raise a guitar against anybody. I teach 'em to play. Shucks! you ought to hear 'em. Why, when I've given 'em two lessons you'd think some of 'em was colored."

"And the dice?"

"Dice? I'm related to a dice. My grandfather was a dice. I teach 'em how to make those dice perform. I protect pocketbook as well as person."

"Did you— Have you got any pupils?"

"Mamm I got all the really nice, rich people in the place. What I told you ain't all. I teach lots of things. I teach 'em the jellyroll— and the Mississippi Sunrise. Why, there was one girl she came to me and said she wanted to learn to snap her fingers. I mean really snap 'em— like they do. She said she never could snap her fingers since she was little. I gave her two lessons and now Wham! Her daddy says he's goin' to leave home."

"When do you have it?" demanded the weak and shaken Amanthis.

"Three times a week. We're goin' there right now."

"And where do I fit in?"

"Well, you'll just be one of the pupils. I got it fixed up that you come from very high-tone people down in New Jersey. I didn't tell 'em your daddy was a judge— I told 'em he was the man that had the patent on lump sugar."

She gasped.

"So all you got to do," he went on, "is to pretend you never saw no barber."

They were now at the south end of the village and Amanthis saw a row of cars parked in front of a two-story building. The cars were all low, long, rakish and of a brilliant hue. They were the sort of car that is manufactured to solve the millionaire's problem on his son's eighteenth birthday.

Then Amanthis was ascending a narrow stairs to the second story. Here, painted on a door from which came the sounds of music and laughter were the words:

JAMES POWELL; J. M.

"Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar"

Mon.—Wed.—Fri.

Hours 3-5 P.M.

"Now if you'll just step this way— " said the Principal, pushing open the door.

Amanthis found herself in a long, bright room, populated with girls and men of about her own age. The scene presented itself to her at first as a sort of animated afternoon tea but after a moment she began to see, here and there, a motive and a pattern to the proceedings.

The students were scattered into groups, sitting, kneeling, standing, but all rapaciously intent on the subjects which engrossed them. From six young ladies gathered in a ring around some indistinguishable objects came a medley of cries and exclamations— plaintive, pleading, supplicating, exhorting, imploring and lamenting— their voices serving as tenor to an undertone of mysterious clatters.

Next to this group, four young men were surrounding an adolescent black, who proved to be none other than Mr. Powell's late body-servant. The young men were roaring at Hugo apparently unrelated phrases, expressing a wide gamut of emotion. Now their voices rose to a sort of clamor, now they spoke softly and gently, with mellow implication. Every little while Hugo would answer them with words of approbation, correction or disapproval.

"What are they doing?" whispered Amanthis to Jim.

"That there's a course in southern accent. Lot of young men up here want to learn southern accent— so we teach it— Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Eastern Shore, Ole Virginian. Some of 'em even want straight nigger— for song purposes."

They walked around among the groups. Some girls with metal knuckles were furiously insulting two punching bags on each of which was painted the leering, winking face of a "masher." A mixed group, led by a banjo tom-tom, were rolling harmonic syllables from their guitars. There were couples dancing flat-footed in the corner to a phonograph record made by Rastus Muldoon's Savannah Band; there were couples stalking a slow Chicago with a Memphis Sideswoop solemnly around the room.

"Are there any rules?" asked Amanthis.

Jim considered.

"Well," he answered finally, "they can't smoke unless they're over sixteen, and the boys have got to shoot square dice and I don't let 'em bring liquor into the Academy."

"I see."

"And now, Miss Powell, if you're ready I'll ask you to take off your hat and go over and join Miss Genevieve Harlan at that punching bag in the corner." He raised his voice. "Hugo," he called, "there's a new student here. Equip her with a pair of Powell's Defensive Brassknuckles— débutante size."

I regret to say that I never saw Jim Powell's famous Jazz School in action nor followed his personally conducted tours into the mysteries of Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar. So I can give you only such details as were later reported to me by one of his admiring pupils. During all the discussion of it afterwards no one ever denied that it was an enormous success, and no pupil ever regretted having received its degree— Bachelor of Jazz.

The parents innocently assumed that it was a sort of musical and dancing academy, but its real curriculum was transmitted from Santa Barbara to Biddeford Pool by that underground associated press which links up the so-called younger generation. Invitations to visit Southampton were at a premium— and Southampton generally is almost as dull for young people as Newport.

The Academy branched out with a small but well-groomed Jazz Orchestra.

"If I could keep it dark," Jim confided to Amanthis, "I'd have up Rastus Muldoon's Band from Savannah. That's the band I've always wanted to lead."

He was making money. His charges were not exorbitant— as a rule his pupils were not particularly flush— but he moved from his boarding-house to the Casino Hotel where he took a suite and had Hugo serve him his breakfast in bed.

The establishing of Amanthis as a member of Southampton's younger set was easier than he had expected. Within a week she was known to everyone in the school by her first name. Miss Genevieve Harlan took such a fancy to her that she was invited to a sub-deb dance at the Harlan house— and evidently acquitted herself with tact, for thereafter she was invited to almost every such entertainment in Southampton.

Jim saw less of her than he would have liked. Not that her manner toward him changed— she walked with him often in the mornings, she was always willing to listen to his plans— but after she was taken up by the fashionable her evenings seemed to be monopolized. Several times Jim arrived at her boarding-house to find her out of breath, as if she had just come in at a run, presumably from some festivity in which he had no share.

So as the summer waned he found that one thing was lacking to complete the triumph of his enterprise. Despite the hospitality shown to Amanthis, the doors of Southampton were closed to him. Polite to, or rather, fascinated by him as his pupils were from three to five, after that hour they moved in another world.

His was the position of a golf professional who, though he may fraternize, and even command, on the links, loses his privileges with the sun-down. He may look in the club window but he cannot dance. And, likewise, it was not given to Jim to see his teachings put into effect. He could hear the gossip of the morning after— that was all.

But while the golf professional, being English, holds himself proudly below his patrons, Jim Powell, who "came from a right good family down there— pore though," lay awake many nights in his hotel bed and heard the music drifting into his window from the Katzbys' house or the Beach Club, and turned over restlessly and wondered what was the matter. In the early days of his success he had bought himself a dress-suit, thinking that he would soon have a chance to wear it— but it still lay untouched in the box in which it had come from the tailor's.

Perhaps, he thought, there was some real gap which separated him from the rest. It worried him. One boy in particular, Martin Van Vleck, son of Van Vleck the ash-can King, made him conscious of the gap. Van Vleck was twenty-one, a tutoring-school product who still hoped to enter Yale. Several times Jim had heard him make remarks not intended for Jim's ear— once in regard to the suit with multiple buttons, again in reference to Jim's long, pointed shoes. Jim had passed these over.

He knew that Van Vleck was attending the school chiefly to monopolize the time of little Martha Katzby, who was just sixteen and too young to have attention of a boy of twenty-one— especially the attention of Van Vleck, who was so spiritually exhausted by his educational failures that he drew on the rather exhaustible innocence of sixteen.

It was late in September, two days before the Harlan dance which was to be the last and biggest of the season for this younger crowd. Jim, as usual, was not invited. He had hoped that he would be. The two young Harlans, Ronald and Genevieve, had been his first patrons when he arrived at Southampton— and it was Genevieve who had taken such a fancy to Amanthis. To have been at their dance— the most magnificent dance of all— would have crowned and justified the success of the waning summer.

His class, gathering for the afternoon, was loudly anticipating the next day's revel with no more thought of him than if he had been the family butler. Hugo, standing beside Jim, chuckled suddenly and remarked:

"Look yonder that man Van Vleck. He paralyzed. He been havin' powerful lotta corn this evenin'."

Jim turned and stared at Van Vleck, who had linked arms with little Martha Katzby and was saying something to her in a low voice. Jim saw her try to draw away.

He put his whistle to his mouth and blew it.

"All right," he cried, "Le's go! Group one tossin' the drumstick, high an' zig-zag, group two, test your mouth organs for the Riverfront Shuffle. Promise 'em sugar! Flatfoots this way! Orchestra— let's have the Florida Drag-Out played as a dirge."

There was an unaccustomed sharpness in his voice and the exercises began with a mutter of facetious protest.

With his smoldering grievance directing itself toward Van Vleck, Jim was walking here and there among the groups when Hugo tapped him suddenly on the arm. He looked around. Two participants had withdrawn from the mouth organ institute— one of them was Van Vleck and he was giving a drink out of his flask to fifteen-year-old Ronald Harlan.

Jim strode across the room. Van Vleck turned defiantly as he came up.

"All right," said Jim, trembling with anger, "you know the rules. You get out!"

The music died slowly away and there was a sudden drifting over in the direction of the trouble. Somebody snickered. An atmosphere of anticipation formed instantly. Despite the fact that they all liked Jim their sympathies were divided— Van Vleck was one of them.

"Get out!" repeated Jim, more quietly.

"Are you talking to me?" inquired Van Vleck coldly.

"Yes."

"Then you better say 'sir.'"

"I wouldn't say 'sir' to anybody that'd give a little boy whisky! You get out!"

"Look here!" said Van Vleck furiously. "You've butted in once too much. I've known Ronald since he was two years old. Ask him if he wants you to tell him what he can do!"

Ronald Harlan, his dignity offended, grew several years older and looked haughtily at Jim.

"Mind your own business!" he said defiantly, albeit a little guiltily.

"Hear that?" demanded Van Vleck. "My God, can't you see you're just a servant? Ronald here'd no more think of asking you to his party than he would his bootlegger."

"Youbettergetout!" cried Jim incoherently.

Van Vleck did not move. Reaching out suddenly, Jim caught his wrist and jerking it behind his back forced his arm upward until Van Vleck bent forward in agony. Jim leaned and picked the flask from the floor with his free hand. Then he signed Hugo to open the hall-door, uttered an abrupt "You step!" and marched his helpless captive out into the hall where he literally threw him downstairs, head over heels bumping from wall to banister, and hurled his flask after him.

Then he reentered his academy, closed the door behind him and stood with his back against it.

"It— it happens to be a rule that nobody drinks while in this Academy." He paused, looking from face to face, finding there sympathy, awe, disapproval, conflicting emotions. They stirred uneasily. He caught Amanthis's eye, fancied he saw a faint nod of encouragement and, with almost an effort, went on:

"I just had to throw that fella out an' you-all know it." Then he concluded with a transparent affectation of dismissing an unimportant matter— "All right, let's go! Orchestra—!"

But no one felt exactly like going on. The spontaneity of the proceedings had been violently disturbed. Someone made a run or two on the sliding guitar and several of the girls began whamming at the leer on the punching bags, but Ronald Harlan, followed by two other boys, got their hats and went silently out the door.

Jim and Hugo moved among the groups as usual until a certain measure of routine activity was restored but the enthusiasm was unrecapturable and Jim, shaken and discouraged, considered discontinuing school for the day. But he dared not. If they went home in this mood they might not come back. The whole thing depended on a mood. He must recreate it, he thought frantically— now, at once!

But try as he might, there was little response. He himself was not happy— he could communicate no gaiety to them. They watched his efforts listlessly and, he thought, a little contemptuously.

Then the tension snapped when the door burst suddenly open, precipitating a brace of middle-aged and excited women into the room. No person over twenty-one had ever entered the Academy before— but Van Vleck had gone direct to headquarters. The women were Mrs. Clifton Garneau and Mrs. Poindexter Katzby, two of the most fashionable and, at present, two of the most flurried women in Southampton. They were in search of their daughters as, in these days, so many women continually are.

The business was over in about three minutes.

"And as for you!" cried Mrs. Clifton Garneau in an awful voice, "your idea is to run a bar and— and opium den for children! You ghastly, horrible, unspeakable man! I can smell morphin fumes! Don't tell me I can't smell morphin fumes. I can smell morphin fumes!"

"And," bellowed Mrs. Poindexter Katzby, "you have colored men around! You have colored girls hidden! I'm going to the police!"

Not content with herding their own daughters from the room, they insisted on the exodus of their friends' daughters. Jim was not a little touched when several of them— including even little Martha Katzby, before she was snatched fiercely away by her mother— came up and shook hands with him. But they were all going, haughtily, regretfully or with shame-faced mutters of apology.

"Good-by," he told them wistfully. "In the morning I'll send you the money that's due you."

And, after all, they were not sorry to go. Outside, the sound of their starting motors, the triumphant put-put of their cut-outs cutting the warm September air, was a jubilant sound— a sound of youth and hopes high as the sun. Down to the ocean, to roll in the waves and forget— forget him and their discomfort at his humiliation.

They were gone— he was alone with Hugo in the room. He sat down suddenly with his face in his hands.

"Hugo," he said huskily. "They don't want us up here."

"Don't you care," said a voice.

He looked up to see Amanthis standing beside him.

"You better go with them," he told her. "You better not be seen here with me."

"Why?"

"Because you're in society now and I'm no better to those people than a servant. You're in society— I fixed that up. You better go or they won't invite you to any of their dances."

"They won't anyhow, Jim," she said gently. "They didn't invite me to the one tomorrow night."

He looked up indignantly.

"They didn't?"

She shook her head.

"I'll make 'em!" he said wildly. "I'll tell 'em they got to. I'll— I'll— "

She came close to him with shining eyes.

"Don't you mind, Jim," she soothed him. "Don't you mind. They don't matter. We'll have a party of our own tomorrow— just you and I."

"I come from right good folks," he said, defiantly. "Pore though."

She laid her hand softly on his shoulder.

"I understand. You're better than all of them put together, Jim."

He got up and went to the window and stared out mournfully into the late afternoon.

"I reckon I should have let you sleep in that hammock."

She laughed.

"I'm awfully glad you didn't."

He turned and faced the room, and his face was dark.

"Sweep up and lock up, Hugo," he said, his voice trembling. "The summer's over and we're going down home."

Autumn had come early. Jim Powell woke next morning to find his room cool, and the phenomenon of frosted breath in September absorbed him for a moment to the exclusion of the day before. Then the lines of his face drooped with unhappiness as he remembered the humiliation which had washed the cheery glitter from the summer. There was nothing left for him except to go back where he was known, where under no provocation were such things said to white people as had been said to him here.

After breakfast a measure of his customary light-heartedness returned. He was a child of the South— brooding was alien to his nature. He could conjure up an injury only a certain number of times before it faded into the great vacancy of the past.

But when, from force of habit, he strolled over to his defunct establishment, already as obsolete as Snorkey's late sanitarium, melancholy again dwelt in his heart. Hugo was there, a specter of despair, deep in the lugubrious blues amidst his master's broken hopes.

Usually a few words from Jim were enough to raise him to an inarticulate ecstasy, but this morning there were no words to utter. For two months Hugo had lived on a pinnacle of which he had never dreamed. He had enjoyed his work simply and passionately, arriving before school hours and lingering long after Mr. Powell's pupils had gone.

The day dragged toward a not-too-promising night. Amanthis did not appear and Jim wondered forlornly if she had not changed her mind about dining with him that night. Perhaps it would be better if she were not seen with them. But then, he reflected dismally, no one would see them anyhow— everybody was going to the big dance at the Harlans' house.

When twilight threw unbearable shadows into the school hall he locked it up for the last time, took down the sign "James Powell; J. M., Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar," and went back to his hotel. Looking over his scrawled accounts he saw that there was another month's rent to pay on his school and some bills for windows broken and new equipment that had hardly been used. Jim had lived in state, and he realized that financially he would have nothing to show for the summer after all.

When he had finished he took his new dress-suit out of its box and inspected it, running his hand over the satin of the lapels and lining. This, at least, he owned and perhaps in Tarleton somebody would ask him to a party where he could wear it.

"Shucks!" he said scoffingly. "It was just a no account old academy, anyhow. Some of those boys round the garage down home could of beat it all hollow."

Whistling "Jeanne of Jelly-bean Town" to a not-dispirited rhythm Jim encased himself in his first dress-suit and walked downtown.

"Orchids," he said to the clerk. He surveyed his purchase with some pride. He knew that no girl at the Harlan dance would wear anything lovelier than these exotic blossoms that leaned languorously backward against green ferns.

In a taxi-cab, carefully selected to look like a private car, he drove to Amanthis's boarding-house. She came down wearing a rose-colored evening dress into which the orchids melted like colors into a sunset.

"I reckon we'll go to the Casino Hotel," he suggested, "unless you got some other place— "

At their table, looking out over the dark ocean, his mood became a contended sadness. The windows were shut against the cool but the orchestra played "Kalula" and "South Sea Moon" and for awhile, with her young loveliness opposite him, he felt himself to be a romantic participant in the life around him. They did not dance, and he was glad— it would have reminded him of that other brighter and more radiant dance to which they could not go.

After dinner they took a taxi and followed the sandy roads for an hour, glimpsing the now starry ocean through the casual trees.

"I want to thank you," she said, "for all you've done for me, Jim."

"That's all right— we Powells ought to stick together."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to Tarleton tomorrow."

"I'm sorry," she said softly. "Are you going to drive down?"

"I got to. I got to get the car south because I couldn't get what she was worth by sellin' it. You don't suppose anybody's stole my car out of your barn?" he asked in sudden alarm.

She repressed a smile.

"No."

"I'm sorry about this— about you," he went on huskily, "and— and I would like to have gone to just one of their dances. You shouldn't of stayed with me yesterday. Maybe it kept 'em from asking you."

"Jim," she suggested eagerly, "let's go and stand outside and listen to their old music. We don't care."

"They'll be coming out," he objected.

"No, it's too cold. Besides there's nothing they could do to you any more than they have done."

She gave the chauffeur a direction and a few minutes later they stopped in front of the heavy Georgian beauty of the Madison Harlan house whence the windows cast their gaiety in bright patches on the lawn. There was laughter inside and the plaintive wind of fashionable horns, and now and again the slow, mysterious shuffle of dancing feet.

"Let's go up close," whispered Amanthis in an ecstatic trance, "I want to hear."

They walked toward the house, keeping in the shadow of the great trees. Jim proceeded with awe— suddenly he stopped and seized Amanthis's arm.

"Man!" he cried in an excited whisper. "Do you know what that is?"

"A night watchman?" Amanthis cast a startled look around.

"It's Rastus Muldoon's Band from Savannah! I heard 'em once, and I know. It's Rastus Muldoon's Band!"

They moved closer till they could see first pompadours, then slicked male heads, and high coiffures and finally even bobbed hair pressed under black ties. They could distinguish chatter below the ceaseless laughter. Two figures appeared on the porch, gulped something quickly from flasks and returned inside. But the music had bewitched Jim Powell. His eyes were fixed and he moved his feet like a blind man.

Pressed in close behind some dark bushes they listened. The number ended. A breeze from the ocean blew over them and Jim shivered slightly. Then, in a wistful whisper:

"I've always wanted to lead that band. Just once." His voice grew listless. "Come on. Let's go. I reckon I don't belong around here."

He held out his arm to her but instead of taking it she stepped suddenly out of the bushes and into a bright patch of light.

"Come on, Jim," she said startlingly. "Let's go inside."

"What—?"

She seized his arm and though he drew back in a sort of stupefied horror at her boldness she urged him persistently toward the great front door.

"Watch out!" he gasped. "Somebody's coming out of that house and see us."

"No, Jim," she said firmly. "Nobody's coming out of that house— but two people are going in."

"Why?" he demanded wildly, standing in full glare of the porte-cochere lamps. "Why?"

"Why?" she mocked him. "Why, just because this dance happens to be given for me."

He thought she was mad.

"Come home before they see us," he begged her.

The great doors swung open and a gentleman stepped out on the porch. In horror Jim recognized Mr. Madison Harlan. He made a movement as though to break away and run. But the man walked down the steps holding out both hands to Amanthis.

"Hello at last," he cried. "Where on earth have you two been? Cousin Amanthis— " He kissed her, and turned cordially to Jim. "And for you, Mr. Powell," he went on, "to make up for being late you've got to promise that for just one number you're going to lead that band."

New Jersey was warm, all except the part that was under water, and that mattered only to the fishes. All the tourists who rode through the long green miles stopped their cars in front of a spreading old-fashioned country house and looked at the red swing on the lawn and the wide, shady porch, and sighed and drove on— swerving a little to avoid a jet-black body-servant in the road. The body-servant was applying a hammer and nails to a decayed flivver which flaunted from its rear the legend, "Tarleton, Ga."

A girl with yellow hair and a warm color to her face was lying in the hammock looking as though she could fall asleep any moment. Near her sat a gentleman in an extraordinarily tight suit. They had come down together the day before from the fashionable resort at Southampton.

"When you first appeared," she was explaining, "I never thought I'd see you again so I made that up about the barber and all. As a matter of fact, I've been around quite a bit— with or without brassknuckles. I'm coming out this autumn."

"I reckon I had a lot to learn," said Jim.

"And you see," went on Amanthis, looking at him rather anxiously, "I'd been invited up to Southampton to visit my cousins— and when you said you were going, I wanted to see what you'd do. I always slept at the Harlans' but I kept a room at the boarding-house so you wouldn't know. The reason I didn't get there on the right train was because I had to come early and warn a lot of people to pretend not to know me."

Jim got up, nodding his head in comprehension.

"I reckon I and Hugo had better be movin' along. We got to make Baltimore by night."

"That's a long way."

"I want to sleep south tonight," he said simply.

Together they walked down the path and past the idiotic statue of Diana on the lawn.

"You see," added Amanthis gently, "you don't have to be rich up here in order to— to go around, any more than you do in Georgia— " She broke off abruptly, "Won't you come back next year and start another Academy?"

"No mamm, not me. That Mr. Harlan told me I could go on with the one I had but I told him no."

"Haven't you— didn't you make money?"

"No mamm," he answered. "I got enough of my own income to just get me home. I didn't have my principal along. One time I was way ahead but I was livin' high and there was my rent an' apparatus and those musicians. Besides, there at the end I had to pay what they'd advanced me for their lessons."

"You shouldn't have done that!" cried Amanthis indignantly.

"They didn't want me to, but I told 'em they'd have to take it."

He didn't consider it necessary to mention that Mr. Harlan had tried to present him with a check.

They reached the automobile just as Hugo drove in his last nail. Jim opened a pocket of the door and took from it an unlabeled bottle containing a whitish-yellow liquid.

"I intended to get you a present," he told her awkwardly, "but my money got away before I could, so I thought I'd send you something from Georgia. This here's just a personal remembrance. It won't do for you to drink but maybe after you come out into society you might want to show some of those young fellas what good old corn tastes like."

She took the bottle.

"Thank you, Jim."

"That's all right." He turned to Hugo. "I reckon we'll go along now. Give the lady the hammer."

"Oh, you can have the hammer," said Amanthis tearfully. "Oh, won't you promise to come back?"

"Someday— maybe."

He looked for a moment at her yellow hair and her blue eyes misty with sleep and tears. Then he got into his car and as his foot found the clutch his whole manner underwent a change.

"I'll say good-by mamm," he announced with impressive dignity, "we're goin' south for the winter."

The gesture of his straw hat indicated Palm Beach, St. Augustine, Miami. His body-servant spun the crank, gained his seat and became part of the intense vibration into which the automobile was thrown.

"South for the winter," repeated Jim, and then he added softly, "You're the prettiest girl I ever knew. You go back up there and lie down in that hammock, and sleep— sle-eep— "

It was almost a lullaby, as he said it. He bowed to her, magnificently, profoundly, including the whole North in the splendor of his obeisance —

Then they were gone down the road in quite a preposterous cloud of dust. Just before they reached the first bend Amanthis saw them come to a full stop, dismount and shove the top part of the car on to the bottom pan. They took their seats again without looking around. Then the bend— and they were out of sight, leaving only a faint brown mist to show that they had passed.

____________________

9: The Red Bungalow

Bithia Mary Croker

1849-1920

From Odds and Ends, 1919

IT IS a considerable time since my husband's regiment ('The Snapshots') was stationed in Kulu, yet it seems as if it were but yesterday, when I look back on the days we spent in India. As I sit by the fire, or in the sunny corner of the garden, sometimes when my eyes are dim with reading I close them upon the outer world, and see, with vivid distinctness, events which happened years ago. Among various mental pictures, there is not one which stands forth with the same weird and lurid effect as the episode of 'The Red Bungalow.'

Robert was commanding his regiment, and we were established in a pretty spacious house at Kulu, and liked the station. It was a little off the beaten track, healthy and sociable. Memories of John Company and traces of ancient Empires still clung to the neighbourhood. Pig-sticking and rose-growing, Badminton and polo, helped the residents of the place to dispose of the long, long Indian day— never too long for me!

One morning I experienced an agreeable surprise, when, in reading the Gazette, I saw that my cousin, Tom Fellowes, had been appointed Quartermaster-General of the district, and was to take up the billet at once.

Tom had a wife and two dear little children (our nursery was empty), and as soon as I had put down the paper I wired to Netta to congratulate and beg them to come to us immediately. Indian moves are rapid. Within a week our small party had increased to six, Tom, Netta, little Guy, aged four, and Baba, a dark-eyed coquette of nearly two. They also brought with them an invaluable ayah— a Madrassi. She spoke English with a pretty foreign accent, and was entirely devoted to the children.

Netta was a slight young woman with brilliant eyes, jet black hair, and a firm mouth. She was lively, clever, and a capital helpmate for an army man, with marvellous energy, and enviable taste.

Tom, an easy-going individual in private life, was a red-hot soldier. All financial and domestic affairs were left in the hands of his wife, and she managed him and them with conspicuous success.

Before Netta had been with us three days she began, in spite of my protestations, to clamour about 'getting a house'.

'Why, you have only just arrived,' I remonstrated. 'You are not even half unpacked. Wait here a few weeks, and make acquaintance with the place and people. It is such a pleasure to me to have you and the children.'

'You spoil them— especially Guy!' she answered with a laugh. 'The sooner they are removed the better, and, seriously, I want to settle in. I am longing to do up my new house, and make it pretty, and have a garden— a humble imitation of yours— a Badminton court, and a couple of ponies. I'm like a child looking forward to a new toy, for, cooped up in Fort William in Calcutta, I never felt that I had a real home.'

'Even so,' I answered, 'there is plenty of time, and I think you might remain here till after Christmas.'

'Christmas!' she screamed. 'I shall be having Christmas parties myself, and a tree for the kids; and you, dear Liz, shall come and help me. I want to get into a house next week.'

'Then pray don't look to me for any assistance. If you make such a hasty exit the station will think we have quarrelled.'

'The station could not be so detestable, and no one could quarrel with you, you dear old thing,' and as she stooped down and patted my cheek, I realised that she was fully resolved to have her own way.

'I have yards and yards of the most lovely cretonne for cushions, and chairs, and curtains,' she continued, 'brought out from home, and never yet made up. Your Dirzee is bringing me two men tomorrow. When I was out riding this morning, I went to an auction-room— John Mahomed, they call the man— and inspected some sofas and chairs. Do let us drive there this afternoon on our way to the club, and I also wish to have a look round. I hear that nearly all the good bungalows are occupied.'

'Yes, they are,' I answered triumphantly. 'At present there is not one in the place to suit you! I have been running over them with my mind's eye, and either they are near the river, or too small, or— not healthy. After Christmas the Watsons are going home; there will be their bungalow— it is nice and large, and has a capital office, which would suit Tom.'

We drove down to John Mahomed's that afternoon, and selected some furniture— Netta exhibiting her usual taste and business capacity. On our way to the club I pointed out several vacant houses, and, among them, the Watsons' charming abode— with its celebrated gardens, beds of brilliant green lucerne, and verandah curtained in yellow roses.

'Oh yes,' she admitted, 'it is a fine, roomy sort of abode, but I hate a thatched roof— I want one with tiles— red tiles. They make such a nice bit of colour among trees.'

'I'm afraid you won't find many tiled roofs in Kulu,' I answered; 'this will limit you a good deal.'

For several mornings, together, we explored bungalows— and I was by no means sorry to find that, in the eyes of Netta, they were all more or less found wanting— too small, too damp, too near the river, too stuffy— and I had made up my mind that the Watsons' residence (despite its thatch) was to be Netta's fate, when one afternoon she hurried in, a little breathless and dusty, and announced, with a wild wave of her sunshade, 'I've found it!'

'Where? Do you mean a house?' I exclaimed.

'Yes. What moles we've been! At the back of this, down the next turn, at the cross roads! Most central and suitable. They call it the Red Bungalow.'

'The Red Bungalow,' I repeated reflectively. I had never cast a thought to it— what is always before one is frequently unnoticed. Also it had been unoccupied ever since we had come to the station, and as entirely overlooked as if it had no existence! I had a sort of recollection that there was some drawback— it was either too large, or too expensive, or too out of repair.

'It is strange that I never mentioned it,' I said. 'But it has had no tenant for years.'

'Unless I am greatly mistaken, it will have one before long,' rejoined Netta, with her most definite air. 'It looks as if it were just waiting for us— and had been marked "reserved".'

'Then you have been over it?'

'No, I could not get in, the doors are all bolted, and there seems to be no chokedar. I wandered round the verandahs, and took stock of the size and proportions— it stands in an imposing compound. There are the ruins at the back, mixed up with the remains of a garden— old guava trees, lemon trees, a vine, and a well. There is a capital place at one side for two Badminton courts, and I have mentally laid out a rose-garden in front of the portico.'

'How quickly your mind travels!'

'Everything must travel quickly in these days,' she retorted. 'We all have to put on the pace. Just as I was leaving, I met a venerable coolie person, who informed me that John Mahomed had the keys, so I despatched him to bring them at once, and promised a rupee for his trouble. Now do, like a good soul, let us have tea, and start off immediately after to inspect my treasure-trove!'

'I can promise you a cup of tea in five minutes,' I replied, 'but I am not so certain of your treasure-trove.'

'I am. I generally can tell what suits me at first sight. The only thing I am afraid of is the rent. Still, in Tommy's position one must not consider that. He is obliged to live in a suitable style.'

'The Watsons' house has often had a staff-tenant. I believe it would answer all your requirements.'

'Too near the road, and too near the General,' she objected, with a gesture of impatience. 'Ah, here comes tea at last!'

It came, but before I had time to swallow my second cup, I found myself hustled out of the house by my energetic cousin and en route to her wonderful discovery— the Red Bungalow.

We had but a short distance to walk, and, often as I had passed the house, I now gazed at it for the first time with an air of critical interest. In Kulu, for some unexplained reason, this particular bungalow had never counted; it was boycotted— no, that is not the word— ignored, as if, like some undesirable character, it had no place in the station's thoughts. Nevertheless, its position was sufficiently prominent— it stood at a point where four ways met. Two gateless entrances opened into different roads, as if determined to obtrude upon public attention. Standing aloof between the approaches was the house— large, red-tiled, and built back in the shape of the letter 'T' from an enormous pillared porch, which, with some tall adjacent trees, gave it an air of reserve and dignity.

'The coolie with the keys has not arrived,' said Netta, 'so I will just take you round and show you its capabilities myself. Here'— as we stumbled over some rough grass— 'is where I should make a couple of Badminton courts, and this'— as we came to the back of the bungalow— 'is the garden.'

Yes, here were old choked-up stone water-channels, the traces of walks, hoary guava and apricot trees, a stone pergola and a dead vine, also a well, with elaborate tracery, and odd, shapeless mounds of ancient masonry. As we stood we faced the back verandah of the house. To our right hand lay tall cork trees, a wide expanse of compound, and the road; to our left, at a distance, more trees, a high wall, and clustered beneath it the servants' quarters, the cookhouse, and a long range of stables.

It was a fine, important-looking residence, although the stables where almost roofless and the garden and compound a wilderness, given over to stray goats and tame lizards.

'Yes, there is only one thing I am afraid of,' exclaimed Netta.

'Snakes?' I suggested. 'It looks rather snaky.'

'No, the rent; and here comes the key at last,' and as she spoke a fat young clerk, on a small yellow pony, trotted quickly under the porch— a voluble person, who wore spotless white garments, and spoke English with much fluency.

'I am abject. Please excuse being so tardy. I could not excavate the key; but at last I got it, and now I will hasten to exhibit premises. First of all, I go and open doors and windows, and call in the atmosphere— ladies kindly excuse.' Leaving his tame steed on its honour, the baboo hurried to the back, and presently we heard the grinding of locks, banging of shutters, and grating of bolts. Then the door was flung open and we entered, walked (as is usual) straight into the drawing-room, a fine, lofty, half-circular room, twice as large and well-proportioned as mine. The drawing-room led into an equally excellent dining-room. I saw Netta measuring it with her eye, and she said, 'One could easily seat thirty people here, and what a place for a Christmas-tree!'

The dining-room opened into an immense bedroom which gave directly on the back verandah, with a flight of shallow steps leading into the garden.

'The nursery,' she whispered; 'capital!'

At either side were two other rooms, with bath and dressing-rooms complete. Undoubtedly it was an exceedingly commodious and well-planned house.

As we stood once more in the nursery— all the wide doors being open— we could see directly through the bungalow out into the porch, as the three large apartments were en suite.

'A draught right through, you see!' she said. 'So cool in the hot weather.'

Then we returned to the drawing-room, where I noticed that Netta was already arranging the furniture with her mental eye. At last she turned to the baboo and said, 'And what is the rent?'

After a moment's palpable hesitation he replied, 'Ninety rupees a month. If you take it for some time it will be all put in repair and done up.'

'Ninety!' I mentally echoed— and we paid one hundred and forty!

'Does it belong to John Mahomed?' I asked.

'No— to a client.'

'Does he live here?'

'No— he lives far away, in another region; we have never seen him.'

'How long is it since this was occupied?'

'Oh, a good while—'

'Some years?'

'Perhaps,' with a wag of his head.

'Why has it stood empty? Is it unhealthy?' asked Netta.

'Oh no, no. I think it is too majestic, too gigantic for insignificant people. They like something more altogether and cosy; it is not cosy— it is suitable to persons like a lady on the General's staff,' and he bowed himself to Netta.

I believe she was secretly of his opinion, for already she had assumed the air of the mistress of the house, and said briskly, 'Now I wish to see the kitchen, and servants' quarters,' and, picking up her dainty skirts, she led the way thither through loose stones and hard yellow grass. As I have a rooted antipathy to dark and uninhabited places, possibly the haunt of snakes and scorpions, I failed to attend her, but, leaving the baboo to continue his duty, turned back into the house alone.

I paced the drawing-room, dining-room, the nursery, and as I stood surveying the long vista of apartments, with the sun pouring into the porch on one hand, and on the green foliage and baked yellow earth of the garden on the other, I confessed to myself that Netta was a miracle!

She, a new arrival, had hit upon this excellent and suitable residence; and a bargain. But, then, she always found bargains; their discovery was her métier!

As I stood reflecting thus, gazing absently into the outer glare, a dark and mysterious cloud seemed to fall upon the place, the sun was suddenly obscured, and from the portico came a sharp little gust of wind that gradually increased into a long-drawn wailing cry— surely the cry of some lost soul! What could have put such a hideous idea in my head? But the cry rang in my ears with such piercing distinctness that I felt myself trembling from head to foot; in a second the voice had, as it were, passed forth into the garden and was stifled among the tamarind trees in an agonised wail. I roused myself from a condition of frightful obsession, and endeavoured to summon my common sense and self-command. Here was I, a middle-aged Scotchwoman, standing in this empty bungalow, clutching my garden umbrella, and imagining horrors!

Such thoughts I must keep exclusively to myself, lest I become the laughing-stock of a station with a keen sense of the ridiculous.

Yes, I was an imaginative old goose, but I walked rather quickly back into the porch, and stepped into the open air, with a secret but invincible prejudice against the Red Bungalow. This antipathy was not shared by Netta, who had returned from her quest all animation and satisfaction.

'The stables require repair, and some of the go-downs,' she said, 'and the whole house must be recoloured inside, and matted. I will bring my husband round tomorrow morning,' she announced, dismissing the baboo. 'We will be here at eight o'clock sharp.'

By this I knew— and so did the baboo— that the Red Bungalow was let at last!

'Well, what do you think of it?' asked Netta triumphantly, as we were walking home together.

'It is a roomy house,' I admitted, 'but there is no office for Tom.'

'Oh, he has the Brigade Office. Any more objections?'

'A bungalow so long vacant, so entirely overlooked, must have something against it— and it is not the rent—'

'Nor is it unhealthy,' she argued. 'It is quite high, higher than your bungalow— no water near it, and the trees not too close. I can see that you don't like it. Can you give me a good reason?'

'I really wish I could. No, I do not like it— there is something about it that repels me. You know I'm a Highlander, and am sensitive to impressions.'

'My dear Liz,' and here she came to a dead halt, 'you don't mean me to suppose that you think it is haunted? Why, this is the twentieth century!'

'I did not say it was haunted'— (I dared not voice my fears)— 'but I declare that I do not like it, and I wish you'd wait; wait only a couple of days, and I'll take you to see the Watsons' bungalow— so sunny, so lived in— always so cheerful, with a lovely garden, and an office for Tom.'

'I'm not sure that that is an advantage!' she exclaimed with a smile. 'It is not always agreeable to have a man on the premises for twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four hours!'

'But the Watsons—'

'My dear Liz, if you say another word about the Watsons' bungalow I shall have a bad attack of the sulks, and go straight to bed!'

It is needless to mention that Tom was delighted with the bungalow selected by his ever-clever little wife, and for the next week our own abode was the resort of tailors, hawkers, butchers, milkmen, furniture-makers, ponies and cows on sale, and troops of servants in quest of places.

Every day Netta went over to the house to inspect, and to give directions, to see how the mallees were laying out the garden and Badminton courts, and the matting people and whitewashers were progressing indoors.

Many hands make light work, and within a week the transformation of the Red Bungalow was astonishing. Within a fortnight it was complete; the stables were again occupied— also the new spick-and-span servants' quarters; Badminton courts were ready to be played upon; the verandah and porch were gay with palms and plants and parrots, and the drawing-room was the admiration of all Kulu. Netta introduced plants in pots— pots actually dressed up in pongee silk!— to the station ladies; her sofa cushions were frilled, she had quantities of pretty pictures and photos, silver knick-knacks, and gay rugs.

But before Netta had had the usual name-board— 'Major Fellowes, AQMG'— attached to the gate piers of the Red Bungalow, there had been some demur and remonstrance. My ayah, an old Madrassi, long in my service, had ventured one day, as she held my hair in her hand, 'That new missus never taking the old Red Bungalow?'

'Yes.'

'My missus then telling her, please, that plenty bad place— oh, so bad! No one living there this many years.'

'Why— what is it?'

'I not never knowing, only the one word— bad. Oh, my missus! you speak, never letting these pretty little children go there—'

'But other people have lived there, Mary—'

'Never long— so people telling— the house man paint bungalow all so nice— same like now— they make great bargain— so pleased. One day they go away, away, away, never coming back. Please, please,' and she stooped and kissed my hand, 'speak that master, tell him— bad bungalow.'

Of course I pooh-poohed the subject to Mary, who actually wept, good kind creature, and as she did my hair had constantly to dry her eyes on her saree.

And, knowing how futile a word to Tom would prove, I once more attacked Netta. I said, 'Netta, I'm sure you think I'm an ignorant, superstitious imbecile, but I believe in presentiments. I have a presentiment, dear, about that Bungalow— do give it up to please and, yes, comfort me—'

'What! my beautiful find— the best house in Kulu— my bargain?'

'You may find it a dear bargain!'

'Not even to oblige you, dear Liz, can I break off my agreement, and I have really set my heart on your bête noire. I am so, so sorry,' and she came over and caressed me.

I wonder if Netta in her secret heart suspected that I, the Colonel's wife, might be a little jealous that the new arrival had secured a far more impressive looking abode than her own, and for this mean reason I endeavoured to persuade her to 'move on'.

However, her mind must have been entirely disabused of this by a lady on whom we were calling, who said:

'Oh, Mrs Fellowes, have you got a house yet, or will you wait for the Watsons'? Such a—'

'I am already suited,' interrupted Netta. 'We have found just the thing— not far from my cousin's, too— a fine, roomy, cheerful place, with a huge compound; we are already making the garden.'

'Roomy— large compound; near Mrs Drummond,' she repeated with knitted brow. 'No— oh, surely you do not mean the Red Bungalow?'

'Yes, that is its name; I am charmed with it, and so lucky to find it.'

'No difficulty in finding it, dear Mrs Fellowes, but I believe the difficulty is in remaining there.'

'Do you mean that it's haunted?' enquired Netta with a rather superior air.

'Something of that sort— the natives call it "the devil's house". A terrible tragedy happened there long ago— so long ago that it is forgotten; but you will find it almost impossible to keep servants!'

'You are certainly most discouraging, but I hope some day you will come and dine with us, and see how comfortable we are!'

There was a note of challenge in this invitation, and I could see with the traditional 'half-eye' that Mrs Dodd and Mrs Fellowes would scarcely be bosom friends.

Nor was this the sole warning.

At the club a very old resident, wife of a Government employé, who had spent twenty years in Kulu, came and seated herself by me one morning with the air of a person who desired to fulfil a disagreeable duty.

'I am afraid you will think me presuming, Mrs Drummond, but I feel that I ought to speak. Do you know that the house your cousin has taken is said to be unlucky? The last people only remained a month, though they got it for next to nothing— a mere song.'

'Yes, I've heard of these places, and read of them, too,' I replied, 'but it generally turns out that someone has an interest in keeping it empty; possibly natives live there.'

'Anywhere but there!' she exclaimed. 'Not a soul will go near it after night-fall— there is not even the usual chokedar— '

'What is it? What is the tale?'

'Something connected with those old mounds of brickwork, and the well. I think a palace or a temple stood on the spot thousands of years ago, when Kulu was a great native city. Do try and dissuade your cousin from going there; she will find her mistake sooner or later. I hope you won't think me very officious, but she is young and happy, and has two such dear children, especially the little boy.'

Yes, especially the little boy! I was devoted to Guy— my husband, too. We had bought him a pony and a tiny monkey, and were only too glad to keep him and Baba for a few days when their parents took the great step and moved into the Red Bungalow.

In a short time all was in readiness; the big end room made a delightful nursery; the children had also the run of the back verandah and the garden, and were soon completely and happily at home.

An inhabited house seems so different to the same when it stands silent, with closed doors— afar from the sound of voices and footsteps. I could scarcely recognise Netta's new home. It was the centre of half the station gaieties— Badminton parties twice a week, dinners, Chotah Hazra gatherings on the great verandah, and rehearsals for a forthcoming play; the pattering of little feet, servants, horses, cows, goats, dogs, parrots, all contributed their share to the general life and stir. I went over to the Bungalow almost daily: I dined, I breakfasted, I had tea, and I never saw anything but the expected and the common-place, yet I failed to eradicate my first instinct, my secret apprehension and aversion. Christmas was over, the parties, dinners and teas were among memories of the past; we were well advanced in the month of February, when Netta, the triumphant, breathed her first complaint. The servants— excellent servants, with long and bonâ fide characters— arrived, stayed one week, or perhaps two, and then came and said, 'Please I go!'

None of them remained in the compound at night, except the horsekeepers and an orderly; they retired to more congenial quarters in an adjoining bazaar, and the maddening part was that they would give no definite name or shape to their fears— they spoke of 'It' and a 'Thing'— a fearsome object, that dwelt within and around the Bungalow.

The children's ayah, a Madras woman, remained loyal and staunch; she laughed at the Bazaar tales and their reciters; and, as her husband was the cook, Netta was fairly independent of the cowardly crew who nightly fled to the Bazaar.

Suddenly the ayah, the treasure, fell ill of fever— the really virulent fever that occasionally seizes on natives of the country, and seems to lick up their very life. As my servants' quarters were more comfortable— and I am something of a nurse— I took the invalid home, and Netta promoted her understudy (a local woman) temporarily into her place. She was a chattering, gay, gaudy creature, that I had never approved, but Netta would not listen to any advice, whether with respect to medicines, servants, or bungalows. Her choice in the latter had undoubtedly turned out well, and she was not a little exultant, and bragged to me that she never left it in anyone's power to say, 'There— I told you so!'

It was Baba's birthday— she was two— a pretty, healthy child, but for her age backward: beyond 'Dadda', 'Mamma', and 'Ayah', she could not say one word. However, as Tom cynically remarked, 'she was bound to make up for it by and by!'

It was twelve o'clock on this very warm morning when I took my umbrella and topee and started off to help Netta with her preparations for the afternoon. The chief feature of the entertainment was to be a bran pie.

I found my cousin hard at work when I arrived. In the verandah a great bath-tub full of bran had been placed on a table, and she was draping the said tub with elegant festoons of pink glazed calico— her implement a hammer and tacks— while I burrowed into the bran, and there interred the bodies of dolls and cats and horses, and all manner of pleasant surprises. We were making a dreadful litter, and a considerable noise, when suddenly above the hammering I heard a single sharp cry.

'Listen!' I said.

'Oh, Baba is awake— naughty child— and she will disturb her brother,' replied the mother, selecting a fresh tack. 'The ayah is there. Don't go.'

'But it had such an odd, uncanny sound,' I protested.

'Dear old Liz! how nervous you are! Baba's scream is something between a whistle of an express and a fog-horn. She has abnormal lung power— and to-day she is restless and upset by her birthday— and her teeth. Your fears—'

Then she stopped abruptly, for a loud, frantic shriek, the shriek of extreme mortal terror, now rose high above her voice, and, throwing the hammer from her, Netta fled into the drawing-room, overturning chairs in her route, dashed across the drawing-room, and burst into the nursery, from whence came these most appalling cries. There, huddled together, we discovered the two children on the table which stood in the middle of the apartment. Guy had evidently climbed up by a chair, and dragged his sister along with him. It was a beautiful afternoon, the sun streamed in upon them, and the room, as far as we could see, was empty. Yes, but not empty to the trembling little creatures on the table, for with wide, mad eyes they seemed to follow the motion of a something that was creeping round the room close to the wall, and I noticed that their gaze went up and down, as they accompanied its progress with starting pupils and gasping breaths.

'Oh! what is it, my darling?' cried Netta, seizing Guy, whilst I snatched at Baba.

He stretched himself stiffly in her arms, and, pointing with a trembling finger to a certain spot, gasped, 'Oh, Mummy! look, look, look!' and with the last word, which was a shriek of horror, he fell into violent convulsions.

But look as we might, we could see nothing, save the bare matting and the bare wall. What frightful object had made itself visible to these innocent children has never been discovered to the present day.

Little Guy, in spite of superhuman efforts to save him, died of brain fever, unintelligible to the last; the only words we could distinguish among his ravings were, 'Look, look, look! Oh, Mummy! look, look, look!' and as for Baba, whatever was seen by her is locked within her lips, for she remains dumb to the present day.

The ayah had nothing to disclose; she could only beat her head upon the ground and scream, and declare that she had just left the children for a moment to speak to the milkman.

But other servants confessed that the ayah had been gossiping in the cook-house for more than half an hour. The sole living creature that had been with the children when 'It' had appeared to them, was Guy's little pet monkey, which was subsequently found under the table quite dead.

At first I was afraid that after the shock of Guy's death poor Netta would lose her reason. Of course they all came to us, that same dreadful afternoon, leaving the birthday feast already spread, the bran pie in the verandah, the music on the piano; never had there been such a hasty flight, such a domestic earthquake. We endeavoured to keep the mysterious tragedy to ourselves. Little Guy had brain fever; surely it was natural that relations should be together in their trouble, and I declared that I, being a noted nurse, had bodily carried off the child, who was followed by the whole family.

People talked of 'a stroke of the sun', but I believe something of the truth filtered into the Bazaar— where all things are known. Shortly after little Guy's death Netta took Baba home, declaring she would never, never return to India, and Tom applied for and obtained a transfer to another station. He sold off the household furniture, the pretty knick-knacks, the pictures, all that had gone to make Netta's house so attractive, for she could not endure to look on them again. They had been in that house. As for the Red Bungalow, it is once more closed, and silent. The squirrels and hoo-poos share the garden, the stables are given over to scorpions, the house to white ants. On application to John Mahomed, anyone desirous of becoming a tenant will certainly find that it is still to be had for a mere song!

______________

10: Little Liz

B. L. Farjeon

1838-1903

From "Shadows on the Snow", 1866

WHEN the Victorian gold-fever was at its height, people were mad with excitement. Neither more nor less, I was as mad as the others, although I came to the colony from California, which was suffering from the same kind of fever, and which was pretty mad, too, in its way. But Victoria beat it hollow; for one reason, perhaps, because there was more of it. The strange sights I saw and the strange stories I could tell, if I knew how to do it, would fill a dozen books. In my time I have lived all sorts of lives and have worked with all sorts of mates, picked up in a rough-and-tumble kind of way, which was about the only way then that mates picked up each other. One day you did not know the man that the next day you were hob-a-nob with. I had some strange mates, as you may guess, but the strangest I ever worked with, and the one I liked more than all the others put together, was Bill Trickett. Bill was as thin as a lath and as tall as a maypole, and had come to the colony under a cloud. I don't mean by that that he had done anything wrong at home, and was sent out at the expense of the Government, like a heap of others I mated with; but he was obliged to run away from England for a reason I didn't know when I picked him up, but which I learnt afterwards. He had brought his wife out with him— a poor, weak, delicate creature, who died soon after he landed, leaving behind her a baby, a little girl, the only child they had. This child Bill left with some people in Melbourne, and came on to the gold-diggings to try his luck. I was working at that time in Dead-dog Gully, near Forest Creek, which was just then discovered, and Bill and me came together as mates. A better one, to do his share of the work and a little bit over, I should be unreasonable to wish for. I never had anything to complain of. On the contrary. He never shirked his work, seeming to like it more than anything else in the world. And once, when I was laid up with colonial fever— some of you have had a touch of it, I daresay, and know how it pulls a man down— he nursed me with the tenderness of a woman, and worked the claim without a murmur. Those are things one doesn't easily forget. Soon after I got well our claim was worked out, and we had to look elsewhere for another; for every inch of Dead Dog was taken up. I remember well the night we parted. We were sitting in our tent, Bill and me, with our gold before us and our revolvers at full cock on the table. We had to look out pretty sharp in those days, mates. Many's the man who has been robbed and disposed of, without any one being the wiser; many's the man that has been murdered, and thrown down deserted shafts. Queer things were done on the diggings during the first fit of the fever, that human tongue will never speak of. Murder will out, they say; that isn't quite true. I've seen some sights that make me shiver to think of, the secret of which will only be known on the Day of Judgment.

Well, we were sitting there, with our gold before us. Our claim had been a rich one, and we had three hundred ounces to divide, after all our sprees— and we had a few, I can tell you.

"Tom," said Bill, as he sat looking at the gold, "if I had had as much money as that when I was in the old country, I should never have come out to the gold-fields, and my dear wife would not have died."

"That's more than you can say for a certainty," I answered.

"Not a bit of it," he said; "my wife would have been alive, and we should have been living happily together. I'll tell you how it was. I was a contractor in a small way at home, and had lots of up-hill work, for I commenced with nothing. While I was courting Lizzie, an old hunks of a money-lender wanted to marry my girl. She had a nice time of it, poor lass! With her father on one side trying to persuade her to marry the old hunks, and me on the other, begging her to be faithful to me. But I had no need to do that. There was only one way out of the difficulty; we ran away, and got married without their knowing. We were as happy as the days were long, and should have remained so, but for the old money-lending thief. To spite me for taking the girl from him, he bought up all my debts— about three hundred pounds worth— and almost drove me mad. And one morning I caught the villain in the act of insulting my Liz. I didn't show him any mercy; I beat him till he was sore, and then I kicked him out of the house. The next day the bailiffs were on the look-out to arrest me for debt, and I had to run for my liberty. He sold me up, root and branch, and turned my wife into the streets, and we came together to Liverpool, where Lizzie was confined. I tried hard to get work, but couldn't; starvation or the workhouse was before us. All my chances at home were gone, and there was nothing for it but emigration. I shipped before the mast, and a friend assisted me to pay Lizzie's passage in the steerage. A fortnight after we were out at sea, she told me that the doctor who attended her in her confinement had said that a long sea voyage would probably be the death of her. His words came true; she died within the year. So, you see, if I had had my share of that gold at home, I could have paid that damned old scoundrel, and my wife would not have died. I want to get a heap of gold, and go home and ruin him. I should die contented then."

He rose, and walked up and down the tent, cursing the man who, he believed, had killed his wife.

"I tell you what, Tom," he said, after a bit, "I shall tramp to Melbourne to see my little daughter, and then I shall go prospecting. There are places, I'll stake my life, where the gold can be got in lumps, and I mean to find them out. I dreamt the other night that I came upon it in the rock, and that I had to cut it out with a chisel."

I didn't like the idea of losing my mate, and I did my best to persuade him not to go; but I might as well have talked to a lamp-post. So we divided the gold, shook hands, and the next morning he started on the tramp to Melbourne.

I didn't see or hear anything of him for a good many months after this; and somehow or other, when I lost him I lost my luck. Every shaft I bottomed turned out a duffer. I could hardly earn tucker. I worked in Jackass Gully, Donkey-woman's Gully, Pegleg, Starvation Point, Choke'm Gully, Dead-horse Gully, and at last made my way to Murdering Flat— nice, sociable names!— pretty well down on my luck. I had been in Murdering Flat three weeks, and was sitting alone in my tent one night, reckoning up things. In those three weeks I hadn't made half-an-ounce of gold, and there wasn't two pennyweights in my match-box— so that I didn't feel over amiable. That day, I had been particularly unlucky, having made about three grains of gold, which I flung away in a rage. I was just thinking whether I mightn't just as well go to the grog-shanty, and have a drink— it was past nine o'clock at night— when who should walk straight into my tent but my old mate, Bill. I scarcely knew him at first; for he had let his hair grow all over his face, and he was almost covered with it, up to his eyes and down to his breast.

"Bill!" I cried, jumping up.

"Yes, it's me, Tom," he said. "Are you alone?"

"Yes, Bill."

"Stop here, then, till I come back, and don't let anybody in but me."

He went out, and returned in about ten minutes with a beautiful little girl in his arms.

"Hush!" he said, stepping softly. "Speak low. She's asleep."

She wasn't above six years old but she was so pretty, and looked so like a little angel— such as I never expected to see under my roof— that I fell in love with her at once. Of course I was a bit surprised when he brought her in, and he couldn't help observing it as he laid her carefully upon my stretcher.

"This is my little girl, Tom," he said, answering my look. "If I ever go to heaven, I shall have her to thank for it. She is my good angel."

"Where are you come from?" I asked, after we had covered the pretty fairy with a blanket. He looked cautiously round, as though he feared some one was in hiding, and then, sitting opposite me at the table, rested his chin on his hands, and said, in a whisper,

"I've found it, Tom!"

There was such an awful glare in his eyes that I felt quite scared as I asked him what it was he had found.

"I've found the place where the gold comes from," he said, in the same sort of hoarse whisper. "I am on it, Tom! I knew I should find it at last. Look here."

First going to the door, to see that no one could get in without warning, he pulled from his breast-pocket a nugget of pure gold that must have weighed near upon seventy ounces, and five or six others, from fifteen to twenty ounces each. Lord! how my heart beat as I handled them, and how I wished I could drop across some of the same kidney! I don't know how it is with you, mates; but although I don't believe I value the gold much when I've got it, there's no pleasure in life so great to me as coming suddenly upon a rich patch. I think the sight of bright shining gold at the bottom of a dark shaft is one of the prettiest in the world.

"Is that good enough for you?" he asked, as he put the nuggets back into his pocket.

I laughed.

"Any more where they came from, Bill?"

"More than you could carry."

I stared at him, believing he had gone mad. "It's true. How are you doing?"

"I can't make tucker, Bill. My luck's dead out."

"It's dead in now," said he; "I've come to put fifty ounces a day in your pocket. What do you say? Will you go mates with me again?"

That was a nice question, wasn't it, to put to a hard-up digger, without an ounce of gold in his match-box?

"Will I, old fellow?" I cried. "Will I not! When shall we start?"

"Stop a minute, Tom," he said gravely. "I've something to say to you first. I want you for a mate again, and shall be glad to have you; but we've got to strike a bargain. You see my little girl there?"

I nodded.

"She is the blood of my heart! I am like a plant, Tom, which would wither if deprived of God Almighty's blessed dew. She is my dew. If anything was to happen to her I should wither, and rot, and die. I want you for my mate, because I believe you to be honest and true. And I am going to show you a place where the gold grows— a place which, of my own free will, I would not show to another man in the world. I have hunted it and tracked it, never heeding the danger I have run. But do you know, Tom, that since I have had my little pet with me"— and he laid his hand, O, so gently upon her cheek!— "all my recklessness and courage seem to have gone clean out of me. For it is her life I am living now, not my own! And I think what will become of her if I die before my time— if I should slip down a shaft, or it should tumble in upon me, or I should fall ill of a fever, or anything of that sort should happen to me that would deprive her of a protector. These thoughts haunt me day and night, and presentiments come over me sometimes that fill me with fears I can't express. Now, Tom, listen to me. The place I am going to take you to will make you rich. If we can keep it to ourselves for a few months— (though there is another in the secret, but he won't peach, for his own sake)— we shall get at least five thousand ounces— perhaps double as much: there's no telling whether we sha'n't drop across a mountain of gold. Now, lay your hand upon your heart, and swear by all you hold dearest that if anything should happen to me, you will take care of my little darling, and be a second father to her when I am gone!"

I bent over the dear little one's face— I can feel her sweet breath again upon my cheek— and kissed her. She stirred in her sleep, and smiled. Then I said,

"That kiss is a sacrament, Bill. By all that's holy, I will be a second father to your little girl, should she need me. So help me, God!"

He took my hand, and the big tears rolled down his beard. It was full five minutes before he was calm enough to speak.

"Now I'll tell you all about it. You remember my leaving you to go to Melbourne, after we had worked out our claim in Dead-dog Gully. Well, when I got there, I found that my little girl was not being well treated. The people she was living with had taken to drink, and had neglected her. And my heart so grew to her— I can see my Lizzie's face in hers— that I made up my mind never to leave her again. So, when I was ready to start, I brought her away with me, and we've travelled together, since that time, I don't know how many hundreds of miles."

"How in the world did you manage it?" I asked, in wonder. "The little thing couldn't walk!"

"And if she could," he answered, "do you think I would have let her blister her pretty feet? My darling! Manage it, Tom! Sometimes I carried her, and I got her odd lifts, now and then, upon the drays and wagons going our way. There was never a drayman or a wagoner that refused to give my little girl a ride, and that wasn't sorry to part with her— good luck to them! Why, some of them came miles out of their way for her sake, and would never take anything for it but a kiss from her pretty lips! And do you know, Tom," he said, "she saved me from the bushrangers once. We were in the Black Forest, and they were on me before I knew where I was. We had just finished tea, and I was stooping over the log-fire to get a light for my pipe, so that the little girl was hidden from them at first. I turned, with my heart in my mouth— not for myself, Tom; for her— and looked at them. There were four of them, splendidly mounted, dressed in red serge shirts and bright silk sashes.

"Stand!" they cried, levelling their revolvers at me; "stand, for your life!"

Well, my girl jumps up, and runs to my side, and takes hold of my hand. They were dumbfounded.

"Well, I'm damned!" said one, under his breath; and then in a louder tone, "is that yours, mate?"

"Yes," I answered, looking into their faces for pity. Upon that, they put up their pistols, and one of the men got off his horse, and came close to us.

"Don't be frightened, little one," he said.

"I'm not frightened," lisped my pet, playing with the fringe of his red silk sash.

"I'm not going to harm her, mate," he said to me; and he knelt before my darling, and put her pretty hands on his eyes, and kissed them again and again. "If every man had an angel like this by his side," he said softly, "it would be the better for him." Then he took off his sash, and tied it round my girl's waist; and I had to lift her up to the other men to kiss them. That being done, they wished me good-night, and rode off. That was a lucky escape, wasn't it? However, after a time I found I couldn't get along as quickly as I wanted, and besides, when I was on the track of the gold I've discovered, I had to travel through country where I didn't meet with drays or wagons. So I bought a wheelbarrow."

"A wheelbarrow?" I cried, more and more surprised.

"Yes, Tom," he said, with a comical look; "a wheelbarrow; and I put my little darling in it, and wheel her wherever I want to go. Well, to get along with my story, I came one day to the place where I'm working now, and where I want you to join me. Directly I saw it, I knew the gold was there, and I put up my tent. Before the week was out, I had a hundred ounces. I went to a cattle-station about twelve miles off, and bought a stock of provisions. Then I set to work in earnest. The whole place is a great gold-bed; wherever you dig, it peeps up at you with its bright eyes. There's plenty of quartz on the hills, and you can't search five minutes without finding it. At the top there's more quartz than gold; deep down, I'll lay my life there's more gold than quartz. I worked by myself in this gully for four weeks, making about a hundred ounces a week, when one day, as I was panning out the gold in the creek hard by, I saw a man looking at me. He had wandered by accident to the place, and had discovered me working. My mind was made up in a minute. I took him for my mate, so that the secret might be kept, and we worked together till the day before yesterday."

"What has become of him, then?" I asked.

"O, he's there still, getting gold, but not so much as he might if he was one of the right sort. For I know of a gully that's worth a dozen of the one we've been working in, and I don't intend that he shall put a pick in it. No, Tom, that's for you and me. I haven't parted from him without good reason. My little darling never liked him from the first, and would never let him kiss her. Then there's Rhadamanthus— "

"Rhadamanthus!"

"Don't be scared, Tom. It's only a dog, that was given to me by a drunken scholar— or rather, given to Lizzie in the bush— on the condition that we were always to call him Rhadamanthus— which we do, though at first it was a jaw-breaker. Then, as I say, there's Rhadamanthus. He won't let this mate of mine that was, come near him; snaps at him; snarls like the very devil if he tries to pat him on the head. That's a kind of instinct I believe in. And Lizzie's is a kind of instinct that I'd stake salvation on. But I put up with the fellow till a week ago. He wanted Lizzie to kiss him, and she wouldn't. He tried to force her, and I came upon them when she was struggling in his arms, screaming out to me for help. I helped her— and helped him, to the soundest thrashing he ever made acquaintance with. I broke with him then and there, and came away in search of you, pretty certain I should be able to find you. You're pretty well known, Tom."

"And Rhada— "

"Manthus. Out with it, Tom! It'll come as easy as butter soon."

"Where is he?"

"Outside in the bush, a couple of hundred yards away, keeping watch over the wheelbarrow. I want to start right away; we'll have to be careful that we're not followed."

"I'm ready this minute, Bill," I said. "I'll just take my blankets and tools. I'll leave the tent up; it'll keep off suspicion."

I wasn't long getting ready, and Bill, lifting his little girl from the bed, held her, still asleep, tenderly to his breast, and led the way into the bush, where Rhadamanthus and the wheelbarrow were waiting for us.

Rhadamanthus, the raggedest dog that ever breathed, with the most disgraceful tail that ever wagged, fixed his eyes upon me in a kind of way that said, "Now, what sort of a chap are you?" We laid pretty little Liz in the wheelbarrow, making her snug, and covering her up warm. Her face, as she lay asleep in the wheelbarrow, had a curious effect upon me. Made me choke a bit, as I'm doing now. When she was snugly tucked in, I kissed her, and a sweet and new feeling crept into my heart as once more she smiled at my kiss.

"It's a trick of hers," said Bill; she always smiles in her sleep when any one kisses her that she likes. God bless you, Tom!"

"All right, mate," said I.

"Rhadamanthus sidled up to me, and licked my hand.

We travelled the whole of that night, taking it in turns to wheel little Liz, who slept soundly all the time. Rhadamanthus trudged along by our side, watching his child-mistress with true affection in his eyes. It was a beautiful star-lit night, and everything about us was quiet and peaceful. The scenes through which we passed were full of strange beauty to me, who had hitherto looked upon them with a careless eye. Now and again in the distance we saw a camp-fire burning, with the diggers lying around it; and occasionally we heard the tinkling of bells on the necks of horses who stumbled about with hobbles on their feet, while their drivers were sleeping between the shafts of the wagons, walled round with canvas, on beds of dry leaves. We kept out of the track of men as much as we could, and met with no obstacles on the road that we did not easily overcome. We had to lift the wheelbarrow over fallen logs sometimes, and once over a creek, and we did it gently, without disturbing our little one. That walk through the solemn and lovely woods was to me very much like a prayer. When we made our way through the tall straight trees of silverbark— when I looked up at the wonderful brightness of the heavens, which filled the woods with lovely light, among which the shadows played like living things— when upon a distant hill I saw a flock of sheep asleep, with the moon shining clear upon them— and when I gazed at the peaceful and beautiful face of the child asleep in the barrow— I could scarcely believe that it was not all a dream. The remembrance of that night's tramp has never left me, and its lessons remain. Too often, mates, do we walk through life, blind to the signs.

During the day we camped, and took it in turns to sleep, and on the third night we came to the end of our journey. We had had three or four hours' heavy up-hill work, but I didn't feel tired a bit. My body was as light as my heart.

"Over that range, Tom," said Bill, "and we're there."

It was the steepest of all the ranges, and took us a time getting to the top, and then, looking down, I saw a great natural basin, shut in by high hills. You would have thought there was no outlet from it, unless you climbed over the hills which surrounded it; but when you got down, you discovered a number of artful little turns and windings, which led to gullies and smaller basins which you could not discern from the heights. We had to wake little Liz, as there was some danger wheeling the barrow down so steep an incline. She jumped out quite bright, and let me carry her some distance. If she had been my own child, I could not have felt more tender towards her. Presently Bill pointed out his tent, and said he should not wonder if his old mate were sleeping in it. Sure enough, when we were within six yards of the tent, he rushed out with a revolver in his hand, and fired at Rhadamanthus, who had sprung at him the moment he made his appearance.

"Lie down, Rhad!" cried Bill, pushing the dog away with his foot; "and you, Ted, drop that revolver, or I'll wring your neck for you!"

Almost on the words, Bill leaped at the fellow, wrested the revolver from his hand, and sent him spinning a dozen yards away. It was not done a moment too soon, for I believe he was about to fire on us. He was a desperate-looking fellow was Teddy the Tyler. A white-faced, white-livered, flat-footed bully. I heard some queer stories about him afterwards.

"You murdering villain, you!" said Bill, as Teddy the Tyler rose from the ground with an evil look, and tightened his belt. "Do you know you might have shot my little girl?"

Little Liz was clinging to her father, trembling in every limb.

"A good job if I had," muttered Teddy the Tyler.

Bill strode quickly up to him, and seizing him by the collar, forced him to the ground by dint of sheer muscular strength.

"If ever again you raise your hand," he said, between his clenched teeth, "against me, or my little girl, or my mate, or my dog— you so much as lift your finger against them, say good-bye to the world. I'll break your infernal back for you, as sure as the Lord's in heaven!"

"What do you bring loafers into the gully for?" growled Teddy.

"That's my business," answered Bill. "I discovered this place, and I've a right to bring a friend. This is my mate now. Call him a loafer again, and I'll knock your ugly teeth down your throat; keep a civil tongue in your head, and I'll not interfere with you. I make you a present of this gully, every inch of it." Teddy's face brightened. "I know where there's a richer one— ah, you may stare, but you'll not put your foot in it! To-morrow I shall take my tent away, and you can work here by yourself till you rot, if you like. I don't think you're fool enough to get the place rushed, for that would put an end to your little game. Pick up the revolver, Tom, and stick it in your belt. It's mine. And throw out of the tent everything that belongs to the thief."

I carried his blankets and clothes out to him, and threw them at his feet.

"There's something else in there belonging to me," he said. "My neckerchief."

I found it, and flung it to him. A bright-coloured neckerchief, which he slung about his neck, sailor fashion. The light of the moon shone upon it, and I noticed particularly the combination of bright colours in which it was woven.

As he gathered up his things he had a parting word to say, and he spit it out with foam about his lips, like the hound he was.

"I'll make this the worst night's work you have ever done! You shall cry blood for the way you've served me! By this, and this, I swear it!"

He wiped the foam from his mouth, and, flicking it to the ground with a snap of his fingers, walked slowly away.

We took no further notice of him, but putting the chain on Rhadamanthus, we went into the tent, and lay down till morning.

We were up with the lark, and out. As we passed along the gully, I noticed that Teddy the Tyler had put up a sort of mimi, and that he was asleep under it.

"Now then, Tom," said my mate, "I'll show you something that will open your eyes. That fool there knows nothing about it. I discovered the place three weeks ago, and held my tongue, having my doubts of him."

Coming to the end of the gully we walked over a pretty considerable rise in the land, Bill leading the way, through more than one heavy clump of timber on the other side. We might have walked half a mile through thick clusters of trees, when Bill clapped his hand upon my eyes, and told me to close them. We might have walked a hundred yards further, when he took his hand away, saying we were there. It was a strange-looking spot, completely hidden by wood-growth; a piece of land that appeared to have been scooped out of the hills, in the exact shape of a saddle.

"Look around you," said Bill; "see the hills, every one of them, shelving down into this hollow. Look at the veins of quartz, auriferous every bit of it, all running down to one point. Here's a piece of the stone"— picking it up— "with gold in it, here's another with more gold in it. That's evidence. Now take your fossicking knife, and dig up some of the earth at the trunk of that tree with the large spreading roots. Dig into the roots. I thought as much. You can see the gold in it without spectacles. The stuff there'll yield an ounce to the tin dish. Why is the gold just at that spot? Because it has slid down the heights with the rains, and the roots of that tree have caught some of it in its descent, and held it fast in crevices. This hollow beneath us contains all the gold that has been washed for ages off these golden hills, and it is all ours— all ours, every ounce of it!" He was on the ground, showing me proof of his theory in small lumps of gold that he dug out here and there. "Tom, kneel down here by my side, and I'll tell you why I worship it." He held it in the palm of his hand, and gazed with glowing eyes upon it. "I see this educating her; I see this making her fit to hold her own with the best lady in the land; I see it bring smiles to her lips, roses to her cheeks; I see her doing good with it; I see her, the light of my days, removed from the hard trials that make life so sad to many; I see lifelong joy and happiness in it for my pretty Liz, my pretty, pretty Liz!"

He let the gold fall to the ground, and hid his face in his hands. I understood then how perfect love can be.

We returned to the old gully, and carried away our tent and all that belonged to us. Before night we had our fireplace built, and our tent fixed in a spot where it would be secure from floods. The next day we set to work.

Bill was a true prophet. The hollow was heavy with gold. We did not find a regular gutter of it, though Bill said if we sank deep we should be sure to come upon one; but within a few feet of the surface, and sometimes almost on the surface, we lighted upon rich pockets of gold. Talk of jewellers' shops! This dirty hollow took the shine out of all of them. And as day after day went away, and our bags of gold got heavier and heavier, we laid plans for the future. We were to go home and buy a farm; Liz was to be educated and grow into a beautiful young woman and get married, and we were all to live together and take care of the children— how the little one laughed when we came to this part of the story! for we spoke freely before her;— it was all settled, and certain to come true. Those five weeks that we lived together were the happiest of my life. Liz was like a star in our tent, and made everything bright and beautiful. We all worshipped her— Bill, me, and Rhadamanthus— and lived in her, so to speak. The tricks she played, the stories she had to tell, the discoveries she made, gladdened the days, and drew our hearts closer and closer to her. One day she saw a rock exactly the shape of a goat's face and beard, and we had to go with her and christen it, "Goat's Rock"; another day she picked up a beautiful crystal, which she declared was a charm to keep everything bad away; another day she found a new kind of wild-flower, which she prattled over in the quaintest and prettiest fashion; another day she discovered that Rhadamanthus was a fairy who had changed himself into a dog to take care of her. The faithful, ragged beast! She announced the amazing discovery to him in the most impressive manner, kneeling before him, and putting his paws on her shoulders, the while he looked into her face, and blinked in confirmation. A baize partition separated the compartment in which she slept from ours, and one night, when I heard her, before going to bed, lisping her prayer that God would bless dear father and dear Tom and Rhad, my thoughts went back to the time when I, too, prayed before I went to sleep. On Sundays we would take a walk, and Bill, in the evening, would read a chapter from a Bible he had— which him, nor me, nor Rhad, would ever have thought of but for our dear little angel. Those Sundays, with Bill, and the little girl, and the ragged, faithful dog, are never out of my mind. I wish I had always spent my Sundays in the same way.

During this time we had only seen Teddy the Tyler once. About a fortnight after we started working he strolled upon us. A tin dish with nearly a pound of gold in it was lying on the ground, and he threw a woefully covetous look at it. He had his pick and shovel hanging over his shoulder, and walking past us he stuck his pick in the ground, and tucked up his shirt-sleeves.

Bill, following him, took the pick and shovel, and pitched them a dozen yards off.

"I told you you shouldn't come into this gully," he said.

"It's as much mine as yours," replied Teddy the Tyler. "I mean to fight for it, mate, at all events."

"That's fairly spoken," said Bill. "Fight you shall, and if you lick me, we'll give you this gully, and get another. Tom, come and see fair play."

To it they went. But Teddy might as well have stood up against a rock as against my mate. Bill was the strongest man I ever knew, and he gave Teddy such an awful thrashing that he threw up his arms in less than a quarter of an hour.

"Had enough, mate?" asked Bill.

Teddy shouldered his pick, and walked away without a word, throwing a devil's look behind him as he went.

"He'd murder the lot of us, Bill," I said, "if we gave him a chance."

"Daresay," said Bill; "we won't give it to him."

In eleven weeks we got eleven hundred ounces of gold, and then a thing happened that makes my blood turn cold to speak of. I started one night to get a stock of provisions. We used to start in the night so that we shouldn't be discovered, and when we made our appearance at the cattle station early in the morning for meat and flour, the people there didn't suspect we had been walking all the previous night. I was pretty well the whole day getting back, for I had to be cautious, to prevent being followed. Within half a mile of our gully I met Bill, with a ghost's face on him, and looking as if he had gone mad in my absence.

Running towards me, he said wildly,

"Tom, for God's sake answer me quickly! Have you seen Lizzie?"

"Not since last night," I said, with an uncomfortable feeling at Bill's wild manner.

"She's lost! She's lost!" he screamed.

"Lost!"

"I've been hunting for her all the day. O my pet, my darling! if I don't find you, may the world be burned, and all that's in it!"

I was almost as mad as he was, for you know I loved the little thing as if she were my own daughter.

"Keep cool, Bill," I said, as quietly as I could, though I felt my words trembling with the trembling of my lips; "if we want to do any good, we mustn't lose our wits."

"I know, I know!" he said, beating his hands together; "but what am I to do— what am I to do?"

"When did you miss her?"

"This morning. I got up at day-light, and left her sleeping in her crib. She was asleep, and I kissed her before I went out. I shall never kiss her again! I shall never kiss her again! O my pet, my pet!"

And he broke into a passionate fit of sobbing. It was awful to see. I waited till he was a bit calmer, and then I told him to go on.

"I came back to breakfast, and she was gone; and Rhad's off his chain, and gone too. I've been hunting for her all the day. O God! tell me where she is!"

"I am glad the dog was with her," I said. "How long is it since you were at the tent?"

"Not an hour ago. But all this talking won't bring her back. Let's go on searching for her. Perhaps she has climbed over the ranges, and is lost in the bush beyond."

"She could never do it, Bill; she hasn't strength enough, the dear little thing, to walk to the top of these hills. Now, Bill, I am cooler than you are, and I intend to keep cool. Although I'd give my legs and arms rather than any hurt should come to our pretty darling,"— I had to hold myself tight in here, to keep myself from breaking down— "I'm not going to let my feelings run away with me. If I am to help you, I must know everything. Let us go back to the tent, and start from there. Here's my hand, Bill; I'll search for our darling till I drop."

He grasped my hand, and we ran to our tent. The first thing I did was to examine the dog's chain. It had been unlocked in the usual way, and the key was lying on the table.

"That's plain proof," I said, "that Liz herself let him loose, and took him out with her. Had she all her things on?"

Yes; her hat and mantle were gone, and also a little basket she used to take with her, to fill with wild flowers."

"You see," I said, "she went out flower-gathering. Now which way did she go?"

Naturally, I considered, she would take the road she knew best— the one that led to the gully Bill first worked in. There was a creek on the road, pretty deep in parts, and the dreadful idea struck me that she might have fallen in. All this time Bill was behaving in the wildest manner. He took every little thing that belonged to her, and kissed them again and again. He called her by name, as if she could hear him; cried to his dead wife, as if she were standing before him; and altogether was about as useless as a man well could be. Then, taking a chamois-leather bag filled with gold, he threw it on the ground, screaming,

"To the Devil with all the gold! Devil gold! devil gold! why did I come here and lose my pet for you? O Lord! take all the gold, and give me back my child!"

"Come along, Bill," I said, without appearing to heed his ravings, for that, I knew, was the best way; "I am going to the creek to look for her."

"She hasn't fallen in!" he cried. "How do you know she has fallen in? It's not true! My pet is not drowned! No, no!"

"I don't say she is drowned," I said. "God forbid that she is! Behave like a man, Bill, and keep your senses about you, or we may as well give her up altogether."

I was bound to speak in that way to him, and after a time I got him to be a little more reasonable. Then we started for the creek, calling out "Liz! Liz!" at the top of our voices, and whistling in the old familiar way to Rhadamanthus. No sound answered us, and the solemn stillness of the place, when we were not speaking, fell upon my heart like a funeral pall. We tracked the creek from one end to the other, and then I sat on the bank to consider.

"Bill," said I, "she can't be drowned, thank God! Rhad can swim, and if he couldn't have saved her, he would be somewhere about. Besides, her basket would float, and we should see some signs."

And then a thought flashed into my mind. "Bill, have you been to Teddy the Tyler?"

"Great Lord! Do you think— "

"I don't think anything. Let's go and see him."

We walked to Teddy's tent, calling and listening to imaginary answers as we walked. It was late in the evening by this time, and Teddy was sitting outside his tent smoking his pipe. He barely looked up as we approached; but I noticed that he hitched close to him with his foot an axe that was lying on the ground.

"Good-evening, mate," I said, by way of commencement, though I felt more inclined to spit in his face than be civil to him.

Bill shook with excitement, and there was a dangerous gleam in his eyes.

Teddy did not reply to my "Good-evening," but sat still, smoking. He had his eye on the axe, though; I didn't miss that.

"Are you deaf?" I asked.

"No," he snapped. "Are you?"

"Look here, mate," I said.

"And look you here, mate," he interrupted; "I don't want any of your "Good-evenings" or any of your company. What are you loafing in my gully for? I'll split your skull open if you stop here much longer."

"We've come here for a purpose," I said. "I am going to ask you a question or two— that you'll have to answer, my lad, if you wish ever to answer another."

"You can ask a thousand," said Teddy. "Fire away. You won't get me to answer one."

"We shall see. We are in search of little Liz. She hasn't been home all day. Have you seen her?"

Teddy gave us both a sharp, quick look, and did not answer. Bill never took his eyes from Teddy's face.

"Have you seen our Liz?" I repeated. "Has she been here today?"

Still no answer.

Without any warning, Bill made a spring at him; but Teddy was on his legs like lightning, brandishing the axe over his head. Bill avoided the blow, catching the handle on his arm, and, closing with Teddy, had him on the ground in no time, with his knee on his chest, and his hand at his throat.

"Hold off!" Teddy choked out. "Take this madman off, or he'll throttle me!"

"Answer that question," said Bill, with set teeth; "if you don't, I'll kill you!"

"She hasn't been here to-day," the fellow gasped.

"Have you seen her anywhere, you devil?"

"No," was the sullen reply.

"You may get up," said Bill, rising. "Let me find that you are lying, and I'll tear your heart out. Mark me, Teddy the Tyler! If I discover that you have seen my child to-day, and have been telling us lies, you shall do what you threatened I should do, and what I am doing, God help me! You shall cry blood. Come away, Tom; the sight of him turns me sick."

We had a weary night of it. We searched in every likely place; we lighted fires on every rise, so that they might catch the child's eye, if she was anywhere near; but when the morning came, we were as far off finding her as ever. What puzzled me most was the absence of Rhadamanthus. We could find no trace of him. If anything had happened to the child, I thought, the dog's instinct would surely have led him home to the tent. We trudged back, sore and disheartened. We had not eaten a morsel the whole night. Bill, I believe, hadn't put food to his lips since he first missed little Liz. He hadn't even smoked a pipe. I was thinking to myself, what shall we do next? when my mate, who had thrown himself on the ground, whispered to it in a voice so low that he seemed to be afraid of my hearing him,

"The old shafts— the deserted shafts— we haven't looked there for her!"

The idea that our little girl might be lying at the bottom of one of the deserted holes, dying perhaps, made me dizzy for a moment.

We turned out of the tent in silence, and recommenced our search, Bill trembling like a man with the palsy at every hole we stopped at. I went down myself, to save him the first shock of the awful discovery, if she were lying there. But I discovered nothing.

"Let's go to the old gully again," said Bill.

The sun was rising over the hills, bathing them in seas of gold and purple, and the laughing jackass was waking everything up with its gurgling laughter. Teddy the Tyler was not out of bed, and I went down the shaft he was then working. The noise disturbed him, and he came from his tent, half dressed, and, with a death-like scare on his face, asked us what we were up to now.

"It's only fair to tell him," said Bill. "We're looking for my child. She might have tumbled down a shaft, you see."

We searched every hole in the gully without result, and then we went away.

And now, mates, something happened that I have thought of over and over again with wonder. I was a better man then than I am now, for I had the impression of those peaceful and happy Sundays, with the readings out of the Bible, and the quiet walks with little Liz, full upon me. And I believed at that time that God Almighty had sent some little birds to assist us to the end of our search. We had got away from Teddy's gully, fully a mile from it, and were passing a cluster of gum-trees, upon one of which half a dozen laughing jackasses were perched. As we passed they set up a chorus of mocking laughter, which so grated upon me, that I threw my stick at them, and sent them flying away. Going to pick up my stick, which had fallen some distance off, I observed an abrupt turn in the ranges, leading to a chasm in the hills which neither of us had ever trodden before. But for these birds, we should not have discovered it. I called out to Bill, and he followed me into the declivity.

"Here's a shaft sunk," I said; some one has been prospecting."

The shaft was about twenty feet deep, and, holding on to a rope that I tied to the stump of a tree, I lowered myself down. Before I reached the bottom, I saw that our search was at an end. There lay our little Liz, with her face turned upwards, as though she was sleeping. I could not distinguish her features, and indeed I was so startled that I did not pause to think or look more closely.

"Liz!" I whispered.

No answer came, and I called to her again. All was silent. The rope to which I was clinging was not long enough to tie a slip-knot by which we could raise her. Another and a longer rope was in Bill's hands above. I climbed into the sunlight, and, taking the rope from Bill, prepared to make a sling of it.

Bill allowed me to take the rope, and looked at my fear-struck face with a terrible twitching of his features. He was trying to utter words, but for a moment or two he had lost the power. With a sound that was like a shriek and a sob he regained it.

"For the good God's sake, Tom, don't tell me she is down there!"

"She is there, Bill. No, no! What are you about?"

I flung my arms around him, to prevent him springing down the shaft.

"Bill, this is an awful moment, and Lizzie's life may hang upon our keeping steady. As you love your dear little one, don't give way yet awhile. She wants your help to raise her. Do you hear me? She wants your help."

"Ay," he replied vacantly.

"I am going to tie this rope round her. Will you stand steady here above, and raise her, while I support her below?"

He nodded, and made motions with his lips, as though he were speaking. But no sound came from them.

"For our precious darling's sake, Bill," I said, as I prepared to descend again, "be steady, lad."

I tied the rope round her slender body— ah, me! ah, me! the pretty little hands that did not respond to the touch of mine! the soft face that rested on my shoulders!— and slowly, slowly, we brought her to the surface, where I tenderly set her down.

She was dead! The angels had taken her from us.

As she lay with her eyes turned blindly to the sun that was smiling on the hills, and bathing them in light, I could scarcely believe that she was dead. In her innocent young face the roses were still blooming, and in her pretty little hands were grasped a few of the wild flowers she had been gathering. I stooped, and kissed her pure fresh lips. Then I turned away, for blinding tears were in my eyes, and a darkness fell upon me.

"O my darling! my darling!" I heard Bill say. "You are not dead— you cannot be dead! Look at me, speak to me, my pet! Throw your arms round my neck." And he pressed her to his breast, and kissed her many times.

"She is only sleeping. Feel her heart, Tom, it is beating. Feel, feel, I say!"

I placed my hand on her heart, to soothe him; alas, its pulse was stilled for ever!

"Bill," I said solemnly, for it was an awful thing was the sight of the dear angel lying dead upon the grass, "do not deceive yourself; she is dead. She has gone to a better world than this."

"Dead!" he cried, springing to his feet, and looking wildly upwards. "Then strike me dead, too!"

He threw himself beside her again; he clasped her in his arms, nursing and rocking her as he would have done if she had been sleeping; he called her by every endearing name; and suddenly became quite still.

"Tom," he said presently, in a strangely quiet and eager tone, "look at this mark on my child's neck. What is it? God! what is it?"

I looked. It was a discoloured mark, and I shuddered to think that it might have been caused by the grasp of a cruel hand. But I would not madden him utterly by a whisper of my suspicions.

"It is impossible to say what it is, Bill, without evidence."

"True," he replied, still more quietly; "without evidence. Where's Rhad?"

The absence of the dog had been puzzling me. That he would not have voluntarily deserted little Liz was as certain as fate.

"Stay here with my child," said Bill; "I am going to search for her dog. He loved my Liz, and was faithful to her. He would have laid down his life for her."

He disappeared in the bush, and within ten minutes I heard him call out that he had found Rhadamanthus. He stepped from the shadows of the trees, and placed Rhad at my feet. Poor Rhad! He was dead— shot through the heart.

"You see, Tom, he's been shot. Who did it? We want evidence. Whoever killed the dog killed my child."

I knelt and examined the dog's body. Three bullets had been fired into it, and there was something in the dog's mouth. Forcing the jaws open, I took it out, and recognised it immediately. It was a piece of the coloured silk handkerchief I had thrown out of the tent to Teddy the Tyler, the first night he came to the gully. The dog had evidently torn it away in a desperate struggle, for shreds of it were sticking between his teeth so firmly that I could not drag them away.

"There has been foul play here, Bill," I said.

"I know it, I know it. What is that between his teeth? Faithful Rhad! It is part of a handkerchief. O, I know without your telling me! But whose handkerchief?— do you hear me?— whose handkerchief? Speak the name. Out with it, man!"

"Teddy the Tyler's," I said.

I had no time to add another word, for Bill was off with the speed of the wind in the direction of Teddy's gully. I hurried after him, but he was too swift for me, and I lost him. When I reached the gully, neither Teddy nor Bill was in sight, and though I searched for an hour I could see nothing of them. Not knowing which way to turn to look for them, I hastened back to where our dear dead Liz was lying, and carried her in my arms to our tent. My first impulse was to put everything in order. I tidied up the place, and arranged our darling's bed, my scalding tears almost blinding me as I worked. Then I laid the body on it, and covered it up, all but the face, which was still bright with roses soon to fade. About her head I scattered some wild flowers growing near our tent; and on her breast I placed the Bible, our only book. This done, I went again in search of Bill, with no better success than before. I was full of fears, but was powerless to act. All I could do was to wait. My next impulse was to bring Rhad's body home. I did so, and placed it at the foot of the bed, on the ground. The hours went by, and Bill did not appear. Noon was past, and still no sign. The sun set, and still no sign. Half a dozen times at least I went to Teddy's gully, only to find it deserted. What was I to do? What could I do? I would have gone to the cattle-station, where we purchased our food, but that I was loth to leave our darling alone. It seemed like deserting her. No; I would wait till the morning. Night coming on, I lit a candle, and sat in the dim tent, keeping watch— for the living and the dead. It was an awful, awful time. Sounds without warned me that the weather was changing. Dark clouds were in the skies; the wind sighed and moaned. I knew the signs. A storm was coming. It came, sooner than I expected, bursting upon us with frightful fury. One of the most terrible storms in my remembrance. The rain poured down in floods— the thunder shook the hills— the lightning played about the peaceful face of little Liz, and cast a lurid glare upon the flowers and the Bible on her breast. I knelt by the side of the bed, and prayed, keeping my face buried in the bed-clothes, and holding the dead child's cold fingers in mine. I may have knelt thus for an hour, and the storm raged on without abatement. Then I raised my head. My heart leaped into my throat. At the door stood my mate Bill, haggard and white, with blood oozing from between the fingers which he pressed upon his heart. It was but a vision, and it lasted but a moment; but so terrible an impression did it leave upon me, that I ran into the open air for relief. And in that moment a voice fell on my ears:

"Liz! My pet! My darling!" The voice of a dying man. But the darkness was so thick that I could not see my hand before me.

"Bill!" I cried. "Where are you?"

I received an awful answer. A hand stretched itself from out the darkness, and, clutching me with a strength so fierce and resistless that I had no power to resist, forced me back into the tent. The candle was still burning, and by its light I saw my dear old mate standing before me, grasping with his other hand the lifeless body of Teddy the Tyler. Bill's hand upon my breast relaxed, and the body of the murderer slid from his grasp, and lay in a heap on the soddened ground.

"Liz!" whispered Bill. "My Liz! Life of my life! my pet!"

He saw her in her bed, and a ghastly smile of joy played about his lips. He staggered towards her, and fell down dead! Within twenty-four hours five hundred men were in the gullies. They helped me to bury Bill and little Liz in one grave, and to put a fence round it.

My story is done.

______________________

11: Ace, Deuce, Ten Spot, Joker

Irvin S Cobb

1876-1944

Esquire Feb, Mar 1934

THE TEN SPOT

MORE than almost anything else, one bothering thing kept its grip on The Suet while he was holed-up like a hibernating woodchuck in that combination of rooming-house and sweat-shop over on Lexington Avenue. It was a nagging, buzzing doubt as to whether he had been wise to stay on in town after his break with his old mob rather than to get out of town and stay out until the air cleared.

So far as the cops were concerned, everybody knew you couldn't pick a better hide-out than New York. In New York all was likely to be jake with you unless you had a harelip or a clubfoot or an arm missing— some obvious mark such as that— which made you stand out as different from the run of the shoal. Just so you sang soft and low, you probably would be, even to the inquiring eye, merely an undistinguished one of the seven or eight millions or whatever by the latest census figures the number of human atoms was. But just go for temporary retreat into some lesser community and no matter how small and inconspicuous you made yourself, nevertheless you were a stranger and any minute some hick bull might lamp you and get to thinking, which sometimes was just too bad because what he might get to thinking was where he had read your description or seen your mug smeared across one of these posters headed WANTED. No sir, for crossing up John Law's boys, you couldn't ask a better spot than the middle of little old Manhattan Island.

For the present moment The Suet wasn't dodging John Law. To be sure, any stray Central Office dick who recognized him might take the notion to give him the old runaround or ride him down to Headquarters on general principles. But what of it? You took it and you laughed it off.

Now, though, The Suet was in retirement because of an enemy infinitely more to be dreaded than any cop in or out of uniform— an enemy uncannily shrewd and, by nature, most unforgiving and of a fearsome resourcefulness, so that you never could dope it in advance when he'd be coming at you or whence or how— especially how.

In the Detective Bureau and in the newspapers this enemy still was being referred to by his familiar early name, to wit: Torpedo Mike Romano. They didn't know yet— the "tecs" and the reporters— that within various inner and interrelated circles this distinguished personage was wearing a newer title, one which carried with it a tribute to his latest and greatest series of achievements. Being credited with having devised and in some instances having personally directed the successful plans for extinction, one by one, but all within a six-months' period, of nine of the obnoxious Heiney Schlagel beer mob up in the Bronx, the campaign then suitably concluding with the spectacular rubbing-out of Heiney himself, Torpedo Mike privately had been re-christened so that to admiring intimates he had become The Ten Spotter, which by a quick erosion became The Ten Spot, which inevitably and almost immediately became Big Casino. By these same poetic interpretations, Sammy The Suet was called Sambo because he happened to be so dark of complexion as to suggest negroid blood and nearly always was given the alliterative suffix because he was fat with a greasy and a glistening fatness.

Seeing that before the recent misunderstanding came up he had been an esteemed member of Big Casino's outfit, nobody in all this wicked world would know better than he did that when a guy fell out with Big Casino, said guy sooner or later, but probably sooner, was likely to become an object of interest to one undertaker and a number of florists. The main issues here involved were, first, The Suet stood accused of having willfully failed to execute a lethal commission which had been entrusted to him, and, second, and what was worse, was under further suspicion of attempting to betray his chief's intents in this particular matter to the subject marked for elimination. Obedience, codal discipline, good faith, were all involved in these alleged acts of treachery, hence the affair took on an ethical aspect. Casino was most fussy touching on ethics. Considered in that light, one might call him high church— a ritualistic stylist, a stickler for all the little formalisms.

Thus we observe how essential it was to Sammy The Suet's well-being that he see to the secrecy and the safety of his present place of withdrawal. As to those important details, he should have been fairly satisfied. For his part, there was no visible reason to fear that he had been traced to this asylum, which was a staunchly built five-story brick building several miles south of his late Harlem habitat and situate in the approximate middle of a compact block. His room was a front room on the third floor, which meant that between him and the roof was a full floor and above that in turn a so-called loft, both of these being populated by sewing-machine operators during work hours and very securely locked up at all other hours.

On his own level and for the two below, there were rooms for boarders— not transients but established occupants known to the landlord and vouched for by him. And the landlord he could trust so far as any mortal of their cultural grouping might be trusted. At his back was a good thick wall and one very strong door opening upon a hallway. Facing him from the other side was a single window letting upon the smooth façade of the house and commanding a slantwise view of a brief strip of the avenue. From that direction— since the fire escapes cascaded down the rear elevation— his seclusion was guaranteed against any human intrusion whatsoever unless the intruder brought along scaling-ladders, which wasn't probable, or could fly, which wasn't plausible. Finally, the proprietor brought his meals to him along with such other supplies as he required, and in a corner of his room behind a board partition, was a private bath of sorts.

So, while he waited for the grudge of his late chief to abate itself or for the coming of a time deemed to be appropriate for making overtures looking to a truce, or happily, a permanent peace, he might bide on in these snug quarters, sleeping pleasantly in his bed and reading there or, provided he stayed well back behind the lowered shade, looking outward and down through the panes of the bolted window upon the life of the street. It was the middle of November, so keeping the window sash bolted didn't much matter.

In such undisturbed fashion then, the self-imprisoned fugitive spent a week and part of another week. He had a routine. He slept, woke up, breakfasted, read the news of the day and the magazines of the week— some of them, anyhow; the books of the month as well; smoked. Paced the floor for exercise, looked out of the window some more, smoked some more, dined, smoked, read, went to bed. It was not greatly diverting but it was ever so much better than being in a box with plated silver handles down the sides and a blanket of tuberoses and lilies-of-the-valley over the top. It was better than being surrounded by all these expensive flowers— his crowd went in for swell funerals for fallen brothers— and yet not smelling any of them.

There was just one main drawback to the solitary tenant's comfort and that drawback had a temperamental rather than a physical background. The trouble with him was he had an active imagination. To persons of his dangerous calling, an active imagination is an inconvenience always and sometimes 'tis a positive handicap. For such a person, brooding on the past is bad and projecting the thoughts into the future is worse. With very little of anything except leisure on his hands, Sammy was annoyed by recurring brainpan pictures. He saw Big Casino or one of Big Casino's lieutenants spying out his whereabouts. He saw the favorite rendezvous of the mob, a back parlor of a discreet speakeasy in East One Hundred and Sixteenth Street— saw it down to the very roaches skirmishing over the wainscotings— with the boss sitting there sipping a seltzer lemonade— the boss handled the hard stuff but drank only the soft— sitting there with a droll smile on his plump and placid face; just sitting there, artistically figuring out bright fresh plans of reprisal against him. For the boss, outside of his love of sundry tribal rites, was ever fertile-minded and never more so than when sheering away from the hallowed traditions of their craft to conjure up some shapely, sprightly form of murder which would be as a piquant sauce, adding spice of novelty to the red gravy of his vengeance. Sammy saw these things, and he felt things. For instance, he felt bullets striking his flesh with sharp stinging pains, or piercing his flesh with a terrible burning sensation. In the kind of novels he liked to read, a bullet either stung or burned— invariably did one or the other. And between times he kept worrying about whether or not he had made a mistake by denning-up in New York when he might just as well have gone somewhere else.

Oh, yes, indeed, to poets and to stock promoters and advertisement writers, an imagination may be an asset but it's a liability for a killer turned hermit.

Sheltered behind the dingy window curtains, the recluse fought off boredom by studying the foreshortened panorama opposite and beneath him. Before the first week of his captivity was over, knew even the numbers on some of the surface cars that went up and down, down and up. By now, the habitués of the block were familiarized to him: the uniformed doorman of the cheap department store on the corner below and the deputy who understudied for that gaudy notable; the mounted cop at the crossing, and his relief; the patrolmen who in daytime alternated on the post of which his circumscribed vista was a part; the proprietor of the stationery shop yonder on the far side, who spent so many hours lounging in his doorway; the newly established apple vendor who risked disaster while he diagonaled back and forth seeking customers in the traffic; the old lady in garments which seemed outlandish because they were twenty years behind the mode— high-buttoned shoes, longish skirts, balloon sleeves and the rest of it— who at eleven o'clock every morning and again every afternoon at three, promenaded the far sidewalk, holding a decrepit pug dog on an unnecessary leash.

Whenever there was an addition to the small fleet of taxicabs which commonly cruised the roadway hereabouts or ranked themselves in the parking space slightly to the north, he knew it. And he was aware of any newcomers appearing among the standbys in that restless ebb and flow of the tides of pedestrian travel. For instance, there was a sandwich man, cased fore and aft with flat boards, who arrived on the fifth day. This one made the third of these human terrapins, these upended turtle shapes, now shambling along this particular beat. His twin shells proclaimed the merits of a cheap restaurant, whereas, of his already established brethren, one perambulated on behalf of a shoe-repairer and the other crawlingly advertised an auction sale which apparently never ended. The way each of these fellows had of dragging his feet and his way of suddenly sticking one hand out like a flapper from behind his carapace to offer printed cards to the passer-by, accentuated the resemblance to a tortoise reared upon its hind legs.

Likewise there was a ragged beggar-man with heavy black glasses over his eyes, who presently joined the resident mendicants. He appeared on the sixth day. A boy brought him that morning and left him posted in an angle alongside an areaway on the opposite side of the avenue three doors south, where all day thereafter he teetered on his pins and patiently rattled a metal cup and at intervals rapped briskly with a cane upon a large placard which hung from a cord about his neck and which proclaimed him the victim of a powder explosion— with a large family.

This goggled figure, swaying like a channel buoy anchored in an eddy at the verge of some narrow sluiceway, at once became an accepted neighborhood fixture, also.

It got so with Sammy The Suet, and he watching there hour after hour, that he would have missed any one of the regulars who failed to show up. But he told himself that most of all he would have missed the old-fashioned old lady with her funny clothes and her pet specimen of a practically extinct species, that ancient pug dog. She fascinated him. Frequently, in his less perturbed moments, that imagination of his dealt speculatively with her.

The warning came without any warning. There was a smearing of significant drama— a kind of slick and sinister gloss— over the method employed for advising him that his number was up.

On the ninth day, late in the afternoon, he was lying on the bed, propped against the pillows, waiting for his host to bring him the afternoon papers and a fresh stock of cigarettes. The lights were on, the window shade, of course, being drawn.

He heard something— the faintest and tiniest of slithering sounds. He sat up straight and peered over the footboard in the direction of that sound and he saw something. He saw something white, something small and sharply angled, like one corner of an envelope, say, which was crawling, so to speak, through a crack under the bottom of the door and sliding across his threshold. More and more of it came in. It was an envelope. It came in until it was almost entirely in and then it stopped moving and lay there as though waiting for him to pick it up, a flat pale oblong, lying sealed-side up.

Like a chicken entranced by a chalk mark drawn under its beak, he stared at it and stared and stared, his neck stretching, his jaw lolling. For all his hypnotized pose, he didn't forget, though, to listen for noises, however small, from without— the rustle of a body against his bolted door, the stealthy tiptoe of a retreat along the hallway. But there were no such noises.

After a while— maybe five minutes, maybe ten, he very slowly, very cautiously, got up and went and stooped and picked up the envelope and turned it over. In typed letters it was addressed:

Mr. Salvatore Terrafino

Which was all, but which, for The Suet's understanding was enough. That would be Big Casino's deft ironic touch— to call him by his real name, the name which he almost had forgotten was his, so long had it been since he himself had used it or heard it used.

With fingers already turned cold and numbish at their tips, he opened the envelope. The message it contained also was ample and sufficient in its meaning. It was merely a new clean card from a deck of ordinary playing-cards. But it was the ten of diamonds, and, to The Suet, frozen in a stiffly wooden posture, every one of those ten bright little pips was like a separate petal of some scarlet graveyard flower ready to flutter loose and drift down on a coffin lid.

That's what The Suet got for having so much imagination. From that source he got plenty more of trouble through that night and through that next day.

He didn't dare try to make his break during the night; not in the darkness when any black corner in the building, any cranny or sidewalk recess for a block either way might be sheltering the torpedoes. Nor, temperamentally constituted as he was, could he stay on where he was until they came and dug him out of his hole. His only chance— if it was a chance— would be to try for it in broad daylight with people and cops about and all.

In the morning and on through the morning, from behind the slitted shade, he watched the street scene for dangerous-looking strangers. If they were down there— and they must be down there somewhere— he couldn't spot them. He saw all the regulars: the old lady with the pug dog, the apple pedler and the rest of them, but no suspicious newcomers could he see loafing along or idling about or pacing the abbreviated stretch lying within his reach of vision.

So about three o'clock, when the crowds were good and thick, he went down the stairs, one step at a time, with his stubby automatic in his right hand and all the while figuring himself to be no better than a hundred-to-one shot.

The odds were even longer than that.

For him to creep down the narrow stairwell from the second flight to the street level must have taken all of five minutes. Sucking his breath in with a big gulp, he stepped out of the doorway and stood upon the pavement, his back to the building and he trying to look every way at once.

Unless you had been there and seen it with your own eyes, you could never have believed a thing like that could happen so swiftly— yea, and so smoothly.

The apple pedler who, it would subsequently develop, had his station just one door down and on the same side, gave a signal by suddenly flinging a whole platter of apples high in the air, at the same time whistling shrilly. His share being performed, the apple pedler vanished.

The blind man— only it seemed he wasn't a blind man at all— cast off his black glasses and out with a gun and ran then across the roadway, firing briskly as he drew nearer.

The newest one among those three saurian-men closed in on the victim from another flank but his tactics were different. Reaching the curbing, he stopped and squatted so that his front sandwich board made a portable breastwork for him while he swapped shots with their trapped target. A grand breastwork it made, too, seeing it was a sheet of light tough steel painted over so two of The Suet's bullets that struck it zinged and glanced off, leaving gouges in the paint, which details subsequently interested the police department and public press no little. Likewise the abandoned placard of the first gunner had its share of attention. It also was of tempered metal, an excellent shield to the lungs and heart of its wearer.

In half a minute, maybe less, the sandwich-man was freed of his defensive plating and the "blind" man had discarded his armor and the pair of them were racing for a taxicab which just then opportunely cruised past. It slowed up for long enough to take both aboard and fled east by north, flashing a set of forged and therefore misleading license plates in the faces of a confused and, for the most part, a panic-stricken multitude.

As for the properly riddled Suet, he passed out where he had dropped on the pavement before the entryway, and his last conscious thoughts were elsewise directed than to the workmanlike manner of his undoing, there being in these farewell thoughts of his neither deep chagrin over the outcome nor reluctant admiration for the system employed. In these last conscious moments, what filled his mind was a vague wondering— a wondering with an element of shocked astonishment in it— that on penetrating one's person bullets neither stung nor burned, as the story-writers had claimed, but, on the contrary, hit with heavy and stunning impacts, thumps, really, like blows of a club or kicks of a mule's hoof.

THE ACE AND THE DEUCE

COMING out of the Tombs, Mr. M. J. (Slats) Horan obligingly halted to accommodate the waiting newspaper photographers, which the same, as it turned out, was an irreparable error on his part.

But how— we might ask you— was poor old spindle shanked Slats to figure that? The way he figured it, this probably was his last good chance to be photographed for publication. And Slats certainly did love the bright lights, spot-, foot-, or flash-, as the case might be. Also, and by the same token, it would be the last chance for the boys to get a posed likeness of him, inasmuch as this afternoon early he would be off to the United States penitentiary. This was the twenty-third of December, a nice clear day for traveling. And by this time to-morrow he would be Away Down South in Dixie— hooray, hooray!— reaching Atlanta in ample time to get settled and be all primed and ready to wish the warden a Merry Christmas.

Seeing that he very much preferred to be found by St. Nick on a bunk in the Big House rather than on a slab at the Morgue, this promised to be not such an un-Merry Christmas for Slats, either. Of two contingent evils he deliberately had chosen the one which by infinitely long odds was the lesser. As a ward of the government and a temporary guest of the County of New York, he had been safe enough these past few weeks here in the Tombs while awaiting transportation to the bigger prison; and most assuredly he would be safe— safer than a bug in a rug and practically as snug as one— down yonder in Georgia, that hospitable land of cotton for which so many homesick darkies are by so many popular song writers supposed to yearn with an unappeasable yearning. Well, Slats had done some yearning in that general direction on his own account. His four-year bit for violating the income-tax laws didn't matter. Once he got at it, he could, as the saying went, do it standing on his head. What was more, in four years a good many things could happen and undoubtedly would. This might be forgiven and that might be forgotten; such-and-such a one might die or quit or even soften to the point of letting bygones be bygones.

Howsomever, until this bygoer was absolutely begone, the chief of the Homicide Bureau at Headquarters, knowing, that wise old head, what he did know and having, as he did have, the somewhat battered good name of the Department at heart, meant that no mishap which possibly was avoidable should befall during these final hours while Slats remained in the home bailiwick. The national arm might have taken over this lengthy young man for its very own, but until he passed beyond this venue there were the matters of local jurisdiction and local protection to be considered; and in these matters the Department felt a quite pressing responsibility.

Accordingly, for purposes of better insurance against accidents and such, an escort squad of four Central Office men were waiting outside the Tombs when Slats, handcuffed to a Federal deputy-marshal, came forth into the smacky winter sunshine. Furthermore, a special detail of six men in uniform assisted the brace of patrolmen on regular post duty there to maintain a ring around the police wagon that was drawn up at the curb and to form a sort of living aisle across the pavement of Lafayette Street from the door of the jail to the door of the wagon.

Inside the cordon were the newspaper photographers, five or six pushy, enterprising young men, all with their cameras unslung and loaded. Somebody said once that photographers had come to be to newspapers what cooties are to a war— bothersome but inevitable.

"Hey, Slats, old-timer," called out Haley, of the Evening Review, who many a time and oft before had snapped this familiar subject. "How about a nice going-away picture, eh?"

"Sure," said Slats, and smiled.

"Stick right where you are then on that top step," commanded Schlosser, of the Daily Pictorial .

So the Central Office men drew off to this side and that, leaving the coupled pair standing between the stone jambs of the doorway. Just below these two the photographers jockeyed for angle and focus, squinting through their finders to make sure of good close-ups.

In chorus their shutters clicked. But no one there heard the clickings, because those sounds were swallowed up in a sharp and not far-distant crackle of gunfire from somewhere above and somewhere beyond the cameramen and the cops.

There was a quick scatteration this way and that, what with policemen whirling about to face eastward and reaching for their own guns, and photographers scurrying for refuge behind the patrol-wagon or behind one another or behind something else; and the United States deputy tried to scrouge in for shelter against the portico pillars but found he couldn't very readily make it by reason of being tethered to a corpse.

So soon as all that, Slats was dead and gone. There he was, down on the broad of his back, and just at the inner corner of his left eye a small-calibre bullet-hole.

It would seem that the Review man recovered his wits and his nerve quicker than any of his competitors. He shifted plates and got a grand picture of Slats and the deputy, with Slats all flattened out except for one long thin arm held tautly aloft where it was chained, wrist by wrist, to the shying deputy, and on the deputy's face about the most comical look of surprise and scare you could imagine. It made a swell full-page, front-page layout for the Review's Five Star edition that evening— the swellest layout, everybody in tabloid journalism agreed, that had been run in this man's town since another tab's staff star with a baby camera up his leg, got that lovely picture of Ruth Snyder in the Chair up at Sing Sing, that time.

It was a clean beat for the Review. Because, by the time the rival photographers got over their fright and returned to the spot subsequently marked X in the newspaper diagrams— at least two of them had run entirely around the corner of Chambers Street— the handcuffs had been unlocked and the deputy was somewhat recomposed. Indeed, one of the photographers who fled never returned at all. When he dusted around the corner he kept right on with his dusting. At first, in the excitement and the hullabaloo and all, he wasn't missed. Anyhow, nobody was searching for him then. For the moment, the hunt was for whoever it was that had done that volley-firing over on the far side of the little plaza fronting the Tombs.

It was later— fully an hour later— before this entirely vanished individual became an object of official interest; and it was through the days and weeks which followed that thousands upon thousands of good people all over America memorized his printed description in the hope of meeting up with him, though none of them did, or at least if any of them ever did, didn't recognize him.

That, however, was understandable in view of the fact that the persons who collaborated in getting up the reward notice had so little to go on. They didn't know what his real name might be or his aliases, if any. They didn't have his likeness in the Gallery or his finger-prints or, assumed they did have them there, had no way of checking up and proving by comparison that they were his prints. And the description of him that was broadcast was a description to which about every tenth man you met essentially might answer; small, dark, smooth-shaven, quietly dressed, Jewish-looking, apparently about twenty-five years of age, weight approximately one hundred and forty; when last seen wearing a faked-up press card in his hatband, posing as a photographer for a Bronx newspaper and carrying inside a camera-case a deadly weapon with a silencer attached to it, probably an automatic revolver.

But naturally, not even the most simple-minded citizen expected that the party sought for would go on wearing a bogus press card or posing as a photographer for a Bronx newspaper or, most unlikely prospect of all, toting about with him a muted pistol concealed in a camera-box.

Constant Reader or Regular Subscriber or even old Vox Populi does not know this trade secret:

To every big crime mystery that breaks, there are two distinct angles— the angle which is printed in the public press and the angle embodying what technically is known as the "inside story" or the "real low-down." Now, this latter angle, although familiar to the police and to the reporters and usually to the deskmen in the city-rooms, is rarely or never presented in the public press. For this there are reasons which we won't go into now— it would only confuse the Rollo Boys all the more.

For instance, as figuring in this Slats Horan case was, first: the interview which Chief Inspector Fay, speaking for the Commissioner, gave out for publication on the day of the killing, and second, the entirely private statement which he made to a couple of Headquarters reporters in whom he had special confidence. These two were his trusted and valued friends— they'd helped to make him what he was to-day. So to them he spoke freely, if somewhat bitterly, and before them exhibited an air of chagrined defeatism vastly different from the air of jaunty confidence he had worn an hour earlier in his official audience for the assembled pressmen.

"Oh, I get your slant, all right," said the harried chief inspector. "To you fellows this here Slats is a heap bigger man dead than he ever was alive and kicking. And yet, lova Mike, how you did swell him up out of all reason when he was alive! That was his ruination— the way you swelled him up. You made him think he was the top of the pack when he was never anything more, first, last, or any time, than a dirty deuce.

"Listen, I'll prove it to you: He gets all swelled up until he takes it in his cheap head to try to muscle in, single-handed, on a real racket. And while he's muscling-in, he feels called on to prove how important he is by bumping off some little guy. And then all of a sudden he wakes up to what any guy with brains would have known before— that he's bumped off a connection of somebody that's about ten thousand times as powerful as he'll ever be. So the yellow crawls up his neck and he takes a running jump right into the bosom of the Federal court with a plea of guilty to that old indictment against him. It was a rap he could 'a' beaten but he takes it quick, and so to-day, thinking he's out in the clear, he comes out of stir, grinning all over.

"And then what? Why, a real face-card, an ace that probably was imported for this special job from Chi' or St. Louis or Detroit or points west, wipes that grin off his map with a slug out of a dead-and-dumb gun rigged up in a phony camera, whilst a couple of other smart lads on the roof of a tenement house a block away are cutting loose in the air to cover up for him. What's more, by working that trick they give the operator plenty of time for making his get-away while my boys are running circles around the neighborhood following after the false lead. Now, between us, who was it framed up that swell plant right under the noses of a dozen cops? I give you fellows one guess and it'll be the right one— the only performer in this town that's slick enough to have thought it out, that's who. And my private bet is we'll not be able to pin it on him any more than we could pin that lovely Lex. Avenoo job on him last month when Sammy The Suet got his. Here's one Wop that when he sucks eggs he sure hides the shells."

"But you're going after him all the same," said one of his confidants. "What for?"

"What for, but a stall?" admitted Inspector Fay. "Only you'll keep that part under your hats, you two. You saw the head-line the Star had on its second extra after the shooting— 'Dragnet Out for King of Gunmen in "Slats" Assassination.' 'Dragnet'— get that? When he'd already telephoned these Headquarters he'd be right down to answer any questions as soon as he could get here. And he'll be here any minute now, looking like a smooth-faced Santa Claus and handing out that regular line of hooey of his about being just a quiet business man trying to do the best he can and why is it the cops don't leave him alone instead of trying to hang it on him every time somebody gets sneezed off in this town?

"It's a laugh, fellows, all the way through, only you'll excuse me for not laughing much."

THE JOKER

"SMOOTH-faced Santa Claus" was good. It was very good. It was better than Inspector Fay dreamed when he coined it.

Because, forty-eight hours later, the Ten Spot, at his luxurious apartment on upper Fifth Avenue, was playing that identical rôle for his adored son and heir, Master Angelo Romano, aged three and a half.

For Master Angelo and for his doting father, not to mention his small fat mother, it was indeed a grand Christmas. The spirit of the festival even extended to the attendant gorillas on guard fore and aft of the building. A share of the Yuletide joy, of the Yuletide peace on earth was theirs.

And why shouldn't all three members of the Romano household be happy? Mama Romano had the new mink coat and the new ermine coat and the new diamond bracelet she wanted. Baby Romano had a tall and lovely tree and half a carload of expensive gifts. Papa Romano had within him the beautiful glow of satisfaction which comes to a creative genius when he knows that the work of his hands has been good and that on it the world— or at least his world— has put the stamp of its approval.

Still, Fate certainly moves in a mysterious way its blunders to perform, doesn't it? Here was the Romano family all filled with contentment and joy on Christmas Day in the morning and yet within a week Papa Romano would be engaged in dying, after considerable suffering, of acute blood-poisoning.

There was nothing sinister about this tragedy. No subtle enemy laced the wassail cup with venomed drug or put some deadly essence in ye olde minced pie— absolutely nothing of the sort.

What happened, and all that happened, was this: Childlike, Master Romano toddled past a thousand dollars' worth of mechanical toys to fix his juvenile fancy on a small, cheap, gaudily-painted Noah's Ark which some humble friend and well-wisher of the father had bought at the five-and-ten and had sent along. And presently, under baby's rude handling, the head of the spotted wooden lamb came unglued from its whittled neckpiece. So the baby carried the lamb to his father for mending; and the father moistened the socket with his tongue and stuck the head back on. And some trace of a most unbenignant acid in the glue or some corrosive foreign substance in the dye— the physicians had both notions but no positive evidence either way— got into Papa Romano's person by way of a tiny canker sore on his lower lip and set up in his system so malignant a chemistry that neither nature nor the best science which money might buy could save him.

All of which would seem to establish, if indeed it establishes anything at all, that once in a while Destiny deals unobserved from a marked deck to take the winning trick.

Or maybe the reader has a better theory of his own?

_________________

12: Pell Street Blues

Achmed Abdullah

1881-1945

Blue Book Magazine, March 1935

HATE wrote the first chapter of this tale some centuries ago, when it planted the seeds of mutual hate in two kindred Mongol races: in Chinese and in Manchu, and by the same token, in patient, earthbound peasant and in hawkish nomad, hard-galloping across the land, conquering it with the swish of the red sword, the scream and bray of the long-stemmed war-trumpets, the hollow nasal drone of the kettle-drums— and overhead, the carrion-fed vultures paralleling the marauders' progress on eager wings.

Fate wrote the second chapter sixty-odd years ago, when Foh Wong and Yang Shen-Li were boys in the cold northern town of Ninguta, where they threw stones at each other and swapped salty abuse; although it was Yang Shen-Li, the Manchu, the mandarin's son, who did most of the stone-throwing, whereas Foh Wong, whose parents were Chinese coolies tilling the barren clay, did most of the cursing— from a safe distance. For he valued his skin— which, together with his shrewd brain, was his sole possession.

Fate wrote the third chapter a little over fifty years ago, when parlous times had come to China— with Russia at the western and Japan at the eastern border, both waiting for an excuse to invade the tottering Empire and tear it to pieces— and when, one morning, Foh Wong stopped Yang Shen-Li on the street and said:

"A word with you!"

"What is it, mud-turtle?"

"Indeed," replied the other, "I am no more than a mud-turtle, while you are an aristocrat, an ironcapped prince. And yet"— slowly— "today I have the whip-hand."

"Eh?" exclaimed Yang Shen-Li.

He was startled. He wondered if Foh Wong knew, how he knew— heard him drop his voice to a purr:

"You were not alone last night. I watched from behind a tree. And should I proclaim what I saw, there would be your handsome head spiked on a tall pole in front of the Palace of August Justice."

The Manchu shrugged his shoulders. He tried to speak casually:

"I do not fear death."

"Of course not— since you are a brave fool. But being also an honorable fool, you would not wish to bring black disgrace on your father, to cause him to lose face. And— forgive the wretched pun— your father would lose a great deal of face, if you should lose your head. A murderer's head— "

"I did not murder."

"You killed."

"In self-defense. He insulted me, struck me, drew his revolver and fired— the insolent foreigner!"

"But— be pleased to remember— a most important foreigner. A high Russian official whose corpse you— ah— buried in back of Han Ma's camel stables." He stabbed out an accusing finger. "I saw you."

"Have you witnesses?"

"Not a one. I was alone."

"Then?"

"There will be witnesses, when the time comes. Three of my cousins. A dozen, if you prefer."

"Lying witnesses!"

"Lying, only, in swearing they saw the deed. Not lying as to the deed itself. And though you are a mandarin's son, the Dowager Empress, with Russia's soldiers massed at the frontier, will give an order to her red-robed executioners, will have your handsome head removed, if I should— "

"Is there a price for your silence, coolie?" interrupted Yang Shen-Li.

"Is there not a price for everything?"

"How much?"

"No money. Not a single silver tael." Foh Wong paused. "The price of my silence is— a word."

"A word?"

"Yes. A mere word from you— to Na Liu. A word telling her I desire her greatly— wish her to be my wife."

"But"— the Manchu stammered with rage— "she— "

"Loves you? I know. And I know, too, that, loving you, she will not relish the thought of your bleeding head grinning down at her from a tall pole, and will therefore marry me, the mud-turtle.… Hayah!" with sudden violence. "Go to her! At once! For today I command, and you will obey!"

Yang Shen-Li stared at the other.

"Yes," he said heavily. "I shall obey." He took a step nearer. "But— listen to me, coolie!" His words clicked and broke like dropping icicles. "I hate you. Ah— by the Buddha!— I shall always hate you."

"You hate me no more than I hate you," was the answer. "But"— and Foh Wong's eyes gleamed triumphantly through meager almond lids— "you are helpless, O paper tiger with paper teeth. I am not. So— keep on hating me!"

NEVER, through the decades, though for years they did not see one another, did the hate of these two weaken.

It stretched, hard and stark and blighting, athwart the full span of both their lives. It followed the churned steamship lane to San Francisco and Seattle. It traveled thence across the continent to New York— there to abut and peak to a grim, rather fantastic climax in the maze and reek and riot of half a dozen tired old streets that, a few blocks away from the greasy drab of the river, cluster toward the Bowery, toward the pride of the Wall Street mart, as far even as busy, bartering, negligent Broadway.

Streets of Chinatown, squatting turgid and sardonic and tremendously alien! Not caring a tinker's dam for the White Man's world roaring its up-to-date, efficient steel-and-concrete symphony on all sides.

Rickety, this Chinatown; moldy and viscous, not over-clean, smelling distressingly of sewer gas and rotting vegetables and sizzling, rancid fat. Yet a fact to be reckoned with in Gotham's kaleidoscopic pattern. A cultural and civil entity not without dignity. A thing aloof, apart, slightly supercilious— and intensely human. And being human, a fit background for a tragic tale.…

Not that this tale is entirely tragic. For tragedy, no less than comedy, is after all only a matter of viewpoint, perhaps of race and religion— two accidents whose sum-total spells prejudice.

Therefore, if your sense of humor be faintly oblique, faintly Oriental, in other words, you may derive a certain amusement from the thought of Foh Wong, no longer a coolie but a prosperous New York merchant, cooped up in the sweltering garret of his Pell Street house, with the door locked and the windows tightly shuttered, and an agony of fear forever stewing in his brain. You may also laugh at the idea of Yang Shen-Li lording it gloriously over Foh Wong's Cantonese clerks, spending Foh Wong's money with a free and reckless hand— and in the evening, after a pleasant hour or two at the Azure Dragon Club over an archaic mandarin gambling game of "Patting Green Butterflies" or "Ladies on Horseback" or "Heighoh! Flies the Kite," mounting to the second floor of the Pell Street house, there to bow courteously before Na Liu, his wrinkled old wife, once the wife of Foh Wong! She would be sitting stiffly erect, in the proper Chinese manner, on a chair of ebony and lacquer encrusted with rose-quartz, her tiny feet barely touching the floor and her hands demurely folded; and Yang Shen-Li would say to her:

"Moonbeam, was there ever love as staunch as ours?"

She would give a quaint, giggling, girlish little laugh.

"Never, O Great One!" she would reply.

"Never!" he would echo. "The same love until death— may it not be for many years! The same love that came to you and me, so long ago, when the world was young back home in Ninguta— and we were young— "

"And you the iron-capped prince— and I the gardener's daughter!"

"But all the world to me— as you are today."

"For the sake of my love," she said with a queer triumph, "— I shall marry another!"

Always, as often as he spoke the words, he made a great gesture with his strong, hairy hand. A gesture that cleaved the trooping shadows in the room with a certain brutality, that brushed through the sudden, clogged stillness like a conjurer's wand, sweeping away the dust and grime of Pell Street, the dust and grime of the dead years, and calling up the cool, scented spring sweetness of the small Manchu-Chinese border town where both had lived and loved.…

He remembered as clearly as if it were yesterday how, on that morning after his talk with Foh Wong, he met Na Liu where they always met, in back of the Temple of the Monkey and the Stork, in the shelter of the enameled pagoda roof that mirrored the sun a thousand-fold, like intersecting rainbows, endless zigzag flashings of rose and purple and blue and green. There he told her what had happened, told her the full bitter tale; and he said to her as he had to Foh Wong:

"I do not fear death. But there is the honor of my father to be considered— the honor of my ancestors for countless generations."

"Pah!" she cried. "And what do I care for the honor of your father, the honor of all your noble ancestors? It is you I care for. You alone. And the thought of you dead— why, I cannot bear it. Because, you see"— her voice was thin and brittle— "I love you."

He was silent.

"I love you so," she continued. "There is nothing, nothing, nothing I would not do for the sake of my love. Ah"— in a tense whisper— "for the sake of my love, I would lie, I would steal, I would kill! For the sake of my love"— more loudly, with a queer triumph in her accents— "I shall marry another!"

He sighed. He spoke dully:

"The book has been read. The grape has been pressed. There is no more. This is the end of our love."

"The end? No, no! There can be no end to our love, as there was no beginning. Why— don't you see?— our love is a fact. A fact!"

He weighed the thought in his mind. Then he inclined his head.

"That is so," he replied. "A fact, like the living Buddha, eternal and unchangeable. A fact, whatever may happen to you and to me!"

THEY STOOD there. For long minutes they looked at each other. They did not touch hands. For was she not now betrothed to Foh Wong?

They turned and went their different ways. And a few days later Na Liu became the coolie's bride, while Yang Shen-Li traveled south, to be a captain in a Manchu banner corps and rise high in the favor of the Dowager Empress.

NA LIU was a faithful wife to Foh Wong, since it was her duty; obeying the ancient maxim that a married woman must first widen her tolerance, then control the impulses of her heart and body, then entirely correct herself.

He was a good husband to her. Nor did the notion of her loving Yang Shen-Li— he knew it, though they never spoke of it— disturb his massive Mongol equanimity. Indeed, he was conscious of a keener tang and zest to his passion when he reflected that the other was an aristocrat and he himself a despised mud-turtle; yet his the woman who might have had her luxurious ease in a mandarin's palace.

Still, there were moments when he was prey to a certain jealousy. Not jealousy of the flesh— how could that be, with Yang Shen-Li in Pekin and Na Liu so rigidly observing the conventions? Jealousy, rather, of the brain, the imagining; of the gnawing, recurrent idea that, married to his rival, Na Liu would have lived in splendor of silks and jade, while as his own wife, her life was sordid and mean and frugal.

He would reason, thereby doing her an injustice, that she compared her existence, such as it was, with what it might have been. And it was less through love of her, and more because of this jealousy— this avid longing for material achievement, for precious things to put at her feet, telling her, "Behold! I can give you whatever the Manchu could have given you!"— that ambition came to him, that he dreamed of rising from his lowly estate to power and riches.

It was about this time that a Ninguta man returned to his native town, his pockets clanking with gold and amazing tales on his lips of the fair fortune awaiting the men of China in a land beyond the Pacific. America was its fantastic and barbarous name. And it seemed that the work there was plentiful, and the wages generous and princely.

Foh Wong listened to him eagerly. He asked many astute, practical questions. Presently, he made up his mind.

He sold his meager belongings. He took Na Liu to Canton, and crowded there aboard a Yankee clipper with a gang of his countrymen. And even before the ship warped out, he received his first taste of the New World's crass realities at the hands of the Gloucester mate, who, short of help, picked decidedly involuntary and as decidedly unpaid stevedores from among his Chinese passengers— forcing them to labor all day, to shift cumbersome freight, to direct to the derricks the heavy slings of cargo, to toil for long hours with bleeding fingers and tired, aching bodies. Once Foh Wong, taking a breathing spell, said to Na Liu, who stood by the gunwale:

"Ah— hard, hard work! But it does not matter. For I shall succeed. No doubt of it." And in a whisper: "You want me to succeed?"

"Yes."

"You love me— a little bit?"

Her reply was hopeless in its honesty, hopeless in what it did not say:

"I shall be a faithful wife to you— always."

"But— "

He began to plead with her, when the Gloucester mate's bellow interrupted him:

"Cut out that Chinkie talk, yer yaller-skinned heathen— and git back to them derricks!"

And though Foh Wong did not understand the words, he had no trouble in understanding the length of knotted rope that whistled through the air.

Such was the beginning of his odyssey— which was destined to end, ironically, in a sweltering Pell Street garret, with the door locked and the windows tightly shuttered, and an agony of fear forever stewing in his soul. The beginning of his odyssey— almost as bitter as this same end— with all about him, stretching east toward San Francisco, the world of the sea, enigmatic and alien.

Slimy, brutish toil. Seasickness and wretched food and brackish water. The Gloucester mate cuffing and cursing him and his countrymen with a certain austere Puritan determination. Days with the waves house-high under a puffed and desolate sky. Nights of blackness flecked with white, and running back to a yet deeper blackness. Once a gale that shivered a mast into matchwood and swept the bridges clean as with a knife.

He was conscious of fear. But paradoxically, he was not afraid of his fear. For there was his ambition. There was his passion for Na Liu. There was, stronger than his passion, his hate of Yang Shen-Li. These sustained him too through the decades of heavy labor that followed.

First in California— California of the smashing, roaring, epic era. Gold was king then. Silver-lead was viceroy. Everywhere railroads were being pushed. There was timber. There was wheat. There were cattle ranches and orchards. There was the White Man's bragging:

"Give us the dollar! To hell with the cents! Let the Yellow Men earn 'em!"

The Yellow Men did. Among them, Foh Wong— striving desperately, year after year, living close to the danger line of starvation, in California, Arizona, Colorado, Chicago, at last reaching New York. Frugally hoarding his money, climbing up the ladder of success, until his was a name for shrewdness and solid riches to conjure with in Chinatown, and stout merchants, sipping their tea or smoking their opium-pipes on an afternoon at the Azure Dragon Club, would comment admiringly:

"Gold comes to his hand unasked— like a dog or a courtesan."

ONCE in a while Foh Wong had news of Yang Shen-Li. His friends would read in Canton papers, or in the local Chinatown weekly, the Eminent Elevation, owned and edited by Yung Tang, how the Manchu also was steadily making his way— how, a favorite of the Dowager Empress, he had been appointed captain-general of the Pekin troops, commander-in-chief of the Northern army, and finally— this happened at the turn of the century, at about the same time when Foh Wong paid off the twenty-thousand-dollar mortgage on his Pell Street house— military governor of his native province.

With every rise in the other's fortunes, Foh Wong's ambition grew. His hate, expressed by his jealousy of material achievement, was not weakened by his own success, although in this thoughts of Na Liu no longer played a direct part.

He was still a good husband to her, in that he treated her with scrupulous politeness and presented her occasionally with expensive gifts. But his passion was dying. For several reasons. One— logically, inevitably— was that he had never been able to make her love him. Besides, she was getting to be an old woman. And— the gravest reason— she had borne him no children.

She, on the other hand, had not ceased to be his faithful wife: looking after his bodily comfort, making his home a thing of tidiness and beauty, cutting down household costs. Nor did she dislike him. Not at all. Indeed, it would be a hunting after lying, sentimental effect to say that she blamed him for having forced her into marriage. For she also was of Mongol race. She believed, to quote a Chinese proverb, that it was just and proper to take by the tail what one could not take by the head; and she would have acted as Foh Wong had acted— in fact, did act so several years later— had the positions been reversed.

Therefore she gave him her respect. She even gave him a measure of friendship. But no love; she could not. She had not forgotten the Manchu; could never forget him.

So Foh Wong's love died. It became indifference. And then one day his indifference changed to hate, as blighting as his hate for Yang Shen-Li.…

On that day, coming home for lunch, he found his wife in tears. He asked her what was the matter. She did not answer, only sobbed.

He saw a crumpled letter on the floor. He picked it up, forced her to read it aloud to him. It was from her brother.

The latter wrote— for that was the time, after the death of the Dowager Empress, when revolution all over China was no longer the pale, frightened dream of a few idealists, but a fact that seared the land like a sheet of smoldering flame, yellow, cruel, inexorable— he wrote how in Ninguta, too, several months earlier, the masses had turned against their rulers, the iron-capped Manchu princes. He wrote vividly— and Foh Wong smiled as he pictured the grim scene.

THE MOB of enraged coolies— hayah! his own people— racing through the streets, splashing through the thick blue slime, yelling:

"Pao Ch'ing Mien Yong— death to the foreign oppressors!"

Running on and on, like a huge snake with innumerable bobbing heads, mouths cleft into toothy cruel grimaces, crying:

"Pao Ch'ing Mien Yong!"

Rushing on through Pewter Lane. Through the Bazaar of the Tartar Traders. Past the Temple of the Monkey and the Stork. On to the palace of the military governor. Wielding hatchets and daggers and clubs and scythes. Overpowering the Manchu banner-men who fought bravely.

"Pao Ch'ing Mien Yong!"

Heads then— heads rolling on the ground like over-ripe pumpkins. Heads of Manchus, of foreign oppressors; and among them— doubtless, wrote Na Liu's brother, though it had not been found in the crimson shambles— the head of Yang Shen-Li.

Yang Shen-Li's head, thought Foh Wong— his handsome, arrogant head!

He laughed. Then suddenly his laughter broke off— and staring at Na Liu, so wrinkled and faded and old, he said:

"I wish he had lost his head years ago, when I gave him the choice between losing it, and losing you. For had he chosen death, I would not have married you, O turtle-spawn!"

She did not reply. She kept on weeping. And then he beat her— partly because he hated her, and partly because her tears told him that she still loved the Manchu, loved his memory even after death.…

He left the room, the house.

He thought, with self-pity:

"Here I am, wealthy and powerful, and my loins still strong— and saddled with this ancient gnarled crone! Hai! Hai!"— as he saw three young Chinese girls crossing Pell Street arm in arm, with swaying hips and tiny mincing steps. "When there are so many soft, pretty buds waiting to be picked!"

He turned and looked. He knew one of them: Si— Si, the daughter of Yung Tang, editor of the Eminent Elevation.

Foh Wong did not care for the latter. The man, New York born and bred, was a conservative, an adherent of the former imperial regime, and had recently returned from China, whence he had sent articles, to his own and American papers, praising the Manchus and denouncing the revolutionaries as tools of the Bolshevists.

Still, considered Foh Wong, his daughter was lovely. What an exquisite wife she would make! And he smacked his lips like a man sipping warm rice wine of rich bouquet.…

So time passed.

WHENEVER he thought of Si-Si, which was often, he beat his wife. And one day, at the Azure Dragon Club, stretched out on a mat, between them a table with opium-lamps, pipes and needles and ivory and horn boxes neatly arranged, he complained of his fate to Yung Tang, who inclined his head and spoke sententiously:

"Women are useless unless they be the mothers of our children."

"That is so."

"My own wife drinks— too much. She talks— too much. She spends— too much. But she has given birth to a daughter and three sons. Ah"— while with agile fingers he kneaded the brown poppy cube which the flame gradually changed to amber and gold— "better a drunken, nagging, extravagant wife who is fertile, than a virtuous one who is as barren as a mule."

"Yes," agreed Foh Wong. "Better a fat, dirty pig than a cracked jade cup."

"Better," the editor wound up the pleasant round of Mongol metaphor, "a fleet donkey than a hamstrung horse."

For a while they smoked in silence. The fragrant, opalescent fumes rolled in sluggish clouds over the mats. Then Foh Wong asked:

"Your daughter Si-Si is, I understand, of marriageable age?"

"Indeed."

"She is betrothed?"

"Not yet, O wise and older brother." Faint amusement lit up Yung Tang's purple-black eyes. "She is waiting for a proper man, a wealthy man."

"I am wealthy."

"I know." Yung Tang pushed the warm bamboo pipe aside and substituted for it one of carved tortoise-shell with a turquoise tip and three yellow tassels. "She is devoted to her parents. She has given solemn oath to the Buddha the Adored, that she will not marry unless her husband invests— ah— twenty thousand dollars in my enterprise."

Foh Wong stared at the other. He knew that— thanks to the weekly's freely expressed pro— Manchu attitude, contrary to that of Pell Street which, being coolie, was mostly revolutionary— its circulation and advertising had dropped; that therefore the editor was in awkward financial straits.

"Or, perhaps, fifteen thousand dollars?" he suggested.

"Or rather— nineteen?"

Foh Wong kowtowed deeply before the Buddha who looks after the souls of those about to die— for he was sorry for the destiny in store for his faded old wife, Na Liu.

"Sixteen and a half thousand is a goodly sum, the more so as I— should I give it— would be going counter to my political principles. It would mean a loss of face to me."

"While, to me, it would mean a loss of face to accept money from a man who does not see eye to eye with me when it comes to China's future. Thus— eighteen thousand dollars. Personally I dislike bargaining."

THE EDITOR smoked two pipes one after the other. He continued:

"It is wretched manners to praise your own, I know. But it has been remarked by certain people— truthful people, I believe— that Si-Si is a precious casket filled with the arts of coquetry, that when she washes her hands she scents the water, that her seventeen summers have only increased her charms seventeen times, and that"— calmly— "her hips are wide enough to bear many men children."

Foh Wong sighed.

"My own wife," he replied, "is a fallow field. There is none of my seed in the world to pray for me after death. Not that I blame her. Still— it is written in the Book of Meng Tzeu that she who cannot fulfill her charge must resign it."

"You mean divorce?"

"No."

"No?" echoed the editor, looking up sharply. "But a second wife is not permitted in this country."

Foh Wong turned on his mat. He glanced through the window, up at the sky where the sun was gaping in the west like a great red door.

"Divorce," was his answer, "is a custom of coarse-haired barbarians. Besides— a law of these same barbarians— alimony would have to be paid. Expensive— eh?"

"Very expensive."

"Not that I am stingy." Foh Wong spoke with sincerity. "For my wife, should her soul jump the dragon gate, would have a splendid funeral. She would be buried in a large and comfortable redlacquer coffin, on the side of a hill facing running water, and with an elegant view over the rice paddies."

"Her spirit," commented Yung Tang, "would doubtless enjoy itself."

"Doubtless."

Both men were silent. The editor was caressing his cheek with his right hand. The dying crimson sunlight danced and glittered on his highly polished fingernails. He thought of a man whom he had talked to, and who had given his confidence, a few months back, during his visit to China; thought of the queer mission with which this man had entrusted him; thought how, fantastically, sardonically, fate can work its will— fate that ambles out of the dark like a blind camel, with no warning, no jingling of bells.

He smiled at the other, who, having emptied his pipe at one long-drawn inhalation, looked up and asked a casually worded question:

"I believe you have a cousin who is a hatchetman?"

"Yes. But— " The editor hesitated.

"His prices are exorbitant?"

"They would not be— to me. Only, I have discovered that it is one's relatives whom one must trust least."

"Just so."

"I have a friend in Seattle. I shall communicate with him. I shall act slowly, discreetly. I shall think right and think left. There is no especial hurry."

"Except"— courteously— "my desire for Si-Si."

"Another summer will increase her charms eighteen times." Yung Tang pointed at the table. "Will you smoke?"

"No more. I have a duty to attend to. You will write to Seattle?"

"Immediately."

But the editor did not write to Seattle. He wrote, instead, to Hongkong; and he began his letter with a quotation from Confucius which said:

"The man who is departing on a sad journey often leaves his heart under the door— to find it on his return."

He smiled as he dipped his brush into the inkpot; and it is worthwhile remembering that the Chinese ideographs sin (heart) and Menn (door), when placed one above the other and read together, make a third word, "Melancholy"— which latter, by a peculiar Mongol twist, is considered an equivalent of "eternal love." And he wrote on while Foh Wong, having left the Azure Dragon Club, entered the joss temple around the corner.

There, without the slightest hypocrisy, he kowtowed deeply before the Buddha of the Paradise of the West— the Buddha who looks after the souls of those about to die— and burned three sweet-smelling hun-shuh incense sticks in honor of his wife. For once he had loved her. And he was sorry for the destiny in store for her. So, from this day on, he stopped beating her. On the contrary, he was kind to her— brought her presents of flowers and fruit, treated her— with no irony intended— as if she were an invalid not long for this world. And almost every evening he visited the joss temple; always he made kowtow before the Buddha and burned incense sticks— until Yu Ch'ang, the priest, declared that few men on Pell Street could compare to him in piety and rectitude.

NEAR the end of the year, Yung Tang reported to him that the matter was progressing satisfactorily. His friend in Seattle had secured the services of a hatchetman.

His name, said the editor, was Kang Kee. He had been a warlord fallen upon evil days. Therefore, thanks to his former profession, there was no doubt of his being a skilled and efficient killer; and given the fact that he was a stranger with no local tong affiliations, there was no doubt of his discretion.

"When will he be here?" asked Foh Wong eagerly.

Yung Tang shrugged his shoulders.

Kang Kee, he explained, was still in Hongkong; and surely, Foh Wong knew that times had changed since he himself had come to America. For there was now the law called the Asiatic Exclusion Act, to circumvent which the Chinese aspirant after Yankee coin had to travel many thorny roundabout roads and spend exorbitant "squeezes" right and left. Would Foh Wong, therefore, pay fifteen hundred dollars on account, to be deducted, later on, from Kang Kee's price of five thousand?

The merchant grumbled, protested, finally went to the safe and counted out the money.

"I would like a receipt," he said curtly. After all, he went on, he was a businessman. Here was a job for which he was paying. "Not that"— with grim humor— "I want you to particularize the— ah— nature of the job."

WUNG TANG smiled. His smile, had Foh Wong noticed it, was queerly triumphant.

"I understand," he said. "Just a few words acknowledging the money for— well, services to be rendered.… How's that? I shall make it out in duplicate."

"In duplicate?"— rather astonished.

"Yes. One for you, and one for me, as agent for Kang Kee." With quick brushstrokes he wrote paper and copy, handed both to the other. "Will you look it over?"

"No, no!" exclaimed Foh Wong. "It is not necessary."

The editor's smile deepened. He knew that the merchant, in spite of his wealth, had never learned to read, that he carried the intricate details of his business transactions in his shrewd old brain, that he could just barely scrawl his name, but that for fear of losing face, he had never owned up to it. Besides— and here too Yung Tang saw through him— Foh Wong figured that the editor had no reason to cheat him. For though Si-Si was young and beautiful and desirable, there were few men in Chinatown willing and able to pay the eighteen thousand dollars which her father demanded and in fact— Foh Wong knew, having made inquiries here and there— needed desperately; and he had made assurance doubly sure by buying up, at a generous discount, a number of Yung Tang's overdue notes.

He lit a cigarette, while the other signed the original and said:

"Will you countersign the copy?"

"What for? You received the money, not I."

"I know. But— it would make the deal more binding."

Foh Wong was puzzled. Make the deal more binding? He did not understand. Still, doubtless Yung Tang knew what he was talking about. He was a literatus, a learned gentleman; and the merchant, for all his success, was at heart the coolie who had never lost his respect for educated people. And— again the thought— the man needed him, could have no reason to cheat him.

"Very well." He dipped brush in inkpot, and clumsily painted his signature. "Here you are."

Even so, he felt relieved when, in the course of the afternoon, he dropped in on Ng Fat, the banker, and found out, by discreet questioning, that Yung Tang had bought a draft for fifteen hundred dollars made out to one Kang Kee, a former warlord residing in Hongkong.

INDEED the latter— whose American odyssey was destined to be quite as hard as that of Foh Wong, decades earlier— needed every cent of the fifteen hundred dollars. To enumerate all those whom he had to bribe would be to give an ethnographical survey of many of the Far East's more gaudy rogues.

But let us pick out a few.

There was, in Shanghai, a Kansuh ruffian on whose shaven poll had been a blood-price ever since the Boxer affair, and who met the former warlord and thirty other prospective emigrants in a first-chop chandoo place west of the To Kao Tien Temple. There was, furthermore, a squint-eyed Lithuanian skipper, wanted for murder in Riga and for piracy in Pernambuco, who took them to Vladivostok and into the tranquil presence of a Nanking compradore with gold-encased fingernails and a charming taste in early Ming porcelain. This gentleman passed the adventurers through yet two more middlemen to a Japanese captain who flaunted British naturalization papers and called himself O'Duffy Ichiban.

He was supposed to clear directly for Seattle. But he managed to cruise off the British Columbia coast— "contrary head winds, half a gale," he wrote in his log, and lied— until a narrow-flanked clipper shot out from the fogs of Queen Charlotte Sound and took away the living freight, drowning no more than seven. The remainder had an interview, next morning, with a government inspector who— hating himself for it— drowned his conscience in his greed.

Then a stormy night. A motorboat chugging recklessly across the Straits of San Juan de Fuca. A dumping overboard into the swirling, greasy sea half a mile from land. A screaming wave that swallowed all the merry band of Mongol rovers with the exception of the former warlord.… His swim ashore. And at last, his strong hand reaching out from the water and gripping the slippery piles at the foot of Yeslerway, in the city of Seattle.…

Seattle in spring.

Spring, too, in New York.

Spring brushing into Pell Street on gauzy pinions. Hovering birdlike over sordid, tarred rooftops. Dropping liquid silver over the toil of the streets, adding music to the strident calls of pavement and gutter.

Spring in the heart of Foh Wong— to whom, that morning, the editor had said that he had received a telegram from the hatchetman. The latter would be here on Saturday— would seek out the merchant immediately upon his arrival, at nine in the evening.

So, on Saturday afternoon, Foh Wong entered the joss temple. There he attended to his religious duties more thoroughly and unctuously than usual. Not only did he make kowtow to the Buddha of the Paradise of the West. He also kowtowed seven times to the Buddha of the Light Without Measure, and nine times to the purple-faced Goddess of Mercy. He heaped the bowls in front of the idols with dry rice. He burned twenty-seven incense sticks. He made the rounds of the temple, bowing right and left, beating gongs, ringing a small silver bell. He paid the priest a handsome sum to exorcise whatever evil spirits might be about.

FINALLY, his soul at rest, he went home. He presented his wife with gifts, thinking shrewdly that Si-Si would enjoy them after Na Liu's demise— an expensive radio set, a robe of purple satin embroidered with tiny butterflies, a pair of coral-and-jade earrings and a precious Suen-tih vase.

Na Liu smiled. She said:

"You have made me very happy these last few months."

"Have I?"

"Yes," she agreed; "by forgetting your anger against me, your just and righteous anger. For, you see, I have been a bad wife. I have never loved you. I have grown old and ugly. And I have borne you no children."

"Three things which only fate can help," he replied quite gently.

"Fate is bitter."

"Fate, at times"— as he thought of Si-Si— "is sweet. Let us not blame fate." He interrupted himself as there was a loud knocking at the street door below. "A friend whom I expect," he explained, and hurried out.

He reached the shop, crossed it, threw open the door. A man stood there— tall, broad, a black handkerchief concealing all his features but the hard, staring eyes.

"Upstairs," whispered Foh Wong. "The first room to the left."

The stranger inclined his head without speaking. Noiselessly he mounted. He disappeared.

There was a pall of heavy, oppressive silence— suddenly broken by a sob that quickly gurgled out. And Foh Wong trembled a little, felt a cold shiver along his spine— saw, a minute or two later, the man return.

He asked:

"Is it— finished, O hatchetman?"

"Yes. It is finished, O mud-turtle."

"Is it— finished, O hatchetman?" Foh Wong asked; and the stranger replied: "It is finished, O mudturtle."

Then the merchant gave a shriek of surprise and fear. Why— that nasal, metallic voice so well remembered! The voice of Yang Shen-Li! And as the other tore off the black handkerchief— the face of Yang Shen-Li! Older, much older. But still the bold, aquiline nose, the high cheekbones that seemed to give beneath the pressure of the leathery, copper-red skin, the compressed, sardonic lips brushed by the drooping mandarin mustache, the combative chin.…

"But you," Foh Wong stammered ludicrously, "— you died— in Ninguta!"

"And I came to life again," was the drawling answer, "as Kang Kee, the warlord. Kang Kee, who last year forged a chain of strong and exquisite friendship with one Yung Tang, who was visiting China. Kang Kee— no longer a warlord, but a hatchetman come here for the sake of a small killing."

"A killing," cried Foh Wong, rapidly collecting his wits, "for which you will lose your head."

He had decided what he was going to do. Outside somewhere, on Pell Street or Mott, his friend Bill, detective of Second Branch, would be walking his beat. He would call him, would tell him that his wife had been murdered. He was about to run out— stopped as he heard the other's drawling words:

"Not so fast, mud-turtle! You spoke of my losing my head. And what of your own head?"

"You killed, not I."

"You hired me."

"Prove it!"

Leisurely, from his loose sleeve, the Manchu drew a paper— the paper which a few months earlier, Foh Wong had signed on the editor's request— and which Yang Shen-Li now read aloud:

"Herewith, for the sum of five thousand dollars, I employ Kang Kee to kill my wife— "

Foh Wong grew pale. He stared at the Manchu, who stared back. There was in their eyes the old hate that had never weakened. Alone they were with this searing, choking hate. The outer world and its noises seemed very far away. There was just a memory of street cries lifting their lean, starved arms; just a memory of river wind chasing the night clouds that clawed at the moon with cool, slim fingers of silver and white.

Then the Manchu spoke:

"If I lose my head, you lose yours. Only— I am not afraid of losing mine, being a brave man, an iron-capped prince; whereas you, O coolie, are— "

"A coward," the other said dully.

"Precisely. But brave man and coward shall be united in death. Together our souls shall jump the dragon gate." Yang Shen-Li turned toward the door. "I shall now go to the police of the coarsehaired barbarians, and— "

"Wait!"

"Yes?"

Unconsciously, Foh Wong used the words which, decades ago, in Ninguta, the Manchu had used:

"Is there a price for your silence?"

"There is."

"How much?"

"Everything," announced the Manchu, sitting down, slipping a little fan from his sleeve and opening it slowly.…

He had not arrived tonight, he related, but twenty-four hours earlier. He had spent the time with Yung Tang, talking over the whole matter with him, and making certain arrangements. For instance, bribing a Chinese doctor who would certify that Foh Wong had died— of heart failure.

"You," the merchant whispered, "you mean to— "

"Kill you? Not at all. Did I not tell you there is a price for my silence? And would your life be the price? No, no! Your life is sacred to me."

"Then?"

"Listen!" Yang Shen-Li went on to explain that, with the help of the physician's certificate, Na Liu would be buried as Foh Wong, while it would be given out that she had gone to China on a lengthy visit. "Clever— don't you think?" he smiled.

"But what will happen to me? How, if I'm supposed to be dead and buried, can I show my face?"

"You can't," said the Manchu grimly. "You will live in the garret of your house until death— may it not be for many years! You will see nobody— except me. You will speak to nobody— except to me. Nobody will know that you are among the living— nobody except me and Yung Tang. This shall be a bond between you and me. The moment you break it, I shall go to the police and—"

"But my business— my money—"

"I shall look after it. For before— shall I say?— your death, you shall have made a will— you are going to sign it presently— making me trustee of your estate for your absent wife. You will leave her your whole fortune— all, that is, save eighteen thousand dollars— make it thirty-eight thousand— which you will leave to Yung Tang.… Hayah!"— as the other began to plead and argue. "Be quiet, coolie! For today I command— and you will obey!"

AND THUS it is Foh Wong is cooped up in the sweltering garret of his Pell Street house, with the door locked and the windows tightly shuttered, and an agony of fear forever stewing in his brain. It is thus that Yang Shen-Li is lording it gloriously over Foh Wong's clerks, spending Foh Wong's money recklessly; and in the evening, after a pleasant hour or two at the Azure Dragon Club, mounting to the second floor, bowing courteously to his wrinkled old wife and asking her:

"Moonbeam, was there ever love as staunch as ours?"

Always she gives a quaint, giggling, girlish little laugh. And at times, hearing the echo of it, Foh Wong wonders—  then forgets his wonder in his fear.

______________

13:  The Old Lady with the Two Umbrellas

Stacy Aumonier

1877-1928

Hutchinson’s Magazine Dec 1921

PARIS CAN BE an exceedingly dull city. One has only to miss a keenly anticipated appointment with a friend, to catch a cold in the head, to be disappointed in some love affair, to realise that the cold grey waters of the Seine are the only really inviting thing about it. One is down in the depths. Certainly these moods are apt to be transitory. One burst of sunshine, and lo! the cold in the head is forgotten, the friend has been waiting all the time, the girl may turn up. I forget which of these misfortunes had assailed me, but I know that I was in a very bad humour, sitting alone outside a little café in Etoile. Imagine my delight, then, when who should amble along the boulevard, and proceed to seek a table near me, but my old friend Tolozan. I had not seen him since his retirement from the police intelligence department at Bordeaux, upon a modest but well-merited pension. He held out his hand to me and smiled in that courtly and engaging manner which was characteristic of him. One of the secrets of his successful career had been that manner of inspiring immediate confidence. One went on from the point where one last left off, however long an interval may have intervened. He forgot nothing. All one's own opinions and affections appeared to be stored away carefully in his memory. The humdrum details of my particular trouble on this occasion evoked from him a profound concern. (Looking back on it I think it must have been a girl; no cold in the head would have called forth such charming sympathy).

My affairs dismissed, he told me that he was living at Colombes with his wife and daughter. He had a small villa and an acre of garden, which occupied most of his time. He spoke lovingly of his roses and gentians, his runner beans and leeks, and vegetable marrows. He hoped I would pay him a visit. He had come to Paris to buy seeds.

I was vaguely amused at my friend's enthusiasm. I could not help being impressed by the contrast of these placid interests compared with the turbulent incidents of his career spent amongst criminals and courtesans. At the same time, I could not help rejoicing that the perils and dangers of his life were passed, and that he had now reached this calm haven, where he could enjoy a full measure of repose, and indulge in those pleasant philosophical recreations and theories, which always attracted him so.

Moreover, I had been anxious to meet him ever since his retirement. I felt convinced that stored away in the archives of his memory must be many interesting facts and stories which the etiquette of the service would have prevented him from divulging while in harness. Over our coffee I boldly insinuated that this might be the case. He smiled deprecatingly and shrugged his shoulders. He was not one of those old chaps who like to hold youth spellbound by a recapitulation of their remarkable deeds and exploits. He was no Tartarin of Tarascon. It was indeed difficult to get him to talk about himself in a subjective sense at all. If a discussion arose, he would point some little theory with a leaf or two taken from the record of his own experiences, but as for telling a tale in the accepted sense, well, he simply couldn't see the sense of it. I dug out of him the story of the Old Lady with the Two Umbrellas. Being a writer, and therefore a person with an elastic conscience, I have no hesitation in repeating it. But I'm glad I am to do it in a foreign language and in a foreign country, for I feel that Tolozan would not approve. He told me once that the only fiction he had ever read was Monte Cristo, and he thought it a poor book, pointless and improbable. He used to study Comte, Montaigne, and seed catalogues.

I should never have got these facts out of him at all, I believe, if it had not happened to commence raining whilst we were sitting outside the café. We were under an awning and the procession of people passing by, holding up umbrellas, reminded him of the salient fact, for he turned to me and said abruptly:

"What would you think of anyone who always carried two umbrellas?"

The question was so surprising that I had nothing to reply. Two umbrellas? He continued meditatively:

"I knew a woman who did this."

I begged him to enlighten me upon the details of this unusual fact, and by many questionings and promptings I got the story out of him.

It happened after he had left the service. It appears that for a year after his retirement he and his wife and daughter continued to live in Bordeaux. They only came to Paris ultimately because it was decided that the daughter should attend the conservatoire of music. On retiring, his portfolio and the cases he had in hand were given over to a younger man, named Freycinet. He was a young man for the position, and a protégé and friend of Tolozan's. He frequently visited the family at their flat in the Rue Judaique. One evening towards the end of the summer— it was the summer following the Armistice— Freycinet came to him in a great state of consternation. He was obviously bewildered and distressed. Tolozan took him into his little den and begged him to confide his trouble.

"I'm likely to lose my position," he kept repeating.

"Well, old man, tell me all about it. Perhaps I can be of service," said Tolozan.

"It's like this," spluttered Freycinet. "Two months ago we received information from the prefecture that gold was leaking out of the country over the Spanish border. I was sent down to Irun to take charge of the matter. I did the usual thing, examined all luggage, searched promiscuous people, arrested a few suspicious characters, doubled the sentries at vital points on the border, but nothing came of it. We could find no trace of the leaking gold. For three weeks I was up night and day doing everything I could think. Then a stern note came from headquarters. The gold was still going through. Something more must be done. These Treasury people have wonderfully sensitive ways of finding out. They believed it went through to Bilbao; a steady stream of golden louis. I became more drastic. For three days running I had every passenger on every train thoroughly searched, all the luggage thoroughly sifted. I even probed amongst the coal on the engines. I searched the guards and porters and engine-drivers. The Government sent naval packets to patrol the Bidassoa, a destroyer to watch off Hendaye, and two others to cover the coast between there and Bordeaux. Not a boat put out to sea without being searched. We never found a coin. A fortnight later the prefect of the police sent for me. He was furious. He said that he regretted to say that he held me responsible. The Government were of opinion that the gold was going through by land, and they were demanding a scapegoat. You see the position I'm in, old man. That was only a week ago, and I've found nothing."

Tolozan looked very grave. He pulled at his thin grey imperial and muttered:

"Smuggling gold out of the country is a penal offence. A man or woman who does that is a traitor to France."

He was very indignant. Tolozan had a criminal code of his own. There were some crimes of which he was surprisingly tolerant. In his opinion the worst crimes were the unpatriotic ones. He would show no mercy to a traitor. Over this affair of Freycinet he wished to make his position clear. He had retired, and he had no intention of deliberately interfering. If he helped his old colleague with his advice, he must understand that he only did so out of his affection for him and for the safety of France. His name was not to be made use of, neither would he take any active part. He would merely observe, and if any illumination came to him he would pass it on to Freycinet to act upon. He would accompany him to the frontier, paying his own expenses.

Freycinet was naturally delighted at his friend's offer, and thanked him profusely. On their way to the station he told him of one unusual incident in the case.

"Naturally," he said, "I have been on the lookout for suspicious characters, and also for people who pass backwards and forwards frequently. Several of the latter I have examined and cross-examined, and gone to the trouble of certifying their statements. For the most part, they are quite innocuous, little traders, commercials, and genuine business people, but there is one old woman who mystifies me. She goes into Spain about twice a week and returns the next day. She always carries two umbrellas and no other luggage at all. The second time she went through I had her up. The woman officials searched her. I searched the umbrellas. There was nothing, nothing at all. She is patently an old crank of some sort. When I asked her why she carried two umbrellas she replied that one was for fair weather and the other for foul. The next time she gave some other reason, quite trivial and absurd. She is quite a character. She attracts a lot of attention in the Customs, talks loudly to everyone, cheeks the officers. They all know her, and are rather amused. They say 'Hullo, here comes Madame Fair and Foul!' "

"Have you followed up her case more closely?" asked Tolozan.

"No. As we know that she neither takes gold out of the country nor brings anything in, it hardly seems worth while. She says her name is Madame Ponsolle. She lives in Bayonne and goes across to visit her sick daughter in San Sebastian. She stays the night with the daughter and returns."

"Are the umbrellas always the same?"

"No, since you mention it, they are not. Sometimes she carries an old blue one with a black-and-white handle; sometimes a black one with a brown handle. I have not made a careful note, but it has struck me that the umbrellas are not always the same. What were you thinking?"

"They may be a sign. A message may be conveyed by such means."

"Yes— but, I don't see how a message could affect the smuggling of gold."

"It might be worth while to follow her. If the umbrellas were always the same, I agree we could dismiss her as a crank, but the fact that they are different— "

"Very good. I'll have her followed if she comes through again."

The two friends arrived at Irun the same afternoon, and Freycinet made arrangements to have all the passengers on the evening express examined. None of his subordinates had anything to report. The old lady with the two umbrellas had not been through again. Tolozan took up his position on the platform, the figure of an indolent, rather bored commercial traveller, with a leather attaché case, and a small pile of Parisian newspapers tucked under his arm. When the train came in, and the passengers were turned out, and headed into the Custom House, he also drifted thither. The noise was deafening— sleepy passengers grumbling at the disturbance, porters struggling with bags and trunks, everyone— including the inspectors— irritable and peevish. Tolozan was pushed hither and thither. Suddenly above the din he heard a shrill voice calling out:

"Oh, you devils! All this again, you miserable toads. As though a lady of my irreproachable character can't carry an umbrella without having all these magpies pecking at her. Ah, there he is! There's a pretty apple-cheeked young man. René! I'm sure his name is René. Come, come along. Hurry, little one. Much as we love you, we can't spend the night here."

Tolozan heard one of the porters mutter: "There she is again. There's old Madame Fair and Foul."

She was waving her umbrellas threateningly, the centre of an astonished group. Even the disgruntled passengers could not restrain a smile, and the officials shrugged their shoulders helplessly. She was rather a tall woman with a black shawl round her head and a shabby black frock. The shawl partly concealed her face. A mop of white hair dangled down, almost covering her eyes.

"Look at that extraordinary old woman," people were exclaiming. "All her luggage seems to consist of two umbrellas."

While they were indulging in this reflection, an official came in, and in an enormous voice bellowed out:

"All women to the right. All men to the left."

A search! Freycinet's work. Grumbles turned into curses, irritation into violent abuse. Scandalous! What was the meaning of it all? As though it wasn't bad enough to go through the Customs! Where was liberty, equality, fraternity? What were these busybodies thinking of? Sweating and groaning, the people poured into the adjoining rooms and quickly forgot all about the old woman with the umbrellas. Ten minutes later Tolozan drifted into a little office where Freycinet sat in state. Various officials were bustling in and out of the room.

"Well, old man?" he said, on observing Tolozan.

"I should like to examine the old lady's umbrellas."

"Certainly."

In a few minutes the umbrellas were brought. There was nothing about them to arouse the slightest suspicion except that one, with a jade green handle, looked more expensive than the costume of the old lady seemed to justify. The other was shabby enough, with a handle of brown wood. Tolozan naturally examined the frames carefully to see if there was any patent spring, or any possibility of gold being secreted. But he quickly realised that such an eventuality was quite out of the case. There was no spring, the stems were much too thin, and the green one was made of steel.

"Would you like to question her?" said Freycinet.

"No," replied Tolozan. "Have you detailed anyone to follow her?"

"Not yet."

"In that case it would amuse me to follow her myself, if you have no objection."

"My dear fellow, I should be delighted, if you really think— if you don't think it will be wasting your time."

"An idea occurred to me whilst I was watching the crowd in the Custom House. I would rather not say anything about it. I may be on the wrong track. But twenty-four hours' delay won't make such a grave difference."

"Very good. The Spanish train leaves in a quarter of an hour."

It is characteristic of Tolozan that he said very little about his trip over the border. His attitude all through was that he was a helper, not an actor, in this little drama. He wanted Freycinet to find things out for himself. He was merely assisting, suggesting. He did not return the next day. Indeed, he did not return for over a week; but on the third day Freycinet received a mysterious and cryptic message from him. It was scribbled across a half sheet of notepaper like a formula from a school text, and was initialled "T." It ran as follows:

"If one's attention is arrested by an old woman with two umbrellas one is apt to overlook a young man with a walking-stick."

Whatever did he mean? A young man with a walking-stick? Had Tolozan seen or heard anything? Why didn't he return? Freycinet continued his worrying tactics at the frontier town. He was becoming unpopular among his subordinates, who were getting tired of being nagged and sworn at by weary travellers. The old lady with the two umbrellas had returned as usual the next day and gone back to Bayonne.

"When he comes back I suppose I must keep my eyes skinned for a young man with a walking-stick," thought Freycinet, who held his old chief in almost reverential awe. Truly enough, the day after receiving the message, Madame Ponsolle appeared again. Freycinet followed her into the Custom House. There she was as garrulous and noisy as ever. Freycinet glanced around. There was the same crowd as usual— Basque peasants, clerks, shopkeepers, commercial travellers, a few English and American tourists. A young man with a walking-stick? Well, of course, there were several. Many of the men were carrying walking-sticks. However, he felt bound to act upon his friend's hint, so he went up to one young man who was standing close behind the old lady, and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Will you please come with me," he said.

The young man looked scared, but followed him quickly enough. In the office he said:

"Please show me your papers."

Maxim Quinson, aged 43, traveller in machine tools to Messrs. Charbonel et Cie, engineers of Bordeaux, visiting firms in San Sebastian, Bilbao. Yes, everything in order.

"Open your valise and remove your overcoat."

The young man did as he was ordered.

In the valise were a few catalogues and papers, clean linen, boots, and night attire. Nothing of any consequence. Neither did the contents of his clothing reveal anything more interesting.

"This is ridiculous," thought Freycinet, "if I've got to arrest every man who carries a walking-stick."

The little traveller was sent on his journey.

A few days later Tolozan returned.

"Has the old lady with the two umbrellas been through again?" was the first question he asked.

"No," replied Freycinet. "But I should think she is about due. Have you anything to report, Tolozan?"

Tolozan looked relieved, and slightly mysterious. He plucked at his beard thoughtfully.

"I would rather wait till after the evening train has been in before I express any opinion. In the meantime, let us see whether Madame Delarme can give us an omelette and a ragout. That Spanish food always nauseates me." Tolozan was in gay humour over their meal, and refused to discuss the affair of smuggled gold.

When the evening train came in, however, they both were on the watch, and mingling with the crowd in the Custom House.

"As I thought," muttered Tolozan. The old lady with the two umbrellas was as noisy and active as ever. Freycinet looked eagerly to see if the young man with the walking-stick was accompanying her. He was not. But, of course, there were other men with walking-sticks struggling and gesticulating near the barrier.

"As I thought," again muttered Tolozan.

Freycinet glanced quickly at his friend. He was regarding a pale middle-aged man standing behind the old lady.

"That's not the man who accompanied her the other day," whispered Freycinet.

"No? Does it occur to you that anything else is similar?"

"No-o, I can't say it does. Does it occur to you?"

"Only this— although it's not the same man, it's the same walking-stick."

"Good God!"

"Wait a minute, Freycinet! Isn't it more important for the Government to know where the gold comes from rather than where it goes to? Think. As a matter of fact, I believe I know where it goes to."

"You know where it goes to! You make me feel like a baby, Tolozan. Do you mean to say that the gold is actually in that stick? And I had it in my hands the other day!"

"I have every reason to believe that it is. But there is another point. I doubt whether the man who is carrying it knows what he is carrying. There's only one person in this crowd who knows and that's the old woman with the two umbrellas— the decoy."

Freycinet braced himself up. He knew that his friend expected him to act, that he was leaving it to him. He walked quickly out of the Custom House. In a few minutes an official entered and announced that everyone was to be searched again. He asked Tolozan to accompany him to his little office. "I'm simply doing this so that the old lady shan't know we have found out," he said to Tolozan, with the glance of a terrier seeking approval from his master. In a few minutes the man with the walking-stick was brought in.

"Your papers, please, and then open your bag and remove your coat," said Freycinet; and then casually: "What a very handsome cane! Allow me!"

He took the cane and examined it. It certainly was handsome. It was made of some very hard South American wood— possibly snake wood. It had a silver knob and a broad silver band a few inches from the top. It was uncommonly heavy. Freycinet gave the knob several twists, but nothing happened. Then he tried the silver band. At the third attempt it moved. Exerting great pressure, he succeeded in making it revolve.

"I observe you carry a sword-stick, Monsieur Grimaux," he remarked.

The man looked very agitated. He was standing in his shirt-sleeves. He mumbled:

"It doesn't belong to me, inspector. I borrowed it."

"Ah! Someone is very trusting. What is all this?"

The top of the stick had come off. Freycinet was pouring out on the deal office table a stream of gold louis pieces!

The expression on the man's face was a strange mixture of amazement and fear. He burst into a sob.

"I know nothing about it, inspector. I know nothing about it."

"You know that smuggling gold over the frontier is a penal offence?"

"Yes, I've heard so, monsieur, but I know nothing about it. I didn't know the cane had gold concealed in it. Someone asked me to bring it. I've a wife and three children, monsieur. I'm a poor man. I've never done anything dishonest. I swear, inspector, I know nothing about it."

"Come, come, pull yourself together. We want to get at the truth. It will pay you to be quite candid. If you lie you will go to prison. If you speak the exact truth, we may let you go. Tell us exactly how you came by this."

The man was a poor specimen. His teeth were chattering. He blurted out:

"They threatened to kill me if I blabbed."

"Go on. Tell us the exact story."

"I'm a traveller in hosiery," he stammered. "I bought my ticket for Bilbao at the ticket-office in Bayonne, where I come from. Just after I had got it a lady comes up to me and says: 'Excuse me, monsieur; I heard you say you were going to Bilbao. I wonder whether you would do me a favour?' 'Charmed, madamoiselle,' I replied. She handed me the walking-stick and said, 'Will you take this stick to my husband? He values it very much. He will give you two hundred francs for your kindness.' I said I was delighted. I am a poor man, and I have three children, one ailing. She said, 'Wait two minutes and I'll get you the address.' She disappeared in the crowd. A few minutes later an individual came up to me that I didn't like the look of at all. He looked like a bull-fighter. He said: 'The lady can't come back, but it's all right. Your instructions are this— you've got to hang on to that cane like grim death and never let it out of your sight. On the platform you'll see an old woman with two umbrellas. You go up to her and let her see you've got the stick, but you don't speak to her. You keep close to her all the way to Bilbao, especially in the Customs. The next morning after you get to Bilbao, you walk along the Calle Major at twelve-fifteen. Just before you come to San Stefano you'll meet a man with a blue rosette in his buttonhole. You hand him the stick, and he'll give you an envelope containing two hundred francs. That's all you have to do. It's money easily made. Only don't let there be any nonsense.' He held his face close to mine and said in a horrible voice: 'If you footle the little arrangement you'll get a knife between your ribs.' And there it is, Monsieur Inspector. I've footled it. I'm in danger. Oh! I wish I'd never seen the stick."

Freycinet counted out the gold pieces. There were exactly two hundred and seventy-eight. They fitted perfectly into the hollow of the stick, which had obviously been made for them. He deliberately poured them all back into the stick and snapped the top to. Then, to the amazement of the traveller in hosiery, he handed it back to him and said:

"We don't want you to be killed, Monsieur Grimaux; continue your journey and carry out your instructions, and not a word of this to anyone."

When this dazed individual had managed to escape from the room, Freycinet turned to Tolozan and said:

"I see your point. It is more necessary to find out where this gold comes from than where it goes to."

He rang a bell and a subordinate appeared.

"Tardieu," he said, "follow that man who has just gone out of the bureau with a kit-bag and walking-stick. He's going to Bilbao. But I want you to follow the stick and not the man. When he gives it up, follow the person he has given it to, and come back and report as soon as possible."

When the sub-inspector had gone, Tolozan nodded sagely.

There was nothing more to do that night, so the friends adjourned to a local café, and Tolozan was quite eloquent upon the new theories of Professor Einstein, the influence of Comte upon modern theological reactions, and the splendour of rum omelettes as supplied by the stepmother of one of his daughter's school friends. Freycinet was sometimes a little abstracted during these dissertations. He could not get his mind off the case in hand. While Tolozan was talking about relativity, he was thinking:

"How am I going to get hold of the real culprits? The old lady with the two umbrellas is not going to run undue risks. A clever idea to get all this smuggling done for you by innocent people. Who is he? Who gets hold of the gold in the first place? Where does it go to? It's all so disconnected. Whoever I arrest will say they know nothing about it. There must be some big organisation at the back somewhere. Who is it? What does Tolozan think? Damn Einstein!"

Three days later Tardieu returned. This was his story. He had followed the traveller in hosiery to Bilbao. The man had gone to a quiet hotel, where Tardieu also secured a room. He had gone to bed early and taken the walking-stick with him. The next morning he had taken it out. He appeared very agitated. He sat about on the boulevards, and kept on looking at his watch. At twelve o'clock he had walked quickly to the Calle Major. There he had met a man with a blue rosette in his buttonhole. He handed the cane over to him, and received an envelope in exchange. Tardieu followed the man with the blue rosette. He entered a restaurant and ordered lunch. In a few minutes another man entered and joined him at table. They talked quietly and were quick over their lunch. When it was finished they parted, but Tardieu observed that in the process of departure they had exchanged walking-sticks. He followed the second man, who hailed a cab. Tardieu also got a cab and bade the driver follow. They drove up to the commercial centre of the Town. The man got out and entered a building divided up into various business offices. He went up on the first floor and entered a room labelled "Private." It was part of a suite of rooms belonging to a big banking concern connected with one of the South American republics. Tolozan would not tell the name of this republic, but I gathered that it was a country whose Government had never been very friendly to France.

Anyhow, in these offices Tardieu lost sight of the walking-stick. The individual he had tracked returned without it in about twenty minutes' time and drove away. The detective watched the building for twenty-four hours, and though clerks and officials were coming and going all the time no one came out with the walking-stick. He then thought it advisable to report to his chief as he had been instructed to do so as soon as possible.

"H'm," thought Freycinet. "I've bungled it again. We have lost sight of the stick. To find it on its way back to Paris will be like looking for a needle in a haystack."

However, there was nothing to do but to lie in wait for it at Irun station and trust to luck. He detailed two inspectors to go through each train as it came through, and to search for the stick in most unlikely places. He and Tardieu took up positions in the Custom House. Tolozan wandered languidly hither and thither. On the second day, on the morning train the old lady with the two umbrellas appeared, and the staff doubled their exertions. She seemed less talkative than usual, and was attracting little attention. Neither did there appear to be anyone dancing attendance upon her. Several walking-sticks appeared in the Custom House, but not one that resembled the all-important one to the slightest degree. Freycinet was beginning to feel discouraged. He felt that his whole career depended upon his success over this search. To fail would be a terrible misfortune, but to fail under the eye of Tolozan, and helped by his advice, would make the position doubly bitter. He rushed hither and thither like a terrier on a rabbit warren. It irritated him at one moment to observe Tolozan idly chatting with a tall angular English clergyman, a ridiculous foreign tourist in a mackintosh, and carrying the inevitable bag of golf-clubs. As he passed he heard Tolozan droning about "mashies" and "niblicks." Why wasn't he helping in the hunt? What had he come from Bordeaux for? In five minutes' time the express would be leaving and another opportunity lost. Five minutes, four minutes, three minutes— someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was Tolozan. Tolozan, with a slight flush of excitement tingling his normal lethargy. He nodded in the direction of the train.

"In the third coach," he whispered. "Bound for Paris."

"What is that?"

"The English curé, the golf player."

"What about him?"

"He's got the walking-stick in his golf-bag."

A horn was blowing, warning people of the departure of the train.

"En voiture! En voiture!"

Freycinet leaped upon that train like a cat springing at a bird. It was very crowded, and he had to stand in the corridor. He had to stand in the corridor nearly all the way to Paris, but he felt that the discomfort was thoroughly justified. In a corner seat lolled the angular English clergyman, with his golf-clubs in a bag on the rack above him. Freycinet had plenty of time to consider how to act. He wandered about the corridor and smoked until lunch was served in the dining-car. As he expected, the clergyman was one of the first to make a bee-line for that abode of material refreshment. When he had gone, Freycinet slipped into his seat. He was glad of the rest. He waited a few minutes; then he reached up and pulled things about on the rack, as though searching for something. The action was sufficient to enable him to verify Tolozan's statement. There was the walking-stick, buried amongst mashies and niblicks and drivers. He smiled contentedly and read a newspaper. At the end of an hour the reverend gentleman returned. Freycinet jumped up and said in English:

"Pardon, sir. I had not the good fortune to secure a seat, so I took advantage of your absence to take a little rest."

"Quayte! Quayte! Don't let me disturb you."

"Ah, no, monsieur. I should not think of usurping— excuse me."

The little scrimmage in manners was sufficient to inaugurate a formal acquaintanceship. They talked about the weather, and the luncheon service on the train, and the condition of the greens on the San Sebastian golf course. Then Freycinet went in to lunch himself. He had no desire to be more intimate with the clergyman than the exigencies of the case demanded. He spoke to him once or twice on the journey to Paris, but it was not until the train was slackening up on its last run through that long tunnel into the Gare Quai d'Orsay that Freycinet suddenly whispered:

"Excuse me, monsieur. In your golf-bag you have a walking-stick. Will you be good enough to tell me how you came by it?"

The clergyman looked surprised, hesitated, and said blushingly,

"Ha— H'm— yes. Quayte. Quayte so. Rather peculiah affair. Man at San Sebastian station— ah— came up to me and asked me if I would object to taking it to Paris. Some other— ah— um— fellow at the Quai d'Orsay with an ambah tiepin in a blue tie would meet me and ask for it— very old and— ah— valuable stick— heirloom— ha— h'm— yes."

The man was at the station all right, and the clergyman departed.

(If the Reverend Peter Dorking, of Instill Rectory, near Dewsbury, should ever read these lines, let him stand up and take note that he was very nearly involved in a very serious case. Moreover, he might just as well have had the courage to speak the truth. There was nothing to be ashamed of in the fact that it was a lady who gave him the stick and not a man!)

In any case, with the advent of the man with the "ambah" tiepin, Freycinet's interest in the clergyman vanished. He became very alert. As I said before, I had to dig all these details out of Tolozan. He contended that the case was the making of Freycinet, and that he showed great acumen and energy over it. Of course, he took no credit for any of it to himself. However that may be, it is certain that Freycinet is now held in high esteem by the Police Intelligence Headquarters in Paris, as well as by certain members of the Government. The disappointing thing is that I am pledged in secrecy to Tolozan not to reveal a certain name. When he came to it he seemed so reluctant to mention it that he eventually wrote it down on the back of an envelope and then tore it into little pieces with an angry gesture. The sight of that name made me gasp.

It appears that the same procedure was followed as that which had taken place in Bilbao, when Tardieu followed up the delivery of the walking-stick. The man with the amber tiepin drove to a small café in the Rue de la Boetie. There he was joined by a man and a girl. They had two drinks together, and then the man and the girl departed, and the walking-stick again changed hands. Freycinet nearly missed them, owing to the difficulty of picking up a taxi, but he got one just as they were nearly out of sight. A Parisian taxi-driver requires no encouragement to drive like a madman, because that is his normal method. The cabs raced up the Champs Elysées and turned to the left. They drove down the Avenue Malakof, and then the front cab began to pull up.

Freycinet said that when he observed the house where the cab stopped he felt his heart beating violently. He knew the gorgeous Renaissance edifice quite well by sight. It belonged to one of the wealthiest and most influential men in Paris, a member of the Government, and a high official at the Treasury. We will call him Monsieur P—. Freycinet could not believe but that there must be some mistake, and then certain rumours and stories recurred to him. The two people departed, and an hour later he saw Monsieur P—  himself come out of the house and enter his car. He was carrying the walking-stick in his hand. Freycinet had dismissed his cab, and there were none others about. He stopped and pretended to light a cigarette. He heard Monsieur P—  say:

"Drive first to the Treasury."

It was easy to see how the gold of the Republic was leaking away!

In describing this incident Monsieur Tolozan looked as though he were still tingling with the sense of outrage; then he smiled wistfully, and added:

"As you may imagine, my friend, gold was not the only thing at the back of this affair. As occurs not infrequently in our beloved France, a woman was the agent of a man's destruction. They never arrested Monsieur P—. With one so highly placed a different procedure is usually adopted. He was simply notified that there was to be an interpellation, that certain facts were to be made public. You may remember the unfortunate affair of Monsieur P—. He slept in a small room on the first floor in that house in the Avenue Malakof. One night, a week after these events, he went to bed as usual, but some servant had been tinkering with the top of the stove which heated the room. Disgracefully careless, these servants! The gas trickled out— hour after hour passed. Poor fellow! He was found quite dead by his man-servant in the morning. A deplorable ending to a brilliant career...deplorable, most deplorable."

"But the woman?" I ventured to interject.

"Ah, yes, the woman. Truly...As you know, Monsieur P—  was an elderly married man of irreproachable social character. He had two sons, one in the Army and the other in the Diplomatic Service. This woman suddenly appeared, no one quite knows from where. She was a Spanish woman, not particularly beautiful, but she exercised strange powers over many men. She was a dancer and actress, and went by the name of 'Juanita.' Indeed, she still sings and dances at our best variety theatres. She dances beautifully. If it would not bore you, we might go together this evening to see her. She is dancing at the Casino de Paris."

"That would be delightful. But tell me, Monsieur Tolozan, was this woman in any way responsible for P—'s criminal smuggling of gold?"

"We have every reason to believe so, but we could never bring anything home to her. She is clever, very clever. We know that, although of Spanish stock, she comes originally from that South American State I have mentioned. She has wealthy and influential friends there, and she returns every year. Paris harbours many such women. She is a clever actress on the stage, but an even cleverer one off."

"You have had experience of it?"

"On one occasion, yes."

"When was that?"

"She was the old lady with the two umbrellas."

"But, good Heavens! Tolozan, why haven't they arrested her?"

"Arrested! Tell me, what did she ever do except cross the front with one superfluous umbrella? There's nothing criminal in that. Come, let us go to the Casino. You will be delighted."

_________________

14: My Friend the Murderer

Arthur Conan Doyle

1859-1930

London Society, Christmas 1882

"NUMBER 481 is no better, doctor," said the head-warder, in a slightly reproachful accent, looking in round the corner of my door.

"Confound 481" I responded from behind the pages of the Australian Sketcher.

"And 61 says his tubes are paining him. Couldn't you do anything for him?"

"He is a walking drug-shop," said I. "He has the whole British pharmacopeae inside him. I believe his tubes are as sound as yours are."

"Then there's 7 and 108, they are chronic," continued the warder, glancing down a blue slip of paper. "And 28 knocked off work yesterday— said lifting things gave him a stitch in the side. I want you to have a look at him, if you don't mind, doctor. There's 81, too— him that killed John Adamson in the Corinthian brig— he's been carrying on awful in the night, shrieking and yelling, he has, and no stopping him either."

"All right, I'll have a look at him afterward," I said, tossing my paper carelessly aside, and pouring myself out a cup of coffee. "Nothing else to report, I suppose, warder?"

The official protruded his head a little further into the room. "Beg pardon, doctor," he said, in a confidential tone, "but I notice as 82 has a bit of a cold, and it would be a good excuse for you to visit him and have a chat, maybe."

The cup of coffee was arrested half-way to my lips as I stared in amazement at the man's serious face.

"An excuse?" I said. "An excuse? What the deuce are you talking about, McPherson? You see me trudging about all day at my practice, when I'm not looking after the prisoners, and coming back every night as tired as a dog, and you talk about finding an excuse for doing more work."

"You'd like it, doctor," said Warder McPherson, insinuating one of his shoulders into the room. "That man's story's worth listening to if you could get him to tell it, though he's not what you'd call free in his speech. Maybe you don't know who 82 is?"

"No, I don't, and I don't care either," I answered, in the conviction that some local ruffian was about to be foisted upon me as a celebrity.

"He's Maloney," said the warder, "him that turned Queen's evidence after the murders at Bluemansdyke."

"You don't say so?" I ejaculated, laying down my cup in astonishment. I had heard of this ghastly series of murders, and read an account of them in a London magazine long before setting foot in the colony. I remembered that the atrocities committed had thrown the Burke and Hare crimes completely into the shade, and that one of the most villainous of the gang had saved his own skin by betraying his companions. "Are you sure?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, it's him right enough. Just you draw him out a bit, and he'll astonish you. He's a man to know, is Maloney; that's to say, in moderation;" and the head grinned, bobbed, and disappeared, leaving me to finish my breakfast and ruminate over what I had heard.

The surgeonship of an Australian prison is not an enviable position. It may be endurable in Melbourne or Sydney, but the little town of Perth has few attractions to recommend it, and those few had been long exhausted. The climate was detestable, and the society far from congenial. Sheep and cattle were the staple support of the community; and their prices, breeding, and diseases the principal topic of conversation. Now as I, being an outsider, possessed neither the one nor the other, and was utterly callous to the new "dip" and the "rot" and other kindred topics, I found myself in a state of mental isolation, and was ready to hail anything which might relieve the monotony of my existence. Maloney, the murderer, had at least some distinctiveness and individuality in his character, and might act as a tonic to a mind sick of the commonplaces of existence. I determined that I should follow the warder's advice, and take the excuse for making his acquaintance. When, therefore, I went upon my usual matutinal round, I turned the lock of the door which bore the convict's number upon it, and walked into the cell.

The man was lying in a heap upon his rough bed as I entered, but, uncoiling his long limbs, he started up and stared at me with an insolent look of defiance on his face which augured badly for our interview. He had a pale, set face, with sandy hair and a steely-blue eye, with something feline in its expression. His frame was tall and muscular, though there was a curious bend in his shoulders, which almost amounted to a deformity. An ordinary observer meeting him in the street might have put him down as a well-developed man, fairly handsome, and of studious habits— even in the hideous uniform of the rottenest convict establishment he imparted a certain refinement to his carriage which marked him out among the inferior ruffians around him.

"I'm not on the sick-list," he said, gruffly. There was something in the hard, rasping voice which dispelled all softer illusions, and made me realize that I was face to face with the man of the Lena Valley and Bluemansdyke, the bloodiest bushranger that ever stuck up a farm or cut the throats of its occupants.

"I know you're not," I answered. "Warder McPherson told me you had a cold, though, and I thought I'd look in and see you."

"Blast Warder McPherson, and blast you, too!" yelled the convict, in a paroxysm of rage. "Oh, that's right," he added in a quieter voice; "hurry away; report me to the governor, do! Get me another six months or so—that's your game."

"I'm not going to report you," I said.

"Eight square feet of ground," he went on, disregarding my protest, and evidently working himself into a fury again. "Eight square feet, and I can't have that without being talked to and stared at, and— oh, blast the whole crew of you!" and he raised his two clinched hands above, his head and shook them in passionate invective.

"You've got a curious idea of hospitality," I remarked, determined not to lose my temper, and saying almost the first thing that came to my tongue.

To my surprise the words had an extraordinary effect upon him. He seemed completely staggered at my assuming the proposition for which he had been so fiercely contending— namely, that the room in which he stood was his own.

"I beg your pardon," he said; "I didn't mean to be rude. Won't you take a seat?" and he motioned toward a rough trestle, which formed the head-piece of his couch.

I sat down, rather astonished at the sudden change. I don't know that I liked Maloney better under this new aspect. The murderer had, it is true, disappeared for the nonce, but there was something in the smooth tones and obsequious manner which powerfully suggested the witness of the queen, who had stood up and sworn away the lives of his companions in crime.

"How's your chest?" I asked, putting on my professional air.

"Come, drop it, doctor— drop it!" he answered, showing a row of white teeth as he resumed his seat upon the side of the bed. "It wasn't anxiety after my precious health that brought you along here; that story won't wash at all. You came to have a look at Wolf Tone Maloney, forger, murderer, Sydney-slider, ranger, and government peach. That's about my figure, ain't it? There it is, plain and straight; there's nothing mean about me."

He paused as if he expected me to say something; but as I remained silent, he repeated once or twice, "There's nothing mean about me."

"And why shouldn't I?" he suddenly yelled, his eyes gleaming and his whole satanic nature reasserting itself. "We were bound to swing, one and all, and they were none the worse if I saved myself by turning against them. Every man for himself, say I, and the devil take the luckiest. You haven't a plug of tobacco, doctor, have you?"

He tore at the piece of "Barrett's" which I handed him, as ravenously as a wild beast. It seemed to have the effect of soothing his nerves, for he settled himself down in the bed and re-assumed his former deprecating manner.

"You wouldn't like it yourself, you know, doctor," he said: "it's enough to make any man a little queer in his temper. I'm in for six months this time for assault, and very sorry I shall be to go out again, I can tell you. My mind's at ease in here; but when I'm outside, what with the government and what with Tattooed Tom, of Hawkesbury, there's no chance of a quiet life."

"Who is he?" I asked.

"He's the brother of John Grimthorpe, the same that was condemned on my evidence; and an infernal scamp he was, too! Spawn of the devil, both of them! This tattooed one is a murderous ruffian, and he swore to have my blood after that trial. It's seven year ago, and he's following me yet; I know he is, though he lies low and keeps dark. He came up to me in Ballarat in '75; you can see on the back of my hand here where the bullet clipped me. He tried again in '76, at Port Philip, but I got the drop on him and wounded him badly. He knifed me in '79, though, in a bar at Adelaide, and that made our account about level. He's loafing round again now, and he'll let daylight into me— unless— unless by some extraordinary chance some one does as much for him." And Maloney gave a very ugly smile.

"I don't complain of him so much," he continued. "Looking at it in his way, no doubt it is a sort of family matter that can hardly be neglected. It's the government that fetches me. When I think of what I've done for this country, and then of what this country has done for me, it makes me fairly wild— clean drives me off my head. There's no gratitude nor common decency left, doctor!"

He brooded over his wrongs for a few minutes, and then proceeded to lay them before me in detail.

"Here's nine men," he said; "they've been murdering and killing for a matter of three years, and maybe a life a week wouldn't more than average the work that they've done. The government catches them and the government tries them, but they can't convict; and why?— because the witnesses have all had their throats cut, and the whole job's been very neatly done. What happens then? Up comes a citizen called Wolf Tone Maloney; he says, 'The country needs me, and here I am.' And with that he gives his evidence, convicts the lot, and enables the beaks to hang them. That's what I did. There's nothing mean about me! And now what does the country do in return? Dogs me, sir, spies on me, watches me night and day, turns against the very man that worked so very hard for it. There's something mean about that, anyway. I didn't expect them to knight me, nor to make me colonial secretary; but, damn it! I did expect that they would let me alone!"

"Well," I remonstrated, "if you choose to break laws and assault people, you can't expect it to be looked over on account of former services."

"I don't refer to my present imprisonment, sir," said Maloney, with dignity. "It's the life I've been leading since that cursed trial that takes the soul out of me. Just you sit there on that trestle, and I'll tell you all about it, and then look me in the face and tell me that I've been treated fair by the police."

I shall endeavor to transcribe the experience of the convict in his own words, as far as I can remember them, preserving his curious perversions of right and wrong. I can answer for the truth of his facts, whatever may be said for his deductions from them. Months afterward, Inspector H. W. Hann, formerly governor of the jail at Dunedin, showed me entries in his ledger which corroborated every statement Maloney reeled the story off in a dull, monotonous voice, with his head sunk upon his breast and his hands between his knees. The glitter of his serpentlike eyes was the only sign of the emotions which were stirred up by the recollection of the events which he narrated.

YOU'VE read of Bluemansdyke (he began, with some pride in his tone). We made it hot while it lasted; but they ran us to earth at last, and a trap called Braxton, with a damned Yankee, took the lot of us. That was in New Zealand, of course, and they took us down to Dunedin, and there they were convicted and hanged. One and all they put up their hands in the dock, and cursed me till your blood would have run cold to hear them— which was scurvy treatment, seeing that we had all been pals together; but they were a blackguard lot, and thought only of themselves. I think it is as well that they were hung.

They took me back to Dunedin Jail, and clapped me into the old cell. The only difference they made was, that I had no work to do and was well fed. I stood this for a week or two, until one day the governor was making his rounds, and I put the matter to him.

"How's this?" I said. "My conditions were a free pardon, and you're keeping me here against the law."

He gave a sort of a smile. "Should you like very much to get out?" he asked.

"So much," said I, "that unless you open that door I'll have an action against you for illegal detention."

He seemed a bit astonished by my resolution.

"You're very anxious to meet your death," he said.

"What d'ye mean?" I asked.

"Come here, and you'll know what I mean," he answered. And he led me down the passage to a window that overlooked the door of the prison. "Look at that!" said he.

I looked out, and there were a dozen or so rough-looking fellows standing outside the street, some of them smoking, some playing cards on the pavement. When they saw me they gave a yell and crowded round the door, shaking their fists and hooting.

"They wait for you, watch and watch about," said the governor. "They're the executive of the vigilance committee. However, since you are determined to go, I can't stop you."

"D'ye call this a civilized land," I cried, "and let a man be murdered in cold blood in open daylight?"

When I said this the governor and the warder and every fool in the place grinned, as if a man's life was a rare good joke.

"You've got the law on your side," says the governor; "so we won't detain you any longer. Show him out, warder."

He'd have done it, too, the black-hearted villain, if I hadn't begged and prayed and offered to pay for my board and lodging, which is more than any prisoner ever did before me. He let me stay on those conditions; and for three months I was caged up there with every larrikin in the township clamoring at the other side of the wall. That was pretty treatment for a man that had served his country!

At last, one morning up came the governor again.

"Well, Maloney," he said, "how long are you going to honor us with your society?"

I could have put a knife into his cursed body, and would, too, if we had been alone in the bush; but I had to smile, and smooth him and flatter, for I feared that he might have me sent out.

"You're an infernal rascal," he said; those were his very words, to a man that had helped him all he knew how. "I don't want any rough justice here, though; and I think I see my way to getting you out of Dunedin."

"I'll never forget you, governor," said I; "and, by God! I never will."

"I don't want your thanks nor your gratitude," he answered; "it's not for your sake that I do it, but simply to keep order in the town. There's a steamer starts from the West Quay to Melbourne to-morrow, and we'll get you aboard it. She is advertised at five in the morning, so have yourself in readiness."

I packed up the few things I had, and was smuggled out by a back door, just before daybreak. I hurried down, took my ticket under the name of Isaac Smith, and got safely aboard the Melbourne boat. I remember hearing her screw grinding into the water as the warps were cast loose, and looking back at the lights of Dunedin as I leaned upon the bulwarks, with the pleasant thought that I was leaving them behind me forever. It seemed to me that a new world was before me, and that all my troubles had been cast off. I went down below and had some coffee, and came up again feeling better than I had done since the morning that I woke to find that cursed Irishman that took me standing over me with a six-shooter.

Day had dawned by that time, and we were steaming along by the coast, well out of sight of Dunedin. I loafed about for a couple of hours, and when the sun got well up some of the other passengers came on deck and joined me. One of them, a little perky sort of fellow, took a good long look at me, and then came over and began talking.

"Mining, I suppose?" says he.

"Yes," I says.

"Made your pile?" he asks.

"Pretty fair," says I.

"I was at it myself," he says; "I worked at the Nelson fields for three months, and spent all I made in buying a salted claim which busted up the second day. I went at it again, though, and struck it rich; but when the gold wagon was going down to the settlements, it was stuck up by those cursed rangers, and not a red cent left."

"That was a bad job," I says.

"Broke me— ruined me clean. Never mind, I've seen them all hanged for it; that makes it easier to bear. There's only one left— the villain that gave the evidence. I'd die happy if I could come across him. There are two things I have to do if I meet him."

"What's that?" says I, carelessly.

"I've got to ask him where the money lies— they never had time to make away with it, and it's cachéd somewhere in the mountains— and then I've got to stretch his neck for him, and send his soul down to join the men that he betrayed."

It seemed to me that I knew something about that caché, and I felt like laughing; but he was watching me, and it struck me that he had a nasty, vindictive kind of mind.

"I'm going up on the bridge," I said, for he was not a man whose acquaintance I cared much about making.

He wouldn't hear of my leaving him, though. "We're both miners," he says, "and we're pals for the voyage. Come down to the bar. I'm not too poor to shout."

I couldn't refuse him well, and we went down together; and that was the beginning of the trouble. What harm was I doing any one on the ship? All I asked for was a quiet life, leaving others alone and getting left alone myself. No man could ask fairer than that. And now just you listen to what came of it.

We were passing the front of the ladies' cabin, on our way to the saloon, when out comes a servant lass— a freckled currency she-devil— with a baby in her arms. We were brushing past her, when she gave a scream like a railway whistle, and nearly dropped the kid. My nerves gave a sort of a jump when I heard that scream, but I turned and begged her pardon, letting on that I thought I might have trod on her foot. I knew the game was up, though, when I saw her white face, and her leaning against the door and pointing.

"It's him!" she cried; "it's him! I saw him in the court-house. Oh, don't let him hurt the baby!"

"Who is it?" asked the steward and half a dozen others in a breath.

"It's him— Maloney— Maloney, the murderer— oh, take him away— take him away!"

I don't rightly remember what happened just at that moment. The furniture and me seemed to get kind of mixed, and there was cursing, and smashing, and some one shouting for his gold, and a general stamping round. When I got steadied a bit, I found somebody's hand in my mouth. From what I gathered afterward, I concluded that it belonged to that same little man with the vicious way of talking. He got some of it out again, but that was because the others were choking me. A poor chap can get no fair play in this world when once he is down— still, I think he will remember me till the day of his death— longer, I hope.

They dragged me out on to the poop and held a damned court-martial— on me, mind you; me, that had thrown over my pals in order to serve them. What were they to do with me? Some said this, some said that; but it ended by the captain deciding to send me ashore. The ship stopped, they lowered a boat, and I was hoisted in, the whole gang of them hooting at me from over the bulwarks, I saw the man I spoke of tying up his hand, though, and I felt that things might be worse.

I changed my opinion before we got to the land. I had reckoned on the shore being deserted, and that I might make my way inland; but the ship had stopped too near the Heads, and a dozen beach-combers and such like had come down to the water's edge and were staring at us, wondering what the boat was after. When we got to the edge of the surf the cockswain hailed them, and after singing out who I was, he and his men threw me into the water. You may well look surprised—neck and crop into ten feet of water, with sharks as thick as green parrots in the bush, and I heard them laughing as I floundered to the shore.

I soon saw it was a worse job than ever. As I came scrambling out through the weeds, I was collared by a big chap with a velveteen coat, and half a dozen others got round me and held me fast. Most of them looked simple fellows enough, and I was not afraid of them; but there was one in a cabbage-tree hat that had a very nasty expression on his face, and the big man seemed to be chummy with him.

They dragged me up the beach, and then they let go their hold of me and stood round in a circle.

"Well, mate," says the man with the hat, "we've been looking out for you some time in these parts."

"And very good of you, too," I answers.

"None of your jaw," says he. "Come, boys, what shall it be— hanging, drowning, or shooting? Look sharp!"

This looked a bit too like business. "No, you don't!" I said. "I've got government protection, and it'll be murder."

"That's what they call it," answered the one in the velveteen coat, as cheery as a piping crow.

"And you're going to murder me for being a ranger?"

"Ranger be damned!" said the man. "We're going to hang you for peaching against your pals; and that's an end of the palaver."

They slung a rope round my neck and dragged me up to the edge of the bush. There were some big she-oaks and blue-gums, and they pitched on one of these for the wicked deed. They ran the rope over a branch, tied my hands, and told me to say my prayers. It seemed as if it was all up; but Providence interfered to save me. It sounds nice enough sitting here and telling about it, sir; but it was sick work to stand with nothing but the beach in front of you, and the long white line of surf, with the steamer in the distance, and a set of bloody-minded villains round you thirsting for your life.

I never thought I'd owe anything good to the police; but they saved me that time. A troop of them were riding from Hawkes Point Station to Dunedin, and hearing that something was up, they came down through the bush and interrupted the proceedings. I've heard some bands in my time, doctor, but I never heard music like the jingle of those traps' spurs and harness as they galloped out on to the open. They tried to hang me even then, but the police were too quick for them; and the man with the hat got one over the head with the flat of a sword. I was clapped on to a horse, and before evening I found myself in my old quarters in the city jail.

The governor wasn't to be done, though. He was determined to get rid of me, and I was equally anxious to see the last of him. He waited a week or so until the excitement had begun to die away, and then he smuggled me aboard a three-masted schooner bound to Sydney with tallow and hides.

We got far away to sea without a hitch, and things began to look a bit more rosy. I made sure that I had seen the last of the prison, anyway. The crew had a sort of an idea who I was, and if there'd been any rough weather, they'd have hove me overboard, like enough; for they were a rough, ignorant lot, and had a notion that I brought bad luck to the ship. We had a good passage, however, and I was landed safe and sound upon Sydney Quay.

Now just you listen to what happened next. You'd have thought they would have been sick of ill-using me and following me by this time— wouldn't you, now? Well, just you listen. It seems that a cursed steamer started from Dunedin to Sydney on the very day we left, and got in before us, bringing news that I was coming. Blessed if they hadn't called a meeting— a regular mass-meeting— at the docks to discuss about it, and I marched right into it when I landed. They didn't take long about arresting me, and I listened to all the speeches and resolutions. If I'd been a prince there couldn't have been more excitement. The end of all was that they agreed that it wasn't right that New Zealand should be allowed to foist her criminals upon her neighbors, and that I was to be sent back again by the next boat. So they posted me off again as if I was a damned parcel; and after another eight-hundred-mile journey I found myself back for the third time moving in the place that I started from.

By this time I had begun to think that I was going to spend the rest of my existence traveling about from one port to another. Every man's hand seemed turned against me, and there was no peace or quiet in any direction. I was about sick of it by the time I had come back; and if I could have taken to the bush I'd have done it, and chanced it with my old pals. They were too quick for me, though, and kept me under lock and key; but I managed, in spite of them, to negotiate that caché I told you of, and sewed the gold up in my belt. I spent another month in jail, and then they slipped me aboard a bark that was bound for England.

This time the crew never knew who I was, but the captain had a pretty good idea, though he didn't let on to me that he had any suspicions. I guessed from the first that the man was a villain. We had a fair passage, except a gale or two off the Cape; and I began to feel like a free man when I saw the blue loom of the old country, and the saucy little pilot-boat from Falmouth dancing toward us over the waves. We ran down the Channel, and before we reached Gravesend I had agreed with the pilot that he should take me ashore with him when he left. It was at this time that the captain showed me that I was right in thinking him a meddling, disagreeable man. I got my things packed, such as they were, and left him talking earnestly to the pilot, while I went below for my breakfast. When I came up again we were fairly into the mouth of the river, and the boat in which I was to have gone ashore had left us. The skipper said the pilot had forgotten me; but that was too thin, and I began to fear that all my old troubles were going to commence once more.

It was not long before my suspicions were confirmed. A boat darted out from the side of the river, and a tall cove with a long black beard came aboard. I heard him ask the mate whether they didn't need a mud-pilot to take them up in the reaches, but it seemed to me that he was a man who would know a deal more about handcuffs than he did about steering, so I kept away from him. He came across the deck, however, and made some remark to me, taking a good look at me the while. I don't like inquisitive people at any time, but an inquisitive stranger with glue about the roots of his beard is the worst of all to stand, especially under the circumstances. I began to feel that it was time for me to go.

I soon got a chance, and made good use of it. A big collier came athwart the bows of our steamer, and we had to slacken down to dead slow. There was a barge astern, and I slipped down by a rope and was into the barge before any one missed me. Of course I had to leave my luggage behind me, but I had the belt with the nuggets round my waist, and the chance of shaking the police off my track was worth more than a couple of boxes. It was clear to me now that the pilot had been a traitor, as well as the captain, and had set the detectives after me. I often wish I could drop across those two men again.

I hung about the barge all day as she drifted down the stream. There was one man in her, but she was a big, ugly craft, and his hands were too full for much looking about. Toward evening, when it got a bit dusky, I struck out for the shore, and found myself in a sort of marsh place, a good many miles to the east of London. I was soaking wet and half dead with hunger, but I trudged into the town, got a new rig-out at a slop-shop, and after having some supper, engaged a bed at the quietest lodgings I could find.

I woke pretty early— a habit you pick up in the bush— and lucky for me that I did so. The very first thing I saw when I took a look through a chink in the shutter was one of these infernal policemen standing right opposite and staring up at the windows. He hadn't epaulets nor a sword, like our traps, but for all that there was a sort of family likeness, and the same busybody expression. Whether they followed me all the time, or whether the woman that let me the bed didn't like the looks of me, is more than I have ever been able to find out. He came across as I was watching him, and noted down the address of the house in a book. I was afraid that he was going to ring at the bell, but I suppose his orders were simply to keep an eye on me, for after another good look at the windows he moved on down the street.

I saw that my only chance was to act at once. I threw on my clothes, opened the window softly, and, after making sure that there was nobody about, dropped out onto the ground and made off as hard as I could run. I traveled a matter of two or three miles, when my wind gave out; and as I saw a big building with people going in and out, I went in too, and found that it was a railway station. A train was just going off for Dover to meet the French boat, so I took a ticket and jumped into a third-class carriage.

There were a couple of other chaps in the carriage, innocent-looking young beggars, both of them. They began speaking about this and that, while I sat quiet in the corner and listened. Then they started on England and foreign countries, and such like. Look ye now, doctor, this is a fact. One of them begins jawing about the justice of England's laws. "It's all fair and above-board," says he; "there ain't any secret police, nor spying, like they have abroad," and a lot more of the same sort of wash. Rather rough on me, wasn't it, listening to the damned young fool, with the police following me about like my shadow?

I got to Paris right enough, and there I changed some of my gold, and for a few days I imagined I'd shaken them off, and began to think of settling down for a bit of rest. I needed it by that time, for I was looking more like a ghost than a man. You've never had the police after you, I suppose? Well, you needn't look offended, I didn't mean any harm. If ever you had you'd know that it wastes a man away like a sheep with the rot.

I went to the opera one night and took a box, for I was very flush. I was coming out between the acts when I met a fellow lounging along in the passage. The light fell on his face, and I saw that it was the mud-pilot that had boarded us in the Thames. His beard was gone, but I recognized the man at a glance, for I've a good memory for faces.

I tell you, doctor, I felt desperate for a moment. I could have knifed him if we had been alone, but he knew me well enough never to give me the chance. It was more than I could stand any longer, so I went right up to him and drew him aside, where we'd be free from all the loungers and theater-goers.

"How long are you going to keep it up?" I asked him.

He seemed a bit flustered for a moment, but then he saw there was no use beating about the bush, so he answered straight:

"Until you go back to Australia," he said.

"Don't you know," I said, "that I have served the government and got a free pardon?"

He grinned all over his ugly face when I said this.

"We know all about you, Maloney," he answered. "If you want a quiet life, just you go back where you came from. If you stay here, you're a marked man; and when you are found tripping it'll be a lifer for you, at the least. Free trade's a fine thing but the market's too full of men like you for us to need to import any."

It seemed to me that there was something in what he said, though he had a nasty way of putting it. For some days back I'd been feeling a sort of homesick. The ways of the people weren't my ways. They stared at me in the street; and if I dropped into a bar, they'd stop talking and edge away a bit, as if I was a wild beast. I'd sooner have had a pint of old Stringybark, too, than a bucketful of their rot-gut liquors. There was too much damned propriety. What was the use of having money if you couldn't dress as you liked, nor bust in properly? There was no sympathy for a man if he shot about a little when he was half-over, I've seen a man dropped at Nelson many a time with less row than they'd make over a broken window-pane. The thing was slow, and I was sick of it.

"You want me to go back?" I said.

"I've my order to stick fast to you until you do," he answered.

"Well," I said, "I don't care if I do. All I bargain is that you keep your mouth shut and don't let on who I am, so that I may have a fair start when I get there."

He agreed to this, and we went over to Southampton the very next day, where he saw me safely off once more. I took a passage round to Adelaide, where no one was likely to know me; and there I settled, right under the nose of the police. I'd been there ever since, leading a quiet life, but for little difficulties like the one I'm in for now, and for that devil, Tattooed Tom, of Hawkesbury. I don't know what made me tell you all this, doctor, unless it is that being lonely makes a man inclined to jaw when he gets a chance. Just you take warning from me, though. Never put yourself out to serve your country; for your country will do precious little for you. Just you let them look after their own affairs; and if they find difficulty in hanging a set of scoundrels, never mind chipping in, but let them alone to do as best they can. Maybe they'll remember how they treated me after I'm dead, and be sorry for neglecting me, I was rude to you when you came in, and swore a trifle promiscuous: but don't you mind me, it's only my way. You'll allow, though, that I have cause to be a bit touchy now and again when I think of all that's passed. You're not going, are you? Well, if you must, you must; but I hope you will look me up at odd times when you are going your rounds. Oh, I say, you've left the balance of that cake of tobacco behind you, haven't you? No; it's in your pocket—that's all right. Thank ye, doctor, you're a good sort, and as quick at a hint as any man I've met.

A COUPLE of months after narrating his experiences, Wolf Tone Maloney finished his term, and was released. For a long time I neither saw him nor heard of him, and he had almost slipped from my memory, until I was reminded, in a somewhat tragic manner, of his existence. I had been attending a patient some distance off in the country, and was riding back, guiding my tired horse among the boulders which strewed the pathway, and endeavoring to see my way through the gathering darkness, when I came suddenly upon a little wayside inn. As I walked my horse up toward the door, intending to make sure of my bearings before proceeding further, I heard the sound of a violent altercation within the little bar.

There seemed to be a chorus of expostulation or remonstrance, above which two powerful voices rang out loud and angry. As I listened, there was a momentary hush, two pistol shots sounded almost simultaneously, and with a crash the door burst open and a pair of dark figures staggered out into the moonlight. They struggled for a moment in a deadly wrestle, and then went down together among the loose stones. I had sprung off my horse, and, with the help of half a dozen rough fellows from the bar, dragged them away from one another.

A glance was sufficient to convince me that one of them was dying fast. He was a thick-set burly fellow, with a determined cast of countenance. The blood was welling from a deep stab in his throat, and it was evident that an important artery had been divided. I turned away from him in despair, and walked over to where his antagonist was lying. He was shot through the lungs, but managed to raise himself up on his hand as I approached, and peered anxiously up into my face. To my surprise, I saw before me the haggard features and flaxen hair of my prison acquaintance, Maloney.

"Ah, doctor!" he said, recognizing me. "How is he? Will he die?"

He asked the question so earnestly that I imagined he had softened at the last moment, and feared to leave the world with another homicide upon his conscience. Truth, however, compelled me to shake my head mournfully, and to intimate that the wound would prove a mortal one.

Maloney gave a wild cry of triumph, which brought the blood welling out from between his lips. "Here, boys," he gasped to the little group around him. "There's money in my inside pocket. Damn the expense! Drinks round. There's nothing mean about me. I'd drink with you, but I'm going. Give the doc my share, for he's as good—" Here his head fell back with a thud, his eye glazed, and the soul of Wolf Tone Maloney, forger, convict, ranger, murderer, and government peach, drifted away into the Great Unknown.

I cannot conclude without borrowing the account of the fatal quarrel which appeared in the column of the West Australian Sentinel. The curious will find it in the issue of October 4, 1881:

"Fatal Affray.—W. T. Maloney, a well-known citizen of New Montrose, and proprietor of the Yellow Boy gambling saloon, has met with his death under rather painful circumstances. Mr. Maloney was a man who had led a checkered existence, and whose past history is replete with interest. Some of our readers may recall the Lena Valley murders, in which he figured as the principal criminal. It is conjectured that during the seven months that he owned a bar in that region, from twenty to thirty travelers were hocussed and made away with. He succeeded, however, in evading the vigilance of the officers of the law, and allied himself with the bushrangers of Bluemansdyke, whose heroic capture and subsequent execution are matters of history. Maloney extricated himself from the fate which awaited him by turning Queen's evidence. He afterward visited Europe, but returned to West Australia, where he has long played a prominent part in local matters. On Friday evening he encountered an old enemy, Thomas Grimthorpe, commonly known as Tattooed Tom, of Hawkesbury.

"Shots were exchanged, and both were badly wounded, only surviving a few minutes. Mr. Maloney had the reputation of being not only the most wholesale murderer that ever lived, but also of having a finish and attention to detail in matters of evidence which has been unapproached by any European criminal. Sic transit gloria mundi!"

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15: The Man in the Inverness Cape

Baroness Orczy

1865-1947

Cassell's Magazine Feb 1910

A "Lady Molly" Case

WELL, you know, some say she is the daughter of a duke, others that she was born in the gutter, and that the handle has been soldered onto her name in order to give her style and influence.

I could say a lot, of course, but "my lips are sealed," as the poets say. All through her successful career at the Yard she honoured me with her friendship and confidence, but when she took me in partnership, as it were, she made me promise that I would never breathe a word of her private life, and this I swore on my Bible oath "wish I may die," and all the rest of it.

Yes, we always called her "my lady," from the moment that she was put at the head of our section; and the chief called her "Lady Molly" in our presence. We of the Female Department are dreadfully snubbed by the men, though don't tell me that women have not ten times as much intuition as the blundering and sterner sex; my firm belief is that we shouldn't have half so many undetected crimes if some of the so-called mysteries were put to the test of feminine investigation.

Many people say— people, too, mind you, who read their daily paper regularly— that it is quite impossible for any one to "disappear" within the confines of the British Isles. At the same time these wise people invariably admit one great exception to their otherwise unimpeachable theory, and that is the case of Mr. Leonard Marvell, who, as you know, walked out one afternoon from the Scotia Hotel in Cromwell Road and has never been seen or heard of since.

Information had originally been given to the police by Mr. Marvell's sister Olive, a Scotchwoman of the usually accepted type: tall, bony, with sandy-coloured hair, and a somewhat melancholy expression in her blue-grey eyes.

Her brother, she said, had gone out on a rather foggy afternoon. I think it was the third of February, just about a year ago. His intention had been to go and consult a solicitor in the City-whose address had been given him recently by a friend— about some private business of his own.

Mr. Marvell had told his sister that he would get a train at South Kensington Station to Moorgate Street, and walk thence to Finsbury Square. She was to expect him home by dinnertime.

As he was, however, very irregular in his habits, being fond of spending his evenings at restaurants and music halls, the sister did not feel the least anxious when he did not return home at the appointed time. She had her dinner in the table d'hote room, and went to bed soon after ten.

She and her brother occupied two bedrooms and a sitting room on the second floor of the little private hotel. Miss Marvell, moreover, had a maid always with her, as she was somewhat of an invalid. This girl, Rosie Campbell, a nice-looking Scotch lassie, slept on the top floor.

It was only on the following morning, when Mr. Leonard did not put in an appearance at breakfast that Miss Marvell began to feel anxious. According to her own account, she sent Rosie in to see if anything was the matter, and the girl, wide-eyed and not a little frightened, came back with the news that Mr. Marvell was not in his room, and that his bed had not been slept in that night.

With characteristic Scottish reserve, Miss Olive said nothing about the matter at the time to any one, nor did she give information to the police until two days later, when she herself had exhausted every means in her power to discover her brother's whereabouts.

She had seen the lawyer to whose office Leonard Marvell had intended going that afternoon, but Mr. Statham, the solicitor in question, had seen nothing of the missing man.

With great adroitness Rosie, the maid, had made inquiries at South Kensington and Moorgate Street Stations. At the former, the booking-clerk, who knew Mr. Marvell by sight, distinctly remembered selling him a first-class ticket to one of the City stations in the early part of the afternoon; but at Moorgate Street, which is a very busy station, no one recollected seeing a tall, red-haired Scotchman in an Inverness cape— such was the description given of the missing man. By that time the fog had become very thick in the City; traffic was disorganized, and every one felt fussy, ill-tempered, and self-centred.

These, in substance, were the details which Miss Marvell gave to the police on the subject of her brother's strange disappearance.

At first she did not appear very anxious; she seemed to have great faith in Mr. Marvell's power to look after himself; moreover, she declared positively that her brother had neither valuables nor money about his person when he went out that afternoon.

But as day succeeded day and no trace of the missing man had yet been found, matters became more serious, and the search instituted by our fellows at the Yard waxed more keen.

A description of Mr. Leonard Marvell was published in the leading London and provincial dailies. Unfortunately, there was no good photograph of him extant, and descriptions are apt to prove vague.

Very little was known about the man beyond his disappearance, which had rendered him famous. He and his sister had arrived at the Scotia Hotel about a month previously, and subsequently they were joined by the maid Campbell.

Scotch people arc far too reserved ever to speak of themselves or their affairs to strangers. Brother and sister spoke very little to any one at the hotel. They had their meals in their sitting room, waited on by the maid, who messed with the staff. But, in face of the present terrible calamity, Miss Marvell's frigidity relaxed before the police inspector, to whom she gave what information she could about her brother.

"He was like a son to me," she explained with scarcely restrained tears, "for we lost our parents early in life, and as we were left very, very badly off, our relations took but little notice of us. My brother was years younger than I am— and though he was a little wild and fond of pleasure, he was as good as gold to me, and has supported us both for years by journalistic work. We came to London from Glasgow about a month ago, because Leonard got a very good appointment on the staff of the Daily Post."

All this, of course, was soon proved to be true; and although, on minute inquiries being instituted in Glasgow, but little seemed to be known about Mr. Leonard Marvell in that city, there seemed no doubt that he had done some reporting for the Courier, and that latterly, in response to an advertisement, he had applied for and obtained regular employment on the Daily Post.

The latter enterprising halfpenny journal, with characteristic magnanimity, made an offer of 50-pound reward to any of its subscribers who gave information which would lead to the discovery of the whereabouts of Mr. Leonard Marvell.

But time went by, and that too remained unclaimed.

Lady Molly had not seemed as interested as she usually was in cases of this sort. With strange flippancy— wholly unlike herself— she remarked that one Scotch journalist more or less in London did not vastly matter.

I was much amused, therefore, one morning about three weeks after the mysterious disappearance of Mr. Leonard Marvell, when Jane, our little parlour-maid, brought in a card accompanied by a letter.

The card bore the name Miss OLIVE MARVELL. The letter was the usual formula from the chief, asking Lady Molly to have a talk with the lady in question, and to come and see him on the subject after the interview.

With a smothered yawn my dear lady told Jane to show in Miss Marvell.

"There are two of them, my lady," said Jane, as she prepared to obey.

"Two what?" asked Lady Molly with a laugh.

"Two ladies, I mean," explained Jane.

"Well! Show them both into the drawing-room," said Lady Molly, impatiently.

Then, as Jane went off on this errand, a very funny thing happened; funny, because during the entire course of my intimate association with my dear lady, I had never known her act with such marked indifference in the face of an obviously interesting case. She turned to me and said:

"Mary, you had better see these two women, whoever they may be; I feel that they would bore me to distraction. Take note of what they say, and let me know. Now, don't argue," she added with a laugh, which peremptorily put a stop to my rising protest, "but go and interview Miss Marvell and Co."

Needless to say, I promptly did as I was told, and the next few seconds saw me installed in our little drawing room, saying polite preliminaries to the two ladies who sat opposite to me.

I had no need to ask which of them was Miss Marvell. Tall, ill-dressed in deep black, with a heavy crape veil over her face, and black-cotton gloves, she looked the uncompromising Scotchwoman to the life. In strange contrast to her depressing appearance, there sat beside her an over-dressed, much behatted, peroxided young woman, who bore the stamp of the theatrical profession all over her pretty, painted face.

Miss Marvell, I was glad to note, was not long in plunging into the subject which had brought her here.

"I saw a gentleman at Scotland Yard," she explained, after a short preamble, "because Miss— er— Lulu Fay came to me at the hotel this very morning with a story which, in my opinion, should have been told to the police directly my brother's disappearance became known, and not three weeks later."

The emphasis which she laid on the last few words, and the stern look with which she regarded the golden-haired young woman beside her, showed the disapproval with which the rigid Scotchwoman viewed any connection which her brother might have had with the lady, whose very name seemed unpleasant to her lips.

Miss— er— Lulu Fay blushed even through her rouge, and turned a pair of large, liquid eyes imploringly upon me.

"I— I didn't know. I was frightened," she stammered.

"There's no occasion to be frightened now," retorted Miss Marvell, "and the sooner you try and be truthful about the whole matter, the better it will be for all of us."

And the stern woman's lips closed with a snap, as she deliberately turned her back on Miss Fay and began turning over the leaves of a magazine which happened to be on a table close to her hand.

I muttered a few words of encouragement, for the little actress looked ready to cry. I spoke as kindly as I could, telling her that if indeed she could throw some light on Mr. Marvell's present whereabouts it was her duty to be quite frank on the subject.

She "hem"-ed and "ha"-ed for a while, and her simpering ways were just beginning to tell on my nerves, when she suddenly started talking very fast.

"I am principal boy at the Grand," she explained with great volubility, "and I knew Mr. Leonard Marvell well— in fact— er— he paid me a good deal of attention and—"

"Yes— and—" I queried, for the girl was obviously nervous.

There was a pause. Miss Fay began to cry.

"And it seems that my brother took this young— er— lady to supper on the night of February 3rd, after which no one has ever seen or heard of him again," here interposed Miss Marvell, quietly.

"Is that so?" I asked.

Lulu Fay nodded, whilst heavy tears fell upon her clasped hands.

"But why did you not tell this to the police three weeks ago?" I ejaculated, with all the sternness at my command.

"I— I was frightened," she stammered.

"Frightened? Of what?"

"I am engaged to Lord Mountnewte and—"

"And you did not wish him to know that you were accepting the attentions of Mr. Leonard Marvell— was that it? Well," I added, with involuntary impatience, "what happened after you had supper with Mr. Marvell?"

"Oh! I hope— I hope that nothing happened," she said through more tears. "We had supper at the Trocadero, and he saw me into my brougham. Suddenly, just as I was driving away, I saw Lord Mountnewte standing quite close to us in the crowd."

"Did the two men know one another?" I asked.

"No," replied Miss Fay. "At least, I didn't think so, but when I looked back through the window of my carriage I saw them standing on the curb talking to each other for a moment, and then walk off together towards Piccadilly Circus. That is the last I have seen of either of them," continued the little actress with a fresh flood of tears. "Lord Mountnewte hasn't spoken to me since, and Mr. Marvell has disappeared with my money and my diamonds."

"Your money and your diamonds?" I gasped in amazement.

"Yes; he told me he was a jeweller, and that my diamonds wanted resetting. He took them with him that evening, for he said that London jewellers were clumsy thieves and that he would love to do the work for me himself. I also gave him two hundred pounds which he said he would want for buying the gold and platinum required for the settings. And now he has disappeared— and my diamonds and my money! Oh! I have been very— very foolish— and—"

Her voice broke down completely. Of course, one often hears of the idiocy of girls giving money and jewels unquestioningly to clever adventurers who know how to trade upon their inordinate vanity. There was, therefore, nothing very out of the way in the story just told me by Miss— er— Lulu Fay, until the moment when Miss Marvell's quiet voice, with its marked Scotch burr, broke in upon the short silence which had followed the actress's narrative.

"As I explained to the chief detective inspector at Scotland Yard," she said calmly, "the story which this young— er— lady tells is only partly true. She may have had supper with Mr. Leonard Marvell on the night of February 3rd, and he may have paid her certain attentions; but he never deceived her by telling her that he was a jeweller, nor did he obtain possession of her diamonds and her money through false statements. My brother was the soul of honour and loyalty. If, for some reason which Miss— er— Lulu Fay chooses to keep secret, he had her jewels and money in his possession on the fatal February 3rd, then I think his disappearance is accounted for. He has been robbed and perhaps murdered."

Like a true Scotchwoman she did not give way to tears, but even her harsh voice trembled slightly when she thus bore witness to her brother's honesty, and expressed the fears which assailed her as to his fate.

Imagine my plight! I could ill forgive my dear lady for leaving me in this unpleasant position— a sort of peacemaker between two women who evidently hated one another, and each of whom was trying her best to give the other "the lie direct."

I ventured to ring for our faithful Jane and to send her with an imploring message to Lady Molly, begging her to come and disentangle the threads of this muddled skein with her clever fingers; but Jane returned with a curt note from my dear lady, telling me not to worry about such a silly case, and to bow the two women out of the flat as soon as possible and then come for a nice walk.

I wore my official manner as well as I could, trying not to betray the "prentice hand. Of course, the interview lasted a great deal longer, and there was considerably more talk than I can tell you of in a brief narrative. But the gist of it all was just as I have said. Miss Lulu Fay stuck to every point of the story which she had originally told Miss Marvell. It was the latter uncompromising lady who had immediately marched the younger woman off to Scotland Yard in order that she might repeat her tale to the police. I did not wonder that the chief promptly referred them both to Lady Molly.

Anyway, I made excellent shorthand notes of the conflicting stories which I heard; and I finally saw, with real relief, the two women walk out of our little front door.

Our fellows at the Yard were abnormally active. It seemed, on the face of it, impossible that a man, healthy, vigorous, and admittedly sober, should vanish in London between Piccadilly Circus and Cromwell Road without leaving the slightest trace of himself or of the valuables said to have been in his possession.

Of course, Lord Mountnewte was closely questioned. He was a young Guardsman of the usual pattern, and, after a great deal of vapid talk which irritated Detective Inspector Saunders not a little, he made the following statement:

"I certainly am acquainted with Miss Lulu Fay. On the night in question I was standing outside the Troc, when I saw this young lady at her own carriage window talking to a tall man in an Inverness cape. She had, earlier in the day, refused my invitation to supper, saying that she was not feeling very well, and would go home directly after the theatre; therefore I felt, naturally, a little vexed. I was just about to hail a taxi, meaning to go on to the club, when, to my intense astonishment, the man in the Inverness cape came up to me and asked me if I could tell him the best way to get back to Cromwell Road."

"And what did you do?" asked Saunders.

"I walked a few steps with him and put him on his way," replied Lord Mountnewte, blandly.

In Saunders's own expressive words, he thought that story "fishy." He could not imagine the arm of coincidence being quite so long as to cause these two men— who presumably were both in love with the same girl, and who had just met at a moment when one of them was obviously suffering pangs of jealousy— to hold merely a topographical conversation with one another. But it was equally difficult to suppose that the eldest son and heir of the Marquis of Loam should murder a successful rival and then rob him in the streets of London.

Moreover, here came the eternal and unanswerable questions: If Lord Mountnewte had murdered Leonard Marvell, where and how had he done it, and what had he done with the body?

I dare say you are wondering by this time why I have said nothing about the maid, Rosie Campbell.

Well, plenty of very clever people (I mean those who write letters to the papers and give suggestions to every official department in the kingdom) thought that the police ought to keep a very strict eye upon that pretty Scotch lassie. For she was very pretty, and had quaint, demure ways which rendered her singularly attractive, in spite of the fact that, for most masculine tastes, she would have been considered too tall. Of course, Saunders and Danvers kept an eye on her— you may be sure of that— and got a good deal of information about her from the people at the hotel. Most of it, unfortunately, was irrelevant to the case. She was maid-attendant to Miss Marvell, who was feeble in health, and who went out but little. Rosie waited on her master and mistress upstairs, carrying their meals to their private room, and doing their bedrooms. The rest of the day she was fairly free, and was quite sociable downstairs with the hotel staff.

With regard to her movements and actions on that memorable 3rd of February, Saunders— though he worked very hard— could glean but little useful information. You see, in a hotel of that kind, with an average of thirty to forty guests at one time, it is extremely difficult to state positively what any one person did or did not do on that particular day.

Most people at the Scotia remembered that Miss Marvell dined in the table d'hote room on that 3rd of February; this she did about once a fortnight, when her maid had an evening "out."

The hotel staff also recollected fairly distinctly that Miss Rosie Campbell was not in the steward's room at suppertime that evening, but no one could remember definitely when she came in.

One of the chambermaids who occupied the bedroom adjoining hers, said that she heard her moving about soon after midnight; the hall porter declared that he saw her come in just before half-past twelve when he closed the doors for the night.

But one of the ground-floor valets said that, on the morning of the 4th, he saw Miss Marvell's maid, in hat and coat, slip into the house and upstairs, very quickly and quietly, soon after the front doors were opened, namely, about 7:00 A.M.

Here of course, was a direct contradiction between the chambermaid and hall porter on the one side, and the valet on the other, whilst Miss Marvell said that Campbell came into her room and made her some tea long before seven o'clock every morning, including that of the 4th.

I assure you our fellows at the Yard were ready to tear their hair out by the roots, from sheer aggravation at this maze of contradictions which met them at every turn.

The whole thing seemed so simple. There was nothing "to it" as it were, and but very little real suggestion of foul play, and yet Mr. Leonard Marvell had disappeared, and no trace of him could be found.

Every one now talked freely of murder. London is a big town, and this would not have been the first instance of a stranger— for Mr. Leonard Marvell was practically a stranger in London— being enticed to a lonely part of the city on a foggy night, and there done away with and robbed, and the body hidden in an out-of-the-way cellar, where it might not be discovered for months to come.

But the newspaper-reading public is notably fickle, and Mr. Leonard Marvell was soon forgotten by every one save the chief and the batch of our fellows who had charge of the case.

Thus I heard through Danvers one day that Rosie Campbell had left Miss Marvell's employ, and was living in rooms in Findlater Terrace, near Walham Green.

I was alone in our Maida Vale flat at the time, my dear lady having gone to spend the weekend with the Dowager Lady Loam, who was an old friend of hers; nor, when she returned, did she seem any more interested in Rosie Campbell's movements than she had been hitherto.

Yet another month went by, and I for one had absolutely ceased to think of the man in the Inverness cape, who had so mysteriously and so completely vanished in the very midst of busy London, when, one morning early in January, Lady Molly made her appearance in my room, looking more like the landlady of a disreputable gambling house than anything else I could imagine.

"What in the world—" I began.

"Yes! I think I look the part," she replied, surveying with obvious complacency the extraordinary figure which confronted her in the glass.

My dear lady had on a purple-cloth coat and skirt of a peculiarly vivid hue, and of a singular cut, which made her matchless figure look like a sack of potatoes. Her soft-brown hair was quite hidden beneath a "transformation," of that yellow-reddish tint only to be met with in very cheap dyes.

As for her hat— I won't attempt to describe it. It towered above and around her face, which was plentifully covered with brick-red and with that kind of powder which causes the cheeks to look a deep mauve.

My dear lady looked, indeed, a perfect picture of appalling vulgarity.

"Where are you going in this elegant attire?" I asked in amazement.

"I have taken rooms in Findlater Terrace," she replied lightly. "I feel that the air of Walham Green will do us both good. Our amiable, if somewhat slatternly, landlady expects us in time for luncheon. You will have to keep rigidly in the background, Mary, all the while we are there. I said that I was bringing an invalid niece with me, and, as a preliminary, you may as well tie two or three thick veils over your face. I think I may safely promise that you won't be dull."

And we certainly were not dull during our brief stay at 34, Findlater Terrace, Walham Green. Fully equipped, and arrayed in our extraordinary garments, we duly arrived there, in a rickety four-wheeler, on the top of which were perched two seedy-looking boxes.

The landlady was a toothless old creature, who apparently thought washing a quite unnecessary proceeding. In this she was evidently at one with every one of her neighbours. Findlater Terrace looked unspeakably squalid; groups of dirty children congregated in the gutters and gave forth discordant shrieks as our cab drove up.

Through my thick veils I thought that, some distance down the road, I spied a horsy-looking man in ill-fitting riding-breeches and gaiters, who vaguely reminded me of Danvers.

Within half an hour of our installation, and whilst we were eating a tough steak over a doubtful table cloth, my dear lady told me that she had been waiting a full month, until rooms in this particular house happened to be vacant. Fortunately the population in Findlater Terrace is always a shifting one, and Lady Molly had kept a sharp eye on No. 34, where, on the floor above, lived Miss Rosie Campbell. Directly the last set of lodgers walked out of the ground-floor rooms, we were ready to walk in.

My dear lady's manners and customs, whilst living at the above aristocratic address, were fully in keeping with her appearance. The shrill, rasping voice which she assumed echoed from attic to cellar.

One day I heard her giving vague hints to the landlady that her husband, Mr. Marcus Stone, had had a little trouble with the police about a small hotel which he had kept somewhere near Fitzroy Square, and where "young gentlemen used to come and play cards of a night." The landlady was also made to understand that the wordily Mr. Stone was now living temporarily at His Majesty's expense, whilst Mrs. Stone had to live a somewhat secluded life, away from her fashionable friends.

The misfortunes of the pseudo Mrs. Stone in no way marred the amiability of Mrs. Tredwen, our landlady. The inhabitants of Findlater Terrace care very little about the antecedents of their lodgers, so long as they pay their week's rent in advance, and settle their "extras" without much murmur.

This Lady Molly did, with a generosity characteristic of an ex-lady of means. She never grumbled at the quantity of jam and marmalade which we were supposed to have consumed every week, and which anon reached titanic proportions. She tolerated Mrs. Tredwen's cat, tipped Ermyntrude— the tousled lodging-house slavey— lavishly, and lent the upstairs lodger her spirit-lamp and curling-tongs when Miss Rosie Campbell's got out of order.

A certain degree of intimacy followed the loan of those curling tongs. Miss Campbell, reserved and demure, greatly sympathized with the lady who was not on the best of terms with the police. I kept steadily in the background. The two ladies did not visit each other's rooms, but they held long and confidential conversations on the landings, and I gathered, presently, that the pseudo Mrs. Stone had succeeded in persuading Rosie Campbell that, if the police were watching No. 34, Findlater Terrace, at all, it was undoubtedly on account of the unfortunate Mr. Stone's faithful wife.

I found it a little difficult to fathom Lady Molly's intentions. We had been in the house over three weeks, and nothing whatever had happened. Once I ventured on a discreet query as to whether we were to expect the sudden re-appearance of Mr. Leonard Marvell.

"For if that's what it's about," I argued, "then surely the men from the Yard could have kept the house in view, without all this inconvenience and masquerading on our part."

But to this tirade my dear lady vouchsafed no reply.

She and her newly acquired friend were, about this time, deeply interested in the case known as the "West End Shop Robberies," which no doubt you recollect, since they occurred such a very little while ago. Ladies who were shopping in the large drapers' emporiums during the crowded and busy sale time lost reticules, purses, and valuable parcels without any trace of the clever thief being found.

The drapers, during sale time, invariably employ detectives in plain clothes to look after their goods, but in this case it was the customers who were robbed, and the detectives, attentive to every attempt at "shop-lifting," had had no eyes for the more subtle thief.

I had already noticed Miss Rosie Campbell's keen look of excitement whenever the pseudo Mrs. Stone discussed these cases with her. I was not a bit surprised, therefore, when, one afternoon at about tea-time, my dear lady came home from her habitual walk, and, at the top of her shrill voice, called out to me from the hall:

"Mary! Mary! They've got the man of the shop robberies. He's given the silly police the slip this time, but they know who he is now, and I suppose they'll get him presently. "Tisn't anybody I know," she added, with that harsh, common laugh which she had adopted for her part.

I had come out of the room in response to her call, and was standing just outside our own sitting-room door. Mrs. Tredwen, too, bedraggled and unkempt, as usual, had sneaked up the area steps, closely followed by Ermyntrude.

But on the half-landing just above us the trembling figure of Rosie Campbell, with scared white face and dilated eyes, looked on the verge of a sudden fall.

Still talking shrilly and volubly, Lady Molly ran up to her, but Campbell met her half-way, and the pseudo Mrs. Stone, taking vigorous hold of her wrist, dragged her into our own sitting-room.

"Pull yourself together, now," she said with rough kindness. "That owl Tredwen is listening, and you needn't let her know too much. Shut the door, Mary. Lor" bless you, m'dear, I've gone through worse scares than these. There! You just lie down on this sofa a bit. My niece'll make you a cup o' tea; and I'll go and get an evening paper, and see what's going on. I suppose you are very interested in the shop-robbery man, or you wouldn't have took on so."

Without waiting for Campbell 's contradiction to this statement, Lady Molly flounced out of the house.

Miss Campbell hardly spoke during the next ten minutes that she and I were left alone together. She lay on the sofa with eyes wide open, staring up at the ceiling, evidently still in a great state of fear.

I had just got tea ready when Lady Molly came back. She had an evening paper in her hand, but threw this down on the table directly she came in. "

"I could only get an early edition," she said breathlessly, "and the silly thing hasn't got anything in it about the matter."

She drew near to the sofa, and, subduing the shrillness of her voice, she whispered rapidly, bending down towards Campbell:

"There's a man hanging about at the corner down there. No, no; it's not the police," she added quickly, in response to the girl's sudden start of alarm. "Trust me, my dear, for knowing a 'tec when I see one! Why, I'd smell one half a mile off. No; my opinion is that it's your man, my dear, and that he's in a devil of a hole."

"Oh! He oughtn't to come here," ejaculated Campbell in great alarm. "He'll get me into trouble and do himself no good. He's been a fool!" she added, with a fierceness wholly unlike her usual demure placidity, "getting himself caught like that. Now I suppose we shall have to hook it— if there's time."

"Can I do anything to help you?" asked the pseudo Mrs. Stone. "You know I've been through all this myself, when they was after Mr. Stone. Or perhaps Mary could do something."

"Well, yes," said the girl, after a slight pause, during which she seemed to be gathering her wits together. "I'll write a note, and you shall take it, if you will, to a friend of mine— a lady who lives in the Cromwell Road. But if you still see a man lurking about at the corner of the street, then, just as you pass him, say the word 'Campbell,' and if he replies 'Rosie," then give him the note. Will you do that?"

"Of course I will, my dear. Just you leave it all to me."

And the pseudo Mrs. Stone brought ink and paper and placed them on the table. Rosie Campbell wrote a brief note, and then fastened it down with a bit of sealing-wax before she handed it over to Lady Molly. The note was addressed to Miss Marvell, Scotia Hotel, Cromwell Road.

"You understand?" she said eagerly. "Don't give the note to the man unless he says "Rosie' in reply to the word  'Campbell.' "

"All right— all right!" said Lady Molly, slipping the note into her reticule. "And you go up to your room, Miss Campbell; it's no good giving that old fool Tredwen too much to gossip about."

Rosie Campbell went upstairs, and presently my dear lady and I were walking rapidly down the badly lighted street.

"Where is the man?" I whispered eagerly as soon as we were out of earshot of No. 34.

"There is no man," replied Lady Molly, quickly.

"But the West End shop thief?" I asked.

"He hasn't been caught yet, and won't be either, for he is far too clever a scoundrel to fall into an ordinary trap."

She did not give me time to ask further questions, for presently, when we had reached Reporton Square, my dear lady handed me the note written by Campbell, and said:

"Go straight on to the Scotia Hotel, and ask for Miss Marvell; send up the note to her, but don't let her see you, as she knows you by sight. I must see the chief first, and will be with you as soon as possible. Having delivered the note, you must hang about outside as long as you can. Use your wits; she must not leave the hotel before I see her."

There was no hansom to be got in this elegant quarter of the town, so, having parted from my dear lady, I made for the nearest Underground station, and took a train for South Kensington.

Thus it was nearly seven o'clock before I reached the Scotia. In answer to my inquiries for Miss Marvell, I was told that she was ill in bed and could see no one. I replied that I had only brought a note for her, and would wait for a reply.

Acting on my dear lady's instructions, I was as slow in my movements as ever I could be, and was some time in finding the note and handing it to a waiter, who then took it upstairs.

Presently he returned with the message: "Miss Marvell says there is no answer."

Whereupon I asked for pen and paper at the office, and wrote the following brief note on my own responsibility, using my wits as my dear lady had bidden me to do.

Please, madam, I wrote, will you send just a line to Miss Rosie Campbell? She seems very upset and frightened at some news she has had.

Once more the waiter ran upstairs, and returned with a sealed envelope, which I slipped into my reticule.

Time was slipping by very slowly. I did not know how long I should have to wait about outside in the cold, when, to my horror, I heard a hard voice, with a marked Scotch accent, saying:

"I am going out, waiter, and shan't be back to dinner. Tell them to lay a little cold supper upstairs in my room."

The next moment Miss Marvell, with coat, hat, and veil, was descending the stairs.

My plight was awkward. I certainly did not think it safe to present myself before the lady; she would undoubtedly recollect my face. Yet I had orders to detain her until the appearance of Lady Molly.

Miss Marvell seemed in no hurry. She was putting on her gloves as she came downstairs. In the hall she gave a few more instructions to the porter, whilst I, in a dark corner in the background, was vaguely planning an assault or an alarm of fire.

Suddenly, at the hotel entrance, where the porter was obsequiously holding open the door for Miss Marvell to pass through, I saw the latter's figure stiffen; she took one step back as if involuntarily, then, equally quickly, attempted to dart across the threshold, on which a group— composed of my dear lady, of Saunders, and of two or three people scarcely distinguishable in the gloom beyond— had suddenly made its appearance.

Miss Marvell was forced to retreat into the hall; already I had heard Saunders's hurriedly whispered words:

"Try and not make a fuss in this place, now. Everything can go off quietly, you know."

Danvers and Cotton, whom I knew well, were already standing one each side of Miss Marvell, whilst suddenly amongst this group I recognized Fanny, the wife of Danvers, who is one of our female searchers at the Yard.

"Shall we go up to your own room?" suggested Saunders.

"I think that is quite unnecessary," interposed Lady Molly. "I feel convinced that Mr. Leonard Marvell will yield to the inevitable quietly, and follow you without giving any trouble."

Marvell, however, did make a bold dash for liberty. As Lady Molly had said previously, he was far too clever to allow himself to be captured easily. But my dear lady had been cleverer. As she told me subsequently, she had from the first suspected that the trio who lodged at the Scotia Hotel were really only a duo— namely, Leonard Marvell and his wife, Rosie Campbell. The latter impersonated a maid most of the time; but among these two clever people the three characters were interchangeable. Of course, there was no Miss Marvell at all! Leonard was alternately dressed up as man or woman, according to the requirements of his villainies.

"As soon as I heard that Miss Marvell was very tall and bony," said Lady Molly, "I thought that there might be a possibility of her being merely a man in disguise. Then there was the extraordinarily suggestive fact— but little dwelt on by either the police or public— that no one seems ever to have seen brother and sister together, nor was the entire trio ever seen at one and the same time.

"On that 3rd of February Leonard Marvell went out. No doubt he changed his attire in a lady's waiting-room at one of the railway stations; subsequently he came home, now dressed as Miss Marvell, and had dinner in the table d'hôte room so as to set up a fairly plausible alibi. But ultimately it was his wife, Rosie Campbell, who stayed indoors that night, whilst he, Leonard Marvell, when going out after dinner, impersonated the maid until he was clear of the hotel; then he reassumed his male clothes once more, no doubt in the deserted waiting-room of some railway station, and met Miss Lulu Fay at supper, subsequently returning to the hotel in the guise of the maid.

"You see the game of crisscross, don't you? This interchanging of characters was bound to baffle every one. Many clever scoundrels have assumed disguises, sometimes impersonating members of the opposite sex, but never before have I known two people play the part of three! Thus, endless contradictions followed as to the hour when Campbell the maid went out and when she came in, for at one time it was she herself who was seen by the valet, and at another it was Leonard Marvell dressed in her clothes."

He was also clever enough to accost Lord Mountnewte in the open street, thus bringing further complications into this strange case.

After the successful robbery of Miss Fay's diamonds, Leonard Marvell and his wife parted for a while. They were waiting for an opportunity to get across the Channel and there turn their booty into solid cash. Whilst Mrs. Marvell, alias Rosie Campbell, led a retired life in Findlater Terrace, Leonard kept his hand in with West End shop robberies.

Then Lady Molly entered the lists. As usual, her scheme was bold and daring; she trusted her own intuition and acted accordingly.

When she brought home the false news that the author of the shop robberies had been spotted by the police, Rosie Campbell's obvious terror confirmed her suspicions. The note written by the latter to the so-called Miss Marvell, though it contained nothing in any way incriminating, was the crowning certitude that my dear lady was right, as usual, in all her surmises.

And now Mr. Leonard Marvell will be living for two years at the tax-payers' expense; he has "disappeared" temporarily from the public eye.

_________________

Table of Contents

1: Those Dissipated Cows / Ernest Favenc

2: The Citizen / James Francis Dwyer

3: The Giant Wistaria / Charlotte Perkins Gilman

4: The Man With Nine Lives / Hugh C. Weir

5: You Can't Explain These Things / Albert Richard Wetjen

6: The Fortunes of War / Albert Richard Wetjen

7: The Man in the Moon / Homer Eon Flint

8: Dice, Brassknuckles & Guitar / F. Scott Fitzgerald

9: The Red Bungalow / Bithia Mary Croker

10: Little Liz / B. L. Farjeon

11: Ace, Deuce, Ten Spot, Joker / Irvin S Cobb

12: Pell Street Blues / Achmed Abdullah

13:  The Old Lady with the Two Umbrellas / Stacy Aumonier

14: My Friend the Murderer / Arthur Conan Doyle

15: The Man in the Inverness Cape / Baroness Orczy