Author: Various
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: Motley assortment of short fiction in the Life+70 Public Domain, from a variety of sources. The obscure life of the author of the first story is, well, different. We have society romantic comedy, weird, horror, action... the usual mix in fact, running to over 105,000 words, a bit more than my arbitrary target of 100,000 words. 1: The Last Reel / George Vaux Bacon 2: Marwood's Ghost Story / Marjorie Bowen 3: El Hamel, the Lost One / G. G. Pendarves 4: The Haunted Station / Hume Nisbet 5: Keep Your Eye on the Ball / William Almon Wolff 6: Curious Cubes / T. Bell 7: Surprise Attack / Georges Surd

PAST MASTERS 126

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

29 April 2023

Contents

1: The Last Reel / George Vaux Bacon

2: Marwood's Ghost Story / Marjorie Bowen

3: El Hamel, the Lost One / G. G. Pendarves

4: The Haunted Station / Hume Nisbet

5: Keep Your Eye on the Ball / William Almon Wolff

6: Curious Cubes / T. Bell

7: Surprise Attack / Georges Surdez

8: Nothing But Dust / Frederick Booth

9: Two Paris Knights / Frederick C. Painton

10: Padre Ignacio / Owen Wister

11: The Dimpled Dumb-Bell / Helen Hysell

12: That Little Square Box / Arthur Conan Doyle

13: The Invisible Finite / Robert A. Wait

14: The Hawk and the White Elephant / Ross Ellis

15: Black Cats / Gerald de Vries

16: Lost Treasures of Eden / Captain John Powers

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1: The Last Reel

George Vaux Bacon
fl. 1910s

Adventure December 1915

Surprisingly little is known about this American journalist and author other than that he was convicted of spying for the Germans in WW1, and sentenced to death in 1917. He was later released on licence to give evidence against his New York recruiters. After his testimony he (not surprisingly) vanished from view.

George Vaux Bacon

(Passport photo)

IN THE GRAND HOTEL at Yokohama there is a bar which is famous for two things: One is the fact that the Japanese bartender there mixes the worst cocktails to be found in five continents; and the other is that a certain very famous war correspondent wrote the story of the battle of the Yalu River there, four days before the battle was fought.

It is an odd fact, but a true one, that men of entirely different castes and business creeds find one another more interesting than those of their own stripe. Thus it was that the stock-broker, who had come up from a visit to his son at the Standard Oil plant in Singapore, and the broken-nosed movie cameraman and the English artist who had arrived that day from Frisco via Honolulu on the Mongolia, found one another congenial companions, and after trying out one cocktail apiece with disastrous and distasteful results, tacked off unanimously on to Johnny Walker and stories.

The stock-broker told one about a man whose father raised elephants in Siam and who went "queer" while up the Penang River on a ruby pirating expedition. There was a woman in it, and ultimately, as is the usual case in Singapore, delirium tremens, disaster and shipment home of the more or less living remains.

The Englishman told one that had to do with the artist Alma-Tadema.

"I don't suppose there are many stories connected with the movies that haven't been tipped off to the public," remarked the camera-man; "but I know of one that I don't think you ever heard of— perhaps because everybody who would have gotten any advantage out of the publicity is dead."

"Go on," said the broker.

The camera-man produced a huge silver watch, looked at it absently, took a sip of Scotch, lit a vicious Japanese Government cigarette and said:

YOU KNOW about three years ago pictures of wild animals in the jungles became quite the rage. Rainey started it with his African pictures, I think; then some guy took some showing the arctic regions, and from that the habit spread until there were any number of expeditions spending their time and thousands of dollars taking them. There's plenty of work in it, all right, you can bet, and it can be all-fired dangerous, too.

About a year ago, a guy named Livingston, who had made his pile in Rio in rubber, and had a kind of patriotic feeling for the place where he had gotten all his dough, got it into his head to finance an expedition to film the interior of Brazil.

Anyhow, there was five of us in the party.

A fellow named Bill Harvey was in the lead. He handled the financing and the baggage end and a lot of other things, while I took care of three cameras. The plan was to take pictures of the voyage as well as in the country itself, so the minute we land- ed on the docks in the East River, New York, ready to board the United Fruit steamer that was to take us South, my work began.

I used up about fifteen hundred feet of film, altogether, on that trip. We stopped at a lot of devilishly hot, sun-baked places, where there were yellow beaches, forests in the background, and then mountains and sky like the places you read about in those stories O. Henry wrote. The population was always dirty and dressed in dirty clothes. I had been kind of hit with the romance of travel when I started, but after one or two of those places, I was glad to pass up the romance and give all my attention to work.

We arrived at Rio all tricked out in white with what Harvey called pith helmets on our heads. They were a great protection from the sun, and, believe me, you need it in those parts. A hot day at Coney is nothing compared to Brazil.

We didn't waste much time at Rio; but took a paddle-wheel steamer up the Amazon as soon as possible. The Amazon is miles wide, yellow, with low, muddy banks and swarms with mosquitoes.

I'll leave that part of the trip to your imagination. The next time you're on a day boat to Albany, just sit in the sun, close your eyes, invite the mosquitoes, and you've got it. The Amazon is the biggest river in the world, Harvey told me. I had a three-cornered argument about it with Jim Hawkins, my assistant, Tom Smith, Harvey's assistant, and a guy with big round glasses named Edgar Truesdale, who was the press agent of the trip. Jim and Tom said the Mississippi was bigger, whereas Edgar claimed that they were wrong. At this date I agree with Edgar. The Amazon is the longest river on earth; it begins at the Atlantic and leads right up to Kingdom Come.

Well, we splashed and tooted along in the heat for several days until the river began to narrow down a bit. It got so you could see the banks on each side pretty clearly. In another day the banks were in sight all the time, and in still another day it was about the size of the Hudson at its widest place.

One morning, we came to a place where the paddle-wheel steamer splashed inshore, and with Harvey in the lead and me taking a movie of the debarkation, we hustled our traps off the steamer and on to a rickety wharf.

There was forest everywhere around us. The trees were higher and thicker than I thought trees ever could be, and the darkness in among them was as black as the gate of hell. A kind of wet, damp breeze, with queer, heavy, dank smells came out from among them, and seemed to lie around us there on the edge of the water. The river wasn't yellow any more, it was black, and deep. The heavy undergrowth grew right down to the water's edge. There wasn't any beach and I got out on the moss, set up my camera and started to wind in a picture of the landing. Harvey had brought a bunch of natives on board the steamer and a big canoe and a flock of smaller ones, all covered with canvas. After all this had been landed, the steamer lets a squeak out of her little whistle, turns around and starts flopping back down the river again.

I quit winding, took the number of feet I'd used on my cuff and watched. Say, the sound of the paddles splashing just echoed and re-echoed back and forth from one side of that forest to the other like nothing I ever heard of before or since. The rest of the bunch with the natives were busy getting the small boats in the water. I stood there with the forest before and behind me, and the sound of the talking kind of being lost in the immensity of things, and listened. You know, a cold shiver ran up my back like I'd seen a ghost or else some one had poured a glass of ice-water down the back of my collar.

I know now that we were in the Poison Arrow country, and that in the twining undergrowth and under the low-hanging Spanish moss in the thousands and thousands of miles of forests around us, there lay the skeletons of any number of white men— some with the helmets and cuirasses of Spanish conquistadores still on them, some in molding velvet and lace of the age that followed, some in the khaki of the present-day adventurer.

No white man had ever gone into that jungle from the landing where we were, intent on coming out at the other side, on the slopes of the Andes, and had reappeared. They are all somewhere in that forest.

That is, what is left of them is, I didn't know all this then; but I felt it, and it didn't feel good.

THE paddle-wheel steamer gave a last tootling whistle, and disappeared around a bend in the river, leaving ke behind but us and a wake that quickly disappeared.

And then my heart stopped and bounced up against my teeth. Something jumped from a bough above me onto my shoulder. I ducked, let a yell out of me, and ran from the camera toward the boats. When I got there, the first that grabbed me were Harvey and Edgar. I guess I was as white as a ghost, and when I first looked at them, I thought they were as scared as I was, from the expressions of their faces; but in a minute I saw that it was laughter. They whirled me around and pointed.

There, sitting on top the camera, grinning and hunting for fleas, was the doggonedest looking monkey I ever saw in my life. He looked half starved, was about the size of the big buck yellow cat that used to hang out on the fire-escape in the back of my sister-in-law's flat on a Hundred and Thirtieth Street, and had the bluest nose, and the reddest ring around its eyes I ever saw in my life. He looked as if he had just stepped out of the olio of an old-time road burlesque, and gave about as much of a darn for me, or my ideas as I do for a chipmunk.

Harvey was yelling instructions to Jim, -who rigged up a 'camera, shot a roll of film in it and stuck it up in front of me.

"Get that monkey, quick, Pete!" he says to me, and, winding a crank being second nature with me, I focused and took about a hundred feet of the monkey.

After I shut off and marked the number of feet on my sleeve under that taken of the paddle-wheel steamer, Harvey started to walk up to the monkey, easily, with a piece of something in his hand. It was a roll or something, I think. I don't remember what the blame animal ate; but I think he would have preferred a slice of some one's vein to anything else, though Harvey said that all monkeys were, like men ought to be, vegetarians, and said something about the length of intestines to prove it. I don't know how long mine are. I never measured them; but I know I like meat. Anyhow, Harvey went out and offered that fiend in more or less human form something to eat. He walked right up to the camera, without the monkey making so much as a motion to try to get away. He had never seen a man before, and I guess took him for a specimen of his own species he had never seen before. Or else he was hungry.

When Harvey offered him the food, he looked at him as if to say, "Well, you're a fool to offer any one food in a world like this where it's hard to get; but I'm much obliged," took it, ate it, yawned, turned his back on Harvey, picked a flea off his back and flipped it nonchalantly into the water.

Which made Harvey laugh. You know, Harvey told me, laughter is one of the few things a human being can do; and an animal, with the exception of hyenas, can't, and hyenas haven't got a human laugh. It startled the monkey. He ducked off the camera and made for the jungle; but he came back again, after a while, when we put out more food for him.

To make a long story short, we annexed him and called him Beelzebub, which Harvey told me is high-toned for the devil. Beelzebub apparently figured that regular eats with no work attached to it was a cinch, and stuck. Harvey said he made a good mascot. I didn't like him much; but I wasn't boss so didn't say anything.

The boats were all fixed, everybody was doled out a businesslike-looking Winchester with a big pocket-load of cartridges, and with the big boat full of provisions following us, we started off with the natives rowing. They were Indians from some peaceful coast tribe. Harvey said they would go with us to a certain point, and then we'd strike through the jungle alone. I didn't like the idea much; but Edgar didn't seem to mind and I never was afraid of anything a four-eyed guy would stand for, so I didn't open my flap on that subject either.

While the Indians paddled us up the river, we landed every here and there under Harvey's direction and took lots of pictures, It was real instructive, too. There are certainly some funny animals in South America. There's the tapir, for instance, that looks like a cross between a black pig and an elephant, and the jaguars and pumas they have there— which both are kind of leopards— are the doggonedest animals I ever did see.

While I lay in hiding with Harvey and the camera, taking the pictures, old Beelzebub used to stick right with us, and kept as quiet as a mouse. He seemed to enjoy the game to a T. I got to kind of like him, finally, and would have let him sleep in my boat with me, only for his fleas. I made him stay in the provision boat with the natives.

WE FOLLOWED the river for days and days. I didn't like the nights much. They were scarey, and after a while we got to a place where parrots were, and they used to scream all night. There is a sort of owl down there too— I got a picture of one, one day, while he was asleep— that's got the most blood-curdling hoot I ever heard.

I began to get nervous and kind of irritable. I noticed it in the others, too. It was the heat, I guess. We didn't do much talking after a while.

One day, we came to a place where another river emptied into the Amazon. The river widened a little there. The trees were wider apart than usual, were not so tall, but were hung with curtains of moss that somehow always reminded me of a funeral. The natives ran the boats in, we got out, and they started jabbering to Harvey.

"This is as far as they'll go, boys," he said to us after a couple of minutes. "We strike out and follow this river, and after a couple of weeks, we'll come out on higher ground beyond the edge of the woods. Each one of you is to carry all the ammunition and biscuits, water and canned vegetables he can. I know the things that grow here that we can eat, and we can get plenty of meat with our rifles. Now comes the real trip, the real test, and when we get back to New York, we will have done something that no man in the history of the world ever has done before. No white man has ever walked through this forest and set foot on the outer edge. We're going to doit."

There was a kind of solemnity in his tone that got me. My breath sort of went away. I didn't feel very comfortable, and I looked at Edgar. He was lighting one of his last box of cigarettes. I knew press agents had nerve; but I didn't realize till I met Edgar what real nerve is in distinction to brass. He had it.

We unloaded the boats without much conversation, while Beelzebub sat on top of the camera I had picked out— we had to send the others back, and I took the one I found to be the most reliable, with the best lens and mechanism— and watched us. He seemed to be grinning, I thought. An impulse to choke him came over me; but I thought I must be nutty, and loaded myself with my share of the stuff. I took all that I could carry of Jim's in addition, as it was up to him to trundle the camera, which was going to be no easy job.

On top of the food, we strapped our rifles over our backs, took a canvas pouch full of ammunition, which Harvey warned us to be careful not to waste, and then, out of the bottom of one of the boats, he produced five long swords with a sheath and a belt attached and passed them around, one to each of us. I've never worn a sword, and couldn't see the use for one while I had a rifle. He explained that they were machetes, that he'd had them each ground as sharp as a razor in Rio, and that we might have to use them, at times, to cut our way through the thick undergrowth.

We watched the natives jump into their boats, wave us farewell with all sorts of unpleasant grins, and disappear down the river with everything that we couldn't carry with us.

I strapped the machete around my waist, as the rest of the crowd did, and we started out in single file, Harvey in the lead.

Harvey was one of those tall, well-set-up men, with a kind of lean jaw, a good forehead, and blue eyes that looked right at you, whether he was asking a favor or calling you a liar. He could walk like the dickens, and was a born leader of men. I'll always remember Harvey; he was a brave man and a gentleman.

Edgar followed him, loaded down with his typewriter, his traps and the rifle and machete. Edgar had hard going. He wasn't much on muscle, but the kid had the backbone of an elephant. I've seen him that tired he'd fall right in his tracks at night, with all his stuff strapped on him and fall asleep, and I'd have to roll him up in the light blankets we carried to keep him from being eaten alive by the insects.

Jim Hawkins, my assistant, who was a roughneck of the kind that, if he likes you, will die for you and only ask in return a shake of your hand to show you appreciate it, went next. I liked Jim an awful lot. He was a simple-minded guy and never tried to interrupt your remarks with any ideas of his own. I never let him know how I  felt, though. It would have been bad for Tom Smith followed Jim with some of Harvey's scientific instruments, and a couple of reels of film. I had four reels. We were all traveling as light as we could; but we were traveling mighty heavy at that. Each of us was loaded with 'way over seventy-five pounds, and that, mind you, where the trees stopped every breath of wind and the heat was like a furnace. I was the rear guard, and, believe me, I "kept my eye out for jaguars and pumas and things that might be trailing us when we weren't taking' pictures'

There were plenty of places where there was good light. We got lots of pictures and used up film pretty fast. And all the while as we marched, Beelzebub was with us, jumping from tree to tree above our heads, and swinging down at mealtime for his share.

In this way we took pictures for more days than I care to say, though some days we just marched, because Harvey said we weren't in the kind of place where the animals could be found. We lived on several queer sorts of fruit that Harvey said were to eat and that grew all around us. None of us felt like eating much meat; it was too hot. We lit a little fire occasionally, always in the daytime, and took some beef broth we heated up over it. Harvey was always finding water-holes and brooks, and we used the water from them to drink and for the broth. It gave the same effect as meat, and at the same time was nourishing and we didn't have to shoot. We didn't waste a cartridge on that march.

This lasted a long time. It was something more than a couple of weeks, and altogether, since we had left Rio, we had been out nearly two months. After a while the forest began to thin some, and we came out every now and then into patches of open country.

Harvey changed his plan of campaign about this time. We stopped marching by day, and marched at night. During the day, we lay around with the camera, patiently waiting for animals, keeping ourselves well hidden, slept about four hours after sunset, and then marched till sunrise.

Four hours is enough sleep in that country. One day I reached my last reel of film. That evening, as we had broken camp and were trailing along, all silent except Jim, who was arguing with me because I had put the last reel in the camera before we started and he had to carry the extra weight, I thought I heard a queer sort of rustling in the woods. Thinking it was an animal, I raised my rifle and fired in the direction of the sound.

I used to be a crack shot with the Iowa State Militia, and I guess I judged the place the sound came from about right. There was a kind of a whimpering yell, a lot of rustling, and then silence. Harvey had stopped; but I yelled to him it was just some animal, and he, thinking, I suppose, that Pd seen what I was shooting at, paid no more attention and we went on.

We hadn't moved a hundred feet when I saw Jim put his hand with a kind of funny gesture to the back of his neck and rub it.

"Say, that's funny," he said. "I've scratched myself somehow." And with that, he dropped in his tracks.

Beelzebub had scampered off when I fired, and I saw him sitting swinging on a bough a little distance away, looking into the woods, crouched as if to jump and hide.

Tom and I ran up to Jim and started to pull him to his feet, thinking he'd stumbled. He was like a lump of mud, and in a minute we knew that he was stone dead. I took the camera from the ground where he had dropped it, set it up on the tripod to get it out of the way, and with Tom and the rest, and Harvey running back toward us, began to look for a wound. When Harvey came up, he said:—

"What happened?"

I told him.

Without another word, he rolled Jim's body over, took out an electric flash and looked at the back of the neck. There was a little scratch there about the size of one that would be made by a needle. It seemed to me that a groan came from Harvey.

"GET into the underbrush and hide behind anything you can find, every i one of youl" he whispered. 'There are Indians around here!"

God! The sweat that had been hot and sticky on my skin turned freezing cold. Without a word we all ducked out of sight. The sun had set; the afterglow was over and it was pitch dark. We pulled Jim's body to one side, and left it there. I heard Beelzebub, swinging above us on his branch, snarling to himself in a way he had.

"Get your cartridges where you can reach them easily; have your rifles ready. When you shoot— shoot to kill!" was all Harvey said. The rest of us didn't say anything. He didn't have anything to talk about and or Jim couldn't. The thing had come so suddenly we could hardly think. We lay almost in a circle, heel to heel, so at no matter where an attack could come om, one of us would see it. I lay nearest Jim's body. The camera looked queer and wnt on its tripod in the open space in ont of me. Up above, on the bough, Beelzebub kept snarling to himself.

I fingered the rifle in my hands, and ran my palms up and down its barrel. The feel was nice and cool. My palm was sweaty, and the cool of the barrel felt mighty good. I found myself petting it, as man would a horse.

The moon came up, flooding the place with shafts and spots of silver, making blue shadows. One of its beams fell on Jim, his face was upturned.

Jim dead! He'd been a good pal, Jim had, and a hard worker. I kept petting my rifle, and I began to think about who'd killed Jim. I started to get restless. I got dizzy for a minute. I guess it had been the heat of the day. An idea began to come to my head, and it drove out every other ideal I had. I thought of the four little steel- tipped bullets in the rifle in my hands. I ought how nice it would be if I could send each of them straight and clean into the center of the forehead of one of those dirty Indians that had killed Jim.

I rested my cheek against the butt of the rife and strained my eyes into the darkness ahead, but I could see nothing. I could hear nothing but the breathing of the others, and Beelzebub snarling above me.

Suddenly, he leaped down on my shoulder and cuddled close to me, shivering. In a flash, the meaning of his act went through me.

"Look out," I whispered, "they're coming."

Almost as I spoke, I saw a figure darker than the shadow kneeling in front of me a little to one side. It seemed to be in the attitude of a man blowing something from a tube like a boy's pea-shooter, although I wuldn't see very clearly.

While Beelzebub shivered closer to me, I took aim slowly for the center of the kneeling figure and fired.

There was another whimpering yell. The figure leaped into the air and fell prone. Beelzebub shuddered close to me at the report of the rifle. I laid my cheek against its butt again and chuckled and had a good deal of trouble keeping from laughing aloud. I hadn't wasted a cartridge yet. The others kept silent.

I heard a tiny click, so small that it would have been impossible to hear it were it not for the silence around me. It came from directly before me. Ipuzzled over it for some time while I watched the shadows. Then it occurred to me what it was. Those Indians were blowing some kind of a poisoned arrow from a reed. They suspected the camera, and one of them had shot at it and hit it.

We lay there all night without another Indian showing his face. When day dawned hot and dreadful, with poor Jim's face already turning pretty badly and the dead Indian lying in the sun, we drew in closer to the underbrush— and there were plenty of insects there when the sun came up, too. We'd been too tense that night to notice them.

As it grew lighter, I noticed a funny thing. When I had set the camera up, after picking it from the ground where Jim left it, I'd happened to point it so that the lens focused exactly between us and the dead Indian. I remembered about the film that was in it that Jim and I had been arguing about. I figured that there was one reel that would probably never be exposed.

"What are we going to do?" I whispered back to Harvey.

"We'll have to stick here all day and watch— watch like the dickens. When night comes, we'll have to take a chance and run. I've got a compass; you all follow me. It's our one chance. We may get away from them—"

The words weren't out of his mouth when a little tick in a branch over my head, and then tick— tick— tick sounded all around. The poisoned arrows were coming. There is a horror about them that makes you sick to the stomach. I hadn't felt it before. I'd been too busy thinking; but I got it that time. They all came from one direction.

"All face the same way as Pete, and volley fire," whispered Harvey.

We all scrambled in a bunch and let them have the hot steel in volley after volley that tore through the leaves of the underbrush  across from us and sent them whirling and  dancing to the ground. Some uncertain cries, and more of that whimpering came from the trees again. We emptied our first clips, reloaded and fired again.

Then there was silence again.

Beelzebub, frightened by the firing, had leaped away from me; but came back in a minute, shivering again, and within thirty seconds after, the leaves in front of us vomited out a yelling, arm-waving horde of cinnamon-colored natives, that rushed us, blowing arrows through the tubes in their mouths as they came. I shot a new clip in my rifle in a second and heard the others doing the same, and we swept the first rank down; but another followed, and another, stumbling and falling, one over the other, and over their fellows' dead bodies, till my ached with shooting them.

I felt Beelzebub gone from my side. There was a lull, and, without thinking, I looked around for him. As I did so, I heard a steady, continuous clicking. Another buneh rushed from the trees; I had one glimpse of Beelzebub. The monkey in an agony of fright, had leaped to the camera, and with hysterical speed was winding the handle that sent that last reel of film flying before the lens. He was taking a picture of the battle!

Then they rushed us. Five cartridges went out of the blazing muzzle of my rifle and I hadn't time to reload. In a flash, I thought of the machete at my side, and, drawing it, leaped into them. I was too close for them to shoot and had a chance.

How that steel went through those naked bodies! The lust for killing blinded me. I swung and struck and swung and struck and felt the saliva in my mouth begin to drip from my lips as the warm blood ran off the blade over my hand.

They forced me back with nightmare clubs that I saw swinging over my head. Some one was fighting at my side. It was Harvey.

"Backup!" he was whispering hoarsely. "Step back at each blow, and when I turn and run, follow me! The others are all dead. —— the devils! —— them!" His voice rang up into a falsetto shriek.

I saw him from the corner of my eye swing on a clubbed Indian, sweep his head from his shoulders, and then stagger and fall, a tiny arrow quivering in his throat.

I hurled my machete, dripping with blood, into the faces of the nearest Indians, and turning, fled with a speed that is incredible— fled into the woods, and sped stumbling and crying and screaming with rage and fear over roots and bushes. The sudden panic that generals fear on the battlefield had taken possession of me. I ran and ran, whither I knew not, nor will I ever know, and the motive power of my going was a horrible, unbelievable and awful fear. The sweat poured from me in torrents; my clothes were dripping and torn; boughs had whipped my face and the blood was in my eyes; but I ran and shrieked aloud to the echoing forest as I ran.

After a time, I crashed face foremost into a tree and knew no more.

When I came to I was lying huddled up under a gigantic fern. My face was as raw as a steak. I had collided full tilt with a tree which stood over the fern. I raised myself stiffly to my feet. Three poisoned arrows were sticking in my clothes. The knuckles of my right hand were smashed from a club, one of my ears was half pulled off, and my nose was broken.

Three days later, after continuous traveling almost all day and night and living on the things Harvey said a man could eat, I came to a stockade in the foothills of what I found were the Andes, where there was a garrison of soldiers and a settlement of peaceful Indians and a priest. Eventually I reached Valparaiso, got into touch with my people in New York and returned home.

THE camera-man paused in his narrative, looked thoughtfully into a fresh glass of Scotch and soda the Englishman had ordered, and said:

"I am the only living white man, the only white man in the memory of man who ever crossed the country of the Poisoned Arrow Indians and escaped alive. That isn't what bothers me, though.

"I've traveled all over the world; I've worked under the best directors and with the best actors and actresses the studios have. My salary is one of the biggest in the business; but it hurts my pride to think that the greatest moving picture in the world was taken in the wilds of Brazil by a blue-nosed monkey named Beelzebub?"

__________________

2: Marwood's Ghost Story

Marjorie Bowen

Gabrielle M. V. Long, 1885-1952

John o’ London’s Weekly, Dec 6 1925

Marjorie Bowen

HE went into the country to write a ghost story; he had written about most things but never about ghosts; he was a keen, practical, clever man and he could not admit that there was anything, in the writing way, that he could not do; since other people had achieved ghost stories, he meant to achieve one— a good ghost story.

He did not despise any of the usual effects, loneliness, snow, even Christmas Eve; he thought that if he went into the country for the winter and experienced all these sensations for himself he might be helped in the writing of his story.

Of course there were a great many trashy, flimsy, silly ghost stories written, but that did not prevent someone writing a really fine ghost story, a tale that would grip and chill and pester the imagination of the unfortunate reader.

Marwood had never been very successful as far as money goes though the critics, those one or two or three or four that can really be called critics, always encouraged him; still he had sufficient means to be able to, sometimes, do what he liked; he was able now, for instance, to give up the winter to writing this ghost story; able, with the assistance of Janet, his wife, who came willingly into the country because the doctors, three very clever doctors, had said that Marwood was overworking, that he wanted quiet, a rest and change.

Doctors say that kind of thing very often, and sometimes rich, or lazy, or solitary folk are able to take advantage of the advice.

The cottage was very lonely, but not inconvenient; it was solid, compact, and could be made warm. Marwood paid so little rent for it that Janet felt she could be slightly lavish in comforts; Marwood had his big soft chair, his clear lamp, his roomy shelves, his thick curtains, his bright fires and his books.

The room soon began to overflow with books; Marwood began to collect ghost stories; he had never read a ghost story before, being a rational, sceptical man; his sharp, acrid studies of modern life had had as little to do with ghosts as with fairies.

"It is a queer thing," said Janet, "that you should want to write about ghosts— it is so silly, really, and so overdone."

"I know; that's the interest, to see if you can put some new vigour into such old stuff— one ought to be able to do— it is just a question of applying your intelligence."

Janet said:

"The best ghost stories have been written by those who believe in ghosts."

Marwood didn't think so; he didn't really think that anyone believed in ghosts.

"Well," argued Janet, "I don't see how you can hope to scare anyone, if no one believes—"

"Oh," said Marwood impatiently, "the fools who read ghost stories— it's a special audience, of course."

It was November and he had not begun to write; he just sat in his comfortable room and read the other fellows' failures.

He didn't think much of any of them, not even Defoe, or Roe, or Walter Scott.

"Stuff to frighten children," he said. "There must be a good ghost story somewhere, and I'm going to write it—"

Janet didn't care as long as he was quiet, resting; she was absorbed in making him comfortable; a plain woman who had never been enticed by pleasure, she did not miss the seductions of town, but sometimes she found the place rather lonely.

It was in a field, off a by-lane, and when the tradespeople (three times a week) and the postman, had "called" there was no one else all day but perhaps a farm-hand trudging through the mud.

It had been a wet summer; when the Marwoods first came the trees were still green, a dank and sodden green, and for a month the low swollen clouds hung over the bistre-coloured uplands and the rain slashed, for many hours each day, into fields already like a sponge full of water. Then, in November, came the frost, and everything was dry and blackish against a sky the colour of iron.

Marwood continued to buy ghost stories; he searched old catalogues for anything remotely bearing on the subject; piles of books came from the library.

"I'm not trying to get ideas," he explained to Janet. "I'm just seeing what the other fellows have said, so I can leave all that alone and start fresh— it's amazing. The credulity, the childish nonsense!"

"You'll get swamped in all that rubbish," replied Janet, who was a very practical woman. "I should stop if I were you and begin to write— after all, we can't stay here for ever."

Of course not. I've got my plot, you know; it won't take me long to write it— I ought to have it ready soon after Christmas; that was part of my plan, you know, to spend Christmas here—"

"You won't know if it is Christmas or not here, no one comes near us, they think we are mad, or heathen."

"Still it will be Christmas Eve and I shall get the atmosphere—"

"I don't see why ghosts should come out on Christmas Eve, never could; there's no logic in it—"

"Of course there isn't," said Marwood, irritated. "It is all an absurd invention. Haven't I told you that is what I want to do, take the stupid nonsense as it stands and make something out of it that's going to touch people up a bit?"

Janet thought that he was becoming rather bad-tempered and rude; she didn't believe much in his ghost story, she wished that he would get it over and done with and back to his usual work; with the cold the loneliness increased and Janet would have been quite glad to have returned to town.

When she ventured to make some remark to this effect, he returned a queer reply.

Janet said:

"If we stay away much longer you'll get out of touch with things."

And Marwood answered:

"I'm just getting into touch with things!"

He looked vexed at her surprise and added sullenly:

"It depends what you mean by things."

The first day of real snow Janet remarked that it might be a good occasion to commence the book.

Marwood said, yes, it was a good occasion, and he would go upstairs and write.

During their quiet meal that evening he seemed thoughtful, his lean, yellowish face was, Janet believed, paler than usual.

"Isn't it remarkable," he asked suddenly, "where they get it all from?"

"All what?" Janet was stupid at an emergency.

"All those things— ghosts, griffins, cockatrices, hobgoblins, vampires— if they never existed, how did people come to think of them?"

"Ignorance, of course." Janet was alert now. "They saw something that they didn't understand and they made up a tale—"

"But why? And how? Where did they get the stuff for the tale?"

"Imagination, obviously."

"But what is imagination, Janet?"

Janet became impatient.

"I should think that you are reading too much of that trash."

"I only want to know where they got it from," he persisted obstinately. "Some of those tales are so queer—"

"Inventions, fancies."

"I know," replied Marwood, exasperated, "but where did they get them from?"

"Well, there's drink, and drugs." Janet tried to humour him.

"That only starts it off— do you think the vision is in the glass? It's in your brain and the drink sets it free."

"What's madness, then?" asked Janet finally. "What's raving lunacy?"

Marwood sat up in some excitement.

"Now don't you ask me that— don't you ask me what madness is—"

"You needn't be personal over the stupid argument. I wish you'd finish your book so that we could get away from here—"

"You don't like the place?"

"I don't say that. But we've been here long enough. It's rather lonely."

"Yes, it's rather lonely."

They both glanced round the room, the one large low living room, as if to confirm this impression of loneliness.

"Fancy sitting up in bed at night and feeling the Devil pulling the mattress from under you, or hearing an empty box opening and shutting, or something with eight feet shuffling round the house—"

"Robert," said Janet, "you couldn't frighten a child with those things, nowadays."

"Couldn't you? Couldn't you?"

"Of course not,"

"What would you say if I told you I saw a gigantic negress, very lean, with a huge red turban, prying round the house and staring in at my window?"

"I should say that it was a poor joke."

"So it is," responded Marwood grimly, "a very poor joke."

"Silly."

"Silly," agreed Marwood.

They sat in silence a little while.

It was real silence in the cottage, heavy palpable silence.

That night Marwood stayed up late, writing or reading, Janet did not know which; she heard him talking to himself— a bad habit that had lately increased upon him, a habit to be discouraged.

They awoke to snow so thick that the dawn could scarcely penetrate the heavy chilled clouds; the fields were pure against a dirty sky.

A few days off Christmas Eve now.

"I hope you got on all right last night," said Janet.

"Splendidly."

"Really begun the ghost story?"

"Really begun."

"Well, I shall be glad when you've finished and we can get away."

"That's the trouble," said Marwood. "It isn't so easy to get away, in fact it's extraordinarily difficult."

"What do you mean, quite?"

"Oh, I can't keep explaining what I mean," he replied testily.

She left him alone.

Queer how the snow added to the loneliness; they seemed absolutely cut off from humanity; if it hadn't been for that glimpse of the tradespeople and the postman Janet would have felt herself completely isolated; she wanted to go to the village, just to see people, but it was a long way and there was the snow, and her husband didn't seem to care to be left alone.

"Someone might come to the door and interrupt me—"

"Not likely."

"You never know. The Vicar perhaps. And I really can't be interrupted."

Janet stayed in.

That evening they sat alone round the fire; the snow had ceased, there was a wind and a frost; they had been to the door several times to look at the stars and to listen to the church bells, practising for Christmas Day, that could just be heard in the absolute stillness.

"Funny," said Marwood, "if something really came along—"

"What do you mean, Robert?"

"Ghosts, or devils—"

She laughed thinly: they evaded each other's look.

"Mind you," Marwood added earnestly, "if any were to come, I couldn't bear it; I've been thinking it over— and I really couldn't."

Janet smiled at his joke.

"You aren't afraid?" she asked feebly.

"How can you be afraid of what you don't believe in? I never believed in them, did I?"

Still they didn't look at each other; Marwood lowered his voice and continued:

"What I am afraid of is Fear."

"Afraid of being afraid?" she suggested.

"That's it— if you were afraid now, if you looked afraid— if I saw Fear— anywhere," he answered confidentially.

"This is foolish," said Janet stoutly. "We are really shut up too much alone."

Marwood looked sullen; he remarked that he had a bad headache; temper, translated Janet, who was beginning to be nettled herself— and it was lonely.

Lonely.

They locked and barred and bolted it all up, they put out all the lights but one candle, and went up to bed.

Janet could not get to sleep; she thought it was because the silence was oppressive.

But Marwood was asleep, and dreaming, she thought, by his mutterings and tossings.

Janet felt uneasy; what a lot of queer things her husband had said lately! He wasn't really a bit like his usual level-headed self; she would be glad when they got away from this place and all these ghost books.

Then Janet heard a faint noise.

Outside the house.

A shuffling, scraping, peculiar sort of no Marwood said about SOME thing with eight feet?

Janet struck a match and lit the candle by the bedside; in the spurt of yellow light she saw her husband's face staring up from the pillow.

"It's nothing," she said quickly. "Some stray dog."

"Oh, you do hear it, then?"

"Of course— a stray dog, I say."

Marwood sat up and they listened.

The noise seemed to encompass the house; it was as if they were being surrounded, beleaguered in the cottage.

"A dog," said Marwood.

Then the shuffling was broken by a hoarse, quickly suppressed laugh.

Janet gripped her husband's shoulder; they stared at each other, shivering.

"If it is," whispered Marwood. "I can't bear it."

"Nonsense. It isn't."

They peered forward across the murk of the room; the window space now showed faintly luminous, a square of reddish light; at the sight of this doubtless infernal illumination Janet winced.

"You're afraid," gibbered Marwood. "I can see that— you're afraid."

"No— I'm going down to find out—"

He clung to her.

"No, you're not—"

A sudden clash, wail and howl tore the tension.

Marwood shrieked.

"I knew they couldn't have invented it all, I knew they'd got the stuff somewhere! It's true! It's true!"

"What's true?" mumbled Janet.

"Devils, ghosts— there outside— legions of 'em."

The howl took form and substance; it became:

"Hark, the Herald Angels sing—"

With triangle and trombone accompaniment.

"The Waits," sighed Janet, trembling.

Marwood never wrote his ghost story; he composed instead an essay on "Fear," but he would not care to have it published. You see, he never believed they were the Waits.

_________________

3: El Hamel, the Lost One

G. G. Pendarves

Gladys Gordon Trenery, 1885-1938

Oriental Stories, Winter 1932

"The fate of every man is about his neck."—Arab proverb.

LIEUTENANT DESTINS was young, unreconciled to loneliness, passionately unwilling to support the burden of his consciousness without the distractions of friends, music, theaters, and the general effervescence of a gay city life—the life of Paris, in fact, now removed from him by the Mediterranean and many weary leagues of the vast Sahara desert. He was undergoing the severest trial a man of his temperament could experience, and his vivacious Gallic soul rebelled and sickened under the ordeal.

It was two years now since he had first arrived at Fort Djebel Sfah, one of the most isolated outposts of the French occupation, northwest of the great range of the Hoggar mountains. It was a region sufficiently desolate and heart-breaking without the added terror of being thee stronghold and headquarters of the dreaded Touaregg tribe.

The ''Forgotten of God" these people are justly named, robbers, murderers, raiders of the most savage character. In spite of French vigilance, they made themselves feared throughout the desert —a fighting untamable remnant of a white Berber race, over whose origin the learned still dispute. "Wearers of the Veil" Is another popular name for this unique people, whose men from time immemorial have worn the littram jealously fastened across their aristocratic features both at home and abroad—sleeping, eating, fighting, dying in this mysterious veil that is so useful in their frequent raids, making identification and retribution equally impossible.

Lieutenant Destins stood on the western ramparts of Fort Djebel Sfah and gloomily watched the far-distant Hoggar peaks— fantastic brilliant pinnacles of rock— against the changing sky. The great vault overhead merged imperceptibly from azure to ultramarine; the far-flung carpet of pale yellow sand deepened to saffron from horizon to horizon. Gradually the whole firmament took fire, blazed in unbelievable reds, yellows, purples, greens, softened to a dusky amethyst, finally darkened in chromatic beauty until the brief desert darkness cloaked thee wilderness.

Still Lieutenant Destins stood like a statue, immobile in his frozen bitter nostalgia, while the moon and brilliant stars revealed the desert once more in the magic of a Saharan night. The soldier's well-knit youthful figure, his military carriage, the poise of his dark head, the beautifully drawn lines of nose and jaw in the shadow of his sun-helmet, all gave a first impression of strength and elasticity, of the "dauntless stuff" which fiction loves to associate with men who hold the frontiers of empire.

In Lieutenant Destins' case this first impression was misleading. The little muscle twitching at the angle of his smoothly-shaved jaw, the restless snapping of thumb and finger, the bitter despondency of the too flexible mouth, the clouded dull despair in the brown eyes did not reveal heroic endurance.

Le cafard was about to claim another victim! That was clear to all within the sun-baked walls of Djebel Sfah who remarked Destins' symptoms. Le cafard— the madness that overtakes so many in the awful loneliness of Saharan outposts, a mortal sickness which too often drives its victims to end the unbearable monotony of their days in suicide.

A running, stumbling figure in a red fez, and long white shirt that flapped about a pair of lean dark legs, was approaching the fort across the moonlit sands. There was a shout from a sentry, repeated and echoed from within the walls of the fort, where native servants squatted round their cooking-fires, eating, smoking, and sleeping in the welcome coolness of the freshening wind.

The hubbub of excited voices pierced Destins' apathy; the distant hurrying figure, like an ant in that immensity of sand, attracted his attention at last. With the rest of the garrison, who tumbled like eager schoolboys from their quarters, he joined the group at the gates as the heavy doors were unbolted and opened to receive the traveler.

The whole garrison was stung to instant life and normality at mere sight of the approaching man. The sluggish tide of existence at the fort became in a twinkling a purposeful swift-flowing river. Here was a link with the great outside world from which they were cut off. Here came tidings of good or evil, no matter which: tidings— news— the breath of life once more!

"Bachir!" exclaimed one of the natives. "Ya salam! He comes with all the shaitans of the wilderness at his heels!"

And "Bachir! Ha! Bachir! Melek Taos! Melek Taos!" echoed on every side, with bursts of ribald laughter.

To see the vain, stately Bachir in this disarray indicated quite unprecedented tidings. Three days ago he had left the fort in company with six others— two servants like himself, and three officers of the garrison. They had gone ostensibly gazelle-hunting, but rumors of a threatened raid on a garfla crossing from Timbuktu to Lake Chad had given purpose and direction to the hunters, apart from the chance of varying their restricted diet with gazelle steaks.

Three short days ago Bachir had departed puffed up with pride and importance. Long service, and conspicuous bravery in several hot sieges and sudden raids, had placed him considerably above the rank and file of other natives at the fort, and an overweening vanity in the matter of dress decked him out in such abandon of glorious hues that he was nicknamed "Melek Taos," or "Lord Peacock," by one officer, who had been reading up the strange history and beliefs of the Yezidees, or devil-worshippers.

Near the gates, the disheveled dusty figure collapsed suddenly. A dozen eager helpers ran out into the moonlight, carried him into the fort, and put him gently on the ground with his back to a wall. Water was brought. He took a mouthful, spat it out, his throat muscles working convulsively; then he drank deeply and raised a limp hand in salute as the commandant bent over him.

"A rhazzia!" he whispered, his stiff, blackened lips shaping the words with difficulty. "Near the Pass of Set-Set! Touareggs... big rhazzia... hundreds! All killed except me... wounded here!" he raised a shaking hand to his head. "I escaped... they pursued to the Well of Daz ... but I had time... to drink... and spoil the water... poison plant near. My pursuers died. Lost my camel... yesterday. Touareggs come... swiftly, swiftly, Arfi!"

He stretched, sighed deeply once, and fell back. The Lord Peacock would strut no more. His body was hastily carried to a convenient comer to await burial at a less distracting moment— a bundle of dirty rags and indifferent clay.

The ancient fort hummed and buzzed.

The pent-up energy of weeks of inaction turned officers and men alike into demons of effectiveness. Gunners stood at attention on the walls, ammunition was brought up by chattering, excited men, cartridge belts donned. In addition to the regulation government rifles, old flintlocks, wicked-looking knives, and swords in strangely-chased scabbards appeared amongst the Arabs, who moved like cats in spite of the weight of the miniature arsenals they disposed about their persons.

With the rest, Lieutenant Destins became a dynamo of energy. Taut, erect, with throbbing pulses he stood again on the western ramparts, his narrowed eyes glued to the binoculars he held up, his whole soul concentrated on a barricade of hills running north and south almost in a straight line across the western horizon. Sand dunes rose to heights of several hundred feet on the distant sky-line. In the foreground, stretching to the base of the fort itself, the dunes flattened out to mere sandy swellings on the plain, covered with bush and dried yellow grasses, and affording excellent cover to such enemies as the Touareggs. With a perfection learnt through centuries of guerrilla warfare in the wilderness, these Touareggs had a magic faculty of identifying themselves with bush and grass and shadow that no white man could hope to emulate.

"Something moves to the left of that tallest hill, Arfi!" one of the Arabs volunteered. "Under the big star."

Destins frowned, strained his sight in vain.

"Keep down, keep down!" he ordered. "If you can see them, they can see us. They mustn't guess we've been warned, and are ready for them. Next man who puts an inch of himself above the parapet will be taken down to the guardhouse."

This horrible threat of missing all the fun kept the excited natives huddled within the deep shadow of a heavy buttress, but they chattered like monkeys.

"Thousands— thousands were Bachir's very words!" they assured one another. "They come as the sands of the desert for multitude! The great Sheikh Ben Zaban leads them— who but he? Billah, the dogs! Scum of the Hoggar! Our guns will scatter them as eagles put wild birds to flight!"

Hours slipped by. The moon rose to her zenith and sank once more. The dark cold hour before dawn was upon them, and the excitement in the fort was intense despite the long hours of waiting. This was ever the Touareggs' chosen hour for attack— that chill discouraging hour when friend and foe are almost indistinguishable in the murk— the hour when blood runs slow and sleep lies heavy on the eyelids.

Lieutenant Destins drank scalding coffee from his pannikin, swore absent- mindedly as the hot metal burned his lips, and stamped his cold feet on the stones, his face turned constantly to the dunes.

Veil after veil of night imperceptibly lifted, and on the eastern horizon a cold white-gray patch increased. The wind that had nipped the garrison so cruelly through the night watches dropped suddenly. Even the Arab tongues were stilled. A moment of silence as intense as the peculiar quiet of a forsaken churchyard held the fort and its watchers in a spell.

Then, like a burst bubble, the quiet and hush broke into a thousand flying shreds.

A soft thunder of hooves on sand increasing to a roar. Shrill yells of fury. Ullah— Ullah— Ullah — lah lah lah! rose in a crescendo as, from the indistinct barrier of dunes, a cloud of horsemen surged forward like a great wave breaking.

An answering roar from the fort scattered them. Taken completely by surprise, they wheeled and circled in momentary confusion. But one figure, darting like a hornet amongst his men, rallied them. On they came once more, the hornet-like leader in the van brandishing his long gun over his head, while his gayly striped burnous stretched like a taut sail behind him.

Another flash of red leaped from the western walls of Fort Djebel Sfah, followed by a roar, and through the acrid smoke the garrison saw the Touareggs mowed down, whirl, and mill about in confusion. The hornet-one did not halt— standing in his stirrups of wide native design he harangued his men, and the Touareggs once more rallied.

On came Striped Burnous, lead peppering about him briskly as he got within rifle range, but although men fell on all sides, he seemed bullet-proof and rode straight for the gates of the fort. Some fifty of the Veiled Ones reached the safety of the buttressed walls with him, and reined in so close that it was impossible for the defenders to shoot them down without exposing their own bodies as easy targets.

A clattering of horses' hooves on the stones of the great courtyard arose. The commandant's orders rapped out like a machine-gun in action. From under the gates wisps and curls of smoke rose ominously. The Touareggs were attempting to fire the massive wooden entrance.

"—but not until we have engaged them thoroughly," the commandant went on addressing Destins. "They've surrounded the fort, but as soon as we open the gates every last Touaregg will rush in on us. Then leave by the postern gate and circle round to cut them off from retreat to the hills. I can only spare you fifteen men. If he escapes us, concentrate on the leader— Ben Zaban! Get him... bring him back alive or dead! We must make an example of him."

THE GATES were opened so abruptly that the raiders were again taken by surprise and the French thrust out in a grim determined wedge, meeting the yelling Berbers with the irresistible force of perfectly co-ordinated machinery. Pushing out through the swarming enemy, the defenders stood solid, taking aim deliberately, bringing down man after man until the riderless horses making toward the hills looked as if they were engaged in some sort of steeple-chase.

The Touareggs wavered, their morale breaking down rapidly under the steady strain. Their leader urged them in vain. Long distance sniping, guerilla warfare, the quick shock of hand-to-hand tussles in the hills with men as excitable and impassioned as themselves— that sort of fighting they understood. But this steady resolute opposition was not according to their code.

They broke and scattered, riding off in all directions. Those that made for the hills were cut off by Destins and his men strung out in a long line across the sand. Caught between these on one hand and the garrison on the other, few Touareggs escaped. But Ben Zaban's luck held, and he spurred determinedly for the hills, a flying streak of red and yellow.

Destins was after him, as closely attached as a tail to a flying comet. If Ben Zaban once reached his objective, the Frenchman realized that all the advantage would be with the desert fighter. It was now or never. He reined in his horse, took steady aim, and fired.

For a moment nothing happened, and he thought he had missed completely. Then the Touaregg reeled in his saddle, toppled, and slipped sideways to the ground. He was dragged in the dust until his body was caught and wedged by a mass of protruding rock. The horse broke free and dashed on, snorting with fear, and in a moment more had vanished among the winding defiles of the hills beyond.

Destins slowed his own horse to a footpace, for stone and stubble made the going precarious, and approached the bright huddle of Ben Zaban's body. He dismounted and looked down at the face which the torn veil revealed.

"A real warrior!" Destins looked regretfully down at the Touaregg sheikh. "Modern civilization can never breed men like this again. A marvelous savage!"

He hoisted the limp body on the back of his horse, and began to make his way back to the fort.

From the bush-covered spur of a hilt about twenty yards away there was a faint tinkle of armlets; slender henna-tipped fingers held aside a twig; two dark brilliant eyes peered through the opening thus made.

Zamathar the Beautiful! Zamathar, whose songs of love and battle were sung at myriad campfires, echoing all the fiery passion and romance of her most ancient race. Zamathar, whose wit and beauty made her a queen amongst the fierce Touaregg warriors. Zamathar, the star of Ben Zaban's tumultuous life— whose firstborn kicked and crowed in Ben Zaban's tent in the far-off Hoggar mountains, not knowing that his father lay still and silent in the dust before Fort Djebel Sfah.

Her eyes watched the limp body of her lover unblinking, her mouth steady, her whole body still as a marvelous statue, her breath deep and quiet, scarcely stirring the silken folds across her breast.

Despair... death... that might come later. The present was no time for private grief. The last act was yet to be played, and the deep tragic gaze that followed Destins, as he led his horse with its burden across the stones and sand, missed no detail that might help her to play her part later.

A long time she lay hidden among the bushes, until the lizards, emboldened by her perfect stillness, began to whisk about her. The sun climbed steadily, the sky changed from blue to grayish white, intolerably hot and glaring. From the scant shelter of a rock Zamathar watched and waited with the endless deadly patience of the East.

At last the gates of the fort were opened. A group of men emerged carrying something amongst them; they moved in her direction until they were quite near to her hiding-place, then threw down their burden on the sand, returned to the fort and vanished within. In a few minutes they reappeared with a ladder, which one of them mounted, and fastened something dark and round to a spike set in the archway over the gates. He got down and surveyed his handiwork from below, and the others joined him, gesticulating furiously. They were town Arabs from Algeria, Zamathar knew, and she despised them as only the true Berber can despise the town-dwelling Arabs. They went back through the gates at last, and the latter closed behind them.

Zamathar's eyes, keen as a young hawk's, knew instantly what that small round object was over the gates. It was the head of Sheikh Ben Zaban.

Her heart stood still with fear and horror and a bitter anger. No more awful punishment could have been devised for a true believer. Not only death of the body, but death of the soul! A dishonor which would blacken the name of Ben Zaban and his heirs forever.

Such punishment as this would deprive her beloved of all chance of peace and happiness in Paradise. He was lost— body and soul he was lost, unless that dear and sacred head could be recovered and buried with his body in one grave.

Long and agonized were Zamathar's thoughts as she lay there. She crept at last across the burning sand to the burden which the men had flung down so carelessly, and beside Ben Zaban's headless trunk she made her vow. Stooping her proud little head to the breast that had pillowed it so often, her lips moved soundlessly. Then she vanished into the hills beyond, while the circling vultures dropped one by one from the brassy skies.

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS later, Lieutenant Destins rode out through the gates of the fort. The old deadly nostalgia was stealing back— the old irritation and despair beginning to tug at him, distorting every one and everything in sight.

A stiff gallop would shake him out of his mood for an hour at least, brace him up before the horrible tedium of mess— dinner with the same old faces, the same old jokes, the inevitable menu, and the choice between a game of cards, a quarrel, or the farce of studying a few dull books to fit himself for promotion.

"Promotion! Mon Dieu— promotion!" Destins said between his teeth as he passed under the archway. "And what does that mean in this cursed desert? Moving on to some other corner of hell! More flies... more sun... more fools to hate... more beastliness... and no recognition until one is skewered on some filthy Bedouin's lance! Then— a nice little hole in the sand and a label— 'Died for his country.' Bah!"

He looked up at the grim object suspended from an iron spike above the gates. The bitter lines about his mouth deepened.

"And that's the end of you, mon brave!" he apostrophized it. "That's the finish of your glory and renown! Your handsome head hangs out for the sun to dry— and your body flung to the vultures! Well, I envy you. At least you died with the blood singing in your veins; you never knew the paralysis of inaction... of years of stupid monotony. You lived a man's life and died fighting. You were never cooped up like a wasp in a bottle until you were a soggy dreary beast... until you didn't care... didn't—"

With a curse he spurred his mount to a wild gallop, on to the far horizon, where the flaming disk that had made the fort an inferno from dawn to sunset now withdrew in a last defiant flare of crimson and gold.

In his hysterical uncontrolled condition, the unhappy Destins rode farther and faster than he had intended. Outraged by the constant application of her master's spurred heels, his spirited mare flew on with a recklessness that matched her rider's mood. Darkness fell round him like a black curtain before Destins woke to a realization of his folly, but it was too late to prevent catastrophe.

The mare stumbled over a patch of rough ground, fell to her knees, and when Destins dismounted and got her up again, the beautiful creature stood shivering and trembling with pain. She rubbed her velvet muzzle against his arm as, full of contrition for his carelessness, he soothed her with hand and voice.

She was very lame, and it was doubtful if she could hobble home even without Destins on her back. The fort was entirely out of sight, but when the moon rose and showed the straight black interminable ridge of hills on the western horizon, it was not difficult to steer in the right direction, and man and beast began their tedious journey.

Destins was in no mood to appreciate the austere desolate beauty of his surroundings. The vast solemn grandeur of the wilderness appalled him. Space... solitude... silence... and overhead the fathomless depths of night-blue sky.

His eager blood was chilled in his veins. He felt like a pale ghost divorced from his body. The desert was to him a bitter hell of sand and heat where a man lost all he had... all he was... all he ever hoped to be.

THE moon rose higher; the desert, sketched in sharpest black and silver, became more remote, more mysterious. A man of far coarser imagination than Destins might well have been awed to the point of fear.

The mare hobbled along more easily; fifteen miles away the dark squat outline of the fort loomed up, while on the left the hills ran down in long ridges and valleys not more than a hundred yards distant. Suddenly the animal halted, one forefoot suspended, intelligent dark eyes turned inquiringly to those same hills, her delicate ears pricked.

A long soft call came clearly, low and sweet as a bird note.

As Destins hesitated, his fingers around the butt of his revolver, a figure emerged from the shadows in the hills, and moved swiftly toward him— a woman's figure, unveiled, desperate in its movements, bare arms outflung in appeal, the eager slender body wrapped in crimson silk that reflected the light as some crystal goblet of rare wine The young solider stood still in the greatest surprise. Half aware of the morbid hysterical state to which he was succumbing by degrees, he felt a pang of horror.

"Am I mad, then?" he asked himself. "Is this a delusion— a trick of the senses?"

He shut his eyes to gain control of himself. Perhaps when he opened them there would be no woman... he would know then that his mind was really going! He squeezed his lids tightly together— heard a faint high note singing in his ears— a quick snuffling breath from the mare— then a faint musical tinkle of metal against metal.

His eyes flashed open in time to see a woman collapse at his feet, a sobbing, murmuring heap of brilliant silk; two clinging hands took one of his between their soft palms and held it to a tear-wet cheek.

"But... but—" stammered Destins, scarcely knowing even yet if he were a victim to a delusion or not, charming though it might be. He was silenced by a sight of the face raised imploringly to his.

"Effendi! Allah is merciful! He has sent thee... thou wilt not refuse thine aid!"

Destins looked long at her. Her face, like a dark glorious flower, was lovely beyond any he had ever seen. Amazed, speechless, he stared with the conviction that he had not known what beauty was until this moment.

And Zamathar did not spare him. She recognized him at once, and her whole soul put forth its strength to lure and bind him to her; every nerve of her exquisite body responded to her demand.

She did not see a young French officer... she saw only Ben Zaban standing proud and splendid before her. She was not speaking to Destins, but to him whose ears would never delight in her low voice again. With all the strength and passion in her she clothed Destins in the body and blood of her beloved dead.

The man before her heard little and understood less of the tragic story she poured out kneeling there at his feet, her eyes outshining the stars in splendor, her perfumed hair a dark mist about her face and slender body. Some dim idea did penetrate his consciousness that her caravan had been attacked by men of the Tublu tribe, blood enemies of her people, that she had escaped and needed sanctuary. Some one she loved was killed; she was defenseless and far from her home. If he would hide her for a few days... a very few days... until it was safe for her to return over the hills again.

"Effendi, thou wilt not refuse me this?" Her hands— the small-boned exquisite hands of the Touaregg aristocrat— held his gently as a child's soft fingers. Destins shivered under their touch.

He was so enchanted that for long moments he could only stand there stiff and stupid as a waxwork, watching the play of her features, her fathomless eyes under tear-wet lashes, her skin smooth and creamy as a deep tea-rose, and her mouth— crimson as her rich robe— pleading, lovely, irresistible.

He stooped to her, lifted her from her knees, holding her as if he feared his touch might break the spell, that she might melt and vanish in his clasp.

Her night-dark eyes were on a level with his own, and he saw that they were blue, not black as he first believed. He drew her closer to him... closer, his eyes on hers. A flame danced down deep in those blue depths of hers, a flame of triumph... and contempt. Her tragic mouth twisted to a smile as he caught her to him.

"No! No!" she whispered breathlessly. "Not now— not yet! We must go swiftly— swiftly, effendi! Take me away from this place! Hide me!"

Destins woke from his trance, astonished at the sudden change in her. He felt like an awkward schoolboy beside this regal woman, who pointed an imperious hand toward the distant fort.

"Take me there!" she commanded. "Hide me for a week— one week!"

She spoke a local dialect familiar to Destins with a liquid slurring of the vowels which pleased the young Frenchman's critical ear.

"It is as you please," he responded slowly. "I was thinking it will be easy to hide you for as long as you wish. I know of a place— if you are not afraid of shaitans [devils]!"

"I am afraid of nothing... nothing save the Tublu sheikh who is pursuing me," she answered. "There are no devils more dreadful than those I find in human shape."

DESTINS flushed, remembering uneasily his share, and his fierce joy in the fight of yesterday. This woman would hardly have appealed to him if she had seen him shooting and hacking at her own tribesmen! He must be careful not to let slip anything about that.

Then a faint premonition of peril and disaster urged him to say:

"There is always the fort. Perhaps it would be wise for you to let me present you to the commandant. He will have you safely guarded, and you can send a message to your tribe."

"Never— never!" she cried. "A woman alone with all those rough soldiers and contemptible Arabs who are the servants of your army! My name would be blackened forever... my own father would shoot me like a dog if I dared return after such disgrace. It would be a shameful thing for a Touaregg woman such as I! No, effendi, if you can not hide me, then I die here in the desert."

She snatched at his revolver before he could move a finger, and turned the muzzle to her breast.

"Wait— wait!" Destins was seized with a quite incredible terror. "It shall be as you desire. I will find a secret place for you... no one, no one shall ever discover you there."

She lowered the weapon, and Destins seized it roughly, his hands suddenly cold and wet with the sudden fear that he had lost her.

"It was only for your sake I suggested the fort. I thought you might feel safer. I am no better than my brother officers," he added roughly, impelled to sheer honesty by the lovely look of confidence and hope that again dawned in her eyes. "Why do you single me out... why do you trust me? I am a man... and you... you are the loveliest thing I have seen in all my life!"

Once more that flame danced in her eyes— that little flame of triumph... and contempt.

"I know men," she said briefly. "I know those whom I can trust. I have known them in peace and in war. Men have loved me, hated me, desired me since I first learned to smile or frown on them! Beauty such as mine brings great wisdom, effendi!"

She spoke with a calm detachment that no one could mistake for vanity. Destins realized afresh that here was no lovely plaything to amuse a man's idle hours.

He knew the matriarchal system of the Touareggs, the unlimited power and freedom of the mothers and wives of this ancient white race, the independence of their women-folk from childhood up. This was one of the grandes dames of that mysterious tribe— a woman whose word was law among her people, whom warriors sought out for counsel and advice, who had no doubt ridden out to battle as other celebrated women of her tribe had done.

A brief doubt as to the meaning of her tears, her role of clinging despondent womanhood, assailed him. Even in his infatuation he realized dimly that such a role was alien to the stately creature before him.

Then she smiled at him, put a gentle, imploring hand on his arm. He was lost. What matter if she had been pretending? What matter the secret she concealed behind those dark blue eyes? What did he care? She had come to him out of the solitary wilderness— the first good gift it had given him, this loveliest of women had come to him. Why ask more of the Fates?

"They'll have sentinels posted," he said suddenly. "We shall be within their range soon. Better to wait here until the moon sets. That will give us a chance to get to your hiding-place without being seen. It is an old ruin about ten miles from the fort— the remains of an ancient castle. It is dry and there are no snakes about, and its reputation for being haunted acts like a charm for keeping it deserted."

She smiled at him again.

"It will be perfect," she assured him. "It is well for me that I have met you. Allah is good!"

Destins privately thought that Allah had been good to him also, and blessed his lucky star that had led him to ride out so fast and far that night.

THEY turned aside to a ridge of dunes, and in a deep hollow Destins built a fire from dried sticks scattered about, and by its cheering warmth he watched the stars fade out, giving himself up completely to the magic of the hour. The play of light and shadow on the face and figure of the woman fascinated him. At times her head, in its cloud of hair, looked fateful, almost threatening— the eyes under their long lashes somber and tragic—the curved mouth austere to cruelty.

Then the leaping flame would set alight the fire in the blue eyes, her flashing glance would make his heart beat hard and fast, the proudly set lips would lose their tautness and relax to smile at him... to murmur gratitude and hope.

"What do they call you?" he asked abruptly.

She leaned toward him, holding out her hands, the jewelled fingers outspread.

"My names are many as the jewels I wear," she answered lightly. "As many as those who hold me dear."

"I hold you dear," replied Destins, his voice hardly audible above the crackle of the blazing twigs.

She looked at him in silence, her eyes holding his deep gaze with composure, her brows puckered a little as if he were a page of some new book she sought to understand.

"You shall call me Nakhla!" she said at last. "Often that name is in my ears. Nakhla— which means a palm-tree!"

"Palm-tree! The crown and glory of the desert," was Destins' quick response. "It's a good name for you. And my name—"

"I will name you El Hamel," she interrupted, with a strange twisted little smile. "El Hamel— the Lost One! When I first saw you trudging with your head down, and your shoulders bowed, that is how you appeared— El Hamel!"

Destins cheerfully agreed, laughing now at the dismal picture she sketched with an indescribable gesture of her supple wrist.

"That's what they will be calling me at the fort by this time, too," he remarked.

"Ah, yes! We must go!" She sprang to her feet. She was suddenly remote and withdrawn again, and Destins followed her, leading the mare. In the gray dawn they reached the ruined castle that was to be Zamathar's shelter.

What had been the ramp leading to the main entrance of the place was now a hardly visible path, and Destins led his companion carefully over the stones and rock half concealed by the straggling camel-thorn. He looked round at the gray ruinous pile in doubt.

"It will be light before I get back to the fort. What will you do all day without food or drink? What a fool I am! You can't stay here and die of thirst!"

She took his hand in hers.

"That is nothing for me, a Touaregg woman! I can endure as much as a man. Often I have not drunk for many days together. Do not fear for me. I shall wait for your return tonight."

Destins took her in his arms— her hands crushed against his breast....

"At the earliest moment," he said, his cheek against hers, the perfume of her hair in his nostrils. "You will wait... you will think of me, Nakhla, my beloved!"

"I will think of you during all the hours of the day," she assured him gravely, and stood quietly in his arms as he kissed her. He grew desperate at the moment of parting, afraid that the cruel desert would steal this new great treasure from him with all the rest.

"I can't leave you... I can't!"

"You must go," she answered very gravely. "In the Name of Allah I swear that you will find me here when you return tonight. Go now, El Hamel, if there is truly any love for me in your heart."

The last long miles across the sand might have been a stroll through the streets of his beloved Paris, as far as Destins was concerned. He looked up at the solid walls of the fort, and at the sentry's grinning face with astonishment on his arrival. As the day wore on, his brother officers watched him at first with amusement, and then with pity.

"Poor fellow! Done for, I'm afraid! This cursed desert gets most of us one way or another!"

Destins, utterly unconscious of their looks and their interpretation of his dazed condition, lived the hours of the past night over and over again, counting the minutes until sunset and the friendly dark.

"IT AMOUNTS to this, then," said the A commandant next morning. "No one has seen Destins since dinner last night. You, Boursoie, lent him your horse, and the sentry on duty then noticed that he took a southerly direction toward the Dazar oases. Take two Arabs and ride out there. If he has not been seen in that locality, round up a band of tribesmen for a search party. They're Tublus and at war with the Touareggs as usual, so that if any stragglers from those that attacked us are about, the Tublus will make short work of them. Keep a sharp lookout for snipers as you go, and report immediately on your return."

Boursoie saluted and went off. He drew a blank at Dazar, and spent the rest of the grilling hours of that day rounding up Tublu helpers and scouring the surrounding country. It was hopeless. At sunset he returned to make his report.

"Instruct the gunners to send up rockets every five minutes," ordered the commandant. "Double the sentries and tell them to keep awake for once."

But in spite of vigilance, nothing unusual occurred to disturb the serenity of the African night. From the distant hills came the occasional shrill yelp of a jackal— from the walls of the fort the voices of the sentries echoed— and that was all!

The surrounding country was full of small hummocks and hollows, patches of bush and long grass, many places where he shadows lay densely black on the silvered face of the desert. More than once the sentries called to one another, thinking they spied something that skulked behind a bush, or crawled in the hollows behind the dunes. The rest would rally round, and, after a few minutes of concentrated vigilance, would jeer at the scaremonger unmercifully, for the sandy dunes were as empty of life and movement as the Dead Sea.

If the commandant had posted his men on the summits of the hills opposite the fort— those hills which had spewed out a Touaregg horde a few days previously— possibly an extra sharp-eyed watcher might have seen Zamathar. Just as possibly not! For she moved supple and quick as a panther, and in the neutral-tinted cloth she wound about her so closely, she was utterly inconspicuous. The brilliant royally clad Nakhla who had beguiled Destins was wiped out completely— only a phantom-like woman remained.

Her scarlet silken robe, tom and stained and dusty, was slung across her shoulders, looped so as to contain some burden about the size of a water-skin, with the comers knotted firmly about her neck. The bundle appeared damp, dripping every now and then upon the hot sands.

Keeping to the hollows, taking the shortest cuts, going always with untiring strength and determination, Zamathar at last reached a position almost opposite the fort, where she lay and took stock of her surroundings.

In the brilliant moonlight she could see distinctly every detail of the massive building which faced her. The white walls glistened as if they were cut from hard-frozen snow. On the battlements the sentries drowsily propped themselves on their guns and chatted in groups. It was almost three a. m. and they were thinking happily of hot coffee and their pipe?

For any one skilled in guerilla warfare as was this warrior-queen, it was not a task of superhuman difficulty to approach within a hundred yards of the fort in comparative safety. True, that damp sticky bundle on her back was not a convenient accessory to her strategies. However, she let it slip from her shoulders and dragged it along in the sand, making a long furrow behind her— the sand caked and stuck to it until it resembled a huge ball of sand.

Behind a large patch of bush, Zamathar waited for endless minutes. The voices of the sentries came clearly across the clear night air to the watcher, whose brilliant eyes glittered as she prayed that Allah would speedily bring these dogs to a very evil end.

Not a sound, not a movement on the walls of the fort escaped her. But chiefly her attention was riveted on that small dried object hanging from the spike over the gate. Zamathar's face altered incredibly as she gazed at this.

She glanced around. Ah! There it was, still lying in the dust. A mere skeleton now, picked clean by desert scavengers— that strong splendid body that had been Ben Zaban's only three short nights since. Dead and dishonored! Her lover... dishonored!

Her small white teeth ground savagely together.

From sea to sea, in all the wide Sahara, none had borne a name more famous than that of the great warrior, Sheikh Ben Zaban. And now this shameful curse was put upon him by the vile unbelievers... a curse to keep his noble soul from the Paradise it had earned.

The sentries were dispersing. It was a change of guard. She knew the ways of the white man— his strange foolish ways. There were two or three minutes when the walls were absolutely deserted, the careless sentries going off duty exchanging badinage with equally careless sentries coming on.

"Now... now Zamathar!" she adjured herself.

Catching up her bundle under her arm, she sped like a cloud shadow across the last intervening space to the fort— gained the shelter of the walls— dropped beneath them.

With her bundle again slung on her back she once more looked up at the grim trophy over the gate. Then, clinging to the rough uneven surface of the old walls like a bat, taking advantage of every crack and cranny, she fought and struggled upward inch by inch. Her delicate feet and hands were tom, her nails broken, her muscles strained agonizingly, but she managed at last to reach a wide shelf of stone which ran along on either side of the gates. It was easy, once she stood there, to undo her bundle and exchange its contents with that shrivelled head impaled on the spike.

With the precious head clasped to her, she dropped in a soft boneless heap to the ground, and crouched there waiting. Not a tear, not a sigh escaped her, as she huddled there with that dreadful thing upon her knee. Not even yet was she free to dwell on her private grief. Vengeance was accomplished, but her duty to the dead was still incomplete.

An hour dragged by— two— three hours. At last she ventured to creep forward a few yards and peer up at the walls. Only one sentry in sight, and he nodded as he stood with folded arms, leaning against a gun.

"Allah guard me!" she breathed, as she darted back to the shelter of the rocks and bush that fringed the hills opposite the fort, back to the hollow where the bones of Ben Zaban lay. She held the withered head to her soft breast.

"Remember me, where thou art gone, Ben Zaban!"

Digging a shallow grave in the soft sand, she laid within it both head and bones, covering all at last with a cairn of stones.

In the gray mists of dawn she vanished— back to the shelter of the enveloping dunes— back to her own tribe— back; to drink the cup of grief to its dregs.

SHORTLY after dawn, the commandant stared in purple apoplectic silence at that which replaced the head of the infamous Touaregg sheikh, Ben Zaban.

True, a head still hung there from the iron spike over the gate of the fort— the head of a man as young, as handsome, as aristocratic as that of Ben Zaban's had been.

Bur this head was that of a Frenchman, not an Arab. Nor was it withered and dried by the sun. The face was still beautiful— more beautiful in death than in life, for peace and deep content were written on it.

It was the head of Lieutenant Destins.

__________________

4: The Haunted Station

Hume Nisbet

1849-1921

Belgravia Annual,  Christmas 1892.

Scottish artist and author, who spent several years in Australia as a young man, and revisited Australia from time to time after settling in Edinburgh. He wrote many ghost stories, and this Christmas ghost story is often reprinted.

James Hume Nisbet

IT LOOKED AS IF a curse rested upon it, even under that glorious southern morn which transformed all that it touched into old oak and silver-bronze.

I use the term silver-bronze, because I can think of no other combination to express that peculiar bronzy tarnish, like silver that has lain covered for a time, which the moonlight in the tropics gives to the near objects upon which it falls— tarnished silver surfaces and deep sepia-tinted shadows.

I felt the weird influence of that curse even as I crawled intothe gully that led to it; a shiver ran over me as one feels when they say some stranger is passing over your future grave; a chill gripped at my vitals as I glanced about me apprehensively, expectant of something ghoulish and unnatural to come upon me from the sepulchral gloom and mystery of the overhanging boulders under which I was dragging my wearied limbs. A deathly silence brooded within this rut-like and treeless gully that formed the only passage from the arid desert over which I had struggled, famishing and desperate; where it led to I neither knew nor cared, so that it did not end in a cul-de-sac.

At last I came to what I least expected to see in that part, a house of two storeys, with the double gables facing me, as it stood on a mound in front of a water-hole, the mellow full moon behind the shingly roof, and glittering whitely as it repeated itself in the still water against the inky blackness of the reflections cast by the denser masses of the house and vegetation about it.

It seemed to be a wooden erection, such as squatters first raise for their homesteads after they have decided to stay; the intermediate kind of station, which takes the place of the temporary shanty while the proprietor's bank account is rapidly swelling, and his children are being educated in the city boarding schools to know their own social importance. By and bye, when he is out of the mortgagee's hands, he may discard this comfortable house, as he has done his shanty, and go in for stateliness and stone-work, but to the tramp or the bushranger, the present house is the most welcome sight, for it promises to the one shelter, and to the other a prospect of loot.

There was a verandah round the basement that stood clear above the earth on piles, with a broad ladder stair leading down to the garden walk which terminated at the edge of the pool or water hole; under the iron roofing of the verandah I could make out the vague indications of French doors that led to the reception rooms, etc., while above them were bedroom windows, all dark with the exception of one of the upper windows, the second one from the end gable, through which a pale greenish light streamed faintly.

Behind the house, or rather from the centre of it, as I afterwards found out, projected a gigantic and lifeless gum tree, which spread its fantastic limbs and branches wildly over the roof, and behind that again a mass of chaotic and planted greenery, all softened and generalized in the thin silvery mist which emanated from the pool and hovered over the ground.

At the first glance it appeared the abode of a romantic owner, who had fixed upon a picturesque site, and afterwards devoted himself to making it comfortable as well as beautiful. He had planted creepers and trained them over the walls, passion-fruit and vines clung closely to the posts and trellis work and broke the square outlines of windows and angles, a wild tangle of shrubs and flowers covered the mound in front and trailed into the water without much order, so that it looked like the abode of an imaginative poet rather than the station of a practical money-grubbing squatter.

As I quitted the desolate and rock-bound gully and entered upon this romantic domain, I could not help admiring the artful manner in which the owner had left Nature alone where he could do so; the gum trees which he had found there were still left as they must have been for ages, great trees shooting up hundreds of feet into the air, some of them gaunt and bald with time, others with their leafage still in a flourishing condition, while the more youthful trees were springing out of the fertile soil in all directions, giving the approach the appearance of an English park, particularly with the heavy night-dew that glistened over them.

But the chill was still upon me that had gripped me at the entrance of the gully, and the same lifeless silence brooded over the house, garden, pool and forest which had awed me amongst the boulders, so that as I paused at the edge of the water and regarded the house, I again shuddered as if spectres were round me; and murmured to myself, "Yes, it looks like a place upon which has fallen a curse."

TWO YEARS before this night, I had been tried and condemned to death for murder, the murder of the one I loved best on earth, but, through the energy of the press and the intercession of a number of influential friends, my sentence had been mercifully commuted to transportation for life in Western Australia.

The victim, whom I was proved by circumstantial evidence to have murdered, was my young wife, to whom I had been married only six months before; ours was a love match, and until I saw her lying stark before me, those six months had been an uninterrupted honeymoon, without a cloud to cross it, a brief term of heaven, which accentuated the after misery. I was a medical practitioner in a small country village which I need not name, as my supposed crime rang through England. My practice was new but growing, so that, although not too well off we were fairly comfortable as to position, and, as my wife was modest in her desires, we were more than contented with our lot.

I suppose the evidence was strong enough to place my guilt beyond a doubt to those who could not read my heart and the heart of the woman I loved more than life. She had not been very well of late, yet, as it was nothing serious, I attended her myself; then the end came with appalling suddenness, a postmortem examination proved that she had been poisoned, and that the drug had been taken from my surgery, by whom or for what reason is still a mystery to me, for I do not think I had an enemy in the world, nor do I think my poor darling had either.

At the time of my sentence, I had only one wish, and that was to join the victim of this mysterious crime, so that I saw the judge put on the fatal black cap with a feeling of pleasure, but when afterwards I heard it was to be transportation instead, then I flung myself down in my cell and hurled imprecations on those officious friends who had given me slavery and misery instead of release. Where was the mercy in letting me have life, since all had been taken from it which made it worth holding?— the woman who had lain in my arms while together we built up glowing pictures of an impossible future, my good name lost, my place amongst men destroyed; henceforward I would be only recognised by a number, my companions the vilest, my days dragged out in chains until the degradation of my lot encrusted over that previous memory of tenderness and fidelity, and I grew to be like the other numbered felons, a mindless and emotionless animal. Fortunately, at this point of my sufferings, oblivion came in the form of delirium, so that the weeks passed in a dream, during which my lost wife lived once more with me as we had been in the past, and by the time the ship's doctor pronounced me recovered, we were within a few days of our dreary destination. Then my wife went from me to her own place, and I woke up to find that I had made some friends amongst my fellow convicts, who had taken care of me during my insanity.

We landed at Fremantle, and began our life, road-making; that is, each morning we were driven out of the prison like cattle chained together in groups, and kept in the open until sundown, when we were once more driven back to sleep.

For fourteen months this dull monotony of eating, working and sleeping went on without variation, and then the chance came that I had been hungering for all along; not that liberty was likely to do me much good, only that the hope of accomplishing it kept me alive.

Three of us made a run for it one afternoon, just before the gun sounded for our recall, while the rest of the gang, being in our confidence, covered our escape until we had got beyond gunshot distance. We had managed to file through the chain which linked us together, and we ran towards the bush with the broken pieces in our hands as weapons of defence.

My two comrades were desperate criminals, who, like myself, had been sentenced for life, and, as they confessed themselves, were ready to commit any atrocity rather than be caught and taken back. That night and the next day we walked in a straight line about forty miles through the bush, and then, being hungry and tired, and considering ourselves fairly safe, we lay down to sleep without any thought of keeping watch.

But we had reckoned too confidently upon our escape, for about daybreak the next morning we were roused up by the sound of galloping horses, and, springing to our feet and climbing a gum tree, we saw a dozen of mounted police, led by two black trackers, coming straight in our direction. Under the circumstances there were but two things left for us to do, either to wait until they came and caught us, or run for it until we were beaten or shot down.

One of my companions decided to wait and be taken back, in spite of his bravado the night before; an empty stomach demoralizes most men; the other one made up his mind, as I did, to run as long as we could. We started in different directions, leaving our mate sitting under the gum tree, he promising to keep them off our track as long as possible. The fact of him being there when the police arrived gave us a good start. I put all my speed out, and dashed along until I had covered, I daresay, about a couple of miles, when all at once the scrub came to an end, and before me I saw an open space, with another stretch of bush about half a mile distant, and no shelter between me and it.

As I stood for a few minutes to recover my breath, I heard two or three shots fired to the right, the direction my companion had taken, and on looking that way I saw that he also had gained the open, and was followed by one of the trackers and a couple of the police. He was still running, but I could see that he was wounded from the way he went.

Another shot was sent after him, that went straight to its mark, for all at once he threw up his arms and fell prone upon his face, then, hearing the sounds of pursuit in my direction, I waited no longer, but bounded full into the morning sunlight, hoping, as I ran, that I might be as lucky as he had been, and get a bullet between my shoulders and so end my troubles.

I knew that they had seen me, and were after me almost as soon as I had left the cover, for I could hear them shouting for me to stop, as well as the clatter of their horses' hoofs on the hard soil, but still 1 kept to my course, waiting upon the shots to sound which would terminate my wretched existence, my backnerves quivering in anticipation and my teeth meeting in my under-lip.

One!

Two!!

Two reports sounded in my ears; a second after the bullets had whistled past my head; and then, before the third and fourth reports came, something like hot iron touched me above my left elbow, while the other bullet whirred past me with a singing wail, cooling my cheek with the wind it raised, and then I saw it ricochet in front of me on the hill side, for I was going up a slight rise at the time.

I had no pain in my arm, although I knew that my humerus was splintered by that third last shot, but I put on a final spurt in order to tempt them to fire again.

What were they doing? I glanced over my shoulder as I rushed, and saw that they were spreading out, fan-like, and riding like fury, while they hurriedly reloaded. Once more they were taking aim at me, and then I looked again in front.

Before me yawned a gulf, the depth of which I could not estimate, yet in width it was over a hundred feet. My pursuers had seen this impediment also, for they were reining up their horses, while they shouted to me, more frantically than ever, to stop.

Why should I stop? flashed the thought across my mind as I neared the edge. Since their bullets had denied me the death I courted, why should I pause at the death spread out for me so opportunely?

As the question flashed through me, I answered it by making the leap, and as I went down I could hear the reports of the rifles above me.

Down into shadow from the sun-glare I dropped, the outer branches of a tree breaking with me as I fell through them. Another obstacle caught me a little lower, and gave way under my weight, and then with an awful wrench, that nearly stunned me, I felt myself hanging by the remnant of the chain which was still rivetted to my waist-band, about ten feet from the surface, and with a hundred and fifty feet of a drop below me before I could reach the bottom. The chain had somehow got entangled in a fork of the last tree through which I had broken.

Although that sudden wrench was excruciating, the exigency of my position compelled me to collect my faculties without loss of time. Perhaps my months of serfdom and intercourse with felons had blunted my sensibility, and rendered me more callous to danger and bodily pain than I had been in my former and happier days, or the excitement of that terrible chase was still urging within me, for without more than a second's pause, and almost indifferent glance downwards to those distant boulders, I made a wild clutch with my unwounded arm at the branch which had caught me, and with an effort drew myself up to it, so that the next instant I was astride it, or rather crouching, where my loose chain had caught. Then, once more secure, I looked upwards to where I expected my hunters to appear.

When I think upon it now, it was a marvel how I ever got to be placed where I was, for I was under the shelving ledge from which I had leapt, that is, it spread over me like a roof, so that I must conclude that the first tier of branches must have bent inwards, and so landed me on to the second tree at a slant. At least, this is the only way in which I can account for my position.

The tree on which I sat grew from a crevice on the side of the precipice, and from the top could not be seen by those above, neither could I see them, although they looked down after me, but I could hear them plainly enough and what they said.

"That fellow has gone right enough, Jack, although I don't see his remains below; shall we try to get down and make sure?" I heard one say, while another replied:

"What's the good of wasting time; he's as dead as the other chap, after that drop, and they will both be picked clean enough, so let us get back to Fremantle with the living one, and report the other two as wiped out; we have a long enough journey before us, sergeant."

"Yes, I suppose so," answered the sergeant. "Well, boys, we may say that there are two promising bushrangers the less for this colony to support, so right about, home's the word."

I heard their horses wheel round and go off at a canter after this final speech, and then I was left alone on my airy perch, to plan out how best I was to get down with my broken arm, for it was impossible to get up, and also what I was likely to do with my liberty in that desolate region.

Desperate men are not very particular about the risks they run, and I ran not a few before I finally reached the bottom of that gulch, risky drops from one ledge to another, frantic clutchings at branches and tree roots; sufficient that I did reach the level ground at last more nearly dead than alive, so that I was fain to lie under the shadow of a boulder for hours without making an effort to rise and continue my journey.

Then, as night was approaching, I dragged myself along until I came to some water, where, after drinking and bracing up my broken arm with a few gum-trunk shards, and binding them round with some native grasses, while I made my supper of the young leaves of the eucalyptus bushes, I went on.

On, on, on for weeks, until I had lost all count of time, I wandered, carrying my broken fetters with me, and my broken arm gradually mending of its own accord. Sometimes I killed a snake or an iguana during the day with the branch I used for a stick, or a 'possum or wild cat at night, which I devoured raw. Often I existed for days on grass roots or the leaves of the gumtree, anything was good enough to fill up the gap.

My convict garb was in tatters and my feet bootless by this time, and my hair and beard hung over my shoulders and chest, while often I went for days in a semi-conscious state, for the fierce sun seemed to wither up my blood and set fire to my brain.

Where I was going I could not tell, and still, with all the privation and misery, the love of life was once again stronger in me than it had been since I had lost my place amongst civilized men, for I was at liberty and alone to indulge in fancy.

And yet it did not seem altogether fancy that my lost wife was with me on that journey. At first she came only when I lay down to sleep, but after a time she walked with me hand in hand duiing the day as well as in my dreams.

Dora was her name, and soon I forgot that she had been dead, for she was living and beautiful as ever as we went along together, day after day, speaking to each other like lovers as we used to speak, and she did not seem to mind my ragged, degraded costume, or my dirty, tangled beard, but caressed me with the same tenderness as of yore. Through the bush, down lonely gullies, over bitter deserts and salt marshes, we passed as happy and affectionate as fond lovers could be who are newly married, and whom the world cannot part, my broken chain rattling as I staggered onwards, while she smiled as if pleased with the music, because it was the chain which I was wearing for her dear sake.

Let me think for a moment— was she with me through that last desert before I came to that gloomy gully? I cannot be quite sure of that, but this I do know that she was not with me after the chill shadows of the boulders drew me into them, and I was quite alone when I stood by the water-hole looking upon that strange and silent house.

IT WAS SINGULAR that the house should be here at all in this far-off and as yet unnamed portion of Western Australia, for I naturally supposed that I had walked hundreds of miles since leaving the convict settlement, and as I had encountered no one, not even a single tribe of wandering blacks, it seemed impossible to believe that I was not the first white man who had penetrated so far, and yet there it loomed before me, substantial-looking in its masses, with painted weatherboards, shingles, iron-sheeting, carved posts and trellis-work, French windows, and the signs of cultivation about it, although bearing the traces of late neglect.

Was it inhabited? I next asked myself as I looked steadily at that dimly-illumined window; seemingly it was, for as I mentally asked the question, a darkness blotted out the light for a few moments and then moved slowly aside, while the faint pallor once more shone out; it appeared to be from the distance a window with a pale green blind drawn down, behind which a lamp turned low was burning, possibly some invalid who was restlessly walking about, while the rest of the household slept.

Would it be well to rouse them up at this hour of the night? I next queried as I paused, watching the chimney tops from which no wreath of smoke came, for although it did not seem late, judging from the height of the moon, yet it was only natural to suppose that in this isolated place the people would retire early. Perhaps it would be better to wait where I was till morning and see what they were like before I ventured to ask. hospitality from them, in my ragged yet unmistakably convict dress. I would rather go on as I was than run the risk of being dragged back to prison.

How chilly the night vapours were which rose from this large pool, for it was more like the moat round some ancient ruin than an ordinary Australian water-hole. How ominous the shadows that gathered over this dwelling, and which even the great and lustrous moon, now clear of the gable end, seemed unable to dissipate,and what a dismal effect that dimly-burning lamp behind the pale green blind gave to it.

I turned my eyes from the window to the pond from which the ghostly vapours were steaming upwards in such strange shapes; they crossed the reflections like grey shadows and floated over the white glitter which the moon cast down, like spectres following each other in a stately procession, curling upwards interlaced, while the gaunt trees behind them altered their shapes and looked demoniac in their fantastic outlines, shadows passing along and sending back doleful sighs, which I tried all my might to think was the night breeze but without succeeding.

Hush! was that a laugh which wafted from the house, a low, but blood-curdling cachinnation such as an exultant devil might utter who had witnessed his fell mischief accomplished, followed by the wail of a woman, intermixed with the cry of a child!

Ah! what a fool I was to forget the cry of the Australian king-fisher; of course that was it, of course, of course, but—

The shapes are thickening over that mirror-like pool, and as I look I see a woman with a chalk-white face and eyes distended in horror, with a child in her hands— a little girl— and beside them the form of a man whose face changes into two different men, one the face of death, and the other like that of a demon with glaring eyeballs, while he points from the woman and child to the sleeping pool.

What is the devil-spectre pointing at, as he laughs once more, while the woman and child shrink with affright?

The face that he wore a moment ago, the face of the dead man whom I can see floating amongst that silver lustre.

I MUST HAVE fainted at the weird visions of the night before, or else I may have fallen asleep and dreamt them, for when I opened my eyes again the morning sun was pouring over the landscape and all appeared changed.

The pool was still there, but it looked like a natural Australian water-hole which had been deepened and lengthened, and artificially arranged by a tasteful proprietor to beautify his estate; water-lilies grew round the edges and spread themselves in graceful patches about; it was only in the centre portion, where the moonlight had glinted and the other reflections cast themselves, that the water was clear of weeds, and there it still lay inky and dangerous-like in its depth.

Over the building itself clustered a perfect tangle of vegetable parasites, Star-of-Bethlehem, Maiden-blush roses, and Gloire-de-Dijon, passion-flowers and convolvulus, intermingling with a large grape-laden vine going to waste, and hanging about in half-wild, neglected festoons; a woman's hand had planted these tendrils, as well as the garden in front, for I could see that flowers predominated.

As for the house itself, it still stood silent and desertedlooking, the weatherboards had shrunk a good deal with the heat of many suns beating upon them, while the paint, once tasteful in its varied tints, was bleached into dry powder; the trellis-work also on the verandah had in many places been torn away by the weight of the clinging vines, and between the window-frames and the windows yawned wide fissures where they had shrunk from each other.

I looked round at the landscape, but could see no trace of sheep or cattle, or humanity; it spread out a sun-lit solitude where Nature, for a little while trained to order, had once more asserted her independent lavishness.

A little of my former awe came upon me as I stood for a few moments hesitating to advance, but at the sight of those luscious-looking bunches of grapes, which seemed to promise some fare more substantial inside, the dormant cravings for food which I had so long subdued came upon me with tenfold force, and, without more than a slight tremor of superstitious dread, I hurriedly crushed my way through the tangle of vegetation, and made for the verandah and open door of the hall.

Delicious grapes they were, as I found when, after tearing off  a huge bunch, and eating them greedily, I entered the silent hall and began my exploration.

The dust and fine sand of many "brick-fielders," i.e., sandstorms, lay thickly on every object inside, so that as I walked I left my footprints behind me as plainly as if I had been walking over snow. In the hall I found a handsome stand and carved table with chairs, a hat and riding-whip lay on the table, while on the rack I saw two or three coats and hats hanging, with sticks and umbrellas beneath, all white with dust.

The dining-room door stood ajar, and as I entered I could see that it also had been undisturbed for months, if not for years. It had been handsomely furnished, with artistic hangings and stuffed leather chairs and couches, while on the elaborately carved cheffonier was a plentiful supply of spirit and wine decanters, with cut glasses standing ready for use. On the table stood a bottle of Three-star brandy, half-emptied, and by its side a water-filter and glass as they had been left by the last user.

I smelt the bottle, and found that the contents were mellow and good, and when, after dusting the top, I put it to my mouth, I discovered that the bouquet was delicious; then, invigorated by that sip, I continued my voyage of discovery.

The cheffonier was not locked, and inside I discovered rows of sealed bottles, which satisfied me that I was not likely to run short of refreshments in the liquid form at any rate, so, content with this pleasant prospect, I ventured into the other apartments.

The drawing-room was like the room I had left, a picture of comfort and elegance, when once the accumulation of dust and sand had been removed.

The library or study came next, which I found in perfect order, although I left the details for a more leisurely examination.

I next penetrated the kitchen, which I saw was comfortable, roomy and well-provided, although in more disorder than the other rooms; pans stood rusting in the fire-place, dishes lay dirty and in an accumulated pile on the table, as if the servants had left in a hurry and the owners had been forced to make what shifts they could during their absence.

Yet there was no lack of such provisions as an up-country station would be sure to lay in; the pantry I found stored like a provision shop, with flitches of bacon, hams sewn in canvas, tinned meat and soups of all kinds, with barrels and bags and boxes of flour, sugar, tea and other sundries, enough to keep me going for years if I was lucky enough to be in possession.

I next went upstairs to the bedrooms, up a thickly-carpeted staircase, with the white linen overcloth still upon it. In the first room I found the bed with the bed-clothes tumbled about as if the sleeper had lately left it; the master of the house I supposed, as I examined the wardrobe and found it well stocked with male apparel. At last I could cast aside my degrading rags, and fit myself out like a free man, after I had visited the workshop and filed my fetters from me.

Another door attracted me on the opposite side of the lobby, and this I opened with some considerable trepidation because it led into the room which I had seen lighted up the night before.

It seemed untenanted, as I looked in cautiously, and like the other bed-room was in a tumble of confusion, a woman's room, for the dresses and underclothing were lying about, a bed-room which had been occupied by a woman and a child, for a crib stood in one corner, and on a chair lay the frock and other articles belonging to a little girl of about five or six years of age.

I looked at the window, it had Venetian blinds upon it, and they were drawn up, so that my surmise had been wrong about the pale green blind, but on the end side of the room was another window with the blinds also drawn up, and thus satisfied I walked in boldly; what I had thought to be a light, had only been the moonlight streaming from the one window to the other, while the momentary blackening of the light had been caused, doubtless, by the branches of the trees outside, moved forward by the night breeze. Yes, that must have been the cause, so that I had nothing to fear, the house was deserted, and my own property, for the time at least. There was a strange and musty odour in this bed-room, which blended with the perfume which the owner had used, and made me for a moment almost giddy, so the first thing I did was to open both windows and let in the morning air, after which I looked over to the unmade bed, and then I staggered back with a cry of horror.

There amongst the tumble of bed-clothes lay the skeletons of what had been two human beings, clad in embroidered nightdresses. One glance was enough to convince me, with my medical knowledge, that the gleaming bones were those of a woman and a child, the original wearers of those dresses which lay scattered about.

What awful tragedy had taken place in this richly furnished but accursed house? Recovering myself, I examined the remains more particularly, but could find no clue, they were lying reposefully enough, with arms interlacing as if they had died or been done to death in their sleep, while those tiny anatomists, the ants, had found their way in, and cleaned the bones completely, as they very soon do in this country.

With a sick sensation at my heart, I continued my investigations throughout the other portions of the station. In the servants' quarters I learnt the cause of the unwashed dishes; three skeletons lay on the floor in different positions as they had fallen, while their shattered skulls proved the cause of their end, even if the empty revolver that I picked up from the floor had not been evidence enough. Some one must have entered their rooms and woke them rudely from their sleep in the night time for they lay also in their blood-stained night-dresses, and beside them, on the boards, were dried-up markings which were unmistakable.

The rest of the house was as it had been left by the murderer or murderers. Three domestics, with their mistress and child, had been slaughtered, and then the guilty wretches had fled without disturbing anything else.

IT WAS once again night, and I was still in the house which my first impulse had been to leave with all haste after the gruesome discoveries that I had made.

But several potent reasons restrained me from yielding to that impulse. I had been wandering for months, and living like a wild beast, while here I had everything to my hand which I needed to recruit my exhausted system. My curiosity was roused, so that I wanted to penetrate the strange mystery if I could, by hunting after and reading all the letters and papers that I might be able to find, and to do this required leisure; thirdly, as a medical practitioner who had passed through the anatomical schools, the presence of five skeletons did not have much effect upon me, and lastly, before sun-down the weather had broken, and one of those fierce storms of rain, wind, thunder and lightning had come on, which utterly prevented anyone who had the chance of a roof to shelter him from turning out to the dangers of the night.

These were some of my reasons for staying where I was, at least the reasons that I explained to myself, but there was another and a more subtle motive which I could not logically explain, and which yet influenced me more than any of the others. I could not leave the house, now that I had taken possession o f it, or rather, if I may say it, now that the house had taken possession of me.

I had lifted the bucket from the kitchen, and found my way to the draw-well in the back-garden, with the uncomfortable feeling that some unseen force was compelling me to stay here. I discovered a large file and freed myself from my fetters, and then, throwing my rags from me with disgust, I clad myself in one of the suits that I found in the wardrobe upstairs, then I set to work dusting and sweeping out the dining-room, after which I lit a fire, retrimmed the lamps, and cooked a substantial meal for myself, then the storm coming on decided me, so that I spent the remainder of the afternoon making the place comfortable, and when darkness did come, I had drawn the blinds down and secured the shutters, and with a lighted lamp, a bottle of good wine, and a box of first-class cigars which I also found in the cheffonier, with a few volumes that I had taken from the book shelves at random, and an album of photographs that I picked up from the drawing-room table, I felt a different man from what I had been the night previous, particularly with that glowing log fire in the grate.

I left the half-emptied bottle of brandy where I had found it, on the table, with the used glass and the water filter untouched,' as I did also the chair that had been beside them. I had a repugnance to those articles which I could not overcome; the murderer had used them last, possibly as a reviver after his crimes, for I had reasoned out that one hand only had been at the work, and that man's the owner of the suit which I was then wearing and which fitted me so exactly, otherwise why should the house have been left in the condition that it was?

As I sat at the end of the table and smoked the cigar, I rebuilt the whole tragedy, although as yet the motive was not so clear, and as I thought the matter out, I turned over the leaves of the album and looked at the photographs? Before me, on the walls, hung three oil portraits, enlargements they were, and as works of art vile things, yet doubtless they were faithful enough likenesses. In the album, I found three cabinet portraits from which the paintings had been enlarged.

They were the portraits of a woman of about twenty-six, a girl of five years, and a man of about thirty-two.

The woman was good-looking, with fresh colour, blue eyes and golden-brown hair. The girl— evidently her daughter— for the likeness was marked between the two, had one of those seraphic expressions which some delicate children have who are marked out for early death, that places them above the plane of grosser humanity. She looked, as she hung between the two portraits, with her glory of golden hair, like the guardian angel of the woman who was smiling so contentedly and unconsciously from her gilded frame.

The man was pallid-faced and dark, clean-shaven, all except the small black moustache, with lips which, except the artist had grossly exaggerated the colour, were excessively and disagreeably vivid. His eyes were deep set, and glowing as if with the glitter of a fever.

"These would be the likenesses of the woman and child whose skeletons lay unburied upstairs, and that pallid-faced, feverisheyed ghoul, the fiend who had murdered them, his wife and child," I murmured to myself as I watched the last portrait with morbid interest

"Right and wrong, Doctor, as you medical men mostly are," answered a deep voice from the other end of the table.

I started with amazement, and looked from the painting to the vacant chair beside the brandy bottle, which was now occupied by what appeared to be the original of the picture I had been looking at, face, hair, vivid scarlet lips and deep-set fiery eyes, which were fixed upon me intently and mockingly

How had he entered without my observing him? By the window? No, for that I had firmly closed and secured myself, and as I glanced at it I saw that it still remained the same. By the door? Perhaps so, although he must have closed it again after he had entered without my hearing him, as he might easily have done during one of the claps of thunder, which were now almost incessant, as were the vivid flashes of wild fire or lightning that darted about, while the rain lashed against the shutters outside.

He was dripping wet, as I could see, so that he must have come from that deluge, bareheaded and dripping, with his hair and moustache draggling over his glistening, ashy cheeks and bluish chin, as if he had been submerged in water, while weeds and slime hung about his saturated garments; a gruesome sight for a man who fancied himself alone to see start up all of a sudden, and no wonder that it paralyzed me and prevented me from finding the words I wanted at the moment. Had he lain hidden somewhere watching me take possession of his premises, and being, as solitary men sometimes are, fond of dramatic effect, slipped in while my back was turned from the door to give me a surprise? If so, he had succeeded, for I never before felt so craven-spirited or horror-stricken, my flesh was creeping and my hair bristling, while my blood grew to ice within me. The very lamp seemed to turn dim, and the fire smouldered down on the hearth, while the air was chill as a charnel vault, as I sat with shivering limbs and chattering teeth before this evil visitor.

Outside, the warring elements raged and fought, shaking the wooden walls, while the forked flames darted between us, lighting up his face with a ghastly effect. He must have seen my horror, for he once more laughed that low, malicious chuckle that I had heard the night before, as he again spoke.

"Make yourself at home, Doctor, and try some of this cognac instead of that washy stuff you are drinking. I am only sorry that I cannot join you in it, but I cannot just yet."

I found words at last and asked him questions, which seemed impertinent in the extreme, considering where I was.

"Who are you? Where do you come from? What do you want? "

Again that hateful chuckle, as he fixed his burning eyes upon me with a regard which fascinated me in spite of myself.

"Who am I, do you ask? Well, before you took possession of this place I was its owner. Where do I come from? From out of there last."

He pointed backwards towards the window, which burst open as he uttered the words, while through the driving rain a flash of lightning seemed to dart from his outstretched finger and disappear into the centre of the lake, then after that hurried glimpse, the shutters clashed together again and we were as before.

"What do I want? You, for lack of a better."

"What do you want with me? " I gasped.

"To make you myself."

"I do not understand you, what are you? "

"At present nothing, yet with your help, I shall be a man once more, while you shall be free and rich, for you shall have more gold than you ever could dream of."

"What can I do for you? "

"Listen to my story and you will see. Ten years ago I was a successful gold finder, the trusting husband of that woman, and the fond father of that girl. I had likewise a friend whom I trusted, and took to live with me as a partner. We lived here together, my friend, myself, my wife and my daughter, for I was romantic and had raised this house to be close to the mine which I had discovered, and which I will show you if you consent to my terms.

"One night my friend murdered me and pitched my body into that water-hole where the bones still lie. He did this because he coveted my wife and my share of the money."

I was calm now, but watchful, for it appeared that I had to deal with a madman.

"In my life-time I had been a trusting and guileless simpleton, but no sooner was my spirit set free than vengeance transformed its nature. I hovered about the place where all my affections had been centred, watching him beguile the woman who had been mine until he won her. She waited three years for me to return, and then she believed his story that I had been killed by the natives, and married him. They travelled to where you came from, to be married, and I followed them closely, for that was the chance I waited upon. The union of those two once accomplished he was in my power for ever, for this had established the link that was needed for me to take forcible possession of him."

"And where was his spirit meantime?" I asked, to humour the maniac.

"In my grasp also, a spirit rendered impotent by murder and ingratitude; a spirit which I could do with as I pleased, so long as the wish I had was evil. I took possession of his body, the mirage of which you see now, and from that moment until the hour that our daughter rescued her from his clutches, he made the life of my former wife a hell on earth. I prompted his murder-embrued spirit to madness, leaving him only long enough to himself after I had braced him up to do the deed of vengeance."

"How did the daughter save the mother?"

"By dying with her, and by her own purity tearing the freed spirit from my clutches. I did not intend the animal to do all that he did, for I wanted the mother only, but once the murder lust was on him, I found that he was beyond my influence. He slew the two by poison, as he had done me, then, frenzied, he murdered the servants, and finally exterminated himself by flinging himself into the pool. That was why I said that I came last from out of there, where both my own remains and his lie together."

"Yes, and what is my share of the business?"

"To look on me passively for a few moments, as you are at present doing, that is all I require."

I did not believe his story about his being only a mirage or spectre, for he looked at the moment corporal enough to do me a considerable amount of bodily harm, and therefore to humour him, until I could plan out a way to overpower him, I fixed my eyes upon his steadfastly, as he desired.

Was I falling asleep, or being mesmerized by this homicidal lunatic? As he glared at me with those fiery orbs and an evil contortion curling the blood-red lips, while the forked lightning played around him, I became helpless. He was creeping slowly towards me as a cat might steal upon a mouse, and I was unable to move, or take my eyes from his eyes which seemed to be charming my life-blood from me, when suddenly I heard the distant sound of music, through a lull of the tempest, the rippling of a piano from the drawing-room with the mingling of a child's silvery voice as it sang its evening hymn, and at the sound his eyes shifted while he fell back a step or two with an agonized spasm crossing his ghastly and dripping wet face.

Then the hurricane broke loose once more, with a resistless fury, while the door and window burst open, and the shutters were dashed into the room.

I leapt to my feet in a paroxysm of horror, and sprang towards the open door with that demon, or maniac, behind me. Merciful heavens! the drawing-room was brilliantly lighted up, and there, seated at the open piano, was the woman whose bones I had seen bleaching upstairs, with the seraphic-faced child singing her hymn.

Out to the tempest I rushed madly, and heedless of where I went, so that I escaped from that accursed and haunted house, on, past the water-hole and into the glade, where I turned my head back instinctively, as I heard a wilder roar of thunder and the crash as if a tree had been struck.

What a flash that was which lighted up the scene and showed me the house collapsing as an erection of cards. It went down like an avalanche before that zig-zag flame, which seemed to lick round it for a moment, and then disappear into the earth.

Next instant I was thrown off my feet by the earthquake which shook the ground under me, while, as I still looked on where the house had been, I saw that the ruin had caught fire, and was blazing up in spite of the torrents that still poured down, and as it burned, I saw the mound sink slowly out of sight, while the reddened smoke eddied about in the same strange shapes which the vapours had assumed the night before, scarlet ghosts of the demon and his victims.

TWO MONTHS after this, I woke up to find myself in a Queensland back-country station. They had found me wandering in a delirious condition over one of their distant runs six weeks before my return to consciousness, and as they could not believe that a pedestrian, without provisions, could get over that unknown stretch of country from Fremantle, they paid no attention to my ravings about being an escaped convict, particularly as the rags I had on could never have been prison made. Learning, however, that I had medical knowledge, by the simple method of putting it to the test, my good rescuers set me up in my old profession, where I still remain— a Queensland back-country doctor.

________________

5: Keep Your Eye on the Ball

William Almon Wolff

1885-1933

The Merry Magazine, Mar 1929

SALLY Huston wanted to go home, but she couldn't. Not possibly. Not for hours yet. Not unless she walked to the station, five miles away. And even if she grew desperate enough to do that, it would mean a row later; and she wasn t, she thought, up to facing even the prospect of a row.

She was licked. This party, somehow, had beaten her. She loathed it, but its ironic contrast to the way she'd been living for the. last year, and seemed likely to have to keep on living, had been too much for her. She'd managed to get away for a few minutes, and she sat and smoked a cigarette on a bench hidden away in a clump of white birches from which she could keep an eye on things with a fair chance of not being seen herself until she was rested.

Sally didn't like her aunt, but she had to admit that this was a good show. There'd been a perfectly marvellous lunch out of doors, and people were wandering around now. waiting for the golf to begin, looking the place over.

Hordes of nice people, beautifully dressed, gay and cheerful, vivid, colourful. Half a mile of Westchester real estate, with a stone wall around it, worth incalculable sums in terms of building lots. Eighteen of Mr. Devereux Emmett's very choicest holes for a private golf course, with greens gleaming like emeralds and traps full of sea sand as white as snow, brought in lighters and trucks from Long Island, and hang the expense! And the house rising above the trees, grey stone, looking really, Sally was obliged to confess, like the French chateau its architect had copied.

"Listen—"

Sally turned with a start. There was a young man. She hadn't heard him come up. He looked worried, but very nice, Sally thought. She didn't know him, which was, that day, a point very much in his favour. She smiled at him before she quite knew she was doing it.

"Hallo!" said Sally.

"Hallo!" he said seemingly relieved, "Look here, tell me— who's giving this party, and why?"

"But, good grief, don't you know?" she said.

"Would I be asking you if I did ? Be yourself, lady; there's no time to be lost, tell me."

"Oh," said Sally, "it's my aunt. At least, she's not really my aunt. She's my real aunt's husband's second wife."

"I see," he said, "quite. But do you mind if we go into that some other time? About how many wives your uncle had, I mean? What's the woman's name, and why is she giving this show?"

"Because she wanted to, I suppose," said Sally.

"I wish you'd stop trying to be funny," the young man said crossly. "Haven't you any concentration at all ? Keep your eye on the ball! What's her name, and is this a garden-party, or is Lindbergh going to fly over, or what?"

"Oh, now I see what you mean," said Sally. " My aunt's name is Mrs. Madden, and it's just a party to celebrate this new golf course. They're going to have mixed four-somes "

"By heavens!" said the young man.

Sally thought he'd have turned pale if he hadn't been too sunburned to make that practicable.

"And, you see, her daughter— her step-daughter, I mean, my cousin—"

" You know," he said, " I think your family tree's extraordinarily interesting and all that; but that's not the point just now, is it? Madden, eh? Mrs. Madden. What's she wearing? How do I know her when I see her?"

"Bl-black and white voile!" Sally gasped. "A large white hat."

"Good! Tall, short, thin, fat?"

"In between," said Sally. "Quite— quite nice-looking; her hair's white."

"Good!" said the young man. "You see, if you just concentrate, you're all right."

And off he rushed.

Sally arose and followed him. She didn't want to go home any more, not until she found out what this young man wanted.

In a minute she found out. Her aunt was introducing him to Marjorie Romer, and the young man who'd been with Marjorie, looking incredulous but happy, was fading away swiftly in the direction of a debutante who had five men already, but was perfectly capable of handling another.

"Well—" said Sally to herself; then she smiled wickedly.

All that simply because he had wanted to meet Marjorie!

Wild horses couldn't have dragged Sally away now. Her behaviour was entirely shameless. Deliberately she watched the two of them. The young man started in to talk to Marjorie breathlessly, but he didn't get very far. Before long it was Marjorie who talked. Sally saw varying expressions come and go in the young man's eyes — doubt, curiosity, suspicion, desperation. Sally bided her time. At what seemed to her the right moment, she struck. All she did was wander into the line of the young man's vision. She wanted to see what would happen.

She did. He saw her, looked at her; looked at her again to make sure. Then he turned and paid concentrated attention to Marjorie. Ruthlessly, at what, Sally was sure, was his first chance, he broke in, accompanying his words with a wide, free gesture. Then he bowed and turned away, and came straight to Sally.

"Hallo!" he said. "Wondering where you were, I was." He took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. " My good gosh, I ought to have known there'd be a catch! But how can you tell that a girl who looks like that's going to talk like someone reading a guide book out loud? Anything you'd like to know about the English lakes; or the chateau country in France?"

"No, thanks," said Sally. "But, please, I'd love to know the plot."

"Plot ?" he said. "Plot?" Then he smiled a slow smile that grew into a grin. " Oh, well! Driving along, just so-so. Got held up somewhere. That girl in the next car— with a man. Fell for her. Fell hard. Turned in here, after them— saw it was a party, you see. Came in. Thought there'd be someone I knew. Never saw so many people I didn't know all at one time."

Sally just listened.

"Barged around. Beginning to feel nervous. Tried to make this girl. Thought she gave me a glass eye. Tried to spot hostess. No go. Lots of old girls looked as if they might be hostesses. You know."

Sally did.

"It's not funny," he complained. "That's your trouble, though. No seriousness of purpose. Chap can't count on you. Got to know hostess' name if you're crashing the gate at a party, haven't you?"

"I— I suppose it is a help!" said Sally.

"Of course. Elementary, that is. Come on. Let's go."

"Go?" said Sally, startled. "Go where?"

"I don't care!" he said. "Away. That's all. You—" He looked alarmed. "You don't live here, do you?"

"No," she said. "I live in New York."

"Good," he said, "So do I. Drive you down. Have dinner somewhere."

"Oh, I oughtn't— all right— let's!" said Sally.

Why not? If she didn't go now she'd have to wait around for hours before they sent her to the station, and the train would be crowded, and what good did it do her, anyway, to keep in the good graces of an aunt who wasn't really an aunt at all?

Driving down with Peter— she found out, quite soon, that his name was Peter Armstrong— was fun.

"Where were you going, originally?" she asked him.

"Oh, just to play golf— it didn't matter," he said. "You wouldn't have been there; anyway."

Everything was all right until late, when he began talking about the future.

"To-morrow's out," he said gloomily. "Engagement I can't break. Silly, but there it is. Monday, though. That's another day. Lunch— d'you mind having it early, about one? And dinner rather late, and we'll do a musical show, so we can miss all we like of the first act. And then we can start seeing if any of the night clubs are any good this summer— you know, find out where they have music we both like— darned important, that is—"

"Stop!" she said. "I can't have lunch at all on Monday, and I oughtn't to go out that night— except— well, dinner perhaps, if I go home right away afterwards. I have to get some sleep week nights. I work."

"Work?" he said, shocked and annoyed. "Why bring that up? So do I work. That's why I said an early lunch; I have to beat the old man back to the office."

"You don't have to work the way I do," she said viciously. "You don't have to take dictation all morning and type letters all afternoon, and then stay around for hours typing half of them over again because you've made so many mistakes."

"Maybe," he said. "But the worst they can do to you is fire you."

"Well, you can't even be fired! "

"You'd be surprised. You don't know the male parent. A hard-boiled egg if the cook ever forgot to turn the gas off under one! Fired! I'll say I can be fired. And if I am I get cut off with a dollar, too! Laugh that off." His voice was increasingly bitter. "Know the fast one he pulled on me this morning! No more golf!"

"But you were going to play to-day—"

"Oh, I mean real golf. Tournament stuff. Saturday afternoons and Sundays— yes. Says I can't concentrate on business and tournament golf, too!"

Sally laughed, to his annoyance. She wasn't appalled, as he'd expected her to be.

"I don't see why you had to start talking about work," he said. And, quite soon, he took her home, to the dull, respectable upper West Side block where she shared an apartment with a couple of other girls from the office— which wasn't where she'd been brought up, by any means, in the days before her father had died suddenly, without leaving any money, and her aunt had made her uncle do the right thing by her in the way of a secretarial course. Peter got out with her, and they stood and looked at one another.

"Well," said Sally. "Good night, Mr. Armstrong."

"Peter," he said absently. "Oh, hang!"

"What's the matter with you, I'd like to know?" she said crossly.

"I'm just trying to think," he said. "It's so mixed up—"

"I don't see—"

"Oh. hush, of course you don't!" said Peter. "Can't you take my word for it? If I tried to explain—" He shook his head. "No use. Have to wait."

She stared at him, mystified. And then he did what absolutely nothing he'd said or done all day had warned her to expect. He grabbed her suddenly and kissed her, most unskilfully, somewhere under the left eye, and then let her go.

" You just leave it to me," he said. "It'll come out all right. Good-night!"

And before she could catch her breath, much less say anything, he was in the car and going off t: Well!" said Sally, as she let herself in. "What a day!" Sally, considering the times she lived in, hadn't been kissed much. And now she'd been kissed twice in one day.

Twice— yes. The first kiss hasn't come up before, but it had happened, even though subsequent events had rather banished the memory of it from Sally's mind, until the last event of all recalled it sharply.

Peter's kiss meant nothing; Sally knew that. Arthur Butler's kiss, though, which had occurred much earlier in the day, in the taxi in which he'd taken her to the station, had been different. It had meant nothing to Sally, but a lot to Arthur. Arthur was not one of your light and casual kissers, as Peter probably was. But what was she to do?

Sunday was a blank, mercifully. But Monday, at the office, was terrible. Sally's head ached, and she'd forgotten what little she had ever known about a typewriter, and her spelling, always original, became grotesque. Arthur wanted her to have lunch, and she wouldn't, and then he called up again. Not to ask her to dinner, but just to say he'd broken an engagement so that they could dine together; a command, not an invitation. She said she couldn't, and he hung up ominously, and when she started home, well after six, he was waiting for her downstairs.

"You're late," he said.

"Do you suppose I don't know it?" Was Peter coming to take her to dinner or wasn't he? She hadn't heard a word from him. "Arthur—"

"Yes?"

"You know everything. Is there a golf player called Armstrong? A— a well-known one, I mean?"

"Peter Armstrong? Of course. Plays for Baltamis. Be pretty good if he'd take the game seriously. Doesn't concentrate. Lasted to the semi-final in the amateur last year, though, at that."

"Oh!" said Sally.

"Why can't you have dinner with me?"

"I'm going out."

"With a man?"

"I don't know."

"Sally, don't equivocate! Of course you know!"

Then she got a respite while he selected a taxi, something he always did with care. There was this about Arthur, though; he could afford to take a girl home to South Brooklyn, even in a taxi, to say nothing of the upper West Side.

"Sally," he said gravely, when they were in the cab. "I don't want to press you, but, after all, now that we're engaged—"

Engaged!" she said, with a start.

"Of course!" he said. "After what happened Saturday "

She racked her aching head. Yes. He'd kissed her, just as they reached the station, and she'd run for her train, then, while he paid off the cab.

"But—" she began.

Then she stopped. She couldn't think of any tactfully kind way to tell him that she'd have let almost any man kiss her Saturday noon, the way she was feeling, rather than get into an argument. So she just closed her eyes and leaned back, and Arthur was chivalrously silent and let her rest.

She saw Peter, sitting in another taxi, as they drove up to her house, and he must have seen her, too, and the way Arthur kissed her good-bye. He waited till Arthur had gone off, and then followed her into her vestibule.

"Hallo!" he said. " Couldn't remember any of your name except Sally. Had to come around and catch you going in. Rotten hours you keep. Lit out early to be here by a quarter to five. The old man'll think that shows lack of concentration— that's all he knows."

"You lack something, all right," said Sally. "I told you my name and the telephone and everything."

"I know, I know," he said. "Concentrating on something else, that's why I forgot. Do I come up or wait in the cab. Nice cab. Little bare, though, as a home. I was thinking of putting up a few good etchings."

"Oh, you might as well come up!" said Sally. What difference did it make? A lot, as it turned out. The other girls were out, and Peter, when they got upstairs, proved that when he was putting his mind to it he was a perfectly adequate kisser. Sally was tired, and her head still ached, and she liked having Peter kiss her, and why not be hung for a sheep, when it came to that?

"Who was that other bloke?" Peter asked presently.

"He?" said Sally. She braced herself. "Oh, just the man I'm engaged to!"

"No!" said Peter. He began to laugh. He roared. " Oh, that's priceless! It's great. That makes it all right."

He kissed her again. But she had to draw a line somewhere.

"Don't, Peter " she said.

"Why not?"

"You can't— when I'm engaged and you know it—"

"Can't see it," said Peter. "Did I kick and scream when he kissed you downstairs?  And you're only engaged to him, but you're going to marry me."

"What?" said Sally.

He nodded vigorously. "Of course! Didn't you know that Saturday night? I did." He took her to a place she liked and did the ordering, and they had all the things she most loved to eat. Arthur always took her to the sort of hotel your provincial aunt stays at when visiting town, and she had to order for herself, because Arthur ran to nourishing broths and chops and plain green vegetables— spinach, for choice.

"Everything all right?" said Peter. She just looked at him.

"Good. Now— how about being engaged? Why, how, when, all that?"

When he finally believed her he laughed.

"Oh, well," he said, "if that's all! If a chap's coot enough to think a girl's going to marry him just because he's kissed her—"

"But— you seem to think that yourself—"

"That's different," he said sternly. "And, anyway, it's the other way round. I didn't think you were going t o marry, me be- cause I, kissed you — I kissed you because I knew you were going to marry me."

Coffee. Cigarettes. No one left, except waiters, discreetly remote.

"Now, let's see," said Peter, frowning. "I ought to get a cable to-morrow. . Wish I knew if the old man's really going to Boston Wednesday!"

"Peter, how do you expect me to know what you're talking about?"

"It's simple enough," he said. "You'll see. It'll work out, one way or another. Leave it to me."

All day Tuesday there wasn't a word from Peter. Plenty from Arthur, though. And he made the mistake of turning up at the flat about seven— and she thought, when she heard the bell, it was Peter.

That was the end, for Arthur. Sally told him as much of the truth as he could take in, and it was enough. He walked out of her life, and she was glad of it. Then she sat up till midnight, waiting to hear from Peter, but she never did.

Wednesday morning it was her turn to be up and dressed early and get coffee and rolls for breakfast. While she was doing that the bell rang, and this time it was Peter. In plus fours and a cap.

" Hallo!" he said. " The old man went to Boston all right." He frowned. " That dress won't do. Put on what you were wearing Saturday."

"To go to the office? I won't! Peter, you are crazy! "

"Office? Oh, you're not going to the office! Not to-day. Tell them you're ill. Car's downstairs. We're going out to Baltamis. Breakfast on the way."

She looked at him. Oh, what did anything matter? They were going to fire her on Saturday, anyway— they were sure to.

Peter and Sally had breakfast at the Claremont, looking out over a misty river to the Palisades.

"Team match this afternoon, you see," he said. "Got to play. The old man's all wet. Need me— lots of bets on the darned match. Got to give the boy friends a run for their money. He won't know— the old man, being in Boston. And they're going to telephone the cable from the office as soon as it comes."

She'd stopped expecting anything Peter gaid to make sense.

It was still early when they got to the club, and lunch on the clubhouse porch was nice. People were drifting in.

"Be quite a crowd," Peter explained. "Nothing in the papers, though. Sort of party we have every year with this Hillway gang. Lots of malefactors of great wealth here— up there, too. Bet their fool heads off on this match. Silly, if you ask me. Game's too much fun to mix it up with gambling. Funny about the old man; he bets as much as any of them. But it'd be the gate for me if he knew I was playing."

"Why take a chance, then, Peter?" said Sally.

"Oh, I don't know! Sort of up to me. Counting on me. I'm not so hot now— haven't been playing enough. No one else Carson couldn't eat for breakfast, though. Can't let the boy friends down."

Sally was furious when she saw that most of the crowd didn't mean to wait for Peter and his opponent, Carson, who were the last to start. The first match got the gallery— reasonably enough, because the metropolitan champion was playing for Baltamis, and a man who'd been runner-up twice in the Amateur was against him from Hillway. Only about half a dozen people made up the gallery for Peter and Carson. But she heard one of them say the crowd would be around for the finish all right, because this was the match that would settle things— if form meant anything the other six twosomes would be split.

Nothing happened till the fourth hole, when Peter finished one op!

No more excitement till the ninth, when Peter was in trouble. He the bottom of a deep pit, placed to penalise a sliced second shot. One way out was easy, safe— and costly, for it entailed playing for the back of the green and the practically certain loss of a stroke. Sally and the rest of them stood looking down as Peter studied the lie of his ball in the sand. Straight ahead was the high bank of the pit.

"Gosh!" said a man beside her. "He's going to try it!"

He did. The niblick crashed down; the ball rose, in a cloud of sand. It soared high; cleared the bunker; landed on the green; rolled on and on— until it lay directly between Carson's ball and the hole. Carson was stymied hopelessly; Peter's hole, four to five. Two up at the turn!

He fell back to walk through the woods towards the tenth tee with Sally.

"You're marvellous! " she said.

"You mean I'm shot with luck!" said Peter. "Wait a bit."

He hurried on to drive. Straight down the narrow, tree-lined fairway went his ball; Sally vaguely conscious of a man who had fallen into step beside her, turned, with glowing cheeks.

" Wasn't that a splendid drive?" she said.

The man was elderly and safe, and Sally'd been quiet too long.

"Eh? "he said. " Oh. yes! Yes. indeed." He laughed harshly. "Good thing the boy can do something well. Maybe he can turn pro. to make a living."

Suspicion stirred suddenly in Sally's mind. She looked at this man again. Eyes— no. Nose— yes. Mouth and chin— oh, yes! He couldn't be, though.

" You " she said. " Oh, my soul— you're not— you can't be Peter's father!"

"Why not, I'd like to know ? " said Mr. Armstrong.

For that was exactly who he was.

"Because— oh, because you went to Boston, for one thing! "

"H'mph!" said Mr. Armstrong. "But I didn't, you see. Luckily. Know the young idiot, do you?"

"Yes— yes, I do," said Sally. "Mr. Armstrong—"

"You have my sympathy." he said.

"Wait," she. said. "Please — couldn't we stay back a little, so that Peter won't see you? It'd be such a shock "

"I thought of that myself," said Mr. Armstrong grimly.

And increased his pace. Sally kept up with him; she wondered what would happen if she put out her loot and tnpped him. They came to the green; there were more people now. Carson putted from a corner; lay dead for a five. Peter had a four-footer for the half. He looked over, saw Sally, and grinned. Then, as he was about to turn and address the ball, he saw his father. The grin was frozen into a grimace of sheer horror. For a moment he just stared. Then he missed his putt. Carson's hole; Peter was only one up.

"Grr," said Mr. Armstrong. "You see? No concentration! Yellow, that's what he is!"

"He is not!" said Sally furiously.

The eleventh was a nightmare. Peter drovs out of bounds — something he probably did once every two years. He pulled his second drive into the rough; picked up, having played six, in a trap. The match was square.

Carson won the twelfth, though Peter pulled himself together and stayed on the course, ruining himself, this time, with three putts.

"What do you think now?" said Mr. Armstrong grimly. "I might overlook his sneaking off because he thought I was in Boston, but seeing him quit—"

He ended with inarticulate growls. Sally was shaken herself. All her sympathy went to Peter— but, oh, he oughtn't just to let go like this!

He was trying to look as if everything were all right, as if this were just what might hap- pen to anyone. But he didn't fool Sally; his eyes gave him away. He loathed himself for being rattled, for the way he'd lost his grip. He knew right enough. Keep your eye on the ball— the way he'd said that to her, over and over! But he— why, it was just because he didn't, because he lifted his head as he took an easy iron shot, that he lost the thirteenth hole— to make Carson two up and only five to go.

On the fourteenth Peter over-apprcached, and the gallery, shocked and incredulous— it had grown to respectable proportions now— saw Carson sink his putt to win the fifth hole in succession— and to be three up, with four to play!

" Well!" said Mr. Armstrong, in Sally's ear. "What do you think of him now?

Sally wished she had something to hit him with.

"I'll tell you!" she said. "I think he'll win. I'll bet you he will. I'll bet you ten dollars! "

She did have ten dollars — and about fifty cents more. And no job. At least, if she still had a job the age of miracles wasn't past.

"Ho!" said Mr. Armstrong. "You need a lesson. I'll take that bet, young lady— only I'll give you ten to one."

"No," said Sally."You won't! I ought to give you odds "

Peter's father stared at her curiously. She didn't care what he thought.

"All right," he said, and his voice, somehow, was pleasanter. "Even money, then."

He held out his hand, and, reluctantly, Sally shook it.

Peter didn't lose the next hole. But he didn't win it, either. He couldn't very well, because though he played it perfectly, so did Carson. And now Carson was dormie— three up, three to go.

They had to walk through the woods from the fifteenth green to the next tee, and Sally called to Peter, walking along, his head down; a little ahead. He turned and waited.

"Fine show you're putting on!" said Mr. Armstrong.

"Sorry, sir. It is pretty sour."

"Peter!" said Sally. "I just bet your father ten dollars you'd win this match. He wanted to bet me ten to one you wouldn't, but I said I ought to give him odds, not take them! Peter!"

He stared at her. And she saw something happen to his eyes, and to his mouth.

"You did," he said. "Sally—"

"Don't say anything," she cried. " But— oh, Peter— just keep your eye on the ball!"

"I— all right, I will," he said. But the way he said it sent queer little thrills running up and down Sally's back. He turned to his father. " Thought you were going to Boston, sir? Change your mind?"

"They postponed the meeting."

"Were you at the office?"

Mr. Armstrong nodded curtly.

"Did they happen to say anything about a cable coming for me?"

"Yes," said his father. He took a blue envelope from his pocket. "Want it?"

"I'll say I do!" Peter's eyes were shining. Eagerly he took the envelope, tore it open; then he turned to Sally. "That's that!" he said, "Told you it'd work out all right. Hallo— got to beat it. Carson's waiting. See you later."

Sally closed her eyes for a second as he hurried off. Peter was back, her own crazy, adorable Peter; this wasn't the Peter who'd gone to pieces when he saw his father. She didn't see him drive, but she heard the cheer that broke out as the ball sailed down the course. And she saw Carson outdriven for the first time since Peter had cracked. Peter won the hole when he reached the green with his brassie and sank a long putt for a birdie. Nothing sensational about that three, coming just then, though, it bordered on the miraculous.

Peter, still two down, had the honour of the next tee. Again he played perfect golf. Carson, unworried, serene, sure of winning, was careful; he took no chances. Peter had to do just the same. His second left him in a tricky spot.

Sally saw him shake his head. He took a deep-bladed mashie; bit deep into the turf. The ball rose high, in a lovely, roaring flight; above the green it seemed to hover for a moment; then dropped, like a hawk about to strike. A shout went up from the crowd: the ball had stuck two feet from the hole and lay there, motionless. Even Sally, no golfer, heaven knew, could appreciate the magic of that shot! Peter's hole again— and Carson was one up with one to go!

"Now!" said Sally to Mr. Armstrong. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Wasn't that glorious?"

"It's not over yet," said Mr. Armstrong.

But every golfer in the gallery who knew the eighteenth hole at Baltamis thought it was. in his heart. For that is a hole offering few opportunities for the sort of golf that was all that could save Peter now. You drive straight out from the eighteenth tee; for your second you have to turn, at right angles, to reach the green, which you can't see from the tee at all, since woods hide it; a strip of maple oak, and beech thirty or forty yards wide, two hundred yards from the tee.

Peter stood on the tee, studying the wind. Then, with a shake of his head, he knelt and built up a high tee of wet sand. Sally saw Carson start as Peter took his stance; she heard a sort of whispered sigh that ran through t he crowd  Then Peter drove. Not down the fairway, but straight across the corner of the woods, a screaming drive that rose higher and higher until the ball began to fall and the high trees hid it.

"By Jimmy, I think you made it!" cried Carson, in high and chivalrous excitement. And Peter had. He had risked utter disaster should his ball fail to clear the woods; he had taken the one chance in a hundred that had remained to him, since Carson, playing safe, was morally sure of victory. When, after Carson had made his clean, orthodox drive, the first of the gallery went running down, a great cry came back. Peter's ball was in the open, thirty yards short of the green. Carson's, on his second, was only five yards nearer. Peter laid his approach dead; the match was square. And on the first extra hole that was played, Peter won!

" H'mph!" said Peter's father. He looked at Sally curiously again. He took a ten-dollar bill from his pocket. She grew scarlet.

"I—  oh, I don't want it!" she said. But he made her take it. Peter saw that; grinned, as he joined them.

"Oh, Peter!" said Sally, and that was all, for the moment, she could manage.

"Sorry I played hooky from the office, sir," said Peter. "I— I'm rather glad you caught me out, though."

"I— I wouldn't have missed seeing those last three holes for a thousand dollars!" said his father. "Anyone who can pull himself together the way you did after quitting cold "

"That wasn't so good," said Peter. "Couldn't seem to co-ordinate, for a minute or two." He hesitated. "Going back to town, sir? I can drive you in. Won't be keeping the car much longer, I suppose."

"No?" said Mr. Armstrong.

"Not if I'm fired."

"Oh, don't be an ass!" said his father. "I've an idea you'll behave yourself from now on."

"Oh, I shall, sir! Have to. Going to settle down. Going to get married, sir, you see."

His father stared.

"That's no news," he said. "Unless— Mary coming back soon?"

Sally jumped. Mary! Peter caught her arm.

"Oh, that's all off, sir," he said. " Mary and I— well, that's been all wet. That's why she's been staying abroad, just to avoid me. And— and— well, there's Sally, you see, and—"

He turned to Sally.

"That was the catch, you see," he said breathlessly. "That was why I laughed about your being engaged. Dad and Mary's dad had got us two kids engaged. Neither of us liked it. So you and I, Sally, couldn't be engaged until Mary answered my cable and broke it off— don't you see? And she did— that's the cable I was waiting for—"

Mr. Armstrong was making strange noises. Peter shook his head. Queer, he seemed to feel, how obtuse otherwise intelligent people were about some things.

"Simple enough!" he said. "Just took a little concentration. Got to keep your eye on the ball, that's all."

___________________

6: Curious Cubes

T. Bell
fl 1912-1922

All Story March 1914

YOU might camp out on the Great American Desert for days and days and nothing worthy of comment would happen.

At the junction of Thirty-Fourth Street, Sixth Avenue and Broadway something happens every two and one-half minutes, or twice every five minutes, wherein that vicinity differs vastly from the Great American Desert.

This is no reflection on the G. A. D., but such are the facts, and must be so set down as hereinbefore provided and contained in the minutes of this meeting.

First, a fire-engine came tearing up Broadway,

Second, a cab-horse, for reasons known only to cab-horses and possibly to traffic policemen— though I have never inquired of one— lay down on the car-tracks.

Then all the trucks, street-cars, automobiles, ambulances, and fire-fighting apparatus in the vicinity became inextricably entangled in a true lover's knot, so that a common, ordinary Mexican ant could not have made its way out of the mass.

In company with hundreds of other New Yorkers who are so busy neglecting their own business that they have time to mind every one else's, I paused and surveyed the scene of disorder.

Suddenly a cry broke from the lips of the assembled multitude (I got this phrase out of a book—rather good— eh, what?) and I looked in the direction toward which all eyes were turned.

There, in the very core and center of the hub-locked mess of traffic was a little old man, caught like a rat in a trap. He darted up, under, over, and above, through outside, inside, and across, beneath the hoofs of prancing steeds, narrowly escaping death by hairbreadths, and then, just as he was about to drag himself clear of the whole business, some invisible force set the congested mass in motion and he would have been crushed beneath the wheels of an expensive, red automobile had I not dashed forward and pulled him to his feet.

It all happened in a moment.

He leaned heavily against me, grasping my arm. I steadied him and slowly forced him through the crowd now rapidly reducing itself to fragments. When we hit an open space he looked up into my face with gratitude.

"Young man," he said in a small, thin, weak, trembling voice, "you have saved my life."

"Don't mention it," I said airily, brushing myself off. "It was a rare pleasure, I assure you."

"I am disposed to reward you." He regarded me thoughtfully, the while he stroked his long, luxurious. King Leopold beard. "Yes." he went on. "I shall reward you. It is fitting and proper."

"Please." I said modestly, " don't 'think of such a thing. I really won't permit it."

We walked slowly down Broadway. He was leaning on my arm and I was heartily wishing I could drop him in some polite. convenient manner.

"Let us step into this hotel," he said as we passed one of those gilded sin- palaces for which Broadway is noted from the rock-bound coast of the Pacific to the pine-clad hills of Maine. "I wish to present you with a token of my gratitude which knows no bounds."

"Now—really—" I protested feebly; but he led me through the portal— decorated like a ticket-wagon at a circus— and into the lobby.

"Now," he said, after we were seated in deep, leather-covered chairs, " | shall ask you to tell me your name so that I may engrave it on the tablets of my memory."

"J. Harvey MacNuder." I replied.

"And I," he said, grasping my hand, "am Professor Horace Maxwell. You have saved my life. You have saved a benefactor of the human race— the inventor of— but wait."

He drew a small, glittering object from his waistcoat-pocket and handed it to me. It looked like a lump of sugar wrapped in tinfoil.

"That little thing," he went on, "is a cube of congeniality.

"Listen," he continued as I observed the thing in wonder, "and I will explain.

"I have discovered a method of solidifying the psychic elements in the atmosphere, a subject to which I have devoted my life. At last I have triumphed. That cube, and several others I have with me, are the result."

"You're too far over in the book for me," I  said. "I don't make you, professor. May I unwrap it and take a look?"

"Not yet," he protested.  "Allow me to continue."

"You have frequently noticed, I presume, that certain states of mind are infectious. For instance, one man carries about him an air of gloom, another an air of prosperity. Such a man visibly affects those about him. He enters a company and his presence is felt and noticed. Shortly the company becomes infected with the atmosphere of the strongest personality in it: this atmosphere expands until it may be said that one man has dominated— by what we call personality— those around him. Is this true?"

"Well— yes," I replied slowly. "I'd never thought about it that way. I fail, however, to understand—"

"Very well," he returned with dignity. "Now this cube"— he took it from me— "is a cube of congeniality, I secured its ingredients from the atmosphere in a room where six prominent politicians were seated at damp, round tables in the back of a café, dividing the swag, as they say. Naturally the atmosphere was heavily charged with congeniality."

"This man," I said to myself, "is crazy. Far better had I permitted him to become a victim of the rich, red motor-car."

"This cube," he went on excitedly, drawing another from his pocket, "is what I call a cube of prosperity. The ingredients of this were procured from the office of a prominent railway king whose name I may not divulge. Suffice to say he has millions of dollars at his command. He is one of the richest men in the world."

"Really," I thought to myself again. "I ought to turn old gray-beard over to a policeman."

"And this," he produced another, "is a cube of gloom, and was the result of attending the World's Series at the Polo Grounds in nineteen twelve, when the Giants lost the pennant. It is the one most highly charged, and will, therefore, be the most highly efficient."

"Very interesting," I murmured, edging away from him ever so little and casting about for a means of escape.

"I am going to give you one specimen of each of these," he said. placing them in my hand. "I can confer no greater gift on you for the service you have performed in my behalf this day. You have saved my life."

"How do they— they work?" I asked, merely to humor him. "Just pour hot water and serve?"

"Do not jest." he warned me, laying a thin, cold, blue-white hand on my shoulder. "Simply remove the tinfoil. Contact with the atmosphere will do the rest. The cube will gradually disappear. The effect is temporary and immediate."

"Thank you," I said, thrusting the three cubes in my coat pocket. "I accept these with pleasure." I looked at the big clock at the far end of the lobby. "I must be going along. It's getting late."

"I, too, must proceed on my way," the old man rose stiffly. "Allow me to grasp you by the hand again, young man. You have saved my life. In return I have conferred upon you a marvelous triumph of science. Use it with discrimination."

He moved away and presently I lost sight of him in the throng that eddied and surged through the corridor of the hotel.

"Well," I said to myself, "I've wasted some time on this loose-beaned, elderly person. It is five o'clock. I will go up home, dress, and—"

Then I heard my name called.

The speaker was Joe Mellish, for whom I have slight regard.

"Hello, Joe," I greeted him. "How's your conduct?"

"Great," he replied, grasping me by the hand. "Have you heard the news?"

"Nothing to speak of," I replied.

"I'm engaged."

He said this as one would say "I have been elected President of the United States," or "The world is mine," or some other large, high-priced remark.

"Put it there." I shook hands with him again. "Aliss Borden, I suppose. Fine girl, lucky man. Have a drink."

We stepped into the café and spoke certain mysterious words to the white- coated gentleman behind the bar, who presently laid before us two portions of a wet, intoxicating fluid.

"Pulled it last night," Joe said in a joyous tone of voice. "She snapped me up like a bargain. I guess I ain't a lucky guy— what?"

"Oh," I said, "you're simply poisoned with luck. I don't see how you'll ever be able to die when your time comes."

"Well"— he expanded his chest considerably— "you got to give me credit, Harve, for picking the sweetest, finest, most good-looking, all-round member of the obstinate sex in these here parts. Gimme credit, will you?"

"Sure," I replied. "I ain't like a fellow that's the least bit jealous, you know, even though I was once— well,— kind of sweet on the lady myself."

"I beat you to it," he said complacently as he made a motion to the dispenser behind the long, moist mahogany. "Same?" he asked condescendingly.

"Yes, same for me," I answered, and suddenly I longed to damage the gigantic assurance of this person.

It was then that I thought of the cubes in my pocket— those marvels of science— triumphs of the inventor's art, et cetera.

I surreptitiously took them out to look at them, and suddenly became aware of the fact that there was nothing by which to identify one from the other.

"Oh, well," I said to myself, "it's likely they are only the work of a nut, so it won't make much difference, anyway."

I unwrapped one and dropped it in Joe's pocket.

"There's no use talking," Joe said as he sipped his drink, "this getting married is a serious proposition. For one thing, marriage without love is an awful lemon, so they tell me. Of course Janet loves me," he took another sip.

"Nothing could save him," I thought to myself, "if we were in a dark alley and I had an ax with me."

"But sometimes I feel as if— well, maybe she don't love me, Harve; and— I— oh, what the dickens!"

He set his glass down on the bar while a tear formed in the corner of his eye and rolled down the side of his nose.

"Say," I cried, "what's the matter with you?"

"I don't know," he lamented, wiping his eyes with his handkerchief; "but I feel so— Say, Harve, do I look like a human being?"

"You bear slight chemical traces of belonging to the human race," I replied. "Why?"

"She don't love me," he said finally as he wiped his eyes again. "I feel it, Harve, and it's awful. I didn't feel this way before, but now—"

He burst out crying.

"What are you going to do about it?" I said. "Don't weep all over this perfectly good café, that never did a thing to either of us. Come outside."

I led him, weeping, to the door.

"Do me a favor, Harve," he sobbed when we were outside, where we attracted unfavorable comment. "Go up to the Bordens to-night and tell Janet that you've seen me and that I— oh, she won't care, anyway—but tell her that I am on my way to bleach my bones in the desert places of the earth. Some day she will—she will regret that she—I— Oh, Harve, go to her and tell her that."

"I'll go," I said with an air of resignation.

"Yes, go,"— he clung to me— "and take her, Harve. She loves you. I feel it. Go to her— take her, and— and be good to her for my sake. And when you lead her to the altar— you will lead her to the altar, won't you? "

"Perhaps," I replied, gently disengaging him from my shoulder, which was damp from his tears.

"When you lead her to the altar and— and— think of me, will you, Harve? And teach her to think kindly of the man who loves her, and always will love her so long as she— tell her that, will you, Harve?"

"I will." I spoke gently.

"Go," he wailed. "And if the Giants— the Red Sox win the pennant— I— what am I saying?"

So it was the cube! The baseball. game was showing through!

"Nothing," I said gently. " You were saying positively nothing."

"I thought so," he returned as I moved away hurriedly.

I lost no time in reaching the Borden residence, which is tucked away in the vest-pocket of Harlem.

Janet met me at the portals.

"Why, how do you do, Mr. MacNuder?" she exclaimed. "This is indeed a surprise!"

"Isn't it?" I said affably as we entered the little two-by-four parlor.

"You never come up here any more," she pouted very prettily. "Am I honored in believing that you came to-night just to see my humble self?"

"Honored is scarcely the word." I smiled upon her. "I am performing a duty," I said.

"Oh, how wretched!" she cried. "That's such a terrible word to use."

"Well, I couldn't think of a better one." I unwrapped one of the two remaining cubes.

"It don't make much difference." I said to myself as I turned loose another triumph of science. "It won't make much difference whether it's Prosperity of Congeniality. Women fall for either or both."

"Do tell," she chided me. "What is the nature of this duty, may I ask?"

"Certainly," I replied. "I have just left Joe down-town!"

"Something has happened to him!" She rose and came over to me. "Tell me at once!"

"It's really nothing," I replied calmly. "He told me to tell you that he is on his way to— to some desert or other, because he thinks you don't love him or he don't love you, or something of the sort. I couldn't just get the hang of it.'

"Great Heavens, the man is mad!"

She dropped into a chair.

"So I thought maybe you'd like to come out with me to-morrow afternoon for a spin in my motor-car."

(I had no motor-car.)

"It's very good of you," she spoke brokenly. " I— yes— I will come."

"And," I went on madly, " perhaps some day you will think kindly of one who wishes to make you the happiest woman in the world."

"Please don't speak of it yet," she whispered.

"Why not?" I replied impetuously taking both her little white hands in mine. ''I can give you everything— everything in the world that your! heart craves.

"I will build a palace for you as high as the skies; you shall have a thousand servants to do your bidding; jewels, motor-cars, opera boxes, yachts, European trips— I lay them all— all at your feet."

I suited the action to the word by, laying an imaginary universe on the carpet before her.

"Why, Mr. MacNuder," she blushed very, very attractively, "I had no idea you were so— so rich."

"Rich!" I cried, abandoning myself to the triumph of science. "Rich! The half has not been told. Name it and you can have it. That's my motto. I do nothing by halves— positively nothing.

"For you, Janet, I will turn the world wrong side out and paint the other side red, like your lips. I will reach up and pluck a star for you to wear in a ring. You may have the moon with which to decorate your alabaster brow.

"There is nothing in the wide, wide world—in the wide, wide universe— that you shall not have, if money can buy it. And," I added complacently, "money can buy anything."

"Where did you get all this money?" she asked.

"Have no fear on that score," I replied airily. "Picture to yourself a thousand miles of steel rails girdling the continent. Picture the vast, comprehensive railway system that brings San Francisco next door to New York, and then ask me— me— where I got all this money!"

I still held her hands in mine.

"Oh!" she gasped. "Why— I never knew, I never dreamed of anything so wonderful! You must be—"

"They call me the railroad king," I said modestly.

In another moment she would have been mine.

But that moment never arrived, for I heard a great clatter outside in the hall, as if twenty men were simultaneously trying to enter and pull the house in after them.

I looked up. Joe stood in the doorway.

He took in the situation at a glance, and I hurriedly slipped off the covering of the one remaining cube— the cube of Congeniality.

Janet ran to him and grasped him in what I believe to be a half-Nelson, a wrestling term.

"Let me at him!" Joe cried. "The— the— hound!"

"Don't," I said with dignity, "Keep away. I shall explain."

Joe tossed Janet gently to the far end of the room and advanced on me.

"You explain!" he hissed. "I'll muss you up first, and then do your explaining afterward!"

He did. I didn't.

Outside, I slowly and painfully arranged my attire and discovered that I could actually see out of one eye, which was a great relief to me.

The bright lights of a café on the corner attracted my attention. I slipped in through the side door labeled "Family Entrance," though why they should so label a side door I have never been able to discover, because I never saw nor heard of a family entering such a place.

The room was deserted except for one man who was asleep.

The waiter entered and brushed off the table at which I sat.

"Bring me some pens and ink and paper." I ordered.

Was I mad? What was the reason for this bursting, throbbing sensation in my head? Of course, it might have been on account of having come in violent contact with the United States when Joe Mellish (curse him) hurled me through the front door.

And, anyway— the desire to write!

Me, a poor slave of a thieving corporation, suddenly seized with a mania for pen, ink, and paper! Horrible thought! I wondered if there was such a thing as an ink-drunkard!

He went out and presently returned with them.

"Now," I said, "bring me a forty horsepower rye highball, and then let me alone."

I wrote until far into the night.

A month afterward I ran into Professor Maxwell on Broadway.

I drew him aside.

"See this eye?" I said. "Well, it's better now, but you ought to have seen it when it was fresh."

I told him what had happened.

"Everything worked like a charm," I said, "except that blamed cube of Congeniality. It's a frost."

"Not so," he replied kindly. "I found, after I had returned home, that I had included by mistake a cube of Literary atmosphere which was secured at the home of Rudyard Kipling while that master was engaged in a most difficult piece of literary labor. That accounts for your having written the story of your experiences.

"Allow me to present you with my latest triumph of science, the cube of Courage. It was secured by me at the exact moment when you saved my life, a service for which I feel that I cannot sufficiently repay you.

"Accept it, please, as a final testimony of my gratitude. I leave for Europe to-morrow, and we shall probably never meet again."

"Thank you just the same, professor," I said. "But I've had all the experience I want with your cubes, which, I may say, are all that you claim for them."

"Take it, young man." He thrust it into my hand. "Use it when you present your literary masterpiece to an editor for publication."

Under the circumstances I accepted it, with the result that you observe the story in print.

I fear I shall never write another.

________________

7: Surprise Attack

Georges Surdez

1900-1949

Adventure, April 1939

Georges Arthur Surdez

YOU ask me for information concerning the disciplinary company of the Foreign Legion at Colomb-Bechar, Saharan Territories. You presume that because you saw me in charge of the outfit several years ago I am likely to know more about it than most.

That is not necessarily true.

You have heard, of course, the old saying that there is not one Legion—  there are as many Legions as there are Legionnaires.

"The Legion is what one makes of it," is what they say. So far as externals are concerned, you know as much as I do, because you have seen the buildings, which are nothing to boast about even if they suit their purpose; you saw my office—and you saw the poor devils at work.

Everything at the double, wheeling a barrow, swinging a pick, lifting a spade. You remember my second in command, the skinny German adjutant, nicknamed Schnaps, who kept them going on outside fatigues. That chap had a heart like a ball of steel and a liver like a rotting sponge, which somehow seems the ideal combination for a non-commissioned officer in the disciplinary company.

Get it clear in your writings that the inmates of the disciplinary are not criminals in any sense except the military sense. Most of them come because they can't learn to obey, or have a mental flaw that makes them explode into insubordination at irregular intervals. The scheduled stay is for nine months, but it can be lengthened indefinitely without further official trial, so that some men have spent four, five years and even more.

I went there because I was assigned to the job at a time when it would have looked bad for me to kick, because I had just emerged from a scrape. I have never heard of an officer volunteering to take charge of the 'Disciplinary.' The appointment is so hard that it counts toward promotion just as much as field service. I was picked, moreover, because I am constructed along broad and solid lines, as you will remember.

My first contact with my new charges came in the courtyard of the place. For the occasion, they had put on their blouses, which is rare with them. Most of the time, they work bare from the waist up. I saw nothing extraordinary about them on that afternoon, and if they had been equipped with rifles and bayonets, I would have imagined them ordinary sections of Legion. A good many of them seemed very tough, but there is a proportion of ugly-looking customers in any outfit of our corps.

I made them a little speech— routine stuff, that I would treat them justly, that those who behaved would get out soon and those who didn't would find me tough enough to suit them. And I had no sooner turned my back than I heard sounds of derision, incongruous, uncouth noises made with the lips. I whirled and saw my sergeants staring at the blank, sunburned faces lined before them, seeking the culprits.

"Never mind that," I called. "School-room stuff. Dismissed."

Schnaps walked back to the office with me. He said: "Listen, Lieutenant, that was wrong. It would have been better to kick the stuffings out of a couple of them now."

As you can imagine, I suggested that he keep his advice to himself. I had small esteem for the sergeants, most of whom were volunteers, and almost without exception, had developed sadistic traits.

"Just the same, Lieutenant," Schnaps said, "I'll make you a bet that inside a week you sock one of them, regulations or no regulations. We have this always with a new officer."

THREE days later I was beginning to agree with him. It is impossible to describe the irritation of an atmosphere charged with hatred of you. And I saw that those lads made it a point of pride to do nothing willingly. They had to be forced and threatened. As a matter of fact, they are all more than a little mad. The simpler course would be for the Legion to discharge them. But if feigning madness was a way out, whenever a Legionnaire got fed up with his surroundings he would sham insanity. And the government would be out food, bonus money, without profit.

During the morning of the fourth day, a sergeant informed me that a disciplinaire wished to speak to me. He was not the first who had requested an interview. When a new officer takes charge he is always approached by the men in the hope that they can put something over on him through his ignorance of rules and regulations. That is why, if a disciplinaire disturbed me over a trifle I gave him special punishment for forty-eight hours.

The man appeared. He had dressed neatly, wore a white blouse.

"Laurens, Aristide," he introduced himself.

He was obviously French, as obviously from Paris. His speech, his attitude denoted that. A smart fellow in his own estimation, and vain as a peacock despite his lean, horsy face and his cropped skull. Instead of coming to attention, saluting, and giving his number as well as his name, he held his long-vizored képi in his hand, casually, like a civilian paying a call.

I decided to let that pass. "What do you wish?"

"Monsieur Tainton—"

"I'm a lieutenant, acting as captain," I reminded him.

"This isn't a military request. I am acting as a private citizen, not as a Legionnaire. I have never been deprived of my citizenship rights by any prison sentence—"

"But you gave up ordinary rights when you enlisted," I explained patiently. "I am a Frenchman, but as an army officer, I cannot vote."

"I am enlisted in the Foreign Legion as a Belgian," Aristide Laurens said. "Consequently, the Foreign Legion being different from the army in general, my using an assumed name in it, that leaves my rights—" and he continued this for several minutes. I understood, of course, that it was a 'gag,' something to entertain himself and his comrades with.

"What do you wish to do, anyway?" I interrupted him.

"I want paper and ink, a pen, and a table to write on. I have a complaint to make to the minister of war."

"What about?"

"About the food, the accommodations. We sleep on cement, with only one blanket. We—"

"All right," I agreed. "You have the right to write the ministry of war. Sit down there and write him, then hand me the letter. I shall pass it on to the regimental office to be forwarded—"

"I want to write direct. You can lend me stamps, Monsieur, until I am discharged from here and collecting pay again."

"My good fellow," I barked, "are you trying—"

Suddenly, he flung his képi into my face.

It dropped to the floor, and he stood there, laughing at me. If I took official notice of his act, he was due for twenty years in the penal camps: Insubordination, insults, assault upon an officer. I tried to carry it off casually. The scribes in the outer office had heard him laugh. and had come to the door.

"You've dropped your képi, Laurens. Pick it up and go."

He answered me with a single word, the one you think of. That may not seem much of a plight to you, but for an officer it was annoying. I had to call upon the machinery of military justice to crush this silly fool, and that made me look ridiculous. Or, as I had told him to pick up the képi, I could make him pick it up, to save myself.

What I did not know was that Laurens had been complete master of the scene from the beginning, and that this course on my part was what he had led up to.

"Pick that up," I said.

"Hand it to me!" And he laughed. "Or call in the patrol to arrest me."

"Pick it up," I repeated, going nearer, my fists clenched. Under the special regulations of the disciplinary company, physical punishment cannot be inflicted summarily. But it is. In that place, I did not risk my commission if I struck a blow.

The sergeant-scribe started to come in, saying: "Don't, Lieutenant, don't!" And I did not understand then just what he meant. "Let me take him out, Lieutenant." He appeared frightened, and I believed that he thought Laurens might knife me. It was much worse than that, as I was to find out.

"Pick it up!"

"Go to hell!"

YOU may understand how it happened: I had given him an order in front of witnesses. He had defied me to force him to execute it without calling for help. I lost my temper. My right arm swung back and forward again. The punch caught him on the jaw. He made no attempt to dodge or to retaliate, went down and was on all fours.

I expected to see him reach for that képi. But he did not. He rose, shook his head, and grinned. He waited there, waited for my next blow. And through striking the first, I had lost the moral right to charge him with a military crime, I had made the matter personal. My personal prestige was involved. I had to make him pick up that képi.

I struck him for the second time, and down he went. He rested two or three seconds, rose and faced me. From the corner of that ironic grin leaked a thin stream of blood. And he repeated that same word to my repeated order. And, with the first sensation of the nightmare that was to come, [ hit him for the third time.

In his own way, he was a keen psychologist. He had undoubtedly done this trick before, for the sergeant had known. He knew that having started to strike him I could not stop. And he knew that it was torture for a man of my type to hit again and again a man who did not defend himself.

He hoisted himself to his feet deliberately, spat his word of defiance. I understood that the pain of the blow did not frighten him. Perhaps he even derived a sort of rapture out of it.

"Get your képi and get out," I said.

"No. to you!"

It had become automatic. I struck him and he went down. This time, he was dazed and sprawled for fifteen or twenty seconds before stirring. I was about to order the scribes to lift him up and carry him out before he grew conscious again, when I saw that the sergeant had closed the door discreetly, to allow me to endure my torment alone. For, of the two, I was the one being tortured.

Laurens knew that I would not do as Adjutant Schnaps or any one of the sergeants would do, kick him around as he lay. This was a trick he tried only on officers, as I discovered later. If I had not been so sure of myself, so strict with Schnaps, I would have been warned. But, like most new officers, I had seen the prisoners' side and forgotten the guards' viewpoint.

How many times I knocked him down I can't remember. It was as if I had gone mad myself. I was covered with perspiration; my tunic was wrinkled— it happened to be one-hundred-andthirty in the shade that day— and my hair hung wet on my forehead. I was trying to break his will. And he would lose consciousness, but not his will.

Once, when he rose, I believed he was about to break. But he mumbled: "I'll write that to the minister of war!"

"And write him this, too—" I said.

I was living as if in a dream, I had forgotten just how it had started. All I knew was that I must make that man pick up the képi. I felt degraded, ashamed. And, finally, I cheated. As he sat up, I picked up the képi and slammed it over his skull, gripped one of his wrists, hoisted him and pushed him toward the door. I slammed that open, and pushed him into the outer office.

"You'd have saved trouble picking it up the first time," I called out.

He reeled about and collapsed on a table.

"Didn't pick it up— didn't pick it up—" he mumbled, and passed out for minutes.

He was badly bruised about the face, and my knuckles were swollen. But what hurt more was the look on the sergeant's face. He did not believe that Laurens had picked up the képi; he knew that I had lied. Lied in actions if net in words. Schnaps told me as much that night.

"He's never been known to before, Lieutenant. And once, when he tried that képi trick, I called in two sergeants and we spent a whole evening. He went to the infirmary for four days that time, but an orderly carried his képi out." Schnaps shrugged. "It's his special pride, you understand."

THAT was only one case. I had over one hundred and thirty men under my orders.

There was a Russian, chased out by the Reds, a former officer of Hussars, who had come down because he would not do manual labor in an ordinary formation. Nine days out of ten, he was normal and obedient. The tenth, he refused to work and nothing could make him work. Starving him was no solution, because his fits were periodical, and after the day on which he had selected to refuse work was passed, he was quite willing to wield a pick for ten hours on end. I don't know what happened to that one, althoughk I met some of the others later.

Then there was what I term the 'wine uprising.' According to regulations, the men in the disciplinary company are allowed one pint of wine a day, just as in ordinary formation. Privation of wine is a special punishment. Now, the disctplinaires get no money. They are not supposed to gamble, but they do. And they use cigarettes, which are contraband and forbidden them, for money, while those who do not care for wine mortgage their wine rations.

This custom led to drunkenness. A elever gambler who was fond of wine would be discovered drunk some evening, within post limits. The wine also served to purchase other pleasures, All over the world, men isolated from the mass develop queer habits.

I cut off the wine rations as a preventive measure. But I could maintain that order only a short while, because it punished the innocent with the guilty, and there were legitimate complaints from some disciplinaires that they were deprived of wine without cause. An honest officer must forward a legitimate complaint. I did and was berated for not handling the situation properly. No one could suggest what to do. There it was: Each man was entitled to a pint of wine if he wanted it. If he did not get that pint and there was nothing in particular charged against him, he was being unjustly punished!

So I allowed the wine to be distributed again, and the same troubles occured again and again. It worked harm on some of the very young— we had one or two lads barely twenty— because they loved the forgetfulness that comes with drink and were willing to pay any price for it. They did and that led to rows and jealousy. A man was stabbed; disciplinaires are not permitted to have knives, but someone had found one!

I could see that the men were amused, because they believed they had me. The guards were native infantrymen, and could be bribed with cigarettes or drink. If those inducements failed, there were others. To start with, I applied urgently for a transfer to a combat unit, and then decided that during the balance of my sojourn, I would end the wine racket.

That took some thought. I had to keep within regulations. The men not specially punished must get their wine allowance.

I solved this after a while. It meant a good deal of extra work for me. I had to be present at the distribution of food and drink. Here was my system: After the food rations had been given out, I ordered the men to stand at attention in the yard, in two long limes twenty feet apart. They stood with their backs to me, who kept in the center. Two soldiers carried the wine buckets, with a ladle.

Stopping behind the first man, I would order:

"Right about, face!" And when he had obeyed and was facing me, the only inmate to do so, I would ask him: "Do you drink wine?" If he replied in the affirmative, I would order him to present his tin cup, and one of the soldiers would fill it with the ladle: "Now, drink it down!"

And he would have to drain that tin cup, right before my eyes. I would go from man to man in person, supervise the drinking of the wine. I had them turned around so that if a man felt embarrassed, had promised his drink to another, he could not be threatened, intimidated, with a glance. I was keeping them from acting together. It was a slight trick, but it worked.

I had complaints from men who declared that they did not like to drink wine like that, that they wished it with their food.

"Not stipulated in regulations," I reminded them. "Show me the article that states that wine must be drunk while eating food." They could not, of course. "So, my friends, as your complaint is not based on regulations, I cannot bother the colonel with it. Too bad, but I can't help you."

Strangely enough, that broke them, and a delegation came to me, promising to keep order. That small trick of mine had caught their fancy; they thought me a pretty smart fellow, and I had little trouble after that. Naturally, when things started to run smoothly, my long delayed transfer came through. I was assigned to the fourth regiment, in southwest Morocco, and remained there a couple of years. Then I was wounded in a casual skirmish, went to France to recover, was promoted to captain.

ACCORDING to routine, I was shifted to another regiment when I went back to Africa. I reported at Meknas headquarters for an assignment, and was given command of the garrison at Dar-Rahib, on the Saharan fringe. Everyone told me it was a dump, that I was out of luck. From the photographs you could tell that there was not much grass.

But I started out, reached Midelt across the Middle Atlas Range by civilian bus. There I was informed that there was a convoy of lorries carrying supplies to the outposts due to leave the next morning. Ten trucks, guarded by Senegalese Tirailleurs and two driven by Legionnaires were lined up outside the town at dawn. The armored car which was to clear the way of possible marauders started out, vanished in a swirl of dust, just as I arrived.

"The Legion trucks?" I asked a twenty year old sub-lieutenant in charge of the convoy. I could have superseded him, and avoided a lot of trouble for myself, but he was so pleased with his authority that I made it clear I was still on leave, more or less a passenger.

"Back there somewhere," he said. "They branch off for Dar-Rahib at Kilometer Sixty-Three." And he detailed two of his Negroes, big, grinning fellows, to tote my bags for me.

And, on the front seat of the first Legion lorry, I recognized ex-disciplinaire Laurens, wearing the single chevron of first-class Legionnaire. He appeared healthy and strong, but his eyes still had the old nervous, darting glances. The man behind the wheel was Rene Berceril, who had been with the disciplinary company also. I cast a quick glance at the second truck, and recognized three out of four faces, although I could not recall the names immediately.

All saluted me as if they had never seen me. Laurens was superb, his stare unconcerned. He was evidently in charge, as he ordered one of his men to make room for me by passing into the body of the truck. Nevertheless, I grew somewhat worried. I settled myself and Laurens reached across my knees to take his carbine, which had been resting on my side.

The truck ahead, with grinning, squealing black soldiers piled above the crates, bales and barrels, started off. Our chauffeur released his brake, rolled down the gentle slope; then the motor hammered. The day was going to be hot; a copper vapor clung to the crests, not the red of approaching rain but the shimmer of the desert air after daybreak.

We rolled for twenty minutes or more in silence. Obviously, it was up to me to speak. I was the officer. And I wondered on a delicate problem of etiquette not foreseen by the manuals. What was the proper attitude for me to take toward my former charges? The thing to do, I believed, was to be very casual, As casual as I could be with at least six men about who must have grown to hate me over a period of months.

I brought out cigarettes, offered them before lighting one. They were turned down, politely, definitely. Yet Laurens was a smoker, and the chauffeur, judging from the stains on his fingers, also used tobacco. That was a bad sign. I started to wish that I had been less considerate, taken the first truck at the risk of disappointing the kid lieutenant.

"Where are you chaps stationed, Legionnaire?" I asked.

"At Midelt, mostly, mon capitaine," Laurens replied. "We're attached to the transport branch."

"You were with me at Discipline in Béchar, years ago?"

"Yes, Captain."

"So were some of the others?"

"Yes, Captain. All of the Legionnaires here are from the dump."

"How does that happen?"

"A section was sent to Menwarha, south of Béchar, to help build a sort of bridge over a gap. We had about twenty Moroccans guarding us, sent from Bou Denib." Laurens spoke softly, easily. "The slobs from Tafilalet jumped us— that was a few weeks before we took the place— and when the Tirailleurs were being cut to pieces, we pitched in with spades, shovels and picks. About a dozen were bumped off, and the rest of us were pardoned. Rehabilitated, they call it."

"And is Adjutant Schnaps still with the company?"

"No, Captain." The ghost of a smile appeared on his lips. "But he isn't far from it."

"Where is he?"

"In the cemetery, Captain. Found one morning on the Place des Chameaux, throat cut from ear to ear."

"Murdered?" I asked, foolishly.

"So they said." He cast a sidelong glance in my direction. "Some people even claimed a disciplinary inmate had done it—"

"Ah?"

"Yes. They said that a man couldn't go on forever kicking exhausted chaps in the stomach until they got up or died."

"And what do you think, Laurens?"

"Me, Captain? I never think."

He stared at the narrow road flanking the cliff. In the rear-view mirror beside the chauffeur, I could see the left side of his face. It was scarred. Perhaps the traces of my blows were there beside those of a hundred other blows. After a long while, he spoke again.

"I never think— I never forget."

WE HAD been out probably an hour when the Legionnaires on the last truck shouted to attract our attention. We stopped and alighted. There had been a slight mishap; the armored car closing the procession had broken down. I walked back and spoke to the young sergeant in charge. He did not understand it; it had never happened before. But he had a broken rear wheel and no spare. He would signal to the nearest watch-tower, and Midelt would send out another car inside an hour.

He sensed that I was under some sort of a strain, and he suggested that I remain there with him and his crew of four. But as he was not a Legionnaire, it would have looked bad for me to leave my own kind and hang around with him behind steel plates.

I got on the truck again and we started off. Soon, the armored car was out of sight around a bend of the trail. And we scuttled, with a drop two hundred feet deep on the right, hugging the cliff on the left.

"Ever see any shooting around here?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, Captain. It's seldom that a convoy goes all the way through without being fired upon." Laurens appeared to read my thoughts and added casually, "And a lot of the swine have Lebels. So that if a guy was shot with one, nothing else could be proved." And he took out his own cigarettes, asked no permission, but lighted up.

That was like a signal, because I saw his face grow hard, with that queer, mulish look that sulky privates get. And the chauffeur looked over at me, grinning nervously.

"Odd thing," he commented, addressing no one in particular, "Odd thing, that car breaking down. First time it ever happened. Just like we had been praying for it."

We reached a spot where the trail divided into two branches. The young lieutenant was waiting there. "Here's where we separate, Captain. If you get into any trouble, the rear armored car will be along and hear it." I told him what had happened, and he shrugged. "Well, the bicos couldn't foresee that, luckily. Of course, if you wish me to—"

There again, I could not do the obvious thing, inform the boy of my situation. It was unthinkable for an officer of Legion to appear afraid of his own men. And I was more worried than afraid.

We shook hands, and he left. I heard the chugging of his trucks a while, then the motor was started and drowned it out. We swung right, and and rolled on the Dar-Rahib path.

"How far, Laurens?"

"Twenty-four kilometers, Captain."

"What do you ordinarily make it in?"

"Almost an hour, Captain. See, the road's not so good and you have to go in low gear most of the time."

He had not exaggerated. At times the curves in the trail were so sharp that the road seemed to turn back upon itself. The inclines were steep, tufted with bushes, strewn with boulders, ideal for an ambush. I had been in the region before, knew the natives. I felt that unless we kept going at a fairly good speed, we would be fired upon.

For an attacking party in that zone is not hard to gather. All through the hills are flocks of sheep, each one guarded by a mountaineer. And it is common knowledge that a sheepman in the Atlas usually has a carbine concealed within easy reach, so that he may transform himself into a raider if the occasion for loot or even for killing offers itself.

Those with me knew this as well as I did, evidently, for in each cab was a Legionnaire, with his carbine ready. They scanned the cliffs, the crests, the hollows. And, after some time, they relaxed, as I did, because they saw nothing. Ahead, when we chanced to be at a point of vantage, with a clear view, we could discern the walls of Dar-Rahib, very far, immensely remote, like a picture thrown on the screen of the blazing sky.

Then the path would dip, the mountains seemed to rise, and the vision vanished. I had an uneasy sensation that the men behind me were consulting. I could see Laurens and the chauffeur exchanging glances. And I knew that those men, who had been forbidden to communicate in words for so long, could come to an understanding by signs, signs beyond my perception.

Not criminals, but convicts, military convicts!

WE had reached a sort of a gap between the rocks, like a natural gateway opening on a platform, when the truck came to a stop.

I became alert at once. But Laurens politely excused himself for climbing over me, dropped to the road and walked aside in a most natural fashion. I imitated him, glad to stretch my legs a bit, and saw that the second truck had caught up, had braked right behind ours. The men alighted quietly, and from his seat the chauffeur hailed me: "Captain?"

I turned, looked up. At the same time, my arms were held from behind, I felt my automatic yanked from its holster. Then, immediately, I was released.

"What's going on?" I asked, keeping quite calm outwardly.

I knew that if they had taken my gun they intended to hold it. There was no sense grabbing for it, with nine men against me. For there were nine all told, counting the chaps who had been inside the trucks.

"Your life is in no danger, Captain," Laurens informed me. "We just want a little fun."

What was queer is that I understood them and vaguely sympathized. It was human to seek revenge for what they had undergone. But I was worried over what form their fun would take. I had heard stories, naturally, of such episodes. And the worst feature was that ridicule was stronger than tragedy.

I wore a chech around my képi, a khaki scarf wound like a turban. Someone took the end of it, yanked, and my headgear flew off, dropped in the dust. Instinctively, I bent over to recover it. And I was given a terrific kick on the most conspicuous part of my person.

I turned, and saw three men standing, all smiling. I could not tell which one had kicked me.

"No witnesses, Captain," Laurens announced. "You were not touched. All imagination. Remember?"

I did. Whenever a complaint of excessive brutality on the part of a sergeant was made, I would say: "Sorry, but you have no witnesses. The sergeant says you attacked him first. I have to take his word." I wanted to reason with them, and did not know how to start. All I could tell them, those men knew— that I had been but an impersonal cog in a machine. That what they were doing was foolish. That I would have a chance to avenge myself later.

Laurens, cigarette in the corner of his mouth, was very calm.

"You won't be struck again, Captain, if you behave. The gesture escaped one of us, who has been so kicked around that he could not resist temptation. That was not planned. All you have to do is to pick up your képi." He paused, grinned. "To pick it up at my order. Pick up your képi."

It was a perfect reversal, and I understood Laurens better now than at any time.

To obey him was impossible. It seemed that I would surrender my right to call myself a man forever if I did it. Yet, it was the intelligent thing to do, to pick that képi up, climb on the truck, and forget the incident. Or rather, forget it until I had an opportunity to settle matters.

And, by a weird compulsion of the brain, showing how near alike men are, all I could think of was that one stupid, vile word he had used to me. I said it, flatly.

THEY laughed.

"Listen," Laurens said. "We ain't being mean. Pick it up now, and it's all settled. Wait two minutes, and we'll make you pick it up with your teeth." He produced an imposing watch of silver with a snaplid, and looked at the dial: "Thirty seconds gone, forty—"

The two minutes passed. I was struggling with myself to pick up that képi and end the scene. And I could not even move a hand toward it.

"All right— you asked for it." Laurens pocketed the watch. He spoke to the others just as if I had not been there. "Grab him carefully. Don't mark him. He can't talk about this himself, it's too funny. But if we beat him up, that changes it from a joke on him to a joke on us. A black eye is a bad witness."

Four of the men rested their carbines against the wheels of the trucks. They came toward me. I punched the first one in the nose, managed to hit again, a glancing blow. Then they had me, each by one limb, and swung me off the ground, face down. They were laughing so hard they could hardly hold me, even the one with the trickle of blood down his chin.

Laurens reached over and held me up by my belt, and together we shuffled until my face was directly over the képi. They lowered me within reach, with many admonitions to each other to be careful.

Normally, had they been my equals in rank, I would have laughed. It was a prank, just a prank. But it meant, in this case, that nine subordinates would have seen me humiliated.

"Bite into it, that's a good egg," Laurens said.

I clenched my teeth as they rubbed my face back and forth against the cloth. They were tiring. I could feel the throbbing of their muscles in their gripping hands.

I am not a light man, one hundred and eighty-five pounds, and I was struggling hard. Struggling hard, but feeling carefully.

My heel located a knee-cap. I kicked out. And that one leg was free, gave me a purchase. We fell in a heap, and I contrived to get clear. I knew what I intended, leaped for one of the carbines. The first man got the butt under the chin and dropped headlong, and I ran back along the road for twenty yards. By the time I turned, they were all armed and facing me.

"Enough?" I challenged. My fingers had verified the loading— I had three shots, a full clip.

Laurens seemed quite sober. "All right, Captain! We drop it."

"Bring me my képi."

They consulted among themselves. Again, stupid pride entered in. They refused.

"Listen, Captain, leave it here if you want to. Let's call it square."

"I don't move without it." I was thinking, also, that I had paid sixty francs for that képi. "Bring it here."

Instead, at Lauren's suggestion, they started toward me.

"I'll shoot," I warned.

"Listen, Captain, we've hung around long enough. By now, every bico in the hills is headed this way. It's dangerous to stick here much longer—"

"You should have thought of that before."

They kept coming nearer, and I was afraid they would get close enough to jump at me. So I dodged off the trail, down the pebbly slope, because the way was cut off on the other side by a sheer wall of rock.

"Keep away."

"Listen, Captain, listen—"

I shouldered the carbine, aimed and fired. The bullet struck between Laurens' feet, whined off, and he jumped like a carp at the end of a line.

And that shot brought others. I went down, feeling as if a trunk had fallen on the small of my back. I did not realize what had happened then, did not think much.

But I do remember Laurens' face close to my own, his urgent whisper begging me to quit fooling. Then carbines slapped out all around, some near, some at a distance. I was lifted, and the pain knocked me out.

When I came to, I was crumpled in the rear of the truck, and the motor was roaring. Every jostling bound felt like a red hot blade brushed through my kidneys.

A heavy weight rested across my legs. It was a man, a man I recognized: Berceril. He showed his teeth as if he were amused. But I realized that he was dead.

HOW long that ride lasted, I don't know. Less than thirty minutes at that speed. But it seemed like centuries, because I kept passing out and coming to, and Berceril was inching over on me at every jolt, pressing his dead mug against my cheek.

And I reached Dar-Rahib, my new garrison, only to be placed in the infirmary, due to be shipped away as soon as transportable. I was delirious for a couple of days.

It doesn't do one's system any good to have a slug removed from the loins, so close to the spine that it was a miracle I escaped with a good chance for recovery.

You will find that episode outlined in an official report, classified as an ambush. There's some very interesting dope about the pile of rocks across the path which made it necessary for all hands to come out of the trucks to clear them away.

Laurens was not a stupid man and knew he had to explain our presence in the open.

Only three men had been killed. And two others wounded. It is believed that seven or eight mountaineers were slain. I doubt that strongly, because most of the men were occupied carrying me back to the trucks. But an official report has to list enemy's casualties in excess of your own. Otherwise, it doesn't look so well.

Laurens gave me plenty of chance to talk— a week. Naturally, in a way, it was my duty to report them. If they had not stopped to humiliate me, nothing would have happened. But I found it hard to forget that when they had had a chance to leave me behind— no chance of my being found alive with the Chleuhs so near. they had reacted to the Legion's rule rather than that of the penitentiary. You can't send your saviors to jail.

On the eighth day, Laurens called to see me. He seemed a bit embarrassed. In one hand, he carried a khaki roll, the scarf. In the other, he held my képi, carefully brushed, free of dust, with the nape of the cloth shining, the gold braid intact.

He hung it on a hook in the wall without a word, turned his back on it. Then, haltingly, he started to thank me for not talking.

But I had learned something. The cost of humiliation. So I cut him short, again with that single, expressive word.

"Sit down," I invited, indicating the chair near my cot. "Have a cigarette."

He accepted, puffed in silence. Then he grinned, his normal, sneering grin.

"Three dead, two wounded," he said. "I bring you back. I bring the trucks back. And they'll make me a lousy corporal. There is no justice, Captain."

I looked at him and laughed.

"None," I agreed.

_______________

8: Nothing But Dust

Frederick Booth

1882-1948

The Thrill Book, 1 May 1919

THE house of John Emory stood at the top of the hill, from which point of vantage it looked down upon the little green-and-white county seat with its red heart of brick business houses, and commanded a long vista of the dusty pike that trailed through the town and away like a straw-colored ribbon laid across the checkerboard landscape of wheat— and oats— and cornfields dotted with orchards and white- farmhouses. The house gleamed chastely white among its trees and flowering shrubs— a place good to look upon with orchards and gardens and a spacious lawn. The house was well designed for country comfort and country hospitality; such an establishment indeed as befitted the prosperity of its owner and the public esteem in which he was held.

When he was fifty or thereabouts, lest having been somewhat too busy in garnering the good things of life, to miss the best, he married Lucretia Bennet, and since to those who have the best the best is added, his twenty-year-old bride was the fairest in Fairacres or anywhere around, with an unspoiled complexion, sweet and tractable— apparently— and of incomparably winsome manners.

John Emory was just a trifle shaken by good living and rather self-indulgent habits, but still of an attractive personality, jovial and good-humored and fond of a certain kind of a good time; withal a church member. The neighborhood, kindly disposed toward its solidest citizen, approved the match; the rather humble parents of the girl, who had prepared for this success by an excruciating expenditure of money for clothes and frivolities for the girl, were transported with delight; the bride went home with the groom like a lady with her lord; and to outward appearances here was a wedding match of such suitability as to make even the cynical god of matrimony nod his head in approval.

But the hardest thing in the world to understand is that doubtful manifestation of energy popularly designated as human nature. Lucretia, the young wife, a beautiful creature in a goodly setting, envied and admired of all her young friends, might look out upon a world of green and gold below, of blue above— a lovely world where for her there was no such thing as care; might pet her simple country vanity with all that was required to satisfy it; might sink back into the country comforts and country triumphs of her estate, but at the heart of the business there lived, and grew a canker of duplicity and selfishness, for she married him not for love.

The splendid house and grounds, the shining carriage, John Emory’s money and position, were the gewgaws, dangled before her eyes by indirection both by the man and by her parents, which tempted her simple, barbaric soul and before which she fell. That a lovely woman, soft and rounded, with a musical laugh, may be moved more profoundly by sordid things than by pure love is one of the ugly paradoxes of life. To make the betrayal of herself all the worse, Lucretia loved another man— a double-edged duplicity. The man she loved, who loved her, and who, with all the other youths of the village, had wooed her desperately, was in the employ of John Emory, was the head accountant of his business. Arnold Stillman was his name. He was a young man, keen, fiery, rather moody in disposition, and vindictive when beaten.

To his employer, after the marriage, he gave no sign of his disappointment, nor did that gentleman or any one else, since everybody had been after Lucretia, suspect deeply his bitter chagrin; but there fell at first a coldness between himself and the faithless woman. To this coldness after some months, since before the lure of the house on the hill she had responded to his love, there succeeded an interim of sly watching on his part— at church, at card parties, at town dances. Well he knew the old story of a middle-aged husband and a young wife— of cooling enthusiasm for frivolous pastimes on the part of the former, of resentment and a renewed desire for girlish pleasures on the part of the latter. He knew the crochety temper that sometimes showed through the joviality of John Emory— fruit of a weak heart from too many cigars, of a questionable digestion from soft living. Soon enough, the young man told himself, he would have his way; he would win this woman— run away with her, perhaps.

He was wise in the subtleties of human nature. He was wise in the nature of the woman he wanted to steal.

Before they had been married a year, on the nights that John Emory went into town, to lodge or political affairs in which he was prominent, Arnold Stillman began to meet the young wife by stealth under the trees of the Emory home. The first time he came on a pretext. After that nothing of the kind was needed.

Below them, on these nights, the lights of the town gleamed like the stars of a nether and miniature heaven; the placid and velvety sky contributed to their tryst the radiance of its countless luminaries. The perfume of the summer flowers, the soft wind, the odor of the grass, the gossip of nocturnal insects, the plaintive call of some night bird, the road stretching across the landscape below, silvery white,, altogether made the night a time for love and romance. But consider, O gentle and thoughtful reader, that although love is the prime and moving factor of romance, romance has its limits set and perfidy lies beyond.

At these secret meetings young Stillman would urge her to skip the country with him.

“Come away with me," he would whisper. "I have enough money in the bank. We can go away off. They'll never find us. We can be happy."

But though she yielded to his importunate embraces, she was adamant to his importunate demands; she loved him, but dearly she loved the place of safety she had won in the world.

"It is impossible," she would whisper back, "impossible. Can't you see? Father and mother would be broken-hearted. We should be caught. It would be awful; let us wait."

So between her obstinacy, which was all the more maddening by reason of her sweet complaisance in other matters, and his importunance, which at times was almost savage in its intensity, their secret trysts resembled at times a truce between bitter enemies, he accusing her of merely pretending to love him, she accusing him of cruelty, of having no thought for happiness, her safety, only for his own pleasure. Seeing at last that Lucretia was obdurate in the matter of cleaving to her home, Stillman no longer urged her. He fell into a gloom, into long and silent cogitations, the nature of which he kept to himself. And now the woman, as if she divined the nature of these thoughts and wished to urge him on, fell into the trick, on those nights, of uttering some plaint of her sordid married life. True some of them were, others false; but all were full of artifice— an artifice which perhaps she herself did not wholly comprehend.

First she told of her husband's growing indifference, then of his crochety temper. From these tentative hints of unpleasantness she went on as her instinct and the ripening occasion prompted to further revelations of cruelty endured under the marital roof— breathed in snatches in her lover's ear as a tired and sleepy child at bedtime lisps of the Gargantuan adventures and pitfalls of the day. With her fragrant, silky hair against his cheek, her exquisite shape pressed against his body, Lucretia sobbed once, and as if reluctantly showed Stillman a bruise on her arm, and whispered in her sweet voice that Emory had clutched her there in a senseless fit of rage. Must she endure that? Could she? Oh, heavens! But she would not leave him, no. There were her parents to be considered, her good name. She would stay and suffer. Did Lucretia know what she urged her lover to? Or was her mind but a creature mind and ignorant of right or wrong?

Stillman, hot, high strung and unscrupulous when his desires were crossed, coveting another's wife, but still with some manly qualities, ground his teeth in an agony of jealousy and hate. Those softly worded plaints of his sweetheart lent him imagination of a moody sort. Some night, he told himself, that brute Emory might kill Lucretia. Plunged into such bitter thoughts, all the more bitter from those nights of felicity which to him were as a drop of water to a man dying of thirst, naturally he cast about him in such desperation as usually animates those who are without hope for some solution to the ugly tangle. His own desires and hatred of his rival put an edge to his thoughts, and a solution was suggested him, some of the possible consequences of which were fearful to contemplate, but which, accomplished without mishap, was a plausible means to a desirable end. Stillman weighed this thought while the precious summer waxed and began to wane.

One afternoon young Stillman, in his mail, received a note from her. It said simply: "Come to-night and stand in the shrubbery at the front gate. If possible I will meet you there. This is important— nine o'clock."

Something in the tone of the note made Stillman feel a little cold. He had noticed his employer looking a bit heavy-eyed that day, but he had attributed it to his being up late at a lodge affair. The note put a different meaning upon it. Was he becoming suspicious?

That night, at the appointed time, Stillman waited at the gate. Lucretia came to him breathless, white, tragic. She put her hand in his hand, and it was cold. She leaned against him and trembled. She looked up at him in the starlight, and her exquisite mouth was pathetic in its sorrow and woe.

"Arnie," she whispered, "he has found me out— no, not you, only me. This morning he saw my slippers, the ones I wore last night. They were wet with dew, and he noticed it. He asked me where I had been, and I— I didn't know what to say. He was fearful. I thought he would kill me. I am afraid of him; he is a brute. What will I do? I cannot run away; he will come after us. He would find us out. He would ruin you, Arnie. What will I do? He is terrible! He— tried to make me tell everything; he shook me, struck me. If he knew I was out here he would kill me. What will I do?"

Stillman shook as in a chill. "He struck you," he repeated mechanically. "He—"

Stillman paused suddenly and looked hard into the woman's face. "You're lying," he said.

Lucretia's head dropped on his shoulder, her hair was against his face, she wept softly like a tired child.

"If you desert me now, if you don't believe me," she said, "I shall kill myself."

One hand stole up around his neck, the other stroked his face. "If I only had you with me always," she whispered dolefully. Then she clutched him in a paroxysm of fear.

"To-night," she whispered in a voice that made a hissing sound, "to-night he will kill me. Did you ever read 'Othello?' He is like that. He looked at me in a terrible manner. He said nothing. What will I do?" Flimsy persuasion in printed words, a flimsy tale, mostly lies, that tale of fear, of a husband suddenly raging mad from jealousy; but histrionic art has saved many a lame passage at words. Her hair brushed his face, her breast was pressed against him. She seemed consumed by fear and woe. She became fierce and clutched him by the shoulders.

"I wish he were dead," she whispered. "He is loathsome. I cannot go into that house again while he is there. If I were a man—"

She looked at him, and his demeanor changed; a cool resolution seemed to possess him. He put his arm about her with a certain degree of roughness; he put his hand under her chin and uptilted her face so that he could look into her eyes.

"Where is he now?" he demanded.

"Asleep; I put sleeping powders in his tea to-night."

He looked at her intently, and read her secret thoughts, even if she herself could not.

"Will you stand by me— will you marry me afterward if—" He bent his head and whispered the awful word.

There was a silence while she leaned against him; then she whispered, so low it might have been the night wind:

"If you don't, nothing will ever save me. You know I'll stand by you. But is it safe? Will they ever know?'

"There is no danger," he assured her. "I know the way. The coroner is an old-fashioned dunce. The undertaker is a worse fool. It has been done before; the safest way in the world."

"How will you do it?" she wanted to know, but he silenced her roughly. "Leave that to me," he said.

They walked through the yard hand in hand and stood beside a tree under the bedroom window.

"You wait here," he told her, and went into a wooden building at the rear in which the tools for the garden and stable were kept.

Lucretia stood and waited. A gentle wind soughed through the branches of the tree, which made a tapping sound against the side of the house by her husband's window. Lucretia trembled a little, but she hardened her mouth. She could hear her lover fumbling in the tool house. When he came out he carried something in his hand that looked like a short cudgel, but he would not let her see it.

"Stand under the window," he told her; "wait for me here. I will be down presently. It will be all right."

He took off his shoes and went into the house. He knew his way about. Lucretia, listening, heard nothing but the wind in the trees at first. It seemed to her that the house was wrapped in a greater silence after the entrance of Stillman than before. The house seemed to be listening. Lucretia strained her eyes up at her husband's bedroom and trembled again.

And presently, out of the oppressive stillness above, there sounded faintly a dull blow, as of wood striking metal; a sort of moan; then another blow like the first; then silence.

Lucretia leaned against the house, plucking at her throat, and she almost screamed when Stillman joined her, very cool and matter of fact.

"It is done," he said.

In the dark hour before dawn Stillman, having instructed Lucretia, went home by stealth. He was sure of the woman, and Lucretia did her part well. That she did it well is proof of her courage or her brutality, whichever you will. At dawn the doctor, who was also the coroner, came. To him Lucretia, who had donned herself in her night clothes, said that her husband had died in the night while she slept. The doctor was one of those old-fashioned gentlemen who made a diagnosis or an autopsy chiefly by inference because they knew no other way. He saw the tears of Lucretia, heard her story. He knew of no motive for murder. He called it heart failure, because he knew John Emory had been troubled thus. The undertaker, unskilled even in that unskilled day, saw nothing; the man was mourned for, buried, and forgotten.

After a decent interval Stillman married the widow. He succeeded to the former husband's business. Nay, he ate in his dining room, slept in his bedroom, drove his horses. Perhaps these considerations of advantage had quickened his hand as much as jealousy.

It is fear more often than remorse that drives those dark birds of society we call murderers to insanity or suicide. Stillman and his wife were secure from the law. They lived together more or less happily for twenty years.

ii

A NEW railroad was being built into Fairacres from the capital city, twenty miles away. During its whole life the little county seat had had to conduct its traffic over a jerkwater spur to Champlain in the other direction. But now this jerkwater track was to be joined to the new line and rehabilitated, and at last Fairacres, to quote the editor of the local paper, was to be a bead and not a pendant on the necklace of commerce.

It was a great thing for the town and the surrounding neighborhood as well. Business men and farmers, talked of better shipping facilities and cheaper rates.

Arnold Stillman, as owner of the grain elevator and buyer of all the grain raised in the vicinity, looked upon this common good fortune as an added rise to his own prosperity.

He was commenting on this matter to his wife, Lucretia, at the breakfast table and reading items of interest anent the matter from the local paper. His wife, only half regardful of what he was saying, fussed prettily with a new morning gown she had put on for the first time that day, and wished half consciously that Amie would hurry and finish with that dry news so she could read what the local society editor had to say about the dress she had worn at the last Elks' dance.

Twenty years had dealt rather kindly with Stillman and Lucretia. She was still undeniably beautiful and much more youthful than many women of less her age; very placid, still slender, and with a certain air of distinction that is noticeable and hard to explain in a country town. Arnie, as she affectionately called Stillman, had not only successfully taken up the burden of business laid down by his unfortunate predecessor, but he had doubled it. A dominating figure in local business and political affairs, he was also something to look at and consider personally. He was rather tall and commanding, heavy chested and dark, with scant eyebrows and a thin mustache and a thick jaw; a man rather given to wearing heavy jewelry on his hands and coat lapel, to talking a great deal in an abrupt, domineering manner. He and Lucretia got on rather well together. If she wanted to make a rather startling society splurge, he only smiled in his elusive way and told her to go as far as she liked. And, on the other hand, if he wanted to load his new motor car with some choice friends and go flying down the pike to the capital city for what he called a hell of a time, Lucretia only laughed and listened with genuine enjoyment to his account of their doings when they returned. That was their life— engrossed pleasantly in the making and spending of money, in going it a little stronger than any of their neighbors, in indulging themselves in all the creature comforts of life, which to them were the real comforts; life was very agreeable. No black bird of remorse perched above their door and croaked to them of things done in the days of youth. They never spoke of that; they never thought of it.

"It will be a great thing, Lucretia, this railroad," Stillman was saying in his rather throaty voice; "money in my pocket."

"Our pocket, you mean," Lucretia remarked, still fussing with the lace at her throat and preening herself with her pretty fingers.

"Oh, sure," Stillman laughed. "They say here," he went on, "that the road will make a bee line right into town, and they're driving the construction like sixty. Shouldn't wonder if— um, what's this?"

He shook the paper out briskly, and was suddenly plunged into a perusal of something that had caught his eye.

"What is it ?" Lucretia wanted to know, still preening herself.

For a time Stillman was silent, knitting his brows and intent on the page. At last he said rather gruffly: "Oh, nothing!" folded the paper over to the society column, gave it to his wife, and shortly afterward was on his way to the office.

BUT he had read something in the paper that occupied his mind for the whole day in spite of his efforts to dispel it. It was of no importance, he told himself, but in spite of this the thought of what he had read would come back again and again to send him off on morbid speculations.

What the paper had said was in regard to the old cemetery on the pike west of town. The surveyors had found, it seems, that the road, in making a direct line to Fairacres, would bisect this yard. To cross it with the right of way would be against the law; to dodge it would necessitate an expensive and time-killing curve. For this reason the railroad company had entered into an agreement with the town board, said the paper, by which they were to disinter the silent occupants of the plot and move them to the new cemetery east of town, where they would be decently buried again, each one under his own epitaph.

This arrangement was eminently a matter for self-congratulation for the community, said the paper. No longer would Fairacres be flanked on either side by a graveyard when only one was necessary, especially when the one to be moved had for ten years or more gone unkempt and was an eyesore to the community. As a guarantee that this work would be done properly, the services of old Simons, for thirty years sexton of the town, had been secured to superintend the work, which would be begun as soon as enough laborers could be secured.

The old cemetery lay west of Stillman's home, perhaps a mile, on another hill; a product of old-fashioned and lugubrious ideas regarding graveyard architecture of another generation, which, in its turn, had been laid to rest in the ugly city of its building. From the westerly windows of their house or from their broad veranda he and Lucretia could look across to it, with its black evergreens thickly arrayed, its dark-green matted ivy, and pointed white stones. It sloped to the eastward so that they could see its little streets and the bright spots where flowers grew; when a new grave was made— this had not happened in recent years— they could see the yellow patch where the clay had been thrown up. When John Emory had been put away there they could plainly see the spot from their dining-room window, but it had never harried them in the least. Rather they had been pleased at this substantial evidence that he had been put forever beyond human testimony and human suspicion. They had marked the place with an expensive monument for appearance sake.

But now this thing was to be brought again to the light of day.

Arnold Stillman had no desire to jog back again over the road of the past and raise up any old landmarks of his career, for the present, with its prosperity, health, and respectability, was too pleasant a time in which to live; but here was one landmark, it seemed, that was to be fetched along down out of the past and hauled by his very door.

He found this fact to be food for rather serious thought.

That old Simons was to superintend the work did not make the matter any less worthy of consideration.

The burying of people was to old Simons what spring planting was to the farmer. His mind dwelled upon it as a unique vocation and one therefore conveying to its practitioner a certain amount of distinction. He had been in it, to use his own expression, boy and man, and, above everything else, the work itself even, he liked to talk shop. Not a citizen of the community who had died in the last thirty years that he could not and did not love to tell about, when he died and how, where he was slipped beneath the sod, who helped him dig the grave and fill it up again, and what they talked about.

These unvital statistics were his meat and drink, and Stillman could picture to himself the old reprobate telling the life-and-death story of every set of relics fetched again to the light of day in his grisly task, fingering the bones even in the way of renewing old acquaintances.

What would happen when they unearthed the bones of John Emory? Stillman found this question interesting enough to plunge him into the most profound abstraction, in which state of mind he went- home to supper.

Lucretia noticed his mood in the evening, and chided him for it. By an effort he recalled himself, confessed to himself that he had been rather worried, and by the very force of his natural vitality drove himself into an opposite frame of mind. The lights of the dining room, the flowers on the table, his still-beautiful and very desirable wife, these present and very real facts of his lot in life made his speculations of the day seem very weak and puerile.

"What nonsense!" he told himself. "What was I thinking of? Twenty years have passed. The things that happened back there, they belong in the limbo of old men's gossip. Those bones— they are nothing but dust."

He poured himself a stiff glass of whisky from the sideboard to reinforce his returning spirits, and with perfect ease entered into the mood of his wife, who happened to be particularly merry. For the next two or three days so sanguine was his natural temperament that he forgot his speculation on the matter.

One morning, as was often his wont, he walked down the hill to his office. He was just about to turn from the pike into the side street whose shady pavement led in the direction of his office when from behind the tall hedge that hid the street from his view there came a great clattering of wagons, and a cloud of dust drifted over the hedge in the wind. As these wagons would have to turn into the pike he stood aside on the grass to let them pass.

Almost immediately the cavalcade debouched into his view— a strange sight. It proved to be six or eight gravel wagons drawn by mules and hauling a strange freight, for each wagon was full to its capacity of men. They were the riffraff of Fairacres, those small-town hoodlums who infest every middle West village of any size. There were negroes, young and middle-aged, white, unkempt, yellow of face, with stringy hair, discolored eyeballs, and drooping shoulders; the odd-job class of men who work only when they are offered employment of unique nature and exceptional pay and the rest of the time earn their beer and scant skittles on any sort of hook or crook.

These men were crowded together in the most promiscuous manner, as if they had been tossed aboard the vehicles in which they rode, some of them sitting on the sides of the gravel beds, some with their feet hanging out behind, some lying down, others standing up and lurching from side to side with the jouncing of the wagon.

Every man held in his hand a tool of some sort. There were long-handled shovels, spades, pickaxes, mattocks, axes, and crowbars. An uproar of motley and unintelligible conversation went up from these slow-moving vehicles. Heads turned this way and that; mouths continually moved, eyes rolled, and every voice spoke at its highest pitch, the yells of the drivers at the lazy mules adding to the din.

When this procession turned into the pike, as if by a prearranged consent the whole party broke into a loud-mouthed song. There was a merciless lashing of mule hides with black-snake whips, and the seven wagons took the beginning of the hill at a trot. It was as if the scum of the earth had organized a picnic of its own.

Stillman observed the approach of the evil-looking procession in stupefaction, turned his head as it passed oblivious of his presence, and was gazing after it when a sharp, "Gid-ap, gid-ap!" made him turn his head again.

Hunched over in his rickety buckboard and belaboring his hide-bound roan, with a shovel between his legs, a pencil behind his ear, and a new yellow day book sticking out of his vest pocket, old Abie Simons was coming around the turn from the street into the pike.

"Howdy, Mister Stillman! Howdy!" he piped, the roan coming automatically to a stop at the sound of his voice. "Walkin' to yer work this mornin'? Well, I'm ridin' to mine. Yep," he went on as if Stillman had said something, "I'm goin' up on the hill to unearth 'em."

"So you're going to begin moving the graves?" said Stillman, feeling in a queer sort of way that he should say something.

"Yep," Simons nodded; "about the biggest job ever give to a man in this community, I reckon. But I kin do it, you bet. Not a man, woman, or child up there I don't know the pedigree of an' all about 'em. I'll bring 'em down an' put 'em away under their own tumstones, you bet."

He drove on, a cloud of dust flying up behind him. Stillman looked after him, at the old buckboard with its crooked wheels weaving in and out, the loose spokes playing a dismal rattle-bones tune, the thick dust falling on the old man's shoulders and brown straw hat, his stub-ended whip waving up and down over the back of his nag like an orchestra leader's baton. Then Stillman turned and went on into the village. Somehow his legs felt weak under him.

That evening, as he went home rather late, he saw at the western edge of the cemetery some heaps of yellow clay in straight rows; but the wagons and the men were gone.

Supper was half finished in an unwonted silence that evening before his wife spoke, evidently having been busy with her own thoughts.

"I suppose you noticed, Arnie," she said, nibbling at her salad with evident relish, "that they're digging up the old graveyard? The wagons went by all afternoon with boxes in them, and the drivers singing as if they were on a holiday. Isn't it awful?" She glanced up at him with her blue eyes rather wide, then bent them again to her plate.

Stillman observed her rather narrowly. Perhaps the unhappy train of thought that all day had plagued him had quickened his perception, for all at once the smooth and untroubled comeliness of his wife struck him as having something about it resembling the sleek demureness of a well-fed cat.

Undoubtedly his nerves were on edge a little. He had never had such a thought before.

"I don't believe," he said to himself, "that Lucretia has any heart."

To be sure, she had not the cause for thought that he had. He had told her repeatedly during die first years of their married life that he had left absolutely no trace of that thing behind him; absolutely no evidence. She had believed him. He had never told her, nor intended to tell her, how he had done it. But even so—

He slept ill that night. Continually the picture of Simons jogging up the road, and the row of yellow patches, as if the two were one, haunted him in a repeated dream, and each time the dream awoke him and set him to twisting and turning in an agony of thought. His wife awoke at last.

"What is it, Amie?" she wanted to know in her soft and sleepy voice. "Are you too warm? Would you like me to get you a drink ?" She half raised up in her bed, her cool hand on his forehead. Something in her manner, which always was kind, soothed him.

"No, honey; just too tired to sleep, I guess, but I'll be good now." He put his hand over hers, and she dropped again to sleep. Naturally strong of will, sanguine, with a great belief in himself and his star, Stillman composed himself. Why should he be scared by an old gravedigger? Ten to one old Simons would not be there when that particular grave was opened, and those hoodlums would observe nothing. "There'll be nothing but dust, anyway," he told himself; "nothing but dust. They'll crumble like straw when they fetch them up."

He went to sleep.

Nevertheless, for two days thereafter, to avoid meeting that unsavory procession he walked to his office through his orchard, and so into town by another street. Both evenings he found himself, when his wife was not looking, strolling as carelessly as possible around the porch and gazing off toward the cemetery. The yellow patches were growing in number, he noticed, coming slowly down the hill.

At the bottom of the yard was the little plot occupied by John Emory. His monument stood up taller than the rest, like a landmark.

Stillman, gnawing his mustache, would stand for an hour or more observing these gloomy details. At that distance the yellow patches, all in even array, looked like straw rugs. Scattered about between them were numerous objects of a darker hue. He judged they must be the rotted boards of coffins. He jibed at himself rather testily for looking at these things.

No one, he told himself, was interested in those remains of a past generation. Let them find what they would; who would listen to old Simons? Besides, there would be nothing but dust.

He observed with relief that Lucretia, busy with the usual occupations of her life, said nothing and seemed to think nothing of what was going on up there. Her attitude, he told himself, was more sensible than his. That picnic party in the gravel wagons had rattled him a little. Twenty years was a long time.

Stillman, as we have said, was of a sanguine nature. On the third day after having met with Simons he walked home again by the road as a matter of habit.

Upon turning into the pike he saw again approaching from the direction of the cemetery the string of gravel wagons. Now, as when he saw them first, these men sang or badgered each other with the most empty jests. They sat upon long boxes, of which there were two in each wagon. Their boots, covered with yellow clay, hung over the sides of the sides of the wagons and beat an unrhythmic tattoo on the sideboards, and whether they sang for joy of the work or for another reason, Stillman could not say. Simons brought up the rear, his roan creeping like a sheep dog after the herd.

"Well, Mister Stillman," he called out, "we're gettin' 'em." The roan came to a stop. Simons pointed after the wagons. "Good bunch o' hands there," he remarked, "but nervous. Hear 'em sing? That's to keep their courage up. They'll dig fer me, but not a human remainder will they touch. I do that."

"So the bones—" Stillman began with a dry throat

"Sound as a nut; sound as a nut!" The old man spoke as if it were a credit to himself, cracked his roan across the back, and drove away.

It is unnecessary to say that this intelligence was a mortal shock to Stillman. He was in great danger. True, it was a matter of chance, but the odds were against him. He walked the rest of the way home rather unsteadily. He must begin to think.

He sat down heavily on the porch, and mopped his wet brow. They were making great progress up there on the hill. The yellow patches were so thickly arrayed now that they formed a great yellow carpet. The feeling that somehow that work would have to be stopped in one spot, and that he was powerless to do it overwhelmed him. If he went up there in the night and opened that one himself, that would arouse suspicion; he might be caught at it, and besides he could not dig a grave by himself on one night

No, he told himself, he would have to wait and trust in Providence.

Providence? That was the thing he feared. He mopped his forehead again.

Lucretia came out and sat upon the arm of his chair.

"Doesn't it look— ugh— scary up there?" she said, but her tone was light and unconcerned. Stillman again found himself appraising her as he had before. "She has no heart," he told himself, but it was not so much disgust as it was the thought that she could not help him that made him say it.

Shortly afterward they went in to supper, and not until then did Lucretia notice anything wrong with her husband. He sat at the table very gray in the face, and touched nothing. His courage was wholly gone, and Lucretia, by sheer intuition, divined something of the cause.

Afterward she cornered him. "I know what it is," she said quietly. ''You're afraid— of that up there." She pointed toward the cemetery. ''But why? You told me no one could find you out, but now I know better. You've got to tell me."

Stillman was in no condition for clever evasion. He told her. "Old Simons is the one that will know," he told her at the last, "and the only one. He acts like a fool, but he's as wise as a serpent. Those hoodlums would only joke about it, and think nothing; but if he sees it we're done for."

Then Stillman knew that he had never understood the woman, that he had never known the law that governed her being. She clutched him by the shoulders. Her eyes were hard and bright.

"You've got to kill Simons," she said, "to-night."

That night, near twelve o'clock, he went stealthily to the mean house in which the old sexton lived. It was his intention to call him out and strike him down in his dooryard. He carried a club for the purpose. But he was rather puzzled to see a light in the kitchen window of the house; the wind blowing prevented him from hearing anything. Approaching the window stealthily, curious about the light, he peered in; and there, sprawled about the kitchen table, in their clay-stained clothes, were the old sexton and a half dozen of his workmen playing cards. Then he remembered that some one had told him that Simons was boarding some of the workmen who had come over from a neighboring town. There was no use, he told himself rather weakly, in trying to do anything here. The risk was greater than up yonder. To call him out would fetch that crowd howling about his ears. The odds were against him. Better trust to luck. He had lost his nerve. He went home and told his wife of the hopelessness of the situation.

Thereafter, grown hard and bitter, Lucretia avoided him and shut herself in her room. Stillman went no more to his office, but sat on the veranda, looking off toward the hill. For only two reasons did he leave his post, when night came to try to sleep, and in the daytime when the wagon train came down the road. Then he hid, himself until the clatter passed.

From the hill, during the day, came a confused noise—the shouting of men, rattle of wagons, clinking of tools, the tune of a song, all blended together. They seemed to be happy at that unhappy task. It made him feel sick.

On the third day after she had been apprised of this peril, Lucretia, who sat in the spare room upstairs with her chin in her hands, looking off toward the west, saw from her casement Stillman going up the road toward the cemetery. He walked like an old man. He must go up there, he had told himself, and look the place over; he must find some way out. That was the thing—find some way out. But Lucretia, watching from her window, saw him hesitate after he had gone but a short distance, stop and come back.

Not yet, he told himself. Let him think up some idea on which to work.

Lucretia, from her place, saw him that same morning start twice more up the road, each time getting a little nearer, but each time he came back.

IN THE afternoon he went all the way.

It seemed to Stillman, as he went through the gate, that the noisy men were trying to celebrate some hideous victory. He could see old Simons in the distance, gesticulating to two men who were digging a hole. Stillman told himself that he would stroll among them casually and engage them in talk. Perhaps he could persuade them not to open that grave— a little smooth talk. He was good at that. They would never suspect the motive. His legs wabbled a little as he approached the workers.

Somehow this was a ticklish business. What would he say? He must not arouse their suspicions.

He leaned against a tree for a moment. He must appear very careless and unconcerned. He had walked rather rapidly up the hill; he had better rest.

As he stood there one of the laborers looked up and saw him. He must have said something, for all at once the whole crowd had fallen silent and were staring at him.

Then Stillman awoke to the fact that he had gone up there in the hot sun without his hat; that his hair hung down in his eyes, and that those laborers were staring at him as at a specter.

He made shift to get away, walking as unconcernedly as he might. But he knew those men at his back were still silent as he went from the yard, and silent when he had gone far down the road. He knew they were gazing after him. Well, let them gaze; he would fool them yet. He had fooled them for twenty years. To-night he would lie awake and think a way out. That was the thing.

Mumbling aloud, dragging his feet along in the dust, he made his bewildered way down the hill and perched again, a doubtful shape, in his aerie on the porch.

On the porch he still sat three days later, as if he had not moved nor shifted his gaze from the yard in that time.

Quiet for hours, in the middle of the afternoon he roused himself convulsively and got up. The workers, hurrying hither and thither in die distance like ants, but drawing nearer and nearer, had at last left a part of its army gathered about the particular spot on which his gaze had been fixed.

He must have dozed. Already the stone had been thrown down and a good-sized heap of dirt thrown up. He went up the road, half doubled, in a half trot. He reached out in front of him first with one hand, then with the other, as if to pull himself along. The dust flew up about him.

Lucretia no longer watched from her window. She lay on her couch, her face in her hands.

Stillman crawled through a broken place in the fence about the lot, and, going upon all fours like an animal, keeping as much as possible behind bushes, got near the place without being seen. Now was the time, he told himself with his throat twitching, to do something. He had forgotten again that he was bareheaded, his clothes dusty. Only let him do something!

At last he could see the men at work and hear their picks striking into the ground. It seemed to him that they threw up the dirt terribly fast. He wanted more time. He would do something sure.

The two men in the grave went lower and lower, the dirt flying up from their shovels. One of them stooped once, pried at something, and presently fetched up a good-sized stone, which he laid at the side of the grave.

At last the two men both stooped, fetched up a great quantity of rotten boards, which they tossed on the grass, and then themselves leaped out with visible alacrity.

Old Simons came forward. He wore long gloves, and as he climbed into the grave all the noise that filled the yard seemed to center in his high voice.

"I knowed him," he was saying, "boy an' man. I buried him. He died suddint—"

At this moment Arnold Stillman came out of the bushes. His eye was fixed upon the stone by the hole. That was the thing. He would throw that in; he would crush that skull. That was it. Only he must do it as if by accident. That was it. He lurched forward.

One of the men standing by saw him. He said a word, and again a silence fell on the men about. Again they stared at him in wonder.

Stillman raked his hand across his face and leered back at them.

Only the old sexton was unaware of his presence. "Yep, he died suddint," he was saying in his imbecile singsong. "Arnie Stillman married his widder—"

At this moment he stooped, and when he stood up again he held in his hands that object which is imbued by popular fancy with such horror, but which is, in fact, the homeliest of objects; upon which indeed old Simons gazed as at an old friend, with a forgiving eye for the lost habiliments of flesh. And as he called for the box, perhaps to free it from some of the loose particles of clay, he shook the skull violently in his hands. It rattled like a dice box.

It is probable that Arnold Stillman never knew what he did. But they who were watching him remember. They say that whereas he had stopped stock-still at first, when the skull rattled he ran forward, gasping and choking like a man shot through the lungs, and flung himself into the grave, crying out and begging the astounded Simons not to do it again.

When they had seen to this madman— for he was mad and continued so for the rest of his life— and had bound him to a tree, they examined the cause of his fear, and found driven through the back of it a tenpenny nail, the head battered as if by a tremendous blow.

When Lucretia Bennet was accused of complicity in the murder of John Emory she first fainted, then went into hysterics and confessed the act. Afterward, under the chilling effect of the county jail, she thought better of her position and sent for the best criminal lawyer in the State.

She went very well with her defense until they faced her with Exhibit A and rattled it in her face.

Afterward they sent her to the pen.

_______________

9: Two Paris Knights

Frederick C. Painton

1896-1945

Popular Detective Aug 1940

1: Broke— As Usual

AT MIDNIGHT of a pleasant spring evening two tanned young men walked furtively along the Rue Pigalle and stopped near the entrance of Le Perroquet, one of the gayer night clubs of Paris. From within came the rhythmic pound of tangos and the cheerful happy sounds of dancers. Along the curb the taxi drivers loafed contentedly, and up and down this famous Parisian street with its green and red, yellow and blue Neon lights, strolled gay revellers. In short, here was Gay Paree, made for fun and frolic.

But neither of these furtive young men was in a gay, festive mood, nor out for a frolic.

The tall, broad-shouldered youth with the blue eyes took a hasty glance inside Le Perroquet, and then gazed apprehensively at the blue-caped agent de police twirling his baton on the street corner. This good-looking young man wore a wrinkled broad-cloth tuxedo and a wrinkled white a but his shirt was spotless.

His companion was much shorter, broader and stockier, possessed of a wide billiken face ornamented by a broken nose and an amazing number of freckles. He had a shock of brick-red hair that stuck straight up en brosse, like the stubbles of a toothbrush.

This one turned his snub nose toward the night club entrance and sniffed agonizingly. From within, above the pleasant pop of champagne corks, sounded the definite clink of knives and forks cutting on plates. To his distended nostrils wafted the succulent odors of broiled lamb chops, the exciting smell of thick, rich steaks, and the tantalizing aroma of fragrant coffee. He licked his lips, swallowed convulsively, and with a sad sigh turned away.

"Boy," he moaned, "I could eat my way through a restaurant, door to door."

IN TURNING his nose away, however, he sniffed the appetizing aroma of fresh-baked bread, piled high with salami and garlic, which the taxicab drivers were eating in their off hour, washing down the food with long gulps at leathern bottles of pinard, red wine.

The freckle-faced youth's expression grew desperate.

"Pete," he cried to his blond companion. "I ain't et since day before yesterday. I've got to eat. People expect me to. It's a swell custom."

"It's a nice habit, Clicker," admitted Peter F. Vallon good-naturedly, "and if you'll just hush your plaintive cries for a half hour, I'll stuff you full of sirloin steak to your tonsils."

"With mashed potatoes and gravy?" cried Ernest "Clicker" Dunn eagerly. Then he sighed heavily. "That's what you said in England, and we got ten days in the London can."

"Well," said Pete Vallon, "you ate there, didn't you?"

"Not enough to keep my belt tight."

"Hush and smile," grinned Pete Vallon cheerfully. "This stunt will feed us both— a real meal."

Clicker Dunn hushed, but he did not smile nor look cheerful. He had never missed a meal in his life until Peter F. Vallon had inveigled him into this cockeyed trip around the world. At the time it had seemed a swell idea. Peter F. Vallon, star reporter of the New York Sphere, of which Clicker was tops photographer, was a restless, ambitious young man. One day he came to Clicker burning with a great idea.

"You and I," he cried excitedly, "we start at City Hall, bid farewell by Mayor LaGuardia. We start penniless, recorded by witnesses. All we carry is the clothes we wear, one suitcase, your camera and my notebooks and pencils. We swear to go around the world and return to that spot within one year, and in that time we can't beg, borrow or steal a penny. We can't send home for money. We can't bum a ride. We have to work and earn every penny of the cost of the trip."

Clicker Dunn had got enough shiners from people who didn't want their pictures in the paper, and had had enough cameras broken over his skull to be slightly gloomy in disposition.

"Why?" he said dourly.

"We write a book of our adventures," cried Pete enthusiastically. "You take the pictures to illustrate the story, and I write the copy. it'll be a world-beater, it'll make us famous. We'll call it, 'Around the World Busted, or You Can't Keep a Couple of Good Guys Down'."

Clicker surveyed the idea.

"But listen, Pete, we might get in some awful jams," he said.

"So what?" grinned Pete. "They only make the book better. The bigger the adventures, the less we'll have to lie."

"Well," said Clicker, "I'll go and I hope it's a lesson to me."

They had come to England playing chambermaid to a lot of cows on a cattle boat. They had walked practically all the way from Liverpool to London. They had lived on fish and chips so long that Clicker felt he was sprouting gills. But they had eaten, they had worked. Compared to France, England had been easy. Here in Paris, not knowing the language and unable to get a work permit from the French Government, they had got no work. They had pawned clothes, camera, pencils.

From three meals a day they cut to two, then one. Occasionally Pete sold a feature to the Paris edition of the New York Herald-Tribune. But it was not enough.

Worse, and more dangerous, they had not enough money to leave Paris for Rome, Italy, the next stop. Their book contract depended on completing the round-the-world trip in one year. If they were to stay on schedule, then they should have been in Italy a fortnight back. They were dangerously late now. And they were broke, hungry, desperate.

ONCE Clicker had timidly suggested wiring for money or borrowing five bucks.

Pete's blond hair had bristled. "Not a thin dime," he had shouted. "Do you want people to think we're quitters? I'll walk to Rome on an empty stomach first."

"Well," groaned Clicker, "walk on mine. You'll never find an emptier stomach."

So now, driven into a corner, Pete had come up with some harebrained scheme to get the price of a meal and a pair of third-class tickets to Rome.

Clicker emerged from his sad contemplation. "How you gonna get a feed out of this night club?" he asked plaintively.

"I'm going to dance," said Pete, nodding for emphasis.

Used as he was to Pete Vallon's mad ideas, this made even Clicker gasp.

"Dance? Moses on the Mount, Pete, you can't dance."

Pete nodded grimly. "But I'm going to—somehow."

"But why?" cried Clicker.

"Listen," said Pete. "In France there is one law that is strictly enforced. If a gigolo dances with your dame you have to pay him— or go to jail."

"You gonna play being a gigolo?"

"Yes!"

"But how can you collect when you can't dance?"

"Easy," grinned Pete. "I'll pick out a couple of Americans and put on my best busted accent. If she trips over me I'll say it's a new step— the Yankee Toddle or something—and blame it on her that we don't dance good."

"What if you're so lousy they won't pay?"

"That's the point," said Pete. "No matter how lousy I am, the guy has to pay. That's the law. The only catch is that the guy might find out I'm not a regular gigolo in the place. But he won't. Americans in Paris want to avoid trouble."

"Well," Clicker said, "if we do wind up in the can, they have to feed you."

"Hush," said Pete, peering inside. "There's a couple— the big tall guy and the luscious blonde. You slide in and wait until I give you the sign, then come over and help me in the get-away."

Clicker sighed. "It's cockeyed, but what have I to lose but my life?"

He followed Pete Vallon into the night club....

2: Life Begins at Midnight

AT THE table to which Pete Vallon had directed Clicker Dunn's gaze, the big, broad man, Harry Craig, lit a cigarette and very thoughtfully blew out the match with a lungful of smoke

"You're gorgeous tonight, Sally," he said. "I believe I still love you."

She had red-gold hair, deep violet eyes, and she had a soft crimson mouth and that breathless, exciting appeal called allure. If you talked to  her, danced with her, looked at her, an electric shock went from her to you and dazzled you. Even the hard, bitter disillusionment in her big eyes, even the fact that she was now half drunk, didn't detract from her loveliness.

She shook her head, her red lips twisted satirically.

"That's what all men say," she said. "You have a slogan, 'Love 'em and leave 'em'."

She laughed softly. "Not me. No man will ever hurt me again the way Ronald did. Me, I'm out for the money. Give me my hundred thousand and you can keep your love."

Harry Craig was a good-looking man, attractive, save for the thin quality of his hard gray eyes.

"You'll get your money after Ronald is committed," he said. "And, by the way, the lunacy commission will arrive tomorrow for the final examination. You'll testify, of course."

She looked at him broodingly, her stare withdrawn.

"I hate to do it," she said, shaking her head.

"He's mad, getting dangerously

"I know," she nodded. "And I don't love him now— I couldn't, knowing what I do. But still I hate to say outright that he's insane."

"But you will," Craig said thinly.

She shrugged. "Yes, as long as you'll settle my suit out of court and..." She broke off sharply at a warning look from Craig.

A tall, tanned young man loomed over Sally and bowed gracefully from the hips.

"Eef Madame would 'onor me wit' theese dance, pliz?" He smiled, showing a mouthful of even white teeth.

Sally surveyed his clean-cut appearance and noted the shabby dinner jacket. She felt sorry for him.

"He looks something like Ronald, doesn't he?" she said.

Craig frowned.

"Send him away."

She shook her head, her lovely eyes brightening.

"I've never danced with a gigolo— they say they're wonderful— and it might be fun."

With things going well, Craig was not so impatient, irritable and ruthless tonight. He shrugged.

"You won't find it worth a hundred francs," he grinned.

Sally stood up, raised slim, alabaster arms, and slid warmly into Peter F. Vallon's waiting arms. She placed her cheek against Pete's, her red-gold hair nestled against his neck. Her red lips parted in an entrancing slow smile.

"All right, Good-looking," she murmured softly, "show me something."

For the first time since he had thought up this plan of raising a hundred francs, Pete Vallon's heart sank. Usually these night clubs, with their tiny postage stamps of parquet floors, are so crowded that dancing is a pretense in which a couple merely stand and take mincing steps. Pete had depended on that to cover his terpsichorean inadequacies. But this floor, for some reason, was practically empty. He could, he told himself ruefully, have gone skiing and not hit a thing.

THE orchestra, being European, had spent most of the night playing La Congas, rhumbas and tangos, these being the slower, more graceful dances to which Europeans are addicted. In such slow rhythmic steps Pete could make a pretense of dancing, and if he didn't catch the time he could say that he was trying a new step.

But now, to his utter horror, the orchestra, as if knowing' they were American, began to give off hot licks and jive a tune known as The Watchmaker's Daughter Was on Watch. Within Pete's arms this fragrant lovely girl began to twist and throb to the rhythm.

"Come on, Ronny," she said dreamily, "get hot and give."

Somehow the combination of the maddening pulsation of the drums and this gorgeous girl made Pete's heart hammer wildly, and he began to shake and move. And a miracle happened, For the first ten steps he whisked her across the floor in magnificent style. He could not know it, of course, but she was a marvelous dancer, and as he turned and stepped and hopped, her slim body moved with his, so that they were as one. Pete became ecstatic. This was easy, all you did was keep time to that drum.

Even Sally murmured against his cheek:

"Say, Handsome, you're a real hopping alligator."

"Madame ees won'nerful," said Pete.

He was flushed, grinning, and on one semi-high jump of a hop he looked past Sally's golden head and smiled triumphantly at an astounded Clicker Dunn.

Clicker gulped.

"It can't be," he muttered. "The guy can't dance."

His confidence fully restored, Pete clutched the lovely girl closer and essayed a couple of mad whirls. The first two went off swell because she was instinctively sensing his every change of pace and meeting it.

But the third turn Pete ended with an unexpected hop. She had expected a hip— and there was disaster.

Pete suddenly found himself walking right up her slim legs like a line-man up a telephone pole. He climbed her ankles with one shoe, and he walked up her dress with the other.

Sally cried out in agony.

And at the same moment her lovely chartreuse dress, jerked from below, gave away in two places. It was one of the new dresses held up by magic and bridge-engineering without any straps. But it had never been constructed for such an emergency, so it yielded at the bosom and it gave way at the waist line in the rear.

Sally Hunter, there in the center of the dance floor, felt a cold draft above and in the rear. She clutched at her bosom.

"Get behind me, for heaven's sake," she gasped, "and hold it up."

Pete, in horror, perceived that so wild had been his gyrations that all others had deserted the floor to witness a solo by these two mad Americans. He seized the torn chartreuse gown and tried not to see the contorted faces, nor hear the laughter.

The dress slid from his grasp. In a trice he whipped off his coat and held it around Sally's thighs.

In prison lockstep they left the floor. Sally's face was crimson, furious, and she was shaking.

Pete was so red his neck was swollen against his collar.

In the rear of the night club Clicker groaned.

"Well, I knew cockeyed well that he couldn't dance," he muttered.

Harry Craig had risen and was watching Sally's disheveled arrival with cool detachment. She sank down, trembling.

"Put on your coat, you idiot!" she said to Pete.

Pete put on his coat, The orchestra, with true Gallic sympathy and gallantry, had struck up a fast fox trot to cover the situation. The manager was arriving with Sally's mink wrap.

Harry Craig looked at Pete.

"Whoever told you that you knew how to dance?" he growled.

PETE thought frantically. To admit blame was to lose the hundred francs they so desperately needed. And if he bluffed it out there was still a chance of getting away with it. He drew himself up haughtily.

"I was dancing zee new Americain dance, Yankee Toddle," he said coldly. "I am sorree if Madame she do not know eet."

Sally, subsiding inside the mink coat, flamed anew.

"My Lord, are you trying to tell me I can't dance?"

Pete shrugged and gave Clicker the emergency signal.

"I would not say anyzing to Madame about her dancing," he rejoined. "I merely ask for my 'ondred francs, and I go and I am veree sorree."

"A hundred francs," repeated Harry Craig. "You just ruined a gown that cost one hundred and fifty dollars."

"To me zat is nossing," said Pete. "I dance weeth Madame. Eet ees one 'ondred francs. If she ees out of practice dancing, can I be blamed?"

"Ooh!" gasped Sally and then suddenly the whole thing struck her risibilities and she laughed. "Once Hollywood paid me fifteen hundred a week, thinking I could."

Pete's eyes widened and he smothered a groan. My God, he would have to pick a professional danseuse for this jam. But he mustered his courage.

"Madame, I do not care who you are. I am owed one 'ondred francs. Please to 'ave your 'usband pay."

"He's not my husband."

"Not a penny," said Craig angrily.

"If you do not pay," frowned Pete, "you weel go to the— the jailhouse."

The moment he spoke, he knew he had made a mistake. Harry Craig's thin, narrow eyes widened. Sally's violet orbs flashed. Clicker groaned. Then Sally snatched at Pete's coat, pulled it open. On the edge of the inside pocket was the maker's label, "Brooks Brothers, New York."

"Why!" cried Sally, "you're no gigolo. You're an American!"

"Say," said Harry Craig, "what is this?"

He turned to the manager. "Does this man work for you as a professional dancer?"

The manager was pale with fury that anything like this should have happened.

"M'sieur,' he cried thickly, "these one I 'ave nevair seen before in all my life, non. But contain yourself, M'sieur and Madame, soyez tranquille. I weel feex all as all was nevair feexed before."

With that, he whistled shrilly, one long blast.

A flying wedge of waiters came out of nowhere and plunged at Peter F. Vallon. The manager whistled again, twice, and the agent de police stopped twirling his baton and ran furiously to Le Perroquet.

As the battalion of waiters bore down on him, Pete yelled, "Clicker," and braced himself. Clicker hurdled two tables to stand beside him, fists clenched. But Pete didn't want to fight. A fight meant police, police meant jail, and jail meant weeks, perhaps, of incarceration and utter failure to get around the world in one year as had been pledged. No, Pete wished only to escape. In the split-second before the waiters hit him he saw the flapping kitchen door. There, might be escape.

"The kitchen door," he panted. "Let's go."

Pete swung from the hip on the jaw of the first waiter who presented himself. Clicker might be dour but as a rough-and-tumble fighter he had few equals. He hit one waiter on the jaw and the said waiter lit on the back of a neck.

They were going good, fighting back to back, and were nearly to the kitchen door when the chef with a meat cleaver came out roaring and brandishing his horrible weapon. And the agent de police lifted his baton and swung at Clicker's head. Clicker dodged but not quite enough. He went down. Pete straddled his prostrate body to keep him from further harm. His face was white and grim.

"All right," he said, "we give up."

The gendarme collared him. "La boite for you, and you will stay there One long time."

3: Propositioned

SALLY HUNTER had watched this unequal struggle with shifting emotions. And now when the agent de police prepared to take his prisoners out she cried impulsively:

"Oh, Harry, they are Americans. We can't let them go to a French jail."

"I can," said Craig dryly. "Come on, let's get out of here."

"No, please, Harry," she said. "There must have been a reason for their actions."

She turned to Pete. "Why did you pretend you could dance and try to get money out of us?"

Long ago Pete and Clicker had made their decision as to what kind of a story they would tell if they ever fell afoul of the law. They wanted no publicity in New York headed:

"Reporter and Photographer Imprisoned Abroad."

So Pete explained. "We're two college boys working our way around the world on a bet." He enlarged on this, explaining how they must neither beg, borrow or steal. If we aren't in Rome by Tuesday," he concluded, "we'll lose all the way around and that hundred francs would have taken us a long way third-class."

Sally listened interestedly.

"There, Harry," she said when Pete had finished, "you see?"

Harry Craig did not reply to her. Instead he addressed Pete.

"If you went to Yale then you knew Ronald Baird."

"Ronald Baird?" repeated Pete. "You mean the Hermit of Park Avenue?"

"The newspapers nicknamed him that," nodded Craig, his eyes narrowing keenly.

"Sure, I know him," replied Pete. "I once got an. interview from him for the er— Yale Daily Record. On his twenty-first birthday. The whackiest lad I ever met. For a guy worth eighty million dollars he's crazy."

This was a little but not all of the truth. Pete had, by dint of brilliant scheming, managed to give to the world the only interview Ronald Baird ever gave. The story had created a sensation.

Ronald Baird, the adopted and only son of Jason Baird, multi-millionaire lumber and coal baron, was a queer youth and victim of a queer upbringing. Old Jason Baird had been afraid of germs, a phobia that caused him to wipe down doorknobs before grasping them.

Young Ronald was brought up by nurses in sterilized surroundings and was nicknamed "the sanitary baby." The boy had, therefore, no playmates, Even after his adopted father died and left him eighty millions, he lived alone.

He had queer ideas such as thinking all women were useless parasites, wanting to establish an endowment corporation to bring about a revival of the Golden Age of ancient Greek Civilization. He wanted to buy an island from the British Empire to house his new civilization and populate it with the brainy refugees from totalitarian governments.

In short, he shunned people, claiming they were decadent. But of all this, Pete said nothing. He was already smelling a big story for the cable.

"If you saw him, say, tomorrow," Craig was saying, "could you identify him and tell something of his queer reputation?"

"Sure," said Clicker eagerly.

Craig's jaw tightened as if he had made a decision.

He turned to the agent de police who had listened bewilderedly to this interchange. He spoke to him in perfect. French.

"Monsieur de la Police, these two young men are making a practical joke—in America it is very popular. I am not offended, and I will pay what damage there is— and take this for your trouble."

He slid the policeman a hundred-franc note. The man's expression changed instantly.

"A joke," he laughed loudly and waved his hands. "Back to your places, Messieurs, it is only the mad American humor— the Yankee joke—  and we all laugh."

ALL began to smile hopefully. A few more hundred-franc notes ended the episode.

Craig looked keenly at Pete.

"You know, I suppose," he said, "that you can always be arrested on this charge?"

Pete nodded. "What about Ronald Baird?"

"I am the nephew of old Jason Baird," Craig said, "so Ronald Baird is my er— step-cousin."

He paused. "Ronald is being committed tomorrow to a private psychopathic institution. I'd like you two to appear before the commission and tell what you know, and in exchange for this testimony I'll give you a place to sleep tonight, your meals, and supply you with two second-class tickets to Rome, Italy."

"Hot dog!" beamed Clicker. "You hired two hands. We'll start the meals right now. Hey, garcong!"

He waved to a waiter.

Pete also nodded agreement.

"Has he become— er— violent?" he asked.

"Well, yes," nodded Craig. "He thinks he's traveling around the world. He tries to speak Hindu, for example, or Japanese, or Malayan, according to where he thinks he is. He won't leave the house, and sometimes he insists he is a fly crawling on the ceiling. And, like any other dementia praecox, he thinks he is not insane but being persecuted and would attack us if not— er— restrained."

"The poor devil!" Pete said. "Well, he was always odd — but I should think an American psychopathic ward would be better than the French."

"Oh, no," said Craig. "It is the most expensive in the world, has the best physicians, and they have new treatments aside from malaria to cure insanity."

Pete let his eyes shift to the lovely Sally Hunter. Craig saw the glance.

"She was engaged to be married to him," he said gently, "and suddenly Ronald attacked her, physically, at a big reception. Slapped her face, and knocked her down. She started to sue for a hundred thousand dollars— the letters he wrote, you know— but I have managed to arrange that out of court."

After Pete and Clicker had had a hasty snack, Craig summoned his car, a big Rolls Royce, and they all got in. The car purred smoothly for several miles through the Fontainbleau section and came to a halt before a huge Louis Sixteenth mansion sitting in a hundred acres of magnificently landscaped grounds.

THE car waited while a gate-tender came out, unlocked the massive wrought-iron gates and admitted the car. Pete, who had a quickly observant eye, saw in the headlights that the gateman wore a shoulder holster and the butt of a pistol, at least a .38, partly protruded from the slack coat. Clicker also saw the gun butt and raised his brows. The car rolled up a long drive and stopped under the porte-cochére,

"Gosh!" said Clicker, "this looks like Grand Central Station."

"It has fifty-two rooms," said Sally.

A man in butler's livery let them in. Pete saw that this man's plum-colored coat also bulged over a gun and holster. Pete suppressed a puzzled frown.

Inside now, Harry Craig eyed them sourly.

"Just to make certain you're not lying, I want you two to look at Ronald Baird right now to identify him. And God help you if you've lied."

Craig led Pete and Clicker to the third story. Here was a long corridor, brightly lighted, and in front of a door sat a thick burly man, reading a detective story magazine. He jumped up as he saw Craig.

"Quiet as a mouse," he said.

Craig nodded curtly and the man went to the door and turned the big, heavy French key. He thrust open the door and peered in alertly.

"Tres bien," he said.

"I hope he's not violent," Sally said.

Pete, sensing deeply a big story, looked around eagerly.

The room was large and airy but devoid of furniture, except for a big bed bolted to the floor and a chair likewise immovable. There was a youth in the middle of the room, squatting Turk fashion on the linoleum and picking nervously at a drapery he had apparently jerked from the window. The bare window disclosed steel bars newly placed there.

Pete's eyes fastened to the young man's face. He saw a youth of twenty-three or so, with jet black, long, uncombed hair, a gaunt, pale face, and big staring eyes that held a deep glitter in them.

His mouth was full-formed and generous, but twitching now. The body was thin but wiry. In short, Ronald Baird might have been, with rest and diet, a powerful, good-looking young man. Now he looked frenzied and abnormal,

"Can you swear on the stand that this is Ronald Baird?" Craig said coldly to Pete.

"Yes," said Pete, a deep pity suddenly welling up in him,

"Yeah, that's him," said Clicker, subdued.

The boy looked from one to the other of them.

"Why do you claim to recognize me? I don't know you."

His voice was deep, nervous.

Craig stared at his step-cousin and then twisted to face Pete.

"That's funny," he said. "If you interviewed him he doesn't seem to remember, and he remembers almost everything about his college days."

Pete bit his lips. "Why," he said hastily, "dementia praecox cases have strange lapses. He doesn't remember the interview, but he should remember me."

"Ronald," Craig said, "did you ever meet this young man before?"

Ronald Baird came off the floor. He was shaking terribly, a wild glitter in his eyes.

"I'm not insane," he shouted thickly. "I haven't dementia praecox, and you brought these men here to lie me into an asylum. know your plan, Craig. You've always hated me. You thought my father should have left his money to you because you were of the blood and I was only adopted. You've schemed this all the way to get control of the money."

He flung back his head and laughed hysterically.

"But you won't. No French commission will swear me into an asylum. Not when they can see in a moment that I'm sane."

He suddenly glared with fury at Sally Hunter.

"And they won't put me away on the false testimony of this jezebel, either." His voice rose to a scream. "She tricked me— she's a cheat, a wanton, and she wanted my money, too, but she won't get it— not a penny."

Pete looked from the boy's face to Sally Hunter's. Sally was deathly pale, too.

"Don't talk like that, Ronald," she said quietly. "You..."

"Quiet, you wanton," he howled. "I saw you with my own eyes kissing that man. And you supposed to be engaged to me! And when I slapped you for what you are, you sued me in court. And when I said I'd see you dead..." He broke off. "You wormed inside of my life, and some day I'll kill you for it."

She was stung. "You only prove yourself mad," she cried. "I was kissing that man— sure, I was. We were rehearsing for the roles in 'Beyond the Law.' It was business, and if you had been sensible then you'd have thought nothing of it."

She retreated, leaned against the wall.

"I've been sorry for you, Ronald," she went on, lowering her voice. "I haven't wanted to see you— er— put in an institution. But now I guess it's for the best."

"Sure," sneered Ronald, "and after you've got me there and Craig has got my money, he'll pay you a hundred thousand dollars for lying."

"He'll pay me a hundred thousand dollars for the humiliation and embarrassment you caused me by slapping my face and publicly ruining my picture career by having people laugh at me as the girl who had her face slapped at the reception of the Duke of Hansor."

"Stop it, the both of you," cried Craig. "Sally, you ought to know better than to bicker with a maniac. Ronald, it will do you no good to get violent, because they'll put you in a strait-jacket."

"They will?" Ronald Baird laughed a high-pitched hysterical laugh. "That's what you think. I'll never go to an asylum."

4: Escape!

PETE had listened intently to all this amazing interchange but he had also been busy. His roving eyes had seen, tucked into a hole in the linoleum, something that glittered. He could just see the edge of it.

No one saw him stoop and pick it up.

His eyes went round with wonderment. What he held in his hand was a home-made but nonetheless efficient oustiti. Now, an oustiti is a narrow-headed, sharp-jawed pair of pliers made for the sole purpose of reaching into a keyhole to seize the key and turn it. With this oustiti Ronald Baird could have released himself at any moment from this room.

Pete just had time to slip the oustiti into his pocket when Craig seized Sally's arm.

"Enough of this," he said.

"You've failed," screamed Baird. "You've taken me around the world, but you didn't dare put me in a Chinese asylum, or Japanese or Hindu one, either. And I'm not fooled by your other schemes. hang to the chandelier but I know I'm not crawling on the ceiling."

Craig did not reply. He thrust Sally out of the room, gestured curtly to Pete and Clicker. The guard locked the door behind them. In silence, Craig led the way down to the next floor. He told Sally to wait for him downstairs, then walked along the corridor and finally threw open a door. He pressed a button, flooding a huge room with light, and gestured to two huge, red-canopied beds.

"You'll be comfortable enough here," he said.

Pete noticed that the windows here, too, were barred. He muttered something.

"You can understand now why he must go to an institution?" Craig said.

"Sure," said Clicker, "he cuts paper dolls."

Craig went out. In the silence, Pete and Clicker both heard the key turn in the lock. They exchanged quick looks.

"Gosh!" said Clicker. "It's nights like this that makes guys' hair go white."

Pete said nothing. He walked around the huge room, fished for a cigarette and smoked abstractedly.

"Big joint, ain't it?" Clicker said. "I could bed down in Grand Central Terminal and feel more cozy."

"Did you smell anything familiar while you were near Baird?" Pete said.

Clicker thought. "No, I didn't smell... yes, I did, too! Kind of like— well, I can't just remember."

"Neither can I," said Pete, "but I will." He paused near Clicker. "What do you think?"

"Think? What of?"

"The set-up. Baird, Sally Hunter, Craig—"

"Oh!" said Clicker. "Well, I dunno. Baird's a screwball all right— crazier than a monkey in a prickly pear orchard. The gal— she loved him, but he slapped her down publicly and that ain't no way to do. As for Craig, he's greasy and I don't like him."

"Neither do I," said Pete. "And why did he lock us in here?"

"Maybe he thought we'd steal the family crest."

Pete didn't laugh. "It's the story of the year," he muttered. "Heir to eighty millions clapped into the slap happy coop. Girl friend swears him away and takes a hundred thousand for a slap on the jaw."

He paused. "And Craig, as only relative, gets to administer a nutty man's estate of eighty millions. And, Clicker, administering eighty millions is just like owning it yourself."

Pete took out the oustiti and juggled it in his hand.

"I crave to look around this place and clear up the details. This story is worth a hundred dollars in New York,"

"Well—" began Clicker doubtfully.

"That kid didn't sound too crazy to me.

"Aw, now, Pete," protested Clicker, "don't go gettin' Sir Galahad on me. Damn it all, that kid was nutsy-fagen five years ago and you know it."

"He might have been eccentric but he didn't have to be crazy."

HE STRODE to the door and put the oustiti in the lock.

"Oh, all right," said Clicker, "only now I wish I hadn't let you hock my camera, Pix would sell, too, and then I'd buy me a thick steak."

"That kid was clever enough to make this oustiti," said Pete as the door opened,

Clicker sighed. "Sometimes I think you ought to have your head examined. They'd find some funny-looking air pockets in the skull part."

The two tiptoed out into the hall.

Followed by Clicker, Pete moved along the hallway, with the intention of climbing to the next floor and getting another talk with Ronald Baird. Pete was far from satisfied.

The boy didn't talk like a dementia praecox. There was that familiar smell which, if Pete could ever identify it, would be a clue to indicate what was the matter with Baird. And finally, there was Pete's utter mistrust of Harry Craig. This might all be his own imaginings but another talk with Baird, alone, would prove conclusive.

But he didn't get that talk.

As he reached the shadow of the staircase leading upward, he suddenly shrank back and thrust hard up against Clicker.

Clicker gulped.

Going down the stair, silent as a ghost, was Ronald Baird.

In his hand he held an ugly, short-snubbed revolver, and his face was twisted with such a look of fanatic purpose as Pete had never seen before. Even while Pete and Clicker crouched in the shadows, the boy stole down the flight of stairs to the main floor where Craig and Sally Hunter had their suites. He glided silently out of sight.

Clicker's eyes were wide.

"Gosh," he whispered, "that guy is going to use that rod! Did you see his face?"

Pete nodded. How, he wondered, had Baird got out? Where had he got the gun? Well, that didn't matter. What did count was that the boy must be prevented from committing murder. He hastily slipped off his own shoes, gesturing to Clicker to do the same. Then he hurried down the staircase.

"Be careful," said Clicker, "I seen guys before with that look— and somebody always died."

Pete hurried as fast as he could but he was not in time to prevent what ensued. As he came to the entrance of the drawing room he an Harry Craig, his hands raised, and Sally Hunter, a cigarette in her hand, and her hands raised. They stood by the fire. Facing them, gun leveled, was Ronald Baird, a most terrible expression of joy and triumph on his face. It was thirty feet across a brightly lit room to the boy and Pete knew he couldn't make it and live unless Baird's attention was distracted. He must bide his time for the moment.

Meanwhile, the boy spoke in a low fierce tone.

"I've got to have it. I've got to smoke. Where is it?"

"Go back to your room, you fool," said Craig harshly. "You go outside with that gun and somebody will kill you."

"You daren't let me die," the boy smiled weirdly. "You know I've made a will. The will leaves everything where I want it left and not to you."

"Ronny, listen to me!" Sally said nervously.

"Hush," the boy said. "You've had your say long enough. It's my turn now. What I want to know is, what country am I in— Japan or China?"

Clicker nudged Pete. Pete didn't move.

"I know it's eighteen days across the Pacific," the boy said, "but I couldn't tell, you keeping me blindfolded and my eyes so bad. I don't know where we landed."

CRAIG remained silent.

Sally looked at him. "You're in Paris, Ronny. You've..."

"Don't lie to me," cried the boy harshly. "How can I be in Paris after eighteen days on the Pacific and the damned endless hoot of the foghorn? No, no. Answer me, I say, or I'll—"

"You're in Shanghai," said Craig.

He glanced at Sally as if indicating the lad should be humored.

"Good," said Baird. "Now, give me the smoke, Craig, and then I'm going out and tell the police how you're trying to destroy my brain."

Craig made an involuntary move.

The boy's arm became rigid.

"Don't do it, Craig, or by God, I'll shoot. I want to shoot. I don't see why I don't."

"Please, Ronny," said Sally, "listen to me, boy. I know..."

"You cheap gold-digger," he snarled, "Keep out of this."

Pete saw Craig start to dive toward Baird. He thought it was only a bluff.

"Get back, Craig," Baird screamed. "Get back, or I'll..."

It was reckless, mad, but Craig kept on coming, one long savage charge. Pete started to jump forward to interfere, but it happened too quickly.

"Ronny!" screamed Sally.

The boy pulled the trigger. There was a sharp explosion. Pete Vallon saw cloth flick from Craig's coat sleeve on a line with the heart. But Craig kept on coming and before the boy could fire again he had knocked up the revolver barrel with his left hand and swung savagely with his right. The fist came over with pile-driver force and struck the boy squarely on the jaw.

Ronny Baird shot backward, a low, agonizing moan driven from his pale lips. He struck the floor with a crash and lay in a crumpled heap.

For an instant, nothing moved in the room and there was no sound except the heavy breathing of Craig.

Then Sally sobbed.

"Oh, dear Lord, Harry, you've killed him."

She ran to Ronald Baird and knelt beside him. Blood seeped from the boy's bluish lips.

"I had to do it," Craig spoke queerly. "You saw he was going to shoot me. It was his life or mine."

"Was it?" she turned, gave him an odd look. "Why didn't you let him go out? He would have harmed no one. He would have been brought back by the police."

"Hush, you fool," said Craig. He bent over, picked up the boy in his arms. "I'll fire Teverdeaux for this. How did the boy get out?"

From the boy's pocket fell an oustiti, the mate to the one Pete now had. So! The boy had made two.

Pete looked troubled and suddenly shrank back.

Craig crossed the room.

"Jules!" he shouted.

Pete looked at Clicker and, with a swift movement, retreated to the stairs. He ran up them silently, pursued by Clicker. Pete did not pause at the second floor but continued on to the third.

"For cripes sake, Clicker panted, "what now?"

Pete did not answer. He paused before the door to Baird's room and looked down at the senseless body of the guard. The man had evidently been surprised and Baird hammered his skull with a small marble bust. It was the guard's gun that Baird had seized and used.

The door stood open. Pete gestured to Clicker to enter.

"Hurry," he whispered.

"What goes on?" Clicker pleaded.

Pete shut the door and switched on the light. There was no place to hide except under the bed. He switched off the light.

"All right, Click, you first."

He pushed Clicker to the bed.

Clicker protestingly got down and crawled under the big French bed.

"But why?" he demanded.

"Click," whispered Pete, "that lad isn't crazy."

"He's nuttier than a fruitcake," Clicker said.

"Hush!" whispered Pete and they lay flat, even holding their breath, for suddenly the door opened and Craig entered. He walked straight to the bed and flung the boy on it. Baird was already muttering incoherently and his body tossed and the bed creaked.

5: The Plan Fails

"HARRY," said Sally, "he's hurt. Maybe he—he's dying."

"Its better if he does," said Craig in a cold biting voice. "If he has to exist in an asylum, with no hope of recovery—"

"But you said," cut in Sally, "his will..."

"His will doesn't matter now," said Craig.

There was silence.

"Harry," Sally said, "I don't like this—"

"Hush!" said Craig. "You're tired and upset, and I don't blame you. But everything is going to be all right. The guards will be more careful after this."

Pete, watching his legs, saw them stand close to Sally. There was silence in which he presumed that Craig kissed her. She said no more and their legs walked to the door. The light was turned off, the door closed, and a key whined in the lock. Then silence.

Pete crept out from under the bed. He switched on a wall light. Ronald Baird lay there, twisting and writhing, his face hotly flushed, his eyes open but unseeing, his lips mumbling. Je scowled. This didn't look so good.

Then he bent and smelled. He gestured to Clicker.

"Smell," he said.

Clicker sniffed. "Say," he began, "I've smelled that before. On the East Side." He paused, thinking. "Say, it was a dump we raided with the cops!"

"The Hindu bhang joint," muttered Pete. "That's it! This boy's been forced to smoke hashish until his wits are as addled as a ten-minute egg."

"On the level?" wondered Clicker. "The health commish once said hashish would drive you cuckoo, but..."

"Wait," said Pete.

He was bending down over the twitching, throbbing young man. He was studying the feverish skull and the veins in it. He frowned again. This looked like brain fever.

"Its hellish,' he growled. "I think..."

Sudden, Baird came up off the bed with a jerking leap that nearly knocked Pete over.

"I'm falling, falling," the boy cried. "I've got to get to the chandelier."

He crossed the room in three leaps, tore open the door of a room and vanished inside.

"For cripes sake," muttered Clicker, "and you say that guy ain't goofy?"

"Good God!" cried Pete. "He was on the verge of cracking up and that blow has given him brain fever. That kid is liable to die on us."

He ran into the dark room after Baird. Clicker followed and in his excitement slammed the door. It locked behind him.

Pete started to say, "Open the door," but didn't when, somewhere in the darkness, Ronald Baird began a half-scream in panting terror. So rather than have this outburst bring the guard, Pete endured the darkness and fished for a match. The room was utterly black and breathless.

The match flared wildly and settled into a steady pear-shaped flame. Pete was looking down at the floor at the spot from whence came the sobbing sound.

Clicker startled him by saying: "My God, Pete! Look!" He was pointing upward.

But Pete did not look. In that instant he wondered if he were going nuts, too. Because, staring at the spot where the sobbing came from, he saw Ronald Baird clutching tightly to a cut glass chandelier such as ornamented the ceiling of the room which had been assigned to him and Clicker. He was so startled that he dropped the match. It flickered, went out.

CLICKER was grabbing his arm. "Gosh, we're walking on the ceiling!"

"You're crazy," said Pete uneasily.

He reached for another match, lit it. Ronald Baird shifted, straightened, but did not release his grip on the cut glass chandelier. His sobbing stopped.

"Look out," he whispered, "you'll fall up and break your neck. You can't walk on the ceiling. You are not flies."

Despite himself, Pete made a grab for Clicker. Holding up the match, he lifted his eyes.

"My God!" he gasped and staggered.

Over his head he saw a sofa, a big easy chair, a lounge, a taboret with boxes of cigarettes and a pipe on it, a carpet, rugs in front of the hearth, a small end table piled high with magazines, a bookcase — all upside down. He shifted his gaze and saw draperies arching outward from windows that were upside down, too.

The match burned his fingers and he dropped it. As it went out, he reeled dizzily. When you are seeing upside down those things you've been seeing normally all your life, your senses reel.

"Baird, are there lights?" he whispered.

"No, no lights in here except when they make them come on. But I like the dark. Then I don't see myself walking on the ceiling like a fly."

"Oo-ooh!" moaned Clicker. "Pete, for gossake get me out of here."

Pete lit another match and stared into the dimness. Once again, the horrible dizziness assailed him and he wanted to bend and twist his head and look up from his ankles. When he did so, however, he felt about eighteen feet tall. When he straightened, he had a sudden giddy sensation that made him lurch. It was a horrible feeling.

"It ain't right," Clicker was muttering, "it just looks that way."

"Oh, no," panted Baird from his clinging perch. "I thought so at first. No, if I let loose I'll fall and dash my brains out."

Pete was staggered. Was this the same boy who had talked downstairs? This raving madman?

In a swift motion, Pete knelt beside the youth.

He felt the hot, flushed face, the twitching. Then he knew.

"Dear God!" he muttered.

"What is it?" cried Clicker.

"The boy was worked up to the point of a breakdown. Now, as a result of that blow, he's got brain fever. We must get him out of here or he'll be insane or perhaps die."

"Get him out? Are you goofy, too? How can you get him past Craig and his men? You'll have to wait and spill the scheme to the lunacy commission."

Pete again felt of the boy's brow. He had intended to wait, but he knew now he dare not. He had had a reporter room-mate once who had brain fever.

"We've got to go now, or get a doctor in," he said.

"Then, Pete, you really think this boy is sane?"

A cold fury grew in Pete's heart. Forgotten now, for the second, was his wish for a big exclusive story. Forgotten was everything, except this gibbering boy whose reason had been unhinged by the most deadly scheme Pete had ever encountered.

"Of course, he's sane," he growled. "How would you feel if you were kept in an upside down room and fed hashish cigarettes? And I'll bet that isn't all. Craig has got him all mixed up on his location. He probably dropped belladonna in the boy's eyes and then kept them bandaged when the belladonna enlarged the pupils to admit too much light— and made the boy ill."

"An upside down room," said Clicker. "It had me pretty groggy at that."

"Its not so original," said Pete.

"There was a rich man in New York who had a room built upside down and used to put his drunk guests in there to come out with a hangover and figure pink snakes were chasing them." He paused.

"Hold a match, Click, while I see where that door goes."

IT GAVE you a horrible sensation to reach up from a frescoed ceiling to open an upside down door. But on the other side was something nearly as bad.

"For cripes sake!" said Clicker. "Its a ship's cabin."

Pete looked around the replica of a first class cabin on an ocean liner— complete, berth and all.

"Yes," he said sternly. "That's how he fooled the blindfolded boy. He'd tell Baird he was in Tokio when he was in Paris and people to whom Baird talked would think he was crazy."

"Gosh, the poor kid!" said Clicker. He picked up a queer-shaped object.

"Looks like a small foghorn to give sound effects."

"Give me that," said Pete, lighting still another match. "It'll come in handy."

There was no egress in this direction and Pete turned to retrace his steps. As he did so Ronald Baird emitted a terrible shout.

Pete raced to him over the frescoed ceiling.

"Put out the light," cried Ronald. "Put it out or I'll be blind for life."

He leaped up at Pete, hung in midair for a divided second and then he crashed flat and did not move. Pete hastily knelt.

"Out cold," he muttered. "We've got to get him out of here, Click, or he's going to die."

As he spoke there was a slamming sound from the adjacent room.

"Duck!" Pete whispered.

He was just in time. The guard flung open the connecting door and threw a flashlight beam across the frescoed ceiling. It picked out the unconscious body of Ronald Baird. The guard cursed, hesitated and then came in.

"Damned nut ought to be in bed," he muttered.

This was too heaven-sent an opportunity to miss. As the guard entered Pete swung noiselessly behind him. He had only the foghorn but it was heavy. He swung with all his strength. The guard hiccoughed and fell flat on his face.

"Nice going," said Clicker. "He's hearing the birdies."

"Grab Baird's feet," Pete said. "Now's the time to move fast."

"It can't be too fast for me."

Clicker lifted Baird's feet.

As they backed out Pete tried to make a plan of sorts. Once out of the house they could rush Ronald Baird to the American Hospital at Neuilly where, if it was at all possible, American physicians could save his life. Meanwhile, the job was to get safely out of this house.

And this, in the next moment, seemed utterly impossible.

As they carried Ronny down the hallway to the staircase there were footsteps behind them. A man's voice called loudly, "Teverdeaux!"

Pete groaned. "That guy will find Teverdeaux out cold and rouse the house."

It was too late to go back.

To make matters worse Ronald Baird took this occasion to twist and writhe and utter peculiar strangling sounds. Pete tried in vain to muffle the noise. The brain fever gave Baird super-strength.

They were on the first floor now, but on the staircase overhead sounded racing feet.

"We can't make it outside in time," Pete said.

The man above shouted the alarm and his voice bellowed through the house. Almost in Pete's face, a door opened and flung out a rectangle of light. He prepared to fight. But instead of Harry Craig, it was Sally Hunter. Pete was seized with a sudden inspiration.

"Bring him in here, Click," he ordered.

ROUGHLY he thrust Sally, soft, warm and rumpled from sleep, back into the room. Her eyes widened and she turned pale but she did not cry out.

"Steady," said Pete, "and put something on. You're going to need it."

She silently got into a dressing robe practically as diaphanous as her nightgown.

"Well?" she said.

Pete walked to her, placed his hands on her slim warm shoulders and looked into her eyes. She returned the look unflinching.

"You look too decent to be in on a hellish scheme like this."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you know that Harry Craig is deliberately trying to unhinge this boy's brain and drive him insane— and may have succeeded?"

She shrank back. "That's a lie! The boy is psychopathic and he belongs in a sanitarium. It's the best."

Pete shook her. "Are you just a cheap little gold digger as Ronny said?" he growled. "Come— look."

He dragged her to the bed where Ronald Baird tossed and twisted inside Clicker's firm grip.

"Listen to him," he said, "just listen."

The boy was babbling wildly but through it all, like a refrain, ran the words— "Sally, darling, I didn't mean to strike you. Oh, darling, I love you. Please, sweetheart, it was jealousy— I—" His voice died down to incoherent mumbles.

She looked at the fevered face, the twisting lips and hands. Her own face was tense.

"What is the matter with him?"

"Brain fever," said Pete. "Without a doctor he goes insane— maybe dies— as Craig wants him to." He paused. "We've got to get him to a hospital right away— and Craig's guards are looking for us."

She didn't seem to hear. "I didn't think he loved me. I thought it was the run-around. I didn't realize— he's just a boy."

"Just a queer shy, retiring boy," assented Pete, "and when— we'll have to find out how— when Craig got him on hashish it reacted peculiarly. In the singular, narcotized, condition that the boy developed Craig probably poisoned his mind against you. Maybe Craig fixed it so that the jealous kid saw you kiss that guy in rehearsal."

The youth's hands groped. "Sally, where are you? I'm in the dark."

She took his hand in her cool one, and pressed it.

"I'm here, darling," she whispered. She turned to Pete, her face resolute.

"What can I do until you get him to a hospital?"

"Get cold compresses for his head now. And if you've got a gun you'd be practically a godsend."

"No gun," she said and went for the compresses.

6: Presents For Two

WATCHING her a moment, Pete turned and strode rapidly to the window. It was at least thirty feet to the ground. The windows were not locked and one, indeed, was open.

"Get those sheets," Clicker, he said, "and start tearing them up." He got no reply from Clicker and turned to raise his voice. Clicker was bent over the girl's vanity table, examining something. He was grinning delightedly.

"You might know them Germans would think up a gadget like that," he chuckled.

"What is it?" demanded Pete impatiently.

"Looky." Clicker held up what seemed to be a gardenia attached to a length of slender rubber tubing.

Pete swore fretfully. "All right, playboy," he growled, "fill it with water and squirt it in somebody's face."

"Squirt hell," said Clicker injuredly. "That's a candid camera. Takes pictures on film the size of your fingernail."

"So what, little boy?" Pete pointed to the bed. "Tear up some sheets."

Clicker swore. "I never seen such a guy," but he put the gardenia camera in his pocket and set to work tearing up sheets.

Sally Hunter returned with some cold compresses and began to administer to Baird. The moment her soothing voice touched the lad's ear he ceased to squirm and talk incoherently and rested quietly. But this did not go on for long.

Ten minutes later, there was a thumping at the door and Harry Craig's impatient voice could be heard shouting in the hall.

"Sally, Sally! Open up."

Pete swore softly. Clicker froze over his sheets. Sally didn't take her hands from Baird's head but her eyes flew to Pete. Pete shrugged and started looking for a weapon.

"Stall him," he whispered. "Don't let him in now."

She glanced down at Ronald.

Clicker hastened to be ready to clamp a hand over the boy's mouth. She got up, encountered Pete's level gaze.

"You can trust me," she whispered coolly.

She walked to the door.

"For Heaven's sake, Harry, what's the idea of waking me up?" she said.

"Let me in," Craig repeated. "Ronny's escaped and those two damned crooks have him."

Pete searched desperately for a weapon. He found one of sorts on the escritoire, a thin-pointed silver blade, used to slit letters in the morning mail. It wasn't much but it would have to do. í

"Damn it," Craig was saying, "stop talking and unlock the door."

Pete gestured to Clicker to hide Ronny and himself in the clothes closet. He ran to the door, froze along the wall so that the opening of the door would hide him from observation. He gave Sally a reassuring smile.

"Nice going," he muttered. "Now tell him to come in."

She was scared but she fought down her fear.

"Oh, all right," she said carelessly, and unlocked the door.

The door opened wide under the thrust of Craig's impatient hands. Sally had sense enough to shrink back on a line with the closet so that Clicker, crouching, holding Baird, would be covered.

As Craig followed her, saying, "What's the big idea?" Pete came out from behind the door and pressed the point of the paper cutter against the back of Craig's neck.

"Stand still and-raise your hands," he said in the coldest voice he could muster, "or I'll push—hard."

Harry Craig stood rigid.

"Sally," Pete said, "lock the door."

She obeyed silently.

"Craig, try to yell and it will be your last," Pete said grimly.

CRAIG was shaking, but not with fear.

"You she-devil, you're protecting them," he choked.

"Save your dirty names, Craig," said Pete. "You were all washed up in any case. I'm a reporter and Dunn is a cameraman and we'll cable a story tomorrow that will queer your pitch. The police, after that, will take charge."

Craig seemed not to hear. He was looking at Sally Hunter with a very strained, fierce gaze.

"Why?" he urged in a low tone. "Why did you let them in here?"

She returned his stare, her nostrils flaring.

"You lied to me," she said. "You lied to Ronny about me. You framed that rehearsal to break us up. Because once Ronny was married to me, he was safe from you and your horrible scheme."

"And as it is," he sneered, "Ronny dies and you get nothing— because you'll not get a hundred thousand from me."

"You're not the heir," she cried. "The will..."

"I destroyed the will," smiled Craig triumphantly. "As the sole relative I get it all."

"No," said Pete quietly. "At a hospital Ronny can recover. So you stay here for the police. Tie him, Click."

"You fool," Craig said to Sally, "if I go to jail, don't you see you must go, too, as an accessory?"

She did not flinch. "If that's the way to save Ronny, then that's the way it's got to be."

"How noble!" he sneered. "For a gold digger who started out to get Ronny's money..."

"Yes," she cut in quietly, "I started out to get his money. I've been hurt plenty by men in my time and I said I'd never be hurt again. But"—she looked down at Ronny— "I love him and that's all there is to it."

"He'll not want you— ever— you fool," rasped Craig.

"Probably not, poor lost child," she said. "That doesn't count now."

She looked at Pete. "Hadn't we better get him to a hospital?"

Pete nodded, his eyes shining.

"Right!" He motioned to Clicker Dunn. "Put Ronny on the bed and fix that rope of sheets."

"Okay," Clicker said, and left Ronny.

This was a mistake. The moment Clicker's hands left him, Ronald Baird bounded from the bed and started for the window.

"Look out," cried Pete, but he knew Clicker would be too late.

Baird was racing for the window as one who is about to dive. It was

Sally who stopped him. "Ronny!" she called, and jumped for him.

At the sound of her voice, he stopped, hesitated. And in that second she reached him, flung her arms around his neck and pressed his face to hers.

"Sally," he said in a queer voice and collapsed onto her.

His weight forced them back to the door.

Then Craig struck.

Pete's attention was momentarily withdrawn and Craig took advantage of it. He lunged forward to his knees, jumped up like a cat and in turning he had his gun out and leveled.

"All right," his voice was arctic cold, "I'll play the rest of the hand." He backed carefully to the door, opened it.

"Jules! George!" he called out loudly. He was grinning savagely.

"That's no go, Craig," Pete said. "We've seen your torture rooms. We've even"— he had an inspiration—  "we've even got pictures of them—  the upside down room.

He turned to Clicker. "Show him the camera, Clicker."

Clicker looked puzzled for a space and then said: "The camera? Oh, the camera," and pulled out the German buttonhole candid.

Pete had been trying to startle Craig but he failed.

"So what?" grinned the man. "With eighty millions at stake and all its power, do you think I'm not prepared?"

Pete's heart sank.

"Prepared?" he repeated.

"Certainly, prepared. Tonight, this house accidentally burns to the ground. It is too bad that a reporter, a photographer and a cheap chiseling gold digger will burn, too."

PETE knew the man was mad enough to carry out such a holocaust. But Pete was not through yet. He made one more attempt. He signaled Clicker to be ready.

"Did you use up a whole roll of film on those crazy gadgets Craig was using to drive Baird nuts?" he asked.

Clicker looked at him, caught Pete's expression and slight nod.

"Oh, sure," he said, "I got them all."

"Then throw the roll out the window— now," yelled Pete and crouched to spring.

It was life or death in that instant and he knew it. If Clicker failed to jump toward the window and draw Craig's attention, then Pete would get a bullet as he lunged to the attack. But he trusted Clicker implicitly, and as he yelled he dove across the room at Craig. And Clicker, putting all his faith in Pete, jumped for the window, his hand upraised.

With two figures in motion, one toward him, Craig hesitated for the slightest fraction of a second. Not long, but long enough. As he aimed at Clicker and puller the trigger, Pete hit his legs. He smashed the man sideways, clung tightly and Craig toppled and fell.

As he went down he raised the gun to kill Pete. Clicker, coming like an express train, hit him in time to knock the gun muzzle aside. Pete slugged Craig in the jaw. The man slumped back, senseless.

There were running footsteps in the hall. Pete bounded across the room, shut and locked the door practically in the face of two men with pistols. He jumped aside to avoid a shot through the panels. He gestured to Clicker who gave him Craig's gun.

"You out there, listen," Pete said loudly. "I've got a gun in here with five shots. You can't get in here alive. Craig's dead. We've sent for the police. Scram!"

He turned to Clicker. "Set that foghorn moaning out the window, boy, we've won."

The horn produced a long sad, dreary moan that grew more mournful by the minute. But it was heard a long way, and somebody would come,

"Sounds like a cow that's lost its sheep," grinned Clicker.

Fifteen minutes later, when Pete opened the hallway door, Craig's guards were gone. Pete grinned.

"Good! So now, before the cops arrive, I'll just settle a pressing little business matter."

He bent over the still unconscious Craig and abstracted a wallet stuffed with French banknotes of incredible size. Clicker saw the thousand-franc notes and gasped.

"Gosh, there's enough there to take us around the world in a Rolls-Royce."

Pete shook his head and carefully extracted five one-hundred franc notes.

"He promised us a second class passage to Rome for identifying Ronald Baird. Well, we identified him— and earned our money, so I'll take it."

He started to put away the wallet.

"Hey !" cried Clicker, "He promised us chow, too. Don't forget the eats."

"You wouldn't let me, you and your stomach," sighed Pete, but he took another hundred-franc note.

His eyes lifted to where Sally sat holding Ronald Baird's hand.

"I'm not stealing," he said.

"Of course not," she protested, "and if you'd wait Ronny would give you any sum you wanted. You've saved his life and his reason."

"Hot dog!" said Clicker hopefully. "That ought to be worth a hundred bucks."

Pete Vallon shook his head.

"We couldn't use the money, honest," he said. "If we had all the money to make this trip there'd be no fun."

"That's what you think," muttered Clicker, but he subsided at Pete's throaty growl to hush up.

When the police arrived Pete let Sally, as Ronny Baird's fiancée, take charge, while he and Clicker became two visiting friends from America. They made statements, swore to them, promised to return if needed, and, forty-eight hours later, were permitted to leave France.

Sally Hunter went to the Gare de Lyon to see them off. She was pale, worn, but her violet eyes shone with a spiritual glow, an inward happiness that made Pete catch his breath.

"Ronny's getting well," she said. "He'll be as he was— soon."

She said no more but Pete understood.

"That's swell," he said heartily.

"I've brought you two presents— from me and Ronny," she said. She handed Clicker the German button-hole candid camera,

"Criminy!" gasped Clicker, overwhelmed.

"You earned it," Sally said earnestly. "It helped save Ronny's life."

The train conductor stalked along the platform crying, "En voiture, Mesdames et Messieurs. En voiture."

Sally came to Pete and gave him her hand.

"I couldn't think of anything for you but this," she said, and reaching up swiftly she kissed him softly on the lips.

In an instant, as his lips touched her fragrant ones, Pete saw into her eyes and perceived that the hard, bitter look was gone forever. He saw the soul of her and it was shining.

"Good-by," he said. "You'll make him happy— make it all up to him."

She stood waving on the platform until the train vanished from sight.

Clicker leaned back, face alive with joy as he examined the beautiful little camera. He talked happily until he discovered Pete was not replying. He looked over.

"What's eating you?" he demanded.

Pete was looking at a crimson tint of lipstick on his handkerchief.

"Nothing," he said, "only I think I learn to dance on this dizzy world tour."

__________________

10: Padre Ignacio

Owen Wister

1860-1938

The Golden Book Dec 1926

Harper’s New Monthly Magazine April 1900

Wister is famous for the western novel "The Virginian", and the immortal quote: "When you call me that, smile!"  This story has also been published as Father Ignazio. This transcription is from The Golden Book

Owen Wister

AT SANTA ISABEL del Mar the season was at one of those moments when the air rests quiet over land and sea. The old breezes were gone; the new ones were not yet risen. The flowers in the mission garden opened wide; no wind came by day or night to shake the loose petals from their stems. Along the basking, silent, many-coloured shore gathered and lingered the crisp odours of the mountains. The dust hung golden and motionless long after the rider was behind the hill, and the Pacific lay like a floor of sapphire, whereon to walk beyond the setting sun into the East. One white sail shone there. Instead of an hour, it had been from dawn till afternoon in sight between the short head- lands; and the Padre had hoped that it might be the ship his homesick heart awaited. But it had slowly passed. From an arch in his garden cloisters he was now watching the last of it. Presently it was gone, and the great ocean lay empty. The Padre put his glasses in his lap. For a short while he read in his breviary, but soon forgot it again. He looked at the flowers and sunny ridges, then at the huge blue triangle of sea which the opening of the hills let into sight.

"Paradise," he murmured, "need not hold more beauty and peace. But I think I would exchange all my remaining years of this for one sight again of Paris or Seville. May God forgive me such a thought!"

Across the unstirred fragrance of oleanders the bell for vespers began to ring. Its tones passed over the Padre as he watched the sea in his garden. They reached his parishioners in their adobe dwellings near by. The gentle circles of sound floated outward upon the smooth, immense silence— over the vines and pear-trees; down the avenues of the olives; into the planted fields, whence women and children began to return; then out of the lap of the valley along the yellow uplands, where the men that rode among the cattle paused, looking down like birds at the map of their home. Then the sound widened, faint, unbroken, until it met Temptation in the guise of a youth, riding toward the Padre from the South, and cheered the steps of Temptation's jaded horse.

"For a day, one single day of Paris!" repeated the Padre, gazing through his cloisters at the empty sea.

Once in the year the mother-world remembered him. Once in the year, from Spain, tokens and home-tidings came to him, sent by certain beloved friends of his youth. A barkentine brought him these messages. Whenever thus the mother- world remembered him, it was like the touch of a warm hand, a dear and tender caress; a distant life, by him long left behind, seemed to be drawing the exile homeward from these alien shores. As the time for his letters and packets drew near, the eyes of Padre Ignacio would be often fixed wistfully upon the harbour, watching for the barkentine. Sometimes, as to-day, he mistook other sails for hers, but hers he mistook never. That Pacific Ocean, which, for all its hues and jeweled mists, he could not learn to love, had, since long before his day, been furrowed by the keels of Spain. Traders, and adventurers, and men of God had passed along this coast, planting their colonies and cloisters; but it was not his ocean. In the year that we, a thin strip of patriots away over on the Atlantic edge of the continent, declared ourselves an independent nation, a Spanish ship, in the name of Saint Francis, was unloading the centuries of her own civilization at the Golden Gate. San Diego had come earlier. Then, slowly, as mission after mission was built along the soft coast wilderness, new ports were established— at Santa Barbara, and by Point San Luis for San Luis Obispo, which lay inland a little way up the gorge where it opened among the hills. Thus the world reached these missions by water; while on land, through the mountains, a road led to them, and also to many more that were too distant behind the hills for ships to serve— a rough road, long and lonely, punctuated with church towers and gardens. For the Fathers gradually so stationed their settlements that the traveler might each morning ride out from one mission and by evening of a day's fair journey ride into the next. A lonely, rough, dangerous road, but lovely, too, with a name like music—El Camino Real. Like music also were the names of the missions— San Juan Capistrano, San Luis Rey de Francia, San Miguel, Santa Ynez—their very list is a song.

So there, by-and-by, was our continent, with the locomotive whistling from Savannah to Boston along its eastern edge, and on the western the scattered chimes of Spain, ringing among the unpeopled mountains. Thus grew the two sorts of civilization— not equally. We know what has happened since. To-day the locomotive is whistling also from The Golden Gate to San Diego; but still the old mission-road goes through the mountains, and along it the footsteps of vanished Spain are marked with roses, and broken cloisters, and the crucifix.

But this was 1855. Only the barkentine brought to Padre Ignacio the signs from the world that he once had known and loved so dearly. As for the new world making a rude noise to the northward, he trusted that it might keep away from Santa Ysabel, and he waited for the vessel that was overdue with its package containing his single worldly luxury.

As the little, ancient bronze bell continued swinging in the tower, its plaintive call reached something in the Padre's memory. Softly, absently, he began to sing. He took up the slow strain not quite correctly, and dropped it, and took it up again, always in cadence with the bell:

At length he heard himself, and, glancing at the belfry, smiled a little. "It is a pretty tune," he said, "and it always made me sorry for poor Fra Diavolo, Auber himself confessed to me that he had made it sad and put the hermitage bell to go with it, because he too was grieved at having to kill his villain, and wanted him, if possible, to die in a religious frame of mind. And Auber touched glasses with me and said— how well I remember it!— 'Is it the good Lord, or is it merely the devil, that makes me always have a weakness for rascals?' I told him it was the devil. I was not a priest then. I could not be so sure with my answer now." And then Padre Ignacio repeated Auber's remark in French: " 'Est-ce le bon Dieu, ou est-ce bien le diable, qui veut toujours que j'aime les coquins?' I don't know! I don't know! I wonder if Auber has composed anything lately? I wonder who is singing 'Zerlina' now?"

He cast a farewell look at the ocean, and took his steps between the monastic herbs, the jasmines and the oleanders to the sac- risty. "At least," he said, "if we cannot carry with us into exile the friends and the places we have loved, music will go whither we go, even to an end of the world such as this.—Felipe!" he called to his organist. "Can they sing the music I taught them for the Dixit Dominus to-night?"

"Yes, father, surely."

"Then we will have that. And, Felipe—" The Padre crossed the chancel to the small, shabby organ. "Rise, my child, and listen. Here is something you can learn. Why, see now if you cannot learn it from a single hearing."

The swarthy boy of sixteen stood watching his master's fingers, delicate and white, as they played. Thus, of his own accord, he had begun to watch them when a child of six; and the Padre had taken the wild, half-scared, spellbound creature and made a musician of him.

"There, Felipe!" he said now. "Can you do it? Slower, and more softly, muchacho mio. It is about the death of a man, and it should go with our bell."

The boy listened. "Then the father has played it a tone too low," said he, "for our bell rings the note of sol, or something very near it, as the father must surely know." He placed the melody in the right key—an easy thing for him; and the Padre was delighted.

"Ah, my Felipe," he exclaimed, "what could you and I not do if we had a better organ! Only a little better! See! above this row of keys would be a second row, and many more stops. Then we would make such music as has never yet been heard in California. But my people are so poor and so few! And some day I shall have passed from them, and it will be too late."

"Perhaps," ventured Felipe, "the Americanos—"

"They care nothing for us, Felipe. They are not of our religion—or of any religion, from what I can hear. Don't forget my Dixit Dominus."

'The Padre retired once more to the sacristy, while the horse that brought Temptation came over the hill. .

'The hour of service drew near; and as the Padre waited he once again stepped out for a look at the ocean; but the blue triangle of water lay like a picture in its frame of land, bare as the sky. "I think, from the colour, though," said he, "that a little more wind must have begun out there."

'The bell rang a last short summons to prayer. Along the road from the south a young rider, leading a pack-animal, ambled into the mission and dismounted. Church was not so much in his thoughts as food and, after due digestion, a bed; but the doors stood open, and, as everybody was passing within them, more variety was to be gained by joining this company than by waiting outside alone until they should return from their devotions. So he seated himself in a corner near the entrance, and after a brief, jaunty glance at the sunburned, shaggy congregation, made himself as comfortable as might be. He had not seen a face worth keeping his eyes open for. The simple choir and simple fold, gathered for even-song, paid him no attention— a rough American bound for the mines was but an object of aversion to them.

The Padre, of course, had been instantly aware of the stranger's presence. To be aware of unaccustomed presences is the sixth sense with vicars of every creed and heresy; and if the parish is lonely and the worshipers few and seldom varying, a newcomer will gleam out like a new book to be read. And a trained priest learns to read keenly the faces of those who assemble to worship under his guidance. But American vagrants, with no thoughts save of gold-digging, and an overweening illiterate jargon for speech, had long ceased to interest this priest, even in his starvation for company and talk from the outside world; and therefore after the intoning he sat with his homesick thoughts unchanged, to draw both pain and enjoyment from the music that he had set to the Dixit Dominus. He listened to the tender chorus that opens William Tell; and, as the Latin psalm proceeded, pictures of the past rose between him and the altar. One after another came these strains he had taken from operas famous in their day, until at length the Padre was murmuring to some music seldom long out of his heart— not the Latin verse which the choir sang, but the original French words:

Ah, voilà mon envie,

Voilà mon seul désir:

Rendez-moi ma patrie,

Ou laissez-moi mourir."

Which may be rendered:

But one wish I implore,

One wish is all my cry:

Give back my native land once more,

Give back, or let me die.

Then it happened that his eye fell again upon the stranger near the door, and he straightway forgot his Dixit Dominus. The face of the young man was no longer hidden by the slouching position he had at first taken.

"I only noticed his clothes at first," thought the Padre. Restlessness was plain upon the handsome brow, and violence was in the mouth; but Padre Ignacio liked the eyes.

"He is not saying any prayers," he surmised, presently. "I doubt if he has said any for a long while. And he knows my music. He is of educated people. He cannot be American. And now— yes, he has taken— I think it must be a flower, from his pocket. I shall have him to dine with me."

And vespers ended with rosy clouds of eagerness drifting across the Padre's brain.

ii

BUT the stranger made his own beginning. As the priest came from the church, the rebellious young figure was waiting. "Your organist tells me," he said, impetuously, "that it is you who—"

"May I ask with whom I have the great pleasure of speaking?" said the Padre, putting formality to the front and his pleasure out of sight.

The stranger's face reddened beneath its sun-beaten bronze, and he became aware of the Padre's pale features, molded by refinement and the world. "I beg your lenience," said he, with a graceful and confident utterance, as of equal to equal. "My name is Gaston Villeré, and it was time I should be reminded of my manners. "

The Padre's hand waved a polite negative.

"Indeed, yes, Padre. But your music has amazed me. If you carried such as- sociations as— Ah! the days and the nights!"— he broke off. "To come down a California mountain and find Paris at the bottom! The Huguenots, Rossini, Hérold— I was waiting for Il Trovatore."

"Is that something new?" inquired the Padre eagerly.

The young man gave an exclamation. "The whole world is ringing with it!" he cried.

"But Santa Ysabel del Mar is a long way from the whole world," murmured Padre Ignacio.

"Indeed, it would not appear to be so," returned young Gaston. "I think the Comédie Française must be round the corner."

A thrill went through the priest at the theater's name. "And have you been long in America?" he asked.

"Why, always— except two years of foreign travel after college. "

"An American!" exclaimed the surprised Padre, with perhaps a tone of disappointment in his voice. "But no Americans who are yet come this way have been— have been"— he veiled the too-blunt expression of his thought— "have been familiar with The Huguenots," he finished, making a slight bow.

Villeré took his under-meaning. "I come from New Orleans," he returned. "And in New Orleans there live many of us who can recognize a— who can recognize good music wherever we hear it." And he made a slight bow in his turn.

The Padre laughed outright with pleasure and laid his hand upon the young man's arm. "You have no intention of going away to-morrow, I trust?"

"With your leave," answered Gaston, "I will have such an intention no longer. "

It was with the air and gait of mutual understanding that the two now walked on together toward the Padre's door. The guest was twenty-five, the host sixty.

"And have you been in America long?" inquired Gaston.

"Twenty years."

"And at Santa Ysabel how long?"

"Twenty years."

"I should have thought," said Gaston looking lightly at the desert and unpeopled mountains, "that now and again you might have wished to travel."

"Were I your age," murmured Padre Ignacio, "it might be so."

The evening had now ripened to the long after-glow of sunset. The sea was the purple of grapes, and wine-coloured hues flowed among the high shoulders of the mountains.

"I have seen a sight like this," said Gaston, "between Granada and Malaga."

"So you know Spain!" said the Padre.

Often he had thought of this resemblance, but never till now met any one to share his thought. The courtly proprietor of San Fernando and the other patriarchal rancheros with whom he occasionally exchanged visits across the wilderness knew hospitality and inherited gentle manners, sending to Europe for silks and laces to give their daughters; but their eyes had not looked upon Granada, and their ears had never listened to William Tell.

"It is quite singular," pursued Gaston, "how one nook in the world will suddenly remind you of another nook that may be thousands of miles away. One morning, behind the Quai Voltaire, an old, yellow house with rusty balconies made me almost homesick for New Orleans."

"The Quai Voltaire!" said the Padre.

"I heard Rachel in Valerie that night," the young man went on. "Did you know that she could sing, too? She sang several verses by an astonishing little Jew violon-cellist that is come up over there. "

The Padre gazed down at his blithe guest. "To see somebody, somebody, once again, is very pleasant to a hermit!"

"It cannot be more pleasant than arriving at an oasis," returned Gaston.

They had delayed on the threshold to look at the beauty of the evening, and now the priest watched his parishioners come and go. "How can one make companions—" he began; then, checking himself, he said: "Their souls are as sacred and immortal as mine, and God helps me to help them. But in this world it is not immortal souls that we choose for companions; it is kindred tastes, intelligences, and—and so I and my books are growing old together, you see," he added, more lightly. "You will find my volumes as behind the times as myself."

He had fallen into talk more intimate than he wished; and while the guest was uttering something polite about the nobility of missionary work, he placed him in an easy-chair and sought aguardiente for his immediate refreshment. Since the year's beginning there had been no guest for him to bring into his rooms, or to sit beside him in the high seats at table, set apart for the gente fina.

Such another library was not then in California; and though Gaston Villeré, in leaving Harvard College, had shut Horace and Sophocles for ever at the earliest instant possible under academic requirements, he knew the Greek and Latin names that he now saw as well as he knew those of Shakspere, Dante, Molière, and Cervantes. These were here also; but it could not be precisely said of them, either, that they made a part of the young man's daily reading. As he surveyed the Padre's august shelves, it was with a touch of the histrionic Southern gravity which his Northern education had not wholly schooled out of him that he said:

"I fear I am no scholar, sir. But I know what writers every gentleman ought to respect.

The polished Padre bowed gravely to this compliment.

It was when his eyes caught sight of the music that the young man felt again at ease, and his vivacity returned to him. Leaving his chair, he began enthusiastically to examine the tall piles that filled one side of the room. The volumes lay piled and scattered everywhere, making a pleasant disorder; and, as perfume comes from a flower, memories of singers and chandeliers rose bright from the printed names. Norma Tancredi, Don Pasquale, La Vestale, dim lights in the fashions of to-day, sparkled upon the exploring Gaston, conjuring the radiant halls of Europe before him. "The Barber of Seville!" he presently exclaimed. "And I happened to hear it in Seville. "

But Seville's name brought over the Padre a new rush of home thoughts. "Is not Andalusia beautiful?" he said. "Did you see it in April, when the flowers come?"

"Yes," said Gaston, among the music. "I was at Cordova then. "

"Ah, Cordova!" murmured the Padre.

"Semiramide!" cried Gaston, lighting upon that opera. "That was a week! I should like to live it over, everv day and night of it!"

"Did you reach Malaga from Marseilles or Gibraltar?" asked the Padre, wistfully.

"From Marseilles. Down from Paris through the Rhone Valley, you know."

"Then you saw Provence! And did you go, perhaps, from Avignon to Nismes by the Pont du Gard? There is a place I have made here— a little, little place— with olive-trees. And now they have grown, and it looks something like that country, if you stand in a particular position. I will take you there to-morrow. I think you will understand what I mean."'

"Another resemblance!" said the volatile and happy Gaston. "We both seem to have an eye for them. But, believe me, Padre, I could never stay here planting olives. I should go back and see the original ones— and then I'd hasten on to Paris." And, with a volume of Meyerbeer open in his hand, Gaston hummed: 'Robert, Robert, toi que j'aime.' Why, Padre, I think that your library contains none of the masses and all of the operas in the world!"

"I will make you a little confession," said Padre Ignacio, "and then you shall give me a little absolution. "

"For a penance," said Gaston; "you must play over some of these things to me."

"I suppose I could not permit myself this luxury," began the Padre, pointing to his operas, "and teach these to my choir, if the people had any worldly associations with the music. But I have reasoned that the music cannot do them harm."

The ringing of a bell here interrupted him. "In fifteen minutes," he said, our poor meal will be ready for you." The good Padre was not quite sincere when he spoke of a poor meal.  While getting the aguardiente for his guest he had given orders, and he knew how well such orders would be carried out. He lived alone, and generally supped simply enough, but not even the ample table at San Fernando could surpass his own on occasions. And this was for him indeed an occasion!

"Your half-breeds will think I am one of themselves, " said Gaston, showing his dusty clothes. "I am not fit to be seated with you." But he did not mean this any more than his host had meant his remark about the food. In his pack, which an Indian had brought from his horse, he carried some garments of civilization. And presently, after fresh water and not a little painstaking with brush and scarf, there came back to the Padre a young guest whose elegance and bearing and ease of the great world were to the exiled priest as sweet as was his traveled conversation.

They repaired to the hall and took their seats at the head of the long table. For the Spanish centuries of stately custom lived at Santa Ysabel del Mar, inviolate, feudal, remote.

They were the only persons of quality present; and between themselves and the gente de razon a space intervened. Behind the Padre's chair stood an Indian to wait upon him, and another stood behind the chair of Gaston Villeré. Each of these servants wore one single white garment, and offered the many dishes to the gente fina and refilled their glasses. At the lower end of the table a general attendant waited upon mesclados— the half-breeds. There was meat with spices, and roasted quail, with various cakes and other preparations of grain; also the brown fresh olives and grapes, with several sorts of figs and plums, and preserved fruits, and white and red wine—the white fifty years old. Beneath the quiet shining of candles, fresh-cut flow- ers leaned from vessels of old Mexican and Spanish make.

There at one end of this feast sat the wild, pastoral, gaudy company, speaking little over their food; and there at the other the pale Padre, questioning his visitor about Rachel. The mere name of a street would bring memories crowding to his lips; and when his guest told him of a new play he was ready with old quotations from the same author. Alfred de Vigny they spoke of, and Victor Hugo, whom the Padre disliked. Long after the dulce, or sweet dish, when it was the custom for the vaqueros and the rest of the retainers to rise and leave the gente fina to themselves, the host sat on in the empty hall, fondly talking to his guest of his bygone Paris and fondly learning of the later Paris that the guest had seen. And thus the two lingered, exchanging their enthusiasms, while the candles waned, and the long-haired Indians stood silent behind the chairs.

"But we must go to my piano," the host exclaimed. For at length they had come to a lusty difference of opinion. The Padre, with ears critically deaf, and with smiling, unconvinced eyes, was shaking his head, while young Gaston sang Trovatore at him, and beat upon the table with a fork.

"Come and convert me, then," said Padre Ignacio, and he led the way. "Donizetti I have always admitted. There, at least, is refinement. If the world has taken to this Verdi, with his street-band music— But there, now! Sit down and convert me. Only don't crush my poor little Erard with Verdi's hoofs. I brought it when I came. It is behind the times, too. And, oh, my dear boy, our organ is still worse. So old, so old! To get a proper one I would sacrifice even this piano of mine in a moment— only the tinkling thing is not worth a sou to anybody except its master. But there! Are you quite comfortable?" And having seen to his guest's needs, and placed spirits and cigars and an ash-tray within his reach, the Padre sat himself comfortably in his chair to hear and expose the false doctrine of Il Trovatore.

By midnight all of the opera that Gaston could recall had been played and sung twice.

The convert sat in his chair no longer, but stood singing by the piano. The potent swing and flow of rhythms, the torrid, copious inspiration of the South, mastered him. "Verdi has grown," he cried. 'Verdi is become a giant." And he swayed to the beat of the melodies, and waved an enthusiastic arm. He demanded every note. Why did not Gaston remember it all? But if the barkentine would arrive and bring the whole music, then they would have it right! And he made Gaston teach him what words he knew. " 'Non ti scordar,' " he sang— " 'non ti scordar di me.' That is genius. But one sees how the world moves when one is out of it. 'A nostri monti ritorneremo'; home to our mountains. Ah, yes, there is genius again." And the exile sighed and his spirit voyaged to distant places, while Gaston continued brilliantly with the music of the final scene.

Then the host remembered his guest. "I am ashamed of my selfishness," he said. "It is already to-morrow."

"I have sat later in less good company," answered the pleasant Gaston. "And I shall sleep all the sounder for making a convert."

"You have dispensed roadside alms," said the Padre, smiling. "And that should win excellent dreams."

Thus, with courtesies more elaborate than the world has time for at the present day, they bade each other good-night and parted, bearing their late candles along the quiet halls of the mission. To young Gaston in his bed easy sleep came without waiting, and no dreams at all. Outside his open window was the quiet, serene darkness, where the stars shone clear, and tranquil perfumes hung in the cloisters. But while the guest lay sleeping all night in unchanged position like a child, up and down between the oleanders went Padre Ignacio, walking until dawn. Temptation indeed had come over the hill and entered the cloisters.

iii

DAY showed the ocean's surface no longer glassy, but lying like a mirror breathed upon; and there between the short head- lands came a sail, gray and plain against the flat water. The priest watched through his glasses, and saw the gradual sun grow strong upon the canvas of the barkentine. The message from his world was at hand, yet to-day he scarcely cared so much. Sitting in his garden yesterday, he could never have imagined such a change. But his heart did not hail the barkentine as usual. Books, music, pale paper, and print— this was all that was coming to him, and some of its savour had gone; for the siren voice of Life had been speaking with him face to face, and in his spirit, deep down, the love of the world was restlessly answering it. Young Gaston showed more eagerness than the Padre over this arrival of the vessel that might be bringing Trovatore in the nick of time. Now he would have the chance, before he took his leave, to help rehearse the new music with the choir. He would be a missionary, too: a perfectly new experience.

" And you still forgive Verdi the sins of his youth?" he said to his host. "I wonder if you could forgive mine?"

"Verdi has left his behind him," retorted the Padre.

"But I am only twenty-five!" exclaimed Gaston, pathetically.

"Ah, don't go away soon!" pleaded the exile. It was the first unconcealed complaint that had escaped him, and he felt instant shame.

But Gaston was too much elated with the enjoyment of each new day to comprehend the Padre's soul. The shafts of another's pain might hardly pierce the bright armour of his gaiety. He mistook the priest's entreaty, for anxiety about his own happy spirit.

"Stay here under your care?" he asked. "It would do me no good, Padre. Temptation sticks closer to me than a brother!" and he gave that laugh of his which had disarmed severer judges than his host. "By next week I should have introduced some sin or other into your beautiful Garden of Ignorance here. It will be much safer for your flock if I go and join the other serpents at San Francisco. "

Soon after breakfast the Padre had his two mules saddled, and he and his guest set forth down the hills together to the shore. And, beneath the spell and confidence of pleasant, slow riding and the loveliness of everything, the young man talked freely of himself.

"And, seriously," said he, "if I missed nothing else at Santa Ysabel, I should long for— how shall I say it?— for insecurity, for danger, and of all kinds— not merely danger to the body. Within these walls, beneath these sacred bells, you live too safe for a man like me."

"Too safe!" These echoed words upon the lips of the pale Padre were a whisper too light, too deep, for Gaston's heedless ear.

"Why," the young man pursued in a spirit that was but half levity, "though I yield often to temptation, at times I have resisted it, and here I should miss the very chance to resist. Your garden could never be Eden for me, because temptation is absent from it."

"Absent!" Still lighter, still deeper, was this whisper that the Padre breathed.

"I must find life!" exclaimed Gaston. "And my fortune at the mines, I hope. I am not a bad fellow, Father. You can easily guess all the things I do. I have never, to my knowledge, harmed any one. I didn't even try to kill my adversary in an affair of honour. I gave him a mere flesh-wound, and by this time he must be quite recovered. He was my friend. But as he came between me—""

Gaston stopped, and the Padre, looking keenly at him, saw the violence that he had noticed in church pass like a flame over the young man's handsome face.

"There's nothing dishonourable," said Gaston, answering the priest's look. And then, because this look made him not quite at his ease: "Perhaps a priest might feel obliged to say it was dishonourable. She and her father were— a man owes no fidelity before he is— but you might say that had been dishonourable. "

"I have not said so, my son."

"I did what every gentleman would do," insisted Gaston.

"And that is often wrong!" said the Padre, gently and gravely. "But I'm not your confessor."

"No," said Gaston, looking down. "And it is all over. It will not begin again. Since leaving New Orleans I have traveled an innocent journey straight to you. And when I make my fortune I shall be in a position to return and—"

"Claim the pressed flower?" suggested the Padre. He did not smile.

"Ah, you remember how those things are!" said Gaston; and he laughed and blushed.

"Yes," said the Padre, looking at the anchored barkentine, "I remember how those things are."

For a while the vessel and its cargo and the landed men and various business and conversations occupied them. But the freight for the mission ance seen to, there was not much else to detain them.

The barkentine was only a coaster like many others which had begun to fill the sea a little more of late years, and presently host and guest were riding homeward.

Side by side they rode, companions to the eye, but wide apart in mood; within the turbulent young figure of Gaston dwelt a spirit that could not be more at ease, while revolt was steadily kindling beneath the schooled and placid mask of the Padre.

Yet still the strangeness of his situation in such a remote, resourceless place came back as a marvel into the young man's lively mind. Twenty years in prison, he thought, and hardly aware of it! And he glanced at the silent priest. A man so evidently fond of music, of theaters, of the world, to whom pressed flowers had meant something once— and now contented to bleach upon these wastes! Not even desirous of a brief holiday, but finding an old organ and some old operas enough recreation! "It is his age, I suppose," thought Gaston. And then the notion of himself when he should be sixty occurred to him, and he spoke.

"Do you know, I do not believe," said he, "that I should ever reach such contentment as yours."

"Perhaps you will," said Padre Ignacio, in a low voice.

"Never!" declared the youth. ''It comes only to the few, I am sure."

"Yes. Only to the few," murmured the Padre.

"I am certain that it must be a great possession, " Gaston continued; "and yet— and yet—dear me! life is a splendid thing!"

"There are several ways to live it," said the Padre.

"Only one for me!" cried Gaston. " Action, men, women, things— to be there, to be known, to play a part, to sit in the front seats; to have people tell one another, 'There goes Gaston Villeré!' and to deserve one's prominence. Why, if I were Padre of Santa Ysabel del Mar for twenty years— no! for one year— do you know what I should have done? Some day it would have been too much for me. I should have left these savages to a pastor nearer their own level, and I should have ridden down this cañon upon my mule, and stepped on board the barkentine, and gone back to my proper sphere. You will understand, sir, that I am far from venturing to make any personal comment. I am only thinking what a world of difference lies between natures that can feel as alike as we do upon so many subjects. Why, not since leaving New Orleans have I met any one with whom I could talk, except of the weather and the brute interests common to us all. That such a one as you should be here is like a dream."

"But it is not a dream," said the Padre.

"And, sir— pardon me if I do say this— are you not wasted at Santa Vsabel del Mar? I have seen the priests at the other missions. They are— the sort of good men that I expected. But are you needed to save such souls as these?"

"There is no aristocracy of souls," said the Padre, again whispering.

"But the body and the mind!" cried Gaston. "My God, are they nothing? Do you think that they are given to us for nothing but a trap? You cannot teach such a doctrine with your library there. And how about all the cultivated men and women away from whose quickening society the brightest of us grow numb? You have held out. But will it be for long? Are you never to save any souls of your own kind? Are not twenty years of mesclados enough? No, no!" finished young Gaston, hot with his unforeseen eloquence; "I should ride down some morning and take the barkentine."

Padre Ignacio was silent for a space.

"I have not offended you?" asked the young man.

"No. Anything but that. You are surprized that I should— choose— to stay here. Perhaps you may have wondered how I came to be here at all?"

"I had not intended any impertinent—"

"Oh no. Put such an idea out of your head, my son. You may remember that I was going to make you a confession about my operas. Let us sit down in this shade."

So they picketed the mules near the stream and sat down.

iv

"YOU HAVE seen," began Padre Ignacio, "what sort of a man I— was once. Indeed, it seems very strange to myself that you should have been here not twenty-four hours yet, and know so much of me. For there has come no one else at all"— the Padre paused a moment and mastered the un- steadiness that he had felt approaching ia his voice— "there has been no one else to whom I have talked so freely. In my early days I had no thought of being a priest. My parents destined me for a diplomatic career. There was plenty of money and— and all the rest of it; for by inheritance came to me the acquaintance of many people whose names you would be likely to have heard of. Cities, people of fashion, artists— the whole of it was my element and my choice; and by-and-by I married, not only where it was desirable, but where I loved. Then for the first time Death laid his staff upon my enchantment, and I understood many things that had been only words to me hitherto. To have been a husband for a year, and a father for a moment, and in that moment to lose all— this unblinded me. Looking back, it seemed to me that I had never done anything except for myself all my days. I left the world. In due time I became a priest and lived in my own country. But my worldly experience and my secular education had given to my opinions a turn too liberal for the place where my work was laid. I was soon advised concerning this by those in authority over me. And since they could not change me and I could not change them, yet wished to work and to teach, the New World was suggested and I volunteered to give the rest of my life to missions. It was soon found that some one was needed here, and for this little place I sailed, and to these humble people I have dedicated my service. They are pastoral creatures of the soil. Their vineyard and cattle days are apt to be like the sun and storm around them— strong alike in their evil and in their good. All their years they live as children— children with men's passions given to them like deadly weapons, unable to measure the harm their impulses may bring. Hence, even in their crimes, their hearts will generally open soon to the one great key of love, while civilization makes locks which that key cannot always fit at the first turn. And coming to know this," said Padre Ignacio, fixing his eyes steadily upon Gaston, "you will understand how great a privilege it is to help such people, and how the sense of something accomplished— under God— should bring Contentment with Renunciation."

"Yes," said Gaston Villeré. Then, thinking of himself, "I can understand it in a man like you."

"Do not speak of me at all!" exclaimed the Padre, almost passionately. "But pray Heaven that you may find the thing yourself some day— Contentment with Renunciation— and never let it go."

"Amen!" said Gaston, strangely moved.

"That is the whole of my story," the priest continued, with no more of the recent stress in his voice. "And now I have talked to you about myself quite enough. But you must have my confession." He had now resumed entirely his half-playful tone. "I was just a little mistaken, you see— too self-reliant, perhaps— when I supposed, in my first missionary ardour, that I could get on without any remembrance of the world at all. I found that I could not. And so I have taught the old operas to my choir— such parts of them as are within our compass and suitable for worship. And certain of my friends still alive at home are good enough to remember this taste of mine and to send me each year some of the new music that I should never hear of otherwise. Then we study these things also. And although our organ is a miserable affair, Felipe manages very cleverly to make it do. And while the voices are singing these operas, especially the old ones, what harm is there if sometimes the priest is thinking of something else? So there's my confession! And now, whether Trovatore is come or not, I shall not allow you to leave us until you have taught all you know of it to Felipe."

The new opera, however, had duly ar- rived. And as he turned its pages Padre Ignacio was quick to seize at once upon the music that could be taken into his church. Some of it was ready fitted. By that afternoon Felipe and his choir could have rendered "Ah! se l'error t' ingombra" without slip or falter.

Those were strange rehearsals of Il Trovatore upon this California shore. For the Padre looked to Gaston to say when they went too fast, or too slow, and to correct their emphasis. And since it was hot, the little Erard piano was carried each day out into the mission garden. There, in the cloisters among the jessamine, the orange blossoms, the oleanders, in the presence of the round yellow hills and the blue triangle of sea, the Miserere was slowly learned. The Mexicans and Indians gathered, swarthy and black-haired, around the tinkling instrument that Felipe played; and presiding over them were young Gaston and the pale Padre, walking up and down the paths, beating time or singing now one part and now another. And so it was that the wild cattle on the uplands would hear Trovatore hummed by a passing vaquero, while the same melody was filling the streets of the far-off world.

For three days Gaston Villeré remained, at Santa Ysabel del Mar; and though not a word of restlessness came from him, his host could read San Francisco and the gold-mines in his countenance. No, the young man could not have stayed here for twenty years! And the Padre forbore urging his guest to extend his visit.

"But the world is small," the guest declared at parting. "Some day it will not be able to spare you any longer. And then we are sure to meet. But you shall hear from me soon, at any rate. "

Again, as upon the first evening, the two exchanged a few courtesies, more graceful and particular than we, who have not time, and fight no duels, find worth a man's while at the present day. For duels are gone, which is a very good thing, and with them a certain careful politeness, which is a pity; but that is the way in the eternal profit and loss. So young Gaston rode northward out of the mission, back to the world and his fortune; and the Padre stood watching the dust after the rider had passed from sight. Then he went into his room with a drawn face. But appearances at least had been kept up to the end; the youth would never know of the older man's unrest.

v

TEMPTATION had arrived with Gaston, but was destined to make a longer stay at Santa Ysabeldel Mar. Yetit was perhapsa week before the priest knew this guest was come to abide with him. The guest could be discreet, could withdraw, was not at first importunate.

Sail away on the barkentine? A wild notion, to be sure! although fit enough to enter the brain of such a young scape- grace. The Padre shook his head and smiled affectionately when he thought of Gaston Villeré. The youth's handsome, reckless countenance would shine out, smiling, in his memory, and he repeated Auber's old remark, "Is it the good Lord, or is it merely the devil, that always makes me have a weakness for rascals?"

Sail away on the barkentine! Imagine taking leave of the people here—of Felipe! In what words should he tell the boy to go on industriously with his music? No, this was not imaginable! The mere parting alone would make it for ever impossible to think of such a thing. "And then," he said to himself each new morning, when he looked out at the ocean, "I have given to them my life. One does not take back.a gift."

Pictures of his departure began to shine and melt in his drifting fancy. He saw himself explaining to Felipe that now his presence was wanted elsewhere; that there would come a successor to take care of Santa Ysabel— a younger man, more useful, and able to visit sick people at a distance. "For I am old now. I should not be long here in any case." He stopped and pressed his hands together; he had caught his Temptation in the very act. Now he sat staring at his Temptation's face, close to him, while there in the triangle two ships went sailing by.

One morning Felipe told him that the barkentine was here on its return voyage south. "Indeed?" said the Padre, coldly. "The things are ready to go, I think." For the vessel called for mail and certain boxes that the mission sent away. Felipe left the room in wonder at the Padre's manner. But the priest was laughing secretly to see how little it was to him where the barken- tine was, or whether it should be coming or going. But in the afternoon, at his piano, he found himself saying, "Other ships call here, at any rate." And then for the first time he prayed to be delivered from his thoughts. Vet presently he left his seat and looked out of the window for a sight of the barkentine; but it was gone.

The season of the wine-making passed, and the preserving of all the fruits that the mission fields grew. Lotions and medicines were distilled from garden herbs. Perfume was manufactured from the petals of flowers and certain spices, and presents of it des- patched to San Fernando and Ventura, and to friends at other places; for the Padre had a special receipt. As the time ran on, two or three visitors passed a night with him; and presently there was a word at various missions that Padre Ignacio had begun to show his years. At Santa Ysabel del Mar they whispered, "The Padre is not well." Yet he rode a great deal over the hills by himself, and down the cañon very often, stopping where he had sat with Gaston, to sit alone and look up and down, now at the hills above, and now at the ocean below. Among his parishioners he had certain troubles to soothe, certain wounds to heal; a home from which he was able to drive jealousy; a girl whom he bade her lover set right. But all said, "The Padre is unwell." And Felipe told them that the music seemed nothing to him any more; he never asked for his Dixit Dominus nowadays. Then for a short time he was really in bed, feverish with the two voices that spoke to him without ceasing. "You have given your life," said one voice. "And therefore," said the other, "have earned the right to go home and die." "You are winning better rewards in the service of God," said the first voice. ''God can be better served in other places, " answered the second. As he lay listening he saw Seville again, and the trees of Aranhal, where he had been born. The wind was blowing through them, and in their branches he could hear the nightingales. 'Empty! Empty!" he said, aloud. And he lay for two days and nights hearing the wind and the nightingales in the far trees of Aranhal. But Felipe, watching, only heard the Padre crying through the hours, Empty! Empty!"

Then the wind in the trees died down, and the Padre could get out of bed, and soon be in the garden. But the voices within him still talked all the while as he sat watching the sails when they passed between the headlands. Their words, falling for ever the same way, beat his spirit sore, like blows upon flesh already bruised. If he could only change what they said, he would rest.

"Has the Padre any mail for Santa Barbara?" asked Felipe. "The ship bound southward should be here to-morrow."

"I will attend to it," said the priest, not moving. And Felipe stole away.

At Felipe's words the voices had stopped, as a clock finishes striking. Silence, strained like expectation, filled the Padre's soul. But in place of the voices came old sights of home again, the waving trees at Aranhal; then it would be Rachel for a moment, declaiming tragedy while a houseful of faces that he knew by name watched her; and through all the panorama rang the pleasant laugh of Gaston. For a while in the evening the Padre sat at his Erard playing Trovatore. Later, in his sleepless bed he lay, saying now and then: "To die at home! Surely I may be granted at least this." And he listened for the inner voices. But they were not speaking any more, and the black hole of silence grew more dreadful to him than their arguments. Then the dawn came in at his window, and he lay watching its gray grow warm into colour, until suddenly he sprang from his bed and looked at the sea. Blue it lay, sap- phire-hued and dancing with points of gold, lovely and luring as a charm; and over its triangle the south-bound ship was approaching. People were on board who in a few weeks would be sailing the Atlantic, while he would stand here looking out of this same window.

"Merciful God!" he cried, sinking on his knees. "Heavenly Father, Thou seest this evil in my heart! Thou knowest that my weak hand cannot pluck it out! My strength is breaking, and still Thou makest my burden heavier than I can bear." He stopped, breathless and trembling. The same visions were flitting across his closed eyes; the same silence gaped like a dry crater in his soul. "There is no help in earth or heaven," he said, very quietly; and he dressed himself.

vi

IT was still so early that few of the Indians were stirring, and one of these saddled the Padre's mule. Felipe was not yet awake, and for a moment it came in the priest's mind to open the boy's door softly, look at him once more, and come away. But this he did not, nor even take a farewell glance at the church and organ. He bade nothing farewell, but, turning his back upon his room and his garden, rode down the cafion.

The vessel lay at anchor, and some one had landed from her and was talking with other men on the shore. Seeing the priest slowly coming, this stranger approached to meet him.

"You are connected with the mission here?" he inquired.

"Perhaps it is with you that Gaston Villeré stopped?"

"The young man from New Orleans? Yes. Iam Padre Ignacio."

"Then you'll save me a journey. I promised him to deliver these into your own hands."

The stranger gave them to him.

"A bag of gold-dust, " he explained, "and a letter. I wrote it at his dictation while he was dying. He lived hardly an hour afterward."

The stranger bowed his head at tne stricken cry which his news elicited from the priest, who, after a few moments' vain effort to speak, opened the letter and read:

My dear Friend,

It is through no man's fault but mine that I have come to this. I have had plenty of luck, and lately have been counting the days until I should return home. But last night heavy news from New Orleans reached me, and I tore the pressed flower to pieces. Under the first smart and humiliation of broken faith I was rendered desperate, and picked a needless quarrel. Thank God, it is I who have the punishment. My dear friend, as I lie here, leaving a world that no man ever loved more, I have come to understand you. For you and your mission have been much in my thoughts. It is strange how good can be done, not at the time when it is intended, but afterwards; and you have done this good to me. I say over your words, "Contentment with Renunciation," and believe that at this last hour I have gained something like what you would wish me to feel. For I do not think that I desire it otherwise now. My life would never have been of service, I am afraid. You are the last person in this world who has spoken serious words to me, and I want you to know that now at length I value the peace of Santa Ysabel as I could never have done but for seeing your wisdom and goodness. You spoke of a new organ for your church. Take the gold-dust that will reach you with this, and do what you will with it. Let me at least in dying have helped some one. And since there is no aristocracy in souls— you said that to me; do you remember?— perhaps you will say a mass for this departing soul of mine. I only wish, since my body must go under ground in a strange country, that it might have been at Santa Ysabel del Mar, where your feet would often pass.

"At Santa Ysabel del Mar, where your feet would often pass." The priest repeated this final sentence aloud, without being aware of it.

"Those are the last words he ever spoke," said the stranger, "except bidding me good-by. "

"You knew him well, then?"

"No; not until after he was hurt. I'm the man he quarreled with. "

The priest looked at the ship that would sail onward this afternoon.

Then a smile of great beauty passed over his face, and he addressed the stranger. "I thank you. You will never know what you have done for me."

"It is nothing," answered the stranger, awkwardly. "He told me you set great store on a new organ."

Padre Ignacio turned away from the ship and rode back through the gorge. When he had reached the shady place where once he had sat with Gaston Villeré, he dis- mounted and again sat there, alone by the stream, for many hours. Long rides and outings had been lately so much his cus- tom that no one thought twice of his absence; and when he returned to the mission in the afternoon, the Indian took his mule, and he went to his seat in the garden. But it was with another look that he watched the sea; and presently the sail moved across the blue triangle, and soon it had rounded the headland.

With it departed Temptation for ever.

Gaston's first coming was in the Padre's mind; and, as the vespers bell began to ring in the cloistered silence, a fragment of Auber's plaintive tune passed like a sigh across his memory:

For the repose of Gaston's young, world- loving spirit, they sang all that he had taught them of Il Trovatore.

After this day, Felipe and all those who knew and loved the Padre best, saw serenity had returned to his features; but for some reason they began to watch those features with more care.

"Still," they said, "he is not old." And as the months went by they would repeat: "We shall have him yet for many years."

Thus the season rolled round, bringing the time for the expected messages from the world. Padre Ignacio was wont to sit in his garden, waiting for the ship, as of old.

"As of old," they said, cheerfully, who saw him. But Renunciation with Contentment they could not see; it was deep down in his silent and thankful heart.

One day Felipe went to call him from his garden seat, wondering why the ringing of the bell had not brought him to vespers. Breviary in lap, and hands folded upon it, the Padre sat among his flowers, looking at the sea. Out there amid the sapphire-blue, tranquil and white, gleamed the sails of the barkentine. It had brought him a new message, not from this world; and Padre Ignacio was slowly borne in from the garden, while the mission-bell tolled for the passing of a human soul.

________________

11: The Dimpled Dumb-Bell

Helen Hysell
fl. 1920s

Saucy Stories, 1 Aug 1922

TRIP HAGAR regained his balance and stared at the bald-headed man who had pushed him away from the limousine door. The man was undoubtedly old, and even his white mustache appeared feeble as it drooped dejectedly over his thin, loose lips. Yet it was he, the owner of the car, and not the athletic-looking chauffeur who had thrust Trip aside.

Hagar was not in the habit of lurking about rich men's limousines. His business— or perhaps it might better be called a profession in this day of specialization— had to do with those same rich men when not accompanied by chauffeurs or other paid protectors.

Trip was a hold-up man of discrimination and distinction. He worked at night. This afternoon he had merely paused to roll a cigarette and was gazing absently at the blue-and-gold monogram on the door of the car when the owner came out of the Hotel Gregory and crossed the sidewalk.

There was no room for surprise or anger in Trip's eyes as he stared through the window of the car as it moved slowly away. Pie wanted, if possible, to catch another glimpse of the blue-green stone that adorned the old man's left hand.

Trip knew a dealer in antique jewelry who would pay in the neighborhood of five thousand dollars for the Minibilh, the historic turquoise that had ornamented a Shah of Persia in the year 1688.

Trip believed he had recognized this valuable jewel on the hand that had thrust him so roughly away from the limousine.

"Who was that guy?" he asked of the grinning doorman at the Hotel Gregory.

"Some punch— considering."

He gazed ruefully after the receding car and reflected that the man was probably too old to live through the shock of being held up and robbed. No doubt his heart was weakened by age.

The doorman continued to grin. "That's Darius Blanding— his married daughter lives here." He interrupted his explanation to laugh. "Sort of surprised you, didn't he? Well, you never can tell about these old boys with the young ideas. They—"

But Trip had sudden important business at the Public Library.

His alert-young-business-man stride led straight to the big reading-room on the third floor of the building. Fifteen minutes, and he had freshened his memory as to the history of a certain turquoise pictured in the volume he had requested at the desk. He had also discovered that the stone was now in the collection of Darius Blanding.

Once more in Fifth Avenue. Trip strolled contemplatively in the sunshine. In the back of his busy mind danced the waxy luster of a bluish-green oval, dark and exquisitely colored and set in dull bronze. The ring was worth five thousand dollars to Berlitz, the antique jeweler, and Trip wanted the five thousand.

A hold-up was impractical and dangerous. Trip was careful to select his victims for their appearance of health as well as of wealth. House-breaking was equally impractical and dangerous. The ring had an air of permanence upon the man's finger, as though it were seldom removed. And burglars are notorious for their habit of staying as far as possible from the householder they desire to rob.

Besides, Trip did not know a burglar he could trust, and he was determined to secure the greatest possible amount of the five thousand dollars for himself.

His walk carried him once more past the door of the Hotel Gregory.

Trip ignored the doorman but recalled his grinning, philosophic remarks concerning old men with young ideas. Immediately, the problem was solved. Trip darted into the hotel and telephoned an invitation for dinner to Dora Dell.

Dora was delighted. Dora was always delighted when Trip condescended to notice her. But Trip didn't condescend often. In his estimation, Dora was a dumb-bell. No amount of fluttering eyelids and dimpling smiles could counteract the fact that she was scatterbrained.

However, Dora was young, and exactly the type who could obtain the turquoise from Blanding through sentimental channels.

Pretty in a vain and vapid way. Dora believed that she was clever enough to be useful. And so she was, up to a certain point. Unfortunately, trouble was very likely to begin where her pictorial usefulness ceased.

Trip had met some of this trouble and vanquished it a few months before, and had declared himself finished with Dora. He had, at that time, acquired a large amount of incriminating evidence against her. Therefore, Trip felt equal to the task of dismissing Dora before she put her small mind to work on improving his plan for obtaining the turquoise.

"The old guy looks easy," he told her as they finished their dinner at Chin Low's restaurant. "All you have to do is follow him around until he notices you— and any man with half an eye would notice you—"

Dora flashed him a smile and dimpled delightedly. Trip frowned and went on with his instructions:

"Your job is to get him to let you wear the ring while you eat somewhere. Ber— a jeweler I know— is all set to make a duplicate of it the minute he sees the color of the stone and the bronze. He's had the measurements for years and he can carry the color in his eye."

"My eyes are bluer than any turquoise that ever grew," dimpled Dora; "you told me that the first time you saw me."

"Ancient history," snapped Trip. "You're to keep me posted as to where you're going with the old boy and I'll have Ber— , my friend, go there, too. All he needs is one little glimpse and the thing's done."

"My, you're getting handsome, Trip," said Dora. "I never saw you—"

"Cut out the mush stuff, this is business !" Trip was finding it increasingly difficult to be patient with Dora and her dimpled flirtatiousness. "Do you understand what you're to do?"

Dora nodded sulkily. Then a question occurred to her.

"How can a man carry a color in his eye?"

"That's his job," sighed Trip. "All you have to do is to get the ring for a minute and let him see it. After that's done, I'll tell you what to do next—"

"I didn't know turquoises were worth much," said Dora, forgetting to dimple. She could not think and flirt at the same time.

"You're a dumb-bell," Trip muttered.

"This ring is valuable. It's got seven pages of history in a book. Understand? All about how some Persian king; found it at the bottom of an enchanted lake and—"

"How do you know this is the one?" inquired Dora as she searched for her powder-puff. "It sounds like a fairytale to me."

"How do I know you ask foolish questions?" demanded Trip. "Stop thinking, I'm weary."

"Oh," said Dora, and her eyelids fluttered ravishingly. "Then let's go somewhere and dance. I love to dance with you. You're so big and strong and—"

A WEEK LATER, Dora Dell was dimpling for the delight of Darius Blanding. She gazed happily about the Broadway restaurant to which she had begged prettily to be taken and where she would, when the time came, show Trip Hagar's "friend" the Shah's turquoise.

"The incongruity of our little dinner charms me, Miss Dora," said Darius Blanding in a pompously playful attempt to make conversation. "Your youth takes twenty years off my life."

Dora's eyelids fluttered as she sought for a suitable reply. She had enjoyed the anchovies and she liked the music, but she didn't like Blanding and she didn't understand half he said. She knew, however, that she was charming whether she talked or not, so she smiled and glanced at the turquoise ring on her companion's finger.

"Oh," she cried in childish pleasure. "You're wearing a ring exactly the color of my eyes!" She gazed upward that he might see the color of her eyes.

Darius Blanding allowed his thin lips to relax beneath the drooping mustache. "You're right," he smiled. "But this stone is many centuries older than your eyes, my child."

Dora extended her hand across the table. "Is it an— an— antique?" she asked. "I'd love to touch something that is centuries old."

Blanding hesitated a moment, then slipped the ring from his finger and laid it in her pink palm.

"Be careful of it," he admonished sharply. "It's very valuable— extremely valuable. A Persian Shah once numbered it among his favorite jewels. I'm far from so exalted a ruler— though I'm probably much richer in dollars and cents—"

"Oh," murmured Dora, "are you rich?" She slipped the ring on the index finger of her right hand and proceeded to demolish a French pastry. "How much could you sell it for?"

"There has never been a more beautiful stone," said Blanding, "and it is priceless, so far as selling goes."

Dora dimpled and gurgled over the color of the turquoise and the oddness of the setting. "It must have cost you a lot," she said in an awed voice.

Darius Blanding frowned reminiscently, then smiled in triumphant recollection. "It cost the man who refused to sell me the stone his fortune and his life," he said.

Dora's eyes widened and she shuddered charmingly.

"How?" she whispered.

"He wouldn't sell it so— I— but a pretty little girl like you knows nothing of business. Suffice it to say that my financial power drove his firm to the wall, and he killed himself. I took the ring from his widow."

The expression on Blanding's face was not pleasant to see. Dora shuddered again and glanced across the polished dancing floor at a short, florid man who was endeavoring to catch her attention. Gradually it came to her that this must be the antique jeweler who wanted to see the ring. For a moment she gazed questioningly into his eyes.

At a faint nod from the man, Dora cried, "Oh !" in well-simulated surprise, and sprang to her feet.

"There's an old friend of my uncle's," she murmured to her companion. "Excuse me a minute—" She darted away to show the ring to Trip's confederate.

"Is it the real one?" she demanded breathlessly as she held out her hand.

The short man rose quickly and, bowing low over her hand, smiled effusively. "Don't be so open about it," he said ; "the old man's watching you like a hawk." To an observer across the room it would seem that he paid her a compliment.

Dora glanced over her shoulder and smiled bright reassurance to the deserted Blanding.

"How much is it worth ?" she asked of the jeweler. "Trip said you could carry the color in your eye. Can you?"

"You'd better go back now," he advised shortly.

"How much is the ring worth?" insisted Dora. "A thousand dollars?"

Again the jeweler bowed over her hand, taking a last, lingering look at the turquoise on her index finger.

"At least a thousand," he assured her. "Now run along before you get into trouble. And make a date with the old boy for Wednesday evening. I'll have the fake finished by then."

Dora returned to her dinner, purring apologies. "I'm sorry I ran away like that," she said. "It wasn't nice and— just to prove I'm sorry, I'll let you take me somewhere— Wednesday evening."

"That will give me great pleasure, Miss Dora," said Blanding. "We'll take a nice long drive— perhaps go out to my country place for dinner."

"Oh, Mr. Blanding, I— I couldn't—" Dora tried to look shocked and made a fairly convincing success of the attempt.

"Why?" asked Blanding indulgently.

"We'd be alone and— oh, I couldn't go to your country home— it wouldn't be—"

"Then we'll just drive around the city and—"

Dora paused upon the threshold of consent.

Blanding followed up his imagined advantage by a promise. "You may wear the Shah's favorite jewel as long as you are in the car," he added, and smiled in satisfaction as Dora agreed.

WITH THE copy of the turquoise ring safely tucked away in the pocket of her trim blue-serge jacket, and the original glowing dully on the index finger of her right hand, Dora Dell sat in the limousine beside Darius Blanding on Wednesday evening.

Conversation had long since lapsed for want of kindred interests and no amorous advances had come to take the place of words. They had circled Central Park at least five times and Dora wondered why people talked of the beauty of New York's playground.

They had passed dozens of amorous couples in cabs, in motors and on foot. Dora wondered how it would seem to be kissed by a man who wore a long, drooping mustache. She wondered, too, how the jeweler could carry a color in his eye long enough to match the Shah's turquoise so perfectly that she couldn't have told them apart had she seen them together.

Her eyelids fluttered sleepily and she suppressed a frequently recurring yawn.

"I must go home in a little while," said Dora at last, "it's getting late."

Blanding started as though surprised at her presence in the car. "It's nearly eleven o'clock," he said after a moment, and slipped his arm stiffly about Dora's waist. Dora sighed and allowed her head to rest briefly upon his shoulder.

"I was beginning to think you didn't like me," she said softly.

"Women, especially pretty women, are dangerous," said Blanding, and kissed her suddenly. His drooping mustache dragged unpleasantly across her lips and Dora forgot, for the moment, her role of siren. She thought only of her distaste for her ancient admirer and jerked away from him pettishly.

Darius Blanding was hurt. More, he was angry. He moved to the far corner of the seat and barked an order into the speaking tube at his elbow. The car swerved from the park and sped down Fifth Avenue toward the corner of Thirty-third Street.

Dora recalled the purpose of this ride and was instantly contrite. She dared not give this austere old man an imitation of his valuable turquoise, as long as he was displeased with her. He might take the precaution of examining it closely before he allowed her to leave the car at her corner.

She grew more and more nervous as the time of transfer drew nearer with the passing of the short blocks. Her faith in the perfection of the duplicate ring weakened. It didn't seem possible to her that a man could carry the exact color of the Shah's turquoise in his eye. It was such a queer color, too. But if she did not make the exchange tonight, Trip Hagar would insist that she try again and Dora didn't want to make another engagement with Blanding.

She moved insinuatingly to her companion's side and rubbed her powdered cheek against his black coat sleeve. She sighed softly and looked up into his face.

Blanding sat, stiffly erect, staring at the athletic back of his chauffeur. Dora sighed again and glanced from the window. They were nearing her corner. In another minute—

She took the left hand of Darius Blanding and replaced it about her waist. "Even if you don't like me," she murmured as she dropped the genuine turquoise into her pocket, "there's your pretty ring." She slipped the duplicate ring upon his finger and gave his hand a tender pat of farewell. "I'm sorry I have to go home so early."

The car drew up to the curb and the chauffeur stood alertly beside the open door. Dora allowed her companion a veiled glimpse of her turquoise eyes and a flash of dimples as she stepped quickly to the street.

"It's been a nice ride," she said.

"Thank you," replied Blanding, "Goodbye." His tone was courteously cold and totally lacking in regret. He neither asked for her address nor suggested that she telephone him.

With a sigh of relief, Dora saw the car move away from the corner, carrying Darius Blanding out of her life. It hadn't been a nice ride and only the possession of the Shah's favorite jewel compensated for her trouble in making a temporary playmate of so old and tiresome a man. And, the moment she telephoned Trip Hagar of her success, she would have nothing but a paltry hundred dollars in return for the boredom of being pleasant to Darius Blanding.

Her small fist clutched protectingly about the ring and in her brain grew a plan whereby she could keep the ancient stone a little while. She stepped into a drug-store telephone-booth and dropped a coin into the five-cent slot.

Dora's voice trembled as she gave the number of Trip's phone to the operator. She swallowed with difficulty when he answered.

"This is Dora," she managed to say. "I—" she faltered, fearful lest the untruth she was about to utter would not ring true.

"Well?" said Trip suspiciously.

"I— I didn't—" again she faltered, and Trip's suspicions crystallized into swift anger.

"You failed, I suppose," he bellowed. "I might have known you wouldn't have brains enough to carry through. You're the dumbest dumb-bell that—"

Dora didn't mind being called a "dumbbell" ordinarily. But to be told, in all seriousness, that she wasn't clever enough to accomplish so simple a task as the exchange of the rings, had proved to be—

Dora's slow anger was aroused. Her cheeks flushed under the heavy coating of powder and she glared ferociously into the transmitter of the telephone.

"If that's the way you're going to talk, I won't do it at all," said Dora.

Trip deemed it wise to change his tactics. "Couldn't you make the trade tonight?" he asked more civilly. "It ought to have been easy in the dark and everything."

"It was easy," said Dora and smiled slyly as she recalled the manner of the exchange, "but I thought it best to wait until I see him again on— on Friday."

"Friday?" shouted Trip. "Berlitz wants that stone not later than tomorrow night. Won't you ever learn not to try to think with that flea-sized brain of yours ?"

Dora slashed the receiver upon it hook without replying to Trip's final insult. She had intended to give him the ring on Friday, pretending that she had had another engagement with Blanding. But Trip Hagar had dared to say she could not think. Well, she would show him that she was cleverer than he.

Her eyelids fluttered furiously and the dimples in her flaming cheeks became deep, hard lines. She'd show Trip Hagar a thing or two!

The turquoise was beautiful and she liked it. She wanted to keep it, and now that Trip had acted so mean she would keep it. Trip couldn't make her give it up if she didn't want to, and she'd see to it that he didn't take it away from her by force.

At the door of the drug-store, Dora paused, then hurried to the shelf on which lay a thick and dog-eared telephone book.

In his anger, Trip had accidentally mentioned the name of the jeweler who had made the duplicate that Dora had slipped on Blanding's finger. If she could persuade the jeweler to make a second duplicate of the turquoise, all would be well.

Dora ordered an ice-cream soda and proceeded to lay her plans for showing Trip a thing or two.

FRIDAY NIGHT at eleven o'clock, Dora telephoned to Trip. Her voice, as she asked him to meet her at the Automat nearby, was cheerful and confident. Trip hastened to the tryst, believing that she had succeeded in making the exchange of rings.

"That's your duplicate," said Dora bluntly. She passed it to him, wrapped loosely in a paper napkin. "I'm sorry but— there it is."

Too surprised to be angry, too disappointed to speak coherently, Trip gazed across the rim of his coffee cup at Dora's fluttering eyelids and dimpling smile. He reflected that she didn't look sorry.

"Blanding was leery," continued Dora energetically, "and he held my hand all the time I had the ring on. I'm sorry, but—"

Trip surreptitiously unwrapped the worthless bauble and eyed its waxy luster disgustedly. But he was not thinking of the imitation turquoise nor of the marvelous skill of the imitator. He was wondering why he doubted the authenticity of Dora's failure.

"You're pretty peppy for a total loss," he remarked.

For an instant Dora was frightened at this evidence of Trip's suspicion. Then she rallied to her own defense.

"Why wouldn't I be peppy?" she demanded gaily. "I'm through being nice to that old dub forever. You've no idea how—"

"You've got to make another date with him and try it again," declared Trip. "This means money."

Sudden hatred flared in Dora's eyes. She shuddered at the memory of Binding's brief kiss.

"I don't care what it means," she said hotly, "I'm through being an old man's darling and— I'm through being a young man's slave !"

She rose and strolled past the cashier, through the small lobby with its soda fountain, and walked alone into the deserted street.

Trip's suspicions became absolute knowledge as he gazed after her. There was a flaunting assurance about the slender shoulders and well-poised head that hinted of bravado.

"That dumb-bell's double-crossed me I'll bet a—" his eyes fell upon the cashier—"I'll bet a nickel she's double-crossed me. But— I've got to prove it.'"

TWELVE HOURS later Trip risked his liberty by appearing at the Wall Street office of Darius Blanding. His businesslike manner served him well below the dead-line where men of his profession were not allowed to go. His steady nerve guided his tongue as he told the reception clerk that his name was Higgins and that his business was antique jewelry.

Entering the severely plain office of the great financier, Trip caught a glimpse of a blue-green stone as Blanding brushed an imaginary hair from his high forehead. For an instant Trip believed that he had seen the original turquoise, but he could not be sure.

"My client has commissioned me to purchase the Minibilh turquoise, Mr. Blanding," began the pseudo Mr. Higgins briskly, "providing, of course, that the one you have is genuine."

The old man shook his head. "The stone is not for sale."

The reply was in the nature of a dismissal. Blanding glanced suggestively at the door.

Trip smiled pleasantly and held his ground. He was determined to look closely at the turquoise before he left the office. He wanted proof of Dora's deception before he took steps to frighten her into giving up the treasure that she might not have.

"Are you sure," he asked, "that yours is the famous Minibilh?"

Darius Blanding looked up quickly, angrily. "Examine it and decide for yourself,'' he said shortly as he laid the bronze ring upon the desk.

Trip's hand trembled as he lifted the ring. He had a duplicate in his pocket and, if Dora had told the truth about her failure to make the exchange, Trip intended to attempt it, even while the old man watched him. With a sigh that was half relief and half gasping fury, he laid the ring upon the desk and moved toward the door.

"My client will be very much disappointed," he said, "but, personally, I do not wonder that you refuse to part with the stone."

Blanding allowed himself the luxury of a chuckle. "The stone will never be on the market again," he said. "Tell your client that he may as well give up hope. I shall wear the Minibilh turquoise to my grave." He glanced affectionately at the ring as he returned it to his finger.

Trip Hagar lost no time in escaping from lower New York Alternately cold with fear lest the old man discover his loss and send out an alarm, and burning with anger toward Dora, who had tricked him and Berlitz who had aided her, he hurried uptown. Undoubtedly, the jeweler had advised Dora to wait a few days before turning the turquoise over to him.

Knowing Dora, Trip was able to anticipate her actions while the valuable stone was in her possession. She would reason that the ring was safe as long as she kept it and herself out of sight. She would not venture from her room excepting at night, and then only long enough to eat her dinner. During these brief absences she would probably hide the ring in her room rather than on her person.

To a casual observer on the subway, Trip was merely an alert young businessman, hastening to a luncheon engagement. But, had it been possible to read Trip's mind, this same observer would have detected no intention of wasting time in a restaurant. He was concerned solely with a certain rooming-house from the front windows of which he could see the door of the house in which Dora lived.

All he had to do was to secure that room for a week and wait until he saw Dora leave the house. Then he would search her room, find the turquoise, and compel Berlitz to pay ten thousand instead of five thousand for it.

WITHOUT REGRET, Dora Dell remained indoors throughout the sultry Saturday. She had proved herself cleverer than Trip Hagar and she patted herself upon the mental back. She was cleverer than Berlitz, too. He thought she was going to
sell the turquoise to him, but she wasn't. The stone was hers and she meant to keep it.

She had thought of a wonderful hiding place for her treasure— a place where no one would ever think of looking. And at dark she hurried to a nearby restaurant for her dinner, serenely confident that the ring was safe no matter how thoroughly her room might be searched.

Still calm and unruffled, Dora returned to her room. At the door she paused, her quick fear quieted by the sight of a cold cream jar upon the battered oak dresser. She picked her way carefully through the hopeless disorder of the room and caught up the cold-cream jar. Her hand trembled a little as she lifted the lid and thrust her finger through the perfumed cream to the bottom of the jar.

Then she laughed. What did she care about a disordered room, a mattress slashed by a razor-blade, a rug heaped in the center of the floor and covered with the contents of her dresser drawers? The searcher had not found the turquoise!

She laughed again and glanced into the mirror to note the pictorial effect, and saw a message scrawled upon the glass with a piece of soap.

"Blanding is wise," she read and her self-satisfaction crumbled. It had been easy to outwit Trip, whom she hated, but Blanding— he could call upon the police to help him.

It occurred to her that Trip had got word to Blanding in order to get even with her. Trip was mean enough to do a thing like that— he was mean enough to do anything. Hatred for the man with whom she had once thought herself in love flared anew and Dora shook a small fist defiantly at the writing upon the mirror.

"Blanding'll never get this ring," she declared as she clutched the cold-cream jar to her heart. "And neither will you, Trip Hagar! I'll smash the old thing first or I'll—"

Instantly her face cleared. Berlitz had told her the stone was worth a thousand dollars. She would sell him the ring before he found out that "Blanding was wise." Then she would go to Chicago to visit her married sister until it was safe to return to New York.

Still earning the cold-cream jar, Dora hurried out of the house and made her way to the dingy basement store of B. Berlitz. Behind her, a cap drawn down over his forehead, crept Trip Hagar.

They arrived at the store about the same time, but Trip remained outside until Berlitz and Dora were engaged in conversation.

Inside the store, Dora stated the purpose of her call.

"You said the turquoise you copied was worth a thousand dollars," she said. "I want fifteen hundred."

"Let's see it," answered Berlitz.

With a flourish, Dora lifted the lid of the cold-cream jar.

Intent upon the business of extracting the ring from its perfumed bed, she did not see the expression of horror upon the jeweler's florid face. She held the ring toward him. smiling proudly. Berlitz jerked it from her fingers and dashed to the workshop in the rear of the store. Dora waited impatiently during the moment he was gone.

"I want my fifteen hundred," she shrilled, as he returned. Then, as she saw the expression of despairing fury upon his face she paled and her lips began to tremble.

"Why, what's the matter?" she faltered. "Haven't you got the fifteen hundred?"

Berlitz nodded, then shook his head. "I've got it, but—"

The street door opened and closed with a bang. Dora gasped in fright.

"Where's that turquoise?" bellowed Trip, looking from the frightened Dora to the jeweler, and back again to Dora.

Dora nodded toward Berlitz. "He's got it," she said weakly. "Did— aren't you afraid Blanding will—?"

"Shut up about Blanding. Where's that turquoise?"

Berlitz opened his hand and disclosed a bronze ring set with a mottled, muddy green stone. Gone was all hint of the exquisite color of the turquoise; gone was all trace of its waxy luster.

Trip smiled contemptuously. "None of that!" he snarled. "Come through with the turquoise!"

"This is it," sighed Berlitz. "She's ruined it."

"Ruined it ?" Trip turned angrily upon Dora. "What have you done?" he demanded roughly.

"She has ruined the Minibilh turquoise," repeated Berlitz. "Nothing will counteract the effect of grease."

"Grease !" shouted Trip.

His eyes fell upon the innocent looking jar in which the ring had been hidden. He caught Dora by the shoulders and whirled her about to face him.

"What do you mean, ruining a valuable stone like that?"

"I didn't do anything to it," sobbed Dora. "I only hid it while I went out to dinner. It wasn't in the cold cream more than an hour."

"An hour!" Berlitz laughed sharply. "In grease cream, fifteen minutes would have been enough."

Trip ignored the jeweler who had unconsciously assisted in destroying the turquoise by making the second duplicate. He retained his hold upon Dora's shoulder.

"Didn't you know that grease— any kind of grease— would soak into the stone and spoil the color?" he asked.

"I didn't know anything," sobbed Dora, "except that you were mean and said I couldn't think. And you searched my room and wrote that note and— I got scared and—"

"I'll say you didn't know anything and always will," agreed Trip hopelessly. "You thought I was mean when I told the truth and you thought yourself clever when you put the turquoise in grease cream and you thought Blanding was wise because I said so and—"

He stopped for breath and his hold upon her shoulder relaxed. He snatched up the cold-cream jar and eyed the label disgustedly.

"Guaranteed to contain no harmful ingredients," he read. "Guaranteed not to—" Trip lifted his arm high above his head. "You dumb-bell !"

Once more he hurled the insult in her face as the cold-cream jar crashed to the floor at his feet. "You dumb-bell!"

_______________

12: That Little Square Box

Arthur Conan Doyle

1859-1930

London Society, Christmas Annual 1881

Collected in: Mysteries and Adventures (1889)

Arthur Conan Doyle

"ALL ABOARD?" said the captain.

"All aboard, sir!" said the mate.

"Then stand by to let her go."

It was nine o'clock on a Wednesday morning.  The good ship Spartan was lying off Boston Quay with her cargo under hatches,her passengers shipped, and everything prepared for a start.  Thewarning whistle had been sounded twice; the final bell had beenrung.  Her bowsprit was turned towards England, and the hiss ofescaping steam showed that all was ready for her run of threethousand miles.  She strained at the warps that held her like agreyhound at its leash,

I have the misfortune to be a very nervous man.  A sedentary literary life has helped to increase the morbid love of solitude which, even in my boyhood, was one of my distinguishing characteristics.  As I stood upon the quarter-deck of the Transatlantic steamer, I bitterly cursed the necessity which drove me back to the land of my forefathers.  The shouts of the sailors, the rattle of the cordage, the farewells of my fellow-passengers, and the cheers of the mob, each and all jarred upon my sensitive nature.  I felt sad too.  An indescribable feeling, as of some impending calamity, seemed to haunt me.  The sea was calm, and the breeze light.  There was nothing to disturb the equanimity of the most confirmed of landsmen, yet I felt as if I stood upon the verge of a great though indefinable danger.  I have noticed that such presentiments occur often in men of my peculiar temperament, and that they are not uncommonly fulfilled.  There is a theory that it arises from a species of second-sight, a subtle spiritual communication with the future.  I well remember that Herr Raumer, the eminent spiritualist, remarked on one occasion that I was the most sensitive subject as regards supernatural phenomena that he had ever encountered in the whole of his wide experience. Be that as it may, I certainly felt far from happy as I threaded my way among the weeping, cheering groups which dotted the white decks of the good ship Spartan.  Had I known the experience which awaited me in the course of the next twelve hours I should even then at the last moment have sprung upon the shore, and made my escape from the accursed vessel.

"Time's up!" said the captain, closing his chronometer with a snap, and replacing it in his pocket.  "Time's up!" said the mate.  There was a last wail from the whistle, a rush of friends and relatives upon the land.  One warp was loosened, the gangway was being pushed away, when there was a shout from the bridge, and two men appeared, running rapidly down the quay.  They were waving their hands and making frantic gestures, apparently with the intention of stopping the ship.  "Look sharp!" shouted the crowd.

"Hold hard!" cried the captain.  "Ease her! stop her!  Up with the gangway!" and the two men sprang aboard just as the second warp parted, and a convulsive throb of the engine shot us clear of the shore.  There was a cheer from the deck, another from the quay, a mighty fluttering of handkerchiefs, and the great vessel ploughed its way out of the harbour, and steamed grandly away across the placid bay.

We were fairly started upon our fortnight's voyage.  There was a general dive among the passengers in quest of berths and luggage, while a popping of corks in the saloon proved that more than one bereaved traveller was adopting artificial means for drowning the pangs of separation.  I glanced round the deck and took a running inventory of my compagnons de voyage.  They presented the usual types met with upon these occasions.  There was no striking face among them.  I speak as a connoisseur, for faces are a specialty of mine.  I pounce upon a characteristic feature as a botanist does on a flower, and bear it away with me to analyse at my leisure, and classify and label it in my little anthropological museum.  There was nothing worthy of me here.  Twenty types of young America going to "Yurrup," a few respectable middle-aged couples as an antidote, a sprinkling of clergymen and professional men, young ladies, bagmen, British exclusives, and all the olla podrida of an ocean-going steamer.  I turned away from them and gazed back at the receding shores of America, and, as a cloud of remembrances rose before me, my heart warmed towards the land of my adoption. A pile of portmanteaus and luggage chanced to be lying on one side of the deck, awaiting their turn to be taken below.  With my usual love for solitude I walked behind these, and sitting on a coil of rope between them and the vessel's side, I indulged in a melancholy reverie.

I was aroused from this by a whisper behind me.  "Here's a quiet place," said the voice.  "Sit down, and we can talk it over in safety."

Glancing through a chink between two colossal chests, I saw that the passengers who had joined us at the last moment were standing at the other side of the pile.  They had evidently failed to see me as I crouched in the shadow of the boxes.  The one who had spoken was a tall and very thin man with a blue-black beard and a colourless face.  His manner was nervous and excited.  His companion was a short plethoric little fellow, with a brisk and resolute air.  He had a cigar in his mouth, and a large ulster slung over his left arm.  They both glanced round uneasily, as if to ascertain whether they were alone.

"This is just the place," I heard the other say.  They sat down on a bale of goods with their backs turned towards me, and I found myself, much against my will, playing the unpleasant part of eavesdropper to their conversation.

"Well, Muller," said the taller of the two, "we've got it aboard right enough."

"Yes," assented the man whom he had addressed as Muller, "it's safe aboard."

"It was rather a near go."

"It was that, Flannigan."

"It wouldn't have done to have missed the ship."

"No, it would have put our plans out."

"Ruined them entirely," said the little man, and puffed furiously at his cigar for some minutes.

"I've got it here," he said at last.

"Let me see it."

"Is no one looking?"

"No, they are nearly all below."

"We can't be too careful where so much is at stake," said Muller, as he uncoiled the ulster which hung over his arm, and disclosed a dark object which he laid upon the deck.  One glance at it was enough to cause me to spring to my feet with an exclamation of horror.  Luckily they were so engrossed in the matter on hand that neither of them observed me.  Had they turned their heads they would infallibly have seen my pale face glaring at them over the pile of boxes.

From the first moment of their conversation a horrible misgiving had come over me.  It seemed more than confirmed as I gazed at what lay before me.  It was a little square box made of some dark wood, and ribbed with brass.  I suppose it was about the size of a cubic foot.  It reminded me of a pistol-case, only it was decidedly higher.  There was an appendage to it, however, on which my eyes were riveted, and which suggested the pistol itself rather than its receptacle.  This was a trigger-like arrangement upon the lid, to which a coil of string was attached.  Beside this trigger there was a small square aperture through the wood.  The tall man, Flannigan, as his companion called him, applied his eye to this, and peered in for several minutes with an expression of intense anxiety upon his face.

"It seems right enough," he said at last.

"I tried not to shake it," said his companion.

"Such delicate things need delicate treatment.  Put in some of the needful, Muller."

The shorter man fumbled in his pocket for some time, and then produced a small paper packet.  He opened this, and took out of it half a handful of whitish granules, which he poured down through the hole.  A curious clicking noise followed from the inside of the box, and both the men smiled in a satisfied way.

"Nothing much wrong there," said Flannigan.

"Right as a trivet," answered his companion.

"Look out! here's some one coming.  Take it down to our berth.  It wouldn't do to have any one suspecting what our game is, or, worse still, have them fumbling with it, and letting it off by mistake."

"Well, it would come to the same, whoever let it off," said Muller.

"They'd be rather astonished if they pulled the trigger," said the taller, with a sinister laugh.  "Ha, ha! fancy their faces!  It's not a bad bit of workmanship, I flatter myself."

"No," said Muller.  "I hear it is your own design, every bit of it, isn't it?"

"Yes, the spring and the sliding shutter are my own."

"We should take out a patent."

And the two men laughed again with a cold harsh laugh, as they took up the little brass-bound package, and concealed it in Muller's voluminous overcoat.

"Come down, and we'll stow it in our berth," said Flannigan.  "We won't need it until to-night, and it will be safe there."

His companion assented, and the two went arm-in-arm along the deck and disappeared down the hatchway, bearing the mysterious little box away with them.  The last words I heard were a muttered injunction from Flannigan to carry it carefully, and avoid knocking it against the bulwarks.

How long I remained sitting on that coil of rope I shall never know.  The horror of the conversation I had just overheard was aggravated by the first sinking qualms of sea-sickness.  The long roll of the Atlantic was beginning to assert itself over both ship and passengers.  I felt prostrated in mind and in body, and fell into a state of collapse, from which I was finally aroused by the hearty voice of our worthy quartermaster.

"Do you mind moving out of that, sir?" he said.  "We want to get this lumber cleared off the deck."

His bluff manner and ruddy healthy face seemed to be a positive insult to me in my present condition.  Had I been a courageous or a muscular man I could have struck him.  As it was, I treated the honest sailor to a melodramatic scowl which seemed to cause him no small astonishment, and strode past him to the other side of the deck.  Solitude was what I wanted— solitude in which I could brood over the frightful crime which was being hatched before my very eyes.  One of the quarter-boats was hanging rather low down upon the davits.  An idea struck me, and climbing on the bulwarks, I stepped into the empty boat and lay down in the bottom of it. Stretched on my back, with nothing but the blue sky above me, and an occasional view of the mizen as the vessel rolled, I was at least alone with my sickness and my thoughts.

I TRIED to recall the words which had been spoken in the terrible dialogue I had overheard.  Would they admit of any construction but the one which stared me in the face?  My reason forced me to confess that they would not.  I endeavoured to array the various facts which formed the chain of circumstantial evidence, and to find a flaw in it; but no, not a link was missing.  There was the strange way in which our passengers had come aboard, enabling them to evade any examination of their luggage.  The very name of "Flannigan" smacked of Fenianism, while "Muller" suggested nothing but socialism and murder.  Then their mysterious manner; their remark that their plans would have been ruined had they missed the ship; their fear of being observed; last, but not least, the clenching evidence in the production of the little square box with
the trigger, and their grim joke about the face of the man who should let it off by mistake— could these facts lead to any conclusion other than that they were the desperate emissaries of some body, political or otherwise, who intended to sacrifice themselves, their fellow-passengers, and the ship, in one great holocaust?  The whitish granules which I had seen one of them pour into the box formed no doubt a fuse or train for exploding it.  I had myself heard a sound come from it which might have emanated from some delicate piece of machinery.  But what did they mean by their allusion to to-night?  Could it be that they contemplated putting their horrible design into execution on the very first evening of our voyage?  The mere thought of it sent a cold shudder over me, and made me for a moment superior even to the agonies of sea-sickness.

I have remarked that I am a physical coward.  I am a moral one also.  It is seldom that the two defects are united to such a degree in the one character.  I have known many men who were most sensitive to bodily danger, and yet were distinguished for the independence and strength of their minds.  In my own case, however, I regret to say that my quiet and retiring habits had fostered a nervous dread of doing anything remarkable or making myself conspicuous, which exceeded, if possible, my fear of personal peril.  An ordinary mortal placed under the circumstances in which I now found myself would have gone at once to the Captain, confessed his fears, and put the matter into his hands.  To me, however, constituted as I am, the idea was most repugnant.  The thought of becoming the observed of all observers, cross-questioned by a stranger, and confronted with two desperate conspirators in the character of a denouncer, was hateful to me.  Might it not by some remote possibility prove that I was mistaken?  What would be my feelings if there should turn out to be no grounds for my accusation?  No, I would procrastinate; I would keep my eye on the two desperadoes and dog them at every turn.  Anything was better than the possibility of being wrong.

Then it struck me that even at that moment some new phase of the conspiracy might be developing itself.  The nervous excitement seemed to have driven away my incipient attack of sickness, for I was able to stand up and lower myself from the boat without experiencing any return of it.  I staggered along the deck with the intention of descending into the cabin and finding how my acquaintances of the morning were occupying themselves.  Just as I had my hand on the companion-rail, I was astonished by receiving a hearty slap on the back, which nearly shot me down the steps with more haste than dignity.

"Is that you, Hammond?" said a voice which I seemed to recognise.

"God bless me," I said, as I turned round, "it can't be Dick Merton!  Why, how are you, old man?"

This was an unexpected piece of luck in the midst of my perplexities.  Dick was just the man I wanted; kindly and shrewd in his nature, and prompt in his actions, I should have no difficulty in telling him my suspicions, and could rely upon his sound sense to point out the best course to pursue.  Since I was a little lad in the second form at Harrow, Dick had been my adviser and protector.  He saw at a glance that something had gone wrong with me.

"Hullo!" he said, in his kindly way, "what's put you about, Hammond?  You look as white as a sheet.  Mal de mer, eh?"

"No, not that altogether," said I.  "Walk up and down with me, Dick; I want to speak to you.  Give me your arm."

Supporting myself on Dick's stalwart frame, I tottered along by his side; but it was some time before I could muster resolution to speak.

"Have a cigar," said he, breaking the silence.

"No, thanks," said I.  "Dick, we shall be all corpses to-night."

"That's no reason against your having a cigar now," said Dick, in his cool way, but looking hard at me from under his shaggy eyebrows as he spoke.  He evidently thought that my intellect was a little gone.

"No," I continued, "it's no laughing matter; and I speak in sober earnest, I assure you.  I have discovered an infamous conspiracy, Dick, to destroy this ship and every soul that is in her;" and I then proceeded systematically, and in order, to lay before him the chain of evidence which I had collected.  "There, Dick," I said, as I concluded, "what do you think of that? and, above all, what am I to do?"

To my astonishment he burst into a hearty fit of laughter.

"I'd be frightened," he said, "if any fellow but you had told me as much.  You always had a way, Hammond, of discovering mares' nests.  I like to see the old traits breaking out again.  Do you remember at school how you swore there was a ghost in the long room, and how it turned out to be your own reflection in the mirror.  Why, man," he continued, "what object would any one have in destroying this ship?  We have no great political guns aboard. On the contrary, the majority of the passengers are Americans. Besides, in this sober nineteenth century, the most wholesale murderers stop at including themselves among their victims.  Depend upon it, you have misunderstood them, and have mistaken a photographic camera, or something equally innocent, for an infernal machine."

"Nothing of the sort, sir," said I, rather touchily "You will learn to your cost, I fear, that I have neither exaggerated nor misinterpreted a word.  As to the box, I have certainly never before seen one like it.  It contained delicate machinery; of that I am convinced, from the way in which the men handled it and spoke of it."

"You'd make out every packet of perishable goods to be a torpedo," said Dick, "if that is to be your only test."

"The man's name was Flannigan," I continued.

"I don't think that would go very far in a court of law," said Dick; "but come, I have finished my cigar.  Suppose we go down together and split a bottle of claret.  You can point out these two Orsinis to me if they are still in the cabin."

"All right," I answered; "I am determined not to lose sight of them all day.  Don't look hard at them, though, for I don't want them to think that they are being watched."

"Trust me," said Dick; "I'll look as unconscious and guileless as a lamb;" and with that we passed down the companion and into the saloon.

A good many passengers were scattered about the great central table, some wrestling with refractory carpet bags and rug-straps, some having their luncheon, and a few reading and otherwise amusing themselves.  The objects of our quest were not there.  We passed down the room and peered into every berth, but there was no sign of them.  "Heavens!" thought I, "perhaps at this very moment they are beneath our feet, in the hold or engine-room, preparing their diabolical contrivance!"  It was better to know the worst than to remain in such suspense.

"Steward," said Dick, "are there any other gentlemen about?"

"There's two in the smoking-room, sir," answered the steward.

The smoking-room was a little snuggery, luxuriously fitted up, and  adjoining the pantry.  We pushed the door open and entered.  A sigh of relief escaped from my bosom.  The very first object on which my eye rested was the cadaverous face of Flannigan, with its hard-set mouth and unwinking eye.  His companion sat opposite to him.  They were both drinking, and a pile of cards lay upon the table.  They were engaged in playing as we entered.  I nudged Dick to show him that we had found our quarry, and we sat down beside them with as unconcerned an air as possible.  The two conspirators seemed to take little notice of our presence.  I watched them both narrowly. The game at which they were playing was "Napoleon."  Both were adepts at it, and I could not help admiring the consummate nerve of men who, with such a secret at their hearts, could devote their minds to the manipulating of a long suit or the finessing of a queen.  Money changed hands rapidly; but the run of luck seemed to be all against the taller of the two players.  At last he threw down his cards on the table with an oath, and refused to go on.

"No, I'm hanged if I do," he said; "I haven't had more than two of a suit for five hands."

"Never mind," said his comrade, as he gathered up his winnings; "a few dollars one way or the other won't go very far after to-night's work."

I was astonished at the rascal's audacity, but took care to keep my eyes fixed abstractedly upon the ceiling, and drank my wine in as unconscious a manner as possible.  I felt that Flannigan was  looking towards me with his wolfish eyes to see if I had noticed the allusion.  He whispered something to his companion which I failed to catch.  It was a caution, I suppose, for the other answered rather angrily—

"Nonsense!  Why shouldn't I say what I like?  Over-caution is just what would ruin us."

"I believe you want it not to come off," said Flannigan.

"You believe nothing of the sort," said the other, speaking rapidly and loudly.  "You know as well as I do that when I play for a stake I like to win it.  But I won't have my words criticised and cut short by you or any other man.  I have as much interest in our success as you have— more, I hope."

He was quite hot about it, and puffed furiously at his cigar for some minutes.  The eyes of the other ruffian wandered alternately from Dick Merton to myself.  I knew that I was in the presence of a desperate man, that a quiver of my lip might be the signal for him to plunge a weapon into my heart, but I betrayed more self-command than I should have given myself credit for under such trying circumstances.  As to Dick, he was as immovable and apparently as unconscious as the Egyptian Sphinx.

There was silence for some time in the smoking-room, broken only by the crisp rattle of the cards, as the man Muller shuffled them up before replacing them in his pocket.  He still seemed to be somewhat flushed and irritable.  Throwing the end of his cigar into the spittoon, he glanced defiantly at his companion and turned towards me.

"Can you tell me, sir," he said, "when this ship will be heard of again?"

They were both looking at me; but though my face may have turned a trifle paler, my voice was as steady as ever as I answered—

"I presume, sir, that it will be heard of first when it enters Queenstown Harbour."

"Ha, ha!" laughed the angry little man, "I knew you would say that. Don't you kick me under the table, Flannigan, I won't stand it.  I know what I am doing.  You are wrong, sir," he continued, turning to me, "utterly wrong."

"Some passing ship, perhaps," suggested Dick.

"No, nor that either."

"The weather is fine," I said; "why should we not be heard of at our destination."

"I didn't say we shouldn't be heard of at our destination. Possibly we may not, and in any case that is not where we shall be heard of first."

"Where then?" asked Dick.

"That you shall never know.  Suffice it that a rapid and mysterious agency will signal our whereabouts, and that before the day is out. Ha, ha!" and he chuckled once again.

"Come on deck!" growled his comrade; "you have drunk too much of that confounded brandy-and-water.  It has loosened your tongue. Come away!" and taking him by the arm he half led him, half forced him out of the smoking-room, and we heard them stumbling up the companion together, and on to the deck.

"Well, what do you think now?" I gasped, as I turned towards Dick. He was as imperturbable as ever.

"Think!" he said; "why, I think what his companion thinks, that we have been listening to the ravings of a half-drunken man.  The fellow stunk of brandy."

"Nonsense, Dick I you saw how the other tried to stop his tongue."

"Of course he did.  He didn't want his friend to make a fool of himself before strangers.  Maybe the short one is a lunatic, and the other his private keeper.  It's quite possible."

"O Dick, Dick," I cried, "how can you be so blind!  Don't you see that every word confirmed our previous suspicion?"

"Humbug, man!" said Dick; "you're working yourself into a state of nervous excitement.  Why, what the devil do you make of all that nonsense about a mysterious agent which would signal our whereabouts?"

"I'll tell you what he meant, Dick," I said, bending forward and grasping my friend's arm.  "He meant a sudden glare and a flash seen far out at sea by some lonely fisherman off the American coast.  That's what he meant."

"I didn't think you were such a fool, Hammond," said Dick Merton testily.  "If you try to fix a literal meaning on the twaddle that every drunken man talks, you will come to some queer conclusions. Let us follow their example, and go on deck.  You need fresh air, I think.  Depend upon it, your liver is out of order.  A sea-voyage will do you a world of good."

"If ever I see the end of this one," I groaned, "I'll promise never to venture on another.  They are laying the cloth, so it's hardly worth while my going up.  I'll stay below and unpack my things."

"I hope dinner will find you in a more pleasant state of mind," said Dick; and he went out, leaving me to my thoughts until the clang of the great gong summoned us to the saloon.

My appetite, I need hardly say, had not been improved by the incidents which had occurred during the day.  I sat down, however, mechanically at the table, and listened to the talk which was going on around me.  There were nearly a hundred first-class passengers, and as the wine began to circulate, their voices combined with the clash of the dishes to form a perfect Babel.  I found myself seated between a very stout and nervous old lady and a prim little clergyman; and as neither made any advances I retired into my shell, and spent my time in observing the appearance of my fellow-voyagers.  I could see Dick in the dim distance dividing his attentions between a jointless fowl in front of him and a self-possessed young lady at his side.  Captain Dowie was doing the honours at my end, while the surgeon of the vessel was seated at the other.  I was glad to notice that Flannigan was placed almost opposite to me.  As long as I had him before my eyes I knew that, for the time at least, we were safe.  He was sitting with what was meant to be a sociable smile on his grim face.  It did not escape me that he drank largely of wine— so largely that even before the dessert appeared his voice had become decidedly husky.  His friend Muller was seated a few places lower down.  He ate little, and appeared to be nervous and restless.

"Now, ladies," said our genial Captain, "I trust that you will consider yourselves at home aboard my vessel.  I have no fears for the gentlemen.  A bottle of champagne, steward.  Here's to a fresh breeze and a quick passage!  I trust our friends in America will hear of our safe arrival in eight days, or in nine at the very latest."

I looked up.  Quick as was the glance which passed between Flannigan and his confederate, I was able to intercept it.  There was an evil smile upon the former's thin lips.

The conversation rippled on.  Politics, the sea, amusements, religion, each was in turn discussed.  I remained a silent though an interested listener.  It struck me that no harm could be done by introducing the subject which was ever in my mind.  It could be managed in an off-hand way, and would at least have the effect of turning the Captain's thoughts in that direction.  I could watch, too, what effect it would have upon the faces of the conspirators.

There was a sudden lull in the conversation.  The ordinary subjects of interest appeared to be exhausted.  The opportunity was a favourable one.

"May I ask, Captain," I said, bending forward and speaking very distinctly, "what you think of Fenian manifestoes?"

The Captain's ruddy face became a shade darker from honest indignation.

"They are poor cowardly things," he said, "as silly as they are wicked."

"The impotent threats of a set of anonymous scoundrels," said a pompous-looking old gentleman beside him.

"O Captain!" said the fat lady at my side, "you don't really think they would blow up a ship?"

"I have no doubt they would if they could.  But I am very sure they shall never blow up mine."

"May I ask what precautions are taken against them?" asked an elderly man at the end of the table.

"All goods sent aboard the ship are strictly examined," said Captain Dowie.

"But suppose a man brought explosives aboard with him?" I suggested.

"They are too cowardly to risk their own lives in that way."

During this conversation Flannigan had not betrayed the slightest interest in what was going on.  He raised his head now and looked at the Captain.

"Don't you think you are rather underrating them?" he said.  "Every secret society has produced desperate men— why shouldn't the Fenians have them too?  Many men think it a privilege to die in the service of a cause which seems right in their eyes, though others may think it wrong"

"Indiscriminate murder cannot be right in anybody's eyes," said the little clergyman.

"The bombardment of Paris was nothing else," said Flannigan; "yet the whole civilised world agreed to look on with folded arms, and change the ugly word 'murder' into the more euphonious one of 'war.'  It seemed right enough to German eyes; why shouldn't dynamite seem so to the Fenian?"

"At any rate their empty vapourings have led to nothing as yet," said the Captain.

"Excuse me," returned Flannigan, "but is there not some room for doubt yet as to the fate of the Dotterel?  I have met men in America who asserted from their own personal knowledge that there was a coal torpedo aboard that vessel."

"Then they lied," said the Captain.  "It was proved conclusively at the court-martial to have arisen from an explosion of coal-gas— but we had better change the subject, or we may cause the ladies to have a restless night;" and the conversation once more drifted back into its original channel.

During this little discussion Flannigan had argued his point with a gentlemanly deference and a quiet power for which I had not given him credit.  I could not help admiring a man who, on the eve of a desperate enterprise, could courteously argue upon a point which must touch him so nearly.  He had, as I have already mentioned, partaken of a considerable quantity of wine; but though there was a slight flush upon his pale cheek, his manner was as reserved as ever.  He did not join in the conversation again, but seemed to be lost in thought.

A whirl of conflicting ideas was battling in my own mind.  What was I to do?  Should I stand up now and denounce them before both passengers and Captain?  Should I demand a few minutes' conversation with the latter in his own cabin, and reveal it all?  For an instant I was half resolved to do it, but then the old constitutional timidity came back with redoubled force.  After all there might be some mistake.  Dick had heard the evidence and had refused to believe in it.  I determined to let things go on their course.  A strange reckless feeling came over me.  Why should I help men who were blind to their own danger?  Surely it was the duty of the officers to protect us, not ours to give warning to them.  I drank off a couple of glasses of wine, and staggered upon deck with the determination of keeping my secret locked in my own bosom.

It was a glorious evening.  Even in my excited state of mind I could not help leaning against the bulwarks and enjoying the refreshing breeze.  Away to the westward a solitary sail stood out as a dark speck against the great sheet of flame left by the setting sun.  I shuddered as I looked at it.  It was grand but appalling.  A single star was twinkling faintly above our mainmast, but a thousand seemed to gleam in the water below with every stroke of our propeller.  The only blot in the fair scene was the great trail of smoke which stretched away behind us like a black slash upon a crimson curtain.  It was hard to believe that the great peace which hung over all Nature could be marred by a poor miserable mortal.

"After all," I thought, as I gazed into the blue depths beneath me, "if the worst comes to the worst, it is better to die here than to linger in agony upon a sick-bed on land."  A man's life seems a very paltry thing amid the great forces of Nature.  All my philosophy could not prevent my shuddering, however, when I turned my head and saw two shadowy figures at the other side of the deck, which I had no difficulty in recognising.  They seemed to be conversing earnestly, but I had no opportunity of overhearing what was said; so I contented myself with pacing up and down, and keeping a vigilant watch upon their movements.

It was a relief to me when Dick came on deck.  Even an incredulous confidant is better than none at all.

"Well, old man," he said, giving me a facetious dig in the ribs, "we've not been blown up yet."

"No, not yet," said I; "but that's no proof that we are not going to be."

"Nonsense, man!" said Dick; "I can't conceive what has put this extraordinary idea into your head.  I have been talking to one of your supposed assassins, and he seems a pleasant fellow enough; quite a sporting character, I should think, from the way he speaks."

"Dick," I said, "I am as certain that those men have an infernal machine, and that we are on the verge of eternity, as if I saw them putting the match to the fuse."

"Well, if you really think so," said Dick, half awed for the moment by the earnestness of my manner, "it is your duty to let the Captain know of your suspicions."

"You are right," I said; "I will.  My absurd timidity has prevented my doing so sooner.  I believe our lives can only be saved by laying the whole matter before him."

"Well, go and do it now," said Dick; "but for goodness' sake don't mix me up in the matter."

"I'll speak to him when he comes off the bridge," I answered; "and in the meantime I don't mean to lose sight of them."

"Let me know of the result," said my companion; and with a nod he strolled away in search, I fancy, of his partner at the dinner-table.

Left to myself, I bethought me of my retreat of the morning, and climbing on the bulwark I mounted into the quarter-boat, and lay down there.  In it I could reconsider my course of action, and by raising my head I was able at any time to get a view of my disagreeable neighbours.

An hour passed, and the Captain was still on the bridge.  He was talking to one of the passengers, a retired naval officer, and the two were deep in debate concerning some abstruse point in navigation.  I could see the red tips of their cigars from where I lay.  It was dark now, so dark that I could hardly make out the figures of Flannigan and his accomplice.  They were still standing in the position which they had taken up after dinner.  A few of the passengers were scattered about the deck, but many had gone below. A strange stillness seemed to pervade the air.  The voices of the watch and the rattle of the wheel were the only sounds which broke the silence.

Another half-hour passed.  The Captain was still upon the bridge. It seemed as if he would never come down.  My nerves were in a state of unnatural tension, so much so that the sound of two steps upon the deck made me start up in a quiver of excitement.  I peered over the edge of the boat, and saw that our suspicious passengers had crossed from the other side, and were standing almost directly beneath me.  The light of a binnacle fell full upon the ghastly face of the ruffian Flannigan.  Even in that short glance I saw that Muller had the ulster, whose use I knew so well, slung loosely over his arm.  I sank back with a groan.  It seemed that my fatal procrastination had sacrificed two hundred innocent lives.

I had read of the fiendish vengeance which awaited a spy.  I knew that men with their lives in their hands would stick at nothing. All I could do was to cower at the bottom of the boat and listen silently to their whispered talk below.

"This place will do," said a voice.

"Yes, the leeward side is best."

"I wonder if the trigger will act?"

"I am sure it will."

"We were to let it off at ten, were we not?"

"Yes, at ten sharp.  We have eight minutes yet."  There was a pause.  Then the voice began again—

"They'll hear the drop of the trigger, won't they?"

"It doesn't matter.  It will be too late for any one to prevent its going off."

"That's true.  There will be some excitement among those we have left behind, won't there?"

"Rather.  How long do you reckon it will be before they hear of us?"

"The first news will get in at about midnight at earliest."

"That will be my doing."

"No, mine."

"Ha, ha! we'll settle that."

There was a pause here.  Then I heard Muller's voice in a ghastly whisper, "There's only five minutes more."

How slowly the moments seemed to pass!  I could count them by the throbbing of my heart.

"It'll make a sensation on land," said a voice.

"Yes, it will make a noise in the newspapers."

I raised my head and peered over the side of the boat.  There seemed no hope, no help.  Death stared me in the face, whether I did or did not give the alarm.  The Captain had at last left the bridge.  The deck was deserted, save for those two dark figures crouching in the shadow of the boat.

Flannigan had a watch lying open in his hand.

"Three minutes more," he said.  "Put it down upon the deck."

"No, put it here on the bulwarks."

It was the little square box.  I knew by the sound that they had placed it near the davit, and almost exactly under my head.

I looked over again.  Flannigan was pouring something out of a paper into his hand.  It was white and granular— the same that I had seen him use in the morning.  It was meant as a fuse, no doubt, for he shovelled it into the little box, and I heard the strange noise which had previously arrested my attention.

"A minute and a half more," he said.  "Shall you or I pull the string?"

"I will pull it," said Muller.

He was kneeling down and holding the end in his hand.  Flannigan stood behind with his arms folded, and an air of grim resolution upon his face.

I could stand it no longer.  My nervous system seemed to give way in a moment.

"Stop!" I screamed, springing to my feet.  "Stop, misguided and unprincipled men!"

They both staggered backwards.  I fancy they thought I was a spirit, with the moonlight streaming down upon my pale face.

I was brave enough now.  I had gone too far to retreat.

"Cain was damned," I cried, "and he slew but one; would you have the blood of two hundred upon your souls?"

"He's mad!" said Flannigan.  "Time's up.  Let it off, Muller."

I sprang down upon the deck.

"You shan't do it!" I said.

"By what right do you prevent us?"

"By every right, human and divine."

"It's no business of yours.  Clear out of this."

"Never!" said I.

"Confound the fellow!  There's too much at stake to stand on ceremony.  I'll hold him, Muller, while you pull the trigger."

Next moment I was struggling in the herculean grasp of the Irishman.  Resistance was useless; I was a child in his hands.

He pinned me up against the side of the vessel, and held me there.

"Now," he said, "look sharp.  He can't prevent us."

I felt that I was standing on the verge of eternity. Half-strangled in the arms of the taller ruffian, I saw the other approach the fatal box. He stooped over it and seized the string. I breathed one prayer when I saw his grasp tighten upon it. Then came a sharp snap, a strange rasping noise. The trigger had fallen, the side of the box flew out, and let off— two grey carrier pigeons!

Little more need be said.  It is not a subject on which I care to dwell.  The whole thing is too utterly disgusting and absurd. Perhaps the best thing I can do is to retire gracefully from the scene, and let the sporting correspondent of the New York Herald fill my unworthy place.  Here is an extract clipped from its columns shortly after our departure from America:—

Pigeon-flying Extraordinary.

A novel match has been brought off last week between the birds of John H. Flannigan, of Boston, and Jeremiah Muller, a well-known citizen of Lowell. Both men have devoted much time and attention to an improved breed of bird, and the challenge is an old-standing one. The pigeons were backed to a large amount, and there was considerable local interest in the result.  The start was from the deck of the Transatlantic steamship Spartan, at ten o'clock on the evening of the day of starting, the vessel being then reckoned to be about a hundred miles from the land.  The bird which reached home first was to be declared the winner.  Considerable caution had, we believe, to be observed, as some captains have a prejudice against the bringing off of sporting events aboard their vessels.  In spite of some little difficulty at the last moment, the trap was sprung almost exactly at ten o'clock.

"Muller's bird arrived in Lowell in an extreme state of exhaustion on the following morning, while Flannigan's has not been heard of. The backers of the latter have the satisfaction of knowing, however, that the whole affair has been characterised by extreme fairness.  The pigeons were confined in a specially invented trap, which could only be opened by the spring.  It was thus possible to feed them through an aperture in the top, but any tampering with their wings was quite out of the question.  A few such matches would go far towards popularising pigeon-flying in America, and form an agreeable variety to the morbid exhibitions of human endurance which have assumed such proportions during the last few years."

_______________

13: The Invisible Finite

Robert A. Wait
fl 1929-35

Amazing Stories  May 1929

Old-fashioned 1920s sf from the "scientifiction" era of Amazing Stories.  The author was an instructor of chemistry at James Millikin University, Illinois in the 1920s. Nothing else can be discovered.

"YOU may readily see that as the bicycle wheel speeds up and revolves faster and faster, its spokes, though shiny and bright, tend to disappear. The vision is practically unimpaired by these rapidly moving objects even though they be made of steel. Generally, the impression is that an object moving rapidly becomes more and more difficult to observe or even see as the speed of motion increases."

Professor Moore hesitated, to allow the full significance of his statement to sink into the more or less intelligent group of students in his advanced science problems class.

"To those of you who follow closely, I may point out that this very simple phenomenon may, at some time, take on a vastly important significance. Obviously, if we can cause the spokes of a common bicycle to completely disappear by moving them rapidly before our eyes, it would be possible to extend this principle to still larger and more complex uses. Whole parts of a machine may be made to disappear or even the threads of a cloth might be made invisible by causing sufficiently rapid motion of the same."

He paused, gazed over his spectacles at the more interested students and, as was his habit, smiled in a rather uncertain way as though half expectant that at least the best students would get the full significance of his remarks. This time he was not disappointed, for the attention of the entire class was focused upon the problem being placed before them. To even the least imaginative, the idea of causing a piece of cloth or perhaps a whole automobile to completely disappear was interesting and smacked of Aladdin at his best.

"One more thought to carry away with you, gentlemen," continued the gentle old man, thoroughly pleased by now that his lecture had so caught the fancy of his class. "If you will observe, not only does the rapid revolution of the wheel cause the spokes to become entirely invisible, depending a great deal upon the speed of revolution for total elimination of any noticeable flickerings of each spoke, but also, and most important, objects through and beyond the wheel become clear, distinct, and in fact, appear in detail and clarity exactly as though there were no revolving wheel and spokes between the eye and the object. Generally, of course, to make an object invisible would leave a sort of blank space in the surrounding landscape, inasmuch as the object would still be matter which would not pass light rays striking it from behind. I admit this is a rather fantastic idea and seems rather improbable of realization in practical fields, yet I repeat, young men, this phenomenon, coupled with certain discoveries in the field of the smaller divisions of matter as we know it, leads some of us to hope and suspect the presence of some means used by nature to cause certain of the more rapidly moving particles of matter to completely disappear, thus allowing us to 'see through' them, oft-times with no consciousness of their presence."

The class bells rang and the students stirred uneasily, humanly desiring the satisfaction of their lunches. The professor sighed, sorry that the period was at an end, for he was deeply interested in his problem and hoped to interest others to the same extent. Calling his two graduate students to him, he asked them to aid him that afternoon in laboratory work which seemed to be confirming his theories on light, its reflection and interference effects.

"YOU will remember that during the World War in 1917 or thereabouts many attempts were made by the government, and by private parties, too, to make a cover on the lower side of airplane wings with such a perfect surface that they could obtain a perfect reflection. That is to say, no lines or shadows showing, there could be no distinction made by the eye between the plane or wing and the surrounding objects or sky." The professor was speaking to his two graduate students the afternoon following his lecture on the bicycle wheel. They had before them several sets of apparatus that appeared to be most complicated. On one side of the experimental room was a completely fitted laboratory for working with chemicals and the compounds that interested these students of nature in her physical and chemical fields. While speaking to the young men, one a tall young Irishman, Jerry Murphy, the other a dark young Brazilian of exceptional mental ability, Carlos Manoras by name, the grey haired scientist rubbed a piece of shiny metal vigorously. The metal seemed to be an alloy, dark blue to purple in color, very tough, hard, and rolled into unbelievably thin sheets. One after another the sheets were handled by a member of the trio. The process seemed to be one in which the razoredge sheets were given a coating of an oily liquid and then rubbed clean and dry with especially fine silk cloth.

"Needless to say," the deep-voiced young South American took up the thread of thought where the professor had dropped it in adding an especially fine film of the polishing material to his sheet of the beautiful purple metal, "no such a surface was ever developed. If the attempt to get perfect reflection had succeeded, the results would have been very disappointing, for the airplane must at times pass through or below clouds, and even with a perfect reflection, the outlines of the plane would be visible, for the rough surface of a cloud or a landscape would cause the smooth edges of the plane to stand out as though they were painted a brilliant color. The whole plane would present a sort of blank space, as you mentioned this morning."

"Of course, the idea sounds good at first and is, in a sense," rejoined young Murphy, removing his collegiate briar from his mouth long enough to propound a thought. "The big difficulty would be that, from above, the plane would be perfectly visible not only because of reflection but because of the obstruction of the light rays striking the bottom of the "invisible" plane. It would be a dumb pilot who wouldn't recognize the outlines of a plane below him, since, of course, the landscape below would be cut off from observation by the material part of the wings and fusilage. Matter moving at such a slow rate would not be at all permeable to light rays."

"You are both right," Dr. Moore continued. "While it is, or we'd better say, probably is, possible to create matter in such a fine state of division that the particles are invisible to the naked eye and hence the whole material becomes invisible, or a perfect reflector, since there are no longer any irregularities to be seen, yet we cannot by this means alone cause the existence to become absolutely unrecognizable to the eye, since even such matter would not pass the light rays striking its back."

They piled the sheets up in a well-ordered stack, and the professor clamped them securely together. The whole they covered with a box or sort of cover constructed of pure fused quartz, so well fused and treated that it was practically clear of all flaws or blemishes. Jerry straightened up, cast about with his laughing blue eyes, and finally went over to where a rather large machine stood mounted on a set of wheels, much like the carriage of a movable X-ray apparatus. The machine itself resembled a violet ray machine with a large bulb of cherry-red clear glass superimposed upon its top. This bulb seemed to have five electric connections that ran down into the bulb to a sort of reflecting anodes, shaped much like the anode reflector in an X-ray machine. In fact, the five-fingered affair looked as though it might be a freak Roentgen ray generator, the excess anodes giving higher power, perhaps. The blunt ends of the anti-cathodes were exceptionally peculiar in this large tube— there seemed to be no end! There was no hole, nor was there a visible surface. That the anode rod was solid could be proved by feeling the end, but all attempts to see any surface resulted in a sort of confusing impression of void space.

"I see you have treated the ends of these anodes, doctor," observed Manoras, examining the machine that Murphy was trundling toward the covered pile of glistening metal sheets. "They appear not to be, yet I am conscious of a visual impression of some sort of matter. The impression is extremely vague and uncertain."

"That," said the doctor, smiling shyly at the two students, "that is my very latest attempt at a perfect precipitation of colloidal platinum in the sub-microscopic sized particles. You can't see very much because the light is reflected by the tiny particles in so many millions of ways that nothing but a vague impression of grey existence gets to your retina. Asa matter of fact, most of these particles are of dimensions smaller than the wavelength of ordinary visible light, and so it takes a small group of them to reflect even one wave of light. Naturally, they diffuse it greatly since the colloidal nature of the material makes the deposit far from even or solid in surface nature. You will remember that molecules are invisible to the eye, even aided by the microscopes of highest power. Were we to start 'grinding a material from small chunks down to fine particles, even though we trace the pieces through a microscope, we will sometime have reached, were it possible to grind that fine, the molecular sized particles. Now, limiting ourselves to a single molecule, we would have ground a material from quite visible lumps clear down through the colloidal sized aggregations, and finally we would have ground it into invisibility. Truly, that would be most odd, yet it is theoretically possible, as you can see."

"Frankly, professor, what are you trying to do with this work we are helping you to complete?"

if was a natural and just question that young Murphy asked, and the professor had long expected it. Two young men, bright and intelligent workers in physical chemistry, would indeed be poor scientists if they were content to plod along doing routine jobs for another with no thought as to what was happening or going to happen as a result of their careful labor. The professor sighed as he mentally noted that here again youth would outstrip age, albeit age had contributed the driving force and started the great idea down the swift descent to realization. Dr. Moore knew well that once his purposes were known to the two young men, ideas would flow in voluminous streams from the trained intelligences housed in the rusty-red head of the Irish lad and the dark, bushy head of the Brazilian. Better try to dam up the Mississippi than to stop the flow of thought from two such trained mentalities. No matter, the work would go on and the success would not be his alone. Dr. Moore, as a true scientist, would share in the glory of discovery.

"Jerry, Carlos—"

From this formal salutation the boys recognized a serious turn in the professor's thoughts. They ceased their adjustment work and leaned against the work table in expectant silence.

"You have both worked faithfully and without question at whatever task I assigned you. I want you to know that I sincerely appreciate all you have done. I am about to disclose to you what will make you both famous and prosperous for life. I am an old man. I  cannot hope for more than ten, possibly twenty, years of life. The glory will be ours; yours for a long life, mine for a short decade. Your ideas will supersede mine. I will fall more or less into the background. For that I do not care— only this would I ask of you: always consider me as the origin of your success. With that, I am more than satisfied."

The wondering youths hastened to reassure Dr. Moore that whatever it might be, they were far below him in honor and would always put him first in glory and esteem. The professor smiled a bit wanly and nodded his acknowledgment of the compliment. Behind the smile was a tear, not of self-pity but of sorrow that the human race was so fickle. Despite these vehement reassurances, the professor knew well that it would not be long before the entire proposition would be out of his hands. He would be just "the professor," to be consulted only when the younger men struck a snag in the work. Soit! It was ever thus— and as a true scientist, the professor prepared to sacrifice his all, that science might gain the knowledge that he possessed.

"My purpose in this work is to produce a material which will have all the properties of solid matter except visibility to human eyes. I have reached the point theoretically where I am certain it can be done. You can see the result of my treatment of the anodes, and our discussion of invisible planes should bring you to see the possibilities that are involved. The proposition is simply this: As you know, matter, if moving rapidly enough and at the same time far enough in one line, becomes invisible to the human eye, allowing the objects on the other side of the matter to hecome plainly visible. Again, you know from our work that when matter is divided as particles become smaller and smaller in size, we see them with more and more difficulty. We have spoken of grinding a material from large chunks, quite visible, down through the colloidal stage into sub-microscopic particles that are invisible to the eye— a sort of grinding into invisibility. This has not been found possible as yet, though from my anode treatment in the X-ray machine there, you can get the effect of grey void, the best attempt yet made at invisible colloidal material."

"Of course, all matter is made up of atoms and molecules which are in constant motion, the velocity of which varies according to the particular material ; all, however, are extremely rapid in motion. According to our experiment with the spokes of the bicycle, this motion should cause the particles to become invisible. The fact that, though in rapid motion these particles are visible in the aggregate, is explained by the very short length of the path of motion. All solid and some liquid matter has the particles in it so arranged as to allow each particle to vibrate about a mean point, much as a ball on the end of an elastic cord. Could these particles be induced to stretch these forces and vibrate at enormously larger distances than their natural period, it would seem possible to cause them to become invisible, much as the increase in the speed of rotation of the spokes in a wheel causes the spokes to tend to disappear. Now, could we combine the two theories— rapid motion in comparatively long paths, and sub-microscopic size in particles— both of which cause more or less invisibility, we should have an invisible material.

"To me, it is evident that the gases as we know them are invisible, except for color, because of two things: First, the state of subdivision is so minute that we get practically no reflection, or perhaps we might better say that the particles are so small that one will not reflect a light wave— the wave is longer than the particle is large in diameter. Since our second point is that these particles are not held in a mean position by any forces, but travel in Brownian movement in straight random paths until they rebound with perfect elasticity when they collide, thus never losing any velocity, I conclude that the velocity of the particles, coupled with the length of their paths of travel and their very small size, causes them to become invisible to the eye."

The young men had shifted their positions until they were half reclining on the work table, very intent on what the professor was saying. They were absorbing every word with the agility of a mind intent on learning. It was evident that the professor's arguments were convincing the South American lad, and even Jerry's face was glowing in eager anticipation of further explanation of their work.

"That's a very plausible theory to me." Carlos spoke with great enthusiasm, his mobile face animated with an interest even greater than Dr. Moore had hoped to inspire.

"Tell us what all this has to do with these alloy sheets and this mysterious machine you have never explained to us, doctor. Your theory is certainly staggering, but I am a bit incredulous yet. Remember the scientific attitude we learned in freshman years—  'Never jump to a conclusion because the evidence seems strong.' You yourself have often cautioned students against too hasty acceptance of ideas that are apparently wonderful in possibilities."

YOUNG Murphy uttered the latter part of his not too enthusiastic comment in half apology for even seeming to dispute Dr. Moore. He was a hard-headed young fellow, but, as with most Irish people, as lovable as could be found. It was only because he was a good scientist that he was skeptical. Early in his career he had learned that scepticism was not a vice— more of a virtue, ofttimes preventing false conclusions based on insufficient evidence.

"These sheets that we've been working on are an alloy of gold. You know that many alloys of gold are extremely hard and that some alloys are beautiful in color. This alloy has both gold and uranium in it. The uranium is present in only minute quantities. It is present because of its radio-active properties. This seems to promote the activity I am after. The polishing process which we go through is to cover the sheets of alloy with a thin coat of the colloidal platinum like that I used on the anodes of our Z-ray machine. I call it Z-ray because I really know no other name for the particular ray I produce with the machine. The oily liquid we use is a chloro-platinate which I reduce to platinum, catalytically, in the presence of some gaseous reducing agent such as hydrogen or carbon monoxide. This leaves the freed platinum in the sub-colloidal state. The oil forms a coating only ten or twenty molecules thick. With the very fine state of division of the platinum, we obtain the hazy impression of grey void noticed on the ends of the anodes."

"I can see that easily," interrupted Manoras, "but I don't see that this coating will make the alloy pass the light rays reflected by other objects."

"No, that is true; it won't pass light rays— yet. Bring that black enameled cabinet in the fume-hood. We'll just start this to going and explain as we do it." The professor turned to the chemistry table.

Jerry strode to the fume-hood and carefully extricated the indicated enameled cabinet from the maze of apparatus. True to form, the professor of science had apparatus strewn from end to end of the two-room suite of laboratories.

Dragging a large steel cylinder across the floor, the professor directed manipulations so that he could connect the steel cylinder directly to the top of the cabinet, placing a Bunsen burner beneath so as to heat the sheet iron bottom of the cabinet.

Deftly Dr. Moore removed the clamped stack of treated alloy foil from its temporary housing under the quartz covering and placed it in the cabinet. Carefully closing the black doors and snapping the catches, the professor waved the boys aside.

"The treated sheets are in a gas-tight, heated compartment. You will note the jet at the bottom of the cabinet. We fill this cabinet with carbon monoxide from this cylinder, and since the gas is very slightly lighter than air, we may force the air out through the jet, and by testing frequently with the flame, determine when carbon monoxide has completely filled the cabinet. Since carbon monoxide burns with a bright blue flame, we can easily determine when the gas is escaping from the jet. This we ignite and allow to burn, both to be sure of a constant flow of the reducing agent and to prevent our own asphyxiation from its deadly effect on the hemoglobin of our blood."

The genial old man suited actions to his words and after a few trials, a bright blue flame shot out in a three-inch jet from the base of the cabinet. The jet was so arranged as to burn the gas under the cabinet.

"The burning jet of the escaping gas furnishes enough heat to keep the reaction going after we start it with a Bunsen burner, as you see I am doing. Please move that Roentgen ray machine over here and direct a stream of X-rays through the cabinet."

The two youths quickly had the bulb in action, the anode red with the impact of the electron stream striking upon it.

"The gas I am about to entrain in the stream of carbon monoxide is my catalyst. It is only necessary to put in a very small amount as, once the action is started, it goes on without further catalysis."

Dr. Moore attached a small tube of colorless gas to the side valve on the gas cylinder, and opened the glass stop-cock on it. A hiss of escaping gas under pressure, and the professor removed the emptied tube.

"The gas I have allowed to flow in is a form of gaseous sodium metal. I suppose really I should say a mixture of colloidal sodium vapor and inert argon. The sodium alone will not cause the catalytic action, the argon being necessary to the action. Please note the burning jet under the cabinet."

The flame had suddenly turned from the blue of a carbon monoxide flame to the bright yellow-orange, so well known as the flame-test color of sodium or its compounds.

"Remind me to shut off the gas and remove the plates in four minutes. In the meantime, let us look over this Z-ray machine."

THE professor plugged the electric cord of the big machine into the wall socket and snapped on a switch at the base of the aluminum casing. Instantly a brilliant red streamer flashed toward the ceiling, suffusing the room in a carmine glow. At the base of the machine a blinding bar of crystal light swayed drunkenly for a moment, then steadied to a rigid rod. It struck against a quartz plate and seemed to be disintegrated or absorbed thereby. The two students started back from this demon of light, half frightened by the crackle and roar of the thousands of sparks and streaks of miniature lightning crashing across the gaps on the coils below the main part of the machine.

"Have no fear, young men. The light is quite harmless as long as you do not get the crystal light on you. Note— it is not white ; it is simply a rod of cold, crystalcolored light. You are conscious of its extreme intensity. Some of its intensity is converted into radiant energy as it strikes the quartz plate, the only thing I have found that is not affected by the Z-ray. It alone I have found will disintegrate the ray— how, I do not know."

"My word! What a machine! Tell us what it is, and how it works."

Manoras switched off the machine and mopped his forehead with a white handkerchief. The sudden change had rather upset the nerves of the two younger men.

"As you may have guessed, this machine is for the purpose of increasing the length of the path of the particles in any liquid or solid body— a sort of stretching machine. Every particle has its own period of vibration, and to increase the length of the vibratory path. one must get into tune with the vibration, so to speak. If one tries to increase the length of the swing of a pendulum, he must move his hand at the same speed and vibration as the pendulum. If we can push the particles some way in their path so as to increase the length of their paths, we will reach the point where the size and speed of the particles will cause them to become invisible."

"Yes, but how can this infernal red streak and glow cause that change? I don't see any connection between this machine and pushing particles around."

Jerry Murphy spoke rather belligerently, and the professor smiled at the impetuous lad he had had for so many months in his classes.

"Jerry," began the kindly voice, "I realize that there s apparently no connection between the machine and increasing the velocity of molecules. You will get more from the idea if you will suspend judgment a while. The red glow is caused by the colloidal gold in the ruby glass over the top. The particles in the glass are exceedingly small aggregations of molecules of gold suspended in the super-cooled liquid we call glass. These transmit and reflect red light. The size of the colloidal particle controls the color of light to be reflected or transmitted. In the case of the blue light reflected from tobacco smoke or some wood smokes, the particle is of such size as to cause Tyndall's law to take effect. You will remember Tyndall found that in reflecting white light, colloidal particles of this size reflected the colors of the rainbow in intensities inversely proportional to the fourth power of their wavelengths. Thus, since the blue light has the shortest 'wavelength, the inverse fourth power would be the largest number and hence the greatest color in visible intensity. Lilies owe their white color not to white pigments but to the diffusion of light striking the very tiny colloidal bubbles of air in the lily petals. Of course, when all colored lights striking the lily petal are diffused thoroughly, they mix and form white light. The same phenomenon is found in the case of white hair— no white pigments are found— only colloidal bubbles of air to so diffuse the light as to appear white. As to this machine, the red light is purely accidental. I did not design the machine to make red light. I used ruby glass because I find the Roentgen rays do not penetrate the glass as was heretofore believed. The light is a byproduct of the true purposeful action of the machine. Observe, please."

Dr. Moore took off the red cap of glass from the machine, exposing the five anodes arranged in an arc, each pointing toward a central point in the lower body of the aluminum casing. Opposite each anode was a beautifully coiled tungsten wire cathode from which electrons were discharged at the anode. All these anodes were so leveled and arranged that all the angles of incidence in reflecting the bombardment of electrons focused at one narrowing slit— a sort of rectangular funnel pointing straight downward toward the quartz plate at the bottom where the rod-like ray of cold light was focused.

"When this five circuit X-ray machine operates, all the reflecting anodes have their positions fixed to throw all X-rays generated to this one point— the vortex of the funnel-like piece of the casing. That metal looks like aluminum but is really a lead alloy of that metal. It is especially efficient in stopping Roentgen rays. Please observe that I can control each of these five circuits separately."

"Professor! The cabinet!" Manoras cried in alarm.

A FULL ten minutes had passed since the four-minute reducing period was to have ended. The plates of alloy were removed carefully and, contrary to the fears of the professor, they seemed to be perfect and unharmed by the over-reduction. Strange it was indeed to handle this pile of nearly invisible foil. The grey void of the anodes was seen again. There was the clamp with a grey, dark-appearing mass, with an elusive, shapeless appearance, between its jaws.

"We will proceed with our experiment," said the professor, placing the plates without the clamp in the quartz box, leaving the open top with no cover. He slid this into the X-ray machine immediately below the funnel-like aperture and in the path of the rod-like crystal light.

"Before I turn on the current to make the final test of success or failure, I want to explain the real action of this machine. Have you ever seen a band leader or orchestra leader wave his baton where the light is rather poor? If so, you have noticed that the baton appears to stutter or vibrate through the light— a sort of poor motior picture, where one sees the wand in one place, then see nothing for a short space with a quick reappearance beyond, and so on to produce a stuttered appearance. This phenomenon is due to light interference. In places the light reflected by the baton is interfered with and lost to the eye— a sort of "now you see it, now you don't" idea. I take advantage of this in causing these Roentgen rays to interfere with each other, making a sort of staggered but regular pulsation of X-rays. Some of the rays generated never get to their destination, but because of interference are used up in producing this red glow and beam. The five anodes enable me to control the speed of the interference, thus getting any vibration I want, through interference from two to five separate rays. The pulsating X-rays thus generated are sent through the funnel-like apparatus, where all but the rays passing straight through are absorbed into the walls. Thus, all rays going through the slit-like opening will be parallel in motion— no cross rays. In other words, I polarize the pulsating X-rays. The cold light, or crystal light, is this stream of polarized, pulsating X-rays. By throwing this ray onto any solid or liquid matter, I can cause the pulsation to synchronize with the natural period of the vibrating molecule, and slowly but surely speed up the motion and elongate the path of vibration until the invisibility effect is noticed."

So saying, the doctor switched on the current and the crash of large spark gaps again filled the room. Once more the room was suffused in a red glow and the crystal light steadied to a rigid bar of blinding brilliance. The three leaned forward toward the machine in close and excited observation of the plates of alloy. No great change seemed to occur. Dr. Moore, however, smiled and, motioning the boys away from the machine, opened two switches on a local bank of five on the machine's neat brown switchboard. Immediately the noise of spark gaps decreased and the red shaft of light softened to a hazy beam; the glow in the room faded to a pink sunset-light.

"I have cut off two of the circuits." The professor spoke loudly to be heard distinctly above the crackle of the spark coils. "It was evident that the five were not producing the correct pulsation to synchronize with the natural period of vibration of the molecules of the alloy or its platinum coating. We must blindly feel for the correct interference effect with different numbers of circuits going at one time. A sort of trial and error method. We are but babes in the field of higher science, and so we do not see clearly what we are attempting to do."

The pile of plates was now undergoing a color change — a sort of passing through the color spectrum from red to violet. Gradually the color steadied to a clear violet.

"Dr. Moore, I believe we are observing a gradual increase in the speed of those molecules of alloy which takes us through the vibrations of colored light. The red, being slower vibrations, we see that color first and as the vibration speed increases we get the advance along the spectrum in color to the rapid waves of violet light. Why does the color remain at violet and not pass on into the extremely rapid short waves of ultra-violet light?"

At last Murphy was flushed with excitement over what he had questioned but a short time ago. To him it was obvious that the whole experiment was going to be an unqualified success. Manoras spoke to the professor before an answer came.

"Don't you think that all that has occurred is a speeding up of the particle motion? I doubt if the path of motion has been elongated much; in fact, I should judge that the color change would indicate a shortening of the path to suit the increase in speed. Perhaps the only really necessary thing is to cause an extremely rapid vibration, taking the particles up to the vibration of ultra-violet or other invisible light at which point the object would be invisible."

SLOWLY the professor turned a large black lever to the right. The sputtering gaps fairly jumped off the machine in their activity. The noise increased to a roar. No change occurred in the color of the plates of alloy.

"Guess you are both right," the professor shouted, "Try turning on that number four circuit again please, Jerry."

As the fourth circuit sprang into action, the pile of violet colored sheets seemed to fade into thin air.

"Holy Mother!' Manoras spoke as if in prayer. "Professor, I congratulate you. I have never seen anything so wonderful."

The doctor was smiling through tears. His kindly nature was overwhelmed by this success.

"Marvelous, Dr. Moore." Jerry was almost speechless with amazement.

"Now, my friends, we will apply the last test. If we can make visible things invisible, we should be able to make invisible things visible. If we can cause our stream of Z-rays to pulsate in a manner to interfere with the vibration of the molecules you no longer see before you, we should be able to so hinder them that they again slow down to a normal speed of visibility."

Throwing the switch to the fifth circuit, the professor turned back the black lever controlling the intensity of the spark across the gaps. Slowly the violet color appeared, trembled, and with a flash of light the colors of the rainbow cascaded down the now visible pile of alloy sheets. An intense heat radiated from the stack of foil. Suddenly it flared brilliant white, and the once rigid pile fused and slid to a liquid in the bottom of the quartz dish standing there.

"Too much internal energy loosed all at once. We will have to be more careful in stopping the very violent vibration we set up to cause invisibility. All that energy released at once naturally comes away as heat and light."

The professor reached for the quartz dish in which the molten alloy ran about.

"Professor!" Murphy shrieked a hoarse warning, but too late. Dr. Moore's hand was already under the rod of crystal light. A kaleidoscope of color, a cry of anguish, and before a move could be made by either of the boys, the professor had completely disappeared.

Carlos sobbed aloud. Murphy swore violently. Both were wide-eyed and horror stricken.

"Dr. Moore! Are you here? Where are you? Answer us!' Manoras was hysterical. 'That damned machine. Why, oh why, did it ever come to be! Never will it harm another!"

Seizing a huge iron bar, he raised it high above his head and brought it down with a terrific smash on the glowing red bulb of the machine. A blinding explosion shook the room. Bottles fell from shelves, furniture crashed into the walls— all was a turmoil. The Z-ray machine literally melted to the floor, a fused mass of wreckage.

"Carlos!" Dr. Moore's voice, faint but sharp, cut through the momentary silence that followed the demolishing of the machine. "Alas, lad, you have cut off forever my hopes of returning to you Had you not ruined the machine, you might have again brought me to my natural state, as with the alloy sheets. By careful and slow treatment you could have slowed the motion of my molecules till they were again normal. Now it is too late."

"Professor! Where are you?" Murphy fairly shrieked his question.

"Here, Jerry, among you. Yes, really among you, for I find I can pass through your body without your knowledge. I have discovered a great secret, but it has cost me my human existence. My voice is failing. Listen closely, for ere long I shall not be able to speak in a voice you can hear."

"Forgive me! I was wild with rage at the machine I thought destroyed you."

"You are forgiven, Carlos. Now listen. When the visible becomes invisible, it is dematerialized. I find I have no feelings, no nerves. I have no material body. My faculties are gradually passing to a higher plane of vibration than those you possess: they follow my body. Soon my voice will be inaudible to you. Already I see through walls, see through the earth, any material thing. I move with no effort. I have no weight. My will controls my motion. I feel no pain, no cold, no heat. My hearing involves no sound— only a consciousness of what you say. I cannot touch you. I cannot hold or grasp the material things— they slip through my grasp as air would through yours. Mine alone is the secret of the machine which destroyed my human habitat. It has been destroyed and only my hand and brain could rebuild it. Since I am no longer capable of physical action and my voice fades even now, I can never again regain my human form. Mourn me not. I am not dead, there is no death for me. Perhaps I shall know you again— in— some— future—e—" The voice trailed into nothingness and the two young men stared with set faces and tear filled eyes into a void and space they could not fathom.

Have you ever felt that someone was present when you knew you were alone? It is the professor seeking, searching, looking for some one who can understand his sole means of communicating with us. Only through our intelligences and minds can he reach us. wondrous tale has he of an existence beyond our ken? Will we ever be able to learn more about it?

_______________

14: The Hawk and the White Elephant

Ross Ellis
fl 1914-1932

Adventure Dec 1915

OLD GRIFFITH HENDERSHOT, known to the Millville iron trade as the "Hawk," hung the telephone receiver on the hook with a hand that trembled slightly; but it was eagerness, not age, that had set his nerves aquiver.

Except for a predatory beak of a nose and eyes of a peculiarly piercing quality, Hawk Hendershot bore little resemblance to his feathered namesake. His hair was long and silver-tinged, his voice was soft and his manner benignant. Many, to their lasting sorrow, had been deceived thereby.

Of late the Hendershot Pig Iron Agency had fallen on evil days. The pickings had diminished to the vanishing point. Foundrymen, it seemed to the old broker, had become entirely too well educated. Most of his former customers, realizing the true inwardness of past transactions, had crossed his name off their inquiry lists.

Being well fortified financially as a result of thirty years of sharp trading, The Hawk had about decided to retire. But the awkwardly worded message which had just come to him over the 'phone had caused him to doubt that the game was played out, after all.

He puckered his thin lips and emitted the shnll whistle which served him in lieu of a call-bell.

The rattle of a typewriter in the adjoin- ing room suddenly ceased, and a rat-faced, gray little man appeared in the doorway of the private office. It was Lemuel Heevy, stenographer, bookkeeper, salesman, assistant manager and office boy of the Hendershot Pig Iron Agency.

"Lemuel," demanded his employer, "tell me all about the Millville Steel Foundry."

In addition to his other invaluable qualities, little Heevy had an inquiring disposition and an encyclopedic memory. He could be trusted to supply a complete record of any prospective victim.

He scratched his grizzled head and spat reflectively.

"Built in 1895 by Jerry Bannon. Busted in igor. Idle for two years. Bannon raised some money and started the plant going again in 1904. He died in 1907; plant idle ever since— at least, up to a week ago."

"And a week ago—" prompted the Hawk.

"A week ago young Jerry Bannon, the old man's son, came back from Texas, where he has been living with an uncle since his father's death. They say he has about fifty thousand dollars that he made in some lucky land deals when the oil boom struck his section. Anyhow, he's paid off his father's debts, taken over the plant from the mortgagee, and says he's going to start her up again. I saw him down at the bank a couple of days ago. Just a big, raw, red-headed kid. The cashier introduced us. Bannon says he doesn't know the first thing about the foundry business; but that he made his money in a game he learned while playing it, and he guessed he can learn this one."

The Hawk's eyes gleamed as might those of a veritable bird of prey at the sight of live meat.

"Experience is a great teacher," he agreed. "Mr. Bannon might as well get his now as later. He has just told me over the "phone that he is ready to buy some pig iron."

"We haven't any steel-making iron to sell him," objected Heevy. "Not one of those furnaces will allow us a brokers commission."

"Bannon doesn't appear to know that it requires a special kind of iron to make steel," said Hendershot. "From the way he talked just now I judge he thinks all pig iron is about alike."

"But Con Hefferan, his father's old foundry boss, is working for him. Hefferan will put him wise."

"Hefferan is out of town rounding up a crew of molders. He asked Bannon to pick a few cars of iron so that they can get the foundry in operation right away." Hendershot stood up, an erect, courtly figure, looking much like the traditional Kentucky colonel. "I shall call on Mr. Bannon at once," he announced.

"And may the Lord have mercy on his soul," said little Heevy piously.

His employer sighed.

"Will you never learn?" he mourned. "Why, Lemuel, I intend to sell Mr. Bannon the finest steel-making iron that money will buy. Furthermore, regardless of what it costs me, I shall sell it to him at far less than the market price."

Heevy laughed so hard that he had to lean against the door casing for support.

"I— I get you," he cackled. "And when— when Bannon's appetite is all whetted up—"

"Why, then," drawled The Hawk, "I may serve him with a small steak -carved from Perrigord's 'white elephant'."

Heevy's jaw dropped as the full meaning of the allusion flashed through his brain.

Almost a decade before, the then superintendent of the Perrigord Pig Iron Mfg. Co., 'way down in Tennessee, had gone on a thirty-day drunk. Being a conscientious man, he made a sincere effort to attend to his duties, even while consuming raw mountain whisky at the rate of more than a quart per day. Roaring at the sweating negroes, he kept the single stack going at full capacity.

His zeal for his employer's interests led him to make certain experiments designed to reduce production cost, the details of which he was later unable to remember. The result, however, spoke for itself. When, shaky but sober, he looked over the chemist's analyses of the daily runs, he uttered a shriek of anguish, hastily gathered up his belongings, and his place knew him no more.

He left behind him, stacked on the furnace yard, fifteen hundred tons of iron so uniquely atrocious that even in the boom days of 1906 it could not be sold at any price. The furnace went out of blast, in again, out again. Still that monument to John Barleycorn remained, gathering rust and dust on the furnace yard.

"Good Lord!" ejaculated the little clerk. "You wouldn't dare sell a steel foundry junk like that, would you? Not even a gray-iron foundry could use it. It couldn't be melted into good sash-weights. It's fit only for ballast."

"Has it ever been tried in a steel foundry?"

"Of course it hasn't— nor in a jewelry shop, either."

That lets us out, then," grinned Hawk Hendershot. "You never can be really sure about a thing until you try it."

Whereupon his lean face assumed its habitually benevolent expression, he set- tled a wide, black hat on his silvery mane, and started for the office of the Millville Steel Foundry, a gentleman of the old school to the life.

THE new owner of the steel foundry proved to be a freckled, red-haired person, very big and bony, very optimistic and very young. The Hawk judged his age to be about twenty-three years. He seemed much impressed by his caller— in fact, by the whole city of Millville.

"It's such a nice, friendly, honest place," he said with boyish enthusiasm. "I was just a kid when I left here, but it's always been home tome. When I got off the train and the runner for the Manufacturers' Hotel grabbed for my grip I could have hugged him. It seemed like a personal welcome. I made up my mind then and there that I never would leave here again."

"It is well for a young man to become established," agreed Hendershot paternally.

"Just what I told myself," said the boy. "I came here expecting to spend only a week or so. But, shucks! I liked the smell of the air and I liked the people. I had money enough to buy Dad's old plant and still have something left in the old sock. Why not doit? So I did."

"Very wise, I am sure," beamed The Hawk. "Now, about that pig iron—"

"Why, I'll leave that to you," said Jerry Bannon. "You know what I need better than I do. Con Hefferan said to pick up a couple of carloads as a starter. When he gets back we'll try it out, and if it suits him we'll buy two months' supply— about three hundred tons."

It was so easy that The Hawk felt vaguely disappointed. He really preferred to have his victims put up more of a battle.

"My boy, I must advise you to act at once," he urged. "The iron market is in a critical condition. Today I can offer you an opportunity which tomorrow I may not be able to duplicate. Let me sell you the three hundred tons, the order being subject to your superintendent's approval of the first two cars."

Young Bannon nodded.

"If the price is right, why not?"

"I will make the price eighteen dollars a ton," said The Hawk. "I am giving you a very special bargain."

"It sounds good to me," declared Bannon with enthusiasm. "Hefferan said the iron would cost me twenty dollars a ton. I'll have the laugh on him when he gets back. It certainly is great to be in a place where they don't try to skin a man just because he is green to a business."'

Hendershot was already busy with contract forms and a fountain pen.

"In the oil fields," he remarked without pausing in his labors, "there are, no doubt, many unscrupulous men. You must be a very shrewd young man, Mr. Bannon, to have avoided being defrauded."

"I can take care of myself," boasted the boy. "Nobody yet ever handed me a lime without getting a lemon in return."

Hendershot placed the contract forms on Bannon's side of the battered oak table.

"Look them over," he invited. "I think you will find them Sufficiently explicit to cover the situation."

The cock-sure young man gave them a perfunctory glance.

"Sure," he said, and signed his name with a flourish,

"And look at what he signed!" exulted The Hawk, when, on returning to his office he displayed the contract to Lemuel Heevy. "No brand, no guaranteed analysis, no anything! Just pig iron. And after they approve the first two cars and order the rest forward they have no recourse. I can ship them what I please and they have to take it!"

"What do you want me to do?" asked Heevy.

"Pick up two cars of the finest steel-making iron you can find on the market. Get something on track, if you can, so as to save time. In the meantime, I'll go over to Major Perrigord's office and see what price I can get on three hundred tons of the celebrated 'white elephant.' He ought to pay me for taking it off his hands."

IT WAS the policy of old Hawk Hendershot never to trouble trouble until trouble had him backed up in a corner; but he was strong on the defensive. He was certain that sooner or later there would be a wail of protest from the Millville Steel Foundry, and he waited for it with perfect equanimity. He had written that contract himself and he knew that it would stand inlaw. Moreover, he had the money. He had been careful to have all the cars shipped at one time and to collect the full price on presentation of the bills-of- lading. The possibility that the iron might prove satisfactory never entered into his calculations.

Therefore, when he heard Bannon's voice on the wire some weeks later, the old man instantly prepared for war. He was sur- prised at the affable quality of the other's tone.

"Got any more pig iron like that last lot, Mr. Hendershot?"

"Maybe." At times like these The Hawk was always guarded in his statements.

"I'd like your quotation on a larger quantity— say, eight hundred or a thousand tons."

Hendershot almost dropped the receiver. "You— you're pleased with it, are you?" he finally managed to get out.

"We had considerable difficulty when the second shipment came in," said the friendly voice, "because it's somewhat different from the first two cars. But at last we found how to use it. And, say! You couldn't sell us anything else, now."

"I'll see what I can do for you," said The Hawk feebly, and hung up the receiver. He wanted to think this astonishing situation over. He had all the sensations of the wild-cat promoter whose hole-in-the- ground suddenly develops into a gold mine. He was dazzled by the glittering possibilities that his imagination pictured. On his last transaction with the steel foundry his profit on the three hundred tons had been over thirty-five hundred dollars. At the same rate this coming sale promised to be the juiciest plum of his career. Perhaps Bannon could be talked into buying more than a thousand tons. The Hawk wondered how much of that iron Perrigord really had on his yards. He consulted the telephone.  Major Perrigord was not in, so that gentleman's office informed the questioner. How much of that iron was still for sale? According to the list, about 1500 tons. Yes, that was after deducting the three hundred tons already sold to Mr. Hendershot. Yes, Major Perrigord might be in at any moment. Business must be picking up. There had been a number of inquiries about the iron that day. Who had inquired? Oh, all the iron brokers. Had any of them talked to the Major? No, the Major had been absent all morning.

The Hawk was puzzled. Knowing nothing of steel manufacture, he had taken it for granted that because the iron was worthless for gray-iron castings it would be worse than worthless for Bannon's purposes. Apparently he had been wrong. He turned again to the telephone.

Would Major Perrigord's office give him an option on that 1500 tons at the same price as the previous lot— six dollars a ton? No, the office regretfully could not. The Major himself was the only one with that authority. Some of the other brokers had asked for options.

"Ask the Major to quote nobody until he hears from me," urged Hendershot.

The office would be glad to do that.

The Hawk did not like this sudden interest in the Perrigord product. It meant that Bannon must have had the iron analyzed and then given the inquiry to the other dealers, all of whom would have recognized the freakish analysis on sight. It meant competition, which, in this instance, spelled the death of trade for the Hendershot Pig Iron Agency.

However, by prompt action he might clinch the business before the others were prepared to quote. Half an hour later his wheezy runabout stopped before the Millville Steel Foundry.

The trials incident to whipping the foundry into shape seemed to have had no effect on Jerry Bannon's spirits. He looked pleased with himself, pleased with life, and pleased to see his visitor.

The Hawk got down to business at once.

"So you liked the iron so much that you have to buy a little more, hey?"

Bannon did not attempt to conceal his enthusiasm.

"My superintendent says he never saw anything like it. The chemist told us we couldn't use it; but you can't fool an old steelmaker like Con Hefferan."

"Got rid of most of that three hundred tons, have you?"

"Don't expect to have a pound of it left, two weeks from now."

It wasn't any false alarm, then. They had actually used the iron and liked it. It seemed to Hendershot that the young foundryman ought to be like wax in his hands.

"Now, let me give you a little advice, my boy," he said in his most paternal manner. "That iron is something special, as I told you before. There are only about fifteen hundred tons to be had at present, and I control it. There will not be any more on the market for a long time. Take it all while you can get it. Give me a firm offer at the same price you paid me for the last lot, and I'll see if I can't get the whole tonnage for you."

Bannon's brow puckered.

"I don't understand. I thought you controlled it."

"I represent the furnace that controls it," lied The Hawk. "The furnace people really fix the price. You give me an offer in writing, and then I'll have something definite to put up to my principals."

The young foundryman slowly shook his head.

"I don't see how I can. I've asked the other iron brokers for a price on the same kind of iron. If one of them came in with a better figure than the offer you want me to make you, why, I'd be tied up. It doesn't seem fair. No, Mr. Hendershot, you get your price first. Then we can talk."

There was a finality in the boy's tone that forbade argument. The Hawk wasted no more time. If he could not clinch the buyer, the seller yet remained. His fear lest one of the other brokers might make a snap quotation on the iron was overshadowed by the fear that Major Perrigord would be tempted into giving an option without waiting for him. He knew the Major had little cause to show him special consideration. He remembered, with fleeting regret, a transaction dating back six years, at the conclusion of which Perrigord had announced his intention of some day hanging the Hendershot hide on his back fence. The Major had never referred to the matter again. The Hawk hoped he had forgotten.

The broker hurried into his runabout and stepped on the accelerator. At the first drug store he slipped into a booth and telephoned the Perrigord Company. The Major himself answered the 'phone.

"Yes, sir," he said. "I received your message on my return, and I at once telephoned your office. If you wish to do business with me I'll wait half an hour for you."

Hendershot did not require the half-hour. There were seven miles to be traversed, but be did it in ten minutes flat, almost shaking the hood off his machine, and smashing Millville's speed laws to flinders.

Major Perrigord was a sallow, dyspeptic little man, with military bearing and a drooping black mustache two sizes too large for him. Usually he wore an expression of settled melancholy; but today Hendershot noted that the gloom had lightened. He seemed almost cheerful.

"There has been the most remarkable demand for that iron of mine," he confided. "So far as I know, it is entirely worthless; yet here is the situation. Every iron broker in Millville has telephoned my office today, during my absence, to ask a price on it. Hendershot, that three hundred tons I sold you was the first I ever sold of that freak lot, except for a few sample carloads. What did you have up your sleeve when you bought it? Has some foundryman actually discovered a way in which it can be used?"

Hawk Hendershot permitted himself the unusual lutury of telling the exact truth.

"I bought your iron without guarantee and I sold it the same way. That's all I know. But if you want to give me an option on the balance at the same price I'll try to work it off for you."

The Major shook his head.

"I can't do it. Not with all those inquiries staring me in the face."

The Hawk spread out his hands.

"If you don't protect me, how can I deal with my customer?"

"But these other brokers seem to have customers too," protested Perrigord. "I'll quote you all the same price, subject to prior sale, and let the best man win. That will be fair to everybody."

This did not suit Hendershot at all, and he made no secret of the fact.

"I can't do business that way. Give me an option for twenty-four hours."

"Not twenty-four minutes," said the Major firmly. "I'd be crazy to think of it."

"Not if I make the price seven dollars a ton?"

"Not at any price. You might not make the sale, and in that case I should be the loser."

The Major drew down his black brows in a scowl. It was evident that he was not to be moved from his position.

Hendershot was desperate. Once a price was quoted to the other iron dealers, his chance for big profits was gone. He thought rapidly. He came to a decision.

"Major," he said, "may I use your telephone?"

"Certainly, sir. Step right into the booth."

A MOMENT later The Hawk was in communication with the Millville Steel Foundry.

"This is Griffith Hendershot, Mr. Bannon. My principals think they might authorize a price of eighteen dollars a ton. If I talk them into it, will you give me the order?"

The young foundryman laughed, albeit rather impatiently.

"I won't make you an offer, if that's what you mean. But the other brokers haven't quoted me, and I guess they aren't going to. Get your price and come out to see me. And you might bring contract blanks along. I'll not buy until I hear from you."

The Hawk and the White Elephant

Hendershot left the booth, his mind at rest. His course was now clear. Evidently the others were not venturing to quote until Perrigord had named his price. There was just one way to insure the Major's silence.

"Let's get down to brass tacks. TIl buy . your iron outright at seven dollars a ton, which is a lot more than it is worth. Is it a deal?"

The Major looked wistful, but he shook his head.

"I can't consider less than ten dollars," he said.

"That's absurd!" snorted The Hawk.  "The iron is a drug on the market. Be reasonable."

"If the price is unreasonable," said Major Perrigord, "I shall, of course, have to reduce it. But perhaps the other brokers will not share your view."

Hendershot almost wept. It was agonizing to see such a percentage of his profit pared away. Still, two-thirds of a loaf was decidedly better than no bread at all.

"I suppose I'll have to pay your holdup figure," he conceded grudgingly. "I'd rather lose money than disappoint my customer."

At the picture of old Hawk Hendershot losing money to accommodate anybody, even the gloomy Major was compelled to smile.

"Am I to understand that you will pay me ten dollars per ton, F.O.B. cars Millville, for fifteen hundred tons of pig iron of the same grade as the last lot I sold you?"

"It's robbery, but I'll do it," agreed the other.

The Major snapped his fingers.

"You have bought something," he said. "Now we come to terms. The sum involved is fifteen thousand dollars. I want your check, sir, for one-half that amount. The balance can go sight-draft against bills-of-lading, as the iron is shipped. Those are my terms to you, Mr. Hendershot."

"That's all right," said The Hawk indifferently. He was so accustomed to having his good faith questioned that it never caused a ripple on the surface of his self-esteem. "We can fix it up tomorrow."

"I have contract-blanks here, and I see your check-book in your pocket. We will close the matter now, if you please."

"I don't see what's the overpowering hurry," grumbled the old broker.

Major Perrigord looked him squarely in the eye. "If we failed to pass papers here and now," he said sorrowfully, "by tomorrow morning you would remember this transaction merely as an option— if it suited your purpose better. I had one experience with you, sir, that I can never forget."

"Fix up your contract," growled The Hawk, inspecting the stub of his check-book. He wondered if this rise in price was the Major's threatened revenge. It was an edifying thought, in view of his own profit on the deal. Hendershot chuckled as he scrawled his signature to the seven- thousand five-hundred dollar check.

ACROSS the battered oak table in the office of the Millville Steel Foundry, the iron broker beamed on Jerry Bannon.

"It took great argument with my principals," be said. "They felt that they should have at least twenty dollars a ton. But I fought for your interests, my boy. I maintained that some sacrifice should be made to help along a coming industry like this. Here is the result of my labors."

He laid a contract form on the table.

Bannon picked it up, glanced at it, then laid it down.

"The others didn't name me any prices," he said; there was a hint of embarrassment in his manner.

The Hawk's smile was benignant.

"It was impossible for them to do so, as I told you before. Just sign on that upper line, please."

Bannon swallowed hard.

"Sorry," he said. "I've decided not to buy."

''Wh-what!" exploded The Hawk.

The angry tone seemed to act on the boy like a tonic.

"I've decided not to buy," he repented calmly. "We can't make castings out of the iron, and a manufacturer ought not to buy anything he can't use. Don't you agree with me, Mr. Hendershot?"

The broker stretched a shaking hand across the table.

"You said your foundryman liked the iron. You said you wouldn't use anything else. You said—"

Bannon laughed.

"You must have misunderstood me. I aid Hefferan had never seen anything like t. That's what he told me. I said you couldn't sell me anything else. Well, I'm afraid you couldn't."

Old Hawk Hendershot was almost inarticulate.

"You— you said," he spluttered, "that you were using the iron, that it wouldn't ast—"

"I said I didn't expect to have a pound of it left, two weeks from now. I sha'n't. I've sold it all."

The words were like a life raft to a drowning man. The Hawk clutched at them vildly.

"Tell me where you sold it," he begged, with a facial contortion that was meant to be an ingratiating smile. "Let me get at he buyer right away, before he has time to melt any of that iron, and I'll give you a commission on every ton I sell him."

Bannon grinned. He leaned forward confidentially.

"If there's a chance to make money out of it," he said, "I'll put you in the way of getting the inside dope. I sold the iron through a man named Perrigord, who has an office in the Meredith Building. He had twelve hundred tons more of the same stuff, and I took an option on it at six dollars a ton. He agreed to act as my selling agent, and he seems to be a good one. An hour ago he telephoned me that he had just sold the whole fifteen hundred tons at ten dollars to a man he's had a grudge against for six years. Now, if you see Perrigord— Why, what's your hurry, Mr. Hendershot?"

The Hawk did not answer. He was dashing madly for his auto, in the vain hope that he might reach the bank before Major Perrigord had cashed that check.

________________

15: Black Cats

Gerald de Vries
fl 1928-32

Thrilling Adventures, April 1932

ED HARRIS sat in the doorway of the crude little hut staring sullenly about him. He hated the little tropical island upon which he had been marooned for six weeks. Heat, stifling and intense, rose from the bright-hued foliage of the dense jungle that surrounded the fever-laden swamp which formed the center of the place.

Harris cursed softly as he glared out at the sea. He had not wanted to be put ashore here, yet he had been given little choice. Broke, save for a few dollars which he had been hoarding, he had been discovered on the mail steamer, a stowaway. The captain had been vindictive about it. Harris had been put ashore on the island and argument had proven useless.

When the ship had sailed away Harris had learned that there was but one other white man on the island. That was Jed Wilks, the fat, slovenly uncrowned king of the territory who ruled the natives through fear of his stock brutality while he plied his sordid liquor trade among them.

AT first Harris had been grateful for even the presence of Wilks. Though he had moved into a deserted hut which he had found on the beach the new arrival had spent much of his time at the big shack where Wilks lived and did his trading.

But Wilks had suddenly decided that there was not room for two white men in his domain. It was all because of the native girl, Lela. When Harris had first landed she had come to him, whimpering and frightened, with Wilks close behind her.

There had been a beautiful glitter in the oily hulk of the man as he gazed at the girl. The fear in Lela’s face had been too much for Harris. He had drawn his revolver and ordered the trader away.

Wilks had gone angrily and reluctantly, yet when next he had encountered Harris he had said nothing. It was only now that Harris was beginning to realize how clever the other man had been. Always pretending that they were friends. Seemingly delighted whenever the younger man had come to the big shack, and at the same time doing things under cover to try and get rid of him.

He would have succeeded if it had not been for the girl. Always she was on guard, trying to protect the younger man from the trader. There had been that poisoned coffee which Lela had refused to let him drink. Harris shuddered as he thought about it. It had caused a dog to die almost instantly when the animal had taken a sip of it.

But that had been only one of the attempts on Harris’ life. There had been others, some not so subtle. Twice he had been shot at as he made his way along the beach. Once he had found an evil looking poisonous snake curled up in his bunk in the little hut.

He had killed it with a shot from his automatic revolver. He knew the snake had not gotten there of its own accord. That was more of Wilks’ work.

The other night for the first time the big man’s enmity had come out boldly. Harris had sat across from him at a little table in the big shack watching, always ready for every action of the stout flabby creature.

“I’m speakin’ plain, Harris,” Wilks had said, the words gurgling from his mouth like heavy syrup from a stone jug. “I want Lela, and I’m gonna have her, understand!”

“You'll never get her, Wilks,” Harris had stated quietly and coldly.

“Want her yourself, eh?” Wilks laughed harshly.

“No,” Harris had said slowly. “I’ve sunk pretty low, with little left but a mad craving for liquor, but I haven’t gone native— and I don’t intend to do so!” he smiled grimly. “But you'll never get Lela!”

“You lie!” Wilks had roared. “I always get what I want, no matter how. There ain’t room for us both on this island. I was here before you come an’ I’m gonna still be rulin’ th’ roost when you’re gone.” He had leaned forward and poked Harris in the chest with the black nail of a stubby finger. “Either I get th’ girl an’ you get out on th’ next boat that stops here, or you die, get me?”

TO his own surprise he had not been afraid, just disgusted, and seething with rage. He longed to reach out and slap that ugly, sweaty face in front of him, to break the big man’s head with the butt of the automatic that his fingers clung to tightly within the side pocket of the torn white linen coat. But he had not done so, that would have been too much like Wilks’ way of doing things.

“I don’t give a hoot what you want, Wilks,” he had said. “You won’t get the girl, and I’ll leave when I get damn ready!”

Wilks had started to speak and then glanced at a calendar which hung on the wall. As he did so a strange, frightened expression passed over the stout man’s face.

Harris noticed the other’s expression, and then glanced at the calendar. As he observed the date he smiled faintly.

“Friday, the thirteenth, eh?” he had said. “They say that’s an unlucky day, Wilks.”

“Uh huh,” Wilks had stared down at one huge arm, across the wrist of which ran the jagged scar of a knife wound. “It’s unlucky, all right. I got that slash on Friday, the thirteenth, just after a black cat had crossed my path.”

“Just a little superstitious, aren’t you,” Harris had said. “Afraid of black cats, Wilks?”

“Black cats!” Wilks had shuddered. “I hate ’em— they’re the very worst kind of luck!”

“Did you know that I’ve one at my cabin?” Harris had asked. He had been lying, but had felt it might be wise to play upon the big man’s superstition. “Lela found it near the swamp.”

“You— you got a black cat?” Wilks had demanded, glaring at him wildly. “It’s a lie!”

“Drop around and see for yourself,” Harris had said as he left. “I hope it crosses your path.”

HARRIS smiled now as he thought about that conversation. The funny part of it was that he did have a black cat in his kit bag. Not a real one, just a toy that he had picked up in his travels. To him it had been sort of a mascot. He didn’t believe in the bad luck of black cats. He had taken it out of his kit bag and given it to Lela that afternoon. She had been afraid of it at first. The furry object had looked realistic, with its back arched as though it would utter an angry hiss at any moment.

HARRIS frowned as he realized it was growing dark. Lela had overheard Wilks tell one of the natives that he intended to get Harris tonight. That he would wait no longer.

As night descended over the island a faint chill of fear swept over him. Wilks had said that he was going to get him, and he suddenly found him- self afraid of the big man’s sly, sinister ways. The weeks of drinking Wilks’ stomach-searing liquor had weakened his morale. He got to his feet and stood gazing anxiously about him.

Yesterday had been the thirteenth and the mail steamer was due again on the fifteenth. Why that was to-morrow! He hadn’t thought of that before, but it meant a chance to get away. Yet the captain would never let him on board without money. He grinned mirthlessly. Money! Wilks had plenty of it in that heavy belt he wore around his waist. If there were only some way that he could get that money from Wilks!

Suddenly he caught sight of a dim figure moving toward him along the beach. A heavy, massive form. Wilks! He was coming now. For an instant the younger man stood there, staring. Slowly, deliberately, the fat trader moved toward him. Harris— could see the evil sinister glitter in Wilks’ little pig-like eyes.

With a frightened oath Harris turned and went crashing into the jungle, the automatic in his pocket forgotten. He did not realize that he was heading for the treacherous growth of the swamp, his one thought was to get away— he did not want to die.

Behind him came Wilks. The big man had increased his speed, he, too was running now. Once Harris glanced over his shoulder. He shuddered as he caught a glimpse of the wicked looking knife that the trader held in his hand. He didn’t want to die— life had suddenly grown very sweet. Once Harris tripped and fell, as he did so the automatic slipped unheeded from his pocket.

THE younger man got hurriedly to his feet and ran on. The ground over which he traveled was growing moist and slippery. The swamp! Why hadn’t he realized that before! Behind him he heard Wilks crashing heavily through the brush. It was too late, he could not turn back now.

Harris glanced ahead. He saw a clearing, a spot where the murky black water of the swamp lapped about a big flat rock. With a swift leap he landed upon the rock and then jumped again to find himself in the dry brush a few feet beyond.

He paused abruptly, panting. He could not go any further. He had to face Wilks here and now. For the first time Harris thought of the automatic. He cursed bitterly when he found that the weapon was gone. He turned and waited as the big man drew nearer.

Wilks gave a shout of fiendish joy as he saw the other man standing there, and flourished a knife.

Harris waited grimly. Even the lowest rat will fight when cornered, and he had once been a man, had Ned Harris.

Wilks leaped onto the rock. As he did so he paused and stared at some- thing which Harris had not even noticed. The trader turned hastily as though about to run back in the direction from which he had come, then uttered a scream of terror as his foot slipped and he fell, the knife in his hand turning inward as he did so.

For a long time Harris stood watching the huge figure as it lay in a motionless heap upon the rock. Finally he moved closer. He jumped onto the rock and touched Wilks with his foot. The big man did not move. He was dead, the blade of his own knife sticking in his heart.

Anxiously Harris glanced about him, wondering what had frightened the man. He uttered a startled exclamation as he caught sight of the little furry figure near the edge of the big rock. The toy black cat stood there, it’s back arched as though it were about to spring.

Harris picked it up and gazed at it thoughtfully. Then he looked again at Wilks’ limp form and saw the outline of the money belt beneath the man’s shirt. Harris found he did not regret the other’s death. It had been his life or Wilks, and fate had dealt the trader the black ace.

With the money that would now be useless to the fat man, Harris could get away tomorrow and start afresh. Those on the mail steamer would demand explanations perhaps, but Harris intended to tell the truth if they did. The natives of the island knew that Wilks had planned to kill him, they would testify upon his behalf.

HARRIS thought of Lela. Stamba, one of the native youths loved her— she would return his adoration when there were no white men there.

Harris glanced at the toy black cat in his hand. Lela had probably tired of it, and left it here in the swamp where she often wandered. Then he looked again at the still form of Jed Wilks.

“The superstitious fool!” he murmured. “Black cats are unlucky, huh? Maybe— but not for me!”

__________________

16: Lost Treasures of Eden

Captain John Powers

Fl. 1934

Thrilling Adventures, Dec 1934

Billed as a "true story"; but too preposterous for words (the Garden of Eden is in Yucatan??). And "Captain Powers" appears to have published only this story, so the name is likely a pseudonym. A lost world adventure.

1: A Pledge with Death

I SEARCHED Professor Gregory's face carefully. I knew,  though he held himself staunchly upright, with the cold sweat streaming from his face, that he had only a very short time to live. Malignant malaria might carry him off at any moment. He had to talk rapidly. He had, in a few brief minutes, turned back the hands of the centuries almost six thousand years, by Biblical reckoning!

"You know, of course," he said, "the story of the exodus from Eden?"

"Of course. Who doesn't? Eve was tempted by the serpent and ate of the apple, and she, with Adam, was driven from the Garden of Eden with a flaming sword in the hand of an angel of the Lord. It was their punishment. And since that time nobody has ever been able to locate the idyllic garden of the first man and woman."

Professor Gregory leaned forward tensely. "I know where the Garden is!" he told me.  "And I know that if Adam and Eve were driven out— and I would never deny Holy Writ after all I have seen— they crept back later, or their children did, and remained in the Garden until their death, leaving it to their descendants to the end of time. They have occupied it uninterruptedly ever since."

O, the man wasn't mad. He had taken an expedition into the vast lands of Yucatan— lands which were guarded by Indians who never allowed outsiders to spend the night in their domain. Now, the only survivor of the expedition, he came out claiming he had found the Garden of Eden!

I suppose I was the first person to see Gregory and not to laugh at him. I had a hunch, which was why I had called on him in his hotel. Gregory was pitifully eager to talk. The ridicule he had received at the hands of his fellow scientists had eaten into his very soul. If ever a man had been sentenced to die of a broken heart, that man was Professor Alexis Gregory.

"You believe me?" he asked. "I tell you I have seen the city that stands in the Garden of Eden, inhabited by men, women and children as white as you or I. The city is surely the oldest in the Western Hemisphere. It is like a monster beehive, but marked by domes and minarets which glisten like gold in the sun— because they are gold! Their leader is a first daughter of Eve! Their symbol is the flaming sword.

"The city rests in a deep valley which is like an amphitheater. Outside of the valley, guarded on all sides, at every approach, by lost descendants of the Aztecs, are the hills which no outlander, except myself, has ever passed and lived. I have been in, and have come out. I re- turned to find someone to take up my work and prove my story; I found shrugs and disbelief. They think me mad. I've been through enough to make me mad."

I looked at him again, and he wasn't mad. My heart hammered with excitement. Gold beyond computing! Diamonds, too, mined through the centuries from the changeless hills!

"I know all about you," he told me finally. "I would like you to go into the place, study it, confirm my stories of it, and make preparations to enter with a scientific expedition, open it to the world. You'll do it?"

It didn't take me long to make a decision. To rediscover Eden! To look upon a city forever lost to man!

I extended my hand to him. He caught my fingers and clung. His eyes stared into mine with fierce intensity. Then, slowly, his fingers relaxed, he sat back— and Professor Gregory was dead.

At that moment, I had the feeling that nothing in the world could stop me from keeping faith with him. I had clasped hands with death and made an agreement.

I STARED at the dead man for a moment. Then I rose to my full six feet, and went to the small black handbag which he had explained held all his data and whatever money I would need. The whole thing was in a big envelope, marked with my name. Gregory had known I would accept his proposal.

I shivered a little, recalling what he had told me of the gift of prophecy possessed by these people. Had he had some of it himself?

I counted the money and whistled softly to myself. There were forty new bills of one thousand dollars each. Enough to keep a man in comfort for a lifetime, but for one thing— that potential storehouse of wealth beyond man's wildest imagining. If I hadn't known of the professor's golden city, this forty thousand would not have seemed, by comparison, like a few pennies jingling in the bank of a child.

I called the hotel authorities, reported the death of Gregory. As soon as the medical examiner pronounced his death natural, I slipped out. Times Square seemed a place apart, somehow alien, for beyond and through the lights I could see that sun-drenched city of gleaming roofs!

Making inquiries, I found that the first steamer for Puerto Cortez left in three-quarters of an hour. I headed straight for the docks. I had money to purchase what I needed. By going alone, and immediately, I guarded my secret.

THE steamer fairly crawled southward. Many times I cursed myself for not having flown. But I spent the time planning ahead. Of the Yucatan jungle I knew only that it was filled with snakes, poisonous orchids, ocelots, jaguars. But inland, beyond the valley of lost rivers, I knew nothing of the land. Neither did any other known living white man.

I docked at Puerto Cortez, hurried from the steamer, and bumped into a short white man.

He had blue eyes, fair skin, and yellow hair. The bumping, I thought, was accidental. I started to apologize.

"To go into Eden is to die!" he said softly.

I didn't stop to think. I just grabbed at the man. But many people were moving down the gang-plank, jostling me, and he slipped through my fingers. It wasn't a retreat, for there was nothing in the man's eyes even remotely resembling fear.

His eyes warned me. They were malevolent.

I started after him, but he moved away. To run after him would be to court too much attention, to bring my name into prominence. I didn't want any publicity, so I had to let him get away.

How could this man have been there, ready?

How could he have known of my coming?

Dread suspicion gave me cold chills. The "people of Eden," Gregory had said, could see things at a distance! Absurd!

But Gregory had believed in it himself.

The man on the dock had known of Gregory, of course; had seen stories of his death in the news-papers, stories in which my name had been mentioned. Knowing Gregory, the fellow must have guessed what Gregory would do, and had watched incoming steamers for my appearance.

I wasn't ready to accept people who could see things at a distance. There were plenty of things in the world beyond my comprehension— but then I remembered: had not Jehovah said to Adam and Eve:

"But the tree of knowledge ye shall not eat of it!"

"I must be crazy," I told myself, "to believe in this nonsense!" But what if, as Gregory had said, the first man and woman had come back in the olden time, and eaten of the tree?

My thoughts were leading me into all sorts of mental absurdities. But I couldn't get that white fellow and his warning out of my mind. It stuck to me, and his face went with me in memory, during all my preparations for the trek into the south.

First, I found a beachcomber who had once fought with me in a revolution in Nicaragua, The man's name was Mestizo Jaime, and he might have been any nationality.

"Into Yucatan?" he asked when I told him. "Sure, I'll go. I've heard a lot of stuff about that place. Any fighting?"

"Absolutely," I replied.

"Then I'm on."

"You may get killed," I said.

"What of it? I can't live forever."

"If you are captured you may be tortured or sacrificed to some heathen gods."

He grinned. His mouth was full of gold teeth, his only assets.

"They'll know they've been in a fight!"

TWO days later, with a group of twelve additional men and four burros, we started out of Puerto Cortez and headed straight toward the heart of Yucatan, following a route Gregory's notes had laid out for us. Our crew contained seven blacks and five white men, the latter beach-comber friends of Mestizo Jaime whom he had gathered together.

From the very beginning we had our work cut out for us. The jungle was matted, and we had to cut our way through with machetes. Mosquitoes descended on us in countless hordes, filling our veins with malaria. I dosed everybody with quinine, including myself, until our heads rang like temple bells. Only the burros did not seem to mind.

MESTIZO JAIME ruled the bearers with a heavy hand. They obeyed him without question.

"Get the lead out!" I kept urging them. "This is a race against death!"

At last, after what seemed endless hardships, and dangers which had taken the lives of two of our men, we stood at the uttermost limit ever reached by any expedition. This was the jumping-off place. I lifted my eyes and peered ahead, debating with myself. That warning rang in my ears louder than ever:

"To go into Eden is to die!"

As I stood beside a tree, scanning the way ahead, I heard a light thud. I turned, startled. An arrow had imbedded itself in the tree. Nobody saw it but Mestizo Jaime, who happened to be with me. There was a piece of paper tied around the haft of the arrow. I unfolded it.

Amazingly, the message was in English, a mere scrap of words that meant nothing. The paper was torn, and ragged. Then I recognized the handwriting. It was that of Professor Gregory! It said:

northeast corner of the Garden of Eden.

It looked to be a page torn from a diary. In itself it meant nothing. The arrow was the warning. The handwriting told me our unseen watchers knew who we were and why we were there.

Mestizo Jaime and I looked at each other in silence. The jungle was suddenly silent as the grave, as though all the world had paused to listen, and to wait for what would happen next.

There was nothing miraculous about this, I reassured myself. Gregory had kept notes while a prisoner in the city about which he had told me. To himself he had probably called the place the Garden of Eden, and this note was merely something he had written to remind himself of some spot in the city, some location perhaps, or some hiding place.

"Well, Jaime," I said, "do we go on or go back?"

"What do you say?" he answered.

I gritted my teeth.

"I go on if I have to go alone."

"I go with you," he said simply. "Let's put it up to the others."

I took the arrow and went back to our resting men. I spoke to them briefly.

"To go on may mean that every last one of you will be wiped out. To go back means only to get through the dangers of the jungles— the normal ones. To go on means plenty of money for you if you live. To go back means to forfeit any rights in whatever this expedition develops. What do you say? Remember, now, once we have traveled ahead for just one hour, you're committed to the trip, no matter what happens. It will be too late to turn back. I give you fifteen minutes to decide."

TO a man— so well had Mestizo Jaime chosen our crew— they agreed then and there to go ahead, and we started.

I expected almost anything to happen. But nothing did, as we went deeper and deeper into the jungles which now mounted toward the peaks of the second range behind the mountains ramparting the sea.

We built a barricade that night and set double guards. The jungle was silent. I slept. I wakened to hear a mad, wild chattering, in which there was nothing that sounded human. I jumped from my hammock, thinking we had been attacked.

Three men, who had been sleeping were dead. Over the nostrils of each was a poisonous orchid— the Midnight Lady!

2: Lancets of Gold

BUT as I had already told my men, it was too late to turn back, nor would I have done so, even had I been offered all the gold about which Gregory had spoken. I knew that every last man might die before we ever glimpsed the Garden, but that didn't deter me, either.

We pushed on, after burying the three dead men, as we had buried the others who had died. And now I knew why the jungle had not showered us with enemies. They were around us all the time, lying in wait, prepared to destroy us as they chose. I had walked my men straight into their trap. As we advanced, the blacks, with flaming torches of wood, led the way. They fought at the lianas with machetes until sweat poured from their laboring bodies. When the ever-expected onslaught did not come, I cursed our unseen enemies with all the evil words I knew. Not to attack was worse than any attack could have been. The suspense was ghastly.

It was around two o'clock in the morning when we lost our first burro, but we couldn't blame that on human enemies. A boa constrictor swinging from a tree, and looking like a liana, wrapped himself around the animal and squeezed it to death before we could kill the reptile. Mestizo Jaime shot the snake. It might just as well have gotten one of our men.

The boa, however, didn't fall onto the ground after Jaime's bullets had smashed its head. It merely hung straight down from the fatal tree limb, its loosening folds dropping the contorted burro to the ground.

I looked up and shivered at what I saw. The most dangerous folds of the boa constrictor, the last few feet of the tail, which he had to fasten onto something to bring his other coils into play, were fastened about that tree limb with a liana.

He had been placed in our trail by some human agency.

He couldn't thus have trapped himself.

"They must be all around us!" I told Mestizo Jaime.

I looked wildly into the blackness of the jungle. To me, now, it was peopled with the very imps of Hades. As we went on, we watched for all sorts of traps, for anything the mind of man might imagine. The snake had gotten under my skin, for it made me think again of Eden, in which Eve had listened to the evil counsel of a snake and been banished for her failure to resist.

"Keep going!" I yelled at the men, already traveling their best.

NEAR morning we stood on a cleared space on a shoulder of the last mountain range westward, and looked into the south and east. The sky, in that direction, was streaked by a strange glow. The glow was as if it came from a city lighted with electricity, but I knew that was absurd. Such a glow, I told myself, might have been caused by a vast flame reflecting itself from some smooth substance, say a mighty glass reflector.

Or it might have been reflected from burnished gold!

Gold going to my head: but in that direction, I knew, was the place we sought, if Gregory had been as sane as I thought him, and if his maps and notes were even approximately correct. We had followed those directions minutely.

That the light was of human origin I knew before I took another step, for the glow suddenly vanished as though it had been switched off, and the night sky, where it had been, became as black as Erebus. I judged the light had been three miles away— three Yucatan jungle miles, each of which was as far as the moon. But I hammered at my men.

WHEN morning came, after hours during which I watched the sky for the reappearance of the light, we stood on another eminence and looked down into a valley. Gregory had said that the true valley was guarded by Indians. We saw no such guards,

On the valley floor— and what a fortress the valley was!— were tumbled masses of rock, which were shaped in what seemed to be beehives of mighty proportions, or like pyramids with abutments of some sort. The buildings looked as old as time itself. They covered the valley floor almost to its edge, where the hills rose. In between them were growing things, gorgeous foliage born of the tropics. Here was a paradise. It didn't seem to be inhabited. I saw no living thing that moved— and yet, as I looked, the sweat burst forth on my whole body. I trembled and was afraid. Not afraid of anything I could touch, but afraid of a nameless something I couldn't comprehend.

A warning had come to me from this place. I hadn't heeded it. Yet here was power, plainly indicated, which dwarfed my own to pigmy size. Had I been able to conceive of this place, I wouldn't have dared to move against it with less than an army!

There must be people somewhere, for this city showed evidence of in tense, inspired cultivation. Near the abutment of one of the buildings I saw something move. It seemed to be a huge man, but it was gone so quickly I couldn't be sure. It was as though it had caught my glance and ducked back.

And then —suddenly— the sun came out of the east, rising like a red ball of fire, and splashed its light over the roofs of the city. I gasped. I couldn't seem to catch my breath, for when the sun's rays struck the city, the city's roofs struck back at the sun with lancets of gold that were brilliant as those of the sun itself. The whole city seemed to glow, a golden glow of unimaginable splendor.

Were those roofs sheathed with gold? I think my men must have thought so, for they swore softly, in low voices, and their eyes did not blink as they stared, as though they feared to miss something for an infinitesimal second.

They got out of hand. They forgot hardships and warnings, and acted like men who had gone mad.

"Take it easy!" I cautioned. But they paid me no heed.

THEY bunched themselves and charged down the mountainside. I wouldn't be left behind. After all, this was the place I had set out for, and I was going down into it at any cost. I became as bad as the rest; I raced after them, took the lead. All of us gripped our weapons. The burros with our duffel and our food were left behind, forgotten.

"Look to your guns!" I snapped.

At the beginning of the city, I managed to call a halt. Before us were streets. There were spots in their cobblestones which glistened when the sun struck them as the roofs of the city did. And there were spots where the ground was not covered by stones at all. In these bare spots showed the footprints of human beings— bare feet, and feet covered by sandals.

"Good God!" It was an exclamation, almost a prayer, from Mestizo Jaime.

There were people here, all right, but where were they? Not one was visible. I followed Jaime's gaze and read the answer. On the hill where we had stood were men aplenty. They seemed to be soldiers in extended order. I studied them more closely, and knew they were Indians, the guardians of the passes Gregory had mentioned.

YET they had allowed us to pass through. I felt a chill at that. It meant that we were to be handled by the people of the city; that there was no escape for us. I followed the rim of the valley with my eyes, and knew that every foot of the way out was guarded— by men who merely stood, dots against the jungle, and stared at us in silence, bows and arrows gripped in their murderous hands.

"We're trapped," I said flatly. "But we're still alive. Nothing shall stop us!"

I sent two men ahead as point, to give us warning if enemies waited around the next corner. I watched the two men go. They turned a corner, moving with utmost caution. Then we advanced. But when we reached that corner, no more than a minute later, the two advance men had vanished—and there were spots of blood on the cobblestones,

I looked at Mestizo Jaime, and he looked at me. Jaime grinned. He would have grinned at anything. But I didn't feel like grinning.

"Listen, Jaime," I said. "I don't intend to be played with. Here we stay until something breaks."

We leaned against a wall which seemed to shut off a dwelling of some sort, and waited. We waited for two minutes by my watch. Nothing happened. Then, something did. It was a simple thing, until one recalled that two of our men had disappeared as though miraculously snatched into nothingness.

The something was the musical sound of a bell. I listened, and my head swam. The earth seemed to whirl and spin under my feet, like the deck of a boat in a heavy sea. No need to tell me of what metal, or what alloy, that bell was made.

"Listen to it," I told Jaime.

He nodded, his eyes wide. He, too, had guessed.

The bell was made of gold. It was being rung by a man, or woman, of great power. Its great volume penetrated all the mysterious city, all the valley. It was threatening, savage, commanding.

Then a cry rose from the hills— the guardians making answer: an answer which traveled all around the valley's rim, a cry that chilled the blood.

With a creaking sound, many doors opened. White faces peered forth. I looked back the way we had come, between high walls— and the way behind us had been closed by a third wall which had dropped silently into place, or had been raised into place from the ground.

3: Moving Walls

TO SAY that we were startled, would be to put it mildly. The way back was effectively blocked. We whirled around again, in a body— and there a fourth wall had risen. We were now blocked in by four walls, all of them higher than we could reach with our finger-tips when extended to their greatest reach. And two of the walls were closing in on us, to smash us out flat.

The slow moving of the two walls reminded me of the ponderous moving of the leaves of the great Panama Canal locks. Those walls were heavy; they must have weighed tons. My men were swearing. Their eyes were big with fright.

I stared from one moving wall to the other— and my stomach turned. Those walls were stained significantly with gruesome black splotches which could mean but one thing: other men had seen this treatment before. I fancied I could even see their shapes, painted by the stains of their own blood, on the jaw-like walls closing in to crush us.

THE ironical part of the whole thing was this: we were going to be crushed by gold! The two walls were literally plated with it, and it glistened even through the hideous Stains. It was as though the people here had known why we came, and were mocking us by showing us pounds and pounds of gold, before that precious metal spread us out flat and killed us. I could have laughed hysterically over the irony of it— but some action was necessary. I hated to die like a rat caught in a trap.

"Get hold of yourselves!" I yelled at my terrified men. "Form for wall scaling!"

Mestizo Jaime quickly took charge, dividing them into four parties, one for each wall. He formed his men in the usual pyramid, facing the wall that closed on us from the front. I took three negroes and the wall to my right, which was a fixed wall. We climbed up. Jaime got onto the moving wall with his men.  Two of them sat astride, reaching down their hands to one man who remained at the base. He took two steps backward, and prepared to run and jump, holding up his hands for his comrades to grasp.

"Hurry!" I yelled at him.

But he missed his grip, and by this time there was no chance left to jump again. The closing walls were within two feet of each other.

The man himself knew he couldn't make it. His hands were uplifted as though in supplication. His eyes were starting from his head as he watched the tops of the two walls— those tops now so close together that he could see them both at once, five feet above his head.

"Godlemighty!" moaned Jaime.

Then the opposing walls touched their victim, while his arms were still stretched to their utmost above his head. I stood there, horrified, turned to stone. I wanted to turn my head away and could not. The walls were flattening him out. The resistance of his body did not stay their slow march at all.

A ghastly scream burst from his lips, rose in a terrible agony and died away into the silence of death.

Even then the walls continued to close. When they finally stopped, one could not have inserted a finger between them at the top.

No wonder there were stains on those walls!

"Run!" yelled someone. "Get away from the walls!"

I REGAINED control of myself, whirled atop my perch to look about me. Things had gone bad indeed for us. Mestizo Jaime's man had dropped beyond the wall they had scaled, or so it looked. I was alone on my wall, for the three whom I had helped out of those ghastly jaws had dropped into a sort of compound beyond.

Now they were racing like madmen toward a tall door in the face of a building. I don't know that I blamed them, for the jambs of that door shone in the morning sun like a thousand eyes.

"Where in God's name did they come from?" I asked myself, as I looked at those eyes.

Diamonds? I didn't know. Rubies?

Perhaps. Whatever they were, whether precious or semi-precious, there were hundreds— thousands— of them set into the stones of that doorway. Were my men racing to twist those stones loose— or were they racing for the door merely because it seemed to suggest a way of escape?

I soon had the answer, for they yanked the door open. They dashed through it and the door slid closed silently behind them. Only silence answered when I shouted,

"Where the devil are you?"

I STEPPED out onto the wall over which Mestizo Jaime had gone, looked down the "street" where, a few minutes before, we had stood before the walls began to advance. Mestizo Jaime and the three with him had vanished also. Then I stepped to the wall which had been to the left, peered over into another courtyard. It was empty of any living soul.

The rest of my men, save only the one whom the wall-jaws had caught, had been swallowed up by this beautiful city of gold and precious stones. Prisoners? Who knew, save the inhabitants of the place? I didn't know what to do next.

"Come and get me, too!" I shouted, but only silence answered.

I stepped back to the position on the right wall where I had watched the closing of the doors. I stood there because that spot alone some- how seemed to belong to me. It was little enough to possess, but it seemed oddly like a place of refuge.

"Where are my men?" I raved. "Where is Mestizo Jaime? I've found a city of gold, yet have not one person with whom to share it. And now that I have it, what good is it to me; what can I do with it?"

I gripped my rifle in readiness, I searched the city with angry, sick eyes. If I could spot so much as a moving body, I would fire. I would t each these people to make a mock of me. But nowhere could I spy a living soul,

Well, one compound was as good as any other. I dropped into the one which had swallowed the three men who had scrambled out of the trap with me. And for the first time I was cognizant of the beauty of that compound. It was planted with all kinds of gorgeous flowers and shrubs, their odor sweet to the nostrils.

Then I stared down at the material of which the winding walks were composed, and felt a little sick. They were made of human bones worked into red sandstone, to form beautiful, brilliant mosaics— so that, I thought savagely, the owners of this place walked always in contempt over the enemies they had slain.

My bitter meditation was broken by a sound I had heard before: the ponderous grating sound of those moving walls. They were drawing apart, their work done. Warily, my rifle at the ready, I started for the door which had swallowed my three men.

I reached the door, and the two broad steps which led up to it. Both steps were slightly hollowed out in the center, as though by the footfalls of the centuries. Then my eyes flashed to the door jambs, and the glistening stones set into them. I wasn't an expert in stones, but I would have sworn that this one door-way— in a city which must have had thousands of doors— was worth a fortune in itself. And some of the stones had been cut! If only those stones could speak!

HOW could I pass the portals of this place? I studied the building. There seemed to be no windows; certainly none I could see. But there were cornices on the roof, and I was startled as I noted their decorations. 'Animals, done in metal, marched down the ridges on the roof,

Maybe the idea had come from China, or the traditional animals on Chinese roofs had been modeled after these, but there they were— ocelots, pumas, bush dogs— all done in gold, or gold plating! The place must be a shrine of some sort, or the home of some important dignitary.

I knocked and yelled: "Open up, whoever you are!"

Then I drew back the butt of my rifle and banged it savagely against the door, several times. The sound of the banging seemed to ring through the whole city: I heard it boom muffledly through the thick door.

THE banging gave me an idea. I stepped aside, smashed my rifle butt against one of the stones stuck into the doorjamb at the height of my eyes. The stone jumped out with the force of my blow. It was a many-faceted ruby, larger than a big man's thumb-ball.

I thrust it into my pocket, and was instantly conscious of an aura of menace that seemed to flow out at me from all over the city. I could feel thousands of eyes on me. Then, the door slid open noiselessly and I stepped across the threshold and into a room that was as light as day, because the sun came through great skylights in the roof.

Reaching to the roof from the floor was a mighty black figure. It might have been a statue of Buddha, but for one thing— the body of it was covered with coarse black hair at least two inches in length. Directly beneath it, and about four feet from the floor, was a stone basin. Here was a mighty idol to whom the inhabitants of this place made sacrifice.

I had ghastly proof of this, for I was staring, horrified, at such a sacrifice. Lying at either end of the great sacrificial basin, their headless necks slanting into it, their bodies nude and bathed in the brilliant light of the sun, were two white men. They were my two point men who had vanished so mysteriously!

Could this ghastly place be the Garden of Eden in very fact? If it were, then the sons of Adam who had crept back into it, forsworn by their God, must have forsworn Him in their turn, setting up in His place this mighty black monster whom only human blood would satisfy.

I did a foolish thing, then. I raised my rifle to my shoulder and fired twice, aiming at where the thing's heart would have been had it been semi-human as it seemed.

The thunderous echoes of my firing fairly rocked the place. The result was immediate and horrible.

4: Sons of Adam?

FROM behind the figure, coming from right and left, lumbered two huge creatures, larger than the biggest man I had ever seen. They looked like apes. They looked like giant negroes. They looked like either, neither, both. Their little red eyes were fixed on me with dreadful intensity. They were tiny replicas of the statue into which I had fired.

With arms. outstretched, they plunged at me. I yelled and fired at the foremost. I heard the bullet smash into his body, but the thing came on. His huge hands grabbed my rifle and wrested it from me. In savage anger the maddened brute brought it down across his chest and bent the steel barrel double.

Then both brutes had me down. In a second they would have torn me limb from limb, but there came an interruption. Scores of men, all perfect specimens, poured into the vast audience hall in front of the black statue. They were led by a girl dressed in something white which looked like a Roman toga, her golden hair drawn back from her forehead with a circlet of gold encrusted with gems that, even in my extremity, made my mouth water. The girl's feet, tiny and beautiful, were shod with sandals, made of golden thread, studded with brilliants.

Her face was grim as she said something in a strange tongue. Instantly the two monsters drew back from me, left me panting and weaponless. One of them lumbered to the sacrificial basin where the headless bodies lay, and dropped my ruined rifle into it. Perhaps it was his idea of offering up a sacrifice.

It was no surprise to me that the girl addressed me in English. Gregory had been a long time among these people, and there may have been others before him. Now, at this writing, I know that these people unsuspected, travel throughout the world as sailors, tradesmen, whatever other white men do, and learn all of its secrets; but that always they return home, and keep their own secrets and that of their abiding places.

"What are you doing here?" the girl asked.

IT was a facer. But I could lose nothing by telling the truth.

"I come to open earth's most beautiful city to the world, which has too long been denied such loveliness," I answered.

Her face flamed with anger, the anger of a goddess who listens to words of defilement: "Who are you who dares thus to address the first daughter of the first woman?"

My heart almost stopped beating. What was this woman trying to tell me? That she was a first daughter of Eve?

"But that is impossible," I stammered. "By Biblical reckoning the first man passed to his rest over six thousand years ago."

"Yea, and the God of Heaven did say to him that he should not eat of the Tree of Eternal Life, lest he, like Jehovah, live forever. But he did not forbid the daughters of him who was called Adam."

"And you did eat, and have lived since that time?" I gasped.

My brain whirled. Did this woman count her age in centuries, her beauty growing with each passing year? For she was the most gorgeous woman I had ever seen. It was absurd, impossible. But could I tell her that she lied?

"I come only to look upon wonders," I temporized.

"And wealth?" she asked.

"And wealth. What good is it to you, who never use it?"

"But it is ours. We mean to keep it. Down the centuries our people have guarded it, protected it. Men of your race have come to us, have despoiled us, have gone among us with flame and sword. We have never seen one of you in our own land that it did not mean death to many of our number."

"I did not come to bring death," I assured her.

"Then why did you come with weapons in your hands?"

I COULDN'T very well answer that one. Her beautiful face hardened. I guessed that she was either a priestess of the temple or the queen of the city.

"And you have violated the temple of our god, the Black Avenger," she continued. "You have raised your hands and your weapons against him. For this you will undergo the greatest punishment we can bring to bear against you. There is no escape. We are guarded by thousands of our Indian slaves. You cannot get through them. They obey us because we are their gods. Had you taken heed of our warnings, which began when you landed in Puerto Cortez, you would been spared this."

I bowed to her. "It is worth dying," I said, "to be able first to look upon a woman so beautiful."

But that didn't get across very well. Her face formed into an imperious, displeased frown.

"It is not proper thus to speak to Mené, priestess of the temple," she said. "It augments your punishment."

"I would not retract the statement if I could," I answered.

A MUTTER of protest rose from the lips of the men who stood around me, clear-complexioned men with blue eyes and the inevitable yellow hair, men who showed signs of unusual intelligence and courage.

"Let him die at once to appease the wrath of the god he has wronged!" one of them cried in English.

I don't think it would have surprised me had some of them addressed me in Latin or Sanscrit. I had discovered a highly cultured civilization, a lost tribe, a lost city, in the heart of a country which was almost on the doorstep of my own!

"Where are my people?" I asked.

"Those who live are prisoners," said Mené, "You will see them soon. They, too, have been condemned to sacrifice. But first they must work out their atonement."

It didn't take me long to understand what she meant by atonement, for half a dozen men laid violent hands on me. I was led from the temple by another way, into what appeared to be a vast hothouse. Towering beams upheld its quartzite roof, through which the rays of the sun came to bring life to the luxurious plants which filled the place.

All around the inside of the vast building were urns which must hold fires at night— and so I knew the meaning of the glow I had seen against the sky, though I wondered why the fires were lighted.

I was soon to know why, for in that great hothouse I found my fellows laboring among the plants and flowers, stripped to the waist and clothed in sackcloth, and guarded by "angels of the Lord."

That phrase leaped to my mind without thought on my part. I couldn't fail to think of it, for the guards in this place were armed with long swords with snaky blades, and the swords were plated with gold that shone like the sun. When the swords moved, the blades seemed to be of living flame. With such a sword had the first man and woman been driven out of Eden!

I noticed that the backs of my men were bloody, but I didn't wonder about it long. Immediately I, too, was stripped to the waist, and then beaten across the back with the flat of half a dozen swords until I gritted my teeth in agony and fell to the floor on my face, with the sweet odor of gorgeous flowers in my nostrils.

"Oh, God," I prayed silently to myself, "save me from this torture."

LYING on my face for a moment, I was enabled to see under the plants in the storehouse— to see the thousands upon thousands of glistening eyes! Those eyes were precious stones, of a value beyond all computing, and they glistened because, as any man who is familiar with stones knows, life gives brilliance to gems. Actually, those who worked here, worked to keep the stones "living."

The breath of the plants, and the life of them in that hothouse, literally kept the stones alive— so that, since we were slaves of the plants, our hearts' blood, literally, fed the life of the stones.

Here, then, was the lost treasure of Eden. And there was no end to the power of Mené and her fellows, if they had, centuries ago, broken the divine command and eaten of the Tree of Knowledge!

They must have eaten, and so learned all things— learned where earth's treasures were to be found, so that their slaves might dig them out of the ground and lift them out of the sea, that all might be gathered here to be kept alive by the exhalations of the slave-tended plants. Since Mené knew the abiding place of all earth's treasures, she had but to fetch them at her whim, and this lost city probably held scores of hot-houses like this one, each with its countless hoards of living stones tended by miserable slaves.

MY brain whirled with the fantastic suggestions of it all, even as the flat of the swords were laid across my quivering back.

The guards kicked me to my feet. I fought savagely, and instantly the points of two swords touched my throat. So much did they resemble living flame, I could almost feel heat emanating from those tips.

Then the guards drew back, and one called to me in English what I had to do. I fell to with my fellows. They were carrying huge rocks from a pile at one end of the place, building a big rock fountain in the center of the greenhouse. Each of those rocks would have required the work of three men to lift, but we were forced to lift them, roll them, move them any way we could, one man to each rock. And when we moved too slowly the swords were laid across our backs again.

That night the fires were lighted, turning the whole greenhouse into a blazing, sweating hell. We labored on, without food or water or rest, our eyeballs starting from our heads with pain.

Near morning a man fainted. He was Mestizo Jaime, who hadn't said a word to me since we had been thrown back together. He believed, now, as I believed, that the most fortunate man among us had been the one whom the walls had crushed. They carried Mestizo Jaime away, and he did not come back.

I heard a whispering among the guards, whispering I was meant to hear, because it was in English. Mestizo Jaime had been taken to the temple to be offered as a sacrifice to the Black God when the morning sun sprayed the broad ebon breast of the statue with its lancets of gold.

Desperately, I attacked the guards, calling on my men to help me, intending to rescue Mestizo Jaime. I was beaten senseless for my pains.

When I regained consciousness I was working. I must have been working while in delirium, for there were just five men left of us. The others were gone. The five told me through horribly cracked and bleeding lips that the missing men had followed Mestizo Jaime, and that we were slated to go in turn. They were driving themselves to keep their feet, because even in this hell there was a certain sweetness in living.

I WAS to be the last, they told me, punished by watching my men being led to the slaughter, because I had brought them here and deserved the greatest punishment. I would go to the temple, too, in time— and for three whole days would be tortured, to lose my head finally in the sacrificial basin.

"We'll stop it," I said. "There must be a way out. We'll each take a guard when I signal by straightening my back. Take his sword away from him or die trying. Then split up, smash your way through the green- house walls, and every man will be for himself. Try to meet me on the coast where we started."

They agreed. In desperation they would have agreed to anything. It was days later— I have no idea how many— before I decided that the time was ripe. Near morning, when even
the guards were sleepy with watching, I gave the signal— or tried to. But I had stooped so long over my labors I could not straighten my back. I cried out in despair. Guards came running with lifted swords of flame.

"Now, for the love of God!" I yelled. "This is the signal!"

5: Fact or Fable?

WITH hoarse shouts my men charged the guards with me. My hands were hard claws, broken and burning with blisters I expected to carry with me to my grave. I thrust out those claws at the first man to reach me. I was almost a madman, and he couldn't have stopped me with any weapon.

"Strike and die!" I yelled at him.

I struck aside his thrusting sword with my right hand, slid in, kept the sword away from my body with my left arm, and drove a savage blow to his jaw with my right, In that blow went all my hatred for the oppressors, all my eagerness to win free. The man went down.

It was every man for himself. One of my followers missed in his effort to push aside the sword of his attacker, and was run through the body. Next moment I had caught up the sword of the man I had downed, and had lopped off the head of the killer. I got savage satisfaction out of watching his head roll on the floor, as the heads of some of my men had rolled into the sacrificial basin.

I whirled back to the other four. They had somehow eluded the guards, Each was going off in a different direction.

"Follow me!" I yelled.

They didn't turn, didn't hear me. In the city outside I heard the commanding notes of the great golden bell, and knew that the denizens of the place were waking from sleep: and hurrying to aid our guards. I dashed for the nearest wall of the place and went through it head foremost, still bearing the flaming sword in my hand. I cut myself on the glass. Great slabs of it crashed down behind me. If I had been stayed for a second any one of those slabs would have cut me in two.

I dashed straight ahead. I didn't realize that I had managed at last to straighten my tortured back. I just ram. Shouts: and cries were rising all over the city. From the hills surrounding the place came a bedlam of weird, far cries, as guardians of the passes shouted promises to their white gods that no prisoners would get past them.

I gritted my teeth and ran on. Once let me get atop one of the walls and I would make my escape, at least out of the city.

BUT the walls were high, too high to reach.

Then I thought of the hilt of my flaming sword, and as I ran I tore cloth from my rough garment, wrapped it about the flaming blade. When I came to the first wall I jumped, holding the blade in both hands, and tried to fasten the sword hilt over the wall's top.

I missed as a thousand lights, signal fires, flamed on all over the place. I jumped again. This time the hilt caught, held, and I clambered up.

Now I stood limned in the light of all those fires, which glowed from a thousand windows like great searchlights. Behind each one was a reflector made of gold and studded with precious stones.

Arrows began to whiz about me as I raced along the wall. Once I stopped and looked around:' One of my men was racing along. on the wall behind me, a sword in his hand. Then a score of arrows struck him, buried themselves in his body, toppled him off the wall.

Nowhere could I see the others. I whirled and ran on.

"Come and get me, you pariahs!" I screamed as I dropped down into a compound which was dark.

Maybe the building in its center was deserted. I circled it cautiously, ran into a cul-de-sac where wall and building merged, went up and over into a street— the same, I guessed, by which we had come to this place.

I RAN like a scared rabbit. Somewhere ahead was one of those moving walls which had trapped us. Suddenly I saw it rising out of the street, of which its flat top had been a part. It was rising swiftly, but I was close.

I cleared the rising wall, yelling as I jumped, while every tortured nerve and. muscle cried out in protest at the pain I was inflicting on myself. Behind me a noise as of countless demons shouting inspired me to greater speed.

I was running through dank verdure which gripped at my legs. I stooped as I ran and pulled some of it with my right hand, to stuff the green, wet stuff into my mouth, It tasted like nectar of the gods.

Instantly heartened, I plunged on, knowing that I would still have to run the gauntlet of the guards at the rim of the valley. But I didn't head for that part of the rim down which we had come into the valley.

Once or twice I looked back. The city seemed to be in flames. I knew that the rest of my men were being hunted down, but evidently my escape hadn't been noticed. I hadn't deserted those men, but I couldn't have helped them in any way whatever. They knew it and I knew it.

With a heavy heart, I turned to the right, running the long way of the valley, straining my tortured eyes on the rim, looking for signal fires, or the shapes of Indians against the moon. I saw nothing. The valley was a bedlam of shouting furies. Soon I heard pursuit behind me, and settled to run myself into the very ground if need be, to escape them.

Drops of rain began to fall after a few minutes, and I found time to be thankful for an overcast sky. As I ran I held my mouth open to catch the splashing drops of moisture.

I ran like a man in a nightmare.

When I reached the incline of the valley, leading out, I was panting hoarsely, but I wasn't stopping yet, not even with that precipitous climb ahead of me. With my sword in front of me I started swiftly up.

WHEN I reached the summit, I looked back. I heard men shout behind me, from three different directions, and knew that at least three of my men had gotten out of the city. It would be useless for them to make for me. I raised my voice in a terrific shout that was like the cawing of a crow:

"Make for the place I told you!"

That shout, which was answered from three directions, brought the Indians leaping through the dark. Arrows winged past me as I darted away. I whirled. A man closed with me and I sliced at him savagely with my flaming sword—which even in the dark seemed to glow with a strange fire— and felt the blade bite through bone and muscle and sinew. The man fell. I heard him roll in the brush. Other arrows came, but none touched me. I ran on.

Twice more I had to strike with the sword, and I struck each time as though I myself had been an avenging angel, punishing once more the inhabitants of Eden. Somehow I got through them, though from both sides I heard their shouts and the patter of their feet, as they converged behind me. I banged against the bolls of trees, almost knocking out my brains. I caromed off, ran on.

I decided to race at top speed for three minutes, then stand and take whatever might come to me. Nobody can imagine what I suffered as I desperately carried out this scheme.

Then I stopped, beaten. I could go no further. I looked aloft. It was hopeless to climb a tree; I didn't think I had the strength, and the pursuers were close behind me. Nevertheless, I started up.

How I got up I don't know, but the branches finally hid me. Rain pelted through the leaves, and I hoped that water, cascading down the tree trunk, would erase my tracks. I crawled to the very top, where I fastened myself to limbs with parts of my ragged clothing until I was almost naked.

There I stretched out with my face to the black sky, with my mouth open and my tongue sticking out, and gloried in the pelting rain against my body, which absorbed the water greedily. It was ambrosia!

I heard men racing through the jungle under me, quartering their tracks. I heard arrows whang into trees all around me, some of them into my own. But none touched me. Then I slept.

HOW long I slept, I have no idea. But when I wakened, my whole body was burned and blistered by the sun, which must have been bathing it for hours—days, for all I knew.

I felt I would die of the pain, but I had suffered so much that sunburn was anti-climax. I straightened stiffly. Slowly and painfully, still grasping my snaky sword, I went down.

The sun was low in the west. I took my bearings on it and started. Nobody followed. Momentarily I expected a trap. Often I went into trees when I detected suspicious sounds. My ears seemed preternaturally keen. I went on. Again I found myself in the jungle. Vines and brush tugged at me as I forced my way slowly forward. There were times when I had to use the sword to chop the tangled growth from my path. As night approached, the jungle became a place of unseen menace that lurked insidiously all about me. The slightest rustling in the brush made me pause more than once and look about me anxiously. I had not forgotten that this was the domain of the Indians, nor could I be sure they were not stalking me now.

BLACK darkness of a cloudy night descended. I found that I could go no further. I sank down with my back resting against the trunk of a big tree. The flaming sword lay within easy reach beside me. For what seemed ages, I sat there.

I suppose that finally I must again have fallen asleep. It was all hazy, almost like a weird dream. But I opened my eyes to find it was once more daylight. My body was a mass of throbbing muscular aches.

I again went on. Finally I reached the trail that had been made by my men when we had advanced toward Eden. It was far easier to travel through the brush from here on, but always there was danger lurking in the shadows all about me.

I circled the sleeping places of boas. Twice I stood like a statue when stalking jaguars roamed near me. Finally I came to believe my enemies had given me up for dead.

Sometime later— I will never be able to estimate it in actual hours or even days, because time stood still— having lived on fruits and water from streams, I stood at the jumping off place, the last shadowy outpost of civilization.

I saw marks of three sets of foot-prints in the dirt. My men had beaten me out. They hadn't waited. I followed them back to Puerto Cortez, but I haven't seen them to this day. Doubtless they fled as fast and as far as they could, hoping never again to hear of me or the land into which I had lead them.

TODAY I am a broken man, my body slowly mending. I think that I shall never again be tempted to go adventuring— but I don't know. Adventure is in the blood of men. As I grow stronger, my eyes turn at times to the sword with the curving blade over my fireplace, glowing like the flames below it. It seems some- how like a giant finger, pointing back, as though beckoning me to re- turn to the city of flaming swords. Will I, in the end, heed the call?

I have thought long though lately. How can it be possible, I often ask myself, that Mené be truly a first daughter of Eve? Who has ever known of such longevity?

Once I studied the flaming sword closely, and found an inscription on it, written in tiny letters which seemed to be holy fire. I copied the inscription and sent it away to learned theologians to be translated. The translation came back, but whether in jest I have no way of knowing, and this is what it read:

I am verily that flaming sword of the Angel of Jehovah which drove the first man and the first woman and their children from Eden.

Maybe the translation is true, maybe not. But I think of the fabulous treasure of the city of Mené, and the slaves who tend the plants which give life to the treasure, and I wonder.

Doctors say I wander mentally, but they are liars. And the day shall come when I will prove it to them by opening Eden to the world; or, if it be not Eden, its counterpart— fully as beautiful, thrice as miraculous and filled with such treasure as Eden never knew!

If I live, I shall some day discover the truth— now that I know so much no man has known before me.

End

Table of Contents

- 1: The Last Reel / George Vaux Bacon
- 2: Marwood's Ghost Story / Marjorie Bowen
- 3: El Hamel, the Lost One / G. G. Pendarves
- 4: The Haunted Station / Hume Nisbet

- 5: Keep Your Eye on the Ball / William Almon Wolff

- 6: Curious Cubes / T. Bell
- 7: Surprise Attack / Georges Surdez
- 8: Nothing But Dust / Frederick Booth
- 9: Two Paris Knights / Frederick C. Painton
- 10: Padre Ignacio / Owen Wister
- 11: The Dimpled Dumb-Bell / Helen Hysell

- 12: That Little Square Box / Arthur Conan Doyle

- 13: The Invisible Finite / Robert A. Wait

- 14: The Hawk and the White Elephant / Ross Ellis

- 15: Black Cats / Gerald de Vries

- 16: Lost Treasures of Eden / Captain John Powers