Author: Various
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: Twenty short stories in the Life+70 yrs public domain, collected from magazines and newspapers. 1: The Tower of Treason / G. K. Chesterton 2: The Rook / Jeffery Farnol 3: Catastrophe / Ethel Lina White 4: The Worker in Sandal-Wood / Marjorie Pickthall 5: That Valuable Mare / Edward Sorenson 6: The Curse of the Catafalkques / F Anstey 7: The Haunter of the Ring / Robert E. Howard 8: The Painted Wooden Soldier / Sumner Locke 9: Bubbles! / Ralph Gordon 10: The Stolen Ring / Rosa Praed 11: The Kidnaped Memorial / Sinclair Lewis 12: The Accident of Crime / Stacy Aumonier 13: Death Shaves Close / La

PAST MASTERS 132

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

21 July 2023

Contents

1: The Tower of Treason / G. K. Chesterton

2: The Rook / Jeffery Farnol

3: Catastrophe / Ethel Lina White

4: The Worker in Sandal-Wood / Marjorie Pickthall

5: That Valuable Mare / Edward Sorenson

6: The Curse of the Catafalques / F Anstey

7: The Haunter of the Ring / Robert E. Howard

8: The Painted Wooden Soldier / Sumner Locke

9: Bubbles! / Ralph Gordon

10: The Stolen Ring / Rosa Praed

11: The Kidnaped Memorial / Sinclair Lewis

12: The Accident of Crime / Stacy Aumonier

13: Death Shaves Close / Laurence Donovan

14: Contraband / Frank L Packard

15: Pieces of Hate / Jack O'Brien

16: Mr Clackworthy Profits by the Drama / Christopher B. Booth

17: Murder Makes a Lovely Frame / Ken Kessler

18: On Her Sole / Scott Campbell

19: It was Signed "Bill" / Charles Warren Tyler

20: A Burglar for a Lady / Roy W. Hinds

___________________

1: The Tower of Treason

G. K. Chesterton

1874-1936

The Popular Magazine, Feb 7 1920

Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Dec 1950

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

AT a certain moment, just before  sunset, a young man was walking in a rather extraordinary fashion across a wild country bearded with gray and wintry forests. In the solitude of that silent and wooded wilderness he was walking backwards. There was nobody to notice the eccentricity; it could not arrest the rush of the eagles over those endless forests where Hungarian frontiers fade into the Balkans; it could not be expected to arouse criticism in the squirrel or the hare. Even the peasants of those parts might possibly have been content to explain it as the vow of a pilgrim, or some other wild religious exercise; for it was a land of wild religious exercises. Only a little way in front of him (or rather, at that instant, behind him), the goal of his journey and many previous journeys, was a strange half-military monastery, like some old chapel of the Templars where vigilant ascetics watched night and day over a hoard of sacred jewels, guarded at once like the crown of a king and the relic of a saint. Barely a league beyond, where the hills began to lift themselves clear of the forest, was a yet more solitary outpost of such devotional seclusion; a hermitage which held captive a man once famous through half of Europe, a dazzling diplomatist and ambitious statesman, now solitary and only rarely visited by the religious, for whom he was supposed to have more invisible jewels of a new wisdom. All that land, that seemed so silent and empty, was alive with such miracles.

Nevertheless, the young man was not performing a religious vow, or going on a religious pilgrimage. He had himself known personally the renowned recluse of the hermitage on the hill, when they were both equally in the world and worldly; but he had not the faintest intention of following his holy example. He was himself a guest at the monastery that was the consecrated casket of the strange jewels; but his errand was purely political and not in the least consecrated. He was a diplomatist by profession; but it must not be lightly inferred that he was walking backwards out of excessive deference to the etiquette of courts. He was an Englishman by nationality; but he was not, with somewhat distant reverence, still walking backwards before the King of England. Nor was he paying so polite a duty to any other king, though he might himself have said that he was paying it to a queen. In short, the explanation of his antic, as of not a few antics, was that he was in love; a condition common in romances and not unknown in real life. He was looking backwards at the house he had just left, in an abstracted or distracted fashion, half hoping to see a last signal from it or merely to catch a last glimpse of it among the trees. And his look was the more longing and lingering on this particular evening, for an atmospheric reason he would have found it hard to explain; a sense of pathos and distance and division hardly explained by his practical difficulties. As the sunset clouds were heavy with a purple which typifies the rich tragedy of Lent, so on this evening passion seemed to weigh on him with something of the power of doom. And a pagan of the mystical sort would certainly have called what happened next an omen; though a practical man of the modern sort might rather have hinted that it was the highly calculable effect of walking backwards and being a fool. A noise of distant firing was heard in the forest; and the slight start he gave, combined with a loop of grass that caught his foot, threw him sprawling all his length; as if that distant shot had brought him down.

But the omens were not all ended; nor could they all be counted pagan. For as he gazed upwards for an instant, from the place where he had fallen, he saw above the black forest and against the vivid violet clouds, something strangely suitable to that tragic purple recalling the traditions of Lent. It was a great face between outstretched gigantic arms; the face upon a large wooden crucifix. The figure was carved in the round but very much in the rough, in a rude archaic style, and was probably an old outpost of Latin Christianity in that labyrinth of religious frontiers. He must have seen it before, for it stood on a little hill in a clearing of the woods, just opposite the one straight path leading to the sanctuary of the jewels, the tower of which could already be seen rising out of the sea of leaves. But somehow the size of the head above the trees, seen suddenly from below after the shock of the fall, had the look of a judgment in the sky. It seemed a strange fate to have fallen at the foot of it.

The young man, whose name was Bertram Drake, came from Cambridge and was heir to all the comforts and conventions of scepticism, further enlivened by a certain impatience in his own intellectual temper, which made him more mutinous than was good for his professional career; an active, restless man with a dark but open and audacious face. But for an instant something had stirred in him which is Christendom buried in Europe; something which is a memory even where it is a myth. Rising, he turned a troubled gaze to the great circle of dark gray forests, out of which rose in the distance the lonely tower of his destination; and even as he did so he saw something else. A few feet from where he had just fallen, and risen again to his feet, lay another fallen figure. And the figure did not rise.

He strode across, bent down over the body and touched it and was soon grimly satisfied about why it was lying still. Nor was it without a further shock; for he even realized that he had seen the man before, though in a sufficiently casual and commonplace fashion: as a rustic bringing timber to the house he had just left. He recognized the spectacles on the square and stolid face; they were horn spectacles— of the plainest pattern, yet they did not somehow suit his figure, which was clothed loosely like an ordinary peasant. And in the tragedy of the moment they were almost grotesque. The very fixity of the spectacles on the face was one of those details of daily habit that suddenly make death incredible. He had looked down at him for several seconds, before he became conscious that the deathly silence around was in truth a living silence; he was not alone.

A yard or two away an armed man was standing like a statue. He was a stalwart but rather stooping figure, with a long antiquated musket slung aslant on his shoulders; and in his hand a drawn sabre shone like a silver crescent. For the rest, he was a long-coated, long-bearded figure with a faint suggestion, to be felt in some figures from Russia and Eastern Europe generally, that the coats were like skirts and that the big beard had some of the terrors of a hairy mask; a faint touch of the true East. Thus accoutred, it had the look of a rude uniform; but the Englishman knew it was not that of the small Slav state in which he stood; which may be called, for the purpose of this tale, the kingdom of Transylvania. But when Drake addressed him in the language of that country, with which he himself was already fairly familiar, it was clear enough that the stranger understood. And there was a final touch of something strange in the fact that the brown eyes of this bearded and. barbaric figure seemed not only sad but even soft, as with a sort of mystification of their own.

"Have you murdered this man?" asked the Englishman sternly.

The other shook his head; and then answered an incredulous stare by the simple but sufficient gesture of holding out his bare sabre immediately under the inquirer's eyes. It was an unanswerable fact that the blade was quite clean and without a spot of blood.

"But you were going to murder him," said Drake. "Why did you draw your sword?"

"I was going to—" and with that the stranger stopped in his speech, hesitated, and then suddenly slapping his sabre back into the sheath, dived into the bushes and disappeared, before Drake could make a movement in pursuit of him.

The echoes of the original volley that had waked the woods had not long died away on the distant heights beyond the tower; and Drake could now only suppose that the shot thus fired had been the real cause of death. He was convinced, for many causes, that the shot had come from the tower; and he had other reasons for rapidly repairing thither besides the necessity of giving the fatal news to the nearest human habitation. He hurried along the very straight and strictly embanked road that was like, a bridge between the tower and the little hill in front of the crucifix; and soon came under the shadow of the strange monastic building, now enormous in scale though still simple in outline. For though it was as wide in its circle as a great camp, and even bore on its flat top a sort of roof garden large enough to allow a little exercise to its permanent guards and captives, it rose sheer from the ground in a single round and windowless wall; so high that it stood up in the landscape almost like a pillar rather than a tower. The straight road to it ended in one narrow bridge across a deep but dry moat, outside which ran a ring of thorny hedges, but inside which rose great grisly iron spikes; giant thorns such as are made by man. The completeness of its enclosure and isolation was part of an ancient national policy for the protection of an ancient national prize. For the building, and the men in it were devoted to the defence of the treasure known as the Coat of the Hundred Stones, though there were now rather less
than that number to be defended. According to the legend, the great King Hector, the almost prehistoric hero of those hills, had a corslet or breastplate which was a cluster of countless small diamonds, as a substitute for chain mail; and in old dim pictures and tapestries he was always shown riding into battle as if in a vesture of stars. The legend had ramifications in neighbouring and rival realms; and therefore the possession of this relic was a point of national and international importance in that land of legends. The legend may have been false; but the little loose jewels, or what were left of them, were real enough.

Drake stood looking at that sombre stronghold in an equally sombre spirit. It was the end of winter, and the gray woods were already just faintly empurpled with that suppressed and nameless bloom which is a foreshadowing rather than a beginning of the spring, but his own mood at the moment, though romantic, was also tragic. The string of strange events he had left in his track, if they had not arrested him as omens, must still have arrested him as enigmas. The man killed for no reason, the sword drawn for no reason, the speech broken short also for no reason— all these incidents affected him like the images in a warning dream. He felt that a cloud was on his destiny; nor was he wrong, so far at least as that evening's journey carried him. For when he re-entered that militant monastery of which he was the guest, a new catastrophe befell him. And when next day he again retraced his steps on the woodland path along which he had been looking when he fell, and when he came again to the house towards which he had looked  so longingly, he found its door shut against him.

On the day following he was striding desperately along a new path, winding upwards through the woods to the hills beyond, with his back both to the house and the tower. For something, as has been hinted, had befallen him in the last few days which was not only a tragedy but a riddle; and it was only when he reviewed the whole in the light, or darkness, of his last disaster, that he remembered that he had one old friend in that land, and one who was a reader of such riddles. He was making his way to the hermitage that was the home — some might almost say the grave — of a great man now known only as Father Stephen, though his real name had once been scrawled on the historic treaties and sprawled in the newspaper headlines of many nations. There is no space here to tell all the activities of his once famous acumen. In the world of what has come to be called secret diplomacy he was something more than a secret diplomatist. He was one from whom no diplomacy could be kept secret. Something of his later mysticism, an appreciation of moods and of the subconscious mind, had even then helped him; he not only saw small things, but he saw them as large things, and largely. It was he who had anticipated the suicide of a cosmopolitan millionaire, judging from an atmosphere and the fact that he did not wind up his watch. It was he also who had frustrated a great German conspiracy in America, detecting the Teutonic spy by his unembarrassed posture in a chair when a Boston lady was handing him tea. Now, at long and rare intervals, he would become conscious of such external problems; and, in cases of great injustice, use the same powers to track a lost sheep, or recover the little hoard stolen from the stocking of a peasant.

Along terrace of low cliffs or rocks hollowed here and there ran along the top of a desolate slope that swept down and vanished amid the highest horns and crests of the winter trees. When this wall faced the rising of the sun, the stone shone pale like marble; and in one place especially had the squared look of a human building, pierced by an unquestionably human entrance. In the white wall was a black doorway, hollow and almost horrible like a ghost; for it was shaped in the rude outline of a man, with head and shoulders, like a mummy case. There was no other mark about this coffin-like cavity, except just beside it a coloured ikon of the Holy Family, drawn in that extreme decorative style of Eastern Christianity, which makes a gaily painted diagram rather than a picture. But its gold and scarlet and green and sky-blue glittered on the rock by the black hole like some fabled butterfly from the mouth of the grave. But Bertram Drake strode to the gate of that grave and called aloud, as if upon the name of the dead.

To put the truth in a paradox, he had expected the resurrection to surprise him, and yet he was surprised unexpectedly. When he had last met his famous friend, in evening dress in the stalls of a great theatre in Vienna, he had found that friend pale and prematurely old, and his wit dreary and cynical. He even vaguely remembered the matter of their momentary conversation, some disenchanted criticism about the drop-scene or curtain, in which the great diplomatist had seemed a shade more interested than in the play. But when the same man came out of that black hole in the bleak mountains he seemed to have recovered an almost unnatural youth and even childhood. The colours had come back into his strong face; and his. eyes shone as he came out of the shadow, almost as an animal's will shine in the dark. The tonsure had left him a ring of chestnut hair, and his tall bony figure seemed less loose and more erect than of old. All this might be very rationally explained by the strong air and simple life of the hills; but his visitor, pursued and tormented by fancies, felt for the moment as if the man had a secret sun or fountain of life in that black chamber, or drew nourishment from the roots of the mountains.

He commented on the change in the first few greetings that passed between them; and the hermit seemed willing, though hardly able, to describe the nature of his acceptance of his strange estate.

"This is the last I shall see of this earth," he said quietly, "and I am more than contented in letting it pass. Yet I do not value it less, but rather I think more, as it simplifies itself to a single hold on life. What I know, with assurance, is that it is well for me to remain here, and to stray nowhere else."

After a silence he added, gazing with his burning blue eyes across the wooded valley: "Do you remember when we last met at that theatre and I told you that I always liked the picture on the curtain as much as the scenes of the play? It was some village landscape, I remember, with a bridge, and I felt perversely that I should like to lean on the bridge or look into the little houses. And then I remembered that from almost any other angle I should see it was only a thin, painted rag. That is how I feel about this world, as I see it from this mountain. Not that it is not beautiful, for after all a curtain can be beautiful. Not even that it is unreal, for after all a curtain is real. But only that it is thin, and that the things behind it are the real drama. And I feel that when I shift my place, it will be the end. I shall hear the three thuds of the mallet in the French theatres; and the curtain will rise. I shall be dead."

The Englishman made an effort to shake off the clouds of mystery that had always been so uncongenial to him. "Frankly," he said, "I can't profess to understand how a man of your intellect can brood in that superstitious way. You look healthy enough, but your mind is surely the more morbid for it. Do you really mean to tell me it would be a sin to leave this rat-hole?"

"No," answered the other, "I do not say it would be sin. I only say it would be death. It might conceivably be my duty to go down into the world again; in that case it would be my duty to die. It would have been my duty at any time when I was a soldier; but I never should have done it so cheerfully. Now, if ever I see my signal in the distance, I shall rise and leave this cavern, and leave this world."

"How can you possibly tell?" cried Drake in his impatient way, "Living alone in this wilderness you think you know everything, like a lunatic. Does nobody ever come to see you?"

"Oh, yes," replied Father Stephen with a smile. ""The people from round here sometimes come up and ask me questions; they seem to have a notion that I can help them out of their difficulties."

The dark vivacity of Drake's face took on a shade of something like shame, as he laughed: uneasily and answered.

"And I ought to apologize for what I said just now about the lunatic. For I've come up here on the same errand myself. The truth is, I have a notion that you can help me out of my difficulties."

"I will do my best," replied Father Stephen. "I am afraid they have troubled you a good deal, by the look of you."

They sat down side by side on a flat rock near the edge of the slope, and Bertram Drake began to tell the whole of his story, or all of it that he needed to tell.

"I needn't tell you," he began, "why I am in this country, or why I have been so long a guest in that place where they keep the Coat of the Hundred Stones. You know better than anybody, for it was you who originally wanted an English representative here to write a report on their preservation, for the old propaganda purpose we know of. You probably also know that the rules of that strange institution put even a friendly, and I may say an honoured, guest under very severe restrictions. They are so horribly afraid of any traffic with the outside world that I have had to be practically a prisoner. But the arrangements are stricter even than they were in your visiting days; ever since Paul, the new Abbot, came from across the hills. I don't think you've seen him; nobody's seen him outside the monastery; and I couldn't describe him any more than I could describe you. But while you, somehow, still seem to include all kinds of things, like the circle of the world, he seems to be only one thing, like the point that is the pivot of a circle. He is as still as the centre of a whirlpool. I mean, there seems to be direction and a driving speed in his very immobility; but all pointed  and simplified to a single thing:  the guarding of the diamonds. He has repaired and made rigid the scheme of defence till I really do not think that loss or leakage from that treasure would be physically possible. Suffice it to say for the moment that it is kept in a casket of steel, in the centre of the roof garden, watched by the brethren who sleep only in rotation, and especially by the old Abbot himself who hardly sleeps at all, except for a few hours just before and after sunset. And even then he sleeps sitting beside the casket, which no man may handle but himself, and with his hand on his heavy old gun, an antiquated blunderbuss enough, but with which he can shoot very straight for all that. Then sometimes he will wake quite softly and suddenly; and sit looking up that straight road to where the crucifix stands, like an hoary old white eagle. His watch is his world; though in every other way he is mild and benevolent, though he gave orders for the feeding of the poor for miles around, yet if he hears a footstep or faint movement anywhere in the woods around, except on the road that is the recognized approach, he will shoot without mercy as at a wolf. I have reason to know this, as you shall hear.

"Anyhow, as I said, you know that the rules were always strict, and now they're stricter than ever. I was only able to enter the place by being hoisted up by a sort of crane or open-air lift, which it takes several of the monks together to work from the top; and I wasn't supposed to leave the place at all. It is possible that you also know, for you read people so rapidly like pictures rather than books, that I am a most unfortunate sort of brute to be chained by the leg in that way. My faults are all impatience and irreverence; and you may guess that in a week or two I might have felt inclined to burn the place down. But you cannot know the real and special reason that made my slavery intolerable."

"I am sorry," said Father Stephen; and the sincerity of the note again stilled Drake's impatience.

"Heaven knows it is I who should be sorry; I have been greatly to blame," he said. "But even if you call what I did a sin, you will see that it had a punishment. In one word, you are speaking to a man to whom no one in this country will speak. A monstrous accusation rests upon me, which I cannot refute, and have only some faint hope that you may refute for me. Hundreds in that valley below us are probably cursing my name, and even crying out for my death. And yet, I think, of all those scores of souls looking at me with suspicion, there is only one from whom I cannot endure it."

"Does he live near here?" inquired the hermit.

"She does," replied the Englishman.

An irony shining in the eyes of the anchorite suggested that the answer was not quite unexpected; but he said nothing till the other resumed his tale.

"You know that sort of chateau that some French nobleman, an exiled prince I believe, built upon the wooded ridge over there beyond the crucifix— you can just see its turrets from here. I'm not sure who owns it now; but it's been rented for some years by Dr. Amiel, a famous physician, a Frenchman. He is supposed to have high humanitarian ideals, including the idealization of this small nationality here, which, of course, suits our Foreign Office very well. Perhaps it's unfair to say he's only 'supposed' to be this; and the plain truth is I'm not a fair judge of the man, for a reason you may soon guess. But apart from sentiment, | think somehow I am in two minds about him. It sounds absurd to say that like or dislike of a man could depend on his wearing a red smoking-cap. But that's the nearest I can get to it; bare-headed and just a little bald-headed, he seems only a dark, rather distinguished-looking French man of science, with a pointed beard. When he puts that red fez on, he is suddenly like a Turk; and I see all Asia sneering and leering at me across the Levant. Well, perhaps it's a fancy of the fit I'm in; and it's only just to say that people believe in him, who are really devoted to this people or to our policy here. The people staying with him now, and during the few weeks I was there, are English and very keen on the cause, and they say his work has been splendid. A young fellow named Woodville, from my own college, who has travelled a lot, and written some books about yachting, I think. And his sister."

"Your story is very clear so far," observed Father Stephen with restraint.

Drake seemed suddenly moved to impetuosity. "I know I'm in a mad state and had no right to call you morbid; and it's a state in which it's awfully difficult to judge people. How is it that two people, just a brother and sister, can be so alike and so different? They're both what is called good-looking; and even good-looking in the same way. Why on earth should her high colour look as clear as if it were pale, while his offends me as if it were painted? Why should I think of her hair as gold and look at his as if it were gilt? Honestly, I can't help feeling something artificial about him; but I didn't come to trouble you with these prejudices. There is little or nothing to be said against Woodville; he has something of a name for betting on horses, but not enough to disturb any man of the world. I think the reputation has rather dogged his footsteps in the shape of his servant, Grimes, who is much more horsy than his master, and much in evidence. You see, there were few servants at the chateau, even the gardening being done by a peasant from outside; an unfortunate fellow in horn spectacles who comes into this story later. Anyhow, Woodville was, or professed to be, quite sound in his politics about this place; and I really think him sincere about.  And as for his sister, she has an enthusiasm that is as beautiful as Joan of Arc's."

There was a short silence, and then Father Stephen said dreamily: "In short, you somehow escaped from your prison, and paid her a visit."

"Three visits," replied Drake, with an embarrassed laugh, "and nearly broke my neck at the end of a rope, besides being repeatedly shot at with a gun. I'll tell you later on, if you want them, all the details of how I managed to slip out and in again during those sunset hours of Abbot Paul's slumbers. They really resolved themselves into two; the accidental discovery of a disused iron chain, that had been used for the crane or lift, and the character of the old monk who 'happened to be watching while the Abbot slept. How indescribable is a man, and how huge are the things that turn on his unique self as on a hinge! All those monks were utterly incorruptible, and I owed it to a sympathy that was almost mockery. In an English romance, I suppose, my confederate would have been a young mutinous monk, dreaming of the loves he had lost; whereas my friend was one of the oldest, utterly loyal to the religious life, and helping me from a sort of whim that was little more than a lark. Can you imagine a sort of innocent Pandarus, or even a Christian Pan? He would have died rather than betray the holy stones; but when he was convinced that my love affair was honourable in itself, he let me down by the chain in fits of silent laughter, like a grinning old goblin. It was a pretty wild experience, I can tell you, swinging on that loose iron ladder like dropping off the earth on a falling star. But I swung myself somehow clear of the spikes below, and crept along under the thick wood by the side of the road. Even as I did so, came the crack and rolling echoes of the musket on the tower; and a tuft, from a fir tree spreading above me, dropped detached upon the road at my right. A terrible old man, the Abbot. A light sleeper."

Both men were gazing at the strange tower that rose out of the distant woods as Drake, after a pause, renewed his narrative.

"There is a high hedge of juniper and laurel at the bottom of the garden of Dr. Amyl's chateau. At least, it is high on the outer side, rising above a sort of ledge of earth on the slope, but comparatively low when seen from the level garden above. I used to climb up to this ledge in that late afternoon twilight, and she used to come down the garden, with the lights of the house almost clinging about her dress, and we used to talk. It's no good talking to you about what she looked like, with her hair all as yellow light behind the leaves; though those are the sort of things that make my present position a hell. You are a monk and not— I fear I was going to say, not a man; but at any rate not a lover."

"I am not a juniper bush, if the argument be conclusive," remarked Father Stephen. "But I can admire it in its place; and I know that many good things grow wild in the garden of God. But, if I may say so, seeing that so honourable a lady receives such rather eccentric attentions from you, I cannot see that you have much reason to be jealous of Dr. Amiel, as you seem to be, even if he is so base and perfidious as to wear a smoking-cap."

"What you say was true until yesterday," said Drake. "I know now that until yesterday I was in paradise. But I had gone there once too often; and on my third return journey a thunderbolt struck me down, worse than any bullet from the tower. The old Abbot had never discovered my own evasion; but he must have had miraculous hearing when he woke, for every time I crept through the thicket, as softly as I could, he must have heard something moving, and fired again and again. Well, the last time, I found the spectacled peasant who worked for Dr. Amiel; he was lying dead, a little way in front of the cross, and a foreign-looking fellow with a drawn sabre standing near him. But the strange thing was that the sabre was unstained and unused, and I was eventually convinced that one of the Abbot's shots must have killed the poor peasant in the goggles. Revolving all these things in growing doubt, I returned to the tower, and saw an ominous thing. The regular mechanical lift was lowered for me; and when I re-entered the place, I found that all my escapades had been discovered. But I found something far worse.

"When all those faces were turned upon me, faces I shall never forget, I knew I was being judged for something more than a love affair. My poor old friend, who had connived at my escape, would not have been so  much prostrated for the lesser matter; and as for the Abbot, the form of his countenance was changed, as it says in the Bible, by something nearer to his own lonely soul than all such lesser matters. Well, the truth of this tragedy is soon told. For the last week, as it appeared, the hoard of the little diamonds had dwindled— no man could imagine how. They were counted by the Abbot and two monks at certain regular intervals; and it was found' that the losses had occurred at definite intervals also. Finally, there was found another fact; a fact of which I can make no sense; yet a fact to which I can find no answer. After each of my secret visits to the chateau, and then only, some of the diamonds had disappeared.

"I have not even the right to ask you to believe in my innocence. No man alive in the whole great landscape we are looking at believes in my innocence. I do not know what would have happened to me, or whether I should have been killed by the monks or the peasants, if I had not appealed to your great authority in this country; and if the Abbot had not been persuaded at last to allow the appeal. Dr. Amiel thinks I am guilty. Woodville thinks I am guilty. His sister I have not even been able to see."

There was another silence, and then Father Stephen asked rather absently: "Does he wear slippers as well as a smoking-cap?"'

"Do you mean the doctor? No. What on earth do you mean?"

"Nothing at all, if he doesn't. There's no more to be said about that. Well, it's pretty obvious, I suppose, what are the next three questions. First, I suppose the woodman carried an axe. Did he ever carry a pickaxe? Did he ever carry any other tool in particular? Second, did you ever happen to hear anything like a bell? About the time you heard the shot, for instance? But that will probably have occurred to you already. And third, amid such plain preliminaries in the matter, is Dr. Amiel fond of birds?"

There was again a shadow of irony in the simplicity of the recluse; and Drake turned his dark face towards him with a doubtful frown.

"Are you making fun of me?" he asked.

"I believe in your innocence, if that is what you mean," replied Father Stephen, "and believe. me, I am beginning at the right end in order to establish it."

"But who could it be?" cried Drake in his rather irritable fashion. "I'll tell the plain truth, even against myself, and I'd swear all those monks were really startled out of their wits. And even the peasants near here, supposing they could get into the tower, which they can't— why, I'd be as much surprised to hear of them desecrating the Hundred Stones as if I heard they'd all suddenly become Plymouth Brethren this morning. No; suspicion is sure to fall on the foreigners, like myself; and none of the others round here have a case against them, as I have. Woodville may have a few racing debts; but I'd never believe this about the brother, little as I happened to like him. And as for Dr. Amiel—" And he stopped, his face darkening with thought.

"Yes, but that's beginning at the wrong end," observed Father Stephen, "'because it's beginning with all the millions of mankind, and every man a mystery. I am trying to find out who stole the stones; you seem to be trying to find out who wanted to steal them. Believe me, the smaller and more practical question is also the larger and more philosophical. To the shades of possible wanting there is hardly any limit. It is the root of all religion that anybody may be almost anything if he chooses. The cynics are wrong, not because they say that the heroes may be cowards, but because they do not see that the cowards may be heroes. Now you may think my remark about keeping birds very wild and your remark about betting on horses very relevant, but I assure you it is the other way round; for yours dealt with what might be thought, but mine with what could be done. Do you remember that German Prime Minister who was assassinated because he had reduced Russia to starvation? Millions of peasants might have wanted to murder him; but how could a moujik in Muscovy murder him in a theatre in Munich? He was murdered by a man who came there because he was a trained Russian dancer, and escaped from there because he was a trained Russian acrobat. That is, the highly offensive statesman in question was not killed by all the Russians who may have wanted to kill him; but the one Russian who could kill him. Well, you are the only approximate acrobat in this performance and, apart from what I know about you, I don't see how you could have burgled a safe inside the tower merely by dangling at the end of a string outside it. For the real enigma and obstacle in this story is not the stone tower, but the steel casket. I do not see how you could have stolen the jewels. I don't see how anybody could have stolen them. That is the hopeful part of it."

"You are pretty paradoxical today," growled his English friend.

"I am quite practical," answered Father Stephen serenely. "That is the starting point, and it makes a good start. We have only to deal with a narrow number of conjectures about how it could just conceivably have been done. You scoffed at my three questions just now which I threw off when I was thinking rather about the preliminary approach to the tower. Well, I admit they were very long shots— indeed, very wild shots; I did not myself take them very seriously, or think they would lead to much. But they had this value: that they were not random guesses about the spiritual possibilities of everybody for a hundred miles round. They were the beginnings of an effort to bridge the real difficulties."

"I am afraid,' observed Drake, "that I did not realize that they were even that."

"Well," the hermit went on patiently, "for the first problem of reaching the tower it was reasonable to think first, however hazily, of some sort of secret tunnel or subterranean entrance, and it was natural to ask if the strange workman at the chateau, who afterwards died so mysteriously, was seen carrying any excavating tools."

"Well, I did think of that," assented Drake, "and I came to the conclusion that it was physically impossible. The inside of the tower is as plain and bare as a dry cistern and the floor is really solid concrete everywhere. But what did you mean by that second question about the bell?"

"What I confess still puzzles me," said Father Stephen, "even in your own story, is how the Abbot always heard a man threading his way through a thick forest so far below, so that he invariably fired after him, if only at a venture. Now, nothing would be more natural to such a scheme of defence than to set traps in the wood, in the way of burglar alarms, to warn the watchers in the tower. But anything like that would mean some system of wires or tubes passing through the wall into the woods, and anything of that sort I felt in a shadowy way, a very shadowy way indeed, might mean a passage for other things as well. It would destroy the argument of the sheer wall and the dead drop, which is at present an argument against you, since you alone dared to drop over it. And, of course, my third random question was of the same kind. Nothing could fly about the top of that high tower except birds. For I infer that the vigilant Paul was not too absent-minded to notice any large number of airplanes. Now, it is not in the least probable— it is, indeed, almost wildly improbable— but it is not impossible, that birds should be trained either to take messages or to commit thefts. Carrier pigeons do the former, and magpies have often done the latter. Dr. Amiel, being both a scientist and a humanitarian, might very well be a naturalist and an animal-lover. So if I had found his biological studies specializing wholly on the breeding of carrier pigeons, or if I had found all the love of his life lavished on a particular magpie, I should have thought the question worth following up, formidable as would have been the difficulties still threatening it as a solution."

"I wish the love of his life were lavished on a magpie," observed Bertram Drake bitterly. "As it is, it's lavished on something else, and will be expected, I suppose, to flourish in the blight of mine. But much as I hate him, I shouldn't like to say of him what he is probably saying of me."

"There again is the mistaken method," observed the other. ''Probably he is not morally incapable of a really bad action; very few people are. That is why I stick to the point of whether he is materially capable. It would be quite easy to draw a dark suspicious picture both of him and Mr. Woodville. It is quite true that racing can be a raging gamble and that ruined gamblers are capable of almost anything. It is also true that nobody can be so much of a cad as a gentleman when he is afraid of losing that title. If we were talking about Amiel or about Woodville, instead of about you and about the diamonds, I could trace a thousand mystery stories in the matter. I could take your hint about the scarlet smoking-cap, and say it was a signal and the symbol of a secret society; that a hundred men in a hundred smoking-caps were plotting everywhere, as many of them really are; I could show a conspiracy ramifying from the red cap of Amiel as it did from the Bonnet Rouge of Almereyda; or I could catch at your idle phrase about Woodville's hair looking gilded and describe him as a monstrous decadent in a golden wig, a thing worthy of Nero. Very soon his horse-racing would have all the imperial insanity of charioteering in the amphitheatre, while his friend in the fez would be capable of carrying off Miss Woodville to a whole harem full of Miss Woodvilles, if you will pardon the image. But what corrects all this is the concrete difficulty I defined at the beginning. I still do not see how wearing either a red fez or a gilded wig could conjure very small gems out of a steel box at the top of a tower. But, of course, I did not mean to abandon all inquiry about: the suspicious movements of anybody. I asked if the doctor wore slippers, on a remote chance in connection with your steps having been heard in the wood, and I should like to know if you ever met anybody else prowling about in the forest."

"Why, yes," said Drake, with a slight start. "I once met the man Grimes, now I remember it."

"Mr. Woodville's servant," remarked Father Stephen.

"Yes. A rat of a fellow with red hair," Drake said, frowning. "He seemed a bit startled to see me too."

"Well, never mind," answered the hermit. "My own hair may be called red, but I assure you I didn't steal the diamonds."

"I never met anybody else," went on Drake, "except, of course, the mysterious man with the sabre and the dead man he was staring at. I think that is the queerest puzzle of all."

"It is best to apply the same principle even to that," replied his friend. "It may be hard to imagine what a man could be doing with a drawn sword still unused. But, after all, there are a thousand things he might have been doing, from teaching the poor woodman to cut timber without an axe to cutting off the dead man's head for a trophy and a talisman, as some savages do. The question is whether felling the whole forest or filling the whole country with howling head-hunters would necessarily have got the stones out of the box."

"He was certainly going to do something," said Drake in a low voice. "He said himself, 'I was going to—' and then broke off and vanished. I was very profoundly persuaded, I hardly knew why, that there was something to be done to the dead man which could not be done till he was dead."

"What?" asked the hermit, after an abrupt silence; and it sounded somehow like a new voice from a third person suddenly joining in the conversation.

"Which could not be done till he was dead," repeated Drake.

"Dead," repeated Father Stephen.

And Drake, still staring at him, saw that his face, under its fringe of red hair, was as pale as his linen robe, and the eyes in it were blazing like the lost stones.

"So many things die," he said. "The birds I spoke about, flying and flashing about the great tower. Did you ever find a dead bird? Not one sparrow, it is written, falls to the ground without God. Even a dead bird would be precious. But a yet smaller thing will serve as a sign here."

Drake, still gazing at his companion, felt a growing conviction that the man had suddenly gone mad. He said helplessly, "What is the matter with you?" But Father Stephen had risen from his seat and was gazing calmly across the valley towards the west, which was all swimming with a golden sunlight that here and there turned the tops of the gray trees to silver.

"It is the thud of the mallet," he said, "and the curtain must rise."

Something had certainly happened which the mind of Bertram Drake found it impossible at the moment to measure, but he remembered enough of the strange words with which their interview had opened to know that in some way the hermit was saying farewell to the hermitage and to many more human things. He asked some groping question, the very words of which he could not afterwards recall.

"I see my signal at last," said Father Stephen. "Treason stands up in my own land as that tower stands in the landscape. A great sin against the people and against the glory of the dead is raging in that valley like a lost battle. And I must go down and do my last office, as King Hector came down from these mountains to his last battle long ago, to that Battle of the Stones where he was slain and his sacred coat of mail so nearly captured. For the enemy has come again over the hills, though in a shape in which we never looked for him."

The voice that had lately lingered with irony and shrewdness over the details of detection had the simplicity which makes poetry and primitive rhetoric still possible among such peoples. He was already marching down the slope, leaving Drake wavering in doubt, being uncertain, to tell the truth, whether his own problem had not been rather lost in this last transition.

"Oh, do not fear for your own story," said Father Stephen. "The Battle of the Stones was a victory."

As they went down the mountainside, Drake followed with a strange sense of travelling with some immobile thing liberated by a miracle, as if the earth were shaken by a stone statue walking. The statue led him a strange and rather erratic dance, however, covering considerable time and distance, and the great cloud in the west was a sunset cloud before they came to their final halt. Rather to Drake's surprise, they passed the tower of the monastery, and already seemed to be passing under the shadow of the great wooden cross in the woods.

"We shall return this way tonight," said Father Stephen, speaking for the first time on their march. '"The sin upon this land tonight lies so heavy that there is no other way. Via Crucis."

"Why do you talk in this terrible way?" broke out Drake abruptly. "Don't you realize that it's enough to make a man like me hate the cross? Indeed, I think by this time I really do. Remember what my story is, and what once made these woodlands wonderful to me. Would you blame me if the god I saw among the trees was a pagan god, and at any rate a happy one? This is a wild garden that was full, for me, of love and laughter; and I look up and see that image blackening the sun and saying that the world is utterly evil."

"You do not understand," replied Father Stephen quite quietly. "If there are any who stand apart merely because the world is utterly evil, they are not old monks like me; they are much more likely to be young Byronic disappointed lovers like you. No, it is the optimist much more than the pessimist who finally finds the cross waiting for him at the end of his own road. It is the thing that remains when all is said, like the payment after the feast. Christendom is full of feasts, but they bear the names of martyrs who won them in torments. And if such things horrify you, go and ask what torments your English soldiers endure for the land which your English poets praise. Go and see your English children playing with fireworks, and you will find one of their toys is named after the torture of St. Catherine. No, it is not that the world is rubbish and that we throw it away. It is exactly when the whole world of stars is a jewel, like the jewels we have lost, that we remember the price. And we look up, as you say, in this dim thicket and see the price, which was the death of God."

After a silence he added, like one in a dream: "And the death of man. We shall return by this way tonight."

Drake had the best reasons for being aware of the direction in which their way was now taking them. The familiar path scrambled up the hill to a familiar hedge of juniper, behind which rose the steep roof of a dark mansion. He could even hear voices talking on the lawn behind the hedge, and a note or two of one which changed the current of his blood. He stopped and said in a voice heavy as stone:

"I cannot go in here now. Not for the world."

"Very well," replied Father Stephen calmly. "I think you have waited outside before now."

And he composedly entered the garden by a gate in the hedge, leaving Drake gloomily kicking his heels on the ledge or natural terrace outside, where he had often waited in happier times. As he did so, he could not help hearing fragments of the distant conversation in the garden; and they filled him with confusion and conjecture, not, however, unmingled with hope. It seemed probable that Father Stephen was stating Drake's case and probably offering to prove his innocence. But he must also have been making a sort of appointment, for Drake heard Woodville say: "I can't make head or tail of this, but we will follow later if you insist." And Father Stephen replied with something ending with "the cross in half an hour."

Then Drake heard the voice of the girl, saying: "I shall pray to God that you may yet tell us better news."

"You will be told," said Father Stephen.

As they redescended towards the little hill just in front of the crucifix, Drake was in a less mutinous mood; whether this was due to the hermit's speech or the words about prayer that had fallen from the woman in the garden. The sky was at once clearer and cloudier than in the previous sunset, for the light and darkness seemed divided by deeper abysses; gray and purple cloudlands as large as landscapes now overcasting the whole earth and now falling again before fresh chasms of light; vast changes that gave to a few hours of evening something of the enormous revolutions of the nights and days. The wall of cloud was then rising higher on the heights behind them and spreading over the chateau; but the western half of heaven was a clear gold, where the lonely cross stood dark against it. But as they drew nearer, they saw that it was in truth less lonely, for a man was standing beneath it. Drake saw a long gun aslant on his back; it was the bearded man of the sabre.

The hermit strode towards him with a strange energy and struck him  on the shoulder with the flat of his hand.

"Go home," he said, "and tell your masters that their plot will work no longer. If you are Christians, and ever had any part in a holy relic, or any right to it in your land beyond the hills, you will know you should not seek it by such tricks. Go in peace."

Drake hardly noticed how quickly the man vanished this time, for his eye was fixed on the hermit's finger which seemed idly tracing patterns on the wooden pedestal of the cross. It was really pointing to certain perforations, like holes made by worms in the wood.

"Some of the Abbot's stray shots, I think," he remarked. "And somebody has been picking them out of the wood strangely enough."

"It is unlucky," observed Drake, "that the Abbot should damage one of your own images; he is as much devoted to the relic as to the realm."

"More," said the hermit, sitting down on the knoll a few yards before the pedestal. "The Abbot, as you truly say, has only room for one idea in his mind. But there is no doubt of his concern about the stones."

A great canopy of cloud had again covered the valley, turning twilight almost to darkness; and Stephen spoke out of the dark.

"As for the realm, the Abbot comes from the country beyond the hills, which hundreds of years ago went to war about—"  His words were lost in a distant explosion. A volley had been fired from the tower.

With the first shock of sound Stephen sprang up and stood erect on the little hillock. The world had grown so dark that his attitude could hardly be seen, but as minute followed minute in the interval of silence, a low red light was again gradually released from the drifting cloud, faintly tracing his gray figure in silver and turning his tawny hair to a ring of dim crimson. He was standing quite rigid with his arms stretched out, like a shadow of the crucifix. Drake was striving with the words of a question that would not come. And then there came anew a noise of death from the tower; and the hermit fell all his length crashing among the undergrowth, and lay still as a stone.

Drake hardly knew how he lifted the head on to the wooden pedestal; but the face gave ghastly assurance, and the voice in the few words it could speak was like the voice of a new-born child, weak and small.

"I am dying," said Father Stephen. "I am dying with the truth in my heart."

He made another effort to speak, beginning "I wish—" and then his friend, looking at him steadily, saw that he was dead.

Bertram Drake stood up, and all his universe lay in ruins around him. The night of annihilation was more absolute because a match had flamed and gone out before it could light the lamp. He was certain now that Father Stephen had indeed discovered the truth that could deliver him. He was as clearly certain that no other man would ever discover it. He would go blasted to his grave because his friend had died only a moment too soon.

And to put a final touch to the hideous irony, that had lifted him to heaven and cast him down, he heard the voices of his friends coming along the road from the chateau.

In a sort of tumbled dream he saw Dr. Amiel lift the body on to the pedestal, producing surgical instruments for the last hopeless surgical tests. The doctor had his back to Drake, who did not trouble to look over his shoulder, but stared at the ground until the doctor said:

"I fear he is quite dead. But I have extracted the bullet."

There was something odd about his quiet voice, and the group seemed suddenly, if silently, seething with new emotions. The girl gave an exclamation of wonder, and it seemed of joy, which Drake could not comprehend.

"I am glad I extracted the bullet," said Dr. Amiel. "I fancy that's what Drake's friend with the sabre was trying to extract."

"We certainly owe Drake a complete apology," observed Woodville.

Drake thrust his head over the other's shoulder and saw what they were all staring at. The shot that had struck Father Stephen in the heart lay a few inches from his body, and it not only glittered but sparkled. It  sparkled as only one stone can sparkle in the world.

The girl was standing beside him and he appreciated, through the turmoil, the sense of an obstacle rolled away and of a growth and future, and even in all those growing woods the  promise of the spring. It was only as the tail of a trailing and vanishing nightmare that he appreciated at last the wild tale of the treason of the foreign Abbot from beyond the hills, and in what strange fashion he loaded his large-mouthed gun. But he continued to gaze at the dazzling speck on the  pedestal and saw in it, as in a mirror, all the past words of his friend.

For Father Stephen the hermit had died indeed with the truth in his heart; and the truth had been taken out of his heart by the forceps of Dr. Amiel; and it lay there on the pedestal of the cross, like the soul drawn out of his body. Nor did it seem unnatural, to the man staring at it, that the soul looked like a star.

______________

2: The Rook

Jeffery Farnol

1878-1952

Collier's, July 27, 1929

John Jeffery Farnol

"VERY 'OT, it be," quoth Landlord John, mopping his rubicund visage.

"Ay, it is, John," answered little Parson Mildmay. "I trust it won't keep Sir Robert from our customary game."

"Not a 'ot day, sir! Fire nor flood wouldn't keep 'im away. I know 'im well, sir! Me, as seen him rally our broken line at Malplaquet, so bold and cool, when he lost his arm! And yonder 'e comes I do b'lieve!" and away sped Landlord John as horsehoofs clattered in the yard below; and very presently he was back again to usher in Sir Robert Madden, squire of Isfield, a big, hearty man who, tossing hat and riding-whip on the settle, flapped his empty right sleeve at Parson Mildmay in cheery greeting.

"How are ye, Will, man?" quoth he, clasping the little cleric's spare shoulder, affectionately. "Aha, the armies stand ready marshalled, I see," he laughed, gesturing towards the chessboard. "Well, have at ye!"

He tugged at the bell-rope. "Mary lass," said he to the trim maid who answered, "ask the gentleman who rode in with me to walk upstairs. I know him not— I met him on the road," he added. "But he expressed a desire to watch our game."

And presently, with quick, light tread and jingle of spurs, a courteous stranger entered, a slim, neat man in Ramillie wig and laced coat, who bowed to each in turn, hat a-flourish.

"Gentlemen, I protest you're very kind!" said he, drawing up a chair as the others, bowing their acknowledgments, seated themselves at the table. "As an humble student of this great and ancient game, I thank you."

The game began. At once the Squire became fierce-eyed and tremendously grim, the Parson remained as mildly serene as ever, while the Stranger watched each move with an expression keenly alert, as the game progressed.

Presently the little Parson spoke:

"Sir Robert, my dear Bob, I give you checkmate!"

"Egad and checkmate it is, Will!" exclaimed the Squire.

The Stranger, keen gaze upon the pieces, hitched his chair a little nearer:

"Your pardon, sir," said he, "but had you brought up your knight—"

"Sir," cried the Squire, rising, "up and at it; take my seat, play him yourself and if you win, by George, we'll have a bottle to celebrate your victory, egad!"

"Sir," said the Stranger, taking the proffered chair with a certain eagerness, "I vow you're very kind!"

The pieces were set, Parson and the Stranger bowed to each other and began to play.

Move followed move in a hushed and expectant silence, until at last Sir Robert leaned back and chuckled:

" 'Fore gad, Will, 'tis no blundering soldier thou'rt facing now!"

"Indeed, no, Bob!" murmured the little Parson, studying the pieces with his gentle, untroubled eyes. "'Tis desperate attack and I'm hard beset, still I do not despair," and he moved his Queen.

"Check, sir!" said the Stranger, instantly countering with a Bishop.

"How now, Will, man?" quoth the Squire. "He hath thee front and flank!"

" 'Tis awkward situation, Bob, yet excellent game!"

And now was silence again while the battle raged— attack and counter-attack, cunning feints, bold advances and masterly retreats....

"Hey... Will..." gasped the Squire suddenly, "by heaven ... thy Queen's lost, man!" The Parson nodded:

" 'Twould seem so, Bob— ay, 'tis gone!" he sighed as the Stranger swept it from the board. "Ay, my Queen is no more, but"— his small hand moved the Castle, "I thus give— checkmate!"

A moment's breathless silence, the Stranger's chair fell crashing:

"Ha, the devil!" he exclaimed with a strange, wild look. " 'Twas the Rook— the accursed Rook!" and he smote the board so violently that divers of the pieces leapt through the open lattice into the yard below. "Ha, by God, the curse is on me!" Then, snatching up hat and whip, "Gentlemen," said he in the same strange agitation, "I crave your pardon, but—"

"Sir," quoth the Squire, black brows knit across hawk-nose, "you ha' need... some explanation—"

" 'Tis simple and mayhap you'll judge sufficiently foolish, sirs. I am a man o' desperate ventures... I am superstitious... it hath been foretold me... ah, I was warned... warned 'gainst the Rook!"

"Incredible folly, sir—" cried the Squire.

"Sir, I pray it may prove so— farewell!" And with the word, he was gone; they heard the jingle of his spurs upon the stair and a moment or so thereafter a wild gallop dying rapidly in distance.

"The gentleman would seem in desperate haste, Bob," quoth the little Parson, placid gaze upon the open lattice. "A something strange person! Yet he played notable good game, Bob! Ay, had not my Queen lured him—"

"Hah, 'twas loss strategic, then?"

"Bob, even so!"

"Then faith, we'll crack a bottle; thou'rt mightier player e'en than I dreamed thee, Will." Reaching for the bell-rope, Sir Robert paused as from the road came sudden hubbub, loud voices... a noise of horses... and then, clear-ringing on the stilly evening air, a sharp report, followed by others in rapid succession.

"Pistol shots!" said the Squire.

DESCENDING to the inn-yard they beheld a crowd of villagers, who, espying Sir Robert's tall, familiar presence, touched their hats, grinned and stood aside, showing four sturdy fellows hauling between them a man, torn and bloody, in whom they recognized the polite Stranger.

"Why, how's this? What's here?" demanded Sir Robert. "I'm a magistrate— what do ye with this gentleman?"

"Gentleman, your honour?" cried one of the four with hoarse laugh. "This same fine gentleman be Cap'n Jasper the Highwayman!"

"Eh— are ye sure?"

"As death, your honour. Knows 'is face, I do! Knows 'is hoss, I do— nothin' on four legs to catch his bay mare, but she went lame an' no wonder— caught in 'er hoof, jammed 'twixt shoe and frog was—this here!" and the speaker held up a Red Castle.

"So... you see— gentlemen," gasped the pallid captive, "the prophecy was... true! That accursed... Rook!"

_______________

3: Catastrophe

Ethel Lina White

1879-1944

The Hardin Tribune-Herald, Montana, 20 & 27 Sep 1933

Ethel Lina White

THE night before the last expedition of her holiday Stella was oppressed by a sense of impending catastrophe. She looked at the noisy crowd of young people in the hotel lounge with a feeling of responsibility.

Ought she warn them of their danger?

Her common sense told her that she had no facts to offer them; she probably was exaggerating the windy boasting of an egomaniac. Many young men had attacks of Red rash, yet developed into normal, good citizens. It was mainly youth's recognition that the social system is not perfect.

Yet from the first Ivan Morgan gave her the impression of being an enemy to society. He reminded her of some mad machine, driven by gusts of class hatred, and he made no secret of his views.

Tired from her train journey and seated by herself in the lounge, she noticed at once that the slovenly young man with famished eyes and spikes of black hair was also an outsider. No one spoke to him or took the slightest notice of him. He slumped in his chair, his arms folded and his eyes scorching the face and figure of a beautiful blonde who was taking part in a hectic game of pool.

When Stella tried vainly to attract the attention of a waiter he crossed over to her side.

"Waste of time to ring." His voice grated unpleasantly. "Since the millionaires have condescended to honour this hotel with their patronage, ordinary visitors must wait on themselves or go without."

"Then it's an abominable scandal." Stella spoke sharply, for she wanted her coffee. "I shall complain to the agency when I get back. I've paid for service."

"Don't." Ivan made a dramatic gesture which revealed black-rimmed nails. "Don't blame the waiters. They're only the spineless victims of the rotten capitalist system which must be smashed if we want to build a brave new world."

Stella soon discovered that he could reel off that kind of speech without any encouragement, but she listened to him and even drew him out— partly because she was an intelligent girl who liked to study types of humanity and partly because she was sorry for him. When he learned that she had a job on the staff of a big London hotel, he claimed her sympathy as a fellow worker.

She soon grasped the facts of his grievance. The hotel was shut during the winter and was only full for six weeks in the summer; during the rest of the time it was run on a skeleton staff for the benefit of such tourists as took out-of-season holidays.

The village was miles away from a railway station, but was an excellent centre from which to explore the numerous historic ruins— abbeys and chateaux— set amid wild and picturesque scenery. Probably for that reason a party of riotous young people in a fleet of luxury cars had suddenly swooped down for lunch and then— on impulse— had decided to make it their headquarters.

Coming in the dead season they proved a little gold mine to the proprietor and not unnaturally the staff became demoralized. Money flowed constantly into the bar and waiters reaped a rich harvest of tips. The handful of ordinary visitors went to the wall.

Stella, however, was swift to prove her mettle, for she forced a surly waiter to bring her coffee. While she drank it she smoked a cigarette, while she studied the crowd.

They seemed much alike— young, attractive, high spirited, and strangers to any form of inhibition or restraint. Apparently unconscious of any one outside their own circle, they behaved as though this particular hotel had been created for their pleasure and use. It was plain that they believed that they were roughing it in the wilds, and their joking remarks were so frank that Stella thought it was fortunate that the waiters could not understand English.

The proprietor, who was a linguist, merely shrugged and smiled at his cash register, but Ivan took up the cudgels for him and literally spurted venom as he harangued Stella.

"Look at that swilling mob of drunken swine. They know nothing. They don't know the meaning of hunger, or pain, or fear. They're stuffed with food instead of ideas.... But if I were to hurl a bomb into their midst they'd be nothing but bloody rags."

"You'd be blown up, too," Stella reminded him.

"What of it? Death's nothing. Life's nothing." His eyes smouldered. "But what a scoop. The heirs to millions all here together. What a blow to strike at capitalism. The man who did that would be a hero."

"He'd be a murderer."

"No. An avenger. These millionaires are mass murderers. See that girl." He pointed to the beautiful blonde. "That's Mitzi Cross, heiress to sweated millions. She's a human being, like myself. Yet she doesn't know I'm made of flesh and blood, too. When we meet she doesn't see me. If I speak to her she doesn't hear. I hate her."

The boredom of her first evening was typical of the days to follow and it soon became plain to Stella that this special holiday was not a success. The millionaires— to use Ivan's collective title for sake of convenience—disorganized the hotel. They claimed the easiest chairs, monopolized the billiard table, exacted preferential treatment for meals and baths. Hot water ran tepid, and the best dishes were declared "off."

They were chaperoned by a depressed elderly lady who remained mostly invisible, partly from rheumatism and partly from dread of making an acquaintance. This fear was unfounded, for the other guests usually retired to their own rooms for refuge. They were all of them quiet, pleasant people and included an American family, two English women school-teachers, and several French and Belgian married couples.

As Stella was an attractive girl and used to attention, she grew rather bored and resentful. Ivan soon got on her nerves, especially when she discovered that her pity was wasted on a swollen self-conceit. After she had made it clear that free love was mud to her he left her alone.

All his attention was concentrated on the millionaires, and in particular the heiress, Mitzi Cross. He devoured her with glittering eyes which missed no movement of her slim figure, and strained his ears to catch every word of her fluting high-pitched voice. When she laughed he shivered as though the sound touched an exposed nerve.

"I believe it's an inverted passion," thought Stella. "It's unhealthy."

But gradually she, too, became affected by the adverse conditions, both spiritual and climatic. Although the weather was bad she went on daily motor excursions because the hotel was so uncomfortable. The landscape looked savagely depressing, viewed through sheets of torrential rain, and she left the car only to stumble through melancholy ruins which smelt of mouldy damp.

Presently she began to sleep badly from lack of air and exercise. The village lay deep in a tree-lined valley, so that from her bedroom window she could see only a wall of sodden foliage. After her light was switched off she lay staring out at the gloom until she fell asleep, often to dream of oubliettes and medieval torture.

She had reached the point of deciding to cut her loss and return to England and was actually on her way to the bureau when to her surprise a member of the millionaires' party asked her to play billiards with him.

Before the game was over she had not only shed her depression but was I pledged to stay out her fortnight. The young man, whose name was Lewis Gough, had an interesting personality besides charm. She discovered that in spite of his father's wealth he was a keen worker and a clever chemist.

Her pleasure, however, was partly spoiled by the presence of Ivan, who sat and stared fixedly at Lewis and herself as though they were a pair of performing fleas, hopping about for his ironic amusement. The next time she met him he cut her dead.

Although this extraordinary behaviour was a relief, since it rid her of his company, she expected a sense of discomfort and also of unmerited guilt. Ivan's clap-trap speeches were usually ridiculous, but his silence got on her nerves. It changed him into the unknown— a figure of sinister and inscrutable menace.

But as gradually she was drawn into the outer ring of the charmed circle she thought about him less, even while he remained in the background of her consciousness.

TWO DAYS before the end of her holiday she had just returned from a motor trip with Lewis and was standing on the bridge over the river when she was startled by the sound of Ivan's harsh voice.

"Are you going to the caves tomorrow?"

"Yes," she replied, stressing her smile to show him that she was still friendly. "Are you?"

"What does that matter to you? I'm not your new friend— the millionaire."

"O, don't be silly. If you mean Mr. Gough, he's not a millionaire. And he probably works harder than you."

"Probably. But not between meals... I came to give you a warning. Don't go tomorrow."

Her heart gave a little leap.

"Why not?" she asked.

Ivan stared down at the swirl of the soupy rain-swollen current and smiled darkly, as though he were dipped in the turgid depths of his imagination.

"These rich people feel secure," he said, "because they always herd in crowds. They're cowards who find safety in numbers. But suppose an— accident— happened tomorrow they would be trapped in the bowels of the mountain."

"What could happen?"

"The light might be cut off. They're all at the mercy of some poor devil, but they'll never give one thought to him. Suppose he was one of us? They would be left in pitchy darkness— And then— anything might happen."

As she listened Stella's imagination galloped away with her, so that she gasped with a sense of blind, choking horror, as though some one had crept behind her and smothered her in a black cloth. Before her common sense returned Ivan had turned away.

WHILE she was dressing for dinner she was shocked to discover how shaken she was by the episode. Her fingers trembled and she hunted for garments after she had put them on. Presently she opened her suit-case and drew out her book of return tickets.

As she checked the stages of her journey home the fear coiled around her heart, raised its ugly head.

"Suppose these are never used. Suppose I don't go back."

Even while she told herself that Ivan's threats were ridiculous she knew that one thoughtless or irresponsible person could precipitate a catastrophe. Ivan was incapable of clear thought. His head was a clouded broth of revolutionary phrases. He talked glibly of death, but knew nothing of life.

They were at the mercy of a child— an idiot— a drunkard— who walked amid piles of gunpowder, flourishing a lighted taper.

Suddenly she decided to trust to her instinct and not go to the caves. It was lowering her flag of superstition, but in the circumstances the excursion would prove a penance instead of a pleasure.

After she made the decision she felt happy again. Dinner was quite a festive meal and she ordered a bottle of wine to mark the occasion. But afterward, as she looked around the lounge, to her dismay, her send of responsibility awoke.

To-night some freak had prompted the millionaires to appear in full evening dress. Hitherto, as though to mark the difference between the other quests and themselves, they had not changed for dinner, appearing in the breeches and shorts of the daytime.

Although they were now far too ornate for the occasion they were exceedingly good to look at. The girls were like a swarm of brilliant butterflies, quivering with colour and life. Mitzi was alluring and exquisite in an amazing backless gown of black velvet; her nails and lips were vivid coral, and the loose waves of her silvery hair shimmered like moonlight.

"They have something which is beautiful," thought Stella. "They have youth."

She glanced anxiously at Ivan, who was glowering at Mitzi as he sprawled in one of the chairs which the millionaires had grown to regard as their especial property. Presently he was tackled by one of Mitzi's special young men whom every one called "Pony."

This youth was the richest member of the party and incidentally not a favourite dish with Stella; he was spoilt, sophisticated, and brainless. His grin was confident as he spoke to Ivan.

"I say, Miss Cross wants her chair. Do you mind frightfully?"

"I do," snarled Ivan. "But if she's bought the chair she shall have it when she shows me the receipt."

The youth started, stared, and then turned away with a shrug.

"Was that necessary?" asked Stella, speaking to Ivan in a low, soothing voice. "Why do you let these people make you unhappy? Soon you'll never see them again. Forget them."

"I can't." His voice was choked with passion. "Look at them. Dancing, drinking, laughing. They are always laughing."

"And you're jealous because they laugh. You could laugh, too."

"I'm not a hyena nor yet a grinning ape. Look at that girl. You're a worker. Have you ever worn a dress like hers?"

"No, but I don't envy her. You and I have the luck because we have jobs, while these people are all on the dole. They must be so bored. Can't you realize you're above them? You have personality— power."

It was second nature with Stella to smooth rough places. Her hotel experience had taught her to regard dissatisfied guests as so many fractious children to be calmed. She fed Ivan with spoonfuls of grossest flattery through sheer force of habit.

It came to her as a shock of surprise when he swallowed her bait.

"You're right," he said. "I am above them. I'll show them. I'll show them."

"I can influence him," she thought as she watched him rise to his feet. She felt something of the thrill of the engine-driver when he controls a runaway machine.

"I'm going to give her one last chance," said Ivan. "It is in her power to save the lot of them."

Still acting in the grand manner he crossed to Mitzi, made a low bow, and pointed in the direction of his empty chair

"It's yours," he said. Mitzi accepted the courtesy with quite a gracious nod and half a smile. But even as Stella drew a deep breath of relief the girl gingerly picked up the greasy cushion— against which Ivan's head had rested— and pitched it on the floor.

As it was not clean the action might have been a precaution to protect her frock. Besides, Mitzi was the kind of girl who threw things about. But Ivan construed it as a deadly insult.

His lips quivered with fury as he strode from the lounge. There was a burst of laughter as he went, but Stella shuddered, for she had seen his eyes.

She started at the sound of Lewis' voice.

"That young man!" she replied. "He's class-conscious and not quite normal. I feel he's dangerous. Miss Cross offended him just now. Could you persuade her to say something decent to him?"

"Wouldn't if I could. I know his type. Harmless. All the fellow wants is to be a hero and pose in the limelight... Come on. Dance, little lady, dance."

So Stella danced and tried to forget her fears. She told herself that it was hopeless to try to control the situation. In any case it was not her business. In two days' time she would never see any of these people again.... Life went on.

On her way up to bed she met Ivan on the narrow staircase. He was carrying a suit-case and his face was white and his eyes glazed as though he had been drinking!"

"Are you going away?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied thickly. "I've been kicked out of the hotel by the blasted millionaires."

"What do you mean?"

"I complained to the proprietor about their filthy behaviour. And he had the damned insolence to tell me to go.... Me!"

The triumph of his laugh and the bravado of his swagger told Stella that the ultimate disaster had happened. He was now a martyr to his cause.

She tossed sleeplessly in bed, a prey to every kind of foreboding fancy, and when at last she dropped into a doze she had horrible nightmares of dark places. She was drowning into the darkness. Choked in the darkness. Crushed by the darkness. Sinking down into the bottomless gulfs of darkness.

IT WAS a relief to wake up and see the rare sunlight streaming through her window and to remember that she was not going to the caves.

But all the same she could not shake off a sense of her own responsibility. During cafe complet she felt a pang whenever she looked around the restaurant. The young people were in the highest spirits and their shouts of laughter tore at her heart.

She told herself that they were going to their doom like sacrificial lambs. It was true that they were graceless, noisy lambs, but they were so unconscious of any overhanging fate. Their faces had the bloom of youth; some of the boys had only begun to shave; they were merely spoiled, reckless babes.

She alone was forewarned and had any influence over Ivan. At a critical moment she might prove the driver, able to control a mad machine. One word might mean all the difference between life and death. If she stayed safely at the hotel and later heard of some catastrophe in the caves she would never be able to forgive herself— or to forget. Presently Lewis crossed to her table.

"Change your mind and come to the caves." he pleaded. "It is our last excursion together. Come for me."

As Stella looked at his clear eyes and the clean cut corners of his mouth she suddenly realized that he meant more to her than she had guessed. In that moment she changed her mind. "All right," she said. "I'll go."

Although the rest of the party were in the highest spirits, Stella felt as though she were in the tumbrel on her way to the guillotine as the car tore through the sunlit countryside. When they arrived at the village, which was the starting point of their expedition, the little train was already waiting by the side of the road. But Mitzi and her crowd, with whoops of glee, rushed to get drinks at the hotel, outside which stood the usual painted iron tables and chairs.

Stella seated herself beside the two English school teachers. One was tall and rather gloomily handsome; the other was a little, pale girl in glasses, with a vivid face and an astounding store of information.

"What are we waiting for?" complained the tall teacher.

"Those boys who are drinking," replied her little friend. "People like that spoil things for every one."

Stella mentally agreed with her. Although Ivan was not on the train she held her breath with suspense, fearing every second to see him hurry down the street. But at last, to her joy, the train began slowly to move. It jolted through the town and then ran under a tunnel of shady trees. An amber river flowed beside the avenue, but gradually its water gleamed below them as the engine chugged up the hillside.

As they climbed higher and higher through the gaps in the rocks they had visions of the country spread out below like a painted map. The scarlet of poppies and yellow of mustard made bright splashes, amid the multi-shades of green, while the shadows of racing clouds swept across in tremulous blue and purple patches.

The journey was short and soon the conductor came and took Stella's ticket. Thinking he had made a mistake she held it firmly as she explained that she wanted it for the return journey.

"Pas de retour," he said.

"Sounds ominous." laughed the little school mistress. " 'No return.' He means we don't go back by train. We walk back inside the mountain to our starting point."

Although the explanation was sound Stella felt absurdly depressed by the incident, as though the conductor's words were prophetic. "No return." The phrase rang in her head as she got out of the train. The rest of the tourists were crowding to look over the lip of a Dante-esque gorge at the source of the river, which foamed in a dark boil through the rocks far below.

Turning away with a shudder she followed her companions down a slippery path which zig-zagged along the base of the mountain until the entrance to the caves was reached.

She looked nervously around her as she passed through the turnstile, dreading to see Ivan's white, sneering face. Although he was apparently not among the crowd of sightseers, his absence did not reassure her altogether.

"Perhaps he's already Inside." she thought, "waiting."

In a kind of nightmare she entered the maze of passages and caves with which the mountain was honeycombed. From the beginning of the expedition her mind was so heavy with apprehension that she received but a confused impression of her surroundings. The marvels of the stalactites were lost upon her; she could only plod through cracks in the rocks, along galleries, and I up and down endless steps. She was dimly aware of dripping walls, of corners of fantastic draperies, of what appeared to be guttering stone altar candles, but she could neither admire nor wonder. She could only endure.

"How far is it to the end?" she asked faintly.

"About two and a half miles," replied the little teacher.

The tourists straggled on in a long thin line like ants on march. Sometimes they clustered together in some chamber while the guide explained its formation, in three languages, which did not include English. Stella's brain was too dull to attempt to translate; she was only fretted by the repetition, although she recognized the standardized jokes by the bursts of laughter.

All the time she was acutely on the alert— waiting for some horror which might await them round the next bend. The shattering roar of an explosion—  the rumbling avalanche of rocks sealing their tombs— the thick, choking blackness.

"Tired?" asked Lewis.

"O, no. But the air's rather thick, isn't it?"

"A bit dead probably. We're getting pretty deep in."

He put his hand through her arm to help her as they scrambled onward. The tourists went in pairs or single file along the narrow paths. Most of them were silent. Some were feeling the strain of the stagnant atmosphere and of climbing steps; some were bored; some were memorizing what they saw.

But there were others who were oblivious of their surroundings and carrying on as usual. These included Mitzi and her young men who, following precedent, regarded the mountain as their private property. They chased each other down the flights of steps with shouts and laughter, pushing aside the other tourists without ceremony.

Stella's feeling of oppression deepened as they got further inside the mountain. Sometimes when they walked over the tongues of rock they caught glimpses of a black river boiling down below.

At one point where it was wide and oily it was spanned by a bridge. The guide halted to name it the River Styx and to make jokes about hell in three different languages.

"Looks pretty foul," remarked Lewis. "I shouldn't care to swim in it. Would you?"

"I can't," Stella confessed. "It's awful, but somehow I never got the chance. I suppose I'm unique."

"No, you aren't. Mitzi can't swim either. She'll do any stunt in the air, but she's always had a dread of water. Some sort of complex."

The expedition had now become a test of endurance. They appeared to wind eternally through cracks of rocks or stop in the caves during a ghastly period of explanation. Everything seemed calculated to draw out the agony. The guide had so many regulation jokes to be cracked; there were theatrical effects of coloured flares to be admired; musical chimes and echoes were evoked to heighten the effect of the grottoes.

Presently Stella noticed a man who was always running ahead of the party.

"He turns on the lights before we come and then goes back and switches them of again," explained the little teacher.

"I don't commend their economy," grumbled her tall friend. "If a light fused we should be left in the dark."

A memory stirred in Stella's brain. "Some poor devil.... Suppose he was one of us." To stifle it she spoke to the little school teacher:

"Are we near the end?"

"Yes," was the comforting reply. "But we've got to wait and have refreshments first."

The subterranean café reminded Stella of a foretaste of the infernal regions, with its waitresses and the members of the orchestra all in scarlet, and the weird, echoing music. Tortured by the delay, she was trying to swallow a cup of bitter black coffee when she suddenly saw Ivan looking down from an upper balcony.

Only his face was revealed by the red flare, so that he seemed to swim in space. The light accentuated its bony structure and the hollows of his eyes making him resemble a corpse awaiting burial.

Like a spirit of evil he brooded in gloating triumph over the abyss.

At last his enemies were in his power.

Stella could imagine the drunken dreams which flooded his brain. He would believe it to be a glorious deed to hurl a bomb into their midst. With one gesture entire nests of capitalists and blood-suckers would be wiped out. The others who perished would be merely incidental to the sacrifice.

He would be a hero— and die a martyr's death. He would be photographed and paragraphed in the press. Beyond that his thoughts would not go.

"I must get to him. I must speak to him before it's too late.'

As the thought flashed across Stella's mind he disappeared. She tried to scramble in his direction just as the little teacher called out to her that they were moving on again. Afraid to be lost in the ramifications of the caves, she had to turn and follow the party through other passages until they reached a wooden dock which was built over a stretch of black, still water. On it floated a huge, clumsy craft, rather like a barge.

"In a few minutes we shall be outside," explained the little teacher. "We just float down the river. Jump in. I wish people wouldn't push."

The tourists crowded forward while the boatmen helped them into the barge. They were packed together so closely that the boat seemed to sink down almost below the level of the water

"We're not enough for two boats, so they're making one do," remarked the little teacher.

Stella could see nothing of her party because of the intervening heads, although she could judge the whereabouts of Mitzi, who was shouting to Pony to sit beside her. As he tried to rise the barge lurched perilously and every one yelled to him to keep still.

But in that moment of shifting positions Stella had a glimpse of Ivan's white face and staring eyes. They had taken death on board. They began to slide slowly through the water, leaving the lighted dock for the semi-gloom of the tunnel. She could see its lofty, dripping roof as they crawled onward foot by foot. Each moment the light drew dimmer until it suddenly went out altogether.

The eclipse was greeted with laughter and faint screams of excitement.

"They always do this," said the little teacher. "We shall drift around the bend and then we shall see the daylight at the end of the tunnel, like blue fire."

Stella listened in an agony of terror. At last she realized why Ivan had withheld the bomb of which he talked. This was the opportunity for which he had waited. The darkness.

Each minute seemed to hold an eternity of dread. She could hear the trickling and gurgling of water— the creaking of timber. And then— the catastrophe happened within three seconds. The barge rocked with a sickening lurch as some one rose to his feet. There was shouts of "Sit down," but almost in the same moment the boat keeled completely over and she felt herself slipping down through the water.

It was like her dream— a choking agony in the darkness. Pandemonium raged all around her as people fought and struggled, while a mad medley of limbs thrashed and kicked in every direction. Just as her fingers touched the slimy boards of the barge she felt a violent blow under her chin and dropped down into an abyss of blackness.

WHEN she opened her eyes she was lying on the grass, staring up into a dazzling blur of light. Gradually the landscape stopped floating about like bits of a jig-saw puzzle and reassembled itself into definite shapes of trees, fields, and people. She saw the barge— now righted on the sunlit river— and heard excited voices and shouts of laughter.

Then she smiled into Lewis' concerned eyes.

"Am I drowned?" she asked.

"No, just a spot damp," was the reply "You were knocked out in the scrum."

"Were any lives lost?" she whispered as she shuddered at the memory.

"Of course not. At one time things looked a bit ugly. People lost their heads because of the dark. But when the light came on we soon got things sorted out."

"But it might have been a tragedy. You see, I was right about Ivan. He was dangerous."

"But that chap didn't scuttle the boat," explained Lewis. "It was that fool, Pony, trying to cross to Mitzi. No, the Mad Mullah fished her up and now's she's telling the world he's her hero. I told you all he wanted was the limelight. Look at him. lapping it all up."

As Stella followed his pointing finger she could hardly believe the evidence of her eyes. Shouting and laughing with excitement— Ivan was the central figure of his group. His thin cheeks were flushed and his fingers snapped as he spouted like a stump orator. One arm was thrown around Mitzi, who literally clung to him, for she was a girl who never did things by halves.

But later that evening, looking into the swirl at the soupy river, he made his confession to Stella.

"I did upset the barge. The other chap got up afterward. I gripped Mitzi. I meant to drag her down with me and hold her under until we were both drowned. But when she put her arms around my neck and cried out I— I couldn't. Something got hold of me."

Stella understood. This youth who had walked and talked daily with death, for the first time had been gripped by the mighty force of life.

________________

4: The Worker in Sandal-Wood

Marjorie Pickthall

1883-1922

The Atlantic Monthly, Dec 1909

Collected in "Angels' Shoes and other Stories", 1923.

Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall

I LIKE TO THINK of this as a true story, but you who read may please yourselves, siding either with the curé, who says Hyacinthe dreamed it all, and did the carving himself in his sleep, or with Madame. I am sure that Hyacinthe thinks it true, and so does Madame, but then she has the cabinet, with the little birds and the lilies carved at the corners. Monsieur le curé shrugs his patient shoulders; but then he is tainted with the infidelities of cities, good man, having been three times to Montreal, and once, in an electric car, to Sainte Anne. He and Madame still talk it over whenever they meet, though it happened so many years ago, and each leaves the other forever unconvinced. Meanwhile the dust gathers in the infinite fine lines of the little birds' feathers, and softens the lily stamens where Madame's duster may not go; and the wood, ageing, takes on a golden gleam as of immemorial sunsets: that pale red wood, heavy with the scent of the ancient East; the wood that Hyacinthe loved.

It was the only wood of that kind which had ever been seen in Terminaison. Pierre L'Oreillard brought it into the workshop one morning; a small heavy bundle wrapped in sacking, and then in burlap, and then in fine soft cloths. He laid it on a pile of shavings, and unwrapped it carefully and a dim sweetness filled the dark shed and hung heavily in the thin winter sunbeams.

Pierre L'Oreillard rubbed the wood respectfully with his knobby fingers. "It is sandal-wood," he explained to Hyacinthe, pride of knowledge making him expansive; "a most precious wood that grows in warm countries, thou great goblin. Smell it, imbécile. It is sweeter than cedar. It is to make a cabinet for the old Madame at the big house. Thy great hands shall smooth the wood, nigaud, and I,— I, Pierre the cabinet-maker, shall render it beautiful." Then he went out, locking the door behind him.

When he was gone Hyacinthe laid down his plane, blew on his stiff fingers, and shambled slowly over to the wood. He was a great clumsy boy of fourteen, dark-faced, very slow of speech, dull-eyed and uncared for. He was clumsy because it is impossible to move gracefully when you are growing very big and fast on quite insufficient food. He was dull-eyed because all eyes met his unlovingly; uncared for, because none knew the beauty of his soul. But his heavy young hands could carve simple things, like flowers and birds and beasts, to perfection, as the curé pointed out. Simon has a tobacco-jar, carved with pine-cones and squirrels, and the curé has a pipe whose bowl is the bloom of a moccasin-flower, that I have seen. But it is all very long ago. And facts, in those lonely villages, easily become transfigured, touched upon their gray with a golden gleam.

"Thy hands shall smooth the wood, nigaud, and I shall render it beautiful," said Pierre L'Oreillard, and went off to drink brandy at the Cinq Châteaux.

Hyacinthe knew that the making of the cabinet would fall to him, as most of the other work did. He also touched the strange sweet wood, and at last laid his cheek against it, while the fragrance caught his breath. "How it is beautiful," said Hyacinthe, and for a moment his eyes glowed and he was happy. Then the light passed, and with bent head he shuffled back to his bench through a foam of white shavings curling almost to his knees.

"Madame perhaps will want the cabinet next week, for that is Christmas," said Hyacinthe, and fell to work harder than ever, though it was so cold in the shed that his breath hung like a little silver cloud and the steel stung his hands. There was a tiny window to his right, through which, when it was clear of frost, one looked on Terminaison, and that was cheerful and made one whistle. But to the left, through the chink of the ill-fitting door, there was nothing but the forest and the road dying away in it, and the trees moving heavily under the snow. Yet, from there came all Hyacinthe's dumb dreams and slow reluctant fancies, which he sometimes found himself able to tell,— in wood, not in words.

Brandy was good at the Cinq Châteaux, and Pierre L'Oreillard gave Hyacinthe plenty of directions, but no further help with the cabinet.

"That is to be finished for Madame on the festival gros escargot!" said he, cuffing Hyacinthe's ears furiously, "finished, and with a prettiness about the corners, hearest thou, ourson? I suffer from a delicacy of the constitution and a little feebleness in the legs on these days, so that I cannot handle the tools. I must leave this work to thee, gâcheur. See it is done properly, and stand up and touch a hand to thy cap when I address thee, orvet, great slow-worm."

"Yes, monsieur," said Hyacinthe, wearily.

It is hard, when you do all the work, to be cuffed into the bargain, and fourteen is not very old. He went to work on the cabinet with slow, exquisite skill, but on the eve of Noel, he was still at work, and the cabinet unfinished. It meant a thrashing from Pierre if the morrow came and found it still unfinished, and Pierre's thrashings were cruel. But it was growing into a thing of perfection under his slow hands, and Hyacinthe would not hurry over it.

"Then work on it all night, and show it to me all completed in the morning, or thy bones shall mourn thine idleness," said Pierre with a flicker of his little eyes. And he shut Hyacinthe into the workshop with a smoky lamp, his tools and the sandal-wood cabinet.

It was nothing unusual. The boy had often been left before to finish a piece of work overnight while Pierre went off to his brandies. But this was Christmas Eve, and he was very tired. The cold crept into the shed until the scent of the sandal-wood could not make him dream himself warm, and the roof cracked sullenly in the frost. There came upon Hyacinthe one of those awful, hopeless despairs that children know. It seemed to be a living presence that caught up his soul and crushed it in black hands. "In all the world, nothing!" said he, staring at the dull flame; "no place, no heart, no love! O kind God, is there a place, a love for me in another world?"

I cannot endure to think of Hyacinthe, poor lad, shut up despairing in the work-shop with his loneliness, his cold, and his hunger, on the eve of Christmas. He was but an overgrown, unhappy child, and for unhappy children no aid, at this season, seems too divine for faith. So Madame says, and she is very old and very wise. Hyacinthe even looked at the chisel in his hand, and thought that by a touch of that he might lose it all, all, and be at peace, somewhere not far from God; only it was forbidden. Then came the tears, and great sobs that sickened and deafened him, so that he scarcely heard the gentle rattling of the latch.

At least, I suppose it came then, but it may have been later. The story is all so vague here, so confused with fancies that have spoiled the first simplicity. I think that Hyacinthe must have gone to the door, opening it upon the still woods and the frosty stars, and the lad who stood outside in the snow must have said; "I see you are working late, comrade. May I come in?" or something like it.

Hyacinthe brushed his ragged sleeve across his eyes, and opened the door wider with a little nod to the other to enter. Those little lonely villages strung along the great river see strange wayfarers adrift inland from the sea. Hyacinthe said to himself that surely here was such a one.

Afterwards he told the curé that for a moment he had been bewildered. Dully blinking into the stranger's eyes, he lost for a flash the first impression of youth and received one of some incredible age or sadness. But this also passed and he knew that the wanderer's eyes were only quiet, very quiet, like the little pools in the wood where the wild does went to drink. As he turned within the door, smiling at Hyacinthe and shaking some snow from his fur cap, he did not seem more than sixteen or so.

"It is very cold outside," he said. "There is a big oak tree on the edge of the fields that has split in the frost and frightened all the little squirrels asleep there. Next year it will make an even better home for them. And see what I found close by!" He opened his fingers, and showed Hyacinthe a little sparrow lying unruffled in the palm.

"Pauvrette!" said the dull Hyacinthe.

"Pauvrette! Is it then dead?" He touched it with a gentle forefinger.

"No," answered the strange boy, "it is not dead. We'll put it here among the shavings, not far from the lamp, and it will be well by morning."

He smiled at Hyacinthe again, and the shambling lad felt dimly as if the scent of the sandal-wood had deepened, and the lamp flame burned clearer. But the stranger's eyes were only quiet, quiet.

"Have you come far?" asked Hyacinthe. "It is a bad season for travelling, and the wolves are out in the woods."

"A long way," said the other; "a long, long way. I heard a child cry..."

"There is no child here," answered Hyacinthe, shaking his head. "Monsieur L'Oreillard is not fond of children, he says they cost too much money. But if you have come far, you must be cold and hungry, and I have no food nor fire. At the Cinq Châteaux you will find both!"

The stranger looked at him again with those quiet eyes, and Hyacinthe fancied his face was familiar. "I will stay here," he said. "You are very late at work and you are unhappy."

"Why, as to that," answered Hyacinthe, rubbing again at his cheeks and ashamed of his tears, "most of us are sad at one time or another, the good God knows. Stay here and welcome if it pleases you, and you may take a share of my bed, though it is no more than a pile of balsam boughs and an old blanket, in the loft. But I must work at this cabinet, for the drawer must be finished and the handles put on and these corners carved, all by the holy morning; or my wages will be paid with a stick."

"You have a hard master," put in the other boy, "if he would pay you with blows upon the feast of Noel."

"He is hard enough," said Hyacinthe; "but once he gave me a dinner of sausages and white wine, and once, in the summer, melons. If my eyes will stay open, I will finish this by morning, but indeed I am sleepy. Stay with me an hour or so, comrade, and talk to me of your wanderings, so that the time may pass more quickly."

"I will tell you of the country where I was a child," answered the stranger.

And while Hyacinthe worked, he told— of sunshine and dust; of the shadows of vine-leaves on the flat white walls of a house; of rosy doves on the flat roof; of the flowers that come in the spring, crimson and blue, and the white cyclamen in the shadow of the rocks; of the olive, the myrtle and almond; until Hyacinthe's slow fingers ceased working, and his sleepy eyes blinked wonderingly.

"See what you have done, comrade," he said at last; "you have told of such pretty things that I have done no work for an hour. And now the cabinet will never be finished, and I shall be beaten."

"Let me help you," smiled the other; "I also was bred a carpenter."

At first Hyacinthe would not, fearing to trust the sweet wood out of his own hands, but at length he allowed the stranger to fit in one of the little drawers, and so deftly was the work done, that Hyacinthe pounded his fists on the bench in admiration. "You have a pretty knack" he cried; "it seemed as if you did but hold the drawer in your hands a moment, and hey! ho! it jumped into its place!"

"Let me fit in the other little drawers, while you go and rest a while," said the wanderer. So Hyacinthe curled up among the shavings, and the stranger fell to work upon the little cabinet of sandal-wood.

Here begins what the curé will have it is a dream within a dream. Sweetest of dreams was ever dreamed, if that is so. Sometimes I am forced to think with him, but again I see as clearly as with old Madame's eyes, that have not seen the earthly light for twenty years, and with her and Hyacinthe, I say "Credo."

Hyacinthe said that he lay among the shavings in the sweetness of the sandal-wood, and was very tired. He thought of the country where the stranger had been a boy; of the flowers on the hills; of the laughing leaves of aspen, and poplar; of the golden flowering anise and the golden sun upon the dusty roads, until he was warm. All the time through these pictures, as through a painted veil, he was aware of that other boy with the quiet eyes, at work upon the cabinet, smoothing, fitting, polishing. "He does better work than I," thought Hyacinthe, but he was not jealous. And again he thought, "It is growing towards morning. In a little while I will get up and help him." But he did not, for the dream of warmth and the smell of the sandal-wood held him in a sweet drowse. Also he said that he thought the stranger was singing as he worked, for there seemed to be a sense of some music in the shed, though he could not tell whether it came from the other boy's lips, or from the shabby old tools as he used them, or from the stars. "The stars are much paler," thought Hyacinthe, "and soon it will be morning, and the corners are not carved yet. I must get up and help this kind one in a little moment. Only I am so tired, and the music and the sweetness seem to wrap me and fold me close, so that I may not move."

He lay without moving, and behind the forest there shone a pale glow of some indescribable colour that was neither green nor blue, while in Terminaison the church bells began to ring. "Day will soon be here!" thought Hyacinthe, immovable in that deep dream of his, "and with day will come Monsieur L'Oreillard and his stick. I must get up and help, for even yet the corners are not carved."

But he did not get up. Instead, he saw the stranger look at him again, smiling as if he loved him, and lay his brown finger lightly upon the four empty corners of the cabinet. And Hyacinthe saw the little squares of reddish wood ripple and heave and break, as little clouds when the wind goes through the sky. And out of them thrust forth little birds, and after them the lilies, for a moment living, but even while Hyacinthe looked, growing hard and reddish-brown and settling back into the sweet wood. Then the stranger smiled again, and laid all the tools neatly in order, and, opening the door quietly, went away into the woods.

Hyacinthe lay still among the shavings for a long time, and then he crept slowly to the door. The sun, not yet risen, sent his first beams upon the delicate mist of frost afloat beneath the trees, and so all the world was aflame with splendid gold. Far away down the road a dim figure seemed to move amid the glory, but the glow and the splendour were such that Hyacinthe was blinded. His breath came sharply as the glow beat in great waves on the wretched shed; on the foam of shavings; on the cabinet with the little birds and the lilies carved at the corners.

He was too pure of heart to feel afraid. But, "Blessed be the Lord," whispered Hyacinthe, clasping his slow hands, "for He hath visited and redeemed His people, But who will believe?"

Then the sun of Christ's day rose gloriously, and the little sparrow came from his nest among the shavings and shook his wings to the light.

________________

5: That Valuable Mare

Edward Sorenson

1869-1939

Morning Bulletin (Queensland) 16 May 1905

Edward Sorenson

HUNDREDS of farms on the Clarence River are totally submerged during every big flood. Caramana, though standing miles back from the river, was covered in 1887. The hard work commenced after the flood went down. Several fine patches of lucern had been destroyed. One patch, about five acres, was on an island. There was a lane at the back, and a deep gully, like a canal, swept round from one point to the other, It contained about 7 ft. of water, and was spanned by a log bridge.

Jack Thompson and I were deputed to cut this dead lucern and tip it into the gully. We commenced carting one morning with a fat brood mare. Her owner thought so much of her that she was seldom worked, but this was considered an easy job— just drawing the loads a few yards to the bank and backing. It turned out to be quite exciting.

Jack insisted on doing thc driving; and backing himself.

"I understand her better'n you do," he said. "An' she's so valuable— the boss 'ud take a fit if anything 'appened to her. Refused £30 for her th' other day."

She was worth about half that. Still I believed Thompson; two fools often meet on the horse track.

We had emptied about four loads when I heard an agonised shriek from the careful Jack. The cart was going over the steep bank, and that valuable mare was backing after it. Jack hung frantically to one wheel, and yelled to me to "get her by the head." I got her by the head, and she helped the cart down the bank all the more. Then the weight of the load lifted her, she swung round on the incline, and the next instant the cart turned over; and the lot dropped with a great splash into the water. For a moment I stood on the bank; with a pitchfork in my hand, staring helplessly at two wheels and four kicking hoofs.

Jack had disappeared, and I thought he was under the load. Then a pile of wet lucern popped up, bobbed violently round for awhile, and finally Thompson's head burst through the side of it. He couldn't swim, and was trying to call for help, but could only gasp. Reaching out with the pitchfork, I thrust the prong through the neckband of his shirt, and drew him to the cart wheel. He was crawling through the spokes, when the wheel turned and jammed him, and old Poll drove water at him with her heels in blinding showers. I got him out, and without waiting for breath, he plunged in again, and hauled the mare's head up above water. She looked pretty sick. So did Thompson. He stood nearly to his shoulders in water. The mare was on her back, but the shafts partly held her up, as the lucern underneath kept the cart off the bottom.

Getting the mare out was ticklish work. One had to dive down at times to undo a chain or to cut a strap. Her struggling to get up made things worse. Jack essayed to hold her leg, and she knocked both of us down, and got her head under again. Jack took no notice of his own bruises and cuts and torn clothes, but he was visibly concerned about the little scratches on that priceless mare. We got her out at last, and Jack spent twenty minutes rubbing her legs, and examining her generally.

The next thing was to get the cart up. We couldn't get Poll near enough to the bank to do any good, and Jack wouldn't go for another horse, or help of any kind. He had the reputation of being a careful, trustworthy young man with horses, and that reputation had be considered. So we fished the harness up first, then took the wheels off, and worked like bullocks getting them to the top of the bank. That made lunch time. Jack wouldn't stop for the usual "smoke-oh" afterwards, but hurried back to work. He just loved work.

We spent three hours at that cart, zigzagging it up the bank with levers— 6 inches at a time. Putting the wheels on again was another prodigious task, and by the time it was accomplished we had acquired a thirst of no mean order. We shoved the old mare in the shafts again and told her, to stand there. Then we cut through Bellamy's corn to Kenny's pub, and ran slap into an embarrassing situation. The boss himself in the bar "doing a kill" with Mrs. Kenny. Jack nearly fainted. Trustworthy young men are not expected to be found in public houses when they are supposed to be at work.

"Hulloa, Jack!" he said, "what's the matter?"

Jack's mind was a blank for a moment. He could only raise a grin— a grim, bitter sort of grin, such as he wore when the mare knocked him down. Then, resting his hand on the bar, he noticed a scratch on his finger, and it gave him an inspiration. He held it up.

"A goana bit me," he said, "I— I thought it might be dangerous."

"Do you feel, bad," the boss asked.

"Feel a bit queer," Jack said. He looked it, too.

The boss examined the wounded digit.

"Must have been a very old goana, he remarked. "Only one tooth."

"Oh, he didn't get a fair holt o' me," Jack explained.

The boss turned to me.

"Have the goanas been at you, too?"

"No," I replied, with a determination to stick up for Thompson. "Jack thought I'd better come with him in case he should take bad on the road."

"Come and have a drink," he said.

We didn't mind, and when we had emptied our glasses, he added—

"Now, get back and wire into that lucern. That's the best antidote for goanna bites."

We got back, and found the old mare had got back some, too. She and the dray, were in the water again, and she wasn't struggling any more. Her head was underneath, and she lay quite calm

"My God!" Jack said, and took a few hasty strides towards her. Then the uselessness of it all seemed to strike him, and he turned and ran back, then he changed his mind, and ran towards the mare a second time, he stopped again, and finally deciding on action, both of us fled across the lucern, and down the lane. The lane was 150 miles long.

_____________

6: The Curse of the Catafalques

F. Anstey

1856-1934

The Cornhill Magazine Aug 1882

Thomas Anstey Guthrie

UNLESS I am very much mistaken, until the time when I was subjected to the strange and exceptional experience which I now propose to relate, I had never been brought into close contact with anything of a supernatural description. At least if I ever was, the circumstance can have made no lasting impression upon me, as I am quite unable to recall it. But in the "Curse of the Catafalques" I was confronted with a horror so weird and so altogether unusual, that I doubt whether I shall ever succeed in wholly forgetting it— and I know that I have never felt really well since.

It is difficult for me to tell my story intelligibly without some account of my previous history by way of introduction, although I will try to make it as little diffuse as I may.

I had not been a success at home; I was an orphan, and, in my anxiety to please a wealthy uncle upon whom I was practically dependent, I had consented to submit myself to a series of competitive examinations for quite a variety of professions, but in each successive instance I achieved the same disheartening failure. Some explanation of this may, no doubt, be found in the fact that, with a fatal want of forethought, I had entirely omitted to prepare myself by any particular course of study— which, as I discovered too late, is almost indispensable to success in these intellectual contests.

My uncle himself took this view, and conceiving— not without discernment— that I was by no means likely to retrieve myself by any severe degree of application in the future, he had me shipped out to Australia, where he had correspondents and friends who would put things in my way.

They did put several things in my way— and, as might have been expected, I came to grief over every one of them, until at length, having given a fair trial to each opening that had been provided for me, I began to perceive that my uncle had made a grave mistake in believing me suited for a colonial career.

I resolved to return home and convince him of his error, and give him one more opportunity of repairing it; he had failed to discover the best means of utilizing my undoubted ability, yet I would not reproach him (nor do I reproach him even now), for I too have felt the difficulty.

In pursuance of my resolution, I booked my passage home by one of the Orient liners from Melbourne to London. About an hour before the ship was to leave her moorings, I went on board and made my way at once to the stateroom which I was to share with a fellow passenger, whose acquaintance I then made for the first time.

He was a tall cadaverous young man of about my own age, and my first view of him was not encouraging, for when I came in, I found him rolling restlessly on the cabin floor, and uttering hollow groans.

"This will never do," I said, after I had introduced myself; "if you're like this now, my good sir, what will you be when we're fairly out at sea? You must husband your resources for that."

"And why trouble to roll? The ship will do all that for you, if you will only have patience."

He explained, somewhat brusquely, that he was suffering from mental agony, not seasickness; and by a little pertinacious questioning (for I would not allow myself to be rebuffed) I was soon in possession of the secret which was troubling my companion, whose name, as I also learned, was Augustus McFadden.

It seemed that his parents had emigrated before his birth, and he had lived all his life in the Colony, where he was contented and fairly prosperous— when an eccentric old aunt of his over in England happened to die.

She left McFadden himself nothing, having given by her will the bulk of her property to the only daughter of a baronet of ancient family, in whom she took a strong interest. But the will was not without its effect upon her existence, for it expressly mentioned the desire of the testatrix that the baronet should receive her nephew Augustus if he presented himself within a certain time, and should afford him every facility for proving his fitness for acceptance as a suitor. The alliance was merely recommended, however, not enjoined, and the gift was unfettered by any conditions.

"I heard of it first," said McFadden, "from Chlorine's father (Chlorine is her name, you know)".

Sir Paul Catafalque wrote to me, informing me of the mention of my name in my aunt's will, enclosing his daughter's photograph, and formally inviting me to come over and do my best, if my affections were not preengaged, to carry out the last wishes of the departed. He added that I might expect to receive shortly a packet from my aunt's executors which would explain matters fully, and in which I should find certain directions for my guidance. The photograph decided me; it was so eminently pleasing that I felt at once that my poor aunt's wishes must be sacred to me. I could not wait for the packet to arrive, and so I wrote at once to Sir Paul accepting the invitation.

"Yes," he added, with another of the hollow groans, "miserable wretch that I am, I pledged my honor to present myself as a suitor, and now— now— here I am, actually embarked upon the desperate errand!"

He seemed inclined to begin to roll again here, but I stopped him. "Really," I said, "I think in your place, with an excellent chance— for I presume the lady's heart is also disengaged— with an excellent chance of winning a baronet's daughter with a considerable fortune and a pleasing appearance, I should bear up better."

"You think so," he rejoined, "but you do not know all! The very day after I had despatched my fatal letter, my aunt's explanatory packet arrived. I tell you that when I read the hideous revelations it contained, and knew to what horrors I had innocently pledged myself, my hair stood on end, and I believe it has remained on end ever since. But it was too late. Here I am, engaged to carry out a task from which my inmost soul recoils. Ah, if I dared but retract!"

"Then why in the name of common sense, don't you retract?" I asked. "Write and say that you much regret that a previous engagement, which you had unfortunately overlooked, deprives you of the pleasure of accepting."

"Impossible," he said; "it would be agony to me to feel that I had incurred Chlorine's contempt, even though I only know her through a photograph at present. If I were to back out of it now, she would have reason to despise me, would she not?"

"Perhaps she would," I said.

"You see my dilemma— I cannot retract; on the other hand, I dare not go on. The only thing, as I have thought lately, which could save me and my honor at the same time would be my death on the voyage out, for then my cowardice would remain undiscovered."

"Well," I said, "you can die on the voyage out if you want to— there need be no difficulty about that. All you have to do is just to slip over the side some dark night when no one is looking. I tell you what," I added (for somehow I began to feel a friendly interest in this poor slack-baked creature): "if you don't find your nerves equal to it when it comes to the point, I don't mind giving you a leg over myself."

"I never intended to go as far as that," he said, rather pettishly, and without any sign of gratitude for my offer; "I don't care about actually dying, if she could only be made to believe I had died that would be quite enough for me. I could live on here, happy in the thought that I was saved from her scorn. But how can she be made to believe it?— that's the point."

"Precisely," I said. "You can hardly write yourself and inform her that you died on the voyage."

"You might do this, though: sail to England as you propose, and go to see her under another name, and break the sad intelligence to her."

"Why, to be sure, I might do that!" he said, with some animation; "I should certainly not be recognized— she can have no photograph of me, for I have never been photographed. And yet— no," he added, with a shudder, "it is useless. I can't do it; I dare not trust myself under that roof!"

"I must find some other way. You have given me an idea. Listen," he said, after a short pause:

"You seem to take an interest in me; you are going to London; the Catafalques live there, or near it, at some place called Parson's Green. Can I ask a great favor of you— would you very much mind seeking them out yourself as a fellow-voyager of mine? I could not expect you to tell a positive untruth on my account— but if, in the course of an interview with Chlorine, you could contrive to convey the impression that I died on my way to her side, you would be doing me a service I can never repay!"

"I should very much prefer to do you a service that you could repay," was my very natural rejoinder.

"She will not require strict proof," he continued eagerly; "I could give you enough papers and things to convince her that you come from me. Say you will do me this kindness!"

I hesitated for some time longer, not so much, perhaps, from scruples of a conscientious kind as from a disinclination to undertake a troublesome commission for an entire stranger— gratuitously. But McFadden pressed me hard, and at length he made an appeal to springs in my nature which are never touched in vain, and I yielded.

When we had settled the question in its financial aspect, I said to McFadden, "The only thing now is— how would you prefer to pass away? Shall I make you fall over and be devoured by a shark? That would be a picturesque end— and I could do myself justice over the shark? I should make the young lady weep considerably."

"That won't do at all!" he said irritably; "I can see from her face that Chlorine is a girl of a delicate sensibility, and would be disgusted by the idea of any suitor of hers spending his last cohesive moments inside such a beastly repulsive thing as a shark. I don't want to be associated in her mind with anything so unpleasant. No, sir; I will die— if you will oblige me by remembering it— of a low fever, of a noninfectious type, at sunset, gazing at her portrait with my fading eyesight and gasping her name with my last breath. She will cry more over that!"

"I might work it up into something effective, certainly," I admitted; "and, by the way, if you are going to expire in my stateroom, I ought to know a little more about you than I do. There is time still before the tender goes; you might do worse than spend it in coaching me in your life's history."

He gave me a few leading facts, and supplied me with several documents for study on the voyage; he even abandoned to me the whole of his traveling arrangements, which proved far more complete and serviceable than my own.

And then the "All-ashore" bell rang, and McFadden, as he bade me farewell, took from his pocket a bulky packet. "You have saved me," he said. "Now I can banish every recollection of this miserable episode. I need no longer preserve my poor aunt's directions; let them go, then."

Before I could say anything, he had fastened something heavy to the parcel and dropped it through the cabin-light into the sea, after which he went ashore, and I have never seen nor heard of him since.

During the voyage I had leisure to think seriously over the affair, and the more I thought of the task I had undertaken, the less I liked it.

No man with the instincts of a gentleman can feel any satisfaction at finding himself on the way to harrow up a poor young lady's feelings by a perfectly fictitious account of the death of a poor-spirited suitor who could selfishly save his reputation at her expense.

And so strong was my feeling about this from the very first, that I doubt whether, if McFadden's terms had been a shade less liberal, I could ever have brought myself to consent.

But it struck me that, under judiciously sympathetic treatment, the lady might prove not inconsolable, and that I myself might be able to heal the wound I was about to inflict.

I found a subtle pleasure in the thought of this, for, unless McFadden had misinformed me, Chlorine's fortune was considerable, and did not depend upon any marriage she might or might not make. On the other hand, I was penniless, and it seemed to me only too likely that her parents might seek to found some objection to me on that ground.

I studied the photograph McFadden had left with me; it was that of a pensive but distinctly pretty face, with an absence of firmness in it that betrayed a plastic nature. I felt certain that if I only had the recommendation, as McFadden had, of an aunt's dying wishes, it would not take me long to effect a complete conquest.

And then, as naturally as possible, came the thought— why should not I procure myself the advantages of this recommendation? Nothing could be easier; I had merely to present myself as Augustus McFadden, who was hitherto a mere name to them; the information I already possessed as to his past life would enable me to support the character, and as it seemed that the baronet lived in great seclusion, I could easily contrive to keep out of the way of the few friends and relations I had in London until my position was secure.

What harm would this innocent deception do to anyone? McFadden, even if he ever knew, would have no right to complain— he had given up all pretentions himself— and if he was merely anxious to preserve his reputation, his wishes would be more than carried out, for I flattered myself that whatever ideal Chlorine might have formed of her destined suitor, I should come much nearer to it than poor McFadden could ever have done. No, he would gain, positively gain, by my assumption. He could not have counted upon arousing more than a mild regret as it was; now he would be fondly, it might be madly, loved. By proxy, it is true, but that was far more than he deserved.

Chlorine was not injured— far from it; she would have a suitor to welcome, not weep over, and his mere surname could make no possible difference to her. And lastly, it was a distinct benefit to me, for with a new name and an excellent reputation success would be an absolute certainty.

What wonder, then, that the scheme, which opened out a far more manly and honorable means of obtaining a livelihood than any I had previously contemplated, should have grown more attractively feasible each day, until I resolved at last to carry it out? Let rigid moralists blame me if they will; I have never pretended to be better than the average run of mankind (though I am certainly no worse), and no one who really knows what human nature is will reproach me very keenly for obeying what was almost an instinct. And I may say this, that if ever an unfortunate man was bitterly punished for a fraud which was harmless, if not actually pious, by a visitation of intense and protracted terror, that person was I!

ii

AFTER arriving in England, and before presenting myself at Parson's Green in my assumed character, I took one precaution against any danger there might be of my throwing away my liberty in a fit of youthful impulsiveness. I went to Somerset House, and carefully examined the probate copy of the late Miss Petronia McFadden's last will and testament.

Nothing could have been more satisfactory; a sum of between forty and fifty thousand pounds was Chlorine's unconditionally, just as McFadden had said. I searched, but could find nothing in the will whatever to prevent her property, under the then existing state of the law, from passing under the entire control of a future husband.

After this, then, I could no longer restrain my ardor, and so, one foggy afternoon about the middle of December, I found myself driving towards the house in which I reckoned upon achieving a comfortable independence.

Parson's Green was reached at last; a small triangular open space bordered on two of its sides by mean and modern erections, but on the third by some ancient mansions, gloomy and neglected-looking indeed, but with traces on them still of their former consequence.

My cab stopped before the gloomiest of them all— a square grim house with dull and small-paned windows, flanked by two narrow and projecting wings, and built of dingy brick, faced with yellow-stone. Some old scrollwork railings, with a corroded frame in the middle for a long departed oil lamp, separated the house from the road; inside was a semicircular patch of rank grass, and a damp gravel sweep led from the heavy gate to a square portico supported by two wasted black wooden pillars.

As I stood there, after pulling the pear-shaped bell-handle, and heard the bell tinkling and jangling fretfully within, and as I glanced up at the dull housefront looming cheerless out of the fog-laden December twilight, I felt my confidence beginning to abandon me for the first time, and I really was almost inclined to give the whole thing up and run away.

Before I could make up my mind, a mouldy and melancholy butler had come slowly down the sweep and opened the gate— and my opportunity had fled. Later I remembered how, as I walked along the gravel, a wild and wailing scream pierced the heavy silence— it seemed at once a lamentation and a warning. But as the District Railway was quite near, I did not attach any particular importance to the sound at the time.

I followed the butler through a dank and chilly hall, where an antique lamp hung glimmering feebly through its panes of dusty stained glass, up a broad carved staircase, and along some tortuous paneled passages, until at length I was ushered into a long and rather low reception room, scantily furnished with the tarnished mirrors and spindle-legged brocaded furniture of a bygone century.

A tall and meager old man, with a long white beard, and haggard, sunken black eyes, was seated at one side of the high chimney-piece, while opposite him sat a little limp old lady with a nervous expression, and dressed in trailing black robes relieved by a little yellow lace about the head and throat. As I saw them, I recognized at once that I was in the presence of Sir Paul Catafalque and his wife.

They both rose slowly, and advanced arm-in-arm in their old-fashioned way, and met me with a stately solemnity. "You are indeed welcome," they said in faint hollow voices. "We thank you for this proof of your chivalry and devotion. It cannot be but that such courage and such self-sacrifice will meet with their reward!"

And although I did not quite understand how they could have discerned, as yet, that I was chivalrous and devoted, I was too glad to have made a good impression to do anything but beg them not to mention it.

And then a slender figure, with a drooping head, a wan face, and large sad eyes, came softly down the dimly-lighted room towards me, and I and my destined bride met for the first time.

As I had expected, after she had once anxiously raised her eyes, and allowed them to rest upon me, her face was lighted up by an evident relief, as she discovered that the fulfillment of my aunt's wishes would not be so distasteful to her, personally, as it might have been.

For myself, I was upon the whole rather disappointed in her; the portrait had flattered her considerably— the real Chlorine was thinner and paler than I had been led to anticipate, while there was a settled melancholy in her manner which I felt would prevent her from being an exhilarating companion.

And I must say I prefer a touch of archness and animation in womankind, and, if I had been free to consult my own tastes, should have greatly preferred to become a member of a more cheerful family. Under the circumstances, however, I was not entitled to be too particular, and I put up with it.

From the moment of my arrival I fell easily and naturally into the position of an honored guest, who might be expected in time to form nearer and dearer relations with the family, and certainly I was afforded every opportunity of doing so.

I made no mistakes, for the diligence with which I had got up McFadden's antecedents enabled me to give perfectly satisfactory replies to most of the few allusions or questions that were addressed to me, and I drew upon my imagination for the rest.

But those days I spent in the baronet's family were far from lively: the Catafalques went nowhere; they seemed to know nobody; at least no visitors ever called or dined there while I was with them, and the time dragged slowly on in a terrible monotony in that dim tomb of a house, which I was not expected to leave except for very brief periods, for Sir Paul would grow uneasy if I walked out alone— even to Putney.

There was something, indeed, about the attitude of both the old people towards myself which I could only consider as extremely puzzling. They would follow me about with a jealous care, blended with anxious alarm, and their faces as they looked at me wore an expression of tearful admiration, touched with something of pity, as for some youthful martyr; at times, too, they spoke of the gratitude they felt, and professed a determined hopefulness as to my ultimate success.

Now I was well aware that this is not the ordinary bearing of the parents of an heiress to a suitor who, however deserving in other respects, is both obscure and penniless, and the only way in which I could account for it was by the supposition that there was some latent defect in Chlorine's temper or constitution, which entitled the man who won her to commiseration, and which would also explain their evident anxiety to get her off their hands.

But although anything of this kind would be, of course, a drawback, I felt that forty or fifty thousand pounds would be a fair set-off— and I could not expect everything.

When the time came at which I felt that I could safely speak to Chlorine of what lay nearest my heart, I found an unforeseen difficulty in bringing her to confess that she reciprocated my passion.

She seemed to shrink unaccountably from speaking the word which gave me the right to claim her, confessing that she dreaded it not for her own sake, but for mine alone, which struck me as an unpleasantly morbid trait in so young a girl.

Again and again I protested that I was willing to run all risks— as I was— and again and again she resisted, though always more faintly, until at last my efforts were successful, and I forced from her lips the assent which was of so much importance to me.

But it cost her a great effort, and I believe she even swooned immediately afterwards; but this is only conjecture, as I lost no time in seeking Sir Paul and clenching the matter before Chlorine had time to retract.

He heard what I had to tell him with a strange light of triumph and relief in his weary eyes.

"You have made an old man very happy and hopeful," he said. "I ought, perhaps, even now to deter you, but I am too selfish for that. And you are young and brave and ardent; why need we despair? I suppose," he added, looking keenly at me, "you would prefer as little delay as possible?"

"I should indeed," I replied. I was pleased, for I had not expected to find him so sensible as that.

"Then leave all preliminaries to me; when the day and time have been settled, I will let you know. As you are aware, it will be necessary to have your signature to this document; and here, my boy, I must in conscience warn you solemnly that by signing you make your decision irrevocable— irrevocable, you understand?"

When I had heard this, I need scarcely say that I was all eagerness to sign; so great was my haste that I did not even try to decipher the somewhat crabbed and antiquated writing in which the terms of the agreement were set out.

I was anxious to impress the baronet with a sense of my gentlemanly feeling and the confidence I had in him, while I naturally presumed that, since the contract was binding upon me, the baronet would, as a man of honor, hold it equally conclusive on his own side.

As I look back upon it now, it seems simply extraordinary that I should have been so easily satisfied, have taken so little pains to find out the exact position in which I was placing myself; but, with the ingenuous confidence of youth, I fell an easy victim, as I was to realize later with terrible enlightenment.

"Say nothing of this to Chlorine," said Sir Paul, as I handed him the document signed, "until the final arrangements are made; it will only distress her unnecessarily."

I wondered why at the time, but I promised to obey, supposing that he knew best, and for some days after that I made no mention to Chlorine of the approaching day which was to witness our union.

As we were continually together, I began to regard her with an esteem which I had not thought possible at first. Her looks improved considerably under the influence of happiness, and I found she could converse intelligently enough upon several topics, and did not bore me nearly as much as I was fully prepared for.

And so the time passed less heavily, until one afternoon the baronet took me aside mysteriously. "Prepare yourself, Augustus," (they had all learned to call me Augustus), he said; "all is arranged. The event upon which our dearest hopes depend is fixed for tomorrow— in the Gray Chamber of course, and at midnight."

I thought this a curious time and place for the ceremony, but I had divined his eccentric passion for privacy and retirement, and only imagined that he had procured some very special form of license.

"But you do not know the Gray Chamber," he added.

"Come with me, and I will show you where it is." And he led me up the broad staircase, and, stopping at the end of a passage before an immense door covered with black baize and studded with brass nails, which gave it a hideous resemblance to a gigantic coffin lid, he pressed a spring, and it fell slowly back.

I saw a long dim gallery, whose very existence nothing in the external appearance of the mansion had led me to suspect; it led to a heavy oaken door with cumbrous plates and fastenings of metal.

"Tomorrow night is Christmas eve, as you are doubtless aware," he said in a hushed voice. "At twelve, then, you will present yourself at yonder door— the door of the Gray Chamber— where you must fulfill the engagement you have made."

I was surprised at his choosing such a place for the ceremony; it would have been more cheerful in the long drawing room; but it was evidently a whim of his, and I was too happy to think of opposing it. I hastened at once to Chlorine, with her father's sanction, and told her that the crowning moment of both our lives was fixed at last.

The effect of my announcement was astonishing: she fainted, for which I remonstrated with her as soon as she came to herself. "Such extreme sensitiveness, my love," I could not help saying, "may be highly creditable to your sense of maidenly propriety, but allow me to say that I can scarcely regard it as a compliment."

"Augustus," she said, "you must not think I doubt you; and yet— and yet— the ordeal will be a severe one for you."

"I will steel my nerves," I said grimly (for I was annoyed with her); "and, after all, Chlorine, the ceremony is not invariably fatal; I have heard of the victim surviving it— occasionally."

"How brave you are!" she said earnestly. "I will imitate you, Augustus; I too will hope."

I really thought her insane, which alarmed me for the validity of the marriage. "Yes, I am weak, foolish, I know," she continued; "but oh, I shudder so when I think of you, away in that gloomy Gray Chamber, going through it all alone!"

This confirmed my worst fears. No wonder her parents felt grateful to me for relieving them of such a responsibility! "May I ask where you intend to be at the time?" I inquired very quietly.

"You will not think us unfeeling," she replied, "but dear papa considered that such anxiety as ours would be scarcely endurable did we not seek some distraction from it; and so, as a special favor, he has procured evening orders for Sir John Soane's Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where we shall drive immediately after dinner."

I knew that the proper way to treat the insane was by reasoning with them gently, so as to place their own absurdity clearly before them. "If you are forgetting your anxiety in Sir John Soane's Museum, while I cool my heels in the Gray Chamber," I said, "is it probable that any clergyman will be induced to perform the marriage ceremony? Did you really think two people can be united separately?"

She was astonished this time. "You are joking!" she cried; "you cannot really believe that we are to be married in— in the Gray Chamber?"

"Then will you tell me where we are to be married?" I asked. "I think I have the right to know— it can hardly be at the Museum!"

She turned upon me with a sudden misgiving; "I could almost fancy," she said anxiously, "that this is no feigned ignorance. Augustus, your aunt sent you a message— tell me, have you read it?" Now, owing to McFadden's want of consideration, this was my one weak point— I had not read it, and thus I felt myself upon delicate ground. The message evidently related to business of importance which was to be transacted in this Gray Chamber, and as the genuine McFadden clearly knew all about it, it would have been simply suicidal to confess my own ignorance.

"Why of course, darling, of course," I said hastily. "You must think no more of my silly joke; there is something I have to arrange in the Gray Chamber before I can call you mine. But, tell me, why does it make you so uneasy?" I added, thinking it might be prudent to find out beforehand what formality was expected from me.

"I cannot help it— no, I cannot!" she cried, "the test is so searching— are you sure that you are prepared at all points? I overheard my father say that no precaution could safely be neglected. I have such a terrible foreboding that, after all, this may come between us."

It was clear enough to me now; the baronet was by no means so simple and confiding in his choice of a son-in-law as I had imagined, and had no intention, after all, of accepting me without some inquiry into my past life, my habits, and my prospects.

That he should seek to make this examination more impressive by appointing this ridiculous midnight interview for it, was only what might have been expected from an old man of his confirmed eccentricity.

But I knew I could easily contrive to satisfy the baronet, and with the idea of consoling Chlorine, I said as much. "Why will you persist in treating me like a child, Augustus?" she broke out almost petulantly. "They have tried to hide it all from me, but do you suppose I do not know that in the Gray Chamber you will have to encounter one far more formidable, far more difficult to satisfy, than poor dear papa?"

"I see you know more than I— more than I thought you did," I said. "Let us understand one another, Chlorine— tell me exactly how much you know."

"I have told you all I know," she said; "it is your turn to confide in me."

"Not even for your sweet sake, my dearest," I was obliged to say, "can I break the seal that is set upon my tongue. You must not press me. Come, let us talk of other things."

But I now saw that matters were worse than I had thought; instead of the feeble old baronet I should have to deal with a stranger, some exacting and officious friend or relation perhaps, or, more probably, a keen family solicitor who would put questions I should not care about answering, and even be capable of insisting upon strict settlements.

It was that, of course; they would try to tie my hands by a strict settlement, with a brace of cautious trustees; unless I was very careful, all I should get by my marriage would be a paltry life-interest, contingent upon my surviving my wife.

This revolted me; it seems to me that when law comes in with its offensively suspicious restraints upon the husband and its indelicately premature provisions for the offspring, all the poetry of love is gone at once. By allowing the wife to receive the income "for her separate use and free from the control of her husband," as the phrase runs, you infallibly brush the bloom from the peach, and implant the "little speck within the fruit" which, as Tennyson beautifully says, will widen by and by and make the music mute.

This may be overstrained on my part, but it represents my honest conviction; I was determined to have nothing to do with law. If it was necessary, I felt quite sure enough of Chlorine to defy Sir Paul. I would refuse to meet a family solicitor anywhere, and I intended to say so plainly at the first convenient opportunity.

iii

THE OPPORTUNITY came after dinner that evening when we were all in the drawing-room, Lady Catafalque dozing uneasily in her armchair behind a fire screen, and Chlorine, in the further room, playing funereal dirges in the darkness, and pressing the stiff keys of the old piano with a languid uncertain touch.

Drawing a chair up to Sir Paul's, I began to broach the subject calmly and temperately. "I find," I said, "that we have not quite understood one another over this affair in the Gray Chamber. When I agreed to an appointment there, I thought— well, it doesn't matter what I thought, I was a little too premature. What I want to say now is, that while I have no objection to you, as Chlorine's father, asking me any questions (in reason) about myself, I feel a delicacy in discussing my private affairs with a perfect stranger."

His burning eyes looked me through and through; "I don't understand," he said. "Tell me what you are talking about."

I began all over again, telling him exactly what I felt about solicitors and settlements. "Are you well?" he asked sternly. "What have I ever said about settlements or solicitors?"

I saw that I was wrong again, and could only stammer something to the effect that a remark of Chlorine's had given me this impression.

"What she could have said to convey such an idea passes my comprehension," he said gravely; "but she knows nothing— she's a mere child. I have felt from the first, my boy, that your aunt's intention was to benefit you quite as much as my own daughter. Believe me, I shall not attempt to restrict you in any way; I shall be too rejoiced to see you come forth in safety from the Gray Chamber."

All the relief I had begun to feel respecting the settlements was poisoned by these last words.

Why did he talk of that confounded Gray Chamber as if it were a fiery furnace, or a cage of lions? What mystery was there concealed beneath all this, and how, since I was obviously supposed to be thoroughly acquainted with it, could I manage to penetrate the secret of this perplexing appointment?

While he had been speaking, the faint, mournful music died away, and, looking up, I saw Chlorine, a pale, slight form, standing framed in the archway which connected the two rooms.

"Go back to your piano, my child," said the baronet; "Augustus and I have much to talk about which is not for your ears.

"But why not?" she said; "oh, why not? Papa! Dearest mother! Augustus! I can bear it no longer! I have often felt of late that we are living this strange life under the shadow of some fearful Thing, which would chase all cheerfulness from any home. More than this I did not seek to know; I dared not ask. But now, when I know that Augustus, whom I love with my whole heart, must shortly face this ghastly presence, you cannot wonder if I seek to learn the real extent of the danger that awaits him! Tell me all. I can bear the worst— for it cannot be more horrible than my own fears!"

Lady Catafalque had roused herself and was wringing her long mittened hands and moaning feebly. "Paul," she said, "you must not tell her; it will kill her; she is not strong!" Her husband seemed undecided, and I myself began to feel exquisitely uncomfortable. Chlorine's words pointed to something infinitely more terrible than a mere solicitor.

"Poor girl," said Sir Paul at last, "it was for your own good that the whole truth has been thus concealed from you; but now, perhaps, the time has come when the truest kindness will be to reveal all. What do you say, Augustus?" "I— I agree with you," I replied faintly; "she ought to be told."

"Precisely!" he said. "Break to her, then, the nature of the ordeal which lies before you."

It was the very thing which I wanted to be broken to me! I would have given the world to know all about it myself, and so I stared at his gloomy old face with eyes that must have betrayed my helpless dismay. At last I saved myself by suggesting that such a story would come less harshly from a parent's lips.

"Well, so be it," he said. "Chlorine, compose yourself, dearest one; sit down there, and summon up all your fortitude to hear what I am about to tell you. You must know, then— I think you had better let your mother give you a cup of tea before I begin; it will steady your nerves."

During the delay which followed— for Sir Paul did not consider his daughter sufficiently fortified until she had taken at least three cups— I suffered tortures of suspense, which I dared not betray.

They never thought of offering me any tea, though the merest observer might have noticed how very badly I wanted it.

At last the baronet was satisfied, and not without a sort of gloomy enjoyment and a proud relish of the distinction implied in his exceptional affliction, he began his weird and almost incredible tale.

"It is now," said he, "some centuries since our ill-fated house was first afflicted with the family curse which still attends it. A certain Humfrey de Catafalque, by his acquaintance with the black art, as it was said, had procured the services of a species of familiar, a dread and supernatural being. For some reason he had conceived a bitter enmity towards his nearest relations, whom he hated with a virulence that not even death could soften. For, by a refinement of malice, he bequeathed this baleful thing to his descendants forever, as an inalienable heirloom! And to this day it follows the title— and the head of the family for the time being is bound to provide it with a secret apartment under his own roof. But that is not the worst as each member of our house succeeds to the ancestral rank and honors, he must seek an interview with 'The Curse,' as it has been styled for generations. And, in that interview, it is decided whether the spell is to be broken and the Curse depart from us forever— or whether it is to continue its blighting influence, and hold yet another life in miserable thraldom."

"And are you one of its thralls then, papa?" faltered Chlorine.

"I am, indeed," he said. "I failed to quell it, as every Catafalque, however brave and resolute, has failed yet. It checks all my accounts, and woe to me if that cold, withering eye discovers the slightest error— even in the pence column! I could not describe the extent of my bondage to you, my daughter, or the humiliation of having to go and tremble monthly before that awful presence.

"Not even yet, old as I am, have I grown quite accustomed to it!"

Never, in my wildest imaginings, had I anticipated anything one quarter so dreadful as this; but still I clung to the hope that it was impossible to bring me into the affair.

"But, Sir Paul," I said— "Sir Paul, you— you mustn't stop there, or you'll alarm Chlorine more than there's any need to do. She— ha, ha!— don't you see, she has got some idea into her head that I have to go through much the same sort of thing. Just explain that to her. I'm not a Catafalque, Chlorine, so it— it can't interfere with me. That is so, isn't it, Sir Paul? Good heavens, sir, don't torture her like this!" I cried, as he was silent. "Speak out!"

"You mean well, Augustus," he said, "but the time for deceiving her has gone by; she must know the worst. Yes, my poor child," he continued to Chlorine, whose eyes were wide with terror— though I fancy mine were even wider— "unhappily, though our beloved Augustus is not a Catafalque himself, he has of his own free will brought himself within the influence of the Curse, and he, too, at the appointed hour, must keep the awful assignation, and brave all that the most fiendish malevolence can do to shake his resolution."

I could not say a single word; the horror of the idea was altogether too much for me, and I fell back on my chair in a state of speechless collapse.

"You see," Sir Paul went on explaining, "it is not only all new baronets, but every one who would seek an alliance with the females of our race, who must, by the terms of that strange bequest, also undergo this trial. It may be in some degree owing to this necessity that, ever since Humfrey de Catafalque's diabolical testament first took effect, every maiden of our House has died a spinster." (Here Chlorine hid her face with a low wail.) "In 1770, it is true, one solitary suitor was emboldened by love and daring to face the ordeal. He went calmly and resolutely to the chamber where the Curse was then lodged, and the next morning they found him outside the door— a gibbering maniac!"

I writhed on my chair. "Augustus!" cried Chlorine wildly, "promise me you will not permit the Curse to turn you into a gibbering maniac. I think if I saw you gibber I should die!"

I was on the verge of gibbering then; I dared not trust myself to speak.

"Nay, Chlorine," said Sir Paul more cheerfully "there is no cause for alarm; all has been made smooth for Augustus." (I began to brighten a little at this.) "His Aunt Petronia had made a special study of the old-world science of incantation, and had undoubtedly succeeded at last in discovering the master-word which, employed according to her directions, would almost certainly break the unhallowed spell. In her compassionate attachment to us, she formed the design of persuading a youth of blameless life and antecedents to present himself as our champion, and the reports she had been given of our dear Augustus's irreproachable character led her to select him as a likely instrument. And her confidence in his generosity and courage was indeed well-founded, for he responded at once to the appeal of his departed aunt, and, with her instructions for his safeguard, and the consciousness of his virtue as an additional protection, there is hope, my child, strong hope, that, though the struggle may be a long and bitter one, yet Augustus will emerge a victor!"

I saw very little ground for expecting to emerge as anything of the kind, or for that matter to emerge at all, except in installments— for the master-word which was to abash the demon was probably inside the packet of instructions, and that was certainly somewhere at the bottom of the sea, outside Melbourne, fathoms below the surface.

I could bear no more. "It's simply astonishing to me," I said, "that in the nineteenth century, hardly six miles from Charing Cross, you can calmly allow this hideous 'Curse,' or whatever you call it, to have things all its own way like this."

"What can I do, Augustus?" he asked helplessly.

"Do? Anything!" I retorted wildly (for I scarcely knew what I said). "Take it out for an airing (it must want an airing by this time); take it out— and lose it! Or get both the archbishops to step in and lay it for you. Sell the house, and make the purchaser take it at a valuation, with the other fixtures. I certainly would not live under the same roof with it. And I want you to understand one thing— I was never told all this; I have been kept in the dark about it. Of course I knew there was some kind of a curse in the family— but I never dreamed of anything so bad as this, and I never had any intention of being boxed up alone with it either. I shall not go near the Gray Chamber!"

"Not go near it!" they all cried aghast.

"Not on any account," I said, for I felt firmer and easier now that I had taken up this position.

"If the Curse has any business with me, let it come down and settle it here before you all in a plain straightforward manner. Let us go about it in a businesslike way. On second thoughts," I added, fearing lest they should find means of carrying out this suggestion, "I won't meet it anywhere!"

"And why— why won't you meet it?" they asked breathlessly.

"Because," I explained desperately, "because I'm— I'm a materialist." (I had not been previously aware that I had any decided opinions on the question, but I could not stay then to consider the point.) "How can I have any dealings with a preposterous supernatural something which my reason forbids me to believe in? You see my difficulty? It would be inconsistent, to begin with, and— and extremely painful to both sides."

"No more of this ribaldry," said Sir Paul sternly. "It may be terribly remembered against you when the hour comes. Keep a guard over your tongue, for all our sakes, and more especially your own. Recollect that the Curse knows all that passes beneath this roof. And do not forget, too, that you are pledged— irrevocably pledged. You must confront the Curse!"

Only a short hour ago, and I had counted Chlorine's fortune and Chlorine as virtually mine; and now I saw my golden dreams roughly shattered forever! And, oh, what a wrench it was to tear myself from them! What it cost me to speak the words that barred my Paradise to me forever!

But if I wished to avoid confronting the Curse— and I did wish this very much— I had no other course. "I had no right to pledge myself," I said, with quivering lips, "under all the circumstances."

"Why not," they demanded again; "what circumstances?"

"Well, in the first place," I assured them earnestly, "I'm a base impostor. I am indeed. I'm not Augustus McFadden at all. My real name is of no consequence— but it's a prettier one than that.

"As for McFadden, he, I regret to say, is now no more."

Why on earth I could not have told the plain truth here has always been a mystery to me. I suppose I had been lying so long that it was difficult to break myself of this occasionally inconvenient trick at so short a notice, but I certainly mixed things up to a hopeless extent.

"Yes," I continued mournfully, "McFadden is dead; I will tell you how he died if you would care to know. During his voyage here he fell overboard, and was almost instantly appropriated by a gigantic shark, when, as I happened to be present, I enjoyed the melancholy privilege of seeing him pass away. For one brief moment I beheld him between the jaws of the creature, so pale but so composed (I refer to McFadden, you understand— not the shark), he threw just one glance up at me, and with a smile, the sad sweetness of which I shall never forget (it was McFadden's smile, I mean, of course— not the shark's), he, courteous and considerate to the last, requested me to break the news and remember him very kindly to you all. And, in the same instant, he abruptly vanished within the monster— and I saw neither of them again!"

Of course in bringing the shark in at all I was acting directly contrary to my instructions, but I quite forgot them in my anxiety to escape the acquaintance of the Curse of the Catafalques.

"If this is true, sir," said the baronet haughtily when I had finished, "you have indeed deceived us basely."

"That," I replied, "is what I was endeavoring to bring out. You see, it puts it quite out of my power to meet your family Curse. I should not feel justified in intruding upon it. So, if you will kindly let some one fetch a fly or a cab in half an hour— "

"Stop!" cried Chlorine. "Augustus, as I will call you still, you must not go like this. If you have stooped to deceit, it was for love of me, and— and Mr. McFadden is dead. If he had been alive, I should have felt it my duty to allow him an opportunity of winning my affection, but he is lying in his silent tomb, and— and I have learnt to love you. Stay, then; stay and brave the Curse; we may yet be happy!"

I saw how foolish I had been not to tell the truth at first, and I hastened to repair this error.

"When I described McFadden as dead," I said hoarsely, "it was a loose way of putting the facts— because, to be quite accurate, he isn't dead. We found out afterwards that it was another fellow the shark had swallowed, and, in fact, another shark altogether. So he is alive and well now, at Melbourne, but when he came to know about the Curse, he was too much frightened to come across, and he asked me to call and make his excuses. I have now done so, and will trespass no further on your kindness— if you will tell somebody to bring a vehicle of any sort in a quarter of an hour."

"Pardon me," said the baronet, "but we cannot part in this way. I feared when first I saw you that your resolution might give way under the strain; it is only natural, I admit. But you deceive yourself if you think we cannot see that these extraordinary and utterly contradictory stories are prompted by sudden panic. I quite understand it, Augustus; I cannot blame you; but to allow you to withdraw now would be worse than weakness on my part. The panic will pass, you will forget these fears tomorrow, you must forget them; remember, you have promised. For your own sake, I shall take care that you do not forfeit that solemn bond, for I dare not let you run the danger of exciting the Curse by a deliberate insult."

I saw clearly that his conduct was dictated by a deliberate and most repulsive selfishness; he did not entirely believe me, but he was determined that if there was any chance that I, whoever I might be, could free him from his present thraldom, he would not let it escape him.

I raved, I protested, I implored— all in vain; they would not believe a single word I said, they positively refused to release me, and insisted upon my performing my engagement.

And at last Chlorine and her mother left the room, with a little contempt for my unworthiness mingled with their evident compassion; and a little later Sir Paul conducted me to my room, and locked me in "till," as he said, "I had returned to my senses."

iv

WHAT a night I passed, as I tossed sleeplessly from side to side under the canopy of my old-fashioned bedstead, torturing my fevered brain with vain speculations as to the fate the morrow was to bring me.

I felt myself perfectly helpless; I saw no way out of it; they seemed bent upon offering me up as a sacrifice to this private Moloch of theirs. The baronet was quite capable of keeping me locked up all the next day and pushing me into the Gray Chamber to take my chance when the hour came.

If I had only some idea what the Curse was like to look at, I thought I might not feel quite so afraid of it; the vague and impalpable awfulness of the thing was intolerable, and the very thought of it caused me to fling myself about in an ecstasy of horror.

By degrees, however, as daybreak came near, I grew calmer— until at length I arrived at a decision. It seemed evident to me that, as I could not avoid my fate, the wisest course was to go forth to meet it with as good a grace as possible. Then, should I by some fortunate accident come well out of it, my fortune was ensured.

But if I went on repudiating my assumed self to the very last, I should surely arouse a suspicion which the most signal rout of the Curse would not serve to dispel.

And after all, as I began to think, the whole thing had probably been much exaggerated; if I could only keep my head, and exercise all my powers of cool impudence, I might contrive to hoodwink this formidable relic of medieval days, which must have fallen rather behind the age by this time. It might even turn out to be (although I was hardly sanguine as to this) as big a humbug as I was myself, and we should meet with confidential winks, like the two augurs.

But, at all events, I resolved to see this mysterious affair out, and trust to my customary good luck to bring me safely through, and so, having found the door unlocked, I came down to breakfast something like my usual self, and set myself to remove the unfavorable impression I had made on the previous night.

They did it from consideration for me, but still it was mistaken kindness for them all to leave me entirely to my own thoughts during the whole of the day, for I was driven to mope alone about the gloom-laden building, until by dinnertime I was very low indeed from nervous depression.

We dined in almost unbroken silence; now and then, as Sir Paul saw my hand approaching a decanter, he would open his lips to observe that I should need the clearest head and the firmest nerve ere long, and warn me solemnly against the brown sherry; from time to time, too, Chlorine and her mother stole apprehensive glances at me, and sighed heavily between every course. I never remember eating a dinner with so little enjoyment.

The meal came to an end at last; the ladies rose, and Sir Paul and I were left to brood over the dessert. I fancy both of us felt a delicacy in starting a conversation, and before I could hit upon a safe remark, Lady Catafalque and her daughter returned, dressed, to my unspeakable horror, in readiness to go out. Worse than that even, Sir Paul apparently intended to accompany them, for he rose at their entrance.

"It is now time for us to bid you a solemn farewell, Augustus," he said, in his hollow old voice.

"You have three hours before you yet, and if you are wise, you will spend them in earnest self-preparation.

"At midnight, punctually, for you must not dare to delay, you will go to the Gray Chamber— the way thither you know, and you will find the Curse prepared for you. Good-bye, then, brave and devoted boy; stand firm, and no harm can befall you!"

"You are going away, all of you!" I cried. They were not what you might call a gay family to sit up with, but even their society was better than my own.

"Upon these dread occasions," he explained, "it is absolutely forbidden for any human being but one to remain in the house. All the servants have already left, and we are about to take our departure for a private hotel near the Strand. We shall just have time, if we start at once, to inspect the Soane Museum on our way thither, which will serve as some distraction from the terrible anxiety we shall be feeling."

At this I believe I positively howled with terror; all my old panic came back with a rush.

"Don't leave me all alone with It!" I cried; "I shall go mad if you do!"

Sir Paul simply turned on his heel in silent contempt, and his wife followed him; but Chlorine remained behind for one instant, and somehow, as she gazed at me with a yearning pity in her sad eyes, I thought I had never seen her looking so pretty before.

"Augustus," she said, "get up." (I suppose I must have been on the floor somewhere.) "Be a man; show us we were not mistaken in you. You know I would spare you this if I could; but we are powerless. Oh, be brave, or I shall lose you forever!"

Her appeal did seem to put a little courage into me; I staggered up and kissed her slender hand and vowed sincerely to be worthy of her.

And then she too passed out, and the heavy hall door slammed behind the three, and the rusty old gate screeched like a banshee as it swung back and closed with a clang.

I heard the carriage-wheels grind the slush, and the next moment I knew that I was shut up on Christmas eve in that somber mansion— with the Curse of the Catafalques as my sole companion.

I don't think the generous ardor with which Chlorine's last words had inspired me lasted very long, for I caught myself shivering before the clock struck nine, and, drawing up a clumsy leathern armchair close to the fire, I piled on the logs and tried to get rid of a certain horrible sensation of internal vacancy which was beginning to afflict me.

I tried to look my situation fairly in the face; whatever reason and common sense had to say about it, there seemed no possible doubt that something of a supernatural order was shut up in that great chamber down the corridor, and also that, if I meant to win Chlorine, I must go up and have some kind of an interview with it. Once more I wished I had some definite idea to go upon; what description of being should I find this Curse? Would it be aggressively ugly, like the bogie of my infancy, or should I see a lank and unsubstantial shape, draped in clinging black, with nothing visible beneath it but a pair of burning hollow eyes and one long pale bony hand? Really I could not decide which would be the more trying of the two.

By and by I began to recollect unwillingly all the frightful stories I had ever read; one in particular came back to me— the adventure of a foreign marshal who, after much industry, succeeded in invoking an evil spirit, which came bouncing into the room shaped like a gigantic ball, with, I think, a hideous face in the middle of it, and would not be got rid of until the horrified marshal had spent hours in hard praying and persistent exorcism!

What should I do if the Curse was a globular one and came rolling all round the room after me?

Then there was another appalling tale I had read in some magazine— a tale of a secret chamber, too, and in some respects a very similar case to my own, for there the heir of some great house had to go in and meet a mysterious aged person with strange eyes and an evil smile, who kept attempting to shake hands with him.

Nothing should induce me to shake hands with the Curse of the Catafalques, however apparently friendly I might find it.

But it was not very likely to be friendly, for it was one of those mystic powers of darkness which know nearly everything— it would detect me as an impostor directly, and what would become of me? I declare I almost resolved to confess all and sob out my deceit upon its bosom, and the only thing which made me pause was the reflection that probably the Curse did not possess a bosom.

By this time I had worked myself up to such a pitch of terror that I found it absolutely necessary to brace my nerves, and I did brace them. I emptied all the three decanters, but as Sir Paul's cellar was none of the best, the only result was that, while my courage and daring were not perceptibly heightened, I was conscious of feeling exceedingly unwell.

Tobacco, no doubt, would have calmed and soothed me, but I did not dare to smoke. For the Curse, being old-fashioned, might object to the smell of it, and I was anxious to avoid exciting its prejudices unnecessarily.

And so I simply sat in my chair and shook. Every now and then I heard steps on the frosty path outside: sometimes a rapid tread, as of some happy person bound to scenes of Christmas revelry, and little dreaming of the miserable wretch he was passing; sometimes the slow creaking tramp of the Fulham policeman on his beat.

What if I called him in and gave the Curse into custody— either for putting me in bodily fear (as it was undeniably doing), or for being found on the premises under suspicious circumstances?

There was a certain audacity about this means of cutting the knot that fascinated me at first, but still I did not venture to adopt it, thinking it most probable that the stolid constable would decline to interfere as soon as he knew the facts; and even if he did, it would certainly annoy Sir Paul extremely to hear of his Family Curse spending its Christmas in a police cell, and I felt instinctively that he would consider it a piece of unpardonable bad taste on my part.

So one hour passed. A few minutes after ten I heard more footsteps and voices in low consultation, as if a band of men had collected outside the railings. Could there be any indication without of the horrors these walls contained?

But no; the gaunt housefront kept its secret too well; they were merely the waits. They saluted me with the old carol, "God rest you, merry gentleman, let nothing you dismay!" which should have encouraged me, but it didn't and they followed that up by a wheezy but pathetic rendering of "The Mistletoe Bough."

For a time I did not object to them; while they were scraping and blowing outside I felt less abandoned and cut off from human help, and then they might arouse softer sentiments in the Curse upstairs by their seasonable strains: these things do happen at Christmas sometimes. But their performance was really so infernally bad that it was calculated rather to irritate than subdue any evil spirit, and very soon I rushed to the window and beckoned to them furiously to go away.

Unhappily, they thought I was inviting them indoors for refreshment, and came round to the gate, when they knocked and rang incessantly for a quarter of an hour.

This must have stirred the Curse up quite enough, but when they had gone, there came a man with a barrel organ, which was suffering from some complicated internal disorder, causing it to play its whole repertory at once, in maddening discords. Even the grinder himself seemed dimly aware that his instrument was not doing itself justice, for he would stop occasionally, as if to ponder or examine it. But he was evidently a sanguine person and had hopes of bringing it round by a little perseverance; so, as Parson's Green was well-suited by its quiet for this mode of treatment, he remained there till he must have reduced the Curse to a rampant and rabid condition.

He went at last, and then the silence that followed began to my excited fancy (for I certainly saw nothing) to be invaded by strange sounds that echoed about the old house. I heard sharp reports from the furniture, sighing moans in the draughty passages, doors opening and shutting, and— worse still— stealthy padding footsteps, both above and in the ghostly hall outside!

I sat there in an ice-cold perspiration, until my nerves required more bracing, to effect which I had recourse to the spirit-case.

And after a short time my fears began to melt away rapidly. What a ridiculous bugbear I was making of this thing after all! Was I not too hasty in setting it down as ugly and hostile before I had seen it... how did I know it was anything which deserved my horror?

Here a gush of sentiment came over me at the thought that it might be that for long centuries the poor Curse had been cruelly misunderstood— that it might be a blessing in disguise.

I was so affected by the thought that I resolved to go up at once and wish it a merry Christmas through the keyhole, just to show that I came in no unfriendly spirit.

But would not that seem as if I was afraid of it? I scorned the idea of being afraid. Why, for two straws, I would go straight in and pull its nose for it— if it had a nose! I went out with this object, not very steadily, but before I had reached the top of the dim and misty staircase, I had given up all ideas of defiance, and merely intended to go as far as the corridor by way of a preliminary canter.

The coffin-lid door stood open, and I looked apprehensively down the corridor; the grim metal fittings on the massive door of the Gray Chamber were gleaming with a mysterious pale light, something between the phenomena obtained by electricity and the peculiar phosphorescence observable in a decayed shellfish; under the door I saw the reflection of a sullen red glow, and within I could hear sounds like the roar of a mighty wind, above which peals of fiendish mirth rang out at intervals, and were followed by a hideous dull clanking.

It seemed only too evident that the Curse was getting up the steam for our interview. I did not stay there long, because I was afraid that it might dart out suddenly and catch me eavesdropping, which would be a hopelessly bad beginning. I got back to the dining room, somehow; the fire had taken advantage of my short absence to go out, and I was surprised to find by the light of the fast-dimming lamp that it was a quarter to twelve already.

Only fifteen more fleeting minutes and then— unless I gave tip Chlorine and her fortune forever— I must go up and knock at that awful door, and enter the presence of the frightful mystic Thing that was roaring and laughing and clanking on the other side!

Stupidly I sat and stared at the clock; in five minutes, now, I should be beginning my desperate duel with one of the powers of darkness— a thought which gave me sickening qualms.

I was clinging to the thought that I had still two precious minutes left— perhaps my last moments of safety and sanity— when the lamp expired with a gurgling sob, and left me in the dark.

I was afraid of sitting there all alone any longer, and besides, if I lingered, the Curse might come down and fetch me. The horror of this idea made me resolve to go up at once, especially as scrupulous punctuality might propitiate it.

Groping my way to the door, I reached the hall and stood there, swaying under the old stained-glass lantern. And then I made a terrible discovery. I was not in a condition to transact any business; I had disregarded Sir Paul's well-meant warning at dinner; I was not my own master. I was lost!

The clock in the adjoining room tolled twelve, and from without the distant steeples proclaimed in faint peals and chimes that it was Christmas morn. My hour had come!

Why did I not mount those stairs? I tried again and again, and fell down every time, and at each attempt I knew the Curse would be getting more and more impatient.

I was quite five minutes late, and yet, with all my eagerness to be punctual, I could not get up that staircase. It was a horrible situation, but it was not at its worst even then, for I heard a jarring sound above, as if heavy rusty bolts were being withdrawn.

The Curse was coming down to see what had become of me! I should have to confess my inability to go upstairs without assistance, and so place myself wholly at its mercy!

I made one more desperate effort, and then— and then, upon my word, I don't know how it was exactly— but, as I looked wildly about, I caught sight of my hat on the hat-rack below, and the thoughts it roused in me proved too strong for resistance. Perhaps it was weak of me, but I venture to think that very few men in my position would have behaved any better.

I renounced my ingenious and elaborate scheme forever, the door (fortunately for me) was neither locked nor bolted, and the next moment I was running for my life along the road to Chelsea, urged on by the fancy that the Curse itself was in hot pursuit.

For weeks after that I lay in hiding, starting at every sound, so fearful was I that the outraged Curse might track me down at last; all my worldly possessions were at Parson's Green, and I could not bring myself to write or call for them, nor indeed have I seen any of the Catafalques since that awful Christmas eve.

I wish to have nothing more to do with them, for I feel naturally that they took a cruel advantage of my youth and inexperience, and I shall always resent the deception and constraint to which I so nearly fell a victim.

But it occurs to me that those who may have followed my strange story with any curiosity and interest may be slightly disappointed at its conclusion, which I cannot deny is a lame and unsatisfactory one.

They expected, no doubt, to be told what the Curse's personal appearance is, and how it comports itself in that ghastly Gray Chamber, what it said to me, and what I said to it, and what happened after that.

This information, as will be easily understood, I cannot pretend to give, and, for myself, I have long ceased to feel the slightest curiosity on any of these points. But for the benefit of such as are less indifferent, I may suggest that almost any eligible bachelor would easily obtain the opportunities I failed to enjoy by simply calling at the old mansion at Parson's Green, and presenting himself to the baronet as a suitor for his daughter's hand.

I shall be most happy to allow my name to be used as a reference.

________________

7: The Haunter of the Ring

Robert E. Howard

1906-1936

Weird Tales June 1934

Robert Ervin Howard

AS I ENTERED John Kirowan's study I was too much engrossed in my own thoughts to notice, at first, the haggard appearance of his visitor, a big, handsome young fellow well known to me.

"Hello, Kirowan," I greeted. "Hello, Gordon. Haven't seen you for quite a while. How's Evelyn?" And before he could answer, still on the crest of the enthusiasm which had brought me there, I exclaimed: "Look here, you fellows, I've got something that will make you stare! I got it from that robber Ahmed Mektub, and I paid high for it, but it's worth it. Look!" From under my coat I drew the jewel-hilted Afghan dagger which had fascinated me as a collector of rare weapons.

Kirowan, familiar with my passion, showed only polite interest, but the effect on Gordon was shocking.

With a strangled cry he sprang up and backward, knocking the chair clattering to the floor. Fists clenched and countenance livid he faced me, crying: "Keep back! Get away from me, or—"

I was frozen in my tracks.

"What in the—" I began bewilderedly, when Gordon, with another amazing change of attitude, dropped into a chair and sank his head in his hands. I saw his heavy shoulders quiver. I stared helplessly from him to Kirowan, who seemed equally dumfounded.

"Is he drunk?" I asked.

Kirowan shook his head, and filling a brandy glass, offered it to the man. Gordon looked up with haggard eyes, seized the drink and gulped it down like a man half famished. Then he straightened up and looked at us shamefacedly.

"I'm sorry I went off my handle, O'Donnel," he said. "It was the unexpected shock of you drawing that knife."

"Well," I retorted, with some disgust, "I suppose you thought I was going to stab you with it!"

"Yes, I did!" Then, at the utterly blank expression on my face, he added: "Oh, I didn't actually think that; at least, I didn't reach that conclusion by any process of reasoning. It was just the blind primitive instinct of a hunted man, against whom anyone's hand may be turned."

His strange words and the despairing way he said them sent a queer shiver of nameless apprehension down my spine.

"What are you talking about?" I demanded uneasily. "Hunted? For what? You never committed a crime in your life."

"Not in this life, perhaps," he muttered.

"What do you mean?"

"What if retribution for a black crime committed in a previous life were hounding me?" he muttered.

"That's nonsense," I snorted.

"Oh, is it?" he exclaimed, stung. "Did you ever hear of my great-grandfather, Sir Richard Gordon of Argyle?"

"Sure; but what's that got to do with—"

"You've seen his portrait: doesn't it resemble me?"

"Well, yes," I admitted, "except that your expression is frank and wholesome whereas his is crafty and cruel."

"He murdered his wife," answered Gordon. "Suppose the theory of reincarnation were true? Why shouldn't a man suffer in one life for a crime committed in another?"

"You mean you think you are the reincarnation of your great-grandfather? Of all the fantastic— well, since he killed his wife, I suppose you'll be expecting Evelyn to murder you!" This last was delivered in searing sarcasm, as I thought of the sweet, gentle girl Gordon had married. His answer stunned me.

"My wife," he said slowly, "has tried to kill me three times in the past week."

There was no reply to that. I glanced helplessly at John Kirowan. He sat in his customary position, chin resting on his strong, slim hands; his white face was immobile, but his dark eyes gleamed with interest. In the silence I heard a clock ticking like a death-watch.

"Tell us the full story, Gordon," suggested Kirowan, and his calm, even voice was like a knife that cut a strangling, relieving the unreal tension.

"YOU KNOW we've been married less than a year," Gordon began, plunging into the tale as though he were bursting for utterance; his words stumbled and tripped over one another. "All couples have spats, of course, but we've never had any real quarrels. Evelyn is the best-natured girl in the world.

"The first thing out of the ordinary occurred about a week ago. We had driven up in the mountains, left the car, and were wandering around picking wild flowers. At last we came to a steep slope, some thirty feet in height, and Evelyn called my attention to the flowers which grew thickly at the foot. I was looking over the edge and wondering if I could climb down without tearing my clothes to ribbons, when I felt a violent shove from behind that toppled me over.

"If it had been a sheer cliff, I'd have broken my neck. As it was, I went tumbling down, rolling and sliding, and brought up at the bottom scratched and bruised, with my garments in rags. I looked up and saw Evelyn staring down, apparently frightened half out of her wits.

" 'Oh Jim!' she cried. 'Are you hurt? How came you to fall?'

"It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that there was such a thing as carrying a joke too far, but these words checked me. I decided that she must have stumbled against me unintentionally, and actually didn't know it was she who precipitated me down the slope.

"So I laughed it off, and went home. She made a great fuss over me, insisted on swabbing my scratches with iodine, and lectured me for my carelessness! I hadn't the heart to tell her it was her fault.

"But four days later, the next thing happened. I was walking along our driveway, when I saw her coming up it in the automobile. I stepped out on the grass to let her by, as there isn't any curb along the driveway. She was smiling as she approached me, and slowed down the car, as if to speak to me. Then, just before she reached me, a most horrible change came over her expression. Without warning the car leaped at me like a living thing as she drove her foot down on the accelerator. Only a frantic leap backward saved me from being ground under the wheels. The car shot across the lawn and crashed into a tree. I ran to it and found Evelyn dazed and hysterical, but unhurt. She babbled of losing control of the machine.

"I carried her into the house and sent for Doctor Donnelly. He found nothing seriously wrong with her, and attributed her dazed condition to fright and shock. Within half an hour she regained her normal senses, but she's refused to touch the wheel since. Strange to say, she seemed less frightened on her own account than on mine. She seemed vaguely to know that she'd nearly run me down, and grew hysterical again when she spoke of it. Yet she seemed to take it for granted that I knew the machine had got out of her control. But I distinctly saw her wrench the wheel around, and I know she deliberately tried to hit me— why, God alone knows.

"Still I refused to let my mind follow the channel it was getting into. Evelyn had never given any evidence of any psychological weakness or 'nerves'; she's always been a level-headed girl, wholesome and natural. But I began to think she was subject to crazy impulses. Most of us have felt the impulse to leap from tall buildings. And sometimes a person feels a blind, childish and utterly reasonless urge to harm someone. We pick up a pistol, and the thought suddenly enters our mind how easy it would be to send our friend, who sits smiling and unaware, into eternity with a touch of the trigger. Of course we don't do it, but the impulse is there. So I thought perhaps some lack of mental discipline made Evelyn susceptible to these unguided impulses, and unable to control them."

"Nonsense," I broke in. "I've known her since she was a baby. If she has any such trait, she's developed it since she married you."

It was an unfortunate remark. Gordon caught it up with a despairing gleam in his eyes. "That's just it— since she married me! It's a curse— a black, ghastly curse, crawling like a serpent out of the past! I tell you, I was Richard Gordon and she— she was Lady Elizabeth, his murdered wife!" His voice sank to a blood-freezing whisper.

I shuddered; it is an awful thing to look upon the ruin of a keen clean brain, and such I was certain that I surveyed in James Gordon. Why or how, or by what grisly chance it had come about I could not say, but I was certain the man was mad.

"You spoke of three attempts." It was John Kirowan's voice again, calm and stable amid the gathering webs of horror and unreality.

"Look here!" Gordon lifted his arm, drew back the sleeve and displayed a bandage, the cryptic significance of which was intolerable.

"I came into the bathroom this morning looking for my razor," he said. "I found Evelyn just on the point of using my best shaving implement for some feminine purpose— to cut out a pattern, or something. Like many women she can't seem to realize the difference between a razor and a butcher-knife or a pair of shears.

"I was a bit irritated, and I said: 'Evelyn, how many times have I told you not to use my razors for such things? Bring it here; I'll give you my pocket-knife.'

"'I'm sorry, Jim,' she said. 'I didn't know it would hurt the razor. Here it is.'

"She was advancing, holding the open razor toward me. I reached for it— then something warned me. It was the same look in her eyes, just as I had seen it the day she nearly ran over me. That was all that saved my life, for I instinctively threw up my hand just as she slashed at my throat with all her power. The blade gashed my arm as you see, before I caught her wrist. For an instant she fought me like a wild thing; her slender body was taut as steel beneath my hands. Then she went limp and the look in her eyes was replaced by a strange dazed expression. The razor slipped out of her fingers.

"I let go of her and she stood swaying as if about to faint. I went to the lavatory—my wound was bleeding in a beastly fashion—and the next thing I heard her cry out, and she was hovering over me.

" 'Jim!' she cried. 'How did you cut yourself so terribly?'"

GORDON shook his head and sighed heavily. "I guess I was a bit out of my head. My self-control snapped.

" 'Don't keep up this pretense, Evelyn,' I said. 'God knows what's got into you, but you know as well as I that you've tried to kill me three times in the past week.'

"She recoiled as if I'd struck her, catching at her breast and staring at me as if at a ghost. She didn't say a word— and just what I said I don't remember. But when I finished I left her standing there white and still as a marble statue. I got my arm bandaged at a drug store, and then came over here, not knowing what else to do.

"Kirowan— O'Donnel— it's damnable! Either my wife is subject to fits of insanity—" He choked on the word. "No, I can't believe it. Ordinarily her eyes are too clear and level— too utterly sane. But every time she has an opportunity to harm me, she seems to become a temporary maniac."

He beat his fists together in his impotence and agony.

"But it isn't insanity! I used to work in a psychopathic ward, and I've seen every form of mental unbalance. My wife is not insane!"

"Then what—" I began, but he turned haggard eyes on me.

"Only one alternative remains," he answered. "It is the old curse— from the days when I walked the earth with a heart as black as hell's darkest pits, and did evil in the sight of man and of God. She knows, in fleeting snatches of memory. People have seen before—have glimpsed forbidden things in momentary liftings of the veil which bars life from life. She was Elizabeth Douglas, the ill-fated bride of Richard Gordon, whom he murdered in jealous frenzy, and the vengeance is hers. I shall die by her hands, as it was meant to be. And she—" he bowed his head in his hands.

"Just a moment." It was Kirowan again. "You have mentioned a strange look in your wife's eyes. What sort of a look? Was it of maniacal frenzy?"

Gordon shook his head. "It was an utter blankness. All the life and intelligence simply vanished, leaving her eyes dark wells of emptiness."

Kirowan nodded, and asked a seemingly irrelevant question. "Have you any enemies?"

"Not that I know of."

"You forget Joseph Roelocke," I said. "I can't imagine that elegant sophisticate going to the trouble of doing you actual harm, but I have an idea that if he could discomfort you without any physical effort on his part, he'd do it with a right good will."

Kirowan turned on me an eye that had suddenly become piercing.

"And who is this Joseph Roelocke?"

"A young exquisite who came into Evelyn's life and nearly rushed her off her feet for a while. But in the end she came back to her first love— Gordon here. Roelocke took it pretty hard. For all his suaveness there's a streak of violence and passion in the man that might have cropped out but for his infernal indolence and blasé indifference."

"Oh, there's nothing to be said against Roelocke," interrupted Gordon impatiently. "He must know that Evelyn never really loved him. He merely fascinated her temporarily with his romantic Latin air."

"Not exactly Latin, Jim," I protested. "Roelocke does look foreign, but it isn't Latin. It's almost Oriental."

"Well, what has Roelocke to do with this matter?" Gordon snarled with the irascibility of frayed nerves. "He's been as friendly as a man could be since Evelyn and I were married. In fact, only a week ago he sent her a ring which he said was a peace-offering and a belated wedding gift; said that after all, her jilting him was a greater misfortune for her than it was for him— the conceited jackass!"

"A ring?" Kirowan had suddenly come to life; it was as if something hard and steely had been sounded in him. "What sort of a ring?"

"Oh, a fantastic thing— copper, made like a scaly snake coiled three times, with its tail in its mouth and yellow jewels for eyes. I gather he picked it up somewhere in Hungary."

"He has traveled a great deal in Hungary?"

Gordon looked surprized at this questioning, but answered: "Why, apparently the man's traveled everywhere. I put him down as the pampered son of a millionaire. He never did any work, so far as I know."

"He's a great student," I put in. "I've been up to his apartment several times, and I never saw such a collection of books—"

Gordon leaped to his feet with an oath. "Are we all crazy?" he cried. "I came up here hoping to get some help— and you fellows fall to talking of Joseph Roelocke. I'll go to Doctor Donnelly—"

"Wait!" Kirowan stretched out a detaining hand. "If you don't mind, we'll go over to your house. I'd like to talk to your wife."

Gordon dumbly acquiesced. Harried and haunted by grisly forebodings, he knew not which way to turn, and welcomed anything that promised aid.

WE DROVE over in his car, and scarcely a word was spoken on the way. Gordon was sunk in moody ruminations, and Kirowan had withdrawn himself into some strange aloof domain of thought beyond my ken. He sat like a statue, his dark vital eyes staring into space, not blankly, but as one who looks with understanding into some far realm.

Though I counted the man as my best friend, I knew but little of his past. He had come into my life as abruptly and unannounced as Joseph Roelocke had come into the life of Evelyn Ash. I had met him at the Wanderer's Club, which is composed of the drift of the world, travelers, eccentrics, and all manner of men whose paths lie outside the beaten tracks of life. I had been attracted to him, and intrigued by his strange powers and deep knowledge. I vaguely knew that he was the black sheep younger son of a titled Irish family, and that he had walked many strange ways. Gordon's mention of Hungary struck a chord in my memory; one phase of his life Kirowan had once let drop, fragmentarily. I only knew that he had once suffered a bitter grief and a savage wrong, and that it had been in Hungary. But the nature of the episode I did not know.

At Gordon's house Evelyn met us calmly, showing inner agitation only by the over-restraint of her manner. I saw the beseeching look she stole at her husband. She was a slender, soft-spoken girl, whose dark eyes were always vibrant and alight with emotion. That child try to murder her adored husband? The idea was monstrous. Again I was convinced that James Gordon himself was deranged.

Following Kirowan's lead, we made a pretense of small talk, as if we had casually dropped in, but I felt that Evelyn was not deceived. Our conversation rang false and hollow, and presently Kirowan said: "Mrs. Gordon, that is a remarkable ring you are wearing. Do you mind if I look at it?"

"I'll have to give you my hand," she laughed. "I've been trying to get it off today, and it won't come off."

She held out her slim white hand for Kirowan's inspection, and his face was immobile as he looked at the metal snake that coiled about her slim finger. He did not touch it. I myself was aware of an unaccountable repulsion. There was something almost obscene about that dull copperish reptile wound about the girl's white finger.

"It's evil-looking, isn't it?" She involuntarily shivered. "At first I liked it, but now I can hardly bear to look at it. If I can get it off I intend to return it to Joseph— Mr. Roelocke."

Kirowan was about to make some reply, when the door-bell rang. Gordon jumped as if shot, and Evelyn rose quickly.

"I'll answer it, Jim— I know who it is."

She returned an instant later with two more mutual friends, those inseparable cronies, Doctor Donnelly, whose burly body, jovial manner and booming voice were combined with as keen a brain as any in the profession, and Bill Bain, elderly, lean, wiry, acidly witty. Both were old friends of the Ash family. Doctor Donnelly had ushered Evelyn into the world, and Bain was always Uncle Bill to her.

"Howdy, Jim! Howdy, Mr. Kirowan!" roared Donnelly. "Hey, O'Donnel, have you got any firearms with you? Last time you nearly blew my head off showing me an old flintlock pistol that wasn't supposed to be loaded—"

"Doctor Donnelly!"

We all turned. Evelyn was standing beside a wide table, holding it as if for support. Her face was white. Our badinage ceased instantly. A sudden tension was in the air.

"Doctor Donnelly," she repeated, holding her voice steady by an effort, "I sent for you and Uncle Bill— for the same reason for which I know Jim has brought Mr. Kirowan and Michael. There is a matter Jim and I can no longer deal with alone. There is something between us— something black and ghastly and terrible."

"What are you talking about, girl?" All the levity was gone from Donnelly's great voice.

"My husband—" She choked, then went blindly on: "My husband has accused me of trying to murder him."

The silence that fell was broken by Bain's sudden and energetic rise. His eyes blazed and his fists quivered.

"You young pup!" he shouted at Gordon. "I'll knock the living daylights—"

"Sit down, Bill!" Donnelly's huge hand crushed his smaller companion back into his chair. "No use goin' off half cocked. Go ahead, honey."

"We need help. We can not carry this thing alone." A shadow crossed her comely face. "This morning Jim's arm was badly cut. He said I did it. I don't know. I was handing him the razor. Then I must have fainted. At least, everything faded away. When I came to myself he was washing his arm in the lavatory— and— and he accused me of trying to kill him."

"Why, the young fool!" barked the belligerent Bain. "Hasn't he sense enough to know that if you did cut him, it was an accident?"

"Shut up, won't you?" snorted Donnelly. "Honey, did you say you fainted? That isn't like you."

"I've been having fainting spells," she answered. "The first time was when we were in the mountains and Jim fell down a cliff. We were standing on the edge— then everything went black, and when my sight cleared, he was rolling down the slope." She shuddered at the recollection.

"Then when I lost control of the car and it crashed into the tree. You remember— Jim called you over."

Doctor Donnelly nodded his head ponderously.

"I don't remember you ever having fainting spells before."

"But Jim says I pushed him over the cliff!" she cried hysterically. "He says I tried to run him down in the car! He says I purposely slashed him with the razor!"

Doctor Donnelly turned perplexedly toward the wretched Gordon.

"How about it, son?"

"God help me," Gordon burst out in agony; "it's true!"

"Why, you lying hound!" It was Bain who gave tongue, leaping again to his feet. "If you want a divorce, why don't you get it in a decent way, instead of resorting to these despicable tactics—"

"Damn you!" roared Gordon, lunging up, and losing control of himself completely. "If you say that I'll tear your jugular out!"

Evelyn screamed; Donnelly grabbed Bain ponderously and banged him back into his chair with no overly gentle touch, and Kirowan laid a hand lightly on Gordon's shoulder. The man seemed to crumple into himself. He sank back into his chair and held out his hands gropingly toward his wife.

"Evelyn," he said, his voice thick with laboring emotion, "you know I love you. I feel like a dog. But God help me, it's true. If we go on this way, I'll be a dead man, and you—"

"Don't say it!" she screamed. "I know you wouldn't lie to me, Jim. If you say I tried to kill you, I know I did. But I swear, Jim, I didn't do it consciously. Oh, I must be going mad! That's why my dreams have been so wild and terrifying lately—"

"Of what have you dreamed, Mrs. Gordon?" asked Kirowan gently.

She pressed her hands to her temples and stared dully at him, as if only half comprehending.

"A black thing," she muttered. "A horrible faceless black thing that mows and mumbles and paws over me with apish hands. I dream of it every night. And in the daytime I try to kill the only man I ever loved. I'm going mad! Maybe I'm already crazy and don't know it."

"CALM YOURSELF, honey." To Doctor Donnelly, with all his science, it was only another case of feminine hysteria. His matter-of-fact voice seemed to soothe her, and she sighed and drew a weary hand through her damp locks.

"We'll talk this all over, and everything's goin' to be okay," he said, drawing a thick cigar from his vest pocket. "Gimme a match, honey."

She began mechanically to feel about the table, and just as mechanically Gordon said: "There are matches in the drawer, Evelyn."

She opened the drawer and began groping in it, when suddenly, as if struck by recollection and intuition, Gordon sprang up, white-faced, and shouted: "No, no! Don't open that drawer— don't—"

Even as he voiced that urgent cry, she stiffened, as if at the feel of something in the drawer. Her change of expression held us all frozen, even Kirowan. The vital intelligence vanished from her eyes like a blown-out flame, and into them came the look Gordon had described as blank. The term was descriptive. Her beautiful eyes were dark wells of emptiness, as if the soul had been withdrawn from behind them.

Her hand came out of the drawer holding a pistol, and she fired point-blank. Gordon reeled with a groan and went down, blood starting from his head. For a flashing instant she looked down stupidly at the smoking gun in her hand, like one suddenly waking from a nightmare. Then her wild scream of agony smote our ears.

"Oh God, I've killed him! Jim! Jim!"

She reached him before any of us, throwing herself on her knees and cradling his bloody head in her arms, while she sobbed in an unbearable passion of horror and anguish. The emptiness was gone from her eyes; they were alive and dilated with grief and terror.

I was making toward my prostrate friend with Donnelly and Bain, but Kirowan caught my arm. His face was no longer immobile; his eyes glittered with a controlled savagery.

"Leave him to them!" he snarled. "We are hunters, not healers! Lead me to the house of Joseph Roelocke!"

I did not question him. We drove there in Gordon's car. I had the wheel, and something about the grim face of my companion caused me to hurl the machine recklessly through the traffic. I had the sensation of being part of a tragic drama which was hurtling with headlong speed toward a terrible climax.

I wrenched the car to a grinding halt at the curb before the building where Roelocke lived in a bizarre apartment high above the city. The very elevator that shot us skyward seemed imbued with something of Kirowan's driving urge for haste. I pointed out Roelocke's door, and he cast it open without knocking and shouldered his way in. I was close at his heels.

ROELOCKE, in a dressing-gown of Chinese silk worked with dragons, was lounging on a divan, puffing quickly at a cigarette. He sat up, overturning a wine-glass which stood with a half-filled bottle at his elbow.

Before Kirowan could speak, I burst out with our news. "James Gordon has been shot!"

He sprang to his feet. "Shot? When? When did she kill him?"

"She?" I glared in bewilderment. "How did you know—"

With a steely hand Kirowan thrust me aside, and as the men faced each other, I saw recognition flare up in Roelocke's face. They made a strong contrast: Kirowan, tall, pale with some white-hot passion; Roelocke, slim, darkly handsome, with the saracenic arch of his slim brows above his black eyes. I realized that whatever else occurred, it lay between those two men. They were not strangers; I could sense like a tangible thing the hate that lay between them.

"John Kirowan!" softly whispered Roelocke.

"You remember me, Yosef Vrolok!" Only an iron control kept Kirowan's voice steady. The other merely stared at him without speaking.

"Years ago," said Kirowan more deliberately, "when we delved in the dark mysteries together in Budapest, I saw whither you were drifting. I drew back; I would not descend to the foul depths of forbidden occultism and diabolism to which you sank. And because I would not, you despised me, and you robbed me of the only woman I ever loved; you turned her against me by means of your vile arts, and then you degraded and debauched her, sank her into your own foul slime. I had killed you with my hands then, Yosef Vrolok— vampire by nature as well as by name that you are— but your arts protected you from physical vengeance. But you have trapped yourself at last!"

Kirowan's voice rose in fierce exultation. All his cultured restraint had been swept away from him, leaving a primitive, elemental man, raging and gloating over a hated foe.

"You sought the destruction of James Gordon and his wife, because she unwittingly escaped your snare; you—"

Roelocke shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "You are mad. I have not seen the Gordons for weeks. Why blame me for their family troubles?"

Kirowan snarled. "Liar as always. What did you say just now when O'Donnel told you Gordon had been shot? 'When did she kill him?' You were expecting to hear that the girl had killed her husband. Your psychic powers had told you that a climax was close at hand. You were nervously awaiting news of the success of your devilish scheme.

"But I did not need a slip of your tongue to recognize your handiwork. I knew as soon as I saw the ring on Evelyn Gordon's finger; the ring she could not remove; the ancient and accursed ring of Thoth-amon, handed down by foul cults of sorcerers since the days of forgotten Stygia. I knew that ring was yours, and I knew by what ghastly rites you came to possess it. And I knew its power. Once she put it on her finger, in her innocence and ignorance, she was in your power. By your black magic you summoned the black elemental spirit, the haunter of the ring, out of the gulfs of Night and the ages. Here in your accursed chamber you performed unspeakable rituals to drive Evelyn Gordon's soul from her body, and to cause that body to be possessed by that godless sprite from outside the human universe.

"She was too clean and wholesome, her love for her husband too strong, for the fiend to gain complete and permanent possession of her body; only for brief instants could it drive her own spirit into the void and animate her form. But that was enough for your purpose. But you have brought ruin upon yourself by your vengeance!"

Kirowan's voice rose to a feline screech.

"What was the price demanded by the fiend you drew from the Pits? Ha, you blench! Yosef Vrolok is not the only man to have learned forbidden secrets! After I left Hungary, a broken man, I took up again the study of the black arts, to trap you, you cringing serpent! I explored the ruins of Zimbabwe, the lost mountains of inner Mongolia, and the forgotten jungle islands of the southern seas. I learned what sickened my soul so that I forswore occultism for ever— but I learned of the black spirit that deals death by the hand of a beloved one, and is controlled by a master of magic.

"But, Yosef Vrolok, you are not an adept! You have not the power to control the fiend you have invoked. And you have sold your soul!"

The Hungarian tore at his collar as if it were a strangling noose. His face had changed, as if a mask had dropped away; he looked much older.

"You lie!" he panted. "I did not promise him my soul—"

"I do not lie!" Kirowan's shriek was shocking in its wild exultation. "I know the price a man must pay for calling forth the nameless shape that roams the gulfs of Darkness. Look! There in the corner behind you! A nameless, sightless thing is laughing— is mocking you! It has fulfilled its bargain, and it has come for you, Yosef Vrolok!"

"No!" shrieked Vrolok, tearing his limp collar away from his sweating throat. His composure had crumpled, and his demoralization was sickening to see. "I tell you it was not my soul— I promised it a soul, but not my soul— he must take the soul of the girl, or of James Gordon—"

"Fool!" roared Kirowan. "Do you think he could take the souls of innocents? That he would not know they were beyond his reach? The girl and the youth he could kill; their souls were not his to take or yours to give. But your black soul is not beyond his reach, and he will have his wage. Look! He is materializing behind you! He is growing out of thin air!"

Was it the hypnosis inspired by Kirowan's burning words that caused me to shudder and grow cold, to feel an icy chill that was not of earth pervade the room? Was it a trick of light and shadow that seemed to produce the effect of a black anthropomorphic shadow on the wall behind the Hungarian? No, by heaven! It grew, it swelled— Vrolok had not turned. He stared at Kirowan with eyes starting from his head, hair standing stiffly on his scalp, sweat dripping from his livid face.

Kirowan's cry started shudders down my spine.

"Look behind you, fool! I see him! He has come! He is here! His grisly mouth gapes in awful laughter! His mis-shapen paws reach for you!"

And then at last Vrolok wheeled, with an awful shriek, throwing his arms above his head in a gesture of wild despair. And for one brain-shattering instant he was blotted out by a great black shadow— Kirowan grasped my arm and we fled from that accursed chamber, blind with horror.

THE SAME paper which bore a brief item telling of James Gordon having suffered a slight scalp-wound by the accidental discharge of a pistol in his home, headlined the sudden death of Joseph Roelocke, wealthy and eccentric clubman, in his sumptuous apartments—apparently from heart-failure.

I read it at breakfast, while I drank cup after cup of black coffee, from a hand that was not too steady, even after the lapse of a night. Across the table from me Kirowan likewise seemed to lack appetite. He brooded, as if he roamed again through bygone years.

"Gordon's fantastic theory of reincarnation was wild enough," I said at last. "But the actual facts were still more incredible. Tell me, Kirowan, was that last scene the result of hypnosis? Was it the power of your words that made me seem to see a black horror grow out of the air and rip Yosef Vrolok's soul from his living body?"

He shook his head. "No human hypnotism would strike that black-hearted devil dead on the floor. No; there are beings outside the ken of common humanity, foul shapes of transcosmic evil. Such a one it was with which Vrolok dealt."

"But how could it claim his soul?" I persisted. "If indeed such an awful bargain had been struck, it had not fulfilled its part, for James Gordon was not dead, but merely knocked senseless."

"Vrolok did not know it," answered Kirowan. "He thought that Gordon was dead, and I convinced him that he himself had been trapped, and was doomed. In his demoralization he fell easy prey to the thing he had called forth. It, of course, was always watching for a moment of weakness on his part. The powers of Darkness never deal fairly with human beings; he who traffics with them is always cheated in the end."

"It's a mad nightmare," I muttered. "But it seems to me, then, that you as much as anything else brought about Vrolok's death."

"It is gratifying to think so," Kirowan answered. "Evelyn Gordon is safe now; and it is a small repayment for what he did to another girl, years ago, and in a far country."

________________

8: The Painted Wooden Soldier

Sumner Locke

1881-1917

Weekly Times (Vic), 18 Dec 1909

A MAN was sitting on a log cutting a piece of wood with an old pruning knife. His hat was far back on his tousled head, and just shaded his neck from the penetrating rays of the last sun of that day, a sun that sank away in such vibrant glory that could but mean more scorching 'heat on the morrow.

He had been cutting the stick for a solid hour or two without much result of outline, but now it began to look more shapely, more characteristic of a child's toy. Such was the intention of the man— to carve a plaything for his little child on the morrow. After a time he looked up and sighed, then wiped the heavy perspiration drops from his forehead with his shirt sleeve.

"It isn't much like a soldier!" he said, rather grimly. "When I've glued a bit of red paper across the chest of him and painted him up a bit— perhaps he might shape better."

Then he looked across a space of heated atmosphere, and circulating insects, to where a low-roofed flat sort of house stood in a vacant patch between the great giant trees.

"Three years " he said, forgetting the poker-like soldier that he had been  carving for two hours. "I thought it might be two but three! No wonder she gets tired and sort of off things every year at this time. Christmas isn't much, out here, when it's 110 degrees in the shade, and pests of flies and mosquitoes every day, and nothing to mark it as Christmas at all. I reckoned on giving them both a bit of a trip this year, but— Lord! here comes Christmas again, and no chance—"

He laughed bitterly, and dropped the wooden soldier on the ground in disgust.

"Why, I haven't even got a fare to town, save what's put by for paying off that old horse! Must fix that up, and let Christmas puddings and presents go for another year! My God! if I could only give her one day of what I had when I was a boy at home this time every year. How things change."

His voice broke; then he picked up the naked wooden stick from among the giant ants on the heated ground, and wandered up the rest of the wooded gully to the house.

"Leastways," he said, sorrowfully, looking at the rude cut toy, "the little kid won't know what she's missing by stopping out among the timber, with only the sound of the traction engine in her little ears for another year or two. God alone knows how Stella bears through it all."

He pushed open the door of this kitchen and went in. Myriads of buzzing, noisome flies rose up with a repeated war cry as he passed the table set for tea. The meal had been left uncovered, and the flies descended again on it in a body, that was like an army set in motion.

A woman with a young, pretty face stood near the main door, and when Jim looked at her, she turned swiftly through the door, and he heard her sobbing in the bedroom. Like a bolt shot into his heart, Jim felt fright strike through him; he strode heavily after her.

"Don't do that!" he said, with his voice quiet, arid his hands shaking. "Don't give up, old girl. I can't bear it."

The girl just cried softly, sitting on the bed in a huddled up attitude.

"If — it— wasn't Christinas," she sobbed, and Jim caught her by the shoulders, turning her face to him.

"Look here, Stella," he said, shaking where he stood, "I knew when I brought you out to this timber hell, three years ago, that it was going to be up-hill work all the time, but, before God, my girl, I never thought that at the end of this time we wouldn't he able to afford even—"

He couldn't go on, and a restless movement of his hand pushing.back the hair on his hot head showed, the gin the little, rudely-cut toy. For a moment she stared at him through her tears; then slowly took the wooden image from his fingers, and, looking at it barely a second, tossed it on to the cover of the bed.

"In all this time," she said quickly, "I've never spoken, out— because, because— I've waited for things to be better. It wouldn't hurt so if— if it wasn't Christmas!"

Jim just looked at her, and did not answer. He was in a mind of bitterness against all things. The girl stood up and shut her fingers well into her palms.

"Down there," she said, flashing on him a look of penetrating bitterness-"down there, where there's music and light, and laughter and happiness— where a woman can be a woman, and not a pest-driven beast; down there, where there are people to talk to— I feel I must go. How can I put in more time here with— with nothing and worse than nothing to make life even an existence at all."

Jim's face lined into a deep regret, a sorrow that was cutting his very soul.

"Wait a moment," he said, slowly crossing the room to a corner shelf. "There is just jenough, I think," he went on, rather roughly for his usual self. "It will take you there, at least, and a little over. Perhaps you could go to your sister for a week."

He put some money down on the bed, beside where she stood, and then he smiled forcedly and unhappily.

Stella, stared at him, still opening and shutting her hands nervously.

"You just hurry now and get into that last summer's new dress; and I'll get you to the station in time to catch the through train to-night! Isn't that a bit of a surprise, eh?"

He was trying to look jovial over it, but his heart was weighted as if with leaden balls.

"You— can't do it— Jim!" she gasped, clasping her hands in an entreaty that might have meant that she hoped he could, all the same. Jim stroked her hair with one hand.

"Yes, I can, though! Me and the little kid won't feel the miss of what you'll be having if you get to town tomorrow morning. You can bring us back the news of what's doing down there. Have a week of it, and never mind how you spend that. It won't go far, but—"

Then he picked up the little wooden soldier from the. bed, and held it carefully in his big hand. "I'm going to give him a red coat," he said, in a strained voice, "a little red boat. He's only a bush soldier— never seen active service— but he's got a big heart, and— and— he's a fine, generous sort of little chap, because he's going to do a heap of good things tomorrow! Ha! Ha! Look at him, Stella! All the joy and sunshine in the word are going to shine out of him to-morrow."

He was laughing, though his face showed the strain that told of forced joviality.

The girl turned towards him. Her voice was fearsome now, like, one about to do an action to be scorned afterwards.

"If I could only go— just for— for— oh! Jim, you're sure you don't mind?"

"Look here, little woman," Jim spoke up again, and this time the tone was more firm, more assured.

"I'm not going to think about this at all. You go along now— and when you see the lights and hear the gay voices and laughter down there you can know that I'm living same as them up here among the timber— living and fighting life, fighting hard like a strong soldier, not a little painted one. And some day — well, some day, we'll remember the worst that ever was, and know it is gone for ever!"

He left the room, telling her to hurry, and, meeting his baby child in the kitchen, he picked it up and folded it tight in his arms.

"We'll have to start all over again, kiddie," he said, with his face in the child's neck. "That money was for old Jack, but, after all, she's before him— isn't she?"

A HUNDRED miles away from the timber gully, amid the dancing lights and the coolness of a refreshing sea breeze that wafted itself over the lamp-lit gardens of the house of Christmas festivity, Stella, with happiness anew in her eyes, looked as if she had suddenly been replanted in another sphere— the sphere of rest and pleasure.

A friend of the years ago sat watching beside her in the colored lights of the garden lamps, and bent his head again and again in subdued questionings.

"You won't go back again, Stella. Oh, you can't go back again!"

Stella's eyes shed the lustre that comes with a desire to take up a tempted opportunity, whatever the cost. She laughed lightly.

"Go back again!" she said, looking straight into his face. "I never want to see those big trees again." Suddenly she shivered and spoke quietly. "Oh, you don't know what it's like out there for a woman! There's nothing but heat, and flies and monotony, and—" She jumped up and moved quickly on to the verandah. The man followed, and stood speaking over her shoulder almost into her ear. "...you are not going back. Do you think I've forgotten in all this time—?"

Stella looked into; the garden and thought hard things of the man who had placed her life so much apart from her own inclination. She felt in her own right in listening to the voice of her friend of the years before her marriage.

"Stella!!" No answer. Her eyes were fixed in thought.

"Stella!!!" A hand warm with the night and its alluring charms, caught at her own in the shadow. ''You... care enough... to stay—?"

She turned close to him then and pressed the hand that had. tempted her. "Yes... I care— enough!!!"

Her eyes were ablaze with this new life, and the lights of the garden danced in them, shutting out the dreadful weariness that had grown there from her monotonous existence in the bush.

But far away, where no soft evening breezes fell, among the rough cut timber, where the hum of biting insects was the only sound to break the night, a man with a set face and troubled eyes, sat in a low-roofed room, holding a tangled headed baby on his knee asleep, and in his hand a painted wooden soldier that he had forgotten to put down.

ANOTHER three years came across the life of the man among the giant trees and the traction engine, but at the end of that time a change broke into the monotony.

It was the remembrance of his home people and the legacy of an English relative that brought Jim Inglis and his child to the comfort of a town life. Again Christmas dawned, hot and sultry, but the filtering sunshine in the suburban garden of his house seemed more kindly disposed than when it had baked and cracked the ground in the timber gully three years before.

Jim walked about the gravel paths, with earnest eyes turned every now and then towards his child, who sported many gawdy toys on a raised patch of well-kept grass.... Toys there were, enough to make up for all the years that the child had never known such joys.

"See this man walk!"

The six-year-old child laughed, winding up an automatic being and letting it vibrate itself along the gravel walk. Jim watched until the tin man tumbled into the edge of a garden bed, then he turned towards the gate.

Suddenly, from out the moving crowd, a girl with a pretty face and a shabby dress, stopped, staring into the garden at the child on the grass, and not seeing the man near the gate.

"Baby!" she said, almost whispering, and the man near the gate heard and threw it open. She crouched before him.

"You don't want me to come in, Jim— do you?" she asked timidly.

And Jim just waited until the look in his face almost propelled her through the gate.

"We're having a merry Christmas," he said, quietly, not looking at her. "We're not playing at it this time... the little kid is doing the entertaining for the first time in her life. Perhaps you'll want an introduction after— after this long while!"

The children came down the path, with big, serious eyes.

"Have you come for a merry Christmas?" she asked the woman, whose face paled where she stood.

"Will you give it to me?" was the answer in a broken voice.

"Oh yes," said the child. "The table is set for three, so I suppose Daddy must have known you were coming."

Only a gasp from the woman told the surprise she was feeling at it all. She stood watching the child until a hand softly led her into the house, and when they stopped it was in front of a high mantel-shelf, where, before a length of mirror, a glass case held a red painted wooden soldier.

"That... as the only remembrance!" said the man, pointing to the glass case, and the woman understood and burst into tears

_________________

9: Bubbles!

Ralph Gordon
fl 1932-1936

La Paree Nov 1935

Otherwise unknown author, who specialised in this type of story for several risque magazines of the 1930s, such as La Paree, Pep, Snappy, Spicy Stories, Gay Parisienne, etc.

IN a sidewalk cafe, on the Rue de la Paix, late one afternoon, the burly form of Jimmy Dolan was seated at a table.

"What is your pleasure, monsieur?" asked the waiter, unctuously.

Jimmy finished lighting his cigarette, a lurking grin illuminating his handsome, boyish face... If his tummy had been full of the produce of the vineyards, and his brain had been sufficiently exhilarated thereby, he might have told his questioner that his pleasure consisted of the company of girls, girls, girls...  it mattered not whether they were blonde, brunette, red haired, brown haired, tall, short, slender, plump... so long as they were pretty !

But Jimmy was about to partake of his first drink of the day, so he kept his secret to himself, and said: "Champagne... Mumm's... extra dry!"

"Mais oui, monsieur!" exclaimed the waiter, hustling off to fill the order, and returning in an extraordinarily short space of time with an ice filled bucket and a bottle.

In another moment, Jimmy found himself sitting before a thin-stemmed glass, with myriads of tiny bubbles rising and disappearing from the liquid as if from an inexhaustible fount. He lifted the glass, drank deeply, nd set it down again, his eyes glued fascinatedly to it, while he inhaled his cigarette.

Something subconsciously caused him to lift his eyes, and through the haze of his smoke he saw the attraction. Sitting not a dozen feet away, a girl was smiling at him. Her chapeau was pressed down on a head of bushy curls, golden brown and clustering about her attractively featured face.

"Hmmm!" said Jimmy, returning her smile, and inclining his head in a subtle invitation.

HALF an hour later, the second bottle of champagne had been placed in front of them. Jimmy had consumed his share of the first, and was looking intently at the glass that had been filled from the second.

"Monsieur!" murmured Nanette, for that was the name of the girl. "You aren't drinking your champagne."

Jimmy chuckled. "I love to watch the bubbles!" he replied.

He might have been watching the globules of air constantly arising from the wine, but he wasn't neglecting the far more enchanting vision sitting opposite him!

Her eyes were amber flecked balls of sparkling onyx, below a smooth forehead and finely penciled eyebrows... Her nose was sparingly pointed and her scarlet mouth was a splash of red in the paleness of her cheeks. But the physical charm and attraction that caught and held his attention was the throbbing column of her throat merging with the expanse of her bosom, and the rising young beauties of her breasts plainly outlined by her chiffon dress and, charmingly, peeping from the yoke, sans brassiere.

Her figure might have been that of a debutante budding out of the sweet period of adolescence... the form of girlhood blooming into the full blush of womanhood... firm, full, rounded, altogether luscious, innocently but potently inviting the attentions of an ardent lover.

Nanette pushed the glass toward him. "The bubbles are pretty, monsieur, but the wine is priceless!" she said. "Drink it, otherwise it will fall flat!"

Jimmy drank... He looked into her eyes as he swallowed the liquid, and she seemed to become more beautiful than ever!... But, suddenly, he heard her exclaim: "Mon Dieu! My purse has fallen!"

He smiled. "I'll pick it up for you!"

Pushing back his chair, he stooped, and his head disappeared below the table. His hands searched the floor, but as he recovered the purse, he caught sight of a lovely pair of limbs, encased in silken stockings, and bared by a short skirt until he could easily see beyond her knees!

Jimmy blinked... Was it the champagne working on his imagination, or was his eyesight accurate?

Jimmy plucked his head from beneath the table.

"Here's your purse!" he announced.

"Merci, beaucoup!" she smiled.

It might have been the champagne he had consumed, and it might have been the stooping under the table... Then, again, it might" have been due to both causes in addition to the luscious sights above the rim of her silken stockings... But Jimmy's head was reeling!

"Let's take a walk!" he suggested.

"Certainement!" she replied, unhesitatingly.

With a staggering wave of his hand, he summoned the waiter. Peeling a sizeable note from his bankroll, he said: "Keep the change!"

Nanette, smiling, tucked her arm in his as they sallied forth.

Not long thereafter, footsteps were stamping and thumping up the stairs of a pension in Montmartre. Nanette was guiding Jimmy carefully, but it was his feet that were doing the stamping!

They had strolled along the boulevard for a block or two, but it so happened that the open air and champagne, as usual, didn't mix with any person as unaccustomed to wine as Jimmy, and Nanette was taking him home to her domicile.

Her key rattled in the door. She pushed it open and entered, to be met by her roommate, Suzette, who had been indulging in an afternoon nap before sailing forth to her job as cashier in a cinema.

"Nom du nom!" said Suzette. "You went out for a stroll... Where did you pick that specimen of the cafés?"

Nanette flashed a glance of vexation... Without a bit of hesitation, she led Jimmy toward the bed... It was still warm from the impress of the slim form of Suzette, and he slumped down on it.

"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed Nanette. "He is an American, a stranger in the city of Paris... He was drinking champagne in a café... It seemed to go to his head... Should I have left him alone so that the police could hail him before a judge and fine him?"

Suzette laughed. "Mais non, cherie!"

She slipped an arm about Nanette, standing by the bed, and looking on the picture of Jimmy lying hors-de-combat.

"He needs a seltzer, for a certainty, something to bring him around to himself!" she murmured. "Run down to the apothecary, charmante, and buy him something."

Nanette untwined her arm from Suzette's. "I'll hurry!" she said, as she whisked her lovely figure through the door and scampered downstairs to the nearest drug store, which was several blocks distant.

Suzette turned away from the bed, lighted a cigarette and walked back to stare down at Jimmy.

Only a flimsy chemise made a pretense of covering her pink skin, and pear-shaped, firm breasts sprang outward from her torso in taunting prominence, almost as visible as though they were bare.

"Mon pauvre Americain!" she murmured.

Sitting on the bed beside him, she unfastened the neckband of his shirt, then drew off his coat..  Her fingers touched the skin of his neck, then, with a swift swoop, her face descended!

The wanton waves of her ash blonde hair obliterated his face as her lips lingered on his throat, slowly rising upward past his chin, to seek and find his lips, tightly closed in sleep... But Suzette's lips had always been accustomed to getting what they wanted, and, now, her mouth burrowed in deeply, biting, parting, separating, seeking!

Soon Jimmy's prone body was wrapped in desirous arms, while experienced fingers wandered over him... But, after several minutes, a sigh escaped her.

"Parbleu!" she murmured. "Is this a man or is it a corpse?... One of my kisses should be able to awaken a bronze image!"

Pacing the floor, the graceful figure of Suzette moved with the sinuous undulation of a tigress... The swan-like curve at the base of her neck was so deep it accentuated the contour of her hips and the tapering of her thighs, while her breasts rose and fell with the stress of pasionate emotion.

She glanced toward Jimmy again. "Diable! It would be shameful if he would awake and leave without ever realizing the paradise of a moment in the arms of Suzette!"

Gliding back to him, she twined herself about him once more, and her lips engulfed his mouth!... Her fingers wandered, lingered!

Jimmy stirred. "Mmmmm!" he moaned, pouring the expletive into the mouth that prevented him from enunciating.

Suzette's eyes sparked with the ecstasy of accomplishment, and soon, sighs of delight filled the atmosphere in the slowly darkening twilight of the room!

Minutes pass quickly. Suzette had the look of innocence personified, the expression of the-cat-that-ate-the-canary, when Nanette returned from the drug store. Jimmy was asleep again !

A glass was produced, half filled with water, and a powder was poured into it.

"Help me raise his head!" said Nanette.

"You hold the glass to his lips!" cried Suzette. "I'll hold him up for you."

Her arm went around Jimmy's neck. Lifting his head from the pillow, she snuggled it in the hollow of her shoulder, holding him so that his face rested against a breast which was still palpitating from the thrills of a totally unexpected encounter.

Nanette's fingers parted his lips and inserted the rim of the glass. He gulped, once, twice, thrice... then Suzette let his head sink back on the pillow.

"There!" she smiled. "That should bring him to life!"

Shrewdly, she glanced at Nanette to see if the latter had even the faintest suspicion of what had happened while she was on the trip to the apothecary shop. But Nanette only said:

"Look at his mouth!... It looks as though lipstick had been smeared on it!"

Suzette laughed. "Is it yours?" she murmured.

"Or yours, perhaps?" smiled Nanette.

"Taste it and see!" suggested Suzette.

Nanette bent down and pressed her parted lips to his... It was to be only a simple kiss, a taste of the lipstick that was apparently there, but it turned out to be a soulful example of passionate osculation. Suzette watched it.

Nanette breathed deeply... Suzette sighed. Jimmy slept!

"Whose lipstick is it?" murmured Suzette, a minute later.

"Who knows?" Nanette shrugged. "His mouth is so sweet that I forgot to notice... Now my own lipstick has obliterated the other!"

Suzette laughed boisterously. "Who cares?" she said.

She glanced at the clock. "I must hurry and get dressed!" she went on. "Pierre is coming to take me to the cinema tonight."

Long after Suzette had gone, Nanette sat by the bed, looking at the sleeping form of Jimmy. He semed to be so happy, so comfortable, and so blissfully contented.

In the sprawled position in which he was lying, he occupied nearly all of the bed, and she was wondering what was going to be done about it when Suzette returned.

It was their bed, the only one in the room. It was scarcely large enough for two people. Obviously, Jimmy had to be awakened and sent off to his hotel... But Suzette had failed to arouse him, n'est-ce pas?

Nanette's clock showed that it was only mid-evening... Suzette would be absent for an hour or more longer... In the meantime, was she going to be compelled to sit bolt upright, waiting for him to wake up?

"Mais non!" she murmured. "If he is sleeping so soundly, it will do no harm if I lie on the other side of the bed... He'll never know that I'm there!"

Off came her dress, and a silk underslip shimmered downward to her feet, to be followed by her stockings and lacy panties that had been affectionately hugging her symmetrical legs and thighs and the delightful contours of her hips. There was no brassiere to prevent her gloriously prominent young breasts from dominating the scene, their red tips glowing like rosebuds in the lamplight.

Over her head a nightdress cascaded, and then a kimono was drawn about her, effectively cloaking both charms and nightgown... She thought that she would relax like that and wait for Suzette to return, when they could decide what was to be done with Jimmy.

"Bah!" she muttered, standing over the bed. "Now he takes up all the space!"

It was comparatively easy for her to swing his legs around, but she found it was quite another matter to straighten out his body. Leaning over him, she put her arms about his shoulders and tugged, but without budging him an inch.

"Ahhh!" she sighed. "He is so big, so strong, so heavy!"

Again she wound her arms about him, straining, but the only effect was to press her soft contours against his husky frame!

Nanette paused, panting for breath, her arms still around him, the tips of her breasts boring into his neck, where his collar had become unfastened... A thrill passed over her skin as she realized how close she was to him, but she didn't want to take her arms away.

She recalled the kiss she had tasted earlier in the evening, and the urge to fill her mouth with another was irresistible... She let his head go back on the pillow, then their lips were merged.

Nanette suddenly gasped when she felt two muscular arms coiling about her, and sensed in his mouth his thrilling response to the clinging warmth of her kiss!

JIMMY'S dreams had been filled with unconscious visions of bubbling champagne and beautiful girls... Then it seemed that amid the vista of bubbles all other pretty faces faded away except one, and that was the face of a lovely damsel with golden-brown curls.

He dreamed that he was kissing her madly, and showering her luscious form with caresses, as they planned a marriage and a honeymoon that was to be tres plus grande!

_________________

10: The Stolen Ring

Rosa Praed

1851-1935

Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney) April 1912

Rosa Caroline Murray-Prior Praed

Queensland-born Rosa Caroline Murray-Prior married Arthur Campbell Bulkley Praed, a British heir, in Brisbane in 1872, and went with him to England in 1876. She published her first novel in 1880 and became a successful author and dramatist, producing more than 30 novels and numerous short stories. Her by-line was usually "Mrs Campbell Praed". The marriage ended in 1897 and she became involved in spiritualism and Theosophy. Some of her later works reflect this. One of her many novels was a "lost race" fantasy set in north Queensland, "Fugitive Annie", 1903.

OUTSIDE Victorian Station a young-old lady who had twisted her ankle and was obviously in pain, tried vainly to attract the attention of porter, policeman, or cab-driver.

She carried a dressing-bag and a sheaf of roses— suggesting the return from a week-end visit— and she used her umbrella for a support to her dragging foot. An attractive woman, though in her forties, with a refined face, dreamy, myopic eyes of limpid blue, dark lashes and brows, a delicate complexion and cloudy greyish hair, the hue of wood-ashes.

Miss Rose Arminell showed the indefinable stamp of an unmarried woman who had had a love-tragedy. Sensitive, appealing, strangely sad, childishly innocent, yet with the look in her eyes of having groped in dark places and of having seen shadows of dreadful things, she did not seem fitted to battle with an unsympathetic world.

Now, despairing of assistance, she signalled to a shoe-black nearby, and, in a gentle voice, asked him to call a four-wheeler. The boy shook his head. For at that moment two young gentlemen in serge suits and straw hats, each with a rose in his button-hole, hurried up, the elder of whom pushed the younger forward and bade the shoe-black clean his boots and look as sharp as possible. The elder might have been twenty— a fair, smooth-faced, school-boyish person, with a jaunty air; the younger looked about sixteen— a dark lad with a sullen face and slouching yet defiant carriage, but having an indefinable something about him that affected Miss Arminell curiously.

She started, flushed, and gave the boy a long searching look as if she were trying to trace a likeness to someone she knew. Then her eyes fell; she looked disappointed, having failed to find what she expected. It seemed unaccountable that flashing association taking her back nearly twenty years.

For the lover of her youth, of whom for an instant the dark youth had reminded her, had been of quite a different type.

The elder of the youths who was the fair one took off his hat to Miss Arminell, and said in a frank schoolboy manner.

"Didn't you want a four-wheeler? I'll get you one while my friend is having his boots blacked," and he was off and hailing a cab-driver before Miss Arminell could make any answer. While the driver he secured was getting down luggage and disputing over the fare, Miss Arminell thanked the young gentleman, and when he asked her if he could see after her luggage, told him she had only her dressing bag, and begged him not to let her detain him. "Oh, that doesn't matter. We're only just up from Hampshire— came by the same train as you— I saw you getting out, and was nearly coming up to see if I could do anything. Haven't you hurt your foot?"

Miss Arminell explained that she had twisted her ankle on her way to the station that morning, and that it was just beginning to pain her a little.

"Bad luck!" said the youth. "Please let me put you into a cab... Oh, we're not in any hurry," as she waived aside his offer. "Fact is, an old uncle of mine gave me a cheque for a week's spree in London, and I've brought my friend there to cheer him up a bit. He's failed in an exam, and had a row with his people, and he has got the hump in consequence. We're regular country bumpkins both of us, and he's having a shine put on his boots before going to the Exhibition."

The dark lad with his boot on the shoe-black shot a resentful glance at his friend, "Oh, shut up, will you?"

"All right, old chap," returned the fair one cheerfully and whispered confidentially to Miss Arminell, "I told you he'd got the hump." The young man held out his arm to help Miss Arminell, but she refused it. "Oh no. thank you." Then, as he persisted, "But you may take my bag if you like."

He relieved her of the dressing-bag ana rf the bunch of roses. Leaning heavily on her umbrella Miss Arminell hobbled to the four-wheeler. At the door, the youth hesitated and leaning towards her with his hand on the fastening and his eyes fixed on her face, exclaimed impulsively.

"Excuse me. but I'm pretty positive we've met before — don't you remember— at Wray Lodge— a garden party— last summer?"

"I don't know any Wray Lodge. You are mistaken."

"Oh, surely, I couldn't mistake your face, You're Miss Ffolliot?"

"Indeed I am not. My name is Arminell."

He looked at her amazedly. "You astonish me. The resemblance is quite extraordinary. Ah! Allow me?" for she put her hand to the door. He helpecr her into the cab with great care, placing the bag and the flowers on the seat beside her, and asking where he should bid the man drive.

"Please tell him 59, Grace Court, near Addison-road Station." The young man hesitated again and said awkwardly. "I say, I don't like your going off alone with your foot hurting you— it does hurt?"

She admitted the fact with a wan smile.

"Do let me help you home."

Miss Arminell stiffened.

"You're very kind; but I couldn't think of troubling you."

"Honor bright, it's no trouble. Fact is, I'm used to looking after a sister who's lame— an accident— her spine, you know — and I can't get over the notion that you're Miss Ffolliot. If you won't let me see you home, mayn't I call to-morrow and ask if you're all right?"

"You are very kind," repeated Miss Arminell; "but I shouldn't dream of troubling you."

"I'd love to come, and make sure you're all right. Do let me."

"Well— really! Are you in the habit, may I ask, of making friends with unprotected ladies at railway stations?"

He protested. "Never did such a thing in my life. But you— seemed as if I knew you— and I thought of my poor sister... Look here, I'd like to tell you," he proceeded jerkily, "My old dad's a clergyman. He's rector of Kingswear, near Southampton. Ronald Harrison's my name, and my friend over there —well his dad's a bit of a Tartar— Westmacott, his is—"

"Westmacott!" Miss Arminell echoed the name. "No; I don't know him."

"You can look my dad up in the clergy-list," urged Harrison.

"Oh! I shouldn't think of doubting what you say."

"Then I may call— both of us— to-morrow —just to ask, you know?"

Miss Arminell fairly gave way.

"I can't imagine what pleasure it could be to come and see an old maid in a West Kensington flat," she said; "but if you'd really like to call, come and have tea tomorrow, about half-past four."

Harrison thanked her as if she had conferred on him an inestimable favor.

"Right you are! We'll turn up you may be sure, shan't we, Westmacott?" for the other lad had come up shyly, and now responded to the invitation rather sulkily Miss Arminell thought.

"He's as shy as a rabbit poking out of a warren," said Harrison. "Now, don't you scowl, old chap. We'll be there, Miss Arminell— half- past four— 59 Grace Court, near Addison-road Station. Thank you, Miss Arminell— All right, cabby."

He flourished his straw hat. The dark lad took off his more quietly. The cab rattled off, and Miss Arminell reflected that she had done an unheard of thing in asking two absolutely strange young men to tea. She excused herself to herself.

"But they're not men — only two lonely country lads... And besides..." She sighed under her breath. "I can't think what it was in the dark one that reminded me of him."

She forgot the increasing pain of her foot during the rest of the drive, thinking of him— the man whom, at twenty-two, she was to have married: whom she had adored and who had jilted her, broken her heart, and for several years driven her insane.

That was the tragedy of Rose Arminell's life. He had been an Australian squatter, who had wooed her in England and had gone back on the understanding that she was to come out and marry him a year later. The week before she was to start a cablegram informed her that he had married another woman.

Miss Arminell's flat was in a block that had no lift and a merely nominal porter. It was quite a pretty doll's house, with a corner bow window, Virginia creeper, a nice view, and a few rather valuable odds and ends of furniture aud bric-a-brac inherited from her mother. She had a woman in who usually left soon after midday dinner, Miss Arminell preparing her own tea and frugal supper.

Next day, however, she kept the woman to make and bring in tea, and she- also thought it well to invite Miss Ripley from the next block to meet her two visitors. She sat waiting for them behind the tea-tray, her sprained foot bound up and resting on a footstool; her sweet, elderly fade worn after a night of pain. But the doctor had dressed the sprain that morning with soothing lotions, so that it was now comparatively easy.

Punctually at four-thirty the young gentlemen appeared, wearing the same serge suits, and each with a flower in his buttonhole. Both seemed in high spirits. Harrison, the elder, full of boyish fun and prettily solicitous for his hostess, whom he reproached for not letting him come home with her.... and call the doctor sooner.

He made friends at once with Miss Ripley, who observed that only nice country lads would see any fun in taking tea with two old maids in a West Kensington flat, at which Harrison laughed uproariously.

He showed an immense interest in all the domestic arrangements, and seemed to regard the whole proceeding as a delightful joke. Westmacott, the younger boy, laughed and chattered likewise, but Miss Arminell felt that his gaiety was rather forced, and attributed the air of surly defiance, and of embarrassment underlying it, to shyness and discomfiture over his recent failure in his examination.

This boy at once attracted and repelled her, and she was again thrilled by that indefinable flash of expression which reminded her of the tragedy of her youth.

Harrison chaffed Westmacott for his country appetite and manners, and told absurd stories against themselves of their misadventures at the Exhibition the previous evening. They ate quantities of bread and butter and huge chunks of cake, and not till he had satisfied his hunger did Harrison begin prowling about the room looking at the curios and examining Miss Arminell's Chippendale chairs and settee. He appeared to know something about such things.

His invalid sister, he said, had her room filled with "crocks" and his old dad was always abusing "the mater" for her bargains in old oak and china. The Rectory was just chock full of "pots and pans," he told them, so that even the lumber-room overflowed into jumble sales.

He talked on with engaging candor as he moved about inspecting Miss Arminell's little treasures. She had some fine Japanese ivories and bits of cloisonne picked up by a sea-faring uncle, a quaint old silver clock on the mantel-piece and, almost hidden by the array of roses, two lovely Cosway miniatures of dead Arminell ladies, set in fine old paste which glittered against a faded red velvet background.

"You really ought to have some willow-pattern plates up there," said Harrison, pointing to the empty upper shelf of a three-cornered cabinet. "That's all that's wanted to make it perfect."

"Yes, I know," said Miss Arminell; "but I haven't any blue plates."

"I'll tell you what," cried the lad eagerly. "When I go back, I'll look over the old blue crocks in our lumber-room and send you half a dozen."

"Indeed, I couldn't think of accepting such a present from a stranger," replied Miss .rminell stiffly.

"Oh, now you are unkind!— After I have eaten such a lot of your cake and drunk three cups of your tea, to call me a stranger! I shall make the mater send you her pasteboard all the way from Hampshire and pave the way for the plates."

"I should, of course, be charmed to make your mother's acquaintance," said Miss Arminell; "but I beg you will not send the plates, for I should only return them immediately."

Harrison seemed really hurt. He said he felt afraid now to ask if he might look at the vicvy from some of the other windows. He should so like to tell his mater all about the flat. Her view was Miss Arminell's weak point. The dining-room window looked over to the Exhibition grounds, and on fine days, she could see from her bedroom the towers of the Crystal Palace. Finally she deputed Miss Ripley to act as show-woman to the young men. Westmacott wanted to remain with his lame hostess, but Harrison spoke to him quite sharply, Miss Ripley thought, bidding him remember his promise not to be a shy duffer and neglect opportunities. Whereat Westmacott gave a queer laugh and followed the two.

He disappeared when they were in the dining-room, and Miss Ripley returning along the passage surprised him standing by the dressing table in Miss Arminell's bedroom, the door of which was open. He turned with a violent start at her bantering enquiry what he was doing there, said he had mistaken the door, and had stopped to look at the view.

Miss Ripley was a trustful and unobservant old maid, yet the thought struck her that it was careless of Miss Arminell to leave her trinkets about on the dressing table. A chain, a brooch or two, and her rings lay there, and one or two of these Miss Ripley knew were valuable.

She took Westmacott to the drawing room, where Harrison by the mantelpiece, was now discoursing fluently to Miss Arminell-fingering the roses as he did so, and fidgetting with the vases.

He chaffed Westmacott unmercifully when Miss Ripley told how the boy had strayed into Miss Arminell's room; so much so that Westmacott turned crimson, and cried out: "I say, we ought to be going."

"Right you are, old chap! I've been enjoying myself so awfully that I forgot the time. Do you mindi your servant calling us a taxi?" he asked Miss Arminell.

They never stopped thanking the ladies while the taxi was being fetched; then hurriedly took their leave, Harrison talking noisily, while they went down, to Miss Ripley, who watched them from the landing. At the hall door, they flourished their hats and presently the taxi whizzed off.

Miss Ripley was recalled to the parlor by a cry of dismay. She found her friend tottering towards the mantelpiece.

"My clock! Oh, they have taken my clock!"

Sure enough, the little silver clock was gone; likewise the Cosway miniatures. Miss Arminell swept away the disarranged roses .which had covered the theft.

"The ivories?" she exclaimed apprehensively. The ivories, the bits of cloisonne— all had disappeared.

"Stop the thieves!" shrieked Miss Arminell, struggling frantically towards the door. Miss Ripley and the charwoman flew downstairs on to the pavement, and caught a last glimpse of the taxi turning down a distant street.

"No hope of catching them now," said a policeman, who came up at their cries. "Better go in and see what is missing ' before lodging a description of the stolen articles."

Miss Ripley found Miss Arminell at her dressing-table, weeping bitterly.

"My watch has gone, and my rings," she wailed. "I meant to put them on, and didn't. My mother's diamond and ruby ring, and my name-ring, that I value more than all the rest." Her voice broke.

"Ruby, opal, sapphire, emerald, for 'Rose.' Oh— oh!" moaned the poor lady, "I can't bear to lose that."

It had been her engagement ring, put away during those dark years at the sanatorium. Afterwards she had had no address to which to send it. So she had kept and worn the ring, foolishly fancying that it might attract to her the man for whom she cherished an undying love.

MISS ARMINELL sat alone in her parlor the morning after the theft. The worry had set up inflammation in her foot; it ached horribly, and so did her heart. Someone rang the door-bell. She heard the charwoman answer it, and a man's voice ask for her by name.

At the sound of that voice, the poor woman's heart seemed to stop beating. Voices do not change greatly with the years. She heard the charwoman say, "Miss Arminell is in here, sir," and the parlor door was opened and closed again behind a tall, lean man— bronzed, strong featured, with a grizzled moustache and frosted hair— a man who looked as if he had worked and thought and suffered, though he was well tailored and prosperous enough so far as outward appearance went.

He advanced a few steps and stood dumbly gazing at Miss Arminell. She rose, clutching the arm of her chair for support. A hoarse sound came from her lips, but she could speak no word; she could only stare at the man as if he were a ghost. His brown eyes stared too into her blue ones, still clear enough to be the eyes of a young girl— stared with a wild brightness— the wildness of a great longing; the brightness of unshed tears.

So the two silently looked at each other like long-parted souls meeting on the other side of death.

The change was too sudden. Faintness came over her. She swayed, groping blindly with her hands, and would have fallen had he not sprung to her side, and, with his strong arm round her, put her back In her chair. Then the pent-up yearning and remorse that had tortured him broke forth in passionate words. She heard them as in a dream, realising only with her inner senses that he was telling her how he had always loved her, and had broken his heart in despair at the thought of having irreparably injured her; how he would not have dared to come near her, but for something extraordinary that has happened... And then her physical brain grasped the last spoken words.

"My dear, my dear— what can I say? What right have I to speak to you of my love? I can only kneel at your feet, and pray to you for forgiveness and mercy."

He was kneeling now, kissing her hands, his lean body quivering with emotion, his grey head bent over her lap. There was something infinitely pathetic in that bent grey head. Miss Arminell stooped and touched with her lips one silvery curl thinning away from the temple, a tender little caress that had been peculiar to herself in the. old sweet days. He looked up, his eyes wet, his lips twitching in his agitation.

"You... you remember?"

"I have never forgotten."

"You did not hate me!... Rose... oh, my best beloved— I can't explain. She has been dead two years. It was all a hideous, hopeless tangle— I had compromised her— meaning no harm. Her father forced the situation.... But I was never really untrue to you, my dear. Believe that. Weak, but not wholly false. I loved you with all my heart and soul as I loved you in the beginning, as I love you at this moment."

"It is enough. I don't want you. to talk of— of what came between. We are together at last," she answered, brokenly. And, truly, there was no need for further word.

Their arms went round each other; their hearts beat within breasts that touched in a close embrace. At length suddenly releasing her, and rising to his feet, he said, grimly; "I must tell you of the painful circumstance which brought me here." She echoed his words bewildered, "The painful circumstance ?"

"I came to restore to you part of the property that was stolen from you yesterday, and to implore your mercy for one of the criminals— my son."

"Your son!— Ah!" She understood now the flashing likeness.  "The younger one— Westmacott?"

"Ralph Westmacott Goring— to my shame and his. I pray Heaven this may be a lesson he will never forget. He— it is a long story. I need not give details— he has not been a good boy— oh, this is the first time he has committed theft— but he was expelled from the school and it led to great bitterness between us. He ran away, meaning to work his way to America, in to the clutches of a gang of gentlemanly thieves— the fellow he was with is noted for ingenious methods of getting into flats. He persuaded the boy into doing what he did. Thank God when it was done, Ralph felt so horrified that he came straight to me and made a clean breast of the whole thing. He gave me these, and I have brought them back to you— you will understand that I recognised this ring."

He had taken out of his waistcoat pocket Miss Arminell's watch and the diamond and ruby ring which he laid on the tabled The name-ring he held out to her.

She seized it with a cry of joy and gloated over it as might have done the woman over the pearl she had lost and found again.

"I do not mind about the rest," she said, "now that I have got this back."

"Rose, will you be merciful and forgive my poor boy for the sake of what that ring meant to us— and— he spoke chokily, "for what, Heaven grant, it may mean again?"

She smiled seraphically. "I forgive him with my whole heart— Let us think only that it is he who in this strange way has given us back to each other."

He took the ring from her and solemnly put it on the third finger of her left hand.

___________________

11: The Kidnaped Memorial

Sinclair Lewis

1885-1951

Pictorial Review June 1919

Harry Sinclair Lewis

WAKAMIN is a town with a soul. It used to have sentimental soul which got thrills out of neighborliness and "The Star-Spangled Banner" but now it wavers between two generations, with none of the strong, silly ambition of either. The pioneering generation has died out, and of the young men, a hundred have gone to that new pioneering in France. Along the way they will behold the world, see the goodness and eagerness of it, and not greatly desire to come back to the straggly ungenerous streets of Wakamin.

Those who are left, lords of the dead soul of Wakamin, go to the movies and play tight little games of bridge and aspire only to own an automobile, because a car is the sign of respectability.

Mr. Gale felt the savorlessness of the town within ten minutes after he had arrived. He had come north to wind up the estate of his cousin, the late proprietor of the Wakamin Creamery. Mr. Gale was from the pine belt of Alabama but he did not resemble the stage Southerner. There was a look of resoluteness and industry about his broad red jaw. He spoke English very much like a man from New York or San Francisco. He did not say "Yessuh" nor "Ah declah"; he had neither a large white hat nor a small white imperial; he was neither a Colonel nor a Judge. He was Mr. Gale, and he practiced law, and he preferred lemonade to mint juleps. But he had fought clear through the War for the Southern Confederacy; and once, on a gray wrinkled morning before a cavalry battle, he had spoken to Jeb Stuart.

While he was settling up the estate, Mr. Gale tried out the conversational qualities of the editor and the justice of the peace, and gave up his attempt to get acquainted with the Wakamites— except for Mrs. Tiffany, at whose house he went to board. Mrs. Captain Tiffany was daughter and widow of Territorial Pioneers. She herself had teamed-it from St. Paul, with her young husband, after the War. The late Captain Tiffany had been the last commander of the Wakamin G. A. R. Post, and Mrs. Tiffany had for years been president of the Women's Relief Corps. After the barniness of the Wakamin Hotel Mr. Gale was at home in her cottage, which was as precise and nearly as small as the whitewashed conch shell at the gate. He recovered from the forlorn loneliness that had obsessed him during walks on these long, cold, blue twilights of spring. Nightly he sat on the porch with Mrs. Tiffany, and agreed with her about politics, corn-raising, religion, and recipes for hot biscuits.

When he was standing at the gate one evening of April, a small boy sidled across the street, made believe that he was not making-believe soldiers, rubbed one shin with the other foot, looked into the matter of an electric-light bug that was sprawling on its foolish back, violently chased nothing at all, walked backward a few paces, and came up to Mr. Gale with an explosive, "Hello!"

"Evening, sir."

"You staying with Mrs. Tiffany?''

"Yes, for a while."

"Where do you come from?"

"I'm from Alabama."

"Alabama? Why, gee, then you're a Southerner!"

"I reckon I am, old man."

The small boy looked him all over, dug his toe into the leaf-mold at the edge of the curb, whistled, and burst out, "Aw, gee, you aren't either! You don't wear gray, and you haven't got any darky body servant. I seen lots of Confederuts in the movies, and they always wear gray, and most always they got a body servant, and a big sword with a tossel on it. Have you got a sword with a tossel?"

"No, but I've got a suit of butternuts back home."

"Gee, have you? Say, were you ever a raider?"

"No, but I know lots about raiders, and once I had dinner with Colonel Mosby."

"Gee, did you? Say, what's your name? Say, are you a gen'rul?"

"No, I was a high private. My name is Gale. What is your name, if I may ask you, as one man to another?"

"Fm Jimmy Martin. I live across the street. My dad's got a great big phonograph and seventy records. Were you a high private? How high? Gee, tell me about the raiders!"

"But James, why should a loyal Northerner like you desire to know anything about the rebel horde?"

"Well, you see, I'm the leader of the Boy Scouts, and we haven't any Scout Master, at least we did have, but he moved away, and I have to think up games for the Scouts, and gee, we're awfully tired of discovering the North Pole, and being Red Cross in Belgium, and I always have to be the Eskimos when we discover the North Pole, or they won't play, and I thought maybe we could be raiders and capture a Yankee train."

"Well, you come sit on the porch, James. It occurs to me that you are a new audience for my stories. Let us proceed to defend Richmond, and do a quick dash into Illinois, to our common benefit. Is it a bargain?"

It was, and Jimmy listened, and Mrs. Tiffany came out and listened also and the three lovers of the Heroic Age sat glowing at one another till from across the village street, long and thin and drowsy, came the call, "Jim-mm-ee Mar-r-r-tin!"

Later, Jimmy's mother was surprised to discover her heir leading a Confederate raid, and she was satisfied only when she was assured that the raid was perfectly proper, because it was led by General Grant, and because all the raiders had voluntarily set free their slaves.

It was Jimmy Martin who enticed Mr. Gale to go spearing pickerel, and they two, the big slow-moving man and the boy who took two skips to his one solid pace, plowed through the willow thickets along the creek all one Saturday afternoon.

At the end of the trip, Jimmy cheerfully announced that he would probably get a whale of a licking, because he ought to have been chopping stove-wood. Mr. Gale suggested strategic measures; he sneaked after Jimmy, through a stable door to the Martins' woodshed, and cut wood for an hour, while Jimmy scrabbled to pile it.

In the confidences of Jimmy and in Mrs. Tiffany's stories of her Vermont girlhood and pioneer days in Minnesota, Mr. Gale found those green memories of youth which he had hoped to discover, on coming North, in comradely talks with veterans of the Wakamin G. A. R.

But now there was no G. A. R. at all in Wakamin. During the past year the local post had been wiped out. Of the four veterans remaining on Decoration Day a year before, three had died and one had gone West to live with his son, as is the Mid-Western way. Of the sturdy old men who had marched fifty strong to Woodlawn Cemetery a decade before, not one old man was left to leaven the land.

But they did live on in Mrs. Tiffany's gossip, as she begged Mr. Gale to assure her that there would be a decorating of the graves, though the comrades were gone. This assurance Mr. Gale always gave, though upon sedulous inquiry at the barber shop he discovered that there was very little chance for a celebration of the Day. The town band had broken up when the barber, who was also the bandleader, had bought a car. The school principal had decided that this year it was not worth while to train the girls to wear red-white-and-blue cheesecloth, and sing "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean " from a decked-over hay wagon.

Mr. Gale endeavored to approve this passing of Decoration Day. He told himself that he was glad to hear that all of his old enemies had gone. But no matter how often he said it, he couldn't make it stick. He felt that he, too, was a derelict, as he listened to Mrs. Tiffany's timid hopes for a celebration. To her, the Day was the climax of the year, the time when all her comrades, living and dead, drew closer together. She had a dazed faith that there would be some sort of ceremony.

She went on retrimming the blue bonnet which she had always worn in the parade, at the head ot the W. R. C. Not till the day before the holiday did she learn the truth. That evening she did not come down to supper. She called in a neighbor's daughter to serve Mr. Gale. The young woman giggled, and asked idiotic questions about Society Folks in the South, till Mr. Gale made his iron-ray eyebrows a line of defense. He tramped out the road eastward from town, after supper, growling to himself between periods of vacuous unhappiness:

"Feel's if it's me and the boys I fought with, not them I fought against, they're going to neglect tomorrow. Those Yanks were lively youngsters. Made me do some tall jumping. Hate to think of 'em lying there in the cemetery, lonely and waiting, trusting that we— that the Damyanks— will remember them. Look here, J. Gale, Esq., you sentimental old has-been, what do you mean, whimpering about them? You know good and well you never did like Yanks— killed your daddy and brother. But— poor old codgers, waiting out there—"

His walk had brought him to a fenced field. He peered across. It was set with upright and ghostly stones. He had come to the cemetery. He stopped, prickly. He heard creepy murmurs in the dusk. He saw each white stone as the reproachful spirit of an old soldier robbed of his pension of honor. He turned away with a measured calmness that was more panicky than a stumbling retreat.

The morning of the empty Decoration Day was radiant as sunshine upon a beech trunk. But nowhere was the old-time bustle of schoolgirls in bunting, of mothers preparing lunch baskets, of shabby and halting old civilians magically transformed into soldiers. A few families mechanically hung out flags. Mrs. Tiffany did not. When Mr. Gale came down to breakfast he found her caressing an ancient silken flag. She thrust it into a closet, locked the door, hastened out to the kitchen. She was slow in the serving of breakfast, looked dizzy, often pressed her hand against her side. Mr. Gale begged her to let him help. She forbade him sternly. She seemed to have a calm and embittered control of herself.

He hastened out of the house. There was no business to which he could attend on this holiday. He made shameless overtures for the company of Jimmy Martin, who was boisterous over the fact that summer vacation had begun, and his dear, dear teachers gone away. The Martin family was not going to any of the three or four picnics planned for the day, and Jimmy and Mr. Gale considered gravely the possibility of a fishing trip. They sat in canvas chairs on the tiny lawn, and forgot a certain difference in age.

The door of the Tiffany house slammed. They stopped, listened. Nervous footsteps were crossing the porch, coming along the gravel walk. They looked back. Running toward them was Mrs. Tiffany. She wore no hat. Her hair was like a shell-torn flag, thin gray over the yellowed skin of her brow. Her hands dabbled feebly in the air before her glaring eyes. She moaned :

"Oh, Mr. Gale, I can't stand it! Don't they know what they're doing? My boy lies there, my husband, and he's crying for me to come to him and show I remember him. I tell you I can hear him, and his voice sounds like a rainy wind. I told him I'd go to Woodlawn all by myself, I said I'd fill my little basket with flowers, and crabapple blossoms, but he said he wanted the others to come too, he wanted a Decoration Day parade that would honor all the graves. Oh, I heard him "

Mr. Gale had sprung up. He put his arm about her shoulder. He cried, "There will be a parade, ma'am! We'll remember the boys, every one of them, every grave. You go in the house, honey, and you put on your bonnet, and pack a little sack for you and me to eat after the ceremony, maybe you'll have time to bake a batch of biscuits, but anyway, in an hour or so, maybe hour and a half, you'll hear the parade coming, and you be all ready.'' Mr. Gale's voice had something of the ponderous integrity of distant cannon. He smoothed her disordered hair. He patted her, like the soft pawing of a fond old dog, and led her to the paint-blistered door of the house.

He went back to his canvas chair, scratching his scalp, shaking his head. Jimmy, who had edged away, returned and sighed, "Gee, I wisht I could do something."

"I bet you would, if you were a little older, James, but— better run away. This old Rebel has got to stir up his sleepy brain and conjure up a Federal parade, with a band and at least twenty flags, out of the sparrows in the street. Good-by."

After five minutes, or it may have been ten, of clawing at his chin, Mr. Gale looked happy. He hastened down the street. He entered the drug store, and from the telephone booth he talked to hotel clerks in three different towns within ten miles of Wakamin.

He hurried to the livery stable which operated the two cars in town that were for hire. One of the cars was out. The second was preparing to leave, as he lumbered up to the door.

"I want that car," he said to the stableman-chauffeur.

"Well, you can't have it." The stableman bent over, to crank up.

"Why not?"

"Because I'm going to take a skirt out for a spin, see?"

"Look here. I'm Mr. Gale who—"

"Aw, I know all about you. Seen you go by. You out-of-town guys think we have to drop everything else just to accommodate you—"

Mr. Gale puffed across the floor like a steam-roller. He said gently, "Son, I've been up all night, and I reckon I've had a lee-tle mite too much liquor. I've taken a fancy to going riding. Son, I've got the peacefulest heart that a grown-up human ever had; I'm like a little playing pussy-cat, I am; but Fve got a gun in my back pocket that carries the meanest .44-40 bullet in the South. Maybe youVe heard about us Southern fire-eaters, heh? Son, I only want that car for maybe two hours. Understand?"

He bellowed. He was making vast, vague, loosely swinging gestures, his perspiring hands very red. He caught the stableman by the shoulder. The man's Adam's apple worked grotesquely up and down. He whimpered :

''All right, I'll take you."

Mr. Gale pacifically climbed into the car. "Joralemon, son, and fast, son, particular fast," he murmured.

In the speeding car he meditated: "Let's see. Must be forty years since I've toted any kind of a gun— and twenty years since I've called anybody 'son.' Oh, well."

Again, "Let's see. I'll be a Major. No, a Colonel; Colonel Gale of the Tenth New York. Private Gale, I congratulate you. I reckon the best you ever got from a darky was 'Cap'n' or 'boss.' You're rising in the world, my boy. Poor woman! Poor, faithful woman "

When they reached the town of Joralemon, Mr. Gale leaned out from the car and inquired of a comer loafer, "Where's the Decoration Day parade? The G. A. R.?"

"At the exercises in Greenwood Cemetery."

"Greenwood, son," he blared, and the stableman made haste.

At the entrance to the cemetery Mr. Gale insinuated, "Now wait till I come back, son. I'm getting over that liquor, and I'm ugly, son, powerful ugly."

"All right," growled the stableman. "Say, do I get paid?"

"Here's five dollars. When I come back with my friends, there'll be another five. I'm going to steal a whole Decoration Day parade."

"How?"

"I'm going to surround them."

"My — Gawd!" whispered the stableman.

The Southerner bristled at the sight of the Northern regimental flag among the trees of the cemetery. But he shrugged his shoulders and waddled into the crowd. The morning's radiance brought out in hot primary colors the red and yellow of flowers in muddy glass vases upon the graves. Light flashed from the mirrory brown surfaces of polished granite headstones, with inscriptions cut in painfully white letters. The air was thick with the scent of dust and maple leaves and packed people. Round a clergyman in canonicals were the eight veterans now left in Joralemon; men to whose scrawny faces a dignity was given by their symbolic garb. From their eyes was purged all the meanness of daily grinding. The hand of a sparse-bearded Yankee, who wore an English flag pinned beside his G. A. R. button, was resting on the shoulder of a Teutonic-faced man with the emblem of the Sigel Corps.

Round the G. A. R. were ringed the Sons of Veterans, the Hose and Truck Company, the Women's Relief Corps, and the Joralemon Band; beyond them a great press of townspeople. The road beside the cemetery was packed with cars and buggies, and the stamp of horses' feet as they restlessly swished at flies gave a rustic rhythm to the pause in the clergyman's voice.

Here in a quiet town, unconscious of the stir of the world beyond, was renewed the passion of their faith in the Union.

Mr. Gale shoved forward into the front row. Everyone glared at the pushing stranger. The voice of the gray, sunken-templed clergyman sharpened with indignation for a second. Mr. Gale tried to look unconcerned. But he felt hot about the spine. The dust got into his throat. The people about him were elbowing and sticky. He was not happy. But he vowed, "By thunder, I'll pull this off if I have to kidnap the whole crowd."

As the clergyman finished his oration, Mr. Gale pushed among the G. A. R. He began loudly, cheerfully, "Gentlemen "

The clergyman stared down from his box rostrum. "What do you mean, interrupting this ceremony

The crowd was squeezing in, like a street mob about a man found murdered. Their voices united in a swelling whisper. Their gaping mouths were ugly. Mr. Gale was rigid with the anger that wipes out all fear of a crowd, and leaves a man facing them as though they were one contemptible opponent.

"Look here," he bawled, "I had proposed to join you in certain memorial plaiis. It may interest you to know that I am Colonel John Gale, and that I led the Tenth New York through most of the war!"

"Ah," purred the clergyman, "you are Colonel — Gale, is it?"

"I am." The clergyman licked his lips. With fictitious jocularity Mr. Gale said, "I see you do not salute your superior officer. But I reckon a dominie isn't like us old soldiers. Now, boys, listen to me. There's a little woman—"

The clergyman's voice cut in on this lumbering amiability as a knife cuts butter: ''My dear sir, I don't quite understand the reason for this farce. I am a 'dominie,' as you are pleased to call it, but also I am an old soldier, the present commander of this post, and it may interest you to know that I fought clear through the war in the Tenth New York! And if my memory is still good, you were not my commanding officer for any considerable period!"

"No!" bellowed Mr. Gale, "I wa'n't! I'm a Southerner. From Alabama. And after today I'm not even sure I'm reconstructed! I'm powerful glad I never was a bluebellied Yank, when I think of that poor little woman dying of a broken heart up in Wakamin!''

With banal phrases and sentimental touches, with simple words and no further effort to be friendly, he told the story of Mrs. Captain Tiffany, though he did not satisfy the beggar ears of the crowd with her name.

His voice was at times almost hostile. "So," he wound up, "I want you-all to come to Wakamin and decorate the graves there, too. You, my dear sir, I don't care a damaged Continental whether you ever salute me or not. If you boys do come to Wakamin, then I'll know there's still some men as there were in the '60's. But if you eight or nine great big husky young Yanks are afraid of one poor old lone Johnny Reb, then by God, sir, I win another scrimmage for the Confederate States of America!"

Silence. Big and red, Mr. Gale stood among them like a sandstone boulder. His eyes were steady and hard as his clenched fist. But his upper lip was trembling and covered with a triple row of sweat drops.

Slowly, as in the fumbling stupor of a trance, the clergyman drew off his canonicals and handed them to a boy. He was formal and thin and rather dry of aspect in his black frock coat. His voice was that of a tired, polite old gentleman, as he demanded of Mr. Gale, ''Have you a car to take us to Wakamin?"

"Room for five."

To a man beside him the clergyman said, "Will you have another car ready for us?" Abruptly his voice snapped: " 'Tention. Fall in. Form twos. B' th' right flank. For'ard. March!"

As he spoke he leaped down into the ranks, and the veterans tramped toward the gate of the cemetery, through the parting crowd. Their faces were blurred with weariness and dust and age, but they stared straight ahead, they marched stolidly, as though they had been ordered to occupy a dangerous position and were too fagged to be afraid.

The two rear-line men struck up with fife and drum. The fifer was a corpulent banker, but he tootled with the agility of a boy. The drummer was a wisp of humanity. Though his clay-hued hands kept up with the capering of ''When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again", his yellowish eyes were opening in an agonized stare, and his chin trembled.

"Halt!" the clergyman ordered. "Boys, seems tome the commander of this expedition ought to be Colonel Gale. Colonel, will you please take command of the post?"

"W— why, I wouldn't hardly call it regular."

"You old Rebel, I wouldn't call any of this regular!"

"Yes," said Mr. Gale. "Tention!"

The old drummer, his eyes opening wider and wider, sank forward from the knees, and held himself up only by trembling bent arms. Two men in the crowd caught him. "Go on!" he groaned. His drumsticks clattered on the ground.

Uneasily exchanging glances, the other old men waited. Each face said, "Risky business. Hot day. We might collapse, too."

The clergyman slipped the drum belt over his own head, picked up the sticks. "Play, confound you, Lanse!" he snapped at the pompous banker-fifer, and together they rolled into a rude version of "Marching Through Georgia."

The squad straightened its lines and marched on without even an order from Mr. Gale, who, at the head of the procession, was marveling, "I never did expect to march to that tune!

The two motor cars shot from Joralemon to Wakamin, with steering wheels wrenching and bucking on the sandy road, and old men clinging to seat-edge and robe-rack. They stopped before the Tiffany cottage.

Mrs. Tiffany sat on the porch, her blue bonnet lashed to her faded hair, with a brown veil, a basket of flowers and a shoe-box of lunch on her knees. As the cars drew up, she rushed out, with flustered greetings. The old men greeted her elaborately. One, who had known Captain Tiffany, became the noisy spokesman. But he had little of which to speak. And the whole affair suddenly became a vacuous absurdity. Now that Mr. Gale had them here, what was he going to do with them?

The quiet of the village street flowed over them. This was no parade; it was merely nine old men and an old woman talking in the dust. There was no music, no crowd of spectators, none of the incitements of display which turn the ordinary daily sort of men into one marching thrill. They were old, and tired, and somewhat hungry, and no one saw them as heroes. A small automobile passed; the occupants scarce looked at them.

The unparading parade looked awkward, tried to keep up brisk talk, and became dull in the attempt.

They were engulfed in the indifferent calm of the day. After the passing of the one automobile, there was no one to be seen. The box-elder trees nodded slowly. Far off a rooster crowed, once. In a vacant lot near by a cudchewing cow stared at them dumb and bored. Little sounds of insects in the grass underlaid the silence with a creeping sleepiness. The village street, stretching out toward the wheat fields beyond, grew hotter and more hazy to their old eyes. They all stood about the cars, plucking at hinges and door-edges, wondering how they could give up this childish attempt and admit that they were grannies. A sparrow hopped among them unconcernedly.

"Well?" said the clergyman.

"Wel-l—" said Mr. Gale.

Then Jimmy Martin strolled out in front of his house.

He saw them. He stopped short. He made three jubilant skips, and charged on them.

"Are you going to parade?" he shrilled at Mr. Gale.

"Afraid not, Jimmy. Reckon we haven't quite got the makings. The young people don't appear to care. Reckon we'll give up."

"No, no, no!" Jimmy wailed. "The Scouts want to come!"

He dashed into his house, while the collapsed parade stared after him with mild elderly wonder. He came back to the gate. He wore a Boy Scout uniform and a red neckerchief, and he carried a cheap bugle.

He stood at the gate, his eyes a glory, and he blew the one bugle call he knew— the Reveille. Wavering at first, harsh and timorous, the notes crept among the slumberous trees, then swelled, loud, madly imploring, shaking with a boy's worship of the heroes.

Another boy ran out from a gate down the street, looked, came running, stumbling, panting. He was bare headed, in corduroy knickers unbuckled at the knees, but in his face was the same ageless devotion that had made a splendor of the mere boys who marched out in '64 and '65. He saluted Jimmy. Jimmy spoke, and the two of them, curiously dignified, very earnest, marched out before the scatter of old people and stood at attention, their serious faces toward Woodlawn and the undecked graves.

From a box-elder down the street climbed another boy; one popped out of a crabapple orchard; a dozen others from drowsy distances. They scurried like suddenly disturbed ants. They could be heard calling, clattering into houses. They came out again in Scout uniforms; they raced down the street and fell into line.

They stood with clean backs rigid, eyes forward, waiting to obey orders. As he looked at them, Mr. Gale knew that some day Wakamin would again have a soul.

Jimmy Martin came marching up to Mr. Gale. His voice was plaintive and reedy, but it was electric as he reported: "The Boy Scouts are ready, sir.''

" 'Tention!" shouted Mr. Gale.

The old men's backs had been straightening, the rheumy redness of disappointment had gone from their eyes. They lined out behind the boys. Even the Wakamin stableman seemed to feel inspiration. He sprang from his car, helped Mrs. Tiffany in, and wheeled the car to join the procession. From nowhere, from everywhere, a crowd had come, and stood on the sidewalk, rustling with faint cheering. Two women hastened to add flowers to those in Mrs. Tiffany's basket. The benumbed town had awakened to energy and eagerness and hope.

To the clergyman Mr. Gale suggested, "Do you suppose that just for once this Yankee fife-and-drum corps could play 'Dixie'?" Instantly the clergyman-drummer and the banker-fifer flashed into "Way Down South in the Land of Cotton." The color-bearer raised the flag.

Mr. Gale roared, "Forward! M—"

There was a high wail from Mrs. Tiffany: "Wait! Land o' goodness! What's Decoration Day without one single sword, and you menfolks never thinking—"

She ran into her house. She came out bearing in her two hands, as though it were an altar vessel, the saber of Captain Tiffany.

"Mr. Gale, will you carry a Northerner's sword?" she asked.

"No, ma'am, I won't!"

She gasped.

He buckled on the sword belt, and cried, "This isn't a Northerner's sword any more, nor a Southerner's, ma'am. It's an American's! Forward! March!"

____________________

12: The Accident of Crime

Stacy Aumonier

1877-1928

The Saturday Evening Post, 11 March, 1922

Stacy James Aumonier

EVERY SEAMAN who makes the city of Bordeaux a port of call knows the Rue Lucien Faure. It is one of those irregular streets which one finds in the neighbourhood of docks in every city in the world. Cord wainers, ships stores, cafés and strange foreign eating-houses jostle each other indiscriminately. At the farther end of the Rue Lucien Faure, and facing Bassin à Flot No. 2, is a little cul-de-sac known as Place Duquesne, an obscure honeycomb of high dingy houses. It had often been pointed out to the authorities that the Place Duquesne was a scandal to the neighbourhood; not that the houses themselves were either better or worse than those of adjoining streets, but that the inhabitants belonged almost entirely to the criminal classes. A murderer, an apache, a blackmailer, a coiner, hardly ever appeared in the Court of Justice without his habitation being traced to this unsavoury retreat.

And the authorities did nothing. Indeed, Chief Inspector Tolozan, who had that neighbourhood under his special supervision, said that he preferred it as it was. He affirmed— not unreasonably— that it was better to have all one's birds in one nest rather than have them scattered all over the wood. Tolozan, although a practical man, was something of a visionary. He was of that speculative turn of mind which revels in theories. The contemplation of crime moved him in somewhat the same way that a sunset will affect a landscape painter. He indulged in broad generalities, and it always gave him a mild thrill of pleasure when the actions or behaviour of his protégés substantiated his theories.

In a detached way, he had quite an affection for his "birds," as he called them. He knew their record, their characteristics, their tendencies, their present occupation, if any, their place of abode— which was generally the Place Duquesne. If old Carros, the forger, moved from the attic in No. 17 to the basement in No. 11, Monsieur Tolozan would sense the reason of this change. And he never interfered until the last minute. He allowed Carros to work three months on that very ingenious plan for counterfeiting one franc notes. He waited till the plates were quite complete before he stepped in with his quiet:

"Now, mon brave, it distresses me to interfere..."

He admired the plates enormously, and in the van on the way to the police court he sighed many times, and ruminated upon what he called "the accident of crime." One of his pet theories was that no man was entirely criminal. Somewhere at some time it had all been just touch and go. With better fortune the facile Carros might now be the director of an insurance company, or perhaps an eminent pianist. Another saying of his, which he was very fond of repeating, was this:

"The law does not sit in judgment on people. Laws are only made for the protection of the citizen."

His colleagues were inclined to laugh at "Papa Tolozan," as they called him, but they were bound to respect his thoroughness and conscientiousness, and they treated his passion for philosophic speculation as merely the harmless eccentricity of an urbane and charming character. Perhaps in this attitude toward crime there have always been two schools of thought, the one which regards it— like Tolozan— as "the accident," the other, as represented by the forceful Muguet of the Council of Jurisprudence at Bayonne, who insists that crime is an ineradicable trait, an inheritance, a fate. In spite of their divergence of outlook these two were great friends, and many and long were the arguments they enjoyed over a glass of vermouth and seltzer at a quiet café they sometimes favoured in the Cours du Pavé, when business brought them together. Muguet would invariably clinch the argument with a staccato:

"Well, come now, what about old Laissac?"

Then he would slap his leg and laugh. Here, indeed, was a hard case. Here, indeed, was an irreconcilable, an intransigeant, an ingrained criminal, and as this story principally concerns old Laissac it may be as well to describe him a little in detail at once. He was at that time fifty-seven years of age. Twenty-one years and ten months of that period had been passed in penitentiaries, prisons, and convict establishments. He was already an old man, but a wiry, energetic old man, with a battered face seamed by years of vicious dissipations and passions.

At the age of seventeen he had killed a Chinaman. The affair was the outcome of a dockside mêlée, and many contended that Laissac was not altogether responsible. However that may be, the examining magistrate at that time was of opinion that there had been rather too much of that sort of thing of late, and that an example must be made of someone. Even the Chink must be allowed some show of protection. Laissac was sent to a penitentiary for two years. He returned an avowed enemy of society. Since that day, he had been convicted of burglary, larceny, passing of counterfeit coins, assault, and drunkenness. These were only the crimes of which he had actually been convicted, but everyone knew that they were only an infinitesimal fraction of the crimes of which he was guilty.

He was a cunning old man. He had bashed one of his pals and maimed him for life, and the man was afraid to give evidence against him. He had treated at least two women with almost unspeakable cruelty. There was no record of his ever having done a single action of kindliness or unselfishness. He had, moreover, been a perverter and betrayer of others. He bred crime with malicious enjoyment. He trained young men in the tricks of the trade. He dealt in stolen property. He was a centre, a focus, of criminal activity. One evening, Muguet remarked to Tolozan, as they sipped their coffee:

"The law is too childish. That man has been working steadily all his life to destroy and pervert society. He has a diseased mind. Why aren't we allowed to do away with him? If, as you say, the laws were made to protect citizens, there's only one way to protect ourselves against a villain like Laissac—the guillotine."

Tolozan shook his head slowly. "No, the law only allows capital punishment in the case of murder."

"I know that, my old cabbage. What I say is, why should society bother to keep an old ruffian like that?"

Tolozan did not answer, and Muguet continued:

"Where is he now?"

"He lives in an attic in the Place Duquesne, No. 33."

"Are you watching him?"

"Oh, yes."

"Been to call on him?"

"I was there yesterday."

"What was he doing?"

"Playing with a dog."

Muguet slapped his leg, and threw back his head. Playing with a dog! That was excellent! The greatest criminal in Bordeaux— playing with a dog! Muguet didn't know why it was so funny. Perhaps it was just the vision of his old friend, Tolozan, solemnly sitting there and announcing the fact that Laissac was playing with a dog, as though it were a matter of profound significance. Tolozan looked slightly annoyed and added:

"He's very fond of dogs."

This seemed to Muguet funnier still, and it was some moments before he could steady his voice to say:

"Well, I'm glad he's fond of something. Was there nothing you could lay your hands on?"

"Nothing."

It is certainly true that Muguet had a strong case in old Laissac to confute his friend's theories. Where was "the accident of crime" in such a confirmed criminal?

It is also true old Laissac was playing with a dog, and at that very moment. Whilst the representatives of law and order were discussing him in the Café Basque he was tickling the ribs of his beloved Sancho, and saying:

"Up, soldier. Courage, my old warrior."

Sancho was a strange, forlorn-looking beast, not entirely retriever, not wholly poodle, indeed not necessarily dog at all. He had large sentimental eyes, and he worshipped his master with unquestioning adoration. When his master was out, as he frequently was on strange nocturnal adventures, he would lie on the mat by the door, his nostrils snuggled between his paws, and watch the door. Directly his master entered the house, Sancho would be aware of it. He would utter one long whine of pleasure, and his skin would shake and tremble with excitement. The reason of his perturbations this morning was that part of the chimney had fallen down with a crash. The brickwork had given way, and a little way up old Laissac could see a narrow opening, revealing the leads on the adjoining roof. It was summer time and such a disaster did not appal him unduly.

"Courage," he said, "to-morrow that shall be set right. To-day and to-night we have another omelette in the pan, old comrade. To-morrow there will be ham bones for Sancho, and a nice bottle of fine champagne for the breadwinner, eh? Lie down, boy, that's only old Grognard!"

The dog went into his corner, and a most strange-looking old man entered the room. He had thin white hair, a narrow horse-like face with prominent eyes. His face appeared much too thin and small for the rest of his body, which had unexpected projections and convolutions. From his movements it was immediately apparent that his left side was paralysed. On the left breast of his shabby green coat was a medal for saving lives. The medal recorded that, at the age of twenty-six, he had plunged into the Garonne, and saved the lives of two boys. He sat down and produced a sheet of dirty paper.

"Everything is in order," he said dolefully.

"Good," said Laissac. "Show us the plan."

"This is the garage and the room above where you enter. The chauffeur left with Madame Delannelle and her maid for Pau this morning. They will be away three weeks or more. Monsieur Delannelle sleeps in this room on the first floor; but as you know, he is a drug fiend. From eleven o'clock till four in the morning he is in a coma. Lisette and the other maid sleep on the top floor. Lisette will see that this other woman gets a little of the white powder in her cider before she retires. There is no one else in the house. There is no dog."

"It appears a modest enterprise."

"It is as easy as opening a bottle of white oil. The door of the room above the garage, connecting with the first landing in the house, is locked and the key taken away, but it is a very old-fashioned lock. You could open it with a bone toothpick, master."

"H'm. I suppose Lisette expects something out of this?"

The old man sniggered, and blew his nose on a red handkerchief.

"She's doing it for love."

"You mean— young Leon Briteuil?"

"Yes, now this is the point, master. Are you going to crack this crib yourself, or would you like young Briteuil to go along? He's a promising lad, and he would be proud to be in a job with you."

"What stuff is there, there?"

"In the second drawer on the left-hand side in a bureau in the salon is a cash box, where Monsieur keeps the money from his rents. He owns a lot of small property. There ought to be about ten thousand francs. Madame has taken most of her jewels, but there are a few trinkets in a jewel case in the bedroom. For the rest, there is a collection of old coins in a cabinet, some of them gold. That is in the library, here, see? And the usual silver plate and trinkets scattered about the house. Altogether a useful haul, too much for one man to carry."

"Very well, I'll take the young ——, tell him to be at the Place du Pont, the other side of the river, at twelve-thirty. If he fails or makes the slightest slip, I'll break his face. Tell him that. That's all."

"Right you are, master."

Young Briteuil was not quite the lion-hearted person he liked to pose as, and this message frightened him. Long before the fateful hour of the appointment, he was dreading the association of the infamous Laissac more than the hazardous adventure upon which he was committed. He would have rather made the attempt by himself. He was neat with his fingers and had been quite successful pilfering little articles from the big stores, but he had never yet experienced the thrill of housebreaking.

Moreover, he felt bitterly that the arrangement was unjust. It was he who had manœuvred the whole field of operations, he with his spurious love-making to the middle-aged coquettish Lisette. There was a small fortune to be picked up, but because he was pledged to the gang of which Laissac was the chief, his award would probably amount to a capful of sous. Laissac had the handling of the loot, and he would say that it realised anything he fancied. Grognard had to have his commission also. The whole thing was grossly unfair. He deeply regretted that he had not kept the courting of Lisette a secret. Visions of unholy orgies danced before his eyes. However, there it was, and he had to make the best of it. He was politeness and humility itself when he met old Laissac at the corner of the Place du Pont punctually at the hour appointed. Laissac was in one of his sullen moods and they trudged in silence out to the northern suburb where the villa of Monsieur Delannelle was situated.

The night was reasonably dark and fine. As they got nearer and nearer to their destination, and Laissac became more and more unresponsive, the younger man's nerves began to get on edge. He was becoming distinctly jumpy, and, as people will in such a condition, he carried things to the opposite extreme. He pretended to be extremely light-hearted, and to treat the affair as a most trivial exploit. He even assumed an air of flippancy, but in this attitude he was not encouraged by his companion, who on more than one occasion told him to keep his ugly mouth shut.

"You won't be so merry when you get inside," he said.

"But there is no danger, no danger at all," laughed the young man unconvincingly.

"There's always danger in our job," growled Laissac. "It's the things you don't expect that you've got to look out for. You can make every preparation, think of every eventuality, and then suddenly, presto! a bullet from some unknown quarter. The gendarmes may have had wind of it all the time. Monsieur Delannelle may not have indulged in his dope for once. He may be sitting up with a loaded gun. The girl Lisette may be an informer. The other girl may have heard and given the game away. Madame and the chauffeur may return at any moment. People have punctures sometimes. You can even get through the job and then be nabbed at the corner of the street, or the next morning, or the following week. There's a hundred things likely to give you away. Inspector Tolozan himself may be hiding in the garden with a half-dozen of his thick-necks. Don't you persuade yourself it's a soft thing, my white-livered cockerel."

This speech did not raise Leon's spirits. When they reached the wall adjoining the garage, he was trembling like a leaf, and his teeth began to chatter.

"I could do with a nip of brandy," he said sullenly in a changed voice.

The old criminal looked at him contemptuously, and produced a flask from some mysterious pocket. He took a swig, and then handed it to his companion. He allowed him a little gulp, and then snatched the flask away.

"Now, up you go," he said. Leon knew then that escape was impossible. Old Laissac held out his hands for him to rest his heel upon. He did so, and found himself jerked to the top of the wall. The old man scrambled up after him somehow. They then dropped down quietly on to some sacking in the corner of the yard. The garage and the house were in complete darkness. The night was unnaturally still, the kind of night when every little sound becomes unduly magnified. Laissac regarded the dim structure of the garage with a professional eye. Leon was listening for sounds, and imagining eyes peering at them through the shutters... perhaps a pistol or two already covering them. His heart was beating rapidly. He had never imagined it was going to be such a nerve-racking business. Curse the old man! Why didn't he let him have his full whack at the brandy?

A sudden temptation crept over him. The old man was peering forward. He would hit him suddenly on the back of the head and then bolt. Yes, he would. He knew he would never have the courage to force his way into that sinister place of unknown terrors. He would rather die out here in the yard.

"Come on," said Laissac, advancing cautiously toward the door of the garage.

Leon slunk behind him, watching for his opportunity. He had no weapon, nothing but his hands, and he knew that in a struggle with Laissac he would probably be worsted. The tidy concrete floor of the yard held out no hope of promiscuous weapons. Once he thought: "I will strike him suddenly on the back of the head with all my might. As he falls I'll strike him again. When he's on the ground I'll kick his brains out..."

To such a desperate pass can fear drive a man! Laissac stood by the wood frame of the garage door looking up and judging the best way to make an entrance of the window above. While he was doing so Leon stared round, and his eye alighted on a short dark object near the wall. It was a piece of iron piping. He sidled toward it, and surreptitiously picked it up. At that exact instant Laissac glanced round at him abruptly and whispered:

"What are you doing?"

Now must this desperate venture be brought to a head. He stumbled toward Laissac, mumbling vaguely:

"I thought this might be useful."

Leon was left-handed and he gripped the iron piping in that hand. Laissac was facing him, and he must be put off his guard. He mumbled:

"What's the orders, master?"

He doubtless hoped from this that Laissac would turn round and look up again. He made no allowance for that animal instinct of self-preservation which is most strongly marked in men of low mentality. Without a word old Laissac sprang at him. He wanted to scream with fear, but instead he struck wildly with the iron. He felt it hit something ineffectually. A blow on the face staggered him. In the agony of recovery he realised that his weapon had been wrenched from his hands! Now, indeed, he would scream, and rouse the neighbourhood to save him from this monster. If he could only get his voice! If he could only get his voice! Curse this old devil! Where is he? Spare me! Spare me! Oh, no, no... oh, God!

Old Laissac stuffed the body behind a bin where rubbish was put, in the corner of the yard. The struggle had been curiously silent and quick. The only sound had been the thud of the iron on his treacherous assistant's skull, a few low growls and blows. Fortunately, the young man had been too paralysed with fear to call out. Laissac stood in the shadow of the wall and waited. Had the struggle attracted any attention? Would it be as well to abandon the enterprise? He thought it all out dispassionately. An owl, with a deep mellow note, sailed majestically away toward a neighbouring church. Perhaps it was rather foolish. If he were caught, and the body discovered— that would be the end of Papa Laissac! That would be a great misfortune. Everyone would miss him so, and he still had life and fun in him. He laughed bitterly. Yes, perhaps he had better steal quietly away. He moved over to the outer wall.

Then a strange revulsion came over him, perhaps a deep bitterness with life, or a gambler's lure. Perhaps it was only professional vanity. He had come here to burgle this villa, and he disliked being thwarted. Besides it was such a soft thing, all the dispositions so carefully laid. He had already thought out the way to mount to the bedroom above the door. In half an hour he might be richer by many thousand francs, and he had been getting rather hard up of late. That young fool would be one less to pay. He shrugged his broad shoulders, and crept back to the garage door.

In ten minutes time he had not only entered the room above the garage but had forced the old-fashioned lock, and entered the passage connecting with the house. He was perfectly cool now, his senses keenly alert. He went down on his hands and knees and listened. He waited some time focussing in his mind the exact disposition of the rooms as shown in the plan old Grognard had shown him. He crawled along the corridor like a large gorilla. At the second door on the left he heard the heavy, stentorian breathing of a man inside the room. Monsieur Delannelle, good! It sounded like the breathing of a man under the influence of drugs or drink.

After that, with greater confidence, he made his way downstairs to the salon. With unerring precision he located the drawer in the bureau where the cash box was kept. The box was smaller than he expected and he decided to take it away rather than to indulge in the rather noisy business of forcing the lock. He slipped it into a sack. Guided by his electric torch, he made a rapid round of the reception-rooms. He took most of the collection of old coins from the cabinet in the library and a few more silver trinkets. Young Briteuil would certainly have been useful carrying all this bulkier stuff. Rather unfortunate, but still it served the young fool right. He, Laissac, was not going to encumber himself with plate... a few small and easily negotiable pieces were all he desired, sufficient to keep him in old brandy, and Sancho in succulent ham bones for a few months to come. A modest and simple fellow, old Laissac.

The sack was soon sufficiently full. He paused by the table in the dining-room and helped himself to another swig of brandy, then he blinked his eyes. What else was there? Oh, yes, Grognard had said that there were a few of Madame's jewels in the jewel case. But that was in the bedroom where Monsieur Delannelle was sleeping, that was a different matter, and yet after all, perhaps, a pity not to have the jewels!

H'm, Monsieur Delannelle was in one of his drug stupours. It must be about two o'clock. They said he never woke till five or six. Why not? Besides what was a drugged man? He couldn't give any trouble. If he tried to, Laissac could easily knock him over the head as he had young Briteuil— might just as well have those few extra jewels. His senses tingled rather more acutely as he once more crept upstairs. He pressed his ear to the keyhole of Monsieur Delannelle's bedroom. The master of the house was still sleeping.

He turned the handle quietly, listened, then stole into the room, closing the door after him. Now for it. He kept the play of his electric torch turned from the bed. The sleeper was breathing in an ugly, irregular way. He swept the light along the wall, and located the dressing-table— satinwood and silver fittings. A new piece of furniture— curse it! The top right-hand drawer was locked. And that was the drawer which the woman said contained the jewel case. Dare he force the lock? Was it worth it? He had done very well. Why not clear off now? Madame had probably taken everything of worth. He hesitated and looked in the direction of the sleeper. Rich guzzling old pig! Why should he have all these comforts and luxuries whilst Laissac had to work hard and at such risk for his living? Be damned to him. He put down his sack and took a small steel tool out of his breast pocket. It was necessary to make a certain amount of noise, but after all the man in the bed wasn't much better than a corpse. Laissac went down on his knees and applied himself to his task.

The minutes passed. Confound it! It was a very obstinate lock. He was becoming quite immersed in its intricacy when something abruptly jarred his sensibilities. It was a question of silence. The sleeper was no longer snoring or breathing violently. In fact he was making no noise at all. Laissac was aware of a queer tremor creeping down his spine for the first time that evening. He was a fool not to have cleared out after taking the cash box. He had overdone it. The man in bed was awake and watching him! What was the best thing to do? Perhaps the fool had a revolver! If there was any trouble he must fight. He couldn't allow himself to be taken, with that body down below stuffed behind the dust-bin. Why didn't the tormentor call out or challenge him? Laissac crept lower and twisted his body into a crouching position.

By this action he saved his life, for there was a sudden blinding flash, and a bullet struck the dressing-table just at the place where his head had been. This snapping of the tension was almost a relief. It was a joy to revert to the primitive instincts of self-preservation. At the foot of the bed an eiderdown had fallen. Instinct drove him to snatch this up. He crumpled it up into the rough form of a body and thrust it with his right hand over the end of the bed. Another bullet went through it and struck the dressing-table again. But as this happened, Laissac, who had crept to the left side of the bed sprang across it and gripped the sleeper's throat. The struggle was of momentary duration. The revolver dropped to the floor. The man addicted to drugs gasped, spluttered, then his frame shook violently and he crumpled into an inert mass upon the bed. A blind fury was upon Laissac. He struck the still, cold thing again and again, then a revulsion of terror came over him. He crouched in the darkness, sweating with fear.

"They'll get me this time," he thought. "Those shots must have been heard. Lisette, the other maid, the neighbours, the gendarmes... two of these disgusting bodies to account for. I'd better leave the swag and clear." He drained the rest of the brandy and staggered uncertainly toward the door. The house was very still. He turned the handle and went into the passage. Then one of those voices which were always directing his life said:

"Courage, old man, why leave the sack behind? You've worked for it. Besides, one might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb!"

He went quietly back and picked up the sack. But his hands were shaking violently. As he was returning, the sack with its metallic contents struck the end of the brass bed. This little accident affected him fantastically. He was all fingers and thumbs to-night. What was the matter? Was he losing his nerve? Getting old? Of course, the time must come when— God! What was that? He stood dead still by the jamb of the door. There was the sound of the stealthy tread on the stairs, the distinct creak of a board. How often in his life had he not imagined that! But there was no question about it to-night. He was completely unstrung.

"If there's another fight I won't be able to face it. I'm done."

An interminable interval of time passed, and then—that quiet creaking of another board, the person, whoever it was, was getting nearer. He struggled desperately to hold himself together, to be prepared for one more struggle, even if it should be his last. Suddenly a whisper came down the stairs:

"Leon!"

Leon! What did they mean? Eh? Oh, yes— Leon Briteuil! Of course that fool of a woman, the informer— Lisette. She thought it was Leon. Leon, her lover. He breathed more easily. Women have their uses and purposes after all. But he must be very circumspect. There must be no screaming. She repeated:

"Leon, is that you?"

With a great effort he controlled his voice.

"It's all right. I'm Leon's friend. He's outside."

The woman gave a little gasp of astonishment.

"Oh! I did not know—"

"Very quietly, mademoiselle. Compose yourself. I must now rejoin him. Everything is going well."

"But I would see him. I wish to see him to-night. He promised—"

Laissac hurried noiselessly down the stairs, thankful for the darkness. He waited till he had reached the landing below. Then he called up in a husky voice:

"Wait till ten minutes after I have left the house, mademoiselle, then come down. You will find your Leon waiting for you behind the dust-bin in the yard."

And fortunately for Lisette's momentary peace of mind, she could not see the inhuman grin which accompanied this remark.

From the moment of his uttering it till four hours later, when his mangled body was discovered by a gendarme on the pavement just below the window of the house in which he lived in the Place Duquesne, there is no definite record of old Laissac's movements or whereabouts.

It exists only in those realms of conjecture in which Monsieur Tolozan is so noted an explorer.

Old Laissac had a genius for passing unnoticed. He could walk through the streets of Bordeaux in broad daylight with stolen clocks under each arm and it never occurred to any one to suspect him, but when it came to travelling in the dark he was unique. At the inquest, which was held five days later, not a single witness could come forward and say that they had seen anything of him either that evening or night.

THAT highly eminent advocate Maxim Colbert, president of the court, passed from the cool mortuary into the stuffy courthouse with a bored, preoccupied air. Dead bodies did not greatly interest him, and he had had too much experience of them to be nauseated by them— besides, an old criminal! It appeared to him, a tedious and unnecessary waste of time. The old gentleman had something much more interesting occupying his mind. He was expecting his daughter-in-law to present his son with a child. The affair might happen now, any moment, indeed, it might already have happened. Any moment a message might come with the good tidings. A son! Of course it must be a son! The line of Colbert tracing their genealogy back to the reign of Louis XIV— must be perpetuated. A distinguished family of advocates, generals, rulers of men. A Son! It annoyed him a little in that he suspected that his own son was anxious to have a daughter. Bah! Selfishness.

Let us see what is this case all about? Oh, yes, an old criminal named Theodore Laissac, aged fifty-seven, wanted by the police in connection with a mysterious crime at the villa of Monsieur and Madame Delannelle. The body found by a printer's devil, named Adolph Roger, at 4.15 o'clock on the morning of the ninth, on the pavement of the Place Duquesne. Witness informed police. Sub-inspector Floquette attested to the finding of body as indicated by witness. The position of body directly under attic window, five stories high, occupied by deceased, suggesting that he had fallen or thrown himself therefrom. Good! Quite clear. A life of crime, result— suicide. Will it be a boy or girl? Let us have the deceased's record....

A TALL square-bearded inspector stood up in the body of the court, and in a sepulchral voice read out the criminal life record of Theodore Laissac. It was not pretty reading. It began at the age of seventeen with the murder of the Chinaman, Ching Loo, and from thence onward it revealed a deplorable story of villainy and depravity. The record of evil doings and the award of penalties became monotonous. The mind of Maxim Colbert wandered back to his son, and to his son's son. He had already seen the case in a nutshell and dismissed it. It would give him a pleasant opportunity a little later on. A homily on the wages of sin... a man whose life was devoted to evil-doing, in the end driven into a corner by the forces of justice, smitten by the demons of conscience, dies the coward's death. A homily on cowardice, quoting a passage from Thomas à Kempis, excellent!... Would they send him a telegram? Or would the news come by hand? What was that the Counsel for the Right of the Poor was saying? Chief Inspector Tolozan wished to give evidence. Ah, yes, why not? A worthy fellow, Inspector Tolozan. He had known him for many years, worked with him on many cases, an admirable, energetic officer, a little given to theorising—an interesting fellow, though. He would cross-examine him himself.

Inspector Tolozan took his place in the witness box, and bowed to the president. His steady grey eyes regarded the court thoughtfully as he tugged at his thin grey imperial.

"Now, Inspector Tolozan, I understand that you have this district in which this— unfortunate affair took place, under your own special supervision?"

"Yes, monsieur le président."

"You have heard the evidence of the witnesses Roger and Floquette with regard to the finding of the body?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Afterward, I understand, you made an inspection of the premises occupied by the deceased?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"At what time was that?"

"At six-fifteen, monsieur."

"Did you arrive at any conclusions with regard to the cause or motive of the— er— accident?"

"Yes, monsieur le président."

"What conclusions did you come to?"

"I came to the conclusion that the deceased, Theodore Laissac, met his death trying to save the life of a dog."

"A dog! Trying to save the life of a dog!"

"Yes, monsieur."

The president looked at the court, the court looked at the president and shuffled with papers, glancing apprehensively at the witness between times. There was no doubt that old Tolozan was becoming cranky, very cranky indeed. The president cleared his throat— was he to be robbed of his homily on the wages of sin?

"Indeed, Monsieur Tolozan, you came to the conclusion that the deceased met his death trying to save the life of a dog! Will you please explain to the court how you came to these conclusions?"

"Yes, monsieur le président; the deceased had a dog to which he was very devoted."

"Wait one moment, Inspector Tolozan, how do you know that he was devoted to this dog?"

"I have seen him with it. Moreover, during the years he has been under my supervision he has always had a dog to which he was devoted. I could call some of his criminal associates to prove that, although he was frequently cruel to men, women, and even children, he would never strike or be unkind to a dog. He would never burgle a house guarded by a dog in case he had to use violence."

"Proceed."

"During that day or evening there had apparently been a slight subsidence in the chimney place of the attic occupied by Laissac. Some brickwork had collapsed, leaving a narrow aperture just room enough for a dog to squeeze its body through, and get out on the sloping leads of the house next door. The widow Forbin, who occupies the adjoining attic, complains that she was kept awake for three hours that night by the whining of a dog on the leads above. This whining ceased about three-thirty, which must have been the time that the deceased met his death. There was only one way for a man to get from his attic to these leads and that was a rain-water pipe, sloping from below the window at an angle of forty-five degrees to the roof next door. He could stand on this water pipe, but there was nothing to cling to except small projections of brick till he could scramble hold of the gutter above. He never reached the gutter."

"All of this is pure conjecture, of course, Inspector Tolozan?"

"Not entirely, monsieur le président. My theory is that after Laissac's departure, the dog became disconsolate and restless, as they often will, knowing by some mysterious instinct that its master is in danger. He tried to get out of the room and eventually succeeded in forcing his way through the narrow aperture in the fireplace. His struggle getting through brought down some more brickwork and closed up the opening. This fact I have verified. Out on the sloping roof the dog naturally became terrified. There was no visible means of escape; the roof was sloping, and the night cold. Moreover, he seemed more cut off from his master than ever. As the widow, Forbin, asserts, he whined pitiably. Laissac returned some time after three o'clock. He reached the attic. The first thing he missed was the dog. He ran to the window and heard it whining on the roof above. Probably he hesitated for some time as to the best thing to do. The dog leaned over and saw him. He called to it to be quiet, but so agitated did it appear, hanging over the edge of that perilous slope, that Laissac thought every moment that it would jump. Monsieur le président, nearly every crime has been lain at the door of the deceased, but he has never been accused of lack of physical courage. Moreover, he was accustomed to climbing about buildings. He dropped through that window and started to climb up."

"How do you know this?"

"I examined the water pipe carefully. The night was dry and there had not been rain for three days. Laissac had removed his boots. He knew that it would naturally be easier to walk along a pipe in his socks. There are the distinct marks of stockinged feet on the dusty pipes for nearly two metres of the journey. The body was bootless and the boots were found in the attic. But he was an old man for his age, and probably he had had an exhausting evening. He never quite reached the gutter."

"Are the marks on the gutter still there?"

"No, but I drew the attention of three of my subordinates to the fact, and they are prepared to support my view. It rained the next day. The body of the dog was found by the side of its master."

"Indeed! Do you suggest that the dog— committed suicide as it were?"

Tolozan shrugged his shoulders and bowed. It was not his business to understand the psychology of dogs. He was merely giving evidence in support of his theories concerning the character of criminals— "birds"— and the accident of crime.

Maxim Colbert was delighted. The whole case had been salvaged from the limbo of dull routine. He even forgave Tolozan for causing him to jettison those platitudes upon the wages of sin. He had made it interesting. Besides, he felt in a good humour— it would surely be a boy! The procedure of the court bored him, but he was noticeably cheerful, almost gay. He thanked the inspector profusely for his evidence. Once he glanced at the clock casually, and said in an impressive voice:

"Perhaps we may say of the deceased— he lived a vicious life, but he died not ingloriously."

The court broke up and he passed down into a quadrangle at the back where a pale sun filtered. Lawyers, ushers, court functionaries and police officials were scattering or talking in little groups. Standing outside a group he saw the spare figure of Inspector Tolozan. He touched his arm and smiled.

"Well, my friend, you established an interesting case. I feel that the verdict was just, and yet I cannot see that it in any way corroborates your theory of the accident of crime."

Tolozan paused and blinked up at the sun.

"It did not corroborate, perhaps, but it did nothing to—"

"Well? This old man was an inveterate criminal. The fact that he loved a dog— it's not a very great commendation. Many criminals do."

"But they would not give their lives, monsieur. A man who would do that is capable of— I mean to say it was probably an accident that he was not a better man."

"Possibly, possibly! But the record, my dear Tolozan!"

"One may only conjecture."

"What is your conjecture?"

Tolozan gazed dreamily up at the Gothic tracery of the adjoining chapel. Then he turned to Monsieur Colbert and said very earnestly:

"You must remember that there was nothing against Laissac until the age of seventeen. He had been a boy of good character. His father was an honest wheelwright. At the age of seventeen the boy was to go to sea on the sailing ship La Turenne. Owing to some trouble with the customs authorities the sailing of the ship was delayed twenty-four hours. The boy was given shore leave. He hung about the docks. There was nothing to do. He had no money to spend on entertainment. My conjecture is this. Let us suppose it was a day like this, calm and sunny with a certain quiet exhilaration in the air. Eh? The boy wanders around the quays and stares in the shops. Suddenly at the corner of the Rue Bayard he peeps down into a narrow gally and beholds a sight which drives the blood wildly through his veins."

"What sight, Monsieur Tolozan?"

"The Chinaman, Chong Loo, being cruel to a dog."

"Ah! I see your implication."

"The boy sees red. There is the usual brawl and scuffle. He possibly does not realise his own strength. Follow the law court and the penitentiary. Can you not understand how such an eventuality would embitter him against society? To him in the hereafter the dog would stand as the symbol of patient suffering, humanity as the tyrant. He would be at war for ever, an outcast, a derelict. He was raw, immature, uneducated. He was at the most receptive stage. His sense of justice was outraged. The penitentiary made him a criminal."

"Then from this you mean—"

"I mean that if the good ship La Turenne had sailed to time, or if he had not been given those few hours' leave, he might by this time have been a master mariner, or in any case a man who could look the world in the face. That is what I mean by the accident—"

"Excuse me."

A messenger had handed Monsieur Colbert a telegram. He tore it open feverishly and glanced at the contents. An expression of annoyance crept over his features. He tore the form up in little pieces and threw it petulantly upon the ground. He glanced up at Tolozan absently as though he had seen him for the first time. Then he muttered vaguely:

"The accident, eh? Oh, yes, yes. Quite so, quite so."

But he did not tell Inspector Tolozan what the telegram contained.

___________________

13: Death Shaves Close

Laurence Donovan

1885-1948

Popular Detective, April, 1942

Laurence Donovan

1: Shaving The Law

LITTLE JOE BUNT, best known to his neighbors as "The Mad Barber," was glumly unhappy. He wished he had been satisfied to shave faces— instead of the law. It would have meant less wear and tear upon his inherently honest soul.

As he honed a razor the slight grinding of the fine edge on the oily stone kept saying, "You're a gyp— you're a gyp— you're a gyp."

The neighbors were starting to avoid his one-chair shop. Gilt letters on his window read,

HAIR CUT TO FIT ANY FACE

Fitting some of the faces in Greenwich Village required an artist. Little Joe was that artist.

Yet Little Joe was far more than a mere manipulator of tonsorial shears. He had ambition to be a great detective. His five foot height and an even hundred pounds in weight barred him from the Force.

So he read a book, an immense tome. It was Applied Criminal Psychology and Persuasion. It lay beside him now, opened to the chapter entitled Power of Suggestion.

Little Joe hoped a customer or one of his long-haired neighbors would drop in. He repeated a phrase from the chapter he was reading.

"The projected will of subconscious thought may act as a magnet to attract and draw the individual upon whom the conscious processes of the brain are directed."

The words were no more than uttered than the bell above the door tinkled: Big Jim O'Grady barged in. Little Joe shivered. Something was wrong either with the book or his mind.

He hadn't been thinking of Jim O'Grady. For O'Grady was attached to the department as a first grade detective.

Little Joe averted his bleak eyes. He felt that any good detective automatically would realize that he had been shaving the law—shaving it too close— even if his intentions had been and still were of the very bes possible, :

"Hiya, Joe!" boomed O'Grady.

"Still at the book, huh? Now I was thinkin' of a case. We have the goods on this guy. His wife took poison by mistake. This guy rushes out to buy an antidote, havin' only a few minutes, when he ought of called a doctor.

"It's a half hour trip. On the way home he falls down and breaks the bottle of antidote. Before he can get more, his wife dies. He had a girl friend, so we think it's murder by— treatment. Now what do we do?"

"You bring the guy in and you beat the tar out of him until he's ready to tell you he's guilty, even if he isn't," said Little Joe. "But it isn't legal, and if he has a good mouthpiece he'll make you look like monkeys at the trial."

"And according to the book, Joe, what do we do?"

"First you leave the guy alone in an empty room a long while. Then you leave him alone still longer. And when you come in you don't say anything, just look at him, and go out and leave him alone again. You keep on doing that. It is what is known as the Power of Suggestion."

BIG JIM O'GRADY nodded.

"You keep right on readin' that book, Joe. You'll go places— but what places, I don't know."

He clumped out of the shop after a hasty shave.

The little bell rang 250 pounds of smiling, exuberant confidence into the shop. Mr. Merton Jolly exuded good humor. His fat face was a real life study in optimism.

"And it's a good morning, Joe, good morning, a very good morning!" he chortled. "An' I grabbed old time by the foreleg an' got Merkle, the artist, on the dotted line for most of his picture check. Two hundred down, an' here's your split, Joe, my boy!"

The ebullient Mr. Jolly was riffling greenbacks from a wallet. Little Joe glanced quickly at his window. None of his neighbors must witness this transaction. Some already suspected him.

"I've told you, Jolly, we must be more circumspect, Come into my back room."

He turned firmly away from the offered greenbacks. He took them from Mr. Jolly only when they were in his sleeping quarters in the rear of the shop.

"Its workin' out swell!" enthused Mr. Jolly. "You keep on settin' up the sheep, an' I'll do the shearin'. At that, we may be opening the way to fortune for many in Rolling Ridge Gold Company stock. Who knows?"

Little Joe had his qualms, but he accepted $100 of the money offered by Mr. Jolly. His qualms were not sufficiently strong to refuse.

This had been going on for some time. The genial Mr. Jolly had been clever. He had selected the neighborhood barber as the one most likely to know the rise and fall of the small fortunes of his neighbors.

Mr. Jolly had proposed to make it fifty-fifty on all money obtained for Rolling Ridge gold stock in the neighborhod. Little Joe had been reluctant to enter such a nefarious partnership until an altruistic idea had come to him.

Mr. Jolly was the kind of a shearer who would find his sheep, anyway. And he would trim them. Knowing this, Little Joe had decided to play ball.

And when the sheep had all been sheared, and Mr. Jolly had departed, Little Joe reasoned, a bit obliquely, that he would be considered a Santa Claus when he restored at least the half of his neighbors' loss.

Moreover, he was working upon an idea of his own for the entrapment and the probable confinement in the clink of the optimistic Mr. Jolly. It was to be regretted that Little Joe's book on Applied Criminal Psychology and Persuasion lacked a chapter on the simple subject of compounding a felony.

Having handed Little Joe his unlawful share of the morning take, the smiling Mr. Jolly was about to depart. Out in front the little bell rang.

Mr. Jolly poked his fat face into a erack of the door. He ducked back quickly. His gay manner abruptly vanished.

"Darn!" he muttered. "Old Suydam! An' he's been on the warpath! Seems he wrote out to Denver about Rolling Ridge gold, an' he's wantin' his two grand back! You'd ought to have known better than to steer me onto a miser, Joe! Besides, he's got some tough eggs for friends."

Little Joe did not argue that. In the shop Professor Suydam was removing his collar and thumping on the floor with his cane. He was tall and thin, and his long face ended in a pointed Van Dyke beard.

Little Joe was sure he wore the beard so that a trim twice a week, instead of a daily shave, would be sufficient. Professor Suydam had his hair cut once every two months. He owned a pawnshop.

Little Joe had short changed him ten cents once by mistake. He had returned two hours later for his dime.

PROFESSOR SUYDAM thumped his cane and compiained.

"Joey! I haven't got all day! You know I allow myself only seventeen minutes for a trim! Joey!"

Mr. Jolly's fat face was sweating.

Little Joe said: "Stay in here until I get through with him."

"If you let the razor slip, it will be okay with me," growled Mr. Jolly. "Imagine an egg with all his dough writin' all the way out to Denver about a measly two grand. It's disgusting."

Little Joe clipped Professor Suydam's beard carefully. Suydam's eyes were small and pinkish. They reminded Little Joe of a ferret he had once owned.

"You seen that gold brick swindler around this week? Heard he'd been in your shop for a haircut."

Little Joe uttered a noncommital sound, glancing at the rear door. He saw that Mr. Jolly had it partly open.

"Hope you haven't bought any of that phony stock of his," said Professor Suydam. "I'm only waitin' to catch up with him. I'llput him where he belongs. Denver investigators report the mine is only a small producer without a single rich vein."

"Close today, Professor?" Little Joe weakly.

"Certainly!" snapped Suydam. "You know I always have it close!"

Little Joe's shears snipped busily. Suydam was suspected of fencing stolen stuff.

"You thinking of going to the police about that stock, Professor?" ventured Little Joe, sure Suydam would not risk that.

"I've already reported it!" snapped Suydam.

His Adam's apple jumped. Little Joe's hand slipped. A neat, red nick was gouged out of Professor Suydam's throat.

"Look out!" raged Suydam. "What is the matter with you?"

He pushed Little Joe roughly aside. He reared up in the chair to inspect his nicked throat in the mirror.

Little Joe felt his spine buckling all the way to his toes. For he had looked into the mirror, too. And Mr. Jolly had picked that unfortunate interval to poke his head out of the rear door, looking at Professor Suydam.

It was impossible for Little Joe to follow the succeeding explosion in detail. For a man of his age, Professor Suydam was spry. His anger made him quick.

"Swindler! Thief! Robber!"

The words popped from Professor Suydam on a high key, Little Joe said did make one grab at his violent client when Suydam landed on his feet. For Suydam had seized one of Little Joe's pet razors from under the mirror.

Then Little Joe was forced to make a flying tackle for Professor Suydam's legs. A heel kicked out two of his teeth and all of his concern for the safety of Mr. Jolly for the ensuing few seconds abruptly departed.

There were crashing sounds and oaths in the rear room. Little Joe was arising dizzily as Professor Suydam rushed past him, grabbed his hat, collar and cane on the fly, and departed with the barber towel still attached to his neck,

Little Joe thought desperately that he should call the police. But no alarm appeared to have been created in the street.

"Maybe it would be wiser to see if Mr. Jolly is still intact," mumbled Little Joe, moving toward the rear door as if walking in a bad dream.

His steps became slower and uncertain when a glistening red trickle of blood snaked forward to meet him.

2: Damning Notebook

MERTON JOLLY'S head lay close to the barber shop door. Blood still trickled from under one fat jowl.

Little Joe was very sick. Even so, he saw that Mr. Jolly's pockets had been turned inside out. Murderer or not, Professor Suydam evidently had not overlooked collecting from a corpse.

Little Joe pushed heavy feet out into the shop toward the telephone. Now that it was murder, he was sure that his rôle of Good Samaritan to his neighbors would be greatly misunderstood by the unimaginative police,

"Joe!" gurgled a voice. "Don'tcha call anybody! Joe!"

Little Joe swung around with fascinated horror. The "corpse" was sitting up. A large and ugly slab of Mr. Jolly's fat cheek lobbed over his jaw like a sirloin steak.

When Little Joe got weakly back into the rear room and had closed the door, he was all but talking to himself. He tried to employ the Power of Suggestion upon himself, but his words failed to make sense.

"The next time you get yourself murdered, Mr. Jolly, you've got to go somewhere else," he said angrily. "I'll get a towel and fix that slash, and then I'm quitting. I'll give back all of the misgotten gains I have received."

Mr. Jolly talked out of the intact corner of his mouth.

"No you don't, an'. it wouldn't do you any good if you did," he said. "That miserly skinflint! I'll get him! He took all the money I had, and the cash book. That's why you can't quit."

"Cash book?" gulped Little Joe. "What's that got to do with me?"

"It has the name of the gold stockholders and of the other sheep you have suggested shearing," stated Mr. Jolly. "In it I have noted various amounts paid in cash to Joseph Bunt. I am an honest man, Joe."

Little Joe still had a razor in his hand. It required all of his will power to resist the temptation to complete the decapitation of Mr. Jolly, so neatly . begun by Suydam.

He could see his honorable career as a barber blighted. His hopes of ever becoming a sleuth went glimmering. As soon as Professor Suydam, who played with crooked gents and tough eggs behind the camouflage of the three golden balls, discovered what was in the notebook, Little Joe had an idea it would be suicide to remain in his shop.

Mr. Jolly was twisting a towel around his face.

"I'll get that money and my notebook back, if I have to skin old Suydam off his spine!" promised Mr. Jolly.

A few numbed lobes of Little Joe's brain started to pick up.

"You're a dead man, Mr. Jolly," he said, waving his razor.

Mr. Jolly took an alarmed step backward. But Little Joe was merely emphasizing his point.

"You're a murdered man, Mr. Jolly," he said. "And by Christmas, you're  staying dead! Don't you get it?"

"I have not been murdered, as you can see," said the perplexed Mr. Jolly. "How can I get that notebook back and keep us out of the hands of the law if I am dead? Answer me that one?"

"And how will Professor Suydam, as he is known, explain that notebook or what he thinks is phony stock to the police when he is a murderer on the dodge?"

"Heck an' glory!" spouted Mr. Jolly. "I hadn't thought of that one! But how do I stay murdered?"

HE EDGED suddenly farther from Little Joe and his waving razor. He did not like the gleam in Little Joe's eye. It came to Mr. Jolly there could be a way for him to stay murdered permanently, and all of his unfortunate demise might still be laid to the fugitive Professor Suydam.

"Now, Joe," he said placatingly. "Let's talk this over."

But Little Joe's vagrant thought was upon Applied Psychology, rather than personally applied homicide.

"Suydam would be expecting me to call the police, or perhaps he would imagine I am in a panic and will lock up the shop and leave the corpse here to be discovered later," mused Little Joe.

Mr. Jolly shivered. "Stop talking like that, Joe," he pleaded. "I was thinking of cutting you in for a bigger share—"

"I am through with gold mining stock, Mr. Jolly," interrupted Little Joe. "We will return all of the money. Rather, I will give back the money and explain that was your last wish as you died in my arms."

"But— Joe— if you call the police, you will have to have a body—s-a-y! Let's quit this! What do we do?"

Little Joe was thinking fast.

"I will now call the police for the kids that smashed my window," he said. "It will be all the same to Professor Suydam, who doubtless is hiding out somewhere, with some of his tough eggs watching to see what is happening. Or possibly we should send you to the hospital—"

"I will not go to a hospital—"

"Or the morgue. If I can get in touch with my friend, Jim O'Grady, that might be arranged. Anyway, you stick right here in this room until I have time to think."

"I wish you would quit thinking, Joe. You don't keep your mind on pleasant thoughts—"

Little Joe closed the door to his room upon Mr. Jolly, and turned the key in the lock. He lifted the phone receiver in the shop and said:

"Give me police— quick!"

He reported that his window had just been smashed. Then he went outside to smash it. That was a grave mistake. For as he was looking for a loose brick or something, a coupé pulled up.

The coupé had not come far. In fact, Little Joe had a dimly conscious thought that the little car had been parked only a few yards away and had simply moved to the front of his shop.

Two persons climbed out. Little Joe forgot all about smashing the window. A slatty, scholarly young man, and a luscious dish in the shape of a tricky brunette with a square-cut, blue-black bob crossed the sidewalk to his door.

Little Joe's heart skipped, then steadied some.

The young man was Potter Suydam, the poetic nephew of Professor Suydam, of the pawn shop. The girl was Landa Carter, an unpoetic blues singer at the Black Rabbit Café, where Potter Suydam often read his unsalable verse to defenseless villagers who listened only because they also wished to read their unsalable verse to Potter Suydam and others.

"I'll have a haircut, Joey," cooed little Miss Carter. "And Potter needs his ears trimmed. They're lost in the bush."

Little Joe nodded, glancing fearsomely up and down the too-quiet street. He could not now smash his window on the sly, and already he could hear a police squad car raising merry Hades with its siren a couple of blocks away. He was almost tottering as he followed Potter and Landa into the shop. Landa seated herself in the chair. Little Joe eyed the rear door to his room.

He saw that Potter Suydam also was scrutinizing the door or perhaps it was only as the Power of Suggestion had said: "The nerves of a guilty man are like the taut strings of a violin, to be played upon by the suggestion of a calm mind."

LITTLE JOE made an effort to restore a calm mind. The squad car wailed to a stop. Two uniformed men came in quickly. Little Joe saw Potter Suydam start up in his chair.

The luscious Landa said:

"Goodness! I was afraid going around with a poet was against the law!"

The two coppers said other things, harshly, like:

"Well, where is the riot?" And, "Didn't, you report your window was smashed?"

"The operator's mistake," said Little Joe. "I said kids were throwing things, and the window might be smashed."

Potter Suydam took Little Joe's breath away by verifying the lie.

"Sure, I saw the little rats as we drove up," said Potter. "They beat it."

"What's the matter with your mouth?" a cop asked suspiciously.

"Had a couple of teeth pulled," Joe blurted.

Potter looked at Landa and grinned tightly.

The squad car went away. Little Joe began shearing Landa's hair. He did a fast job, but the minutes dragged.

He had Potter Suydam in the chair, rediscovering his ears by cutting circles in his long hair. He noticed that Potter had mean, pinkish, ferret eyes like his uncle, Professor Suydam.

It was a long time to Little Joe before Potter got out of the chair. Twice he heard creaking noises in his rear room, but Potter did not seem to notice.

Then, when Little Joe hoped everything was clear, Potter said:

"Funny, Uncle Roger should have left his necktie here, Joe? That's the polka-dot I gave him for his birthday and he's worn it ever since."

"Your uncle was in a hurry," said Little Joe weakly.

He was sure that Potter Suydam was staring at the door to his rear room. What was young Potter thinking? Had he already contacted his Uncle Roger outside? Had he been parked in his coupé in the block with Landa Carter, when Professor Suydam had rushed madly from the shop.

"Okay, Potter, let's get goin'," said Landa from behind Little Joe. She was over by the shelf under the big mirror. "I'm still a workin' gal, so what are we waiting for?"

Little Joe was convinced that Potter could not have missed the dried red blood on the floor near the rear door. It looked very much like bright, red paint.

But young Potter blinked behind his owlish glasses and said, "A'right, darling. Joe handed you a hair trim that makes your eyes as green as zircons."

Landa laughed a little nervously. Little Joe was nervous himself, inside. Landa hung back as Potter reached the sidewalk.

"You know I like you, Joe," she said quickly. "If you happened to show up at the Wellington, in Park Street, this afternoon, I might give you some interesting information."

"What the—"

"Darn!" exploded the blues singer, evidently for the benefit of Potter outside. "I'm losing my heel, Joe! Hold my hand while I kick it on!"

Little Joe was somewhat dazed. He had more information now than he could digest mentally. It came to him that Landa had seen Professor Suydam, and knew something she wanted to pass along.

He held her hand obligingly. She kicked her heel down hard on the floor.

"Apartment two-C, after three o'clock," she said between her teeth.

Then Landa went out. Pondering it a moment later, Little Joe got nowhere. Then something halted him. He had laid out seven sharp razors this morning. Now there were but five.

Two of his razors were missing.

3: Redheaded Menace

LITTLE JOE made swift mental addition. He had laid out seven sharp razors this morning. Professor Suydam had grabbed one to work on Mr. Merton Jolly.

There should now be six razors. There were but five!

Only Potter Suydam, Landa Cotter and two policemen had been in the shop since the assault upon Mr. Jolly.

"The razor Professor Suydam took must be in the back room," muttered Little Joe. "Anyway, I'll have to get Mr. Jolly out before he is seen. I wonder why Landa Carter wants me to visit her?"

His eyes cocked toward the front window. Sudden goose pimples chased each other around his skin. He was far from alone. A delightfully appealing redhead was looking, like the famed butcher boy of the song, into his window.

She was not trying to appear delightful. Her red mouth was a straight line. Little Joe did not have to be close up to know that her eyes were blazing.

"She'd have to come along just now," groaned Little Joe.

The red-headed girl was Della Corcoran, of the corner lunchery. She had certain invested rights in Little Joe's affections. She showed every sign of having been near enough to see Little Joe support Landa Carter while she did or did not kick on a loose heel.

The redhead undoubtedly was several degrees hotter right now than the simmering August day. She was a menace to blondes, brunettes or other redheads who fooled around Little Joe.

Little Joe turned away from the rear room door. He did not dare to expose Mr. Jolly.

"Well! Well!" spoke the redhead, walking in. "Maybe you was just having a close look at Landa Carter's wrist-watch, an' maybe you got her address. You're twenty minutes late showin' up for lunch. Or maybe you ain't hungry ?"

"Listen, sweetheart. I was held up by a customer, an' I'll be along. Right away."

"Well? What're you waitin' for? This is Thursday, or wouldn't you know that either? An' we was dated for Coney, seein' it's an old custom to close your shop Thursday afternoons."

"Yes— yes— sure, Della, PI be along," said Little Joe. "Just as soon as I use the phone, sweetheart, and change into my other trousers."

"I'll be right here," she said firmly. "Go on and use the phone. I dare you."

Little Joe turned back toward the rear room. He expected at any minute to have the partly decapitated Mr. Jolly hammering on the rear room door. He thought he could slip in without the redhead spotting his furtiveness.

Then, right across the street he saw them!

"Murch Lano and Hoppy Bragg," he muttered. "An' they're not just sun bathing."

Of all the nefarious, strong-armed eggs of the Village, Murch Lano and Hoppy Bragg were rated the most dangerous. They were known to be linked with some of the uptown jewel gyppers who were said to do their fencing with Professor Suydam.

Little Joe added it up in his mind quickly, twice. Both times it came out the same answer.

"Up to here and now I am the only living witness to what old Suydam believes to be the murder of Mr. Jolly," ran his thought. "As such I am so much poison to Professor Suydam. So that makes the unexpected business of young Potter and Landa Carter match up."

BRIEFLY, Little Joe judged he was right in the middle of one homicidal spot. And that in addition to Professor Suydam having a little notebook from Mr. Jolly that of itself was a mighty club over Little Joe Bunt.

"You got the jitters, or what?" demanded the redhead. "Don't tell me that blues dame promised to blow back as soon as she ditched her boy friend? Now put on your other pants, Joey!"

Little Joe never before had squeezed through so little space between a door and its jamb. He had fingers on his lips for the benefit of Mr. Jolly. The gold stock promoter being back here with his throat partly cut would be only a little less serious than a blonde or a brunette.

Then Little Joe gulped hard. A breeze blew through the window at the back of the room. The window opened into a little yard.

Mr. Jolly was no longer playing the part of a corpse. He was gone.

"Sa-ay! You seen a ghost? Y' try to run any— for the luvva Pete! Joey! Who'd you kill?"

That was the redhead. She was staring at the dried blood on the floor.

"A fellow had a nose bleed," mumbled Little Joe weakly. "Had it bad, an' I let him lie down in here."

Then Little Joe straightened up. He would always go just so far with the redhead, then he cracked down. The time had come.

"Sweetheart," he said firmly. "You will go back to the coffee joint. I will be there when I get darn good an' ready. I am not going to Coney today, but it would be a good idea if you get out of here quick before I lose my temper."

"Yes, Joey," said the redhead meekly, and she backed toward the front doorway, still staring at the spilled blood.

Because the redhead was leaving, Little Joe slammed the door of his little room. Thus he missed seeing Della Corcoran walk backward into two pairs of hands.

The hands of Murch Lano and Hoppy Bragg were quick and quiet. The redhead was not going to Coney Island this afternoon. She was going away on the floor of a sedan, with Hoppy Bragg driving.

And Murch Lano was clumping heavily into Little Joe's barber shop and toward the rear room.

Little Joe heard the heavy feet. He had been looking around the floor and elsewhere in the room for a razor. He thought that perhaps Professor Suydam had dropped the razor before rushing from the shop.

There was no razor. That could mean only that Suydam had pocketed the weapon, or Mr. Jolly had taken it with him as he departed.

Hearing Murch's heavy tread, Little Joe slipped the bolt inside the door. Murch rattled at the knob. He found the door was locked.

"Listen, Joe," he said with quiet deadliness. "Do you open up or do I kick my way in? The professor sent me."

LITTLE JOE had never gone through a window or over a wall faster than just now. He dropped into an areaway and glided toward a side street. "Mr. Jolly would do one of two things," he murmured. "He will get himself in the clear, or he will take a chance and go after the notebook and the money that Professor Suydam took from him. But Suydam would be afraid to go back to his pawn shop, and Mr. Jolly would not know of the quiet address that Landa Carter supplied. Mr. Jolly will deserve all the trouble he encounters."

Nevertheless, Little Joe made straight for the Suydam pawn shop. There was just a chance that he might overtake Mr. Jolly.

Only a few minutes later Little Joe was in a taxicab headed for the Wellington Apartments, named by Landa Carter. For a pimply-faced clerk in Professor Suydam's pawnshop had said that Mr. Jolly had been there. The clerk had known that Mr. Jolly had done business with Suydam.

He also knew of an address where Professor Suydam might be reached on occasions of absence from his shop. And Suydam had not warned him against supplying that address.

Little Joe had almost choked when the clerk had said:

"I guess Professor Suydam is at the Wellington Apartments where he often goes. And I guess Mr. Jolly is on his way there, for I guessed it was all right to tell him."

Little Joe guessed the dumb clerk had guessed everything into one heckuva mess.

The taxicab went eastward. It was abruptly blocked by jammed traffic at a corner of the Wellington Apartments block. Little Joe hastily paid the driver and eased out.

He squirmed through a sidewalk crowd. First he saw the flame of the red-headed menace. When he was close enough, Joe saw that Della Corcoran's face was bruised. She was looking vacantly at two men who were supporting her.

Little Joe resisted an impulse to go to the girl. Something, and it was not Criminal Psychology, told him he had best remain unobserved.

"Who was the driver of the hitand-run car, sister?" one of the men supporting the redhead demanded.

"Was I ridin' in a car, Mister?"

The redhead said it dumbly, as if she really did not know.

"A'right, sister!" snapped her interrogator. "Keep playin' it that way! You tumbled out when the car took the sidewalk an' hit this guy! The way it was done it was a deliberate bump-off! The cops won't like it, sister!"

Little Joe made himself smaller than he was. He saw the man on the sidewalk. The man was undoubtedly a corpse. His eyes were staring horribly at nothing. One of his wounds was a lacerated cheek that looked like a raw beefsteak.

Mr. Merton Jolly was all, finished, completely murdered this time. Little Joe's brain seemed to shrivel until it felt like a loose, dried kernel in a peanut shell.

A woman spoke up.

"I saw him come runnin' out of the Wellington Apartments," she said. "That car jumped the curb to get him and the door flew open. I saw this red-headed dame standin' up in the sedan just before it came out of the street. She was waving her hands an' pointin' at this man. It was her put the finger on him, but the man in the car didn't wait to pick her up when she fell out."

Little Joe thought desperately of Hoppy Bragg.

The corpse of Mr. Jolly lay as it had fallen, untouched.

Little Joe heard a police whistle. Then he saw the open razor. It had slipped out of Mr. Jolly's inside coat pocket. No one appeared to have noticed it.

Little Joe took a long chance. That was one of his missing razors. He cried out, darted to the corpse.

"By Christmas!" he exclaimed. "I think I know him!"

He bent over, as if to make sure. Then he said, "No, I guess he isn't the fellow I'm thinking about."

He eased back into the crowd. He kept on easing away. The redhead seemed to have been too dazed to recognize him. He was almost to the Wellington Apartments before the police had reached the dead man.

Little Joe judged Della Corcoran would be able to explain. As for himself he had an immediate date with Apartment 2-C in the Wellington.

4: Too Many Razors

THE Wellington downstairs employees were watching the crowd up the street. Little Joe ignored the elevator and took to the stairs. Apartment 2-C was on the second floor.

Little Joe tried the door. It was unlocked. He wished he had a gun as he slipped inside. Window shades were down in a sitting room. The door of a bedroom was open.

Little Joe did not have to enter the bedroom. All the information he wanted was on the floor beside a divan. This was none other than Professor Suydam.

"G—gloree!" gulped Little Joe. "It can't be possible!"

It was though. Professor Suydam had totally ruined a Persian rug. It was a blue-patterned rug. If it had been red, the expensive weave might have been saved.

Nearly all of Professor Suydam's blood must have leaked out. There was a clean slash across his throat. There was but little evidence of a struggle. It was easy to determine how Suydam might have been murdered without a fight.

For Professor Suydam had been sitting in a chair. There was dried lather on the corpse's face. And he had one of Little Joe's barber towels tied behind his neck. Any policeman would have said that Professor Suydam had been having a shave.

"In any critical moment, if you have time, always close your eyes for ten seconds before acting."

Little Joe murmured the words. That was from a chapter of Applied Criminal Psychology entitled, Mind Over Matter.

The repeated words did Little Joe no good. Panic engulfed him.

His barber towel! And his razor!

For the razor lay where it had fallen. Its blade was gory. All the psychology that he had absorbed became a dead loss. He snatched up the fallen razor. He tore the barber . towel from the dead man's neck.

Icy terror started his heart pounding hard.

"And I made it worse by taking that other razor off of Mr. Jolly," he said thickly, for he now had two razors, and both were stained with blood. "If I'd left it on him, they'd have pinned the rap on him. How could Mr. Jolly do this to me?"

He was wasting precious time. He thought: I am framed. Mr. Jolly would take his notebook off Suydam, and he would have been in the clear if he had not finally got himself killed.

A more horrific thought stopped his breath.

"They will find that notebook with my name in it on Mr. Jolly now, and I had to take the razor off of him," he muttered.

At last it came to Little Joe that his presence here would count against him. They would get him, he had no doubt, but he must have time to thaw out his frozen brain.

Right now his mind was all stopped up. That was bad, very bad. He might even become incoherent if the police turned on the heat before he was ready. In his desperation the wheels of thought finally began to turn,

Professor Suydam had run from his shop. He had been seen by Potter Suydam, his nephew, and Landa Carter.

Della Corcoran had seen the blood where Mr. Jolly had been almost murdered in his back room.

He had called the police on a phony report that his window had been smashed. He had dashed from his shop the back way, leaving his place unlocked.

He had been given Professor Suydam's address by the dumb clerk at the pawnshop. And— worse than all else— Della Corcoran was on the spot, it having appeared that she had directed the hit-and-run murder of Mr. Merton Jolly.

So far as Little Joe Bunt was concerned, the state executioner might as well be readying up the hot seat now. Every circumstance was damning in detail.

Even Jim O'Grady, his friend, would not believe him.

And with the thought of Jim O'Grady, Little Joe came at last to a degree of sanity.

He, Little Joe, alone knew that he was not the murderer. So he alone must solve this case. Once he landed in the clink, his chance was about as good as trying to cross Hades on ice.

STEPS sounded in the corridor outside. Little Joe acted. He gambled that he had not been seen entering the Wellington.

"I've got to find Landa Carter and Potter Suydam," he said between clenched teeth. "That's the only hope."

He ran into the bedroom. The window was open on a fire-escape. With two bloodstained razors in his pocket and his barber towel stuffed inside his coat, he slipped down the iron Jadder, causing it to tilt slowly with his weight.

The ladder gave him an exit through a narrow space between buildings. If he could slip through to another street, he believed he might hide out until he could contact Jim O'Grady.

There was one flaw in this plan. This was a big, red-faced Irish copper standing at the foot of the fire-escape ladder as it slowly swung down.

The policeman was looking up. He had his revolver held casually in one hand.

All of Little Joe's accumulated psychology fled from his muddled brain. That left what is commonly known to science as the thalamus, or primitive lower section of the mind. His cerebrum went dead.

Little Joe acted as would any trapped jungle animal. His lips even drew back in a snarl from his teeth, exposing the orifice where Professor Suydam had kicked out a couple of molars, undoubtedly another count against him.

Little Joe jumped. The policeman had just growled a command.

"Come down with you! An' keep your hands in the air!"

Little Joe did both. Head foremost, diving, his hands outspread, he made the ten foot drop as a flying projectile. The policeman tried to duck and to shoot at the same time.

Little Joe's light weight hit him before he could do either. The corpulent copper's stomach cushioned his fall. It did the policeman no good. For his head cracked the concrete.

Little Joe's next move was instinctive. He grabbed the fallen copper's gun and ran. The policeman was out cold.

Little Joe came to a wooden gate onto the cross street. This street was reasonably quiet. There were shrill whistles over in front of the Wellington.

He saw one parked car, with a driver vaguely outlined in the front seat. His thalamus was still running the works. He had only the instinct of the jungle animal to escape.

Gun in hand, he jerked open the door of the car.

"Get going, fast!" he grated. "It's life or death! But I won't shoot if you're smart!"

His head jerked, as he glanced behind him. And a mighty hand gripped the back of his neck and slammed his head down and his face into the front seat.

"Okay, Joe! I never thought I'd have to be puttin' the pinch on you!"

IT WAS big Jim O'Grady's booming voice. O'Grady had arisen from concealment in the rear of the sedan. Little Joe got some fog out of his brain. He then saw the car's driver evidently had been waiting for just this move, and that O'Grady had commandeered the sedan.

"Where to, Officer?" said the driver.

"Precinct station! Get back here with me, Joe! Lordy! I'd as soon put the pinch on my own brother!"

The car started away. Little Joe's brain 'slowly thawed. He heard O'Grady talking.

"You don't have to talk, Joe. But it looks bad, awful bad. Potter Suydam an' that Black Rabbit singer, Landa Carter, tipped us off! Seems they found Potter's uncle, Joe, That was after old Professor Suydam had showed 'em a gold stock book that they say ties you up with this. An' they said you first attacked old Suydam in your shop and must've cut him up some, 'cause there was blood on the floor,"

Little Joe's cerebrum was percolating now.

An extra razor had been stolen from his shop. Landa Carter had invited him to Apartment 2-C in the Wellington. But who would ever believe that. There was Mr. Jolly's blood in his barber shop.

"Whassay, Joe?" O'Grady asked mournfully. "You're only mumbling."

Little Joe gripped O'Grady's arm. Ideas were coming now. They were but a forlorn hope. And only convincing O'Grady could give him a chance to try them out.

Little Joe never talked faster. O'Grady flatly refused at first.

"I knew that darn book would get you sooner or later," he muttered. "You keep on tellin' what you're tellin' me, and maybe some good mouthpiece can make it insanity."

"Look, Jim," pleaded Little Joe. "If it misses, it can't make any difference, I've got the two razors right here. There isn't a chance they'll show the prints of the killer, but I'll stake my life that these two razors will turn the trick."

"Tarnation!" exploded O'Grady. "Maybe you've got something! An' you're namin' it! You're stakin' your life on it! You gimme them razors! It ain't regular, but the whole setup's so screwy, it could be true!"

"You'll give me the break, Jim?"

"Yeah, an' if it's a trick, I'll maybe break your neck myself," said O'Grady. "Okay, driver, turn right at the next corner and I'll tell you where to stop. Keepin' your mouth shut for an hour or so gets you ten."

Ten minutes later the car pulled up before a stoop. The basement of this was O'Grady's own bachelor apartment.

O'Grady called the precinct station on the phone and asked that Potter Suydam be put on the wire. When he had him, he said:

"Potter? You and the girl take a taxi over here."

O'Grady gave the address. Then he added:

"I've got Joe Bunt, but keep quiet about it. I had to knock him cold. It's open and shut when he comes around, but I want you to be with me when I bring him in.

"Makin' the pinch alone is a notch up for me, so I want to get it all straight and I want you to identify a barber towel and a razor he tried to sneak out of your uncle's place. They've got only one set of prints, and they're his, so all you have to do is make sure they are the same ones you saw."

Little Joe stretched out on a cot and closed his tired eyes. If this failed to work out, even Jim O'Grady would never be convinced of the fantastic truth.

5: Power of Suggestion

"WE'LL wait until he comes around," said big Jim O'Grady. "You an' Miss Carter wait in here. You say that's the barber towel you saw Little Joe put on your uncle's neck an' then you an' Miss Carter went out?"

Young Potter Suydam ran his fingers through his poetical long hair,

"That's the towel, Detective O'Grady," he said calmly. "It was on Uncle Roger's neck. Uncle Roger was mad, but he wanted Little Joe to finish shaving him, even after Little Joe followed him from his shop. I guess Uncle Roger didn't imagine Little Joe had the nerve to try and get that notebook away from him again. An' that Merton Jolly must have walked in after Uncle Roger was killed, and took the notebook with him."

"Then they say that Little Joo's sweetie, that red-headed dame, sent the car onto the sidewalk an' killed the Jolly guy," said Landa Carter.

"It fits okay," said O'Grady. "An' then Little Joe must have tried to get away, an' that's when you saw the body. But he cooled down, an' went back to remove his towel and the murder razor. Awright, the two of you, just wait in here until Little Joe comes out of it. I wouldn't handle that towel, either of you. I'm thinkin' there's only one set of prints on it."

O'Grady walked out. He closed the thick door. The room was smal!. He bolted it noiselessly on the outside. He went over and sat down where Little Joe was stretched on the cot, apparently unconscious.

"We don't talk, Joe," he whispered. "I haven't much faith in the thing. I'm still sayin' if it's a trick, I'll beat you to a pulp for makin' a monkey out of me. Anything they say in there will come through that ventilator. I used to put my radio in it so it wouldn't wake the neighbors, an' listen to it out here."

Little Joe felt as if his spine had congealed. If what he believed were true, it was an even chance that young Potter Suydam and Landa Carter would have the cold nerve to carry out what he believed to be one of the cleverest murders of circumstance that had ever been committed.

Landa Carter's red lips wore a shrewd, little smile. She said very loudly, "I would never have thought Little Joe could pull a fast one tike that. According to that notebook your Uncle Roger had, why he's been rooking his best friends on that phony gold mine stock."

Then she whispered something quickly to Potter, If there had been a dictagraph, it could not have picked up her words.

Potter spoke loudly.

"I'm almost sorry I have to do this, sweetheart," he said. "I've always liked Little Joe. Who would have thought he had a streak like that. I guess though him being called "The Mad Barber' hasn't missed it much. He must have gone off his nut suddenly."

THEY stood for a moment. Then they sat down in the two chairs O'Grady had placed in the room. Potter was smiling a little, but he glanced at the single window. Being a basement room, this was provided with heavy iron bars against prowlers.

Neither Potter nor the girl spoke again for a little while. Landa Carter kept watching the door expectantly. The minutes dragged. Something seemed to turn her eyes toward the bloody barber towel lying upon the table.

There was a slight hump in the middle of the towel. It had the shape of a razor, one with an open blade.

The girl put her finger to her lips, then she spoke loudly.

"I wonder if the publicity will be good or bad for my act?" she said. "Even if it is bad, I suppose we have to tell the truth about what we know?"

"Certainly!" exclaimed Potter. "That's the law! Only I wish we had waited and not left Uncle Roger alone! I was rather fond of the old boy, you know!"

"Yes, I know!" said the girl.

Potter, she saw, was looking at the stained towel. His fingers ran nervously through his long hair.

"Oh, quit that, darling," hissed the girl, whispering again.

Potter's pinkish little eyes went to his wrist-watch. He was silent for a minute or two. Then he glanced at the door impatiently.

"I wish O'Grady could snap it up," he said. "It's hot in here."

He was sweating a little. His ferret eyes strayed to the barber towel again. And suddenly the girl heard him draw in a deep breath.

He got up and tiptoed across the room. He looked closer at the bloody barber towel, at the irregular hump under it. He shook his head and looked again.

"Landa," he whispered hoarsely. "Come here."

She stepped softly over beside him. He pointed with one finger at the hump under the towel.

"Do you see what I see?" he whispered.

The girl looked closely. She suddenly reached out her hand. Potter caught her wrist.

"You fool, don't touch it," he said, still whispering. "But wait."

He took a handkerchief from his pocket. He enclosed his thumb and forefinger in the handkerchief. Landa Carter drew in a deep breath that seemed to be rasping in her throat.

"I wouldn't, darling," she whispered. "You don't think—"

POTTER cut off her words with his hand over her mouth. He was watching the door. He caught the barber towel between his covered thumb and finger and lifted it carefully.

Neither Potter nor the girl spoke. Their eyes went to each other and back to the table.

Two identical razors lay under the towel. Their handles were of the same black bone. The sharp blades were of the same size. And both were marred by dried brown stains.

"Potter?"

It was a single, gasping word, and a question. Landa seemed to be fascinated, almost paralyzed by the two razors.

"Shut up!" he said low, huskily. "There's something—"

Outside, Little Joe looked at O'Grady and nodded, after a glance at his wrist-watch. Ten minutes had passed.

O'Grady got up. His feet shuffled heavily toward the door of the little room. But he stopped just before he reached it. Little Joe's sharp, black eyes gleamed at him, and Little Joe nodded again.

O'Grady tiptoed back to his chair, and sat down.

Inside the little room, Potter dropped the towel back into place. He made his chair in one quick jump. Landa stood still, and Potter said venomously :

"You fool! Sit down!"

He was staring at the door. Doubtless he expected O'Grady to open it and walk in. But O'Grady's steps had paused just outside. And apparently he had not moved away.

Landa looked at Potter, and sidled nervously to her chair. A minute passed. Landa was looking at the barber towel. Her curved red lips moved soundlessly.

"There was only one razor. O'Grady must know something."

Potter watched the door, but his eyes kept shifting to the barber towel. He got up and moved softly to the door. He whispered:

"I'm going out and see O'Grady. This is nuts."

Then he turned the doorknob, The door did not move. He looked over at the barred window. Sweat globuled on his forehead and trickled down his nose.

"Potter! Sit down! It's a trick! We're all right!"

A whisper can be very loud. It was not loud enough for the words to pass through the ventilator, except for sibilant sound that could not be understood.

Little Joe nodded again at O'Grady. The detective got up and again shuffled heavily to the door. He stopped, turned, and went back on tiptoes to his chair.

Inside the little room, Landa Carter sprang to her feet. Her red tongue flicked over her red lips. She was staring at Potter. He tiptoed from the door to the barred window, but turned back,

Both turned once more toward the table, with the two humps that were puzzling, bloodstained, identical razors.

Perhaps Potter saw it coming. Landa Carter's red mouth flew open as a woman's mouth will only when there is a scream growing in her throat. Potter sprang toward her.

But he was too late by half a second.

"Anyway— l  didn't do it— I wasn't there when you—"

"You fool!"

Potter's fist smashed out. The girl's red lips crushed on her small white teeth. The blow was a stiff one, but not hard enough.

She screamed out as she fell.

"I didn't do it! I didn't know you intended to—"

Potter's pinkish eyes were pinpoints of hate as he sprang. His fingers gripped the girl's white throat.

"As if you didn't egg me into it!" he shouted. "Well, I'll kill you too—" O'Grady jerked the bolt of the door. He was big and slow. Little Joe's lighter figure shot past him, and his small, hard fist connected under one of Potter's ears where he had trimmed away the hair only that morning.

BIG Jim O'Grady was talking to the inspector.

"It's what you would call a murder by opportunity. Undoubtedly Potter Suydam and Landa Carter had been trailing Professor Suydam. The girl had been playing Potter for a sucker. She didn't hesitate in taking part in a killing that would give Potter old Suydam's thousands."

Little Joe nodded.

"Yes, and when old Suydam dashed out of my shop,. Potter and the girl came in. They made the mistake of thinking I had fought with Suydam. My mouth was bleeding and I had lost two teeth. They saw the blood en the floor."

"But they must have talked to Professor Suydam first, just after he ran from the shop, and learned about the book of gold mine stock sales," said O'Grady. "How about it, Potter?"

Landa Carter's throat was blue and bruised. She hated Potter with her eyes.

"I'LL spill it," she said. "His uncle saw us, and showed us the book. He said to get Little Joe to the Wellington apartment, because he had murdered Mr. Jolly and he had to shut Little Joe up with that notebook or some other way.

"He trusted Potter to help him. It was the big chance Potter had been waiting for. So he talked me into the rest of it. As for Mr. Jolly, Hoppy Bragg had been told that he had been murdered by his boss, and when he saw the murdered man running from the Wellington, he just up and run the car over him in his dopey way."

"She was the one who planned all of it!" raged Potter. "She can't squeeze out by singing!"

Landa Carter put on her best smile,

"I wasn't even in the room when it happened, darling," she said. "So they can't do anything about me."

"Sister," said O'Grady, "you'll be singing for many a year upstate, and not in the Black Rabbit."

HERE was the redhead again. She was fully recovered.

"You see what that fishology thing got you into, Joey!" she said. "An' you was rookin' your friends, And all the time, Mr. Jolly was kidding me along, until he sold me enough of that gold mine stock to take all the money I've been saving."

"You?" exclaimed Little Joe. "You bought some of that gold mine stock?"

"Yes, darling, and that's what this letter is all about I got in the mail today," she said, producing a folded sheet. "It says here that all Rolling Ridge Gold Company mining stock will be redeemed, whatever that means, for two to one."

"Let me see that letter, sweetheart," said Little Joe.

A minute late, he spoke:

"Jim O'Grady, it's too bad you didn't buy some of that Rolling Ridge stock. By Christmas! Poor Mr. Jolly. He thought he was a confidence man, and here it says they have struck a high-grade vein in the Rolling Ridge mine, and they will pay two dollars for every dollar's worth of stock that is out, as they wish to make it a closed corporation."

"Joe," said big Jim O'Grady, "I'm wantin' to borrow that book of yours. If readin' that has anything to do with bein' a dead open an' shut murderer, and then having your friends cash in because you played around with a crook, I'm throwing away my badge and then I'm going in for psychology."

"Joey," said the redhead. "You ain't lendin' that fishology book. You're goin' home an' change your pants. You're takin' me to Coney, an' were startin' now before something else happens."

________________

14: Contraband

Frank L Packard

1877-1942

The Popular Magazine, 15 June 1910

Sea Stories Magazine, June 1922

Frank Lucius Packard

STERN, far astern on the horizon line, there showed a tiny smudge of black— apart, an empty sea, smooth, with an oily swell. Creamlike ribbons of white from the bow wave of the Castle Prince curled and trailed along her sides with bubbling, hissing sounds— and lost their identity in the swirling wake.

Forward, across the lower deck, an awning drooped from its lashings, listless, motionless— mute tribute to the torrid, airless heat. Beneath it men moaned and tossed, turning flushed faces restlessly from side to side, their eyes staring with that strange, drunk-like aspect peculiar to the disease— the Yellow Jack, that, like some dread phantom, strikes pitilessly, suddenly, in the night or early dawn.

In the chart house, just forward of, and below, the bridge, that served him, too, as cabin, Captain Parks bent, with scowling face, over the chart spread out before him on the table. A grimfeatured man he was, with great, lantern jaws, and black eyes sunk deep beneath bushy brows—a man of squat, thickset body, of face that, even in repose, was bulldoglike in its expression.

“We'll be needing a port doctor, Mr. Miller,” he said, looking up and addressing his chief officer, who stood at the end of the table.

“I was thinkin’ the same,” replied Miller. “I was thinkin’ the same, sir.”

“With a weather eye out for quarantine,” added the captain.

“Aye, sir; I know it’s a risk,” agreed the mate.

Captain Parks smiled grimly. “Ye may well say so, Mr. Miller. It’s a toss up ‘twixt the Jack and the inside of a  crawling hole of a prison. Were ye ever detained in one of ’em on this benighted coast, Mr. Miller?”

“I was in a bit of a row at Zanzibar one night, sir.”

“I said west coast, Mr. Miller. Man, the other is luxurious! Look ye, we’re hereabouts”— Captain Parks jabbed his forefinger on the chart at a point due south of the Gold Coast and some nine degrees in latitude south of the equator.

“Aye, sir; thereabouts,” said Miller, nodding his head.

“The mainland would be flying in the face of Providence, Mr. Miller." Captain Parks’ first and second fingers spread out like a pair of dividers, one finger tip resting on the spot where Ascension Island was charted, the other on the Island of Annobon.

“The Britisher’ll be the nearer by a bit, sir,” said Miller, following the captain’s movements with his eyes; “but I'm thinkin’ I'd rather take my chances with the Spaniards— they’re not so much interested, so to speak. I'm thinkin’, too, a bit of cash would go a long way with them in fumigatin’ the Prince after quarantine, an’ no questions asked about the cargo— the papers standin’ good an’ sufficient, sir.”

“I ’ve a mind to stand on as we are,” muttered Captain Parks doubtfully.

“We'd be a ghastly, driftin’ derelict by the time we was halfway to Angra, sir,” objected Miller earnestly. “The Jack’s sharp work, sir, cruel sharp an’ sudden. Look what’s happened to us since last night. God knows if there'll be one of us knowin’ our own name this time to-morrow. The day’s broke hot, pasty hot, an’ there’s a feel in the air I don’t like. Anything’s better than dyin’ like rats in a trap.”

“Would ye say the same,” demanded Captain Parks aggressively, “if ye were half owner of the Prince, and every penny to sink or swim with her, Mr. Miller ?”

“Aye,” said Miller shortly; "what’s a ship, if you’re dead?”

Captain Parks’ fist came down with a crashing blow on the table. “After this voyage, I’d have owned her all— all, dye hear, Mr. Miller; and there’d have been a fat slice of picking for yourself and the rest of the crew.”

"I'm a bit of a fatalist,” said Miller resignedly. ‘‘What’ll come’ll come; there’s no gettin’ away from that, Captain Parks.”

“I'll risk the Spaniards, and Annobon it is,’ decided Captain Parks suddenly, after a moment’s pause. “We'll swing round for it. The course’ll be northeast by east, Mr. Miller, and ye'll change according. That'll be by dead reckoning, but we’ll get our position at noon.”

“Aye, Sir," replied the mate, “north-east by east it is, sir. I hope to the Lord we make it, though it’s a fairish distance. I'll see to the course at once, sir.”

He turned to leave the cabin, but Captain Parks halted him in the doorway. “What’s yon astern, Mr. Miller, have ye made her out?”

Miller shook his head. “She’s been ridin’ us the last hour, sir,” he answered.

Captain Parks scowled. Company at sea was neither to his liking, nor conducive to a composed state of mind. The Prince was on very private business, and there were some things worse than Yellow Jack; also, British cruisers had been known to be impertinent. Captain Parks had a very wholesome regard for British cruisers, and for one in particular.

When an American tramp makes four voyages over the same waters, she picks up acquaintances, casual and otherwise. Likewise, her outward freight must be very valuable, if the return voyage is made with her load line showing as high as the day she was launched, barring the weight of a few tons of coal.

A certain lieutenant of his majesty’s ship Orthon had explained this with patience and significance to Captain Parks on the last return voyage, when the Prince, at the pressing invitation of the man-of-war, had laid to for the brief and interesting period of an hour or so.

It would have been extremely indiscreet of Captain Parks to have explained that the port of Angra Pequeña, in Southwest Africa, afforded very little opportunity for picking up a cargo, or that his character looked to the question of speed with which he should reach the Weser, and load again at the Bremen docks.

Captain Parks merely said that trade was bad— rotten bad. He was empty, that was all there was to it— trade was bad.

Lieutenant Cleaver had replied in polite sea language to the effect that, in his estimation, Captain Parks was an egregious liar, and the reputation he gave the Prince— she was then the Arunia— was one of pungent unholiness.

Captain Parks had a very vivid recollection of both the words and the occasion. He was still scowling at his chief officer.

“The change in course, sir, will tell the tale,” volunteered Miller.

“Aye,” agreed Captain Parks; then: “I'll thank you, Mr. Miller, to request Mr. MacKnight to shake up his crawling machinery. It’s speed we want now— to the last revolution.”

“Very good, sir,” said Miller.

Captain Parks grunted in dismissal, and watched the mate disappear through the cabin doorway. Early as it was in the forenoon, the heat was intense, and the perspiration was standing out in great drops on his forehead. He cursed softly as he glanced at the barometer. It had an ugly look.

He went to the door, that Miller had closed behind him, and kicked it open viciously, then returned to his chair to stare out over the rail to the range of waters beyond. His hand sidled into a box of thick, squat-cut smokes, and his back teeth closed over the end of one, but he did not light it.

Captain Parks, being a prudent man, was rehearsing the story he was preparing for the delectation of the port officers at Annobon .This did not take him long— he had had experience before— but he still sat there, listening to the accelerated thump of the engines, and chewing on the cigar, now fast being reduced to a stump.

“Quinine! A blamed quinine ship— that’s us!” he snarled bitterly, and dashed the clinging drops from his forehead with a back sweep of his hand.

Fear was a sensation that in all his dare-devil life he had never experienced; but he knew what the presence of Yellow Jack meant. By night, every last man aboard, himself included, might be down with it—or they might not. As Miller had said, the Jack made sharp work, cruel sharp. The minutes passed—half an hour. Suddenly, a form filled the doorway.

“Bridge, sir,” announced a seaman briefly, and, touching his cap, vanished.

Captain Parks came to his feet with a jump. He had forgotten that smudge of smoke astern. The next minute he was out of his cabin, and tumbling up the bridge ladder to join Miller.

“I haven’t had the glass off her, sir,” was the chief officer’s greeting. “I marked her position when we changed course. She'll be followin’ us, sir; there’s no doubt of that.”

With glowering face, Captain Parks stared astern. The speck of an hour ago now loomed big and ominous.

“She’s comin’ up fast, sir," went on Miller. “Were makin’ a matter of twelve knots ourselves, but I reckon she’s doin’ almost as much as that again.” The mate paused significantly ; then added: “These parts ain’t overcrowded with boats better’n twenty knots.”

“The Orthon’s rated at twenty-two decimal something," growled Captain Parks, with savage bluntness. “Don’t croak, Miller, like an old woman. Say what you mean.”

“Aye, then,” rejoined Miller sullenly, "it’s her station, an’ yon’s she, or her likes— little matter which! Sweet luck we've got, rotten fore an’ aft, an’ worse astern!”

“I'll thank ye to hold your tongue, Mr. Miller, and cry when ye’re hurt, and that'll be when ye’re one of those”— Captain Parks jerked his thumb in the direction of the awning rigged over the forward deck— “or”— pointing astern— "dancing a jig, with a ball and chain, to the tune of ‘Rule, Britannia’ —and not till then, understand?”

Miller made no reply.

Captain Parks snatched at the handle of the engine telegraph— the indicator already stood at “full speed ahead”— and swinging it violently over its full arc and back again, shouted down the engine-room tube for MacKnight, the chief engineer, and more speed.

Answering the demand in person, from the engine room there appeared a little, wizen, red-haired man, in shocking dishabille— a pair of greasy white trousers, and an officer’s cap cocked over one ear. The engine room, with the stifling heat of the day added, could have been little better than torment. The engineer, as he planted himself at the foot of the bridge ladder, was in a lather, and the sweat poured down his bare chest and shoulders in little, trickling courses.

“PII have ye ken, Captain Parks, as I’ve told Miller, there,’ he shouted, “that I canna do more. Twelve knots for a benighted scrouger like the Prince, wi’ her engines rockin’ like a cradle on the bedplates, is treemenjous goin.”

“I'll have ye know, Mr. MacKnight,” snapped Captain Parks, “that ‘the ‘benighted scrouger’ is my ship, and be damned to ye!”

“She’s a dissolute thing,” declared MacKnight, “an a benighted scrouger; but I'll no’ argue the matter. Twelve knots is the leemit.”

“Yere indecent in both words and dress, Mr. MacKnight. Limit, is it? We'll have more speed, Mr. MacKnight, if ye blow her up—and less lip!”

For a moment, the fiery little Scotchman glared, unable to find words adequate’ to express his feelings; then, finally: “Come down in the hell of an engine room,” he choked, “wi’ the life oozing out by the pores, an’ larn when a mon’s doin’ all his all, ye slave-drivin’ Yankee!”

Captain Parks laughed shortly. “A civil tongue in your head’s not to be expected. Come up here, Mr. MacKnight.”

“I will,” replied MacKnight belligerently, and sprang up the ladder.

Captain Parks caught him by the bare shoulder, and pointed astern. “I’m thinking, Mr. MacKnight,” said he, “that ye’ll be wishing ye were a Yankee yourself, if yon ever overhauls us. She'll be the Orthon, ye mind, that passed the time of day with us last trip up. Being a British subject, ’twill fare harder with you than with me, Mr. MacKnight. Treason’s an ugly word, and ugly is the punishment.”

“ 'T wud be vara harrd to prove,” said MacKnight cautiously. “I’m consarned wi’ the machinery, an’ naught else, Captain Parks. A berth’s a berth, an’ what’s an engineer to ken o’ what’s in the hold, so it’s no’ bilge water?”

“That’s as it may be,” replied Captain Parks. “But I’m thinking ye’d be easier in your mind if we managed to give her the slip.”

“I wud,” admitted MacKnight, blinking; “but I canna do more. Twelve knots! Did ye ever hear of the Prince doin’ the like before? What wud yon be makin’?”

“Twenty-two, and better,” acknowledged Captain Parks savagely.

MacKnight wagged his head. “ ’Tis nae credit to your mathematics, Captain Parks, the way ye talk. If ’twere late in the afternoon, I'd no’ say but we'd have a chance to hold out an’ gi’e her the slip in the dark; but, as it is— ye ken, Captain Parks?”

Captain Parks scowled. By every chance, the pursuer would be up with them in the early afternoon. He knew it as well as the other. “Well, then, Mr. MacKnight,” he rapped out, swinging on his heel, “get back to your junk shop, and, if ye can do no better, put in the time praying— ye’ll stand in need of it!”

“I'm a Presbyterian,” retorted the engineer hotly. “Ye’re a blasphemous mon, Captain Parks! Ye’ll get your deserts for it ane o’ these days.”

“I'm getting them now,” said the skipper gruffly, facing around again.

MacKnight stared for a moment into the captain’s troubled face.

“Mon,” said he remorsefully, “ye’re sore harassed. I'll do my best, I'll do my best— but ’twill do nae good.”

ii

AS THE hours crept on, the heat, intense before, became unbearable. The day was a yellow haze, torrid, still. Above, the sun was like a molten disk, its color like a tongue of flame from a furnace blast. Astern, there was no longer any speck; instead, a great smudge of black smoke that, having no breeze to disperse it, settled down, a blotch on the water line, as it poured forth from the three funnels of the cruiser, now coming up hand over hand with the Castle Prince.

Grim, with jaws set like a vise, stripped down to duck trousers and an undershirt, that, open at the neck and with sleeves rolled up, displayed the great chest, the gnarled and knotty forearms, Captain Parks paced savagely up and down his bridge.

A ball of white smoke puffed out from the cruiser’s side, hung, lifted. The muffled roar of the discharge floated across the water. Overhead, a shell sang, and hurtled by. It was good gunnery; just far enough away to do no harm, just close enough to be imperative.

Mechanically, Captain Parks’ hand reached out for the engine telegraph lever; then he hesitated, the hand dropped to his side, and he met Miller’s eyes across the bridge. Miller turned away, and began to whistle under his breath. Below, along the deck, the crew clustered at the rail, their glances alternating between the bridge and the ship astern.

Another fluffy puff of white, again the boom of the discharge, the angry scream of the flying shell— the gunnery was too good to be ignored.

With a laugh that was more a curse, Captain Parks rang his engines to the “stop.” The shake and vibration of the ship ceased, a silence fell upon the cough and hiccup, the clatter of the machinery, and, like some sullen brute hushed against its will, the Prince, gradually losing way, lay still, rolling moodily with the swell.

No man aboard moved or spoke. Swiftly, the black hull of the British cruiser drew up abreast. A white boat swung from her davits, dropped to the water, and came toward them. When within hailing distance, Captain Parks bellowed through his hands.

“What d’ye mean by this?” he bawled. “I'll have ye know that I’m an American ship, and ye’ll answer for it, by the etarnal! I’m the Castle Prince, Hamburg to Cape Town.”

An officer stood up in the stern sheets, and shaded his eyes with his hands. “I'm Cleaver— Lieutenant Cleaver, of the Orthon, captain. Commander’s compliments and apologies, but we mistook you for Captain Parks and the Arunia. Way enough! Make fast there in the bow!”— quick, sharp orders, as the boat’s nose grated on the iron plates of the Prince’s sides.

Captain Parks cursed heartily and with abandon. “Prince or Arunia, it’s all the same,” he yelled. “Yell come aboard at your peril. What d’ye want?”

“Contraband, Captain Parks,” replied Lieutenant Cleaver, from the boat. “Contraband arms for the Transvaal, via German Southwest Africa. Is business better this voyage, captain? I see youre well loaded.”

“Aye, were well loaded,” repeated Captain Parks bitterly. “Were full o’ Yellow Jack! I warn ye again, though I’m a fool to do it, ye’ll board us at your peril. We’re a pestilence ship.”

Lieutenant Cleaver laughed softly, as he came clambering up the side. “You've some humor, Captain Parks,” he said. “You’ve well named yourself. A pestilence ship you are—the worst pest in these waters; but = He stopped suddenly, as he swung on to the deck, and a queer look’ came into his face as his eyes strayed ahead of him to the awning on the forward deck. Then he turned, and motioned to his men, who were swarming up behind him.

“Get back to the boat, men! Every one of you! Look sharp!” he cried  hoarsely.

Captain Parks, hanging over the weather cloth of the bridge, chuckled as he experienced the first real pleasure he had known for many hours. The Yellow Jack was a blessing in disguise! He left the bridge and went to the deck to join his unwelcome visitor. As he came up to Lieutenant Cleaver, the Orthon’s cutter fended from the Prince, and began to pull back to the cruiser,

“I warned ye, lieutenant, didn’t I?” demanded Captain Parks. “Y'ell take a man’s word after, this, likely enough.”

“You did,” Lieutenant Cleaver answered coolly; “but it’s hard to tell when some men are speaking the truth. I’ve asked the commander to send us the doctor. I suppose it’s hardly necessary to inform you that you are under arrest, Captain Parks, you and your crew.”

“What for?" blustered Parks.

“I’ve told you once,” said the lieutenant’ sternly. “Contraband arms for the Boers. The game’s up, Captain Parks, and you might as well take your medicine like a man. Do you think you can change a ship with a coat of paint and a new name? I’ve seen her before, Captain Parks, you’ll remember.”

“Aye,” growled the captain, “I remember. And ye’ll have cause to remember it more than ye do now, sonny, I promise ye that! I ain’t forgotten what ye said that day, and I’ve a sneaking suspicion it’s yourself I’ve to thank for what’s happened now.”

“You’re more than half right about that,” admitted the lieutenant easily.

With a snarl, Captain Parks thrust his great, savage face close to the other’s, and his fists clenched into knotty lumps; then he laughed shortly, turned on his heel, and began-to stamp up and down the deck until, at the expiration of some fifteen minutes, he saw the cutter coming back. He joined MacKnight and Miller, who were standing by the engine-room scuttle.

“D’ye take note of the glass, captain?” asked Miller uneasily. “It’s been hangin’ low all mornin’, but I’ve never seen the like of the drop it’s taken in the last half hour. I’m thinkin’, sir, were in for something out of the ordinary.”

“Its little matter,” responded Captain Parks gruffly, and slued around to watch the doctor, as he came over the side, and handed a letter to the lieutenant. His eyes followed the doctor until he disappeared forward, then they came back to the lieutenant.

Cleaver had torn open the envelope, and was reading the contents. After a minute, he folded the paper, put it in his pocket, and leaned over the rail to the boat’s crew below.

Captain Parks could not catch the words, but the splash of oars, and then the sight of the cutter appearing from under the stern, needed no interpretation. Lieutenant Cleaver was to remain aboard— just Lieutenant Cleaver and the doctor!

Something within Captain Parks stirred with unholy glee. Cleaver was coming toward him now.

“We'll get under way, Captain Parks,” announced the lieutenant briskly. “You'll shape your course by the Orthon’s— four hundred yards astern. She’ll slow to your best speed.”

“Ye’re pretty free with your orders, sonny,” sneered Captain Parks.

“I am,” returned Cleaver.  “I'm in command.”

“Were to follow the Orthon, eh?” murmured Parks slowly, softly. “For why, and for where, I’d like to ask?”

“Commander’s orders,” replied the other shortly. “Ascension for quarantine, and inspection later.”

“Then take her there!” shouted Captain Parks. “Take her there, Mr. Cleaver! If your ratty, crawling crowd are afraid to come aboard, take her there yourself. D’ye think we’re languishing for a taste of prison, that we’re going to work our way to the front door? Take her there, Mr. Cleaver— I'll not!”

“I think you will,” was the quiet reply. “There was no need to risk spreading contagion. I am aboard, and yowre under the Orthon’s guns. I needn’t tell you they could blow you to kingdom come in a jiffy. Well get under way, Captain Parks, if you please.”

For a brief instant, dominating the rage and fury that was in his heart, there flashed through the captain’s mind the thought that this slight, trim young man before him had done a rather decent thing when he had kept his men from coming aboard, and that there was pluck and nerve behind the action that had forced his present position upon him— even with the Orthon’s guns to back him up. Then anger again assumed the supremacy.

“Work her, I'll not!” he roared. “That's flat!”

“Mon,” whispered MacKnight, plucking at his sleeve. “Mon, ye’ll be surely daft. D’ye recollect what Miller was sayin’ o’ the weather a minute gone? Yell want no prize crew aboard the night. Let well enough alone, Captain Parks.”

The boom of a gun came across the water. “She’s getting impatient, Captain Parks,” said Lieutenant Cleaver significantly.

“Have your way, then,” rapped out Captain Parks ungraciously in assumed defeat, as he caught the craftiness of his engineer. “I reckon I’ve little choice. Yell stand by, Mr. MacKnight, to go ahead. Take the bridge, Mr. Cleaver, and be damned to ye!”

iii

HOUR by hour, the Prince plowed sullenly in the Orthon’s wake, and hour by hour the yellow, murky, pasty haze grew more yellow, thicker, more forbidding, gradually shading darker toward the skyline, where the horizon rim was like a jet-black band of ink.

Aboard, men gasped for breath in the sticky atmosphere, the sweltering heat, and over all brooded the dread of the prison doors to come, the horror of the pestilence already theirs.

On the bridge, Captain Parks touched Lieutenant Cleaver on the shoulder, and jerked his thumb forward, “God knows what’s coming, I don’t,” he said; “but I’d feel better with the sick below, as I’ve said before.”

“The doc says no,” Lieutenant Cleaver answered. “The only chance they’ve got is air, what little there is of it. Below, they’d snuff out like candles.”

“Aye, and— look yonder there!"— he pointed his finger before him. The low, black fringe of the horizon was lifting, mounting like a pall to the heavens, and, at the lower edge, coming toward them with incredible speed, was a thin, churning, threadlike line of white.

Captain Parks’ hands went to his mouth, trumpetwise, and his great voice bellowed through the ship:

“Fo’ard, there! Hold fast, every man—"

The swirl, the swoop, the onrush of a mighty wind caught up his words, played with them like whirling bits of chaff, and flung them back upon him into space. With a clap of thunder, the awning tore from its lashings like rotten silk. The churning line of white was upon them. The Prince faltered, staggered, then buried her nose deep in the foaming waters, rose trembling, shaking herself like a thing of life. From the scupper ports, the green water poured in hissing streams.

Like a broken man, Captain Parks, white to the lips, turned and looked into Lieutenant Cleaver’s eyes, and his lips moved dumbly.

Cleaver’s only response was to avert his face.

The deck was bare! Fore and aft swept clean, with awful thoroughness. Surgeon and sick alike dashed to eternity ; the services of the one ended, the sufferings of the others past. And then, as though nature herself was stunned and appalled at the ghastly tragedy she had enacted, there fell a hush, and the silence was as a solemn requiem for the dead.

It was but the prelude of what was to come. Another moment, and the tempest broke with all its pent-up fury. Great, forked tongues of lightning played through a sky now black as ink, and with a moan like a stricken thing the Prince gathered herself together, and swung slowly around head into the teeth of the hurricane, to begin her long battle with the boiling waters, that tossed her on their seething crests like a cockleshell.

Once, as the lightning for a brief instant lit up the heavens, they caught a glimpse of the black hull of the Orthon, far to windward, the storm sweeping them farther and farther apart, and then the blackness closed down upon them again.

Miller came clawing his way to the bridge, and shouted in the captain’s ear. It was the tale of the disaster, the count of those that had gone. Eight men and the doctor!

As the night grew on, the storm increased. Two men were at the wheel now, and beside them towered the giant form of Captain Parks, and the slighter, trimmer figure of the lieutenant, their oilskins streaming, their eyes blinded by the spray flung in stinging sheets over the bridge, as great waves reared high over the bows of the Prince, hovered an instant in menace, and then their tumbling tons of water crashed upon her decks, shaking her as. a terrier shakes a rat.

Twice already, the chart house below the bridge had threatened to go by the board, making the bridge itself perilous and unsafe: and now, at last, it went with a grinding, crunching noise, sweeping into the port stanchions of the bridge, crumpling them like bits of picture wire.

The shock threw Captain Parks bodily back against the after railing of the bridge. As he recovered himself, the quartermaster roared in his ear:

“Wheel’s out, sir!”

“Tell Miller to man the stern gear. Quick, man, jump!” shouted Captain Parks. “Where’s Cleaver?”

The bridge had snapped like a stick, nearly in the center; and, the port  stanchions gone, that end had dropped almost to the deck. It hung, swaying crazily with the tumbling of the ship, sagging like a broken leg from the portion that still remained intact. Caught in the lower corner, where the canvas of the weather cloth made a little pocket, was a huddled heap. As Captain Parks looked, a sea broke over it. Only the quartermaster now remained with him on what was left of the bridge; the other seaman had already gone to carry the captain’s order to the mate.

Captain Parks pointed, gripping the quartermaster’s arm fiercely, and a black thought took shape and form. Free— if ever they weathered the storm— free! He would make his port, unload his cargo— there would be enough in that to refit— and the Prince would still be his— his! True, the Orthon lost in the storm, Cleaver, as a force, had become powerless; but, as a witness, he would, sooner or later, have to be reckoned with.

Now there would be no witness! He laughed aloud as his fingers closed tighter on the quartermaster’s arm.

“Its him, God help him!” cried the seaman. “We can’t get to him. He'll be pounded to death in a minute— if he ain’t already.”

Captain Parks’ grip on the other’s arm loosened, again he laughed, hard and short— and began to work his way along the bridge.

“For God’s sake, sir, don’t try it! "Taint any use, you—"

The quartermaster’s words were lost in the singing roar of the wind. Captain Parks, clinging to the shattered wreckage, was lowering himself down to the still, motionless thing below him. Gasping, panting from the fierce body blows that had battered him at almost every foot of the descent, as, swinging like a pendulum, he had been dashed, with the pitch of the ship, from side to side, he reached Cleaver, raised him in his arms, and began to struggle back. Inch by inch, he won his way upward; then the broken end of the bridge swung with a mighty jerk under the lift of the sea, as the Prince, without her helm, paid off into the trough of the waves, and he was hurled from his hold and flung back to the bottom. For a moment, he lay, helpless, held only from being swept overboard by the merciful protection of the canvas pocket that had already stood Cleaver in such good stead.

A pain shot through his arm and left shoulder, like the searing of hot iron. Again he picked up the lieutenant, and began to struggle upward, His breath came in short moans, his lips were bleeding where his teeth bit into them; the agony from his injured arm, that he was forced to use, was intolerable. At the end, he remembered only that the quartermaster had gripped and held them both. Then he had fainted.

When he opened his eyes again, he was in his bunk— but it was the morning of the third day before he was able to reach the bridge again. Miller gave him a helping hand as he came up the starboard ladder. Battered almost beyond recognition, the Prince was a woebegone, pitiful, broken thing to see. Captain Parks gazed upon the scene with a grim smile. To windward, banks of clouds, low, scudding, with here and there between them a rift of sunlight, heralded the breaking of the storm. There was nothing else in sight.

“Only the upper works. Only the upper works, eh, Miller?” he said softly, to his chief officer. “Below, she’s sound, eh? Sound as a bell?”

“Aye, sir; thank God!” replied Miller fervently.

“What’s our position, would ye say, Mr. Miller?”

“Well, sir, we've blown a goodish bit down the coast.”

“We have, Mr. Miller,” agreed Captain Parks, and he laughed as he clapped his hand on the mate’s back. “We have, and it'll be Angra, after all, Mr. Miller. There’s a bit of luck left us yet.”

“Well need it,” muttered Miller. “That wave didn’t wash out all the Jack. Martin an’ one or two of the men that are left are touched ‘with it. Though not bad, I reckon. We're pretty short-handed for nice maneuverin’, sir. I take it, you mean to work things at Angra same as before?”

“Aye, Mr. Miller, the same as before. We'll manage right enough as far as the men go; but I’d not like to arouse Cleaver’s suspicions— not for what he could do now, but for what he’d know afterward.”

“Lord, sir,” grinned Miller, “no fear of him. He’s too battered to leave his bunk for a week, if he does then. He’s off his head now,-ramblin’ about some girl, an’ him promoted an admiral.”

“I'm a firm believer in luck, Mr. Miller. It’s like the tide. When it turns, it’s all your way.”

“I shouldn’t think he’d say anything, anyway,” submitted the mate, “when he finds out you risked your life for him, sir.”

Captain Parks swung suddenly, savagely, on his chief officer, and shoved his fist under Mr. Miller’s nose. “If ye, or any one of the lot aboard, open your face to Cleaver about that, I'll bash it to pulp!” he cried fiercely.

“Aye, sir,” mumbled Miller, astounded and surprised, stepping hastily back. “Aye, sir; very good.”

iv

FOR the next few days, the Prince wallowed and thrashed her way far down the coast, and then, one afterrioon, MackKnight slowed his revolutions, and she lay, lazily rocking with the swell. Far off on the port beam, the land was just discernible, no more than a faint streak.

The night fell black, black as the Prince herself, creeping stealthily shoreward, with lights out and the engine-room hatch carefully covered. Inside the harbor, the one boat left, and that looking like a crazy quilt, from its manifold patches in an endeavor to make it serviceable, dropped over the side, and Captain Parks went ashore.

When morning came again, the Prince lay, lazily rocking with the swell; and, again, far off on the port beam, the land was just discernible, no more than a faint streak.

Aboard, all. through that day, and for other days thereafter, there was much commotion, the cough and sputter of the donkey engine, the grunting of men, the creaking of block and tackle— and the Prince’s decks lay cumbered with that which the hatches until now had hidden from the vulgar gaze. And each night she crept stealthily shoreward, and the litter of the day’s toil went over the side into barges, far up at the northern end of the bay in the harbor of Angra Pequeña.

Then came a day when the Prince did not wait for night, but steamed boldly in from sea, reeking with innocence and the smell of burning sulphur— steamed in for quarantine! And the port of Angra Pequeña received her at her face value, treating her with that compassion and tenderness that one in her sore plight and pitiful condition impelled; or, perhaps, the rather striking similarity between the port captain and one heavy-paunched, thickset German, who had superintended the loading of the barges in the dead of night, may have had something to do with it. That, however, is no more than speculation, for one cannot be sure of either face or figure by a dim and flickering lantern light, cautiously exposed and carefully shaded!

In due time, the Prince got a clean bill of health, and- the authorities gave her her clearance papers, and on the day this took place Lieutenant Cleaver appeared on deck for the first time— a matter of coincidence!

Captain Parks watched silently as the lieutenant, still very weak and shaky, walked from one end of the Prince to the other, peering reflectively down the open hatches into a bare and empty hold. Then he invited Lieutenant. Cleaver to his cabin.

Cleaver accepted the invitation, and likewise accepted the tendered glass. Both men drank in silence, and then sat eying each other across the table.

“Where’s your cargo?” demanded the lieutenant bluntly.

Captain Parks smiled softly, and shook his head. “The delirium will still be affecting ye, Lieutenant Cleaver?” he suggested politely.

“Oh, chuck all that!’ retorted Cleaver. “What’s the use of beating about the bush?”

“None,” returned Captain Parks promptly; “though what gets me is how ye should get it into your head we ever had any cargo. I put it to ye like this: If we’d had any, ye know we couldn’t have got rid of it neither before nor during that blow, eh? As for afterward, we made this port, where we've lain in quarantine, and any one of the port officials’ll give ye an affidavit that we came in as empty as we are this blessed minute. How could we have had any cargo?”

“You can’t squeal out of it like that,” snapped Cleaver. “I, and, for that matter, every one aboard the Orthon, can prove the difference in your water line. You were infernally deep, Captain. Parks.”

Captain Parks grinned through the smoke of his black cigar. “ ’Twas a mirage-like effect, maybe.”

Cleaver scowled. “Where’s your papers? You said you were bound for Cape Town. Perhaps that’s a mirage, too!”

“Papers!” repeated Captain Parks, removing his cigar, and staring at the other in well-simulated surprise. “Papers! Lord, man, if any one knows where they are, its yourself ought to. The last thing ye saw before ye went and smashed yourself to sleep was the chart house going by the board. I always kept ship’s papers in the chart house, from habit, like. Papers, my eye!”

“I'd give a year’s pay and my chances of promotion to know how, when, and where you landed that cargo,” said Lieutenant Cleaver.

Captain Parks closed one eye slowly, and squinted with the other at the lieutenant. “ 'Taint enough, sonny,” he chuckled. “Ye’ll have to raise the ante.”

Cleaver drummed on the table with his fingers, and stared with puckered brows at the floor.

“I'm getting under way in half an hour or so,” remarked Captain Parks nonchalantly. “Going to put in at Cape Town to refit, and pick up a cargo— if trade ain’t too bad. Ye can go ashore here, Mr. Cleaver, or ye’re heartily welcome to keep on down the coast with us.”

Then Lieutenant Cleaver looked up— and then he laughed. “I'll go ashore, Captain Parks, I suppose we can count ourselves lucky if you don’t lodge a complaint against us with the American consul at Cape Town for piracy, or something like that, on the high seas, eh?”

“ 'Twould be in reason,” said Captain Parks solemnly.

A quarter of an hour later, Captain Parks, from his partially rehabilitated bridge, waved his hand to a figure in naval uniform standing up in the stern sheets of a small boat that was being rapidly rowed shoreward; then he turned, and, calling down the engineroom tube, politely requested Mr. MacKnight to set his unmentionable species of a junk shop in motion.

__________________

15: Pieces of Hate

Jack O'Brien
fl 1943-1945

Detective Book Magazine Spring 1944

Otherwise unknown writer who had ten or so stories published between 1943 and 1945.

DETECTIVE CAPTAIN  Rory Rourke got up with an abrupt vigor that made his swivel chair squeak shrilly in the silent room. He put on his hat, pulling it down in front with significant firmness, and started toward the door.

"Anything doing, boss?" Flaherty asked.

"Maybe," Rourke said, glancing at Flaherty, Mumford and the other men in the room, "but this is one time I go alone. Too many cooks might spoil the pie— and this is a pie I've been looking forward to for a long time."

He closed the door of the Detective Bureau behind him, almost sauntered as he went down the stairs and along the main-floor corridor, and paused at the Desk for a few minutes of idle talk. He wanted to give Mumford plenty of time to let them know he was coming. Mumford was the only bad egg in his department, and this was a good chance to kill two birds with one stone, in addition to wiping a number of unsolved killings off the books. Provided, of course, he didn't get killed himself. He might not be very far from that, before this night was over.

Leaving the Desk he noted that it was fifteen minutes before midnight. He took his time in walking the half-block from the Headquarters entrance to the corner where he usually parked his car. He had to cross the street to get to it, and as he did he looked to his left, up the steep dark incline of Knowlton Street. The look saved his life,

Aae sedan was more than halfway down the short hill, evidently coasting, and Rourke saw that the driver didn't intend to stop for the red light. It had slipped down upon him so quietly that only the glint of the chrome frames of darkened headlights caught Rourke's attention, but as he spotted the car its driver gunned it hard and head-on at him.

Rory was almost in mid-street but his reflexes, fortunately, were still sharp at forty. As he made the last long stride to the curb the sedan went past within two feet of him, its tires squealing as the driver tried to adjust his aim. It went on through the red light and slid swiftly into the darkness of the street on the other side.

Rourke didn't try to get the number. He had a pretty good idea where the car had come from. Mumford hadn't wasted any time letting them know. He felt some surprise that even big graft and an obvious ambition to be head man in the Detective Bureau could make Mumford be an accessory to the killing of the only man who stood between him and the department leadership.

The detective chief got into his car and turned up the street out of which the dark sedan had whirled at him. He switched on the radio, and almost immediately the dispatcher in the Headquarters radio room came on with "calling Captain Rourke, calling Captain Rourke, calling Captain Rourke... you are wanted at Headquarters immediately..."

Rory Rourke's face, which like his body was long and lean, broke into a grin, though there was no grin in the pale blue eyes. He wondered if Mumford thought there was still a live Captain Rourke on hand to hear the summons, He continued on his course away from Headquarters.

Turning into Main Street he warned himself that inside he was feeling tautly like a rookie instead of a veteran of twenty years' service. But that was understandable. He wanted this one very much. And he had waited a long time for it. Twelve years,

With one hand he stroked the jagged scar on the left side of his face. It ran from cheek to jaw and it was still conspicuous, even though it was twelve years old. Rory Rourke had never much minded its conspicuousness. Not when he remembered the second slash that had been intended for his throat.

He turned off Main Street at Elm, and a few feet beyond the corner he wheeled to his right into a dark driveway that ran the length of the block-long building on his right. An alley broke the black blot of building on the left at the point where the detective parked his car behind two others.

He switched off the radio, which was announcing again, "...calling Captain Rourke... you are wanted at Headquarters immediately... ."

The ground-floor portion of the building on his right was dark except for a small bulb over one door. From the block-long stretch of the second floor came the sound of orchestra music and many shuffling feet. The Roseland was the biggest night spot in the city. Everything that Mike Wargo ran was the biggest thing of its kind in the city. Mike Wargo himself was the city's biggest thing on two legs, one way or another.

Rory Rourke was walking toward the door that led up to Mike Wargo's notorious , backroom office when a voice from a doorway beyond the weak range of the solitary bulb asked, with gloating casualness, "Want to see somebody, mister ?"

They were expecting him, all right. He had no doubt about that, especially when a gun dug into his back.

"Okay," the man with the gun said, "get along on to where you was going, sweetheart." The sentinel who had spoken from a neighboring doorway also came along, sneering, "Only a honest cop could be this dumb."

Up in Mike Wargo's lushly rugged, thickly paneled office Rourke quickly scanned the insolent faces of the men who were slouched along the wall on both sides of Wargo's desk. They looked as if they were expecting a job, and the detective took a slow, deep breath to loosen the tautness within him. Well as he had known what he was walking into, the first glimpse shook him for a moment.

Mike Wargo swiveled back in his chair and gave Rourke that ugly, loose grin of his. He had a big-boned, brutal body and brutal eyes.

"This is like old times, Rourke. The times before I got high class." He waved an arm, ape-like in its length, at the room.... "What's on your mind?"

"You know well enough, I guess." The detective nodded at the hoods in the room. "A man was murdered a few nights ago— in a way that I haven't seen in a long time."

"How long?" Wargo's grin broadened, but at the same time the eyes became meaner,

"Just about twelve years." Rourke fingered the scar on the left side of his face.... "Scotty Teasdale must have had you in a tight spot the other night, to make you pull that one on him.... I remember it well. One downward slash in the face, then a twist of the wrist and a second slash across the throat. The first part put your mark on a guy for life, arid made him throw his head back and leave his throat wide open for the second part. You didn't miss the second part very often." :

"With this, you mean?" Mike Wargo fished into a vest pocket, pulled out an odd-looking coin, and held it up. It was one jagged half of a silver dollar.

Rory Rourke saw a momentary flicker of fear in the eyes of some of the other men in the room, even though they were on Wargo's side.

"This is my lucky piece," Wargo said. "The first customer in the first little joint I opened put a silver dollar on the bar, about twenty years ago. I saved it, and I'd say it's been pretty lucky for me."

"Being so fast with your hands for stitch a big fellow— that's where you've really been lucky," Rourke corrected.

"That still brings in my silver dollar, don't it?" Wargo came back, with an animal smirk.... "And right now it's your tough luck that you decided to come here. Ever since what happened to Scotty, I been wondering if you'd let your memory get the best of you. I ain't been able to sleep right, the last couple of nights, and a sickly guy like me can't afford to put up with that. This is your last stop."

"Maybe."

One of the hoods slouched against the wall straightened up impatiently. "Whaddya say, boss?"

"Not so fast, jerk," Mike Wargo snapped. He stood up, all six-feet-three of him, and walked out to the center of the room, where the two men who had been outside now relieved Rory of his gun. They gripped his wrists but widened the space between their bodies and his by a step as their boss stopped squarely in front of Rourke.

"Before we go," Wargo said, "I want to give you something. I had half a mind to make the presentation a couple of times before this, but the chance was never so good before."

HIS huge right hand flashed across Rourke's nose, and then the big arm was jerked back viciously and the elbow cracked the detective under the right eye. Blood was already coming from the nose and the eye cut when the left hand landed with such impact that it jolted Rourke out of his captors' grips and left him sprawled on the rug.

"I guess you was right about my hands, hey, Rourke?"

For all the forty-pound weight pull that Wargo had on him, Rory's eyes were steady enough as he looked up at his assailant. "I didn't see much that time," he said. "Show me again, without half the city holding on to me."

Wargo nodded to the other two men, and they grabbed Rourke's wrists and yanked him back to his feet. This time they let go of him— or, more exactly, they flung his hands to his sides. In that instant in which he was still defenseless, Wargo hit him again with that left hand.

When Rourke landed on the floor this time, he rocked back on his shoulders with the momentum of the fall and flailed up and out with both feet at Wargo's stomach. But Wargo, moving with the easy speed of a big cat, stepped around the flailing feet and drove one of his own into Rourke's ribs. The pain of it stabbed through Rory's lungs.

"This is twelve years overdue," Wargo panted, glowering down at him. "You almost got me, back there twelve years ago, just when I was well on my way to
big things. It cost me plenty to smooth things over, I remember. I got a good mind—"

He snatched the jagged half of a silver dollar out of his vest pocket, and one of his hoods said nervously, "Hey! You can't give it to him in here, boss, You already got blood on the rug."

"All right," Wargo conceded, reluctantly. "Let's give the bum a chance to find out if there's any bodies at the bottom of Devil's Pit, like he's always been claiming."

EVEN though it was what Rourke had known he was letting himself in for by coming here alone, the reference to Devil's Pit brought a look to his eyes that Wargo's blows hadn't been able to accomplish, As they took him downstairs he reminded himself that there could be no slips from now oh—none that wouldn't cost him his life, at any rate.

Devil's Pit was an old limestone quarry three miles outside the city, in a meagerly inhabited area. It contained a depth of water that had inspired local legends of its being bottomless, and the rim of it bordered on a Wargo-owned roadhouse.

There was a stout iron fence between the quarry and the roadhouse's parking space, and Rory Rourke had long had ideas as to why the fence should have an apparently ornamental gate at a point where it opened into the sheerest part of the pit. four bodies in Devil's Pit—including Nick Pallazza, an unsolved case wherein no trace of either the Pallazza body or the Pallazza car had ever been found—but Rourke's suggestions that the spot be dredged had never got far against the influence of Wargo, who also happened to own the hole.

He felt sure there were at least four bodies in Devil’s Pit—including Nick Pallazza, an unsolved case wherein no trace of either the Pallazza body or the Pallazza car had ever been found—but Rourke’s suggestions that the spot be dredged had never got far against the influence of Wargo, who also happened to own the hole.

"Drive slow," Wargo ordered his men, when they were all in the driveway... . "Take all the cars, so there won't be too many of us in any one of them, and keep a good distance apart. Tim," he said to one of them, "you drive Rourke's car. We'll get rid of that along with him."

To still another man he said, "Get busy, Leo." In the faint light from the bulb over Wargo's door, Rourke caught a thin gleam of piano wire as one of the hoods stepped around behind him.

He felt his hands being quickly bound together with painful snugness and, when he got into the back seat of one of the cars, he was shoved to the floor and the man with the piano wire went on with the job. When it was done, Rourke's feet, hands and neck were tightly strung together from behind and any sort of movement brought a cutting, strangling pain across his throat.

Several times Mike Wargo evidently decided that the reduced speed of the car wasn't jolting his victim enough, for he reached out with a big foot and kicked Rory's legs. The sudden cut of wire across his throat each time brought a gasp from Rourke, and Wargo said, "That's better."

When they pulled into the parking space behind the Wargo roadhouse no lights were showing. . . "For your special benefit, Captain," Wargo jeered, "we had the help close up and go home as soon as we heard you was coming."

Rourke was removed from the car and dumped into the gravel of the parking space for the time being. The lights of all the cars 'except his, which remained back at the parking entrance, had been turned off.

He heard the rustily reluctant creak of iron hinges, and Rourke's car was turned slightly to focus its headlights on the supposedly ornamental gate beyond which there was nothing but a sheer drop into Devil's Pit.

"Douse the lights, Tim," Wargo commanded. To Rourke he said, with all the pride of good workmanship, "Tim can do this one with his eyes shut. He's had a little practice.' And, as the darker blot at the parking entrance began to move through the black night, "Now watch and listen."

"What else can I do!" snapped Rourke.

The car was quickly shifted into high, and it went past Rourke close enough for him to see that Tim was standing on the running board, steering through the opened window and controlling the car's speed with the throttle. To Rory it sounded as if Tim pulled the throttle out another notch at the point where the car again became only a darker blot against the night.

And then he heard Tim's feet striking the gravel, the slushing noise of the tires 'stopped, and there was only the racing motor, its roar seeming to come from a hideously big emptiness. The roar ended in a great splash that echoed about in Devil's Pit.

Wargo was the first to break the fascinated silence. "It sounds like a long drop, don't it, Rourke?" he asked, squatting hugely beside the detective. "I wanted to give you some idea, before you tried it yourself."

"Try some of this!" a voice behind him suddenly spat. "It blows you wide open, if you don't tell your boys to be nice!"

Mike Wargo told them. The thing between his shoulder blades had too much a feel of weight and length behind it for any mere pistol.

Only the piano-wire expert, after the warning burst that came from an upper window of the roadhouse's garage, was seen to have other ideas as the flashlights flicked on to the right and left behind Detective Flaherty. The way he was shot down made it difficult for Wargo's hoods to see any further point in disobeying their boss' order.

"Youre a nervy one, coming in that close," Rory Rourke croaked at Flaherty, as that young detective started untrussing him.

"I figured that, with all the noise that was going on, it was a good chance to nail the big fellow and save us some blood. And you should talk about nerve," Flaherty pointed out, laughing in shaky relief.... "While we were waiting for you to arrive, all I could think of was the fine pickle you'd be in if they didn't bring you here, as you thought they would."

"How about Mumford?"

"He did just what you thought he would, too. Your parting speech apparently convinced him that you were alone in this thing, and we got a record of the call he made to Wargo right after you left. When he returned to the room I gave him that phony business about the Chief having called up to say he wanted to see you and him right away, and down in the radio room your friend the dispatcher innocently asked him why all the cars were leaving the garage. He put two and two together, and I nailed him as he was dialing Wargo's number again. He is now in a place that has no telephone,"

BACK on his feet Rory Rourke flexed numb limbs and worked his face and neck to see if any part didn't feel like a lump or a raw crease.

He glanced across at Mike Wargo, who, in the glare of the police-car searchlights that had been brought in, was looking merely annoyed about the handcuffs.

"How many years you think you'll pin on me?" he contemptuously wanted to know.

"What you're going to get will be measured in terms of volts, not years," Rourke promised,

"Huh! On what evidence that a good lawyer can't take care of ?"

"There's one thing that no lawyer under the sun will be able to get around," Rourke said, stepping over to Wargo. He reached into the man's vest pocket and pulled out the half of a silver dollar.

"That night in the dark, up in the warehouse, when you were in no position to be questioned about that hijacking murder, you gave me this." Rourke pointed to the-scar on his face. "My partner on that trip didn't make out so well. He got the whole works. Afterward I had no real proof that it was you— no proof except that it felt like your leg that I grabbed as I went down. Just for luck, though, I kept something you dropped in the scuffle: This."

The detective pulled a piece of silver out of his own pocket and placed it against Wargo's.

They fitted together perfectly.

______________________

16: Mr Clackworthy Profits by the Drama

Christopher B. Booth

1889-1950

Detective Story Magazine, 4 Feb 1922

"TRAVEL, James,"remarked Mr. Amos Clackworthy, "is a wonderful thing."

The Early Bird stared disgustedly out of the Pullman window at the landscape.

"Boss," he said grumblingly, "the only difference between this an' walkin' is that walkin' is free. The way this rattler is movin' would make a guy think they was chargin' by the hour instead of the mile an' was trying to wipe out the road's bonded indebtedness on this one trip."

"There's a hot box on the car ahead," explained George Bascom; "they've got to run slow or burn an axle in two. The conductor was just telling me."

The master confidence man and his three friends and assistants— The Early Bird, George, and George's pretty wife— were returning to Chicago from Omaha, where one of Mr. Clackworthy's schemes had failed to materialize, and this failure, in part, accounted for James' peeve.

At this point Mrs. Bascom came in from the observation platform where she had been getting a breath of the crisp late October air. Her eyes were shining, but this was not due entirely to the exhilarating ozone. She was tremendously excited about something.

"Listen!" she whispered. "This trip may not be a flivver after all. I don't often have a hunch, but I've got one now.. Mr. Clackworthy, did you notice that big, overdressed man across the aisle?"

The question was really superfluous, for Mr. Clackworthy always noticed every one, but he nodded.

"Well," she went on, "he struck up an acquaintance with me out on the observation platform, and—"

"Has he been trying to flirt with you?" interrupted George indignantly.

"Don't be silly, George! You know I never flirt. The man is just naturally talkative and wanted some one— any one— to listen to him. I simply supplied him with an audience. I'm glad I did, too, for I'm sure that he's a good prospect. He is rich; he—"

"Yeah, I've met them Pullman millionaires m'self," cut in The Early Bird; "the figures of their bank balances most always looks like the week's milk bill. Them guys what's long on gab is generally short on cash. Money talks, the sayin' goes, but I sort of notice that the goof with the kale most always keeps a padlock on the jaw."

"No,"insisted Mrs. Bascom, " you're wrong this time. Hes the real article, warranted pure gold, platinum lined, and almost diamond studded. He hasn't been rich long enough to be accustomed to the sensation, so he naturally talks about it. When I speak his name, my friends, you will sit up and gasp, for he is none other than Daniel Orcutt."

"I gotcha," vigorously nodded The Early Bird. "He's the gink what squeezed a million bucks outta the packin' companies for some kind of invention for curin' meats. Was pullin' down about forty plunks a week until he shifted his noodle into high gear an' thought out the invention."

"But did he really invent it?" questioned Bascom. "Seems to me that I read somewhere about a suit by the man who claimed to be the real inventor and charged that Orcutt swiped the idea before it was patented."

"I am deeply interested," said Mr. Clackworthy. "As a matter of fact I happen to know that Orcutt's reputed profit from the invention was greatly exaggerated. He received exactly three hundred thousand dollars for it. The poor devil who really devised the new curing process died before his suit came to trial, otherwise, no doubt, he could have proven that Orcutt did steal the invention.

"So we have run into Daniel Orcutt! Well, well, this is indeed an unexpected pleasure. Mrs. Bascom, you are to be congratulated."

"Please trim him, Mr. Clackworthy; trim him— hard!" begged Mrs. Bascom. "He's so stuck on himself; he is the worst boaster that I ever ran into."

Mr. Clackworthy pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Nothing," he said, " gives me more unadulterated pleasure than in reducing the egotism— and the bank roll— of a boastful man. Humph! Orcutt is posing as a millionaire, and that means, of course, that he would like to be a millionaire. Now if we could only show him a way where he could apparently make a million dollars— it's certainly worth trying.

"Mrs. Bascom, will you kindly usher Daniel into the Lion's Den? And then, Heaven help him!"

There was no difficulty in inducing Mr. Orcutt to be introduced. His loquacious conceit, his crass references to his new fortune, always multiplied more than three times, made him unpopular among all except mercenaries who sought to sell him stock or accept gifts, and he was wise enough to be shy of these. At the sight of the elegant Mr. Clackworthy he beamed in delight, for Mr. Clackworthy, indeed, looked to be manor born— suave, genteel, polished of speech. Bascom and The Early Bird he greeted with less enthusiasm.

Orcutt was forty-odd. In spite of his almost rattle-brained talkativeness there was a certain crafty shrewdness about him. No one would have picked him for an easy mark. For nearly twenty years he had been an office man/ at low pay. The truth of the matter was that the actual inventor of the three-hundred-thousand-dollar packinghouse patent had called at the office of Speed & Co., where Orcutt had been employed, and Orcutt, pretending some show of authority, had gotten him to talk about his device. Craftily he had made a further appointment away from the office and within a week had applied for a patent in his own name.

His chief ambition just now was to mingle with men of affairs, to move in the sphere to which, he thought, new wealth entitled him.

"I am pleased to make your aquaintance," he said rather importantly as he wedged himself into the seat beside the master confidence man. "Guess you got my name right, huh? Daniel Orcutt; yes, Daniel Orcutt— guess you must have heard of me; name's been in the papers a good deal and all that sort of thing, you know."

"Of course," Mr. Clackworthy answered gravely, "I suppose every one has heard of our new millionaire. You certainly struck it rich."

"Yes, I don't mind saying that I did pretty well," replied Orcutt; "cleaned up a cool million on my patent— just an even million. What's your line?"

"Oh, I don't work for my money," answered the master confidence man quite truthfully, "but, then, I'm not a millionaire, either. However, I manage fairly well. Now and then I make a-nice clean-up in the market."

"Them Wall Street sharks don't get any of my money!" declared Orcutt. "I wouldn't buy stock in the Standard Oil Co.— not at five dollars a share!"

"I c'n see right now that we ain't gonna rope this gink in on no stock scheme,"The Early Bird said to himself.

Orcutt rambled on, talking of himself, producing several newspaper clippings which contained his picture, and exhibiting them proudly. All the time Mr. Clackworthy was studying him, seeking to find the vulnerable spot where he could be seriously wounded— financially. The man was a problem; knowing absolutely nothing of big business he would naturally be suspicious of any business venture into which he might be invited.

By the time the train reached Chicago Mr. Clackworthy apparently had developed a great fondness for the prospective victim, showering him with praise. This cordiality was like wine to Orcutt, and he grandly invited the entire party to have dinner with him the following evening.

At Union Station they parted company, Orcutt going to his hotel, and Mr. Clackworthy and his coplotters against idle and surplus wealth, to the master confidence man's Sheridan Road apartment where Mr. Clackworthy, after lending a willing ear to The Early Bird's plea for liquid refreshments, lapsed into a long and meditative silence.

"I see that he's going to prove a tough customer," observed George Bascom.

"Please, Mr. Clackworthy, don't let that absurd man keep all of his money,"begged George's pretty wife.

"Huh!" grunted The Early Bird disgustedly. "That Orcutt bozo ain't gonna quit talkin' about himself long enough to let nobody state any kind of a proposition to him. When he was applyin' to the patent office he oughtta got one for perpetual motion on that tongue of his. The boss is wastin' his time."

Mr. Clackworthy's thoughtful frown lifted. "I fear,"he said, "that our usual avenues of attack are closed to us in the case of Orcutt. He would like to make big money, but he thinks in concrete terms of dollars and cents. He hasn't the imagination to grasp a big business opportunity, or, to be more exact, what we should make appear to be such. If we should be able to interest him in some sort of commercial venture, he would want to look into it with such unimaginative thoroughness that he would be liable to find the catch in it. However, there may be a way to hook him.

"James, kindly hand me last Monday's Transcript. It seems to me that I saw an advertisement on the real estate page that exactly fits in with what I have in mind."

The Early Bird got the paper and eagerly looked over the master confidence man's shoulder as the latter penknifed from the "For Sale"column a modest advertisement which read:

COUNTRY HOME FOR SALE

The Master in Chancery offers for Sale the furnished country home of the late Archibald Collier, located near Cedar City, comprising ten acres, with nine rooms and two baths, stable and garage, at the low price, for immediate sale, of twelve thousand, five hundred dollars, half cash, balance on mortgage.

"What's the grand idea, boss?" James demanded.

Mr. Clackworthy chuckled. "It has just occurred to me,"he replied, "that a man of Mr. Orcutt's comfortable circumstances should have a country estate. I think we shall sell him one— at a handsome profit."

ii

CEDAR CITY, built upon the shores of Lake Michigan, and about thirty miles north of Chicago, is a most attractive place during the summer months, but it is hardly to be commended as a winter abode. Outside, the wind, blowing in from the lake, whistled and moaned about the house tugging at the windows and scraping the stark tree branches against the weather boarding in front. Mr. Clackworthy had moved in only the day before. He and The Early Bird sat in front of the log fire. Daniel Orcutt, who had come along as a guest, was upstairs for a moment, James shivered.

"Boss," he said, "I gotta hand it to you for makin' dough outta some queer deals, but this sure captures my nanny, You say yowre gonna sell this place to Orcutt. Any guy what would pay out any jack for it needs the bean given the double o by a noodle specialist, I know you bought the house in Pop Blanchard's name an' give up twelve thousand an' five hundred seeds for it. Then you rent it furnished from him, an' bring Orcutt out here. Already he is kickin' himself for acceptin' your invite an' wishin' he was back in The Loop. You got about as much chance of sellin' him this place as of sellin' Mr. Prohibition a recipe for homebrew."

"Sh!" said Mr. Clackworthy, lifting his hand warningly. He had heard Orcutt's tread upon the stairs.

"Great guns, Mr. Clackworthy!" exclaimed Orcutt. "What on earth ever induced you to rent this old barn of a house? You leave your comfortable apartment for— this! The only thing that makes it livable is that you brought some of your private stock along."

"Yeah, let's have a snifter," suggested The Early Bird. Mr. Clackworthy nodded pleasantly and rang for Nogo, his Japanese servant whom he had brought along.

"I regret very much that you are not enjoying yourself, my dear Orcutt," he said. "I love nature, this rugged weather, and—" He stopped, suddenly, as Nogo entered with more than customary haste. He was trembling. "Please, sir,"said Nogo, "I no like house; him—him spooky, Just as you ring I see— I see face to kitchen window. He see I look— and gone,"

"I think you must have been sampling my liquor,"said Mr. Clackworthy.

"Me no drink, sir! this house spooky. Last night Nogo hear him, too."

At that moment there rang through the house a scream. It was Mrs. Bascom, and she came flying down the stairs, white of face and breathless.

"Oh!" she gasped out. I— I've had such— such a terrible scare. My room looks out on the roof of— of the front porch; I had just stepped out into the hall and went back for something when I saw— a face at the window. It— it was horrible— horrible! A dirty, ugly face with— with an awful grin. When I screamed, it went away. I looked out of the window just in time to see the man drop off the porch and disappear into the shrubbery."

"I tell you; I tell you!"cried Nogo.

"Well, there does seem to be something in it, after all," said Mr. Clackworthy slowly. "However, I don't think we need be alarmed about it— if we simply take reasonable precautions."

"You had better notify the police," suggested Orcutt. "I ain't anxious to be murdered in my bed, and I think I'll go back to Chicago to-morrow. I don't like—"

Crash! The glass of the front window tinkled to the floor and the missile which had wrought the damage landed on The Early Bird's knee and bounced to the floor at his feet. It was a rock with a strip of paper tied around it. He picked it up and jerked loose the string, spreading out the crumpled paper upon which had been written with a blunt-pointed pencil:

BEWARE! WARNING!

Get out of this house NOW.

You ain't wanted here.

Get out or get killed.

It was signed with a crudely drawn skull and crossbones.

"Let us have a look at it, James,"said Mr. Clackworthy.

With a shiver The Early Bird passed it over, and, to his amazement, the master confidence man read it aloud. How could he expect to sell to Orcutt a house threatened by so sinister a force?

"We seem to have stumbled into quite an adventure," said Mr. Clackworthy; "we seem to be in for quite an exciting time of it. We shall have the fun of seeing what happens."

"Not for me!" explained The Early Bird. "That ain't exactly my idea of fun, I'm tellin' the world."

"George is coming out in the morning," declared Mrs. Bascom, "and I am going to make him take me back with him, if I'm still alive in the morning."

"What do you suppose it's all about?" asked Mr. Orcutt.

"That's the fun of a mystery— finding out what it's all about,"replied Mr. Clackworthy. "I rent a perfectly ordinary house in a perfectly quiet and respectable neighborhood for one month, and I hardly get the furnace going when I'm ordered to leave it."

"But what reason could anybody have for wanting to force us to leave?" pressed Orcutt curiously.

"You're as good at guessing as I am,"returned Mr. Clackworthy laughingly. "What do you say to a little bracer for our overwrought nerves?"

"I guess nothin' short of a quart is goin' to do me any good," said The Early Bird. Under his breath he added: "An' this is the house that the boss was gonna sell to Orcutt for a fancy profit!"

iii

THE REST of the night passed quietly, and the next day Mr. Clackworthy, by announcing that he had hired a private watchman to keep an armed vigil, induced his reluctant guests to remain for at least a few days longer. Again darkness came and all was serene; the terrorists seemed to have lost heart.

Daniel Orcutt's room was at the rear of the house, and about ten o'clock he retired. After nearly an hour of restless tossing he began to snore. It was a few minutes past midnight when there was a faint scraping sound on the window ledge and a ladder rested against the sill. Two men, shadowy blurs in the darkness, mounted the rungs. One of them used a glass cutter to neatly remove a circle of glass from the window pane, and through this opening appeared a hand, fumbling at the catch. In a moment the sash was raised, and the two midnight visitors were inside the room. Mr. Orcutt slept on.

The two men moved noiselessly. One of them cautiously let his electric search light play about until the rays rested full upon Orcutt's face. The latter stirred uneasily, and, as he opened his eyes, he felt an icy hand clutching at his throat.

"One word out of you, cully, an' I'll throttle you!"whispered a hoarse voice. "Quick, Jack, gimme that chloroform!"The other intruder produced .a bottle, removed the stopper, and soakéd a handkerchief with the fluid. Evidently, however, they were novices at using the anesthetic, for they did not give Orcutt even enough of it to numb his senses, but Orcutt pretended to be unconscious.

"I reckon that'll take care of him, Jack, but keep an eye on him an' if he makes a move— croak him!"Although apparently dead to the world, Mr. Orcutt shuddered. With tightly closed eyes he listened to their conversation.

"Are youse sure this is the right room, Jack?"

"Sure, pal, didn't I hold hot irons t' old Collier's feet till he thought I was goin' to brand him, an' made him come through? Sure, this is the right room Too blame bad we didn't get here fore these folks moved in. To think of this place bein' vacant all this time when nobody would have bothered us at all. I thought sure they'd beat it when we handed 'em that scare."

"Mebbe we ought to have waited, pal."

"Nix! Somebody's liable t' get wise an' beat us to it. I've got an idea that Collier wrote a letter to that nephew of him puttin' him wise to the lay. Les get busy."

The two men moved over to the fireplace and, playing the flash light over the surface, began a search of some sort. Daniel Orcutt, opening one eye cautiously, watched them. He saw one of the man's hands reach beneath the grate's opening; there was a sharp click and the entire front of the fireplace swung back, revealing an open space behind it.

"It was on the level, Jack!" whispered one of the men. "The coin is here!"

The other swore eloquently under his breath,

"I didn't know it was a safe!" he said. "We'll never get that open without nitro, dn' we ain't got a drop of soup! That means we got to go back to Chi an' get it, an' that means tomorrow night. Tell you what we'll do; we'll give the boobs in this house another good scare that'll get em out sure; that'll leave us a clear road for to-morrow night."

"That's the only thing t' do, Jack. We couldn't get that box open in ten years without nitro. If I'd known it was a safe, I'd of made Collier slip me the combination. Come on, le's beat it."

They closed the swinging fireplace, stealthily crossed the room to the window, and slipped out into the night. For fully five minutes Daniel Orcutt lay huddled under his cover, shivering— and thinking. When he could get his nerves together he slid his feet to the floor, lowered the window curtain, and snapped on the light. Then he approached the fireplace and, reaching under the grate, fumbled about until his fingers came in contact with a protruding piece of metal. He twisted it and was rewarded with a responding click; a tug, and the woodwork facing swung back.

Before him, built into the wall, was a heavy metal safe of modern design, about forty inches high.

"I didn't dream it!" he gasped out. "It's— it's true. This— this is Archibald Collier's house, and that's his safe!"

Slowly he closed the opening and sat down on the edge of the bed to think things over.

"Crack!" The bark of a pistol thudded through the night, and all for a moment was still. In a moment the house was aroused and Daniel Orcutt heard a step in the hall.

"Are you all right, Orcutt?" called Mr. Clackworthy.

"Yes; what's happened now?"

Mr. Clackworthy opened the door and stepped into the room; he had with apparent haste thrown a dressing gown over his pajamas.

"Somebody outside fired a shot into the living room," said the master confidence man. "Looks like this thing is getting serious. When people go to shooting at us, it's time to move. I think I'll pull out in the morning." A gust of wind, spurting through the hole in the window pane, moved the curtain. Mr. Clackworthy stepped over and examined it. "Hello, what's this!" he exclaimed. "Some one has been trying to get into your room, evidently."

"I— I didn't hear anything— not a thing," declared Daniel Orcutt. "I must sleep very sound. Yes, you're right; the thing to do is to get out of this house as soon as you can. By the way, who did you say owned the place? Didn't you say it had been sold recently?"

"Yes," answered Mr. Clackworthy, "it changed hands only a week or so ago, I believe; bought by a chap named Blanchard who is going to fix it over and make quite a show place out of it, I believe. It used to belong to Archibald Collier, the banker. I guess you remember about the Collier case; the newspapers were full of it at the time."

"Humph, yes," admitted Daniel Orcutt. "I wonder if you happen to know where this Blanchard lives?"

Mr. Clackworthy suppressed a smile. "Why, yes,"he replied, "he's staying down at the hotel in Cedar City for a few days. You want to see him?"

"Oh, no; certainly not,"replied Mr. Orcutt hastily. "Why should I want to see him?"

"Yes, why should you?" said Mr. Clackworthy, and he smiled openly this time.

iv

IMMEDIATELY after breakfast Daniel Orcutt set out on foot for the two mile walk to Cedar City.

Pop Blanchard, gray and grizzled, was in his room at the hotel, and when Mr. Orcutt was announced he at once busied himself with an elaborate lot of blue prints and landscape gardener's designs.

"Mr. Blanchard?"

Pop nodded.

"My name is Orcutt, Daniel Orcutt. I suppose you have heard of me?"

"Oh, yes, I've heard of you—a good deal."

"Well, Mr. Blanchard, I have been a guest at your place during the past three days— guest of Mr. Clackworthy. Fine place you have. I like it out here, and since— er— business calls Mr. Clackworthy to the city, I wondered if you would lease it to me, for, say a month."

Pop promptly shook his head. "No," he said, "I didn't intend to rent it in the first place. The real-estate man must have misunderstood me, but after Mr. Clackworthy moved in, I let him remain. I want to start the work of remodeling the interior of the house right away. Glad to hear that Mr. Clackworthy is leaving. I shall be glad to refund his rental money. I'm going to make a fine place out of it—a very fine place."

Daniel Orcutt was disappointed and showed it. "I— I wonder if you would — er— sell it?"he asked hesitatingly. "I would like to own the place."

"No,"refused Pop.

"I might pay you a good profit on it,"insisted Orcutt.

Pop leaned back in his chair and surveyed the man critically. "Now I wonder just why you want to buy that place of mine?"he asked. "Seems to me it's getting valuable. Last night Archibald Collier's nephew wanted to buy it for twenty-five thousand dollars— just double what I paid for it. It's a good place, beautiful view, but the house is old and certainly it isn't worth twenty-five thousand dollars as it stands. Must have discovered radium on it or something."

Beads of perspiration began to gather on Daniel Orcutt's brow. "What what will you sell it for?" he demanded. "Put a price on it, Mr. Blanchard— a fair price."

Pop waved his hand to the plans on the table before him. "I had planned to make a great summer home, as you can see," he said, "but I'm a business man, too. If you were fool enough to pay money enough, I suppose I would have let it go. The place was a whim with me, but I'm not rich enough to let my whims be too expensive."

"Well," debated Orcutt, "since you refused twenty-five thousand dollars, of course you want more. I might— I might give you thirty thousand dollars."

Pop threw up his hands. "You will give me thirty thousand dollars?" he demanded. "I suppose I ought to make you tell me what it's all about, but—

"I'll tell you what I'll do, if you want to give me— um— fifty thousand dollars cash for it, and assume the six thousand dollars mortagage, the place is yours."

"Ouch!" cried Daniel Orcutt. "You —you don't mean that you're asking me to pay you fifty thousand dollars for that old shell of a house! It's outrageous!"

"I'm not asking you to buy it at all,"answered Pop. I wanted to make the place a sort of hobby; I'm a notional old man, I suppose, but if I don't get fifty thousand dollars for it, I won't do business."

"Forty, and not another cent!" declared Orcutt.

Pop debated for a moment. "Forty if you'll assume the six-thousand-dollar mortgage," he finally decided.

"Let's go over and get the deed signed," agreed Orcutt. "I want possession to-day."

When the deed was duly executed the new owner of the house called a Chicago detective agency and asked for four armed guards for duty at his new place. This detail attended to he returned to what was now his own property.

Mr. Clackworthy and his other guests had finished packing and the master confidence man's automobile was out in front, ready for the return trip to the city. The Early Bird was staring gloomily out of the window, reflecting that this adventure marked their second successive failure.

"Boss," he said, as he saw Daniel Orcutt walking briskly up the drive, "the jinx is sure followin' us, not only followin' us, but has overtook us! We fell down on that Omaha deal, an' then this one goes flooey. Not that I'm any surprised at this flivver. What on earth give you the idea that you was gonna trim this Orcutt guy by sellin' him this house? You couldn't of sold it to him, I betcha, even if things had run smooth."

"However, things have run smooth— very smoothly, indeed," contradicted the master confidence man, "Pop has just telephoned that—"

The sentence was interrupted by the entrance of Daniel Orcutt. "All ready to leave, I see," he said.

"You betcha!" exclaimed The Early Bird.

"I wouldn't sleep in this place another night for five thousand dollars!" declared Mrs. Bascom.

"Not for ten," said her husband.

"We are waiting for you, Orcutt," said Mr. Clackworthy. "Pack your things and we'll be starting."

It was an embarrassing moment for Daniel Orcutt. He did not know just how to explain his apparently sudden decision to remain behind. And he did not want to let his friends know that he had purchased the house. They would ask curious questions.

"I don't believe I'll go back to-day," he said slowly. "You know, I don't like the idea of being scared away like this. I'm going to find out who these terrorists are and why they want us to move. I am going to stay here."

"Don't be foolish, Orcutt," warned Mr. Clackworthy with apparent earnestness. "You may be taking your life in your hands." But Orcutt shook his head stubbornly and struck a dramatic posture.

"No man shall say that I am a coward!"he exclaimed. "I shall remain."

"Ain't no man gonna say 'how natural he looks' if I can help it," retorted The Early Bird. "I'm movin'. I'm tellin' the world I ain't no hero."

For some minutes Mr. Clackworthy pretended to reason with Daniel Orcutt on his foolhardy decision, but the man remained firm. At length they got into Mr. Clackworthy's car and drove off, leaving Mr. Orcutt mumbling to himself. "A cool million dollars," he was saying. "This afternoon I will get a safe expert out here to open it."

AT the moment when Mr. Daniel Orcutt was reveling in his dream, Mr. Clackworthy, driving through the village, stopped at the hotel to pick up Pop Blanchard. Gravely Pop handed over Mr. Orcutt's check for forty thousand dollars as The Early Bird, George Bascom, and George's wife looked in speechless amazement.

"Great Goshen!" gasped out James. "That— that ain't on the level, is it? You— you didn't really sting him for forty thousand beans!"

"Sting him?"queried Mr. Clackworthy. "Nay, we merely consummated a good real-estate transaction. We purchased property for twelve thousand five hundred dollars, and sold it for forty thousand dollars, plus an assumed mortgage of six thousand dollars.

"I would have taken you into my confidence before, my dear friends, but I wanted your terror to be genuine. Yes, you have guessed it, the campaign of terror was carefully staged by me. Jack Prichard and Ned Farley hurled the rock through the window, gave Mrs. Bascom her little fright, and fired the pistol shot. They also took a ladder and ascended to Orcutt's room where they pretended to chloroform him, but were careful to let him hear and see what was going on. They manipulated a trick fireplace that I had built in for the especial purpose, revealing a safe.

"Mr. Orcutt foolishly jumped to the conclusion that the safe must contain a great deal of money— so much money, in fact, that he could quite afford to pay forty thousand dollars for the house."

"I don't getcha, boss," protested The Early Bird. "Why did he give up forty thousand seeds for it when he didn't know how much was in the safe?"

"Yes, why did he?" asked Mrs. Bascom breathlessly.

"My dear innocent children,"replied Mr. Clackworthy, "I am a little surprised that you haven't guessed it already. You knew that the house formerly belonged to Archibald Collier— now, don't you see it?"

"You mean the guy what skipped out long about eight months ago with all the kale belongin' to the Ironsides Trust Co., what he was president of?"

"Exactly," said Mr. Clackworthy. "Mr. Collier disappeared about eight months ago, and with him went practically all of the bank's cash— nearly a million dollars. Eight hundred thousand, to be exact.

"We simply convinced Mr. Daniel Orcutt that the secret safe behind the hinged fireplace contained the Collier loot. He saw the chance to become an actual, instead of a pretending, millionaire, so he fell, as I was quite sure he would, into our little trap.

"Quite a neat profit from a three-dollar theater seat," informed Mr. Clackworthy. "When in New York some months ago I attended the performance of a very popular play and that's where I got the idea, James. Long live the drama!

"But we almost missed if as a narrow margin, I can tell you. I had quite a time of it keeping Orcutt from seeing yesterday afternoon's papers. Nogo had brought one from the village and put it on the library table in front of Orcutt, and if the fellow had not been so busy telling what a great man he was, he would have been sure to have seen it. I managed, however, to get it away before any of you had a look at it. I was, frankly, scared to death that Orcutt would hear the news in Cedar City, but he was evidently so engrossed with his problem of buying the house that he did not talk to any one. Here it is."

Mr. Clackworthy took from his inner overcoat pocket a copy of the afternoon newspaper of the previous day's date. A two-column headline said:

BANKER COLLIER CAPTURED

IN FLORIDA

WITH HIS LOOT

Ironsides Trust Co. President Had

Nearly Eight Hundred Thousand Dollars
in Satchel When Arrested.

"Gosh, that was a narrow squeak!" The Early Bird gasped out.

"It was," affirmed Mr. Clackworthy. "Let us be getting into the city where we can cash Mr. Orcutt's check before he gets a safe expert out here this afternoon and discovers that the secret safe contains nothing more than a quart of very good liquor. I thought he might need a bracer to revive him from the shock. Don't you think that was thoughtful of me?"

________________

17: Murder Makes a Lovely Frame

Ken Kessler
fl 1942-1946

Detective Book Magazine,  Spring 1946/47

IT WASN'T the walk down the hall, or dropping the nickel in the slot, or dialing, that brought beads of sweat to Johnnie Vinson's brow. And certainly it wasn't Leta Morris' warm, lilting "hel-lo," for that was music to his tortured soul. It was none of these.

It was the ending of a phase of his life, or the beginning of another. There was a sharp line and a deep scar in between that Johnnie would never forget. Not for a long time.

When she recognized his voice she drew a quick, pained breath. "Oh, Johnnie, darling, where are you? I've asked everywhere. I've searched till I'm almost panicky—"

He drew strength from her anxiety. He wondered with that part of him which had become so alert whether Henslee ever missed. Henslee, the copper, the genius down at headquarters who had no unsolved cases after twenty years.

"It wasn't safe to call sooner," he said, muffling his voice. "It's still not safe, but I've got to see you. At once, Leta. Can you come here?"

"Of course, darling. Right away."

Johnnie pressed his face tight against the phone. He gave her the address. "Use back streets. Remember, I'm billed as a cop-killer. Captain Henslee himself is on the case."

There was an instant of silence when Johnnie could hear the beating of his heart. Then her voice came. "Don't leave the house, Johnnie. I'll get to you. Don't go out for anything." She hung up. The receiver clicked as if reluctant to break the 'connection.

Johnnie returned to his room at the end of the hall. This building was as remote as any he could find, a good spot for a murder-suspect. It was in the heart of the city, but no limousines plied the streets outside; no women in ermine or men in top hats were ever seen under its shadowy lights, This was a section called Sand Flat, a little isolated world of unkempt hovels and dime beers and sleezy femininity in peeling doorways.

Johnnie entered the room, closing the door behind him. A lone table, ringed with the imprints of a thousand whiskey bottles, two plain chairs, and an iron bed with grilled head- and foot-boards, were the room's furnishings. The bed squeaked lustily as he sat on it.

He would wait now. He would count the seconds marching past and— wait. He felt like a character in one of his own true police-case write-ups. Johnnie Doe, or Harvey Smith. Of Oshkosh, or Pumpkin Center. Only, now it was Johnnie Vinson and not some remote character blurred on a police photograph. Johnnie made his living unearthing unusual murder cases and writing them up for the national magazines. He passed a slim hand across his unshaved cheeks. His eyes were red, his blue suit wrinkled, and his shirt dirty. He hefted himself off the bed and went to the window, drawing back the curtain and peering across at the intersection. The big, alert figure of Captain Henslee was there. He was leaning against a lamp post, cleaning his fingernails.

Johnnie drew back. Leta would never come down the street. She was too schooled in the guiles of a world that lives by night. A dancer, a sprite in gay panties and bra to whet the fancies of overbored customers, a girl who'd made her own way since she was orphaned at twelve. Leta would use the back entrance.

THEN he heard her unmistakable nervous tread in the hallway, he leaped to the door. And then she was in his arms, her hands clasped fiercely behind his neck.

"Johnnie, you're in an awful jam, honey."

He drew away. "The cops are hot, hey ?"

She nodded. "You've got to have help. You can't just sit here and rot. They'll pick you up in time."

He gazed at her slowly. She was wearing black that grew into every subtle curve and made startling contrasts against her white flesh. "That's why I called you," he explained. "I had to see you. It's rough, waiting like this. But I can't go out. I've been living on sandwiches and beer that a kid brings me."

"They've got you charged, you know. Cop-killing!"

His voice was harsh. "But they've got nothing on me except a lot of circumstantial evidence, They've never found the murder gun. What do they claim for a motive?"

"Jealousy, Johnnie. They think you killed Fagan because you were jealous over me. Witnesses heard you tell him to stay away from my dressing room."

"He had no business hanging around back there every night. But I wouldn't have killed him for it."

"Johnnie," she said measuredly, "you're forgetting I saw you."

He slumped on the bed. "He was in the hallway. The Golden Moon was packed. You had just finished your dance. I was ahead of you on my way to your dressing room. As I opened the door I heard the shot. I guess you heard it, too. Being behind me you thought it was me."

She stood close to him. "Johnnie, remember, I saw you. I wasn't more than a couple of steps behind you. The gun went off and then, before I could do or say anything, you were racing out the rear exit."

His shoulders drooped wearily.

"They're saying now he wasn't just playing around. He was on duty. I don't know what he was looking for, but Fagan wasn't there to make passes at me. He was officially working."

"The way he hung around you—"

"That was part of his act. He was using me, or thought he was." She grasped his hand. "I've got a plan. You won't like it, but you've got to listen!"

"I'm listening."

"Curd Roper. I know how you hate him, but you're in no spot to quibble. Curd can get you out of here, out of town, where "you'll be safe. He has men all over the city. Then you can hole up somewhere for a while."

Johnnie tensed. "Curd would want pay, big pay. I haven't got any money. No, we've got to think of something else."

"They— they'll hang you, Johnnie." Her nails dug into his hand. "Oh, I thought there were other ways, too! But there aren't, It has to be Curd."

"But the money?"

"I've got my savings." Her breath came with a rush, "You can pay me back later."

Johnnie shrugged. "Maybe it has to be."

She loosed her hand. "I'll go to Curd immediately. And, Johnnie—" she bit her lip "—you know how Curd is. If you've got a gun around, hide it."

"I don't have one," Johnnie assured her. "Neither a gun nor the gun."

She kissed him and went out.

Johnnie sat quietly on the bed. At length he got up, lit a cigarette and sat down again. He was thinking of the nights in the Golden Moon. Laughter and music, and holding Leta in his arms.

He had first met Leta casually a year ago, but it wasn't until recently that they had come to know each other. Fagan was hanging around then. Leta said not to mind him. She said that Johnnie was all she wanted. It happened that suddenly.

He recalled the night when several of the band members were in the hallway smoking and Fagan was leering at Leta. Johnnie told him to move it.

"A copper's place is out front, Fagan. No crooks back here."

Curd Roper, who owned the Golden Moon, came through then. Fagan smiled and moved out of the hall.

JOHNNIE smoked his cigarette and marked time by the progressive acceleration of his heart. Finally he heard steps again, this time heavier and slower.

The knob turned and Curd Roper stepped in.

"Hi, Johnnie," he smiled in his easy way. Curd gave the impression of being disjointed. His arms swung freely and his legs were as agile as an athlete's. His fine body was incongruous with the unrelenting grey eyes and the thin, hard mouth.

Johnnie got up. "Leta said she'd fix it. I guess I'm in a spot."

"Guess? You're putting it mildly. What made you kill him? A dame ain't worth it, Johnnie."

"I didn't do it, Curd. But innocence makes no difference. A frame can be—"

"Frame?"

"Fagan was shot by a gunman hiding in the hall. The copper was working on a case."

Curd leaned on a chair. "What was he working on, Johnnie?"

"A dope ring. I'd heard it rumored that a big one was active. A few small-time arrests were made, but Fagan was after the leader. I figure the Golden Moon was headquarters and—"

"Are you insinuating—"

"—that he was after you, Curd. Little by little, hanging around as if he was making a play for Leta, he was adding things up." Johnnie stepped back. "Leta learned he was a cop and got wise. So did you."

Curd gouged his hand in his pocket. "So I come up here to help you and you spring this?"

A gun appeared out of Curd's pocket. He grinned, waving it up and down.

The beads of sweat reappeared on Johnnie's forehead. "I know, Curd. The murder gun. I know the whole set-up. I couldn't believe Leta was mixed up in it at first—"

Curd cut in, grinning. "You're smart, Johnnie. Since you called the plays, PH tell one. Sure, I killed Fagan. Now I'll surprise you. I'm not going to kill you, Johnnie."

"You've got to, now!"

Curd jiggled the gun. "Suicide, Johnnie. You couldn't take it, so you shot yourself. Oh, I'll pull the trigger, but they'll find the gun in your hand. This one, Johnnie." He took a step forward. "Start your prayers, Johnnie. Here it is—"

"That's all. I need to hear, Curd." The voice was Henslee's, from the doorway. He stepped inside, his gun aimed at Curd's head. Curd whirled, licking his lips. He finally shrugged.

Johnnie was white. "TI hsoa it to you, Henslee. When you said that you suspected Leta and Rope of working together, I— I couldn't buy it. But—"

Henslee had a moment when he looked very old. "A guy can't bat a thousand. No cop can. Watkins grilled her. He's convinced she's on the level. She was honest in thinking she saw you shoot Fagan. All along she was trying to help you."

Johnnie sprang for the door. "Then she's free!"

Henslee smiled weakly. "She would be if it wasn't for you."

But Johnnie was gone down the stairs, leaving Henslee to talk to himself.

_______________

18: On Her Sole

Scott Campbell

1858-1933

Detective Story Magazine, 28 Oct 1919

WATSON stopped, stared, gasped, and went faint with sudden horror. It was a remarkable display of sensibility in the faithful old butler. He ordinarily was very stiff and punctilious, with the frigid rigidity of one trained in a cold storage plant and graduated cum laude. His temperament, ordinarily, was as torpid and pepless as that of a toad.

On the floor of the spacious main hall, between the side rise of a broad colonial stairway and the open door of an elegant library, lay young Mrs. Russell Ordway, twenty-three, with her skull crushed, her handsome face drenched with blood, her garments in disorder, and with the pallor of death just beginning to settle upon her. Obviously, she had been killed only a short while before.

Joseph Ordway, her stepson, a stalwart man of thirty, was crouching near her, ghastly white, his features strangely drawn and hard set. His hands were wet with blood. His heavy ebony cane, which always occupied a Minton umbrella stand near by when not in use, was lying in a pool of crimson near the dead woman's battefed head, where he had dropped it.

"Goodness!" Watson approached, appalled. "What has happened, sir?"

In the face of such a fatality, evidently the most heinous of crimes, only a devoted old butler would ask such a question.

Joseph Ordway arose unsteadily. He took out his handkerchief and wiped
his hands. He appeared dazed by what had been done, and in doubt as to what he should do. He seemed to realize, nevertheless, what it meant to be caught red-handed.

"Call Doctor Greer at once, Watson," he at length said huskily. "Notify the police, also. Telephone to the police first," Watson, to the police first," he emphasized.

Watson started toward the library, but stopped short, reflecting, and then turned back. Loyalty is often one of a butler's attributes.

"Beg pardon, sir," he said. Then he ventured, faltering: "What shall I tell the—the police, sir?"

Ordway hesitated. There was no misinterpreting the question. It was a covert offer to deceive, to invent explanations that might possibly hide the crime, or at least shield the criminal. His fine dark eyes, though fixed briefly on the butler's pale face, had a glassy stare, the vacancy of one who hurriedly weighed the consequences of his answer. He swallowed a lump in his throat, then drew himself up a little, with jaws set and lips twitching.

"The truth," he replied. "Tell them the truth, Watson."

"Yes, Mr. Ordway, sir." Watson winced, but bowed submissively.

"Then let things lie," Ordway told him more firmly. "Nothing can be done for Mrs. Ordway. She is dead. Let nothing be touched, Watson, before the police arrive."

He gazed at his bloodstained cane, nevertheless, and hesitated again, as if tempted to remove it. Instead he abruptly turned away and sat down in the reception hall, within view of the body; his brows were contracted and his staring eyes fixed upon the floor at his feet.

Gossip had made the most of a sweet morsel one year before, when wealthy Russell Ordway, an invalid near seventy-five, who, in spite of the indignant opposition of his only son and the latter's pretty wife, who dwelt with him with their two-year old child, and presumably were the only heirs to his large fortune— gossip made the most of it when this venerable millionaire married his trained nurse Jane Archer, a dark, handsome, seductive girl of twenty-two, after an acquaintance of only two months. Gossip never, in fact, neglects the union of May and December.

That was not all. Soon there came rumors of increasing friction in the fine old suburban mansion. Tales of bitter discord followed; tales of open enmity. charges of evil and designing infatuation, of the insidious purpose of an artful and unprincipled woman to secure the Ordway millions, of the execution of a new will vastly in her favor; and finally of the sudden alienation of Joseph Ordway and his wife, her refusal to remain longer in the same house with the other, her abrupt return to the home of her mother, her petition to the court for a separate maintenance and the custody of their child— all denoting how completely the feeble old millionaire and the others were under the alleged evil influence of his young wife— who lay dead on the floor of the main hall at nine o'clock on that fateful October evening.

It was to all this, of which very few in that community were ignorant, that Chief Rogler referred, when the desk lieutenant at police headquarters told him of Watson's startling communication,

"So it's come to a head at last and ended with a killing," he said gruffly. "Did you get any details?"

"Only that Joe Ordway must have done it," said the lieutenant. ''Leastwise, the butler said it appeared so, when I asked whether the woman's assailant is known. But he seemed to admit it a bit reluctantly, chief, all the same."

"Humph!" Rogler ejaculated. "Joe Ordway, eh? That don't surprise me." His thin, determined lips took on a strangely sinister and severe expression. "It's about what I would have expected."

Detective Callahan, writing at a desk near by, eyed him furtively. He did not like the chief's tone, nor his last assertion, nor the expression that came with it. He did not like the chief himself, in whom he detected qualities quite at variance with his own straightforward and scrupulous character. But Hugh Callahan only recently had been made an inspector, and he was much too keen and discreet to early criticize or openly oppose his chief— which may have been one reason why the latter selected him as an assistant that evening.

"You better go with me, Callahan," he said brusquely, while putting on his coat. "The investigation of a murder case may sharpen you up a bit. Send two patrolmen after us, lieutenant. We'll go in my runabout."

Callahan accompanied him without replying. He was not yet thirty, an erect, wiry man above medium height, whose slender figure and smooth-shaven face often led others to underestimate his physical strength and his mental keenness. Martin Rogler, on the contrary, was a stalwart man of forty, square-jawed, forceful, aggressive, and not above resorting to threats and intimidation.

"I've been expecting it, Callahan," he repeated, as they rode away. "Something in the Ordway camp was bound to drop. I didn't reckon, however, it would be the woman."

"I've known Joe Ordway since boyhood, chief," Callahan said quietly. "He's a good, clean thoroughbred. I can't think he did it."

"Thoroughbred!" Rogler growled, frowning. "Sure he's a thoroughbred. That's one reason why he did it. Mongrels only cringe and snarl. Fine-bred dogs are quickest to bite. Breeding puts temper in them."

"That's true," Callahan replied.

"Another reason is the old man's money," Rogler pointed out. 'He's made a will leaving the whole of his estate to his wife. 'Tain't generally known, but I was tipped off to it by the lawyer who drew it up. Joe Ordway knows it, too. You can bet on that. Why wouldn't he be sore, then, and want her put away? That's his only look-in for what's coming to him. There's a million or more at stake."

Callahan did not reply.

"Besides, she's the cause of his wife's leaving him— Nancy Glover that was," Rogler elaborated, with sinister vehemence. "I knew her well before he married her. I got it, too, from her own mother. Nan couldn't live longer in the house with her. She got on the poor girl's nerves until she near went dippy. Not even her little kiddie could hold her there. But Ordway didn't quit." He emphasized it with a derisive sneer. "That's the thoroughbred in him. He just sat tight and let her go. He had the money end of it to look out for. Maybe he thinks, having social standing and a political pull, that he can get away with a job of this kind. But not while I'm chief! You hear me, Callahan, not while I'm chief!" Rogler's teeth met with a vicious snap. "If he did it, Callahan, I'll railroad him to justice on greased rollers, pull or no pull. ll hand it to him good and plenty."

Callahan saw the vindictive gleam in his frowning eyes. He knew the true cause of it. He remembered Joe Ordway's charming wife .when she was pretty Nancy Glover, a stenographer in the district attorney's office, and he knew that Martin Rogler then was very fond of her, and not without glowing anticipations— until Joe Ordway met and married her. Callahan knew, and Callahan's only comment was a mental one. "If you hand it to him at all, blast you, you'll hand it to him right," he  said to himself. "I'll make dead sure of that, if it costs me my badge."

Watson admitted them. Only ten minutes had passed since he telephoned.

Joseph Ordway had not stirred, nor did he look up when the detectives entered. He appeared either grimly indifferent to his threatening situation, or racking his brain to determine how best to meet it. Two servant girls, in street clothes, now were standing near the side hall, both pale and awed by the shocking tragedy.

Chief Rogler took in the scene with one quick, comprehensive glance, then paused and questioned the butler.

"What do you know about this?" he asked curtly.

"Very little, sir," said Watson. "I was in the kitchen when it happened. I had been busy there half an hour, and when I returned I saw Mr. Ordway and the body, sir, just as you see it."

"Where was Ordway?" Rogler shot one frowning glance at him. "What was he doing?"

"He was near the body, sir, just rising, and was wiping some blood from his hands. He wanted me to call Doctor Greer and the police. He told me not to touch anything, sir, and to tell the truth. That's all I know about it."

"Had you heard any disturbance?"

"No, sir."

"Where were the other servants?"

"It's their evening out. Two have just come in, sir, but Mrs. Ordway's maid has not returned yet."

"Where was Ordway when you went to the kitchen?"

"In the library, sir.' Watson pointed to the open door of the lighted room.

"And Mrs. Ordway?" Rogler rapidly questioned.

"With Mr. Russell Ordway, sir, in his room," said Watson. "He is old and feeble. She takes most of the care of him, sir, with the help of her maid, Lucy Dean."

"As far as you know, was any other person in the house?" Rogler inquired, with quite needless austerity.

"As far as I know, sir, there was not," Watson told him, stiffly.

"Whose cane is that near the body?"

"Young Mr. Ordway's, sir," was the reluctant admission.

"Tell me the truth." Rogler fixed a fierce and searching eye on him. "Did you see him strike the woman with it?"

"I did not," said Watson, frigidly. "It was lying where you see it, sir, when I came from the ktchen."

Rogler thrust him aside. He appeared to have no eye for Ordway, no wish to question him, but bent only upon weaving around him a net that could not be broken. He strode by the base of the stairs, near which he had been standing, and approached the dead woman. He picked up the heavy cane and briefly examined it.

"Banged on the head with this, Callahan, her skull would have broken like an eggshell," he muttered, as the latter joined him. Both began to inspect the woman's injuries. "She's not been dead long. She's still a bit warm. The butler gave it to me straight. He must have telephoned at once."

"Which shows there was no conspiracy between him and Ordway," Callahan argued quietly. "They've had no time to frame up anything."

"No time be hanged," growled Rogler, with a momentary glare at him. "You're talking through your hat. Sharpen up, Callahan; sharpen up! No great time was needed. They had a quarter hour before we got here. Or how do you know it wasn't all framed up before the job was done?" Rogler demanded. "All of the servants were out. That butler is very devoted to him. You can see that with half an eye. No time be hanged! Sharpen up, Callahan !"

"But he would not have left his own cane lying there," Callahan reasoned.

"Wouldn't he?" Rogler sneered derisively. "That's just what a crafty rascal would do. He'd figure on its being a strong point in his favor; that others would reason as you do. Get wise to tricks of that kind, Callahan. Sharpen up!"

Rogler turned again to the woman. There was a dark, swollen bruise on her right temple. The left side of her skull was very badly fractured. One arm was twisted under her. Her skirts were in some disorder, exposing her ankles and feet, one crossed over the other, and clad in low, laced shoes. The lacing of one was untied, hanging several inches over her ankle, denoting that it had been trodden on and the knot drawn out during a brief struggle with her assailant.

"Everything points to Ordway," Rogler resumed. "No one else could have killed her in that brutal way without his having seen or heard him, It's not ten feet to the library door. - He struck her first on the right temple. Notice the dark swelling. The blow failed to knock her out, and then in a frenzy of rage and hatred, most likely, he dealt the blows that killed her. That's just what he did, Callahan, as sure as the Lord made little apples. He either planned it deliberately, or he had a brain-storm and—"

Rogler broke off abruptly. Doctor Greer was hurriedly approaching, and Rogler moved to one side for him to examine the body, while he at once began with subdued voice to tell him of the circumstances.

Callahan's thin, clean-cut face had turned strangely white and hard. He read Rogler correctly, his sinister mien, the predetermined course he was shaping, his covert enmity and vindictive purpose, Ali this was like a knife thrust to Callahan. He had always liked Joe Ordway. He was mystified now by his grim silence, however; by his moody abstraction, which seemed in a measure to confirm the incriminating circumstances, and he could see no way to refute them.

While Chief Rogler and the physician were inspecting the woman's injured head, however, Callahan gently raised the foot that wascrossed over the other, and placed it on the floor. A scratch on the sole of the low, laced shoe caught his eye. It aroused his interest, moreover, in spite of the fact that he was nettled to the quick by his chief's taunting reiteration: "Sharpen up, Callahan!"

He bent nearer to study the single, plainly discernible scratch. It ran diagonally across the sole. It was so conspicuous in the smooth, clean leather that it must have been very recently made. Callahan viewed it intently for several seconds, then glanced sharply at the other shoe. But he looked up involuntarily the next moment and was a bit startled.

Joseph Ordway, with hardly a vestige of color in his fine, aristocratic face, though he now appeared outwardly calm, was standing directly back of the crouching physician.

"Good evening, Detective Callahan," he said quietly, observing his look of surprise. "I saw you when you came in, of course, but I was thinking of something else. What do you make of this, Doctor Greer?" he inquired, turning to the astonished physician. Chief Rogler was up on the instant.

The interruption was not expected. The outward composure of the speaker, and the fact that he himself was completely ignored, seemed to him like a covert taunt, or open defiance, and it stirred the worst streak in his vindictive nature.

"Make of it!" he exclaimed, eyes snapping. "It speaks for itself, Mr. Ordway, as you ought to see for yourself. In my opinion—"

"One moment." Ordway checked him icily. "I did not ask for your opinion. I know you will make a case against me, Chief Rogler, if you possibly can. I knew that before you entered, and I have been waiting only to see what steps you would take and how far you would go.

"I want an unbiased opinion, Rogler, not yours," he added, with unmistakable significance. "What do you say, Doctor Greer?" he calmly inquired, turning again to the physician, while Rogler was briefly nonplused. "How was this woman killed?"

"There is no question about that," said the physician gravely. "She was murdered, Mr. Ordway, surely, by some person who a

"Wait! Rogler interrupted. Stop right there!"

His dark face had gone flinty hard. His voice was as harsh as a rasp. "You keep your opinion to yourself, Doctor Greer, until the inquest," he commanded. "I will not let you make any statements to the man suspected of this crime."

"Why, no, no, certainly not, chief, if you object," said the physician nervously. "But I really think—"

"Never mind what you think at this time," Rogler sharply insisted. "Keep it to yourself. As for you, Mr. Ordway, you may not want my opinion of this murder," he said sternly. "But I want you, all right, unless you can refute the incriminating circumstances and the evidence against you, and I'll make mighty sure of holding you for the crime."

"I hear you." Ordway drew himself up with frigid haughtiness. 'You hardly needed to say so. You already had made it very obvious. I do not think, however, that you will have any great difficulty in holding me."

"No difficulty at all," Rogler curtly retorted, pointing. A slender, darkeyed girl, closely followed by two policemen, had entered the side door of the house and hurried into the main hall. "This way, Macy, and arrest this man," he commanded, quickly addressing the nearer policeman. 'Hold him until I am ready to question him. You, Donovan, see that no one else leaves the house. Who are you, my girl?" he demanded, striding toward her. "Are you Mrs. Ordway's maid?"

"Y-y-yes, sir,' said the frightened girl, horrified upon seeing her dead mistress. "I— I am, sir. I'm Lucy Dean—"

"That's enough," Rogler said impatiently. "Where is her husband's room? Lead the way. Go with me, Callahan. Hold the others here till I return."

The last was sharply addressed to the two policemen, with a momentary glare at Ordway's drawn white face, while he followed the trembling maid to the main stairway. None ventured any objection, or betrayed any sign of having one. There was no opposing Chief Rogler, in fact, when he was in an ugly mood, or actuated as he was on that fateful occasion.

ii

DETECTIVE Callahan was obeying orders. He had sharpened up. He preceded Chief Rogler and Lucy, the maid, up the polished hardwood stairs. His lithe, wiry figure was somewhat bowed, however, but not because his burden was heavier. There was a singular subtle gleam deep down in his narrowed eyes. They shot swift and searching glances, strangely keen and intent, over each of the glistening waxed stairs, while he led the way, much as if his detective instinct had been suddenly stimulated, either by the peril of the man he would have been glad to befriend, or by the frequent goading command of his churlish chief.

Callahan slipped a little on one of the top stairs, where they curved slightly to meet the second floor. He placed his hand on the handsomely papered wall to steady himself, but with a quick, impulsive movement that was not quite natural.

"Gracious!" he exclaimed, as he removed his hand and glanced at it. "I guess I've marred the paper a bit." He pointed to a hardly noticeable spot on the surface of it, as if his hand had rubbed it slightly.

"Hang the paper!" Rogler growled. "Get a move on. We'll see what Russell Ordway can tell us. He'll know just when his wife left him. He ought to have heard the assault, too, if he has ears. Go on! Sharpen up!"

Callahan was going on. He was near the top stair. He noticed that one corner of a Persian rug, about a yard square and lying on the second-floor landing, was hanging several inches over the edge of the stair.

"It has a deuce of a twist," he remarked, pausing to place the rug squarely on the floor.

"Never mind that,' said Rogler, frowning, impatiently. "Which is Mr, Ordway's room?" he demanded, turning to the maid.

"This way, sir," said the girl, who had partly regained her composure.

She led the way into a large, handsomely furnished side room, the door of which was open. A shaded electric lamp burned on the center table. Near it was a partly filled tumbler, covered with a saucer and spoon, also two small vials and a powder box bearing a druggist's label.

Mr. Russell Ordway, however, thin, gray, and with a strange dead white pallor in his cheeks, was sound asleep in bed. He was sleeping so soundly and breathing so heavily, in fact, that he appeared to be stupefied. Nor did he respond when Chief Rogler, grasping his shoulder, tried to arouse him.

"Dead to the world," said Rogler, after a brief scrutiny. 'We'll get fat, Callahan, on what he can tell us."

"It's the sleeping-powder, sir," Lucy ventured to inform him.

"Sleeping-powder?" Rogler turned and gazed at her.

"Yes, sir." She then pointed to the box on the table. "The mistress gives him one every evening. It makes him sleep sound at night. It's what the doctor ordered, sir."

"He did, eh?" Rogler queried. "It put him asleep, all right. At what time did his wife usually give him the dope?"

"Soon after dinner, sir," said Lucy.

"That was two or three hours ago. He was that way, then, when the murder was committed." Rogler glanced again at the stupefied man. "One could learn as much from a log. There's nothing to be gained, Callahan, by remaining here. That's plain enough."

Chief Rogler did not wait for an answer, nor appear to have any interest in what Callahan was doing. He turned abruptly and strode from the room, and a moment later he was again confronting Ordway in the hall below. His anger, aroused by the latter's haughty rebuff and entirely justified insinuations, was somewhat dispelled; but not his vindictive purpose, as appeared in the gleam of mingled malice and exultation in his frowning eyes. He observed that Donovan, one of the policemen, had disappeared during his brief absence, but in his grim determination to clinch the case against Ordway he asked no questions.

"You come across, now, if you have any statement to make," he said sternly. "You were alone here when this woman came downstairs. You heard what the butler said. If he told the truth e

"I saw to it that Watson told the truth, as he informed you," Ordway interrupted coldly. "He did so, Rogler, as far as he knew. But Watson was mistaken."

"How mistaken?' snapped Rogler. "What about?"

"I was not in the library when Mrs. Ordway came down from my father's room," said Ordway deliberately. "I was there when Watson went to the kitchen, as he stated, but a few moments later I walked out to the side grounds to finish the cigar I was smoking. I was out there about a quarter of an hour. When I returned I saw Mrs. Ordway lying on the floor. I hastened to aid her, not supposing she was dead, and while attempting to raise her head my hands were stained with blood. As I was rising, horrified at finding that she was dead, Watson came into the rear hall and saw me. That is all I know about the murder."

"It's not a credible story, nor do I believe it," said Rogler bluntly. "Your cane—"

"She was not killed with my cane," Ordway again interrupted. "I had the cane in my hand and dropped it before attempting to raise her. It fell in the pool on the floor, just where you found it."

"Did you have the cane while you were out of doors?" Rogler asked sharply.

"I did." Ordway bowed. "I took it from the umbrella stand as I went out."

"Which door?"

"The side door."

"Did you return that way?"

"I did. I had finished my cigar and was—"

"Wait! Did you go at once to the woman and try to raise her?"

"Yes, immediately," said Ordway. "My first thought—"

"One moment!" Rogler turned quickly to the listening butler. "If you had seen Ordway with his hat on, Watson, you would have known he was not in the library all the while you were in the kitchen," he said pointedly. 'Was he wearing a hat or cap when you first saw him near the body, rising and wiping his hands?"

"He was not, sir," Watson admitted reluctantly. 'His head was bare."

"I wore no hat or cap when I went out," Ordway hastened to state, but his increasing gravity showed how keenly he realized the unfavorable significance of it. "I had been reading in the library, and my head felt hot and feverish. I went out partly to cool off in the night air. That's why I wore no hat."

"Oh, you went out not only to finish your cigar, but also to cool your head," said Rogler derisively. "Why didn't you say so before? Why did you wait till I brought out that point against you? Do you expect me to believe, or any one else, in view of all the evidence and circumstances, that you took your cane to go out, and yet went out bare-headed?" he demanded with increasing austerity.

"You may believe it, Rogler, or not." Ordway flushed hotly for a moment. "It's the truth."

"You may be able, then, to convince a judge and jury," said Rogler, with an incredulous sneer. "Why didn't you tell Watson where you had been?" he questioned. "You must have known he suspected you. Did you deny having killed the woman ?"

"No, I did not," Ordway admitted.

"Why didn't you?" asked Rogler. "That's the first thing an innocent man would have done."

"I saw no immediate occasion to do so," Ordway explained. "Besides, I had something else on my mind. It was necessary, moreover, for him to call the police and a physician as quickly as possible."

"Something on your mind, eh?" Rogler queried suspiciously. 'Was it more important than your immediate vindication? Did you go outside to think about it? What was it? What were you doing out there?" he demanded insistently.

"I was walking in the side grounds," said Ordway, with an obvious effort to retain his composure. "I was merely taking—"

"Wait!" snapped Rogler, turning.

Donovan was entering through the side hall. He had an electric torch in his hand. He evidently had heard the last that was said, and his big red face wore the expression of one who had made an important discovery.

"I've been looking around outside, chief," he said. "There's been a woman here. There are fresh footprints in a flower-bed under the dining-room windows. They lead from there toward the side door. There's loam from the flower-bed on one of the steps, or something that looks like that, and if—"

"Stop a moment!" Rogler turned quickly, with eyes glowing. "Is your wife here, Ordway?" he demanded. "Has your wife been here to-night? She has—your face shows it! You're as white as a corpse. You've lied to me," he sternly accused him. "You did not have your cane out of doors. Your wife has been here. It was she, not you, who took it from the umbrella stand and used it to kill this woman. You've been trying to shield her, Ordway, trying to make it appear—"

"No, no, you're mistaken!" Ordway protested, interrupting. He hesitated for the fraction of a second, ghastly white, indeed, and with a look of unutterable anguish in his eyes. Then as if with sudden determination, or as when one sees no other course open, he drew himself up and repeated, with augmented feeling: "You're mistaken, Rogler, wholly mistaken. I admit that my wife was here, but she was not in the house."

"Rot!" said Rogler. "That's a likely story."

"It's true," Ordway insisted, in tones shaken with emotion. "She came only to talk with me about a reconciliation, about ending our unfortunate estrangement. It was caused by that woman's virulent tongue and merciless persecutions. Nan could not endure it, and would not remain here. That opened a chasm between us. I could not go with her, and leave my father to such as she," he cried, pointing to the lifeless woman. "But my wife did not enter the house to-night," he went on hurriedly. "She looked through the dining-room windows only to learn whether I was at home. Then she saw me in the side grounds, Rogler, and talked with me out there. She did not enter. She had left for her mother's home when I came in. Take me for this crime, if you will, but not my wife— not Nan! She—"

Ordway stopped as if suddenly dumfounded. His wife, deathly pale, but strangely calm, with a look of sublime affection on her handsonie face, was approaching from the side hall. She wore a long dark cloak, and had in ther hand a key to the side door. She went straight to Ordway, while the others were briefly silenced by the scene, and put her arms around him.

"You are doing this for my sake, Joe," she said, with pathetic fondness. "There no longer is any estrangement. There never should have been any. I was all to blame— I, and that woman!"

"Oh, oh, how could you, Nan!" Ordway found his voice at last, and held her close in his arms. "I thought you had gone. I meant to get word to you later. How could you return? How could you come here again?"

"My place is here," she replied, lips quivering. "My place, Joe, is with you —if you are in such trouble as this." She turned one glance of her tear-filled eyes toward the lifeless woman. "If you did it, if you—"

"If I did it.' Ordway gasped amazedly, staring at her. "Good heavens, Nan, what are you saying?" he cried. "Do you— do you mean that you— that you didn't do it?"

"Do it— I!" She drew back a little and gazed at him in blank astonishment. "Why, certainly not! I supposed, Joe, that you—"

"But I saw you leave the house. I saw you run from the side door and flee through the rear grounds. I have thought, of course, that you did it, that you had some other weapon," Ordway cried impetuously. "What else could I make of it? Why had you come here? Why rush out in that way and—"

"I'll tell you why!" She interrupted him through welling sobs and tears. "I was yearning to see my child, our child, Joe, but I could not ask you to let me. It's the servants' night out. I had my key to the side door. I thought I could steal in unseen and go to my darling's room. I was on the side stairs, Joe, and I heard the door of your father's room suddenly opened. I knew that woman must have heard me. I did not want to be seen. I fled down the stairs and out of the house, intending to repeat the attempt a little later. I was about to do so, when I saw that policeman entering. I knew something must have occurred. I let myself in again and— and then I heard what you were saying, realized what you were doing, Joe, for my sake and—"

"Oh, that's all rot! Can that stuff!" Rogler sternly commanded, when sobs completely choked the agitated woman. "It's very clever, very dramatic," he said derisively. "But it's not true. It's a put-up job. You can't blind me by both pretending to have thought the other did it. That's much too flimsy. You can't work on my sympathy," he declared, with vindictive harshness. "You both are under arrest, now, for having killed this woman. You had motive enough, as everybody knows. Take them in charge, Macy! Take them in charge at once and—"

"You slow down, chief, or you'll end with throwing a shoe!"

The sudden startling interruption came from Detective Callahan. He was on the curve of the stairway, gazing over the baluster rail, ten feet above the prostrate  form of lifeless woman. Chief Rogler swung around as quickly as if lashed with a whip, and glared up at him.

"What do you mean?" he cried. "What do you mean, throw a shoe?"

"I'll tell you, chief, all right." Callahan's keen eyes had a glean of malice in them. He looked quite willing to throw subordination to the four winds. "Wait half a minute, chief, and I'll tell you. I've sharpened up a bit!"

There was a tinge of mocking irony in the last that was not without effect upon Rogler. His expression changed and his jaw drooped perceptibly, as Callahan, closely followed by Lucy Dean, hurried down to the lower hall. He had in his hand the powder box Rogler had seen on the bedroom table, also a piece of paper he had found on the floor.

"I'll tell you, chief, and this girl will oborate it," Callahan said glibly with the eyes of every hearer riveted upon him. "I found on the bedroom rug, chief, on which you saw me crouching, a wet spot evidently caused by the liquid in a tumbler that had fallen from the table, or been inadvertently dropped in a moment of sudden fear, or excitement, as is true of this powder paper that was lying near it." Callahan displayed it.

"Well?" from Rogler.

"You said yourself, chief, that the sleeping powder must have been administered two or three hours ago," Callahan reminded him. "The wet spot, if a tumbler containing a liquid had been dropped then, would have dried in half that time. Plainly, then, this woman was mixing something else, and only a very short time ago."

"Well, what of it?" said Rogler gruffly. "Mixing what?"

"I've compared this paper with those containing the sleeping powder," Callahan continued. "It is half an inch smaller each way. But this girl, who has been helping care for old Mr. Ordway,knows nothing of any powder in a paper of this size. This woman, chief, was preparing something else. I found particles of it in the meshes of the rug. Some are still adhering to the paper. It looks to me like arsenic."

"Arsenic, eh?" Rogler's heavy brows fell darkly.

"That's what, chief," Callahan declared, and it was subsequently confirmed. "She wouldn't be the first vicious woman who tried secretly to put away a wealthy husband. Take it from me, chief, she dropped the whole business in sudden fright when, as I just heard Mrs. Joe Ordway say, she thought she heard her in the adjoining hall. She feared that a spy was watching her. She rushed out of the room to see, and ran to the head of the stairs.

"Well?" Rogler's voice had lost it's gruff aggressiveness. "Well, what of it?"

"This of it, chief." Callahan's lips curled slightly. "You saw how the rug at the top of the stairs was twisted, as if by the feet of some one hurrying. You saw that spot on the side wall. I called your attention to it when I began to sharpen up," he said dryly. "The lacing of this woman's right shoe was untied and hanging loose from her foot.

"She trod on it with her left foot just as she reached the rug. As she took another hurried step with the right, the lacing tripped her. It also tore off the metal tab from the end of the lacing. You'll find on the sole of her left shoe a scratch made by the tab when the lacing was violently drawn from under her foot. I found the tab on the rug, which shows just where the fatal accident occurred. She pitched forward down the stairs. If she had fallen straight to the base of them, it would at once have been accepted as an accident only. But her head struck the side wall and bruised her right temple. The force of the blow threw her across the stairs and over the baluster rail. She struck on her head, where you see her, and broke her skull. That, Chief Rogler, is how Mrs. Russell Ordway was killed. Take it from— Sharpen-up Callahan!"

Chief Rogler did not reply. He glanced at the woman's feet, then turned to the amazed physician.

"You can pass on this case, Greer," he said curtly. "I have no further interest in it." He turned sharply on his heel with the last and strode out of the house.

Nancy Ordway was sobbing hysterically in her husband's crushing embrace.

Detective Callahan was smiling.

______________

19: It was Signed "Bill"

Charles Warren Tyler

1887-1952

Detective Story Magazine, 8 June 1920

MRS. THOMPSON was waiting for her husband when he came home from the store shortly after five o'clock.

"Hurry up, Cy," she said as the gentleman stamped into the back hall, "we're going to a show to-night."

"Is that so?" asked Mr. Thompson, grunting as he struggled out of his overcoat.

"Yes, is that so?" mimicked the lady of the house. "Say, who is Bill?"

"Bill," murmured Mr, Thompson, backing up to the stove to warm his spine. "Bill, Bill who?"

"Why, I don't know," Mrs.Thompson said, "but listen."

She picked up a letter from the table. This is what she read:

Mr. and Mrs. Cyrus THompson, Myrtle Street.

My Dear Friends:

I have just been to see the Rodney Wainwright production at the Edgemont Theater, and I want you folks to go. It's a corking show. I don't know when I have enjoyed myself so much. Certainly not in a long time. There are pretty girls and fine music, and the sweetest little Japs. It was good. I thought of you people right away. I know you get out so little. I don't know when I've known you to go out. I hope you won't be offended because I have presumed to send you a couple of tickets, which I hope you will accept with the sincere compliments of

BILL.

"And who the devil is Bill?" demanded Mr. Thompson a little irritably, looking at his wife over the tops of his glasses.

"Well," asserted the latter personage, "it must be some of your friends. Don't you know— can't you guess?"

"Know? Guess?" sputtered the mister, preparing to wash at the sink. "Great Scott, I'll bet that I know than one hundred and ninety-nine Bills. Funny he wouldn't sign his last name."

"Just like a man, I must say," declared the lady, carefully examining the back and inside of the envelope, the front and back of the two bits of red cardboard, and the back of the note itself, and reading the letter for a second time; "because his name is Bill he thinks right off we ought to who it is— whether it is Bill Spivins or Bill Cleaves or Bill Gaffney. Humph!"

"Are they good seats?" demanded Mr. T. from somewhere in the depth of an animated towel surface, "or up in pie heaven?"

"First row in the balcony," said Mrs, T., after an examination, "right in the center. Two dollars and twenty cents apiece. Four-forty for two of 'em. It must be somebody right around here, but for the life of me I can't think who it could be."

"Shall we go?"

"Might's well. We've got plenty of time. I guess it don't begin till around eight, does it?"

Mr. Thompson was combing his bald dome industriously with a brush.

"And probably to-morrow," he complained, "Bill Durkee or Bill Madden or Bill Howe or Bill Smith will come hooting into the store and want to know how we liked the show, and will feel sort of put out because we couldn't guess what Bill it was, and didn't call him right up and thank him."

"Yes," complained the always more or less practical Mrs. Thompson, "and then you have got to, nine chances out of ten, turn around and do 'em a favor. They will either want you to 'swap checks', or get 'em something at wholesale, or loan 'em your car, or give some friend of theirs a job. That's most always how it is when your friends start getting generous. They aren't giving something away for nothing nowadays."

"Probably ain't any more my friend than he is yours, Harriet," reminded the husband. "You notice the letter is addressed to Mister and Missus."

And so Mr. Thompson and his wife went to the theater.

MRS. THOMPSON never laughed so much in her life, and Mr. Thompson nearly rolled out of his seat when Lillian Fitzgerald "sang like a tomcat."

Mrs. Thompson thought the Meyakos were just too cute for anything, and Mr. Thompson liked Trixie Jenery, the dancer, the best; but he didn't tell his better half. Mrs. T. thought she was not dressed properly.

"Don't know when I've enjoyed myself so much," remarked Mr. Thompson with a chuckle, as himself and Mrs. T. were waiting in the subway for a City Point car. "I won't forget this night for a long time. Best show I've seen in years. You've got to hand it to Bill. Mighty white of him, I tell you."

"Yes, it was good," agreed Mrs. T. conservatively. "Very, good indeed." And as a sort of afterthought: "We ought to come to town oftener, Cy. We never go anywhere. Sit in nights and read and sew and put out the cat and go to bed. Look at old man Grayber and his wife; they go somewhere every week, and where they've got a dollar you've got a hundred. 'Tain't as though we couldn't afford it."

"Yes," agreed Mr. Thompson, we must,"

Mr. Thompson had his key ready when he tramped up on to the piazza, but he didn't need it. The front door was wide open.

His wife mounted the steps, puffing and stamping her feet. She suddenly found herself confronted by a tragic husband. He fixed his better half with a stern eye.

"Look at that!" he commanded,  pointing. "You were the last one out!" accusingly.

"For goodness sake!" wheezed Mrs. T.; and then, explosively: "I was not the last one out of the house, Cy Thompson! You came back after the tickets. You were the last one out yourself. You'd forget your head if it wasn't hitched onto your neck!"

Still paving the way for a family row, Mr. and Mrs. Thompson entered the hall wrangling.

Mr. T. switched on the lights. Something snapped under his foot. He looked down. He was standing on a small section of the door casing, fastened to which was a piece of black metal, which, on closer examination, proved to be a portion of one hitherto perfectly good lock.

For an instant there was a tense silence; then Mr. Thompson lifted his voice in wild dismay, at the same time lunging for the dining room.

Again he groped for the light switch. The dining room was flooded with a white glare. Cy Thompson shot one swift glance about him, then bellowed:

"Great Ned, this house has been burglarized, Harriet!"

"Oh, my soul!" moaned Mrs. T., wringing her hands. "Grandma's silver!"

The drawers of the sideboard were all out; some had been dumped onto the floor. Dishes were broken, chairs tipped out of the way, the door of the china cabinet was open. A small-sized cyclone could have done no worse.

Mr. Thompson paused for a brief sur vey. He had reached a point where it appeared that there was no manner of relieving himself except by the use of profanity. Mr. Cy Thompson seldom swore. Nevertheless, under the existing conditions he believed that he would be forgiven; so he began.

For more years than he could compute offhand, Cy Thompson had, each night, been in the habit of placing the receipts of the day and whatever money there was in the little grimy safe at the store into a small canvas bag, the mouth of which was closed by means of running strings, and cramming this into his pocket just before leaving the store.

At home, either immediately upon arrival there, or, if something occurred to distract him temporarily, as soon as it was convenient he went into the parlor and lifted one corner of the couch cover and consigned the small bag of money to the blackness there for security till the morning. Mr. Thompson could not really remember when he had begun this practice, it had been so long ago; or he could not have told just why he had chosen this rather insecure hiding place.

In the passing of the years the thing had become merely a mechanical function of which he was half unconscious. He had seldom considered the possibility that one day— or night— burglars might break in and steal. On the few occasions when such meditation had taken place, he had told himself that no thief would ever think of looking under a couch in the parlor for money.

Hence it was with not a little trepidation in his heart that Mr. Thompson directed his wandering footsteps in the direction of the parlor.

Evidently the housebreaker had not considered the possibilities of the couch except as a sort of court of last resort, for the room itself was in a fearful state of disorder.

The piano had been violated— grossly; the upholstery of two big easychairs had been slashed, the grafonola had been partially dissected, the screen which temporarily blocked off the fireplace opening was torn from its place, the sofa cast aside and now was bottom side up in the midst of the ruins— and Mr. Thompson's old gray pouch was gone.

It seemed the ungentlemanly burglar had exhibited a most worthy steadfastness of purpose, possessing, as he must have, the knowledge that Mr. Thompson carried money home with him each night, but not the enlightenment as concerned its exact location in the house. That was a detail that had been left to be worked out when opportunity came for undisturbed concentration anent the matter at hand.

On the dining-room table Mr. and Mrs. Thompson later discovered a note the handwriting of which was the same firm, businesslike hand as the one which had penned the communication which had accompanied the theater tickets. It read:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Thompson:

Now know who sent the tickets

It was signed "Bill."

________________

20: A Burglar for a Lady

Roy W. Hinds

1887-1930

Detective Story Magazine 30 July 1921

SIMON TRAPP shuddered. A knock at the door always had that effect on the nerves of the Broome Street pawn-broker. It isn't surprising then that he shuddered when the knock at the back door came simultaneously with a rattling at the front door. He had a curious, depressed feeling of being surrounded.

Like all old men who live much alone, Simon Trapp had an instinctive apprehension of the unexpected. Besides that, Simon Trapp's manner of life was such as to induce constant misgiving.

He stood uncertainly in his living quarters in the rear of the pawnshop. A stately clock, an unredeemed pledge of previous years, measured the passing seconds in solemn ticks. Mr. Trapp gazed first in the direction of the back door and then toward the front door, undecided as to which summons to answer first— if indeed he answered either. It was quite late at night, and Simon Trapp was an old man.

The knock repeated at the back door interrupted the pawnbroker's affrighted deliberations, His mind, in spite of the nervous tremors that seized him, worked speedily and accurately. The knuckles laid against the back door were cautious and methodical, measured in their rhythm. It was the knock of a wary visitor, If the caller had reason to be wary, undoubtedly he was a crook. In that case, he was likely to be a friend of Simon Trapp.

The rattling at the front door was not so easy of deduction. A friend or an enemy might be there. He decided to admit the probable friend at the back door and thus reénforce himself to deal with the possible enemy at the front door.

Mr. Trapp stepped into a dark corridor and crept softly to the rear door. In another minute he had admitted Charley Mapes. They reached the living room before the rattling was repeated at the front door.

The young crook stiffened perceptibly. He listened attentively, as his eyes searched the face of the pawnbroker.

"Who's that?" he demanded.

"I should like to know that for myself," Mr. Trapp rejoined.

"You're not expecting any one, eh?"

The old man shook his head.

"No," he replied, "It is strange that some one should come— this late at night."

"Then you hadn't better answer the door," Mapes advised.

"Listen," Mr. Trapp inquired, "why did you come here?"

"I couldn't sleep. I want to get this business over with."

"Ummm," the pawnbroker mused.

"Suppose I shouldn't have answered the back door when you knocked? You wouldn't like that, eh?"

"But I don't like that rattling. Friends don't come that way— experienced friends."

The old man meditated upon this. The door rattled again.

"Maybe you are right," he admitted. "But it might be a friend."

"Let him come in daylight, when I'm not here," counseled the prudent crook.

"But maybe he won't come back— and maybe it is somebody that I should see. I didn't expect you— but I ain't sorry you came."

Charley Mapes shrugged his shoulders.

"Go to the door if you like," he said, "but I'm going to stay handy to the alley."

"Come this way," said the pawnbroker. "Here— right in this room here. You can shut the door—almost. It should be open just a little bit— if I should need you. You will pay attention, eh?"

"I won't be asleep."

"That's a good boy. I know I should depend on Charley Mapes."

Whereupon Simon Trapp proceeded cautiously to the front door.

He stood very still in his gloomy shop. The melancholy accumulation of years of pawnbroking appeared more incongruous than ever in the spectral light. A glimmer from the street lamp sifted through the grotesque collection in the window space and fell like a lance upon the visor of an ancient suit of armor, standing stiffly like a king's sentry, pikestaff in hand.

The old man hovering at the door, stoop-shouldered, and tugging at his beard in indecision, gazed upon the inanimate sentry— and somehow took courage from its sturdy aspect. Perhaps the armored figure reminded him of the very capable and daring young man in the back room.

The glass in the front door was fully covered by a drawn shade. No light seeped in there. Mr. Trapp caught the edge of the shade deftly between two fingers, and within a few moments was enabled to peer into the doorway through a slender thread of glass— so slender that his movements hardly would be detected from outside.

He made out part of a cloaked figure standing in the shadowed area .of the dodrway. The street lamp was in such position that its gleam fell only into a narrow strip of the doorway. As Mf. Trapp gazed, the figure thrust forward a gloved hand and repeated the rattling summons, quite guardedly, on the door. Mr. Trapp perceived the gloved hand quite plainly.

It struck the pawnbroker that the hand was extraordinarily small and dainty. The drape of the cloak sleeve, too, impressed him as strangely out of harmony with so singular a mission— a mission into that dark quarter of the city; an errand which at once bespoke extreme courage and extreme desperation. Swiftly he took in other details of the figure in the doorway.

He saw then that his visitor was a woman— a young woman.

"A la-dy!" he exclaimed inwardly. "Why should such a fine lady be chas ing Simon Trapp?"

The answer was apparent. The woman was in distress of some sort. Somehow she had come to the door of Simon Trapp. She needed help, an¢ undoubtedly would pay for it. Simon Trapp unbolted and opened the doof.

Without a word the woman stepped quickly inside. In a moment the pawibroker had locked the door. He faced her expectantly,

"You are Simon Trapp?" she asked in a voice hushed a trifle perhaps by the gloom of her surroundings, but level and unafraid.

"I am Simon Trapp— a very old man," he replied apologetically. It was one of his characteristic moods—deep humility and an air of wishing to be excused for being alive.

"I have been sent here by a friend — a mutual friend," the caller explained. "He—"

"Sh!" he interrupted softly. He didn't know that Charley Mapes might not have crept into a more advantageous position; and he didn't know yet just how much he wished Charley Mapes to hear. "We should talk about your friend— later," he explained. "If you please, lady— back here."

He led the way into his lighted sitting room at the rear. He motioned the young woman into a chair, lifting his hand now and then as though he feared she might speak. Then, with a bow and a significant elevation of his brows, he withdrew.

The pawnbroker crept softly into the room occupied by Charley Mapes. The young crook was seated in a chair, and Simon Trapp did not see him at first, for the room was dark.

"Charley," he whispered. "There you are— I see you now. Listen, Charley, why shouldn't you go home like a good boy and come down to see me to-morrow night?"

"I'm getting tired of waiting, I tell you," he remonstrated. "I want at least to find out about this thing— what it is. You know; why don't you tell me?"

"I can't tell you," the pawnbroker rejoined. "You should be told by the man I spoke about. I'm sure he will be here to-morrow night. You should come to-morrow night— I have company to-night."

"How long will your company be here?"

"Oh, a long time. Some very important business we have to transact— and we must be all alone."

"I'll stay here till you get through. I want to have a talk with you tonight. I won't listen to your talk— with your company."

Simon Trapp's eyes narrowed.

"Listen," said he. A glint of hardness crept into his tones. His suppliant mood had fled. "Me and my company are going to be alone. I should unlock the back door for you. To-morrow night you will meet my friend."

Charley Mapes got to his feet reluctantly.

"Maybe I won't come back," he threatened.

"Yes," said Simon Trapp, "you'll come back." He wagged his head confidently. "You'll come back. A man like you don't throw away a fortune just because he shouldn't want to wait one day. And there should be other things to think about, too. You'll come back."

And Charley Mapes knew that he would return. He was in a position where he had to, or go to another place for which he had no fancy whatever. Simon Trapp let him out the rear door, and returned to his latest visitor.

"You should take off your cloak, lady," he said ingratiatingly.

He helped her to slip the garment off her shoulders and to drape it over the back of the chair. Deftly she tucked a vagrant strand of brown hair under her small, black velvet hat.

"How did you come here?" he asked. "You wore no veil— oh my!"

"I walked the last few blocks," she told him. Her voice had gained some in strength, but was yet pleasantly low and clear. "I thought of wearing a veil," she explained, "and then I thought that a veiled woman perhaps might attract more attention in this district than one who didn't wish to conceal her features."

He studied her face intently. "You couldn't keep from attracting attention, lady, if you don't wear a veil," and the old rogue grinned.

Her lips parted in a half smile and the paleness of her cheeks lighted a moment in a faint flush, but the urgent business of the moment quickly turned her serious.

"Can we talk quite freely now?" she asked.

Simon Trapp sat in a chair from which he could study his visitor without embarrassment. He rubbed his hands and attempted to smile pleasantly.

"There is nobody here but you and me," he assured her, "What is it that you think Simon Trapp should do for you?"

"I hardly know how to begin." She faltered just a moment. "You see, I came here— I—"

"Maybe you should say how you happened to come here— first," he suggested.

"I was directed by Stephen Winder. He said you would help me. You know him, do you not?"

"Stephen Winder?" A thoughtful frown gathered on Mr. Trapp's brow. "I don't know if I know him or not. What kind of a man is he—Stephen Winder?"

The young woman gazed at him in some surprise.

"You do not recall him?" she asked earnestly. 'He said he knew you very well—and that I could trust you. You don't know him?"

"Well," the old man replied with a shrug, "I don't say I don't know him, and I don't say I do. Tell me what kind of a man he is."

"He is about thirty years old, and he—"

"Listen, lady—I don't care how he looks. How does he act?"

"Oh!" And she perceived the object of Mr. Trapp now. He wanted to be sure she really had come from Stephen Winder. She explained: "He instructed me to ask you if you remember the grand old boys?"

Instantly the demeanor of Simon Trapp, the studied alertness, passed away. He sighed in relief and settled back more comfortably in his chair.

"I should never forget the grand old boys," he assured her. "I am glad you should remember to ask me that."

"That is some sort of a password, I suppose," she ventured.

"Well, not exactly a password— but it is enough to show me that you came from Stephen Winder. You see, miss— er—"

"Mawn—Barbara Mawn."

"How d'you do, Miss Mawn. You see, lady, I am a very old man and have to be careful."

"Surely! This sort of thing is new to me, and perhaps I am nervous. I should have mentioned that first. We both know," she pursued frankly, "the kind of man that Stephen Winder is. He is wanted by the police in more than one city, I think. I am a settlement worker, Mr. Trapp. In my travels about the city I meet strange people. I met Stephen Winder under conditions one time that amounted to my saving him from the police. I did it in pity, for the man was ill, and he impressed me as being worth saving for some thing better than prison. He was in hiding with a family, a poor family, which I visited in my work. I recognized him from pictures I had seen in the paper— pictures printed after some of the escapades for which the police sought him. He knew that I recognized him and was alarmed. He begged me not to betray him and told me a story which won me to his side. Of course, I had no interest in him except that of pity. If he was caught, I realized that he would be sent to prison for so long a time that his life would be wrecked.

"He convinced me that he would 'go straight' if he could gnly retain his freedom. I don't know whether he has done so or not. I lost track of him after that. Last week I had occasion to ask him for help. I found myself in difficulties. I traced him through the family with whom I found him. He was glad to be of service to me. That accounts for me being here tonight."

"Why didn't he bring you here, lady ?"

"I didn't want him to do that. I didn't want him to have anything to do with the business I have in hand."

Mr. Trapp wagged his head understandingly.

"I need an expert," she added, "and Mr. Winder is not an expert in the line I am looking for. He said you could find me a man— an expert in that particular— work."

"An expert in what?"

"An expert burglar."

"A burglar— me find you a burglar? Burgiars, lady, are hard to get. There is a great shortage of burglars now. I tell you the truth, it is as hard for me to find a burglar now as it is for the police."

She smiled at his grim jest. She saw in this scheming old man now something besides the sordid broker in crime. She had an idea, from his appearance, that he was very grasping and money-hungry ; but she also had an idea that he loved his nefarious games, that he was seized with the fascination of adventure, and lured by the delights of profitable trickery— trickery which was ever a matching of wits. Also she found that he had a sense of humor, a trifle distorted perhaps, but a quality nevertheless which kept him from desending to the depths of a Fagan. Simon Trapp was hardly a man, she deduced, to whom one could safely come on an errand of murder, but he would be wholly dependable in almost anything else.

She glanced up quickly from these meditations and found him grinning in delight at his peculiar sample of wit.

She smiled, and rejoined: "I'm sure I know nothing about the condition of the burglar market at present, but when one wants anything very badly the price perhaps is secondary."

An alert look came into his eyes and his face lengthened gravely.

"Maybe I can find you a first-class burglar," he said, "if you are willing to pay."

"I am willing to pay."

"How much, lady?"

"Five thousand dollars."

Simon Trapp plucked at his beard.

"That isn't so much for a good live burglar, lady." He chuckled. "Maybe," he bantered, "I could get you a shopworn pickpocket for that price but a first-class burglar—"

"It is all I can afford," she returned disappointedly. "I had thought that amount a substantial inducement, It is for only a few hours' work, hardly half one night— if I have calculated right."

"But five thousand dollars," he demurred, "is not so much— when the burglar is paid. There shouldn't be much left for me."

"It is all I can pay."

He reflected inwardly: "Well, five thousand dollars is five thousand dollars— and I have Charley Mapes, an expert burglar, who will work very cheap if I tell him to." Aloud he said: "I don't like to see a fine lady like you in trouble. I will help you out. What is it that you want this burglar to do?"

"I thought," she said, "that you could arrange for me to meet the man— and I could tell him. Not that I distrust you," she hastened to assure him, "but I thought it best to confine my business to as few persons as possible."

"You shouldn't meet the burglar," he counseled. "A fine lady like you shouldn't be mixing up with burglars. You tell me your business, and I will fix everything. I will get a man to do the job, but he won't know who it is for, or why he is doing it."

"That is just as well," she agreed; and resumed her explanation of the strange affair that had brought her hither.

"Mr. Trapp," she said, "my brother is in serious trouble. He is very young and has had rather a wild career. In his wanderings through the night life of the city he became acquainted with an unscrupulous man who now has him in his power. This man— named Morgan Granner— is—"

"Morgan Granner?"

"Yes, Morgan Granner. Do you know him?"

"No, lady; but I just wanted to get the name straight."

"Well, this Morgan Granner is a crook." She blushed, embarrassed, as she realized she was talking to a crook. "I mean that he is dishonest, and a—"

"That is all right, lady. He is a crook, you say— go on."

"He is a crook who deals in big things. He floats fake corporations and things like that. He is a swindler who operates on a big scale. From all accounts he is a man of polish and a delightful man to meet. It is easy to understand how, when he wished, he drew my young and inexperienced brother into his clutches.

"My brother is a clerk in the office of the Condor Oil Development Company. This company is a bona-fide concern. It happens that Morgan Granner just now is promoting an oil land development company which is not bona fide. He has another of his swindles in operation. From my brother he wormed information which he is prepared to turn to big account, to the detriment of the Condor Company. He manipulated things in such way that my brother cannot reveal the situation without convicting himself of being a party to the conspiracy. In reality he is an unwilling confederate of Granner, but he got in too deep before he was aware of the true state of affairs.

"Now it means dismissal and disgrace, if not something more terrible, for my brother to reveal the conspiracy. It will look as though he went into it willingly, that he became a crook by choice and wants to back out for lack of courage. Altogether itis a terrible situation for him and the family. I want to get him out—and yet I don't want the Condor Company to suffer because of his folly.

"Granner has a hard grip on him and is squeezing the poor boy to the limit. His scheme now is to get hold of certain documents in the vault of the Condor Company. These are highly important documents. They amount to a complete record of oil possibilities in two undeveloped regions in Texas. The Condor Company spent a tremendous amount of money to make the survey— it is the work of years, The report of the experts shows just where oil can be found and where it cannot be found in the whole of those two sections. With that information a company can get options on the desirable properties without spending a vast sum of money acquiring the whole. With the survey report to go on a company virtually has the key to miliions,

"Morgan Granner wants that report. It is in the vault of the Condor Company. He insists that my brother help him get it, and he means to have his way. Granner plans burglary. My brother doesn't know the combination to the vault— he is merely a clerk in the office— but he can be of valuable assistance to the burglars. He can get them into the offices without running the danger of breaking in, and that is what Granner insists on.

"The burglary is set for next Satur day night. Granner wants all day Sunday and Sunday night to get on his-way to the West before the robbery is discovered Monday morning. He means, I suppose, to get into Texas as quickly as he can and get options on the properties which the report shows to be valuable. The Condor Company has no way of bringing him to justice unless they learn he committed the burglary, and they will hardly learn that. He has a very clever scheme laid, and I am here now in an effort to frustrate that scheme and to remove my brother from this man's hands."

Simon Trapp meditated.

"And where does the burglar come in?" he asked.

"I thought," she explained, "that it would be a good plan to let Granner accomplish the burglary. Then we could find some way— oh! we must find some way— to get the documents away from him and replace them in the vault before Monday morning. The Condor Company will know nothing about the affair then. My brother will have complied with the demands of Morgan Granner and cease to be a useful tool of the conspirator. Granner will be balked, but he will not know exactly how he was balked. That is, he will not know until it is too late— and then he will hardly reveal the scheme."

Barbara Mawn searched the pawnbroker's face hopefully.

"Isn't there some way," she begged, "that these documents can be recovered? Then it would be easy for our burglar to open the vault and replace them."

The old man remained silent, musing profoundly,

"There must be some way," she persisted earnestly.

At length he said: "It all depends. This man— Granner, you say his name smart man. The papers he will steal will be very valuable to him, and he ain't going to handle 'em careless. He should watch 'em very close. It would be a hard job to catch him sleeping and—"

An expression of disappointment came over the woman's face.

"And," Simon Trapp proceeded, "he would have to be asleep. Yes, this man must be a very smart man— but maybe I know a man just as smart."

"Oh, I do hope so!"

"And I will see this man and find out what he thinks about it."

Barbara Mawn soon took her departure, immeasurably cheered.

Mr. Trapp's face wore a puzzled frown for some few minutes after the young woman left.

"I am getting too much business," he mused. "Too many unfinished jobs on hand. First it's this, and then it's that— and pretty soon I shouldn't know one from the other."

The very next morning Simon Trapp made it a point to get into touch with a young man known professionally as "Willie the Heel." The picturesque sobriquet had not come to this young man as a matter of course; it was a just recognition of his abilities as a "heel." A heel who specializes in fancy jobs of lifting— that is, jobs which require cleverness above the common run of thievery. It is no difficult task to steal an article over which no guard is set; but a heel performs his task often in broad daylight and in the very presence of the enemy. He works at his victim's heels, as it were— thus the nickname.

"Willie," said Simon Trapp, "you should turn this trick for me."

"It don't sound like an easy one," said Willie. "How there in it?"

"One thousand dollars."

Mild disgust crept over the sharp features of Willie the Heel.

"Since when," he asked, "did you get the idea that I'm working for charity?"

"This is charity," Mr. Trapp admitted. "It is a job for a lady— very much a lady— who at one time done a favor for Stephen Winder. And why should we turn her down when she is in trouble?"

After a time Willie the Heel was persuaded; and thus Simon Trapp had arranged things so that he would come in for the long end of the purse.

It was time now for Simon Trapp to turn his attention to more urgent business. That night there came to him a man with whom he had had previous dealings. The caller was a tall, sleek individual who seemed, in his words and manner, to hold the pawnbroker in contempt— though he concealed his aversion as much as possible. But it was hard to conceal emotions and passions from the wary pawnbroker. Simon Trapp studied humanity as a watchmaker studies watches. The slightest twitching of a muscle was not lost upon him; and he could tell by the tone of a man's voice just what was passing inside.

"He isn't here yet," said the visitor impatiently.

"He will be here any minute now," Mr. Trapp reassured. "You shouldn't fret. I said he would be here, and i

A guarded knock sounded at the back door.

"There he is," the pawnbroker finished triumphantly.

Charley Mapes presently was ushered into the room. He studied the stranger calmly and then glanced expectantly at Mr. Trapp.

"Is this the gentleman?" he asked.

"Charley," said Simon Trapp, "this is the very kind gentleman who had me get you out of prison. He is a very good friend of yours, Charley. Never did I see a man so anxious to get another man out of prison. Once we tried and failed— you remember that; but this kind gentleman would not quit. He kept at it until you got your feet on the ground. You should thank him, Charley."

"Thanks," said Charley Mapes dryly. The young crook didn't go in much for sham, and he knew quite well that the kind gentleman had arranged for his escape from the big prison because he had a job for him to do. The nature of this job was as yet unknown to Charley Mapes, and, being a fugitive, his life for the last few days had been a life of constant apprehension.

Charley Mapes had been promised money for the job. He was exceedingly anxious now to do the job and get the money, so that he could go a long ways away. It wasn't pleasant for Charley—known so well to the police— to be lingering almost at the gates of the prison he had fled from so recently.

"Why not talk business?" Charley suggested. An embarrassed silence had followed his appearance.

"Here?" inquired the stranger.

"Why not?" asked Charley.

"Yes— why not?" Simon Trapp supplemented.

"I don't know of any particular reason," the stranger admitted, "except that I always feel nervous in this place."

"It ain't a very high-toned place," Mr. Trapp rejoined, "but it's safe. You shouldn't be nervous."

They got down to business; and it was some three hours later when they separated. But at last Charley Mapes felt easier in mind. He knew now just what was expected of him— and it wasn't such a hard task. It was a job requiring skill and caution, but the returns would be more than compensatory.

The job went off very smoothly. The adept fingers and keen brain of Charley Mapes, together with the precautions that had been thrown around him, made failure next to impossible.

The sleek stranger, Simon Trapp, and Charley Mapes had their heads together in the living quarters of the pawnbroker. It was late at night.

"I am very well satisfied," said the stranger. He tucked into a traveling bag a sheaf of papers which he had been studying closely.

Simon Trapp rubbed his hands and grinned expectantly.

"We should be satisfied when—"

The stranger understood. He took from the traveling bag a neatly wrapped parcel and handed it to the pawnbroker.

Simon Trapp's fingers trembled as he undid the parcel. In it he found twenty thousand dollars. He divided the money between himself and Charley Mapes.

Charley Mapes prepared to leave at once.

"Come and see me to-morrow night," the pawnbroker whispered to the young crook as he let him out.

The stranger snapped shut his traveling bag. Soon he left.

Simon Trapp hastened from his front door to the room in which the transaction had just been completed. He swung open the door to a closet, and Willie the Heel stepped out.

"Did you see the satchel?" Simon Trapp asked eagerly.

"I seen it. I'll get it."

And Willie the Heel hastened to pick up the trail of the sleek stranger.

Charley Mapes came back next night— Sunday night. He found the pawnbroker meditating gravely.

"What's the matter?" Charley asked.

"I never seen such a business," said Simon Trapp. "You know the papers you got out of that vault last night?"

"Yes. Weren't they the right ones?"

"Oh, yes— they're the right ones all tight— but this man Granner wants 'em put back in the vault to-night. He's changed his mind. It's very important now that the papers shouldn't be missing. Can you put 'em back?"

"I suppose I can— if that kid is there to let me into the office."

"He'll be there all right. I got that all fixed. I'll give you one thousand dollars, Charley, to put them papers back."

Charley Mapes returned two hours later.

"Did you do it?" Simon Trapp asked.asked.

"It was easy."'

"Put 'em back just like they were, eh?"

"That kid— young Mawn— fixed that after I opened the vault."

"That's fine, Charley— and here's one thousand dollars more for you. And now, Charley, you better go to your train right away, like a good boy. It ain't safe for you to be around here."

"I'm leaving town in an hour," said Charley Mapes happily.

"That's a good boy!"

The old pawnbroker sat meditating alone.

"Well," he assured himself, "I done the right thing. Granner's job first— and then I took up the lady's job. I didn't mix 'em up. And I don't like Granner. Miss Mawn done a favor once for Stephen Winder, and Stephen Winder is a nice fellow. No, I shouldn't feel bad. I didn't do anything Granner wouldn't do— and Miss Mawn is a mighty fine lady. And Granner is on his way to Texas thinking he has the papers."

Simon Trapp chuckled maliciously.

________________

Table of Contents

- Unnamed
- 2: The Rook / Jeffery Farnol
- 3: Catastrophe / Ethel Lina White

- 4: The Worker in Sandal-Wood / Marjorie Pickthall

- 5: That Valuable Mare / Edward Sorenson

- 6: The Curse of the Catafalques / F Anstey

- 7: The Haunter of the Ring / Robert E. Howard

- 8: The Painted Wooden Soldier / Sumner Locke

- 9: Bubbles! / Ralph Gordon
- 10: The Stolen Ring / Rosa Praed
- 11: The Kidnaped Memorial / Sinclair Lewis
- 12: The Accident of Crime / Stacy Aumonier
- 13: Death Shaves Close / Laurence Donovan
- 14: Contraband / Frank L Packard
- 15: Pieces of Hate / Jack O'Brien

- 16: Mr Clackworthy Profits by the Drama / Christopher B. Booth

- 17: Murder Makes a Lovely Frame / Ken Kessler

- 18: On Her Sole / Scott Campbell

- 19: It was Signed "Bill" / Charles Warren Tyler

- 20: A Burglar for a Lady / Roy W. Hinds